The negotiators, roused in the early hours by the news, huddled murmuring and grim together until dawn brought Kefentse back, and the discussions resumed. Having given over the notion of preserving their slave-holdings for the moment, the Portuguese now began to argue for the manumitted slaves remaining on their estates—plainly, Laurence thought, with an eye to reversing that manumission as soon as circumstances might permit it, if not rendering it a mere fiction to begin with.
Lethabo listened, spoke with Mogotsi, and then turning back said, “You have torn kinsmen from one another; this cannot be allowed. Where they do not desire to return to their homeland, however, they may be reunited with their ancestors upon the estates.”
Laurence doubted extremely that the Portuguese negotiators, wearing self-satisfaction in every line of their faces, understood that by ancestors the Tswana meant the dragons; nor did he enlighten them when afterwards Soares da Camara bragged to his fellows in the next recess.
“You see how they swallow the least gesture,” he said. “We ought to have met them across the table before: these savages have no understanding, no sophistication; they can easily be led if only one should satisfy their primitive impulses. They have learned that to be a slave is undesirable; very well, we will let them call themselves free; what does it matter, if they do not refuse to live in service to their betters, as some instinct of wisdom must lead them to accept? Even if a few thousand of them decide to brave the passage again and go back to Africa, we will scarcely be the losers when one considers the rate at which presently they flee their appointed places, knowing they may escape to the beasts.”
Hammond looked uneasily at Laurence, perhaps wondering how much he understood and whether he would object; Laurence said nothing, and only glanced across the room at Lethabo, who looked back and met his eye with the faintest suggestion of a smile.
“Well, I hope they can be persuaded to remain, most of them, now that you have arranged handsome estates for them all to live on,” Harcourt said, surveying Rio from the heights: the city had grown a little cramped with another five heavy-weight Tswana dragons trying to clear themselves room in the center, and a scattering of middle-weight beasts debating over the other corners. “If we do have to send them by the Potentate, we will be sitting on our haunches here ourselves for another year; or likely three: one trip won’t be enough to get the half of them back over.”
“They can’t much like the idea of going back crammed aboard the hold very like in the way they came, and so they would be,” Warren said, “for if dragons go along, it will be no end of work fitting enough provisions for them all. If it can even be done: I would not wager on getting more than five hundred passengers aboard at a time, myself. Look sharp, there!”
This exclamation was provoked by the approach of one of the larger Tswana dragons, who abandoning her attempt to make herself comfortable in the ruin of the city had gone aloft, and now came towards the mountain. She had not sighted them, however, or at least paid them no attention if she had; she landed clutching onto the cliff face and began to scratch at the wall experimentally, as though to work out its composition.
Evidently satisfied, she turned her head down and roaring called to her fellows, a few of whom left off their own efforts and joined her in examining the stone. One of the smaller beasts made a thoughtful chirruping noise and darted away, returning shortly thereafter with one of the stolen cannon. From this they stripped away the wheels, leaving only a portion of the wooden housing, on which they seized; the barrel was set against the wall, and the larger beasts began to take it in turn to hammer the length into the rock. The smaller ones held it in place, and when it had been sunk halfway in began to twist and rock it; shortly they had burst out a small pattering avalanche of rock. It bore a strong resemblance to the work Laurence had seen once at the Tswana city of Mosi Oa Tunye, where the dragons carved immense living caverns out of the walls of the waterfall gorge.
By the next morning, the space was large enough for one of the smaller beasts to climb inside and sweep out debris; by that night, two of the larger dragons settled down therein to sleep. “Well, at least some of them are making themselves at home,” Sutton said, as they checked upon the progress, but when Laurence returned to the negotiations and spoke with Lethabo, she shook her head.
“Kefentse will stay, and so will I and my daughters, for we have no other kinsmen remaining back home: but that is not true of many of the dragons,” she said.