Throne of Jade Page 0,88

wiping it against a heap of broad palm leaves.

Laurence watched silently, then took the narrow pathway winding from the landing grounds back to the castle: he found Yongxing resting in the formal guest quarters with Sun Kai and Liu Bao. Thin curtains had been pinned up to dim the sunlight instead of the heavy velvet drapes, and two servants were making a breeze by standing at the full-open windows and waving great fans of folded paper; another stood by unobtrusively, refilling the envoys' cups with tea. Laurence felt untidy and hot in contrast, his collar wet and limp against his neck after the day's exertions, and dust thick on his boots, spattered also with blood from Temeraire's unfinished dinner.

After the translator was summoned and some pleasantries exchanged, he explained the situation and said, as gracefully as he could manage, "I would be grateful if you would lend me your cooks to make some dish for Temeraire, in your style, which might have some stronger flavor than fresh meat alone."

He had scarcely finished asking before Yongxing was giving orders in their language; the cooks were dispatched to the kitchens at once. "Sit and wait with us," Yongxing said, unexpectedly, and had a chair brought for him, draped over with a long narrow silk cloth.

"No, thank you, sir; I am all over dirt," Laurence said, eyeing the beautiful drapery, pale orange and patterned with flowers. "I do very well."

But Yongxing only repeated the invitation; yielding, Laurence gingerly sat down upon the very edge of the chair, and accepted the cup of tea which he was offered. Sun Kai nodded at him, in an odd approving fashion. "Have you heard anything from your family, Captain?" he inquired through the translator. "I hope all is well with them."

"I have had no fresh news, sir, though I thank you for the concern," Laurence said, and passed another quarter of an hour in further small talk of the weather and the prospects for their departure, wondering a little at this sudden change in his reception.

Shortly a couple of lamb carcasses, on a bed of pastry and dressed with a gelatinous red-orange sauce, emerged from the kitchens and were trundled along the path to the clearing on great wooden trays. Temeraire brightened at once, the intensity of the spice penetrating even his dulled senses, and made a proper meal. "I was hungry after all," he said, licking sauce from his chops and putting his head down to be cleaned off more thoroughly. Laurence hoped he was not doing Temeraire some harm by the measure: some traces of the sauce got on his hand as he wiped Temeraire clean, and it literally burnt upon the skin, leaving marks. But Temeraire seemed comfortable enough, not even asking more water than usual, and Keynes opined that keeping him eating was of the greater importance.

Laurence scarcely needed to ask for the extended loan of the cooks; Yongxing not only agreed but made it a point to supervise and press them to do more elaborate work, and his own physician was called for and recommended the introduction of various herbs into the dishes. The poor servants were sent out into the markets - silver the only language they shared with the local merchants - to collect whatever ingredients they could find, the more exotic and expensive the better.

Keynes was skeptical but unworried, and Laurence, being more conscious of owing gratitude than truly grateful, and guilty over his lack of sincerity, did not try to interfere with the menus, even as the servants daily trooped back from the markets with a succession of increasingly bizarre ingredients: penguins, served stuffed with grain and berries and their own eggs; smoked elephant meat brought in by hunters willing to risk the dangerous journey inland; shaggy, fat-tailed sheep with hair instead of wool; and the still-stranger spices and vegetables. The Chinese insisted on these last, swearing they were healthy for dragons, though the English custom had always been to feed them a steady diet of meat alone. Temeraire, for his part, ate the complicated dishes one after another with no ill-effects other than a tendency to belch foully afterwards.

The local children had become regular visitors, emboldened by seeing Dyer and Roland so frequently climbing on and about Temeraire; they began to view the search for ingredients as a game, cheering every new dish, or occasionally hissing those they felt insufficiently imaginative. The native children were members of the various tribes which lived about the region. Most lived