Tongues of Serpents Page 0,32

curiosity; Granby said, "But Lord above, whyever for? We will end with pickaxing our way through solid rock for a month in the worst heat of summer, and there is not a blessed soul out there to be found: unless we see some of the natives, and with three dragons I am pretty sure we won't."

Tharkay paused, and then said quietly, "You will be surveying first, from aloft; if there is a route in use, that will offer the best chance of seeing it."

"If there were a route in use, we shouldn't have to build one," Granby said.

"I am not expecting to find a road suitable for general use," Tharkay said. "A mule-track at most, I should think."

"But - " Laurence said, and only barely restrained himself; Granby also had stopped, with an open mouth: but it was too plain Tharkay did not choose to volunteer more; he might easily have done so. "Oh, if you like, then," Granby said awkwardly, after a moment, looking at Laurence.

"We should be glad of your company," Laurence said, with a bow, and only later, privately to Temeraire, expressed his confusion.

"Maybe he is looking for the smugglers," Temeraire said, unconcernedly, nibbling up another portion of sheep stuffed with raisins and grains: MacArthur had sent another present that morning, letting no grass grow. Laurence stared. "Well, if someone has a secret road and has not said anything to anyone about it," Temeraire offered, having swallowed, "it stands to reason they must be hiding it for cause; and you were just telling me of all these goods from China which are coming in."

"It would be a very peculiar way to bring goods into a port city," Laurence said, doubtfully, but he recalled Tharkay had engaged himself in service to the directors of the East India Company: at Maden's request, he might well have undertaken such a task, even if it did not seem a likely explanation for his wishing to accompany their party.

"But anyone could think of searching the ships and the dockyards, to catch them," Temeraire said, and Laurence after a little more consideration had to acknowledge that if the intention was ultimately to ship the goods on to England, the arrangement was ideal: slip the goods into the markets unsuspected, and then any legitimate captain might openly purchase them and carry them onward.

"They must be landing them in a convenient bay, then, somewhere further up the coast," Laurence said, "and taking them around by land; but it would be a most circuitous route, through unsettled and dangerous countryside."

"There is nothing very dangerous when there is nothing but kangaroos about," Temeraire said dismissively.

They decamped in accord with Granby's fondest wishes, the very next morning, with all the speed and disorder usual to the Aerial Corps and more when traveling so light: the bulk of their baggage was made of simple pickaxes and hammers and shovels, instead of bombshells and gunpowder, and the few tents which would be their shelter. The mountains were richly green despite the summer, even seen from a distance; they might rely on finding sufficient water without trying to carry very much of it as supply, and with a few sacks of biscuit and barrels of salt pork they were ready to depart.

The work gang had been assembled with equal haste: some dozen convicts, having been promised their liberty in exchange for this one service, were herded with difficulty up to the promontory and thence into Temeraire's belly-rigging. They were an odd, ill-favored assortment of men, for the most part thin and leathery, with a peculiar similarity to their faces perhaps born of suffering and their preferred mode of consolation: fine traceworks of broken red capillaries about the base of their noses, and eyes shot through with blood.

There were a few men who looked a little more suited to the work which lay ahead: a Jonas Green, who might himself have been cut none-too-neatly out of rock, with bulk in his shoulders and his arms; he alone of the convicts was not drunk when they came up to the promontory. A Robert Maynard was rather more fat than substantial, and no one could have accused him of abstinence, but he had reportedly a little skill at stonemasonry, and his hands showed the evidence: callused hard as iron and large out of all proportion, thick-fingered.

"You had better not mistake him," MacArthur said, handing over the manifest of men. "Transported for pickpocketing. He cannot do much harm out in the wilderness, but I would