“Sir,” Laurence said, “I must correct you: I am an Englishman, Captain William Laurence of—” He halted. Hanging from the wall behind the man’s head was a large and polished bronze mirror. The face which looked back at him from it was not merely haggard from his recent ordeal but unfamiliar: his hair grown long; a thin white scar running down his cheek, long-healed, which he did not remember; and lines and wear accumulated. He might have aged years since he had seen himself last.
“Perhaps you would be so kind as to explain to me the circumstances of your arrival in this part of the country,” the man said, prompting gently.
Laurence managed to say, reeling, “I am Captain William Laurence, of His Majesty’s Ship Reliant, of the Royal Navy. And I have not the least notion how I have come to be here, except if my ship has suffered some accident, which God forbid.”
Laurence did not much know what else he said afterwards. He supposed they saw his confusion and distress, for the questions stopped, and a servant was called to bring in a tray: a flask and small porcelain cups. His host filled one and gave it to him; Laurence took it and drank blindly, glad for the intensity: strong as brandy though light on the tongue. His cup was refilled promptly, and he drank again; the cup was small enough to be a single swallow. But he put it down afterwards. “I beg your pardon,” he said, feeling acutely that he had lost control of himself, and all the more awkward in the face of their carefully polite failure to notice it. “I beg your pardon,” he said, more strongly. “Sir, to answer your question, I cannot tell you how I came to be here: I must have been swept overboard, is the only possible answer. As for purpose, I have none; I have neither business nor friends in this part of the world.”
He hesitated, yet there was no help for it; he could not help but recognize himself utterly a beggar. Pride should have to be sacrificed. “I am sorry to be so bold as to make any further claims on your generosity,” he said, “when you have already been more than kind, but I would be glad—I would be very glad indeed for your assistance in making my way to Nagasaki, where I may be reunited with my ship, or find another to return me to England.”
But his host was silent. Finally he said, “You are yet too ill for the rigors of a long journey, I think. For now, permit me to invite you to enjoy the hospitality of my house. If there is anything you require for your comfort, Junichiro will see it is done.”
All that was courteous, all that was kind, and yet it was a dismissal. Junichiro silently moved to hover behind Laurence at his elbow, plainly waiting for him to leave. Laurence hesitated, but he could not much argue: there was a low hollow thumping in his head, like the sound of bare heels coming down on a deck overhead, and the liquor already had thrown a further haze over his sight.
He followed Junichiro out and down the hall, back to the small chamber where he had awoken. Junichiro drew open the door and stood waiting; his face remained hard and unfriendly, and he fixed his eyes past Laurence like a grande dame giving the cut direct, though he said with cold hauteur, once Laurence had ducked inside, “Send for me if you should require anything.”
Laurence looked about the chamber: the empty floor covered with straw mats, the bare and featureless walls, the silence of it; both the siren’s promise of immediate rest, and confinement. “My liberty,” he said, grimly, half under his breath.
“Be grateful for your life,” Junichiro said with sudden venom, “which you have only by my master’s benevolence. Perhaps he will think better of it.”
He all but hurled the door shut, the frame rattling on its track, and Laurence could only stare after his shadow disappearing on the other side of the translucent wall.
The green, glassy wave broke against the shoals but flung itself rushing on even as it crumpled. The cold foam washed ferociously up Temeraire’s hindquarters and left a fresh line of seaweed and splinters clinging to his hide as it finally fell back, exhausted. A low groaning came from the Potentate’s hull where she strained against the rocks, pinned and struggling; all around them the ocean stood wide and empty and grey, and the distant curve of land was only a smudge in the distance.
“You may say anything you like,” Temeraire said, flatly, “but I do not care in the least. I will go alone, if I must, whether or not anyone will come and help me.”
“Oh, Lord,” Granby muttered, half under his breath; Captain Berkley, who was clinging to a stanchion to keep his balance on the badly slanted deck, did not bother to keep his own voice low, but bellowed up, “Listen, you mad beast, you don’t suppose any of us like it better than you do?”
“I am quite sure I should like it less than anyone, if Laurence were dead,” Temeraire said, “but he is not: he is certainly not dead. Of course I am going to go and look for him: I think it outside of everything for you to try and persuade me to any other course.”