Crucible of Gold (20 page)

“I do not see how you can have thought any such thing,” Temeraire said. “It sounds as though you had mistaken me for a bunyip or something like it, instead of a dragon, which is perfectly ridiculous.”

“I do not mean to be rude,” the little dragon said, ruffling his feathers up so that he looked nearly twice his size, “but you are all black and shriveled, as though you had been burned up, so I do not think it is as ridiculous as that.”

That
was
rude, in Temeraire’s opinion, and he was about to say so when Iskierka landed. “What are you all sitting about here for?
Have you found another town yet?” she said, and peered critically at Palta. “Is there anything more to eat near-by?” she demanded.

He did not understand her, of course, but Palta shrank back anyway from her outthrust head, wreathed in steam. “My fishermen have just had a very good catch of—” Palta began timidly when Temeraire asked.

“Whatever good is he, then?” Iskierka said impatiently. “Come along back to the camp, and we will find out more from this fellow instead.”

“What fellow?” Temeraire said, and then discovered that Iskierka was carrying a man, whom she had evidently snatched up from somewhere: an old man, with very white hair and his skin deeply furrowed and brown with sun, and marks all over his face; and she had not even asked him if he minded.

“How could I have asked him when I do not speak the language?” she said, dismissing Temeraire’s protests. He was quite sure that she had ought to have asked, and better still not taken him at all. “It is not as though I meant him any harm. We will ask him where we can find some better food, and then I will take him back where I found him—oh, somewhere back that way.”

“I am sure she doesn’t know in the least where she found him,” Temeraire said under his breath, and then asked Palta. “I don’t suppose you know him?”

“No, he is not mine; and you mayn’t have any of mine, either,” Palta said, putting himself anxiously between them and his small group of wide-eyed people. “If you try—”

“Pray stop that; whyever would we take them?” Temeraire said. “We are not trying to take you prisoner; we only want to know where we are, and how we can get to Brazil: we are not thieves.” He paused, realizing Iskierka had already given him the lie. “Well; except Iskierka, but—you see—she does mean to take this gentleman back home, when we have asked him some questions,” he finished uncomfortably.

Palta, unconvinced, was only persuaded to accompany them
back to the shore when Temeraire acceded to his demand that he should be allowed to send his handful of companions back to their home, first. Even so, he tried to keep himself in front while they left, as though he could stop Temeraire seeing which way they were going into the trees; and further insisted on waiting afterwards for a while also, until the sounds of their passage had entirely faded. He then wanted all four of them to go flying abreast and together, even though that was not convenient when Kulingile was slower than all of them, and Temeraire might have gone ahead.

The sailors had put up a makeshift camp with the goods out of the storehouse: several lean-tos and tents, farther up the river away from the village, and several cooking-fires, Temeraire was glad to see; the men were even singing a round of “Spanish Ladies” as they came in for a landing.

“Oh,” Palta said, staring around the camp. “Oh; so many! Are they all yours?”

He was asking Kulingile, even though Kulingile did not understand him and could not say a word back. Temeraire snorted. “They are
ours
,” he said, “although not properly the sailors: they are only along because we would not leave them to drown, and ought to be more grateful for it than they are. Laurence,” he said, turning, “this is Palta, and that man is called Taruca: Iskierka snatched him, and I cannot find she asked him in the least.”

They had made their camp upriver at a distance, but the temple on its hill threw a long shadow. The men went about with low voices, and did not even try to steal away to the village for looting, and Laurence did not say, even in a breath to Granby, what else he had seen inside the charnel-house pyramid: the sheets of beaten gold upon the walls, and the vessels of silver standing amid the silent decaying pallets of the dead.

The storehouse at least had offered a more modest scope for greed, and Laurence did not hesitate to order Forthing to share out
the jars of local beer they found within: better the men should be drowsy and pacified than tempted to go prying about; he had no illusions about the sensible restraint any man of them was likely to exercise in the face of treasure on such a scale.

The dragons were not gone long, fortunately; although they brought with them fresh cause for dismay in the person of Taruca, and Iskierka was at once unrepentant and unable to say just where she had snatched him.

“He was alone, anyway,” she said, “only sitting in the sun near an old empty house, and he did not even try to run away when I landed and picked him up.”

“Oh, Lord,” Granby said despairingly. “Of course he didn’t, you lunatic beast: he is stone blind.”

Taruca’s face was marred with pockmarks, most nearly about his ruined eyes, but he seemed resigned more than alarmed by his abduction. At least, he was ready to accept their apologies and also a share in their dinner and a cup of the pilfered beer. “I thank you; that is refreshing,” he said politely, without mentioning as well he might have that they were serving him from the stores of his own people. “But I am hearing the ocean: is this not Quitalén village? We must not linger here: the governors have banned men from the place while the unhealthy air remains.”

“If I am understanding correctly,” Hammond added to his translation, “the plague passed over not three months ago; and the—red fever?—a month later, which he says was worse.”

“The measles?” Ferris suggested.

“Measles would scarcely be worse than plague,” Granby said. “But there must be unhealthy air here; whoever heard of measles
and
plague, so close on one another; and smallpox, too, if this fellow’s face is anything to go by. Pray ask him where we can take him home to?”

Hammond’s imperfect knowledge of the language evidently gave him some difficulties in this communication: Taruca seemed perplexed by the question, and after listening in, the dragon Palta
looked sidelong up towards Temeraire in a cautious way and volunteered, “If you do not want him, I would be very happy to take him myself: he could help attend the dead, and light work such as that only; I assure you we would be very kind to him.”

“We did not take him to make him a servant, to strangers,” Laurence said when this was translated for him. “Mr. Hammond, pray assure him we will certainly try and find his people, if we can; at least Iskierka can give us the general direction. And if we do not succeed—” He stopped: he had not the least idea what they should do with the old man; they could scarcely leave him alone to his fate, but to take him along away from his home and all his native society seemed not much less cruel. “Ask him what he should like for us to do,” he finished, lamely.

When at last the offer was conveyed and understood Taruca said, doubtfully, “Would you—you would take me home, to my children? They are in the
ayllu
of Curicuillor, at Titicaca—you will take me back to them?”

“I am afraid the precise meaning of the word is beyond me,” Hammond added, to his translation. “I understood it to mean family, but that does not seem to be quite correct under the circumstances.”

“In any case, tell him we will do so gladly,” Laurence said, “if he can direct us; where is it?”

“Lake Titicaca; that is in the highlands near Cusco,” the dragon Palta said, “and nearly two-weeks’ flying in bad air; really you had better leave him with me, as you don’t want him yourselves.”

“Two weeks’
flying
?” Granby said, dismayed, when Temeraire had translated. “I suppose I ought to have expected you to have seized upon a fellow whose nearest relations are on the other side of the country,” he added to Iskierka, “but what is he doing here, then?” and meanwhile Hammond, as always fixed without any evidence of mercy upon his ultimate purpose, raised immediate and urgent objection.

“We cannot simply go flying about the countryside without
permission, at such a distance,” he said. “Even if such an incursion were not to provoke a hostile answer—which, Captain,” he added, “should scarcely permit us to be of any use to the poor fellow in any case—”

“You need not study to persuade me, Mr. Hammond; I agree we must first present ourselves, even as we are, to some nearer authority,” Laurence said. “That, therefore, must be our next concern; afterwards—”

“Perhaps we may find some local traveling in that direction, who might take the gentleman with him,” Hammond said, an optimism not much supported by the distances involved. Laurence was sure that unless such a lucky chance befell, Hammond would soon be arguing for pursuing the mission instead: and he was forced to admit such an argument would be cogent indeed, considering the loss of time a side journey of that distance would involve.

“Anyway,” Temeraire said, turning his head to them after interrogating the little dragon further, “we may ask the governor what to do: Palta says his name is Hualpa Uturuncu, and he lives in a city called Talcahuano.”

“T
HE DISTANCE IS OF NO GREAT MOMENT
,” Governor Hualpa said, when Temeraire had explained their difficulty. “The theft, however, most certainly is.”

They were all of them inside the ceremonial hall of the city, a splendid building many times the size of the pyramid which they had seen on the shore, although in the same style, with enormously broad stepped platforms made of great blocks of stone so snugly fitted one could only see the separations by looking very closely indeed. And inside, oh, inside! The walls were entirely covered with sheets of gold beaten thin and elaborately engraved, lit by many lamps and by windows cut in the roof, which allowed in great shafts of illumination when the sun was high enough.

One of the sailors had gone over to the wall and rubbed it, before being sharply called back to his place by Forthing: Temeraire had overheard him say, “Real enough gold, it is,” in a low voice to his fellows, so it was not merely brass—even though brass would have been almost equally marvelous; Temeraire would not have argued with anyone who had proposed to offer him such panels made of brass, for his pavilion.

The setting made it only the more distressing to find themselves so unkempt and ragged. Laurence had held them back a day to scrub clean in the river and mend their clothes as best they could before entering the city and presenting themselves to Hualpa, but there was
only so much one could do with cold water and a few bent needles. Temeraire had tried to persuade Laurence to wear his robes for the meeting, as Emily had those safe preserved, but without success; and no-one else had anything but what they wore.

He could understand, of course, Laurence’s wish to share in the general privation, but when Temeraire had ducked his head under the lintel of the massive doorway and come inside, and his eyes had adjusted to the grandeur before him, he had regretted it all over again, and still more when the governor had come out to meet them: Hualpa was not so long as Temeraire himself, but not very much shorter, either, and his feathered scales ruffled up so wide about his neck and shoulders that he seemed somehow larger than he was.

In any case, his ornaments of office would have lent even a lesser beast enormous gravity: a band of gold was wrapped about the top of his throat, set into a woolen collar with a tasseled fringe in a bright green color which stood markedly against the deep intense violet of his scales, and enormous gold circles had been embedded within his ears, so they hung to the bottom of his jaw. Golden hoops pierced the lower edges of his wings, a form of decoration Temeraire had never seen before: remarkably handsome, he thought.

“Consideration must be given to strangers and guests who are unfamiliar with local custom,” Hualpa continued, “but this is strange indeed: do you expect me to approve your behavior?”

He sat back on his haunches, the golden hoops ringing against the stone floor as he swept his wings down and onto his back in an elaborate movement: the emeralds caught the shafts of sunlight piercing the great room and flared brilliant green for a moment. “It is known that men from the sea are inveterate liars and thieves,” he added censoriously, “and although I have heard arguments that this is from their being men of no
ayllu
, here you are all together, and brazenly you present yourselves in the court without even an attempt to conceal your crime.”

“But the people were all dead,” Temeraire protested. “The llamas were only wandering around perfectly loose—”

“Not of the llamas,” Hualpa said, “of course you are welcome to the llamas, if no-one was herding them, and you were hungry: of the
man
.”

“I had not understood they practiced slavery, in this country,” Hammond said to Laurence rather anxiously, after Temeraire had translated his exchange, “but if it is the custom—if it is their law—”