‘That is why they have not dared to bother us; dragons of your size are not often seen in the desert.’ The men huddled rather closer to Temeraire, and no one spoke of going outside.
‘Have you heard of dragons having their own languages?’ Temeraire asked Tharkay a little later, softly; most of the men were drifting, half-asleep. ‘I have always thought we learnt them from men only.’
‘The Durzagh tongue is a language of dragons,’ Tharkay said. ‘There are sounds in it men cannot make: your voices more easily mimic ours than the reverse.’
‘Oh! Will you teach me?’ Temeraire asked, eagerly; Celestials, unlike most dragons, kept the ability to easily acquire new tongues past their hatching and infancy.
‘It is of little use,’ Tharkay said. ‘It is only spoken in the mountains: in the Pamirs, and the Karakoram.’
‘I do not mind that,’ Temeraire said. ‘It will be so very useful when we are back in England. Laurence, the Government cannot say we are just animals if we have invented our own language,’ he added, looking to him for confirmation.
‘No one with any sense would say it regardless,’ Laurence began, to be interrupted by Tharkay’s short snorting laugh.
‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘They are more likely to think you an animal for speaking a tongue other than English; or at least a creature unworthy of notice: you would do better to cultivate an elevated tone,’ and his voice changed quite on the final words, taking on the drawling style favoured by the too-fashionable set for a moment.
‘That is a very strange way of speaking,’ Temeraire said dubiously, after he had tried it, repeating over the phrase a few times. ‘It seems very peculiar to me that it should make any difference how one says the words, and it must be a great deal of trouble to learn how to say them all over again. Can one hire a translator to say things properly?’
‘Yes; they are called lawyers,’ Tharkay said, and laughed softly to himself.
‘I would certainly not recommend you to imitate this particular style,’ Laurence said dryly, while Tharkay recovered from his amusement. ‘At best you might only impress some fellow on Bond Street, if he did not run away to begin with.’
‘Very true; you had much better take Captain Laurence as your model,’ Tharkay said, inclining his head. ‘Just how a gentleman ought to speak; I am sure any official would agree.’
His expression was not visible in the shadows, but Laurence felt as though he were being obscurely mocked, perhaps without malice, but irritating to him nonetheless. ‘I see you have made a study of the subject, Mr. Tharkay,’ he said a little coldly. Tharkay shrugged.
‘Necessity was a thorough teacher, if a hard one,’ he said. ‘I found men eager enough to deny me my rights, without providing them so convenient an excuse to dismiss me. You may find it slow going,’ he added to Temeraire, ‘if you mean to assert your own: men with powers and privileges rarely like to share them.’
This was no more than Laurence had said, on many an occasion, but a vein of cynicism ran true and deep beneath Tharkay’s words which perhaps made them the more convincing: ‘I am sure I do not see why they should not wish to be just,’ Temeraire said, but uncertainly, troubled, and so Laurence found he did not after all like to see Temeraire take his own advice to heart.
‘Justice is expensive,’ Tharkay said. ‘That is why there is so little of it, and that it’s reserved for those few with enough money and influence to afford it.’
‘In some corners of the world, perhaps,’ Laurence said, unable to tolerate this, ‘but thank God, we have a rule of law in Britain, and those checks upon the power of men which prevent any from becoming tyrannical.’
‘Or which spread the tyranny over more hands, piecemeal,’ Tharkay said. ‘I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.’
‘And where on the scale would you rank Bonaparte?’ Laurence demanded, growing too indignant to be polite: it was one thing to complain of corruption, or propose judicious reforms; quite another to lump the British system in with absolute despotism.
‘As a man, a monarch, or a system of government?’ Tharkay asked. ‘If there is more injustice in France than elsewhere, on the whole, I have not heard of it. It is quixotic of them to have chosen to be unjust to the noble and the rich, in favour of the common; but it does not seem to me naturally worse; or, for that matter, likely to last long. As for the rest, I will defer to your judgement, sir; who would you take on the battlefield: good King George or the second lieutenant of artillery from Corsica?’
‘I would take Lord Nelson,’ Laurence said. ‘I do not believe anyone has ever suggested he likes glory less than Bonaparte, but he has put his genius in service to his country and his King, and graciously accepted what rewards they chose to give him, instead of setting himself up as a tyrant.’
‘So shining an example must vanquish any argument, and indeed I should be ashamed to be the cause of any disillusionment.’ Tharkay’s faint half-smile was visible now: it was growing lighter outside. ‘We have a little break in the storm, I think; I will go and look in on the camels.’ He wrapped a veil of cotton several times around his face, pulling his hat firmly down over all, and drew on his gloves and cloak before ducking out through the flaps.
‘Laurence, but the government must listen in our case, because there are so many dragons,’ Temeraire said, interrogatively, when Tharkay had gone out, returning to the point of real concern to him.
‘They shall listen,’ Laurence said, still smouldering and indignant, without thinking; and regretted it the next instant: Temeraire, only too willing to be relieved of doubt, brightened at once and said, ‘I was sure it must be so,’ and whatever good the conversation might have done, in lowering his expectations, was lost.
The storm lingered another day, fierce enough to wear holes, after a while, in the leather of their pavilion; they patched it as best they could from inside, but dust crept in through all the cracks, into their garments and their food, gritty and unpleasant when they chewed the cold dried meat. Temeraire sighed and shivered his hide now and again, little cascades of sand running off his shoulders and wings onto the floor: they had already a layer of desert inside the tent with them.
Laurence did not know just when the storm ended: as the blessed silence began to fall, they all drifted into their first real sleep in days, and he woke to the sound of the eagle outside giving a red cry of satisfaction. Stumbling out of the tent, he found it tearing raw flesh from the corpse of a camel lying across the remains of the campfire pit, neck broken and white ribcage already half stripped clean by the sands.
‘One of the tents did not hold,’ Tharkay said, behind him. Laurence did not at once take his meaning: he turned and saw eight of the camels, tethered loosely near a heap of piled forage, swaying a little on legs grown stiff from their long confinement; the tent which had sheltered them was still up, leaning somewhat askew with a sand-drift piled up against one side. Of the second tent there was no sign except two of the iron stakes still planted deeply in the ground, and a few scraps of brown leather pinned down, fluttering with the breeze.
‘Where are the rest of the camels?’ Laurence said, in growing horror. He took Temeraire aloft at once, while the men spread out, calling, in every direction, in vain: the scouring wind had
