Crucible of Gold

dozen dragons of varied size nesting in the rubble or perched on some of the wreckage like crows. Some of them were eating cattle, and others lay watchful and huddled around a sort of encampment of tents and sheds which had been erected in one cleared section of the city near the docks.

“They are not all heavy-weights, anyway,” Temeraire said, although privately—he did not wish at all to convey alarm—but privately, he did think it would be rather difficult for even the four of them to manage so many, in a single fight, even if Churki should decide to fight with them; there were at least five heavy-weights among the enemy; and Iskierka was not yet quite well. “Although that red-brown one looks as though he might come up to my weight—”

“Kefentse,” Laurence said. “His name is Kefentse.”

Chapter 16

“I AM GLAD TO SEE YOU WELL, Captain Laurence,” Mrs. Erasmus said—or rather Lethabo, as she informed him she had resumed her childhood name, from before her abduction. Indeed there seemed nothing left of the subdued, silent woman Laurence had first met on the way to Capetown. She now wore the elaborate Tswana dress of patterned cloth, and much gold jewelry bright against her skin, but these were mere externals: the true distinction lay rather in the stern carriage of her neck, the severely pulled-back hair which disdained to hide the scarring upon her forehead, and her direct look.

“But I hope you are not come as an enemy,” she added, bluntly.

She had returned hence with Kefentse to direct the search for more Tswana survivors among the slaves on the estates. Brazil had been the destination of nearly all those slavers who had preyed upon the villages of the Tswana before the Tswana’s armies, being roused, had struck against the slave ports of Africa and stifled the trade. She herself had been brought here as a mere slip of a girl, abducted from her home and sold into bondage; only great good fortune had preserved her to obtain her freedom and eventually return to her homeland. Yet there could not be any great number of similar survivors: apart from the hideous toll of the ocean crossing in the foulness of a slave-ship’s hold, those who lived to reach Brazil would for the most part have been set to hard labor clearing the deadly jungle or harvesting cane.

“You must know you are being used, by Napoleon,” Laurence said, “to an end which would see more and not less of the world reduced to a subjugated state; indeed he has reinstated slavery, rather than forbidden it, in the territories of France. Can you have found so many survivors of your own particular tribe, with this assault, as to justify the toll in life among the innocent?”

“There has been no slaughter,” she said. “We did not burn the city: the Portuguese did that themselves, in their panic, while we stayed upon the mountains and made our demands for the return of the stolen. We took the city only after they had fled it. As for the survivors, you may come and see for yourself.”

With a word to Kefentse, she guided Laurence and Granby and Hammond down to the encampment and through its cramped and narrow lanes, which housed to his surprise many thousands: men, women, children, dazed with both destruction and liberation. “Some are the descendants of those stolen,” she said, “and do not remember their home in Africa.”

“And others,” Granby said to Laurence in an undertone, “haven’t anything to do with the Tswana at all, I imagine: those dragons don’t seem likely to me to be so very particular about who they have found, so long as they have found someone.” He started guiltily, seeing Lethabo’s eye upon him overhearing.

“But he cannot be wrong,” Laurence said to her, when they had gone back into the dockside house which, being one of the remaining standing buildings, served presently as her headquarters. Supplies of foodstuffs and clothing salvaged from the wreckage filled the rooms, and they sat among barrels of salt beef. “I can scarcely believe that so many would have been taken before provoking that answer, which your dragon country-men have made, of smashing the slave ports; and you yourself have told me that not one in ten could have survived this far. The greater share of those you have rescued cannot be of the Tswana.”

“If it were so,” Lethabo said, “and yet they claimed ancestry or some distant memory, would that be less true than the rebirth of our ancestors as the dragons who guard us?”

He did not know how to answer her: she had been the wife of a missionary and, he thought, too good a Christian to believe in that superstition; she saw his confusion and shook her head. “I do not call that a lie,” she said, “which when believed is true; and I think God loves justice better than the letter of the law. You will forgive me a moment.”

She rose, for another four survivors had that moment come rushing into the house: a man and a woman with a child in arms and an older one clinging to her hand. They looked with fear over their shoulders at the middle- weight dragon who had deposited them before the door; in contrast the beast stood outside hunched down and peering in after them, with a hopeful air.

Lethabo spoke to them in Portuguese; Laurence could not follow the conversation, but saw them grow gradually calmer, and then uncertain, looking back at the dragon with doubt writ on their faces. At last Lethabo went to the table before the windows and opened a great ledger in which names were written in two columns: she paged through it and found the name Boitumelo solitary on the left, and read it aloud to them.

The man repeated it slowly, and looked a question at the woman; she looked at the children, and in a moment repeated the name also. Lethabo nodded, and wrote in the right-hand column; then took them outside to the waiting dragon, and spoke with the creature in the language of the Tswana. Laurence went to stand by the doorway, and heard her tell the dragon that the man was likely the grandson of Boitumelo, and this his family. The dragon bugled joy and answered that he had thought so: there was a decided likeness, in the little boy; and he put his nose down to the older child, who after a moment tentatively reached out and gave it a pat.

In a little more than a quarter-of-an-hour, Lethabo came back inside: the new arrivals had been seen off to shelter in the settlement by one of the women assisting her. She raised an eyebrow at Laurence, who stood looking over the ledger. “Do you have any other quarrel with my work?”

“No,” Laurence said quietly, as she shut the book again, “none; save to wonder how you will take so many home.”

“The French have promised to sail us back,” she said, “and then return for more: we were brought from Africa in smaller ships; on these great transports near one thousand can sail, and in better comfort, with the peace of knowing they go to freedom and not to slavery.” She nodded at his look. “And on their return the ships will bring back still more dragons, yes. Of course they are using us: and we them; this is no true alliance, and our King knows better than to trust Napoleon, but we have had not much opportunity to choose our allies in this cause.”

“Would you prefer others?” Laurence asked outright, ignoring Granby’s startled look, and Hammond’s barely restrained flinch of protest.

“Perhaps, Captain,” Lethabo said, “and I think we must have others, if we are all not soon to witness the very slaughter of which you first accused us.”

“Captain,” Hammond said at once, as they left the headquarters and began the walk back to the city’s edge, where Temeraire waited to carry them up to their encampment on the hill, “of course our engaging in a direct action on behalf of the colony is presently somewhat impractical—”

Laurence exchanged a look with Granby, whose face showed what he thought of this as a description of a confrontation between three dragons and near two dozen.

“—but I feel I must remind you that the Portuguese are our allies, and invaluably so—even this very moment British soldiers may be landing on their soil—and I cannot countenance any arrangement which should damage our relations with that nation.”

“I hope to do no such thing,” Laurence said.

“Sir, you will forgive me,” Hammond said, “but as a point of law, these men and women you see thronging these alleys are escaped slaves—the legal property of landowners subject to the Portuguese Crown: in the—the tacit encouragement, the, I must say, near endorsement—sir, you did not at any moment take pains to establish the rights of the—of the owners—”

Laurence stopped in the lane and took Hammond by the arm and turned him forcibly to look: children played