Quechua was not a very difficult language—very nicely regular, Temeraire noted with approval, so that once one had learned the rules, one could make further progress at a steady pace. “There are records of a great many more dialects, from the earlier colonial days,” Hammond shouted through the speaking-trumpet—it was not really necessary to speak so loudly aloft, Temeraire could hear him quite clearly even if he did not yell, but Hammond could not be convinced of that—“but the Inca have imposed their own preferred dialect as a kind of lingua franca.”
As for pronunciation, that was rather more difficult; Temeraire could not always be listening in on Maila’s conversations with Genevieve, but he heard enough to know Hammond’s left something to be desired. “You might bespeak him now,” Hammond suggested, looking over at Maila, who was making a habit lately of flying close by whenever Temeraire went aloft—likely trying to show away, Temeraire thought. Not that Maila looked to advantage beside him, unless one was more fond of a flashy and vulgar coloration, ostentatious purples and greens rather than sleek and elegant black.
“I see no call for that,” Temeraire said coolly. “We are sure to meet some other Incan dragons sometime, whom I am sure will be much better company.”
“It is not as though you should have to translate between him and Iskierka,” Hammond said.
“I do not see what that has to do with anything,” Temeraire said. “I certainly do not care in the least if he does wish to speak with Iskierka; although he can scarcely have anything very intelligent to say, anyway.”
“He gave me his share of the tunny, yesterday,” Iskierka said on deck, later that afternoon, “and if he likes to talk to me, he may; I think he is perfectly polite.”
She nodded to Maila, a gesture Temeraire felt was quite uncalled-for, and rather like fraternizing with the enemy; and to his indignation Maila puffed himself up and nodded back and said, “Madam—charming,” slowly and carefully.
“Oh! So you can speak properly,” Iskierka said. “Why haven’t you, before?”
“Only a little, now,” Maila said.
“He has been eavesdropping on my lessons,” Temeraire said to Hammond, “in the most rude fashion, without showing the least consciousness after; I cannot think much of his manners at all.”
“So he is learning English?” Hammond said, now whispering excessively low: nearly inaudible here on deck, where there were people shouting in the rigging everywhere to make it difficult to hear, when he would yell so frantically aloft. Temeraire flattened his ruff in annoyance. “I had thought older dragons could not, save your breed—how splendid that he can as well! Would he perhaps consent to speak with me, do you think—”
Temeraire did not see anything splendid in it, and in any case Maila steadfastly continued to ignore Hammond’s overtures. One might have expected Hammond to have enough self-respect, Temeraire thought, to leave off his attempts, but instead Hammond insisted on shouting all the louder in his next lesson for Temeraire; and even though Temeraire tried to fly at a farther distance, Maila kept close after him, still listening in shamelessly where no-one wanted him at all.
“I think the day will be fine,” M. De Guignes said to Temeraire the next morning, coming up to the dragondeck to breakfast with Genevieve.
Temeraire had just cracked his eye after a sleep not really long enough to satisfy. “Yes; it is growing warmer,” he said drowsily, and then roused enough to realize that De Guignes had spoken to him in Quechua, rather than in French: rather a mean trick, he thought reproachfully.
“That is a pity,” Hammond said, when Temeraire reported the exchange, “but I suppose we could not conceal it forever. Do you think you might be able to keep on, if they should keep me from going aloft with you? I might give Roland some notes on the language, to read to you—”
“You had much better give them to Sipho,” Temeraire said: Roland was no great hand at studying. “But perhaps we had better stop, if the French do not like it; anyway I am sure I have learned enough—anyone really skilled at languages does not need to be always having lessons, to learn a new one,” he added, looking coldly across the deck at where Maila was sunning himself.
But De Guignes did not make any objection, and after a few wary hours Hammond even set himself up on the dragondeck and began reciting aloud to Temeraire there, as loudly as ever he might, and enunciating his English words far more slowly and clearly than was at all necessary.
“I cannot make out the sense of their heading at all,” Laurence said to Granby at their small table that evening: he could see enough of the stars to be nearly sure they were sailing northwesterly, for no reason he could imagine; as good as adding another week to the journey, at least, and worse if the ship should get herself becalmed—no joke to risk with seven heavy-weights aboard.
By Thibaux’s courtesy, they had none of them been pillaged, so Laurence still had his glass; three days later, during his airing, it showed him a small atoll rising in the distance.