“I cannot—I cannot by any means account for it,” Hammond said, in much agitation, when they had returned to the encampment.
The British party had been directed to establish themselves on the western side of the valley, separated pointedly from the rest of the forces by a wide furrowed line of open dirt, with sentries posted along it and a dozen of the red dragons encamped surrounding them. “To do honor to the prince, and to Lung Tien Xiang, and ensure none should trouble them,” Fela had said, coldly, paying lip service to the fiction of Laurence’s command.
“I thank you,” Laurence had said, and did not argue; he was himself savagely angry. Across the camp, Chu was directing that his own pavilion be raised up at the farthest point from theirs, beside Fela’s tent.
Their baggage had been heaped carelessly at the boundary, and the cauldrons of porridge: not a generous allotment of the last, particularly when Maximus and Kulingile dragged at last into the camp; the dragons were snappish and sharp at one another over the pots. Spent from their long and arduous flight, however, they were too weary to quarrel long; the porridge was eaten quickly, and they all collapsed into sleep almost at once.
Hammond’s tent had been put up near the center of their encampment, surrounded for privacy by the tents and pavilions of their own men; Churki slept now half-circled round it, the steady heaving of her side gently swelling the back panel of the tent.
“It will be a wretched mess, if we have to fight our way out of this,” Catherine Harcourt said to Laurence, low, as they ducked inside Hammond’s tent together, with the other captains. “If those twelve can hold us long enough for any reinforcements to come up, which I suppose is what they are thinking, we will be sunk. Our only chance will be to bull out through them as quickly as we can—Lily in the middle, Temeraire and Iskierka on her either flank, one pass to clear out anyone before us, and then they give way to Maximus and Kulingile, and we all fall in behind the two of them and make due west. How we are to contrive to win home, with no supply—”
“Pray keep your voice down!” Hammond said. “There can be no call to begin planning so disastrous a course. I grant you the circumstances are awkward—”
“Awkward!” Harcourt said. “Hammond, we are landed in the middle of the largest aerial army of which I have ever heard tell, and now they are only waiting for word that they may put us to the sword and claw.”
“Word that will not come,” Hammond said. “It is preposterous, the idea that we should have provided opium to these rebels—that we should have somehow delivered it here.” He blotted his forehead with the back of his hand and looked around his tent, anxiously. “Where are—ah.” He dug after his pouch of leaves. “I assure you,” he said, folding over a hunk of crumbling leaves with hands that shook, “there must be a misunderstanding. In the morning, I will consult with Lung Qin Mei—we will draft a reply. There are any number of possible explanations. Perhaps these rebels meant to sell opium in order to fund their efforts; it does not follow that we must have been involved in their crimes.”
“And I suppose,” Laurence said, reaching the end of his temper, “that this ragged band of rebels have somehow contrived in their small and impoverished territory to acquire the funds to purchase so enormous a supply?”
He rose to his feet; Hammond stepped back from him, warily. “What use do you imagine it will be to defend ourselves against other charges, when we have already been proven so demonstrably false?” Laurence said. “Twenty chests of Indian opium, of the same make, packed together and certainly from a single British ship. This is no private, no individual endeavor; this was not concealed from the eyes of our factors. This is no secret winking. This is deliberate, orchestrated defiance of the law, and our guilt there is undeniable.”
Laurence was grimly aware that a courier had already flown for the Imperial City with the news of this latest discovery. He would be obliged to follow it with his own; he would have to make excuses, to scrape and connive at justification. He would have to let Hammond put falsehoods into his mouth, or see his men and fellow-officers condemned, his country-men in Guangzhou chased out, all hope of alliance ruined. And he could scarcely see any hope for averting that fate even if he did all this.
“You have made me a liar, and yourself,” he said, bitterly, and stalked from the tent.