Tongues of Serpents Page 0,121

of your safe arrival in this part of the world, as I have suffered great consternation upon hearing of the recent upheaval in the country of England, from your friend Mr. Hammond.

I am charmed by the description of your valley, and await with pleasure a view of the landscape. Will you be settled here a long time? You would make me very happy to hear that it is so. I have enclosed a copy of the Songs of Chu, also, which you may enjoy if your studies have advanced.

"And you may read it with me as well, Sipho," Temeraire said, very pleased. "How kind my mother is! Perhaps we will save the poems and read them out only one a day, as we make our way back, and that will make the journey go more quickly."

Laurence seemed silent and rather thunderstruck by the letters' having come so quickly; although Temeraire thought that it was more peculiar and embarrassing that they should take quite so long to come from England.

"They might at least bring letters by courier to somewhere that does not need so much flying across the open ocean - perhaps from Macassar, where those fishermen were from," Temeraire said, "and then they might row it across, and Shen Li bring them to us in Sydney; that would not be quite so fast, but it would not take eight months! What good is a letter eight months late, when everything must be changed? One might as well write stories that were quite made up - one might say, oh, I have just received a bag of lovely pearls, and if ever a reply came asking to see, one might say, why that was a year ago: they are all gone, now."

Laurence began to write a letter himself, to Arthur Hammond, the envoy in Peking; Temeraire did not remember him very fondly, as it had been very clear that Hammond would have been perfectly delighted to trade him away for any advantage he might get in the way of ports, or of shipping, and Temeraire had felt this was not merely a great misjudgment of his value to England, but also more than a little rude.

But in the end, Hammond had proven very useful, and had worked out the very many confusing details of the adoption, and Temeraire had grown quite reconciled to him; so he was telling Laurence to send Hammond his best wishes, when Mr. Chukwah came into the pavilion, in search of Jia Zhen.

"I am sorry to run out before dinner, more for myself than for you, to tell the truth," he said, "but I had better: a frigate has just heaved up over the horizon, and she isn't flying any colors, but I think I know British handling when I see it; and I don't care to have half my best men pressed. No offense to you, sir," he added, giving Laurence a small bow, "but the Navy has been getting a little unreasonable about it: we objected in 'seventy-six, and we'll object again if we have to."

"Why," Temeraire said to Laurence, "surely that means we do not have to hurry away at all; now they must know for certain."

"Yes," Laurence said, grimly. "Now they know."

Chapter 16

THE FRIGATE MIGHT BE SEEN from shore before dusk fell, and a little after a sloop-of-war, sailing in company. "That is the Nereide, I think," Laurence said, looking through his glass for what he could glimpse of the bow. "She was sent with the expeditionary force to Île de France, by my last Gazette; under Corbet." He did not share what he had heard of that officer: a hard-knocks captain, court-martialed for brutality; anything might have changed in half-a-year, and rumor might be mistaken.

"I suppose - " Granby said, reluctantly.

"Caesar is the only one who can go," Laurence said. "Neither Iskierka nor Temeraire could land upon the ship; and I have no confidence they would listen to Demane - or for that matter to me; the captain can scarcely have failed to hear of my case."

"I don't know I wouldn't rather wait until he was close enough to row out to," Granby muttered, but there was no help for it; they could not with any conscience at all allow a British company to approach without speaking them, so Rankin must go with them; in any case, he was scarcely waiting for their opinion on the matter, and had already gone to dress. Caesar was arranged upon the shore waiting, preening