Crucible of Gold

curaca—” by which word he seemed to mean the chiefs of each clan. “It was a great honor to persuade a dragon to join one’s ayllu: a great warrior might win one for his kin, or a skillful weaver.”

“So you see, Captain,” Hammond said, listening, “I was not at all wrong: it is not slavery, in the ordinary sense.”

“It was not, in those times,” Taruca said. “Why does a dragon wish to say how a man shall live his life? The honor of the ayllu was the honor of the dragon; its strength her strength; they did not govern. But then the plagues came: and men died, so now nearly all the chiefs of all the ayllus are dragons. And they are grown anxious, and do not like us to go anywhere; and rightly when they steal from one another.”

There were people, of course: the country was not deserted. As they came northward into the more populous regions, men might be seen openly upon the roads with llama pack-trains, and dragons in a particular blue fringe flew the route. “She says they are watching the roads to make sure there is no theft,” Temeraire said, when one of these had stopped them in their way and demanded that they land in a deserted valley, and show her their safe-conduct from the governor.

All three dragons were inclined to be offended by her intrusion, as she could not have weighed above two tons: to Laurence’s eye she was smaller than the little courier Volly. She did not seem to care that she was dwarfed by them, however, and when she saw the men were most of them in native dress—courtesy of Magaya’s gifts—she insisted on having every last one paraded before her, so she could assure herself of their indeed being all Europeans. This caused some difficulty, as they were not; and aside from the handful of Malay and Chinese sailors who made her most suspicious, several of the British men were tanned too dark and were forced to disrobe to reveal their natural color; and then Demane and Sipho and the three other black men among the crew, she suspected of being made-up in reverse fashion.

“Demane is mine,” Kulingile said, when he felt she had looked too long. She only ruffled her feathers up and back at him in answer, still peering closely, and he reached the end of his patience. Sitting up, he spread wide his wings and threw out his chest: he had always before been remarkably even- tempered, and not often given to parading himself, but he had despite all their privations continued to grow, and when a dragon of nearly thirty tons chose, he could no more be ignored than an avalanche. The patrol-dragon gave a hop sideways, startled into looking up at him, and he threw up his head and roared.

Kulingile’s voice had remained thready and piping, but his roar shared no such qualities. It did not have the same eerie and particular resonance as the divine wind, but the noise was shocking nonetheless, sourced in so vast a pair of lungs, and at such a near distance. Involuntarily many of the men covered their ears, and when Kulingile leaned forward, the patrol-dragon skipped prudently back still farther, made some hasty remarks about being satisfied, and scurried into the air.

“You did not need to make quite such a fuss,” Temeraire protested, his ruff flattened backwards. “She might have been more polite, of course, but she was very small: it is not as though she were really any threat.”

“She was not so small she is not bigger than Demane,” Kulingile said, which was inarguable, “and those dragons are quick, too; what if she had snatched him up, and I could not have caught her? Anyway,” he added, with a worrying rumble, “I am done with swallowing insults.”

“I hope he does not mean to be quarrelsome,” Laurence said to Temeraire, troubled, that evening when they had made their camp; Kulingile had retreated from all their company and was brooding over three slaughtered llamas. “He has never before behaved so—”

“I expect he is still distressed,” Temeraire said. “I will confess, Laurence, I am not wholly easy in my own mind, either, where the sailors are concerned. How much more dreadful it must be for Kulingile when they actually laid hands on his captain; and I must say, Demane might be kinder,” he added.

Laurence considered at first whether to apply to Roland, to speak with Demane, but realized they were no longer sitting together as had been their habit: she was putting Gerry, and Baggy with him, to mathematics, the first time Laurence could recall her ever showing the least unforced engagement upon any sort of schoolwork. The torn skin of her injury had mended as well as might have been expected, and she had only a tracery of thin lines crossing her cheek and a crook in her nose to show for it now, which she disdained to conceal: instead she had plaited her hair still more severely back.

Demane meanwhile sat a little distance away from her, just past the limits of intrusion, and watched her broodingly; he broke only now and again to pass a suspicious gaze over the sailors, particularly Baggy, who came in for his coldest looks. Roland steadfastly refused to meet Demane’s gaze all the while. So Laurence could not ask her to breach a silence whose cause he could only approve, if she had taken his last advice to heart, and meant to add a proper distance, however inconvenient that might prove in this particular circumstance.

Demane’s temper could not be said to have improved with her reproof, if reproof there had been. “I don’t mean to be always sitting in a basket, being watched,” Demane said, shortly, when Laurence spoke to him directly of Kulingile’s distress, without taking his eyes away from Roland. “You do not hang back, when there is fighting, even when Granby says you ought,” which was a shot that went home too well. Laurence had often been reproved for hazarding himself further than his duty might allow, as an aviator, and had never yet been able to make himself cleave to a practice which, in a Navy officer, must have instead borne the name of rank cowardice.

“There is a distinction,” Laurence said, “between seeing one’s duty differently, and neglecting it. To render your beast unhappy merely for the sake of demonstrating an excessive independence, with no pressing cause, can only be called the latter.”

“You shall not lecture Demane,” Kulingile flared, raising his head abruptly from where he lay, having overheard. “He is also a captain, and I am larger than Temeraire; you do not outrank him.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, indignantly rousing in his turn, “I call that nice, when you should not ever have grown so large if I had not carried you halfway across Australia, and shared my kangaroos when you could not fly yourself; and anyway even if Laurence and Demane are both captains, Laurence is the senior.”

“No, he isn’t,” Kulingile said, “for he was not a captain, when Demane harnessed me; he had been dismissed the service.”

“That,” Temeraire said, “was only in the nature of an interlude; it does not signify.”

“It does, too,” Kulingile said, “for Caesar told me, in Sydney, that the captains are all on a list, and one’s name goes on it in order; so Demane is ahead of Laurence on it.”

“And Granby is ahead of them both.” Iskierka smugly flung her own fuel on the fire, and with Temeraire’s ruff bristling out fiercely, the three looked likely enough to come to blows in a moment.

“Captain Laurence has been restored with seniority!” Hammond cried, rising from his own place by the fire to break into the looming quarrel, and added urgently when the dragons had looked over, “And if I am not mistaken, Captain, that dates from your having made post, in the Navy.”

“So Laurence is first, and by a great margin,” Temeraire said, with intense satisfaction, and Kulingile looked at once mulish and sullen: so matters had only been worsened, and over a mere triviality. Laurence had not troubled himself to inquire regarding his place on the Admiralty lists: even more meaningless than his polite fiction of a reinstatement.

“Regardless,” Laurence said, “Captain Demane, I do offer you my apologies; it is perfectly true that I spoke as I ought not, to a fellow captain: interference is not allowed in the Corps, and for good cause; I hope you will allow me to cry your pardon.”

“Oh,” Demane said, blankly: wind spilled out of his sails. “I don’t—yes, sir, of course?” he finished uncertainly, and then looked at Roland, who hastily averted her own gaze. Gong Su called them to dinner then, interrupting. But when they had eaten, Demane strode over with a determinedly casual air to sit with Kulingile after all; he slept between the dragon’s forelegs rather than going out with his sling to forage as had been his wont, the previous nights of their journey.

Laurence was prepared to find a handsome settlement at Lake Titicaca, from the quality and regularity of the roads and the general excellence of the construction, but his expectations were inadequate for the vista, when they at last saw the blue haze of the water: some distance from the shores, a great city was laid out before them, centered on a raised plaza dotted by immense carved figures, and surrounded by curious fields carved into rows flooded with water.

“Is that your home?” he asked Taruca, as they drew near. “There is a city of red stone—”