“HM,” SAID GENERAL CHU, deep in his throat, when he had been presented to the rest of the formation, and to Iskierka and Kulingile. Temeraire eyed him uneasily. His yellow crest had evidently with age sprouted a great golden-colored mane, which framed his broad flat jaws and the curving horns which bent away from his forehead, and the edges of his vermilion scales were tipped with translucence. He was not quite so large as Temeraire himself, smaller considerably than Maximus and Kulingile, and he was not a Celestial, of course; but somehow that did not seem to matter very much.
He had been very polite, of course—very gracious—on their introduction; he had bowed quite formally and correctly to Laurence and to Temeraire himself, with all the respect due to the Imperial connection. No-one could possibly have faulted his manners, only Temeraire could not quite help but feel that the general did not think very much of their company.
“Hm,” General Chu said again, after a moment’s silence in which they all stared at one another. “Well, we will not get to Xian any sooner. Let us be going.”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, a little taken aback. “Do you mean, now?”
Chu peered at him from under the bristling fringe of his mane, with an air of raised eyebrows. “Are you ill?” he said, with a hint of waspishness. “Is the chill of the day too great?” The day was in fact not in the least cold, an early-spring pleasantness in the air.
“No, only,” Temeraire said, “are we not to take a great many soldiers with us?”
“Three jalan,” General Chu said, and paused as if waiting for Temeraire to go on; but since Temeraire did not know in the least what to say, after a moment Chu added, “Of course you would not expect them to gather all here and fly along the entire way with us,” in heavy, pointed tones.
Temeraire had expected just that. He had been on fire, in fact, to see a proper Chinese aerial company assembled; and he knew Laurence and the other aviators were as deeply interested as he was himself. “Of course not,” he said, a little abashed, and turning his head down murmured to Laurence, “Can we be ready to leave very quickly, Laurence, do you think?”
“He means us to leave on the moment?” Laurence looked at Hammond, and at the other captains; no-one spoke a moment in their confusion. Laurence had only returned two hours before, and had scarcely even had enough time to explain to everyone the Emperor’s command.
Then Captain Harcourt said, “I suppose there’s no reason to wait, if we are going. Have we any better notion of what to do?”
She looked around, and no-one answered her: they had all been debating just that, vigorously, before General Chu’s abrupt arrival; but while disliking the orders, no-one could work out an alternative. Hammond had just been saying, “We cannot refuse this direct Imperial command—at least, Captain Laurence cannot, not and maintain any thin fiction of familial connection: and having lost that tenuous connection, they will assuredly not merely refuse our requests for alliance, but order us out of the capital forthwith, and revoke all those particular and unusual trading privileges which have so benefitted our nation, in the last five years—”
Temeraire, for his part, had no objection to taking Laurence away from here, where assassins lurked around every corner and he was not even to be permitted to deal with Lord Bayan as that treacherous coward deseved. Temeraire was sure that they should certainly be able to quash this rebellion handily, and it seemed to him as good a means as any for ensuring they should gain the alliance they required.
“Well,” Harcourt said, when no-one had anything else to offer, “let us call it settled: I don’t say we shall stay, but I don’t suppose it will hurt us to go. Mr. Hammond, you would oblige me greatly if you would dash a few words to Captain Blaise in the Potentate, so he knows where we have got ourselves off to; and I dare say we can be off in a trice.”
She turned and called to her first lieutenant, “Richards, we must get aloft: and there is not a moment to lose, if you please.”