The aviators went into the tremendous scrambling rush of getting away: gear tumbled pell-mell into chests, the ground crewmen hauling up the belly-netting to the shouts of, “Heave! Heave!” and the officers leaping aboard. Temeraire watched with a little disgruntlement as his own crew went aboard Kulingile. Of course he understood that, according to the Chinese way of thinking, there was a loss of dignity in carrying so many men and going under harness, and for a Celestial to be so burdened was unthinkable; as a consequence, they had devised this arrangement for their journey to the capital from Tien-sing harbor. And while certainly Temeraire did not want to look undignified, he still could not like it in the least; he sighed.
“Will I come with you?” Junichiro was asking Laurence. Temeraire did not quite know what to think of him: he had been very ready to take Junichiro to his heart, when he had learnt everything that young man had done, to see Laurence safely back; but Junichiro had been so very standoffish; he had spurned Temeraire’s thanks, saying, “I did nothing for his sake,” and when Temeraire had asked him for lessons in Japanese, shipboard, he had refused with a flat, unfriendly, “Of what use could such instruction be to you? We will never return there again,” and he had walked clear away across the dragondeck. He did nothing all the day but sit and stare across the ocean, or, since they disembarked, at a wall, it seemed to Temeraire; and though Laurence had asked Emily Roland to teach him English, Junichiro did not seem to be making any progress at all: he scarcely answered when she tried to make him repeat the most basic words.
Even now, he did not ask with any interest, only a cold question, as though he did not care either way, and did not very much want to come; but Laurence said only, “We are all going; stay with Midwingman Roland, if you please,” and sent him up to Kulingile’s back after her.
“Have a little patience: he has been a great deal bereft,” Laurence said, as he climbed into Temeraire’s cupped talons to be put up. “And I cannot give him any real work to do, until he has learnt English; we must let time work on him, and isolation. He is a young man: I dare say he will lose his taste for solitude, soon enough, and want some more society than he can get speaking only Chinese.”
Laurence latched his carabiners on: Temeraire did not even need to shake himself and settle his own harness, as he had none but his polished breastplate, which O’Dea had looked over for him. “It is sure to tarnish sooner or late, with all this sea-air and flying,” O’Dea had said, alarmingly, but when pressed had added, “though not yet: the rot lies far off in wait, for another day.”
Leaning over to speak to General Chu, Laurence asked, “Sir, may I inquire, are there arrangements we ought make for our supply?”
“No particular arrangements will be necessary until we are closer to Xian,” Chu answered, without even looking up. He had sighed heavily, watching their preparations, and had shut his eyes and lay his head down upon his forelegs to rest.
Those preparations were accomplished in under half-an-hour; he cracked one enormous green eye and peered out. “Are you ready at last?” he said, and heaved back up to his feet. “Very well, then,” and coiling himself up on his hindquarters launched himself into the air. His wings were short, the veins and ribbing in green, and his body long and sinuous, so he went undulating as he flew.
“I do not see in the least what he has to object to; we went very quickly indeed,” Temeraire said to Laurence, grumbling, and leapt after the general’s dwindling figure.
A quartet of Jade Dragons, the tiny light-weight couriers scarcely much larger than a man, rose from outside the Imperial grounds to join them: the four of them bore long fluttering banners, red emblazoned with golden characters, and preceded General Chu in the air in a straight line. They led the way southward out of the city, the broad avenues and teeming marketplaces falling away to narrower streets thronged with men broken with the occasional great pavilion crammed with dragons sleeping or amusing themselves. Temeraire saw from aloft, as they passed an immense complex upon the outskirts of Peking, a handful of the most common sort of blue dragons playing some sort of game with stones, which he made a note to inquire about when he had anyone more sympathetic to ask than Chu.
The city yielded to settled sparse towns and then all at once to farmland and fields. Temeraire noticed large square markers set at regular intervals beneath them, dark grey stone engraved with white-enameled characters: they all bore the name of Peking, the direction to that city, and the distance. He pointed them out to Laurence. “That is very convenient,” he said, “and I wonder we do not have them in England; it is much less trouble than having to follow a road, only to know where you are; I can see these from quite far away without the least difficulty.”
“It is a clever notion,” Laurence said, peering down over Temeraire’s shoulder with his glass, “although I suppose it is no use at night.”