CUSCO STOOD IN THE BOWL of a mountaintop, cupped round by jagged short peaks, green and mossy, and overlaid with a veil of clouds. The city from aloft had a curious and peculiarly deliberate shape: a lion in profile, its head an immense fortress of carven stones built upon a hill, and the city its great body, lying alongside the banks of a river and formed of many large houses of fine construction, many with deeply sloping roofs thrust high into the air, of thickly layered thatch. The buildings were established in groups around courtyards: in several of these dragons lay sleeping, in others sitting alert and watchful, all of them in an array of brilliant plumage and adorned in gold and silver, so a faint chiming might be heard even from aloft.
So far as Laurence could see, there were no hovels, not even smaller houses, and no sign of any market within the proper bounds of the city: these practicalities seemed to be constrained to villages that huddled around the city walls in clusters, along short and well-used roads.
Several dragons in the ensign of the patrol came winging to meet them, long before they had reached those walls: the patrol-beasts flew in rings around them peering at Temeraire’s safe-conduct, and exchanging a yammering conversation with Churki. They were at last escorted—whether as guests or prisoners was difficult to ascertain—towards an immense raised plaza, directly to the north of the river, plainly of ceremonial function and which would have admitted even a small army of dragons.
“We are to stay in the kallanka there to the side,” Churki informed Hammond, indicating a great covered hall alongside the plaza. “The other foreigners, they say, are on the other side—”
“The other foreigners?” Hammond said. “De Guignes is here, then?”
And as they landed, across the plaza Laurence could see Genevieve asleep beneath another covered hall, the Fleur-de-Nuit’s immense lamp-eyes lidded down to pale slits.
The patrol-dragons settled down around them as they landed, with an air of intending to remain; Churki held still more discussion with them, and at one moment turned and hissed something aside to Hammond, who started and then said to Laurence, “Pray, Captain, shall we let the men down? Churki is of the opinion that—that it cannot but convey our peaceful intentions, when they have seen us disembark—”
From his awkward looks, Laurence doubted whether Churki’s exact meaning had been translated, but Temeraire was distracted at the moment by low argument with Iskierka on the subject of the ornamentation of an immense temple visible a little to the southeast: “Laurence,” he said, swinging his head around, “do you think that can really be gold, there on the outside of that building? Surely no-one would put gold out where it might be rained upon, and dirtied.”
“You had better apply to Churki, for an answer which might have some authority behind it; it may be gold leaf only,” Laurence said, doubtful himself: certainly the frieze looked golden, but it seemed implausible. “Mr. Fer—Mr. Forthing, I think we will let down the men, if you please.”
The disembarkation of nearly two hundred men certainly had an effect: as the belly-netting was let down and the sailors gratefully spread out to stretch their legs, and set up a clamoring for beer, the patrol-dragons stretched out their necks to peer at them with interest and low murmurs of appreciation and, Laurence thought, perhaps of envy. In any case, they looked on Temeraire and Iskierka and Kulingile with a less suspicious eye.
“Yes,” Churki said, “now they begin to believe me, when I tell them you brought back one of my mother’s own stolen ones: they thought I must be mistaken somehow. And of course they are very impressed; you see, there is no reason for you to be distressed that the French are bringing horses and jewels; what is that, to what you have brought?”
Temeraire added to his translation, “I have no notion what she can mean; surely she sees we are quite destitute,” and asked her.
Churki shook her wings out, with a great jingling noise. “Why, all these men, of course.”