The Frenchwomen whom they had seen aboard the Triomphe, it transpired, were here for no lesser purpose than to carry on negotiations with the Inca on De Guignes’s behalf. “And if possible to persuade her to see him, but so far they have in this respect been unsuccessful. I have been made a member of their party, and welcome to join them in their regular attendance at court, but I have not,” Mrs. Pemberton said, “been privy to all their conversations with the Sapa Inca: and the ladies are far too shrewd to allow their intentions to slip in mere gossiping. You can imagine better than I, sir, what terms they are likely to have offered and to seek.”
“An exchange,” Hammond said thoughtfully. “I should not be in the least surprised if they proposed an exchange—of people, I mean, for dragons; I am quite sure Napoleon would be delighted to receive a number of beasts in France at the price, I suppose, of the population of his prisons. But I am sure he would also settle for a mere vague agreement of friendship—a truce of sorts—he does not require an ally on this continent, when he is already delivering the Tswana here by the boatload.
“Perhaps they are here only to prevent our acquiring one—? Only,” he paused, and gnawed absently upon his thumb a moment, “only, would De Guignes come on so incidental a mission? And bind himself to a dragon for its sake? No—! Blast.”
He muttered to himself in this vein for several moments more; Mrs. Pemberton listened until he ran down again and had turned away from her to his teapot, for a fresh cup of the coca tea; then she said calmly, “I will see what I can find out in more earnest, sir; and present Miss Roland to Her Majesty tomorrow morning, with your permission.”
The steaming cup in his hand momentarily forgotten, Hammond looked up doubtfully at her and then at Emily Roland, who stared equally doubtful back.
“We cannot suffer by having another pair of eyes and ears admitted to the Sapa Inca’s presence,” Mrs. Pemberton pointed out. “Miss Roland and myself will extend whatever offers you might wish to Her Majesty, Mr. Hammond; and I am sure we should be glad to do our very best to accomplish whatever you would like.”
“What I would like,” Hammond said to Laurence several days later, nearly pulling upon his hair: all efforts at obtaining his admission to the Empress’s presence had failed, “what I would like, would be the liberty of carrying on my own negotiations, without recourse to intermediaries: untrained intermediaries! A violently quarrelsome dragon, a governess, and a fifteen-year-old girl! And I must credential them—I hope no-one in England may hear of it.”
“You may at least comfort yourself that the French can be only a little better prepared than are we, for the circumstances of such a negotiation,” Laurence said.
“Can they not?” Hammond said. “They at least have known what to expect—they have surely been sending spies over here through Brazil these last two years. We already know that Mme. Récamier is here on their part; I thought she loathed Bonaparte, but I suppose she loves an opportunity of intrigue on such a scale enough to compensate. And at least De Guignes’s beast has not taken it into her head to form a distaste for the foremost Incan dragon.”
Laurence could not dispute the justice of this last complaint: Temeraire and Maila Yupanqui were only just short of daggers-drawn with one another. There would have been every cause to despair of progress, indeed, if Maila were not more than ready to be pleased by the rest of them, most notably Iskierka, to whom he applied regularly for private conversation, on the excuse of continuing his efforts to acquire English.
“I am sure I do not see any reason why Iskierka must put up with being annoyed,” Temeraire said.
“I am sure I cannot name a single other advantage we have to hand,” Hammond said, “so you will oblige me by not interfering.”
So Temeraire remained resentful, and grew only more so when Iskierka landed shortly thereafter and announced, “I have been out flying with Maila: he has shown me a mine where they take gold directly out of the ground; cartloads of it; and he tells me they could take still more than they do, but they do not have so many hands as they need for the work, as it is only men who can do it properly.”
“Laurence, do you suppose there might be a mine of that sort in England?” Temeraire asked him in low tones, shortly after his scornful dismissal of Iskierka’s report had provoked them to a quarrel which left them sitting at opposite ends of the hall. “Or perhaps in our valley, in New South Wales?”
“I cannot think it at all likely,” Laurence said. “Gold mines are not a common occurrence; from what we saw on our journey across the Australian continent I should think the country might more likely have opal mines.”
“Oh!” Temeraire said. “Like those stones which they sewed to your robes? That would do splendidly; I would rather have opals than a like quantity of gold. Laurence, will you not wear your robes, perhaps to walk across the plaza, where you might be seen?”