Arkady himself was still sleeping, and Laurence was drowsing as well beneath the remains of one of the encampment’s tents, ragged and much abused by the landslide. Immortalis and Kulingile had gone back to camp. “We do not at all want General Fela to know you have uncovered his treason,” Mei said, much to Temeraire’s outrage. “We must find proof of his treachery which can be demonstrated to the Emperor, first. You have killed everyone here, so we have no-one to obtain a confession from.”
She sounded faintly reproachful about the last. “Well, they were trying to kill us, so I do not see how you can complain of that,” Temeraire said. “It is the outside of enough to say that we must have more proof. They are soldiers, they are under Fela’s command, and they were holding Arkady prisoner here, hidden away from all of us, and pretending that he brought the opium.”
“But you must see that Fela can make any number of excuses,” Mei said. “He will say that he did not know of these soldiers, that they are some small band of deserters; or he will say that Arkady did bring the opium, and is a false witness, and demand that he be put to torture.”
“What is she saying about me?” Arkady said, pricking up his head, his eyes sliding open. “And what is there to eat? I smell blood: have you not left me anything?” he added accusingly.
Temeraire did not think it was very prudent to tell Arkady that there might be any question of torture. “She is saying we must have more proof that General Fela is guilty, and that you did not bring the opium here,” he said. “And you needn’t complain; there is a nice goat, right there.” He also did not think it needed to be mentioned there had been a cow, too, just lately; anyway he was much bigger than Arkady, and needed a larger meal.
“Hm,” Arkady said, and reaching out seized the tethered goat with a practiced blow, to break its neck. “I do not see that question is sensible at all,” he said, around a mouthful. “Where would I have got any opium, and why would I have brought it here if I had? What good is it? Is it worth a lot of money?”
“Well, it is,” Temeraire said, “but General Fela would have it that you brought it here to give to some rebels.”
“He could scarcely have brought so many chests, alone,” Laurence said, coming out of the tent and buckling on his sword as he did. “Temeraire, pray inquire where he was intercepted, and how long ago? Why did he not come through Guangzhou?”
Arkady was disinclined to be helpful; he was already sagging back into exhausted sleep, and complained that he was tired after his meal, but after a little prodding muttered fretfully, “A month, and all this while I have been alone, and in chains, and now you will not let me sleep. Why would we have come so roundabout a way as the ocean? We had to come quickly: we have an important message for you.”
“Who does he mean by ‘we’?” Laurence asked.
“Oh,” Arkady said, lifting his head abruptly, looking more wide-awake and to Temeraire’s instant suspicion guilty; then he said in feigned tones of great surprise, “Why, Tharkay was with me, of course; haven’t you rescued him yet?”
“My God,” Granby said, springing up with dismay, when he heard the name. “You don’t remember,” he added to Laurence, “but he is a damned good fellow; he has saved all our necks more than once. I suppose Roland must have asked him to play the courier. He knows those roads backwards and forwards; his people on his mother’s side are in Nepal. He took us to Istanbul overland, the last time we were in this country.”
Laurence briefly caught at an elusive twist of memory: running beside someone through dark half-deserted streets, and a great echoing vaulted chamber half-drowned in water, drops striking like bells; but it meant nothing, and slid from his grasp without leaving him a face or a voice, though from what Granby said they had known the man five years and more.
“It was some human thing, about the war,” was all Arkady could tell them, maddeningly, of the message Tharkay had carried, “—something that fellow Napoleon means to do.” This ominous news might have encompassed everything from another invasion to offering peace on terrible terms, but Arkady flipped one wing in a small shrug when they pressed him. “It did not seem very important to me; I had my egg to think about. You will have to ask Tharkay.”
“If he is even alive,” Granby said, “and we can find him: Fela and his crew have been torturing him, no doubt, to get a confession out of him to use against us.”
“What we’re to do about it is the question,” Captain Harcourt said, later that night. They had gathered in her tent, as secretly as they might, to discuss the matter; Mei had smuggled Laurence back to the camp, under cover of dark, while Temeraire and Arkady remained hidden in another valley. “We haven’t the faintest notion where they are keeping him, and if we challenge Fela, he will claim it is all a lie and he has no idea where Tharkay is; and like as not will kill him.