In any case, his ornaments of office would have lent even a lesser beast enormous gravity: a band of gold was wrapped about the top of his throat, set into a woolen collar with a tasseled fringe in a bright green color which stood markedly against the deep intense violet of his scales, and enormous gold circles had been embedded within his ears, so they hung to the bottom of his jaw. Golden hoops pierced the lower edges of his wings, a form of decoration Temeraire had never seen before: remarkably handsome, he thought.
“Consideration must be given to strangers and guests who are unfamiliar with local custom,” Hualpa continued, “but this is strange indeed: do you expect me to approve your behavior?”
He sat back on his haunches, the golden hoops ringing against the stone floor as he swept his wings down and onto his back in an elaborate movement: the emeralds caught the shafts of sunlight piercing the great room and flared brilliant green for a moment. “It is known that men from the sea are inveterate liars and thieves,” he added censoriously, “and although I have heard arguments that this is from their being men of no ayllu, here you are all together, and brazenly you present yourselves in the court without even an attempt to conceal your crime.”
“But the people were all dead,” Temeraire protested. “The llamas were only wandering around perfectly loose—”
“Not of the llamas,” Hualpa said, “of course you are welcome to the llamas, if no-one was herding them, and you were hungry: of the man.”
“I had not understood they practiced slavery, in this country,” Hammond said to Laurence rather anxiously, after Temeraire had translated his exchange, “but if it is the custom—if it is their law—”
Hammond might well express such anxiety, Laurence thought grimly: he could hardly name anything he would less desire than to hand a man over into bondage: whether owned by another man or a dragon scarcely made any difference. The great distance between Taruca’s home—whence he had surely been taken unwillingly—and his present abode was now explained, and his resignation at the fresh abduction. A man once snatched into slavery might be indifferent to a change of master, and would scarcely see any reason to believe that any honest or merciful act should be the design of his new captors.
“Pray inquire of the gentleman,” Laurence said, cutting Hammond’s continuing murmur short, “why he was taken from his home: had he committed a crime?”
“I must remind you, Captain, that we cannot intrude our own judgment upon their practice in such matters—” Hammond halted, seeing Laurence’s face, and turned to speak to Taruca, whose indignation when he had made out the line of Hammond’s inquiry required no translation.
“What reason but that I had strayed too far, walking, from the protection of my own ayllu, and might be seized without retribution: indeed, why would anyone have wanted to, if I were a criminal and a thief?” Taruca said, and hesitated; then drew himself up proudly and added, “If more reason were needed, I am of the khipukamayuq, and have fathered three sons and seven daughters yet alive when last I saw them: and beside that I am marked, of course, which you do not need me to say.”
Finishing this speech, his shoulders bowed as he said almost privately to himself, “Of course you do not mean to take me back,” with a faded resignation. Laurence would have liked to reassure him more decidedly than he could, in the present circumstance.
Meanwhile the listening governor bent down and peered at Taruca with one slitted red eye. “Is he marked?” He lifted his head away again and shook it, setting the rings of his peculiar accoutrement jingling, and said to Temeraire. “So he has survived the pox? The matter grows even worse. You are sea-people: you have no khipu yourself for him to work with, and no other tasks suitable for a man of his years: what would you even do with him? And from what you say, you did not even offer a proper challenge.”
“But we could not have made a challenge, even if we had wanted to,” Temeraire said, “as I have explained Iskierka did not mark where Taruca was taken from very well: she did not know he was blind, and would not be able to tell us the way back. Anyway, we mean to take him back to his children, not to keep him to do work for us: and I think it is very unkind that he should have been taken away from them. If you mean to reproach us for taking him from his owner, that is scarcely worse than taking him from his family—”
Even before Temeraire had translated his own speech, Laurence had gathered its direction by the increasingly broad gestures of protest Hammond made, trying to catch his attention; at last Laurence laid a hand on Temeraire’s side to interrupt him, and received an account of the conversation.