Tongues of Serpents Page 0,106

at the beast, "she's prodigious, but it is all in the wings now I see her closer; I don't think she could carry more than a ton and go anywhere."

"Which I am afraid begs the question," Tharkay said, "where several tons a week of smuggled goods are coming from into Sydney, unless they have an army of these beasts," but this theory Temeraire was able to discount, though scarcely with less disquieting news: the dragon, Lung Shen Li, was one of barely four beasts extant, of a wholly new breed.

"The crown prince gave orders they should be bred," Temeraire explained, "to travel long distances: she says it took them almost three years to manage, and she is still the only one who can conveniently fly so far: her year-mates cannot stay in the air longer than two or three days at a time."

"In three years?" Granby said, watching covetously: the dragon was stretching herself out in the sun, the massive wings glowing amber with a fine branching tracework of darker veins and tendons. "It can't have been done; it is twenty, at the least, to work out a halfway sort of new breed, if you don't mind it being half-blind when you are done."

"Oh; it is not that they did not know how," Temeraire said. "She says that her kind were bred by the Ming, before, and there is a record of the matings."

"Then why the devil shouldn't they have done it before?" Granby said.

"Because," Laurence said slowly, realizing, "they did not wish to; or more to the point, the conservative faction would not allow it. - This is the consequence of Prince Yongxing's death."

They were silent, considering the implications for Britain's empire - China choosing to reach beyond, and with the means to do so. "Do you suppose we will have to quarrel with them, over the place?" Granby said dubiously. "I don't know how much of the country we have claimed; or where we are, for that matter."

Laurence laid out the maps on the floor of their chamber, but they were uncertain enough of their position to make the determination more than a little troublesome. "I think we are somewhere near One Hundred Thirty East," he said finally, "which would put us outside the border: Cook's claim begins at One Thirty-five. The Dutch might have something, of course; although I cannot recall."

"Well, the politics of it all are past me," Granby said, "but someone in Whitehall will want to know this; and I dare say they would like to know it quicker than eleven months from now, too."

There was more they would like to know, also: Tharkay slipped out, that evening, and returning could report that the dockyards were not so simple as they appeared: there were pulley wheels upon the jetty, and along the shore paving-stones had been laid down in clean lines marking out a road, very broad, in the Chinese style, to accommodate dragons. "With two foundations marked along it," he said, "I imagine for warehouses; or barracks if you care to be pessimistic."

Laurence could not but be grateful for their presence, whatever the larger political questions: there was a physician of some skill among them for the benefit of Lung Shen Li, out of caution for any possible complication which might threaten the health of a new breed, and he had with great courtesy discussed Temeraire's condition with Dorset, and suggested a course of treatment which their supply had further made possible; and besides this, Jia had with great generosity flung wide their stores, and Gong Su had applied himself with great energy: Temeraire had eaten better in one week than in the past two months, and already seemed to Laurence much improved.

There was food enough to meet even Kulingile's appetite, which they saw properly satisfied for the first time at last when he had eaten a heap of fresh-caught fish nearly the full size of his body; and in a smaller and more personal vein, there was something near paradise in finding after so long and grinding a journey, so civilized and gracious a welcome, familiar even if foreign.

But this same gratitude could not but make Laurence all the more sensible of the very real danger of conflict which this outpost represented. It was not merely the presence of the Chinese, or their cooperation with the native Larrakia: two days after their arrival, several Macassan praus appeared in the harbor, come to harvest trepang. Shortly their small flotilla of canoes were plying