“Pray stop that; whyever would we take them?” Temeraire said. “We are not trying to take you prisoner; we only want to know where we are, and how we can get to Brazil: we are not thieves.” He paused, realizing Iskierka had already given him the lie. “Well; except Iskierka, but—you see—she does mean to take this gentleman back home, when we have asked him some questions,” he finished uncomfortably.
Palta, unconvinced, was only persuaded to accompany them back to the shore when Temeraire acceded to his demand that he should be allowed to send his handful of companions back to their home, first. Even so, he tried to keep himself in front while they left, as though he could stop Temeraire seeing which way they were going into the trees; and further insisted on waiting afterwards for a while also, until the sounds of their passage had entirely faded. He then wanted all four of them to go flying abreast and together, even though that was not convenient when Kulingile was slower than all of them, and Temeraire might have gone ahead.
The sailors had put up a makeshift camp with the goods out of the storehouse: several lean-tos and tents, farther up the river away from the village, and several cooking-fires, Temeraire was glad to see; the men were even singing a round of “Spanish Ladies” as they came in for a landing.
“Oh,” Palta said, staring around the camp. “Oh; so many! Are they all yours?”
He was asking Kulingile, even though Kulingile did not understand him and could not say a word back. Temeraire snorted. “They are ours,” he said, “although not properly the sailors: they are only along because we would not leave them to drown, and ought to be more grateful for it than they are. Laurence,” he said, turning, “this is Palta, and that man is called Taruca: Iskierka snatched him, and I cannot find she asked him in the least.”
They had made their camp upriver at a distance, but the temple on its hill threw a long shadow. The men went about with low voices, and did not even try to steal away to the village for looting, and Laurence did not say, even in a breath to Granby, what else he had seen inside the charnel-house pyramid: the sheets of beaten gold upon the walls, and the vessels of silver standing amid the silent decaying pallets of the dead.
The storehouse at least had offered a more modest scope for greed, and Laurence did not hesitate to order Forthing to share out the jars of local beer they found within: better the men should be drowsy and pacified than tempted to go prying about; he had no illusions about the sensible restraint any man of them was likely to exercise in the face of treasure on such a scale.
The dragons were not gone long, fortunately; although they brought with them fresh cause for dismay in the person of Taruca, and Iskierka was at once unrepentant and unable to say just where she had snatched him.
“He was alone, anyway,” she said, “only sitting in the sun near an old empty house, and he did not even try to run away when I landed and picked him up.”
“Oh, Lord,” Granby said despairingly. “Of course he didn’t, you lunatic beast: he is stone blind.”
Taruca’s face was marred with pockmarks, most nearly about his ruined eyes, but he seemed resigned more than alarmed by his abduction. At least, he was ready to accept their apologies and also a share in their dinner and a cup of the pilfered beer. “I thank you; that is refreshing,” he said politely, without mentioning as well he might have that they were serving him from the stores of his own people. “But I am hearing the ocean: is this not Quitalén village? We must not linger here: the governors have banned men from the place while the unhealthy air remains.”
“If I am understanding correctly,” Hammond added to his translation, “the plague passed over not three months ago; and the—red fever?—a month later, which he says was worse.”
“The measles?” Ferris suggested.
“Measles would scarcely be worse than plague,” Granby said. “But there must be unhealthy air here; whoever heard of measles and plague, so close on one another; and smallpox, too, if this fellow’s face is anything to go by. Pray ask him where we can take him home to?”
Hammond’s imperfect knowledge of the language evidently gave him some difficulties in this communication: Taruca seemed perplexed by the question, and after listening in, the dragon Palta looked sidelong up towards Temeraire in a cautious way and volunteered, “If you do not want him, I would be very happy to take him myself: he could help attend the dead, and light work such as that only; I assure you we would be very kind to him.”