Tongues of Serpents Page 0,8

advanced with pleasure, and now with far more pleasure would have delayed. "We have done perfectly well all this time at sea, and we will do perfectly well now, even if a few tiresome people have been rude."

"Legally, I have been in Captain Riley's charge, and may remain so a little longer," Laurence answered. "But that cannot answer for very long: ordinarily he ought to discharge me to the authorities with the rest of the prisoners."

"Whyever must he? Riley is a sensible person," Temeraire said, "and if you must surrender to someone, he is certainly better than Bligh. I cannot like anyone who will insist on interrupting us at our reading, four times, only because he wishes to tell you yet again how wicked the colonists are and how much rum they drink: why that should be of any interest to anyone I am sure I do not know."

"My dear, Riley will not long remain with us," Laurence said. "A dragon transport cannot simply sit in harbor; this is the first time one has been spared to this part of the world, and that only to deliver us. When she has been scraped, and the mizzen topmast replaced, from that blow we had near the Cape, they will go; I am sure Riley expects fresh orders very nearly from the next ship into harbor behind us."

"Oh," Temeraire said, a little downcast, "and we will stay, I suppose."

"Yes," Laurence said, quietly. " - I am sorry."

And without transport, Temeraire would be quite truly a prisoner of their new situation: there were few ships, and none of merchant class, which could carry a dragon of Temeraire's size, and no flying route which could safely see him to any other part of the world. A light courier, built for endurance, perhaps might manage it in extremis with a well-informed navigator, clear weather, and luck, setting down on some deserted and rocky atolls for a rest; but the Aerial Corps did not risk even them on any regular mission to the colony, and Temeraire could never follow such a course without the utmost danger.

And Granby and Iskierka would go as well, when Riley did, to avoid a similar entrapment; leaving Temeraire quite isolated from his own kind, save for the three prospective hatchlings who were as yet an unknown quantity.

"Well, that is nothing to be sorry for," Temeraire said, rather darkly eyeing Iskierka, who at present was asleep and exhaling quantities of steam from her spikes upon his flank, which gathered into fat droplets and rolled off to soak the deck beneath him. "Not," he added, "that I would object to company; it would be pleasant to see Maximus again, and Lily, and I would like to know how Perscitia is getting on with her pavilion; but I am sure they will write to me when we are settled, and as for her, she may go away anytime she likes."

Laurence felt Temeraire might find it a heavier penalty than he yet knew. Yet the prospect of these miseries, which had heretofore on their journey greatly occupied his concerns, seemed petty in comparison to the disaster of the situation that now awaited them: trapped in the roles of convict and kingmaker both, and without any means of escape, save if they chose to sacrifice all intercourse with society and take themselves off into the wilderness.

"Pray do not worry, Laurence," Temeraire said stoutly. "I am sure we will find it a very interesting place, and anyway," he added, "at least there will be something nicer to eat."

Their reception, however, had if anything only given more credence to Bligh's representations, and Laurence's anxiety. The Allegiance could not be said to have crept up on the colony: she had entered the mouth of the harbor at eleven in the morning on a brilliantly clear day, with only the barest breath of wind to bring her along. After eight months at sea, all of them might have been pardoned for impatience, but no one could be immune to the almost shocking loveliness of the immense harbor: one bay after another curving off the main channel, and the thickly forested slopes running down to the water, interspersed with stretches of golden sand.

So Riley did not order out the boats for rowing, or even try to spread a little more sail; he let the men mostly hang along the rail, looking at the new country before them while the Allegiance stately glided among the smaller shipping like a great finwhale among