“What?” Laurence said, taken aback.
Junichiro did not answer; he had taken a bound scroll out of his robes, and set it down precisely in the center of the floor. He went to the outer wall and began to work latches there: abruptly a large section of the lower half of the wall came loose, and the night air breathed in.
Laurence still did not understand in the least; but understanding might wait. He sprang to Junichiro’s side and caught the heavy panel, lifting it aside; together they slid through the opening and into the gardens, small pebbles rolling underfoot and a fragrant smell of crushed leaves as they forced their way past a few small pines. Junichiro caught him by the arm. “Quickly, now!” he breathed.
Laurence had no idea what had possessed Junichiro to undertake his rescue, but he could still less easily imagine it some sort of deep-laid strategem. He turned aside for a moment, however, to hunt through the bushes, ignoring Junichiro’s attempts to draw him onwards. Then he had the bundle out of the undergrowth where he had left it, and turning said, “Go!”
He followed Junichiro through the gardens, and past a low building smelling of cattle and horse piss; a gentle slope eased away into the woods. Junichiro unerring led them along paths he knew into the trees, jumping fallen logs and streams almost unconscious of their presence. Laurence fixed the bundle over his shoulder, and kept his attention for the forest floor: he had put himself into Junichiro’s hands, and he would have certainly done no better evading pursuit alone.
They had been running for nearly half-an-hour when first a dragon roared, behind them and aloft somewhere. Laurence did not turn to look. If Lady Arikawa marked them out for pursuit, they were surely lost, even if she could not come down upon them herself while they remained within the trees. The snap of wings above, so like a sail belling in the wind, seemed strangely loud in his ears. They ran onwards.
A SHARP POKE IN HIS side roused Temeraire from his torpor; he lifted his head only slowly. The steady rocking of the ship had cradled him in comfortable withdrawal. They had put food in his mouth, from time to time; he had felt the sun creeping over his body, and the heat of the galleys below. “It is time you were awake,” a voice said, in Chinese.
“Yes, I am awake,” Temeraire said, and put his head back down and closed his eyes once more: the glare of the sun upon the waves ached.
“No, you are not,” the stranger said, and prodded him unpleasantly with something sharp and cold in the pit of his shoulder; Temeraire flinched and looked around, frowning. The man, in long grey clothing, looked back at him with a severe expression; a long drooping beard with trailing mustaches hung down from his frowning mouth.
“Stop that,” Temeraire said, irritably. “I do not wish to be prodded; take that away.”
“Oho, next you will tell me how to mix your medicine,” the man said, and poked him once more: he was using for the purpose a very long and narrow silver stick, with a sharpened end. “Up! Up! How do you expect to get well, lying around on hot rocks day after day?” He jabbed Temeraire sharply with the stick, in his hindquarters, and Temeraire indignantly pushed up.
“I am feeling much better for having lain here, and it is not hot rocks but the galley, anyway,” Temeraire said. “And for that matter—” He stopped short, appalled: behind the stranger, three points to port, a merchantman flying the Dutch flag rode at anchor; and beyond this, only a little way off, the tight-crammed roofs of a city rose away from a curving and beautiful harbor. A ring of Chinese junks surrounded the Potentate, bobbing gently with the waves, like a garland made of ships.
“Where am I?” Temeraire cried. “Where have you brought me?” He turned to look furious reproach at Maximus, who was drowsing beside him and did not immediately open his eyes to be confronted: the other dragons were all further out to sea on the other side of the ship, all of them diving at the waves and plucking themselves up some fish.
“You are in Nagasaki Harbor,” the stranger said, “and you have been here three days and nights.”