Crucible of Gold

dreadfully rude as to shove her off: she is not so big that she will make things uncomfortable, and she is so much older than any of us except Messoria.”

“So I am afraid I can offer you not much hope of escape,” Laurence told Hammond on shore, supervising the packing of his sea-chest: Gerry was not particularly handy, and Laurence was having to refold every item before it entered the flimsy wooden crate which should have to serve him for the purpose, “unless you should persuade some other person to inveigle her away from you; I may assure you that given your blessing there are several officers among our company who would gladly take your place in her affections.”

“I give it with all my heart,” Hammond said, “and have not the least hope of its answering. If she meant to be fickle, she might have remained in her own country; and I dare say she will be perfectly ready, in the Incan style, to accept any number of suitors, and consider them all her own without letting me off: I will count myself fortunate if I can only persuade her to remain in covert, instead of romping down the Strand behind me, as I suppose she would be glad to do. Unless you could contrive to poison her?” he inquired in a bitter spirit of Gong Su, who had ducked into the tent.

“Did you require me about the provisions?” Laurence asked.

“No, Captain,” Gong Su said, “and Mr. Hammond, I cannot satisfy you; but if I may propose an alternative, you would find Churki no source of difficulty if she should accompany you to China.”

“Ha; I shall not be posted back to China,” Hammond said. “I will be pushed off into the countryside with vague promises of some other occasions in future, which will never come—unless Dom da Câmara decides to try and induce their Lordships to bring me under charges, which I cannot discount—”

“Pardon me,” Gong Su said, gently breaking into this morose ramble, which trailed away low but showed no sign of immediately concluding, “but you need not return to England first: the ship may carry you to China, instead.”

“What?” Hammond said, staring.

“And you, of course, Captain,” Gong Su said, bowing, “and Lung Tien Xiang; that is what I wish to humbly suggest.”

Laurence was rather taken aback himself at what could only be called the effrontery of the suggestion they might virtually commandeer the Potentate, particularly when that suggestion came from a source so ordinarily self-effacing: although that Gong Su might desire to return to his own country was no surprise if one considered it; Laurence made it five years since they had left China. “We are very likely to stop a merchantman on its way to Canton, at Madeira if not before,” Laurence said, “and I would of course book your passage if you wished—” But Gong Su was shaking his head.

“My own insignificant presence cannot make a difference in these matters,” Gong Su said. “But I am of the opinion that my master would, when the fullness of events in this distant part of the world have been laid before him, welcome the chance to consult with you more intimately: and that noble lord, your most honored elder brother and the heir of the dread lord who commands the Celestial Throne, has lately granted me the honor to invite you to visit him, if circumstances should seem to make that desirable: such is his foresight and wisdom.”

He concluded this by bringing out a packet of oilcloth, which he unrolled to reveal a narrow and folded letter—the same letter, Laurence realized after a moment, which Lung Shen Li had brought him in Australia, before their departure, and which Laurence had assumed a message from his family: sealed magnificently with red and enclosed in a wrapper labeled all over with Chinese characters. Gong Su placed it across both hands and presented it to Laurence.

“My elder—my what?” Laurence said, baffled, and then said, “Do you mean Prince Mianning? Your master? What—” He stopped, and pressed his lips shut against betraying himself into an undignified yammer: having been under the impression, until the present moment, that Gong Su had been his cook, he could only regard with outrage both the shockingly brazen mode and the act itself, the self-acknowledgment of a—

“He is not a spy,” Hammond hissed at him urgently, having dragged Laurence nearly bodily to the far corner of the tent, “not a spy, at all, Captain; you must not consider him so. He is—” Hammond groped for some excuse. “He has been delegated to your service—”

“Delegated to my service?” Laurence glared at Hammond. “Mr. Hammond, if you will instruct me what else, but a spy, I am to consider a man who has assuredly reported every minute detail of my affairs—he was a guest in my father’s house!—and those of the service to a foreign power—”

“To your relations, who surely had some right to an interest,” Hammond said, as brazen as Gong Su himself, but hastily altered his course, seeing that Laurence was by no means to be persuaded along these lines, “—to his own government, to whom he surely offers his first allegiance; and in any case,” he dashed on, “in any case, you must see the utmost significance—if Prince Mianning invites us to China officially—”

“Prince Mianning has issued no invitation but one hypothetical,” Laurence said, “and left the power of making it in the hands of this—”

“—servant of the throne,” Hammond said loudly, overriding, “and plainly one of trusted probity and judgment to have been given such license, for, Captain, there can only be one purpose in asking us to make such a journey: they wish to discuss an alliance.”

“How you should arrive at a conclusion so wholly unsupported by any past evidence offered by their behavior—” Laurence began.

“I have been laboring these last five years myself, Captain,” Hammond said, “and not, I trust, to no purpose: China may not have opened her ports to us, but there has certainly been a softening of—”

“From a softening to alliance?” Laurence said.

“If I may,” Gong Su said, apologetically: their voices had risen past even a fiction of private conversation, though Laurence was not much inclined to forgive the reminder that virtually all his conversation, save those conducted under rare circumstances of real privacy, had been exposed to an interest beyond ordinary gossiping curiosity. “I do not presume to speculate as to the motives of my lord, or as to the purpose of his invitation! But I have been impelled to speak as I have by those late events, which one must fear as altering for evil the very balance and the order of the world: and it is with that consideration that I do urge you to hasten without delay to answer the invitation of the crown prince, as is your filial duty.”

“Oh! Laurence, it is beyond anything wonderful!” Temeraire said, in delight. “Of course we must go: I should like nothing better than that Maximus and Lily should see China, and all our formation, too. And to think that Gong Su has arranged it all: I should never have imagined it.”

“No,” Laurence said, stifling the smart of renewed indignation. The first infuriated heat of betrayal past, he had not been able to stand his ground against Hammond’s persuasion very long. Gong Su had made his meaning too plain, even if a notion of courtly decorum forbade him outright speaking on behalf of the Emperor’s son. Laurence could not despite a certain irritated desire to do so believe him a liar or untrustworthy: indeed it was impossible to fault for loyalty a man who in the service of his throne had left home and family to accept a menial position and keep it across a war, five continents, and so many weary years.

Temeraire peered at him a little anxiously. “I hope,” he said tentatively, “that you do not mind we should not go back to England straightaway? But I do understand from Lily that everything there at present is quite at a standstill: and Napoleon will surely have a long time sailing back. And I am sure that this Captain Blaise in charge of the Potentate will see the very real importance of our going to China under these circumstances.”

Of that, Laurence had less certainty. “Particularly as we have only the crown prince’s invitation, and not the Emperor’s; and no certainty of success when we have arrived,” Laurence added soberly, “but I am persuaded we must make the attempt. If we should indeed find it possible to engage China in alliance, that may be our only hope now of standing for long against Napoleon. But we may have to make the passage overland and far to the north, at the Bering strait. I have no confidence in Blaise’s diverting the Potentate at our request: he is not Riley.”

He stopped and said again, low, “He is not Riley,” and swallowed regret once more: the loss not only of a friend, but of that still more priceless treasure, a man on whom he could rely.

“No,” Temeraire said, and bent his head to nose gently at Laurence’s back in comfort.