“I will be sure to tell her, Captain Granby,” Hammond said in a low voice, as they approached, “that you have no interest in governance—that you would not seek to interfere—?”
“Yes,” Granby said wearily, “you may tell her I will be a proper lap-dog, and let her have her own way in everything, and not do anything but sit next to her and nod when she pokes me; and you may as well remind her if I ever do care to do otherwise, I still shan’t be able to, as I don’t know ten words of the language yet and likely won’t put a sentence together for a year to come.”
“Captain Granby begs Your Majesty’s pardon,” Hammond said, “that his lack of skill in the language bars him expressing his gratitude for the honor which you have done him, by this invitation; and wishes me to convey to Your Majesty—”
He went on in this perfectly untruthful vein, with which Anahuarque seemed quite well-satisfied; Temeraire looked away to watch instead the traffic of dragons coming and going among the great stepped terraces and high roofs of the city, laid out before their present vantage point, which if less remarkable was at least less dreadful than the debacle in progress before him; and for interest there were three dragons coming in from the south, two rigged out with elaborate streaming banners of great size.
Then Temeraire sat up sharply: the banners were the tricolor, and the dragon in the center was white: “Laurence!” he said, interrupting Hammond, “Laurence, Lien is coming; and those are Flammes-de-Gloire beside her.”
IT WAS NOT HIS FAULT, of course, but Temeraire conceded that his announcement had disrupted the ceremony beyond repair: the dragons of the Incan court were all sitting up and watching the oncoming dragons warily, paying Hammond’s attempts to resume his speechmaking no attention, and Maila had reared up on his hind legs and put a foreleg on the Inca’s podium as though he meant to snatch her up and go at once.
Temeraire could see Genevieve go up from the hall where the French were quartered, with Piccolo and Ardenteuse on her heels, to join the approaching party: and then all six dragons circled together overhead and descended one after another into the royal court, Piccolo unsubtly crowding against Kulingile’s shoulder to make room for Lien to come down.
She was looking splendidly, Temeraire could not help but reluctantly acknowledge: besides the immense diamond upon her breast, which caught the light of the lamps, she wore also a sort of gauntlet upon each foreleg—talon-sheaths tipped in rubies, joined by delicate lacy chains of silver to broad cuffs set with diamonds, which were in turn joined to another set of cuffs above her elbow-joint set with sapphires, so that she wore the colors of the tricolor herself. She wore no other harness, and carried but one rider—
The French dragons all bowed their heads low, and the men aboard their backs removed their hats; De Guignes slid from Genevieve’s back and knelt, as Napoleon dismounted from Lien’s back, stepping easily down onto her proffered foreleg, which she then lowered to the ground.
He took De Guignes by the shoulders and raised him up, kissed him on either cheek, and said in French, “Best of emissaries! You must not be offended that I have come myself, any more than are my Marshals when I come to take the field; some battles a man must win himself. This is the Empress?” And when De Guignes confirmed it, Napoleon said, “Then tell her, my friend, that I myself have come! And hazarded my own person, to show her the honor which I and France mean to do her, if she will come and grace our throne.”
If the Inca’s dragons were inclined to resent the intrusion of the French party into the ceremony, and Napoleon’s disregard of their protocol, his very temerity seemed to carry fortune with it: De Guignes was heard out, and the ruffled dragons gradually subsided on hearing Napoleon identified and his flamboyant message translated. Certainly there was enough courage to impress in the act of delivering himself into the power of a foreign sovereign; although Laurence noted that the two Flammes-de-Gloire bore each of them more than a usual complement of riflemen, all wary-eyed and with their guns ready to their hands.
A murmuring ran among the Incan dragons; even Maila looked uncertain, and abruptly Anahuarque raised a hand, and her court fell silent. “Tell the Emperor we welcome him to our court,” she said. “Such a great journey must have left him fatigued: you shall go and rest, and we will dine all together this evening, to celebrate the opening friendship among all our nations.”