camel is a worse loss,’ Tharkay said, turning away with a shrug, brutal but truthful: Jing Chao had endeared himself to no one. Even Gong Su, his countryman and longest acquaintance, heaved only one sigh; and then led Temeraire around to the waiting roast camel, today cooked in a fire pit with tea-leaves, an attempt at changing the flavour.
The few oasis towns they passed through were narrow places in spirit, less unfriendly than perplexed by strangers: the marketplaces lazy and slow, men in black skull-caps smoking and drinking spiced tea in the shade and watching them curiously; Tharkay exchanged a few words now and again, in Chinese and in other tongues. The streets were not in good repair, mostly drifted over with sand and cut by deep channels pitted with the ancient marks of nail-studded wagon wheels. They bought bags of almonds and dried fruit, sweet pressed apricots and grapes, filled their water-bags at the clean deep wells, and continued on their way.
The camels began moaning early in the night, the first sign of warning; when the watch came to fetch Laurence, the constellations were already being swallowed up by the low oncoming cloud.
‘Let Temeraire drink and eat; this may last some time,’ Tharkay said: a couple of the ground crewmen pried off the cover from two of the flat-sided wooden butts and brushed the damp, cooling sawdust away from the swollen leather bags inside, then Temeraire lowered his head so they might pour out the mixture of water and ice into his mouth: having had nearly a week’s practice, he did not spill a drop, but closed his jaws tight before raising his head up again to swallow. The unburdened camel rolled its eyes and fought at being separated from its fellows, to no avail; Pratt and his mate, both of them big men, dragged it around behind the tents; Gong Su drew a knife across its neck, deftly catching the spurting blood in a bowl; and Temeraire unenthusiastically fell-to: he was getting tired of camel.
There were still some fifteen left to get under cover, and Granby marshalled the midwingmen and the ensigns while the ground crewmen anchored the tents more securely; already the layer of loose fine sand was whipping across the surface of the dunes and stinging their hands and faces, though they put up their collars and wrapped their neckcloths over their mouths and noses. The thick fur-lined tents, which they had been so glad to have during the cold nights, now grew stifling hot as they struggled and pushed and crowded in the camels, and even the thinner leather pavilion which they got up to shield Temeraire and themselves was smotheringly close.
And then the sandstorm was upon them: a hissing furious assault, nothing like the sound of rain, falling without surcease against the leather tent wall. It could not be ignored; the noise rose and fell in unpredictable bursts, from shrieks to whispers and back again, so they could only take brief unrestful snatches of sleep; and faces grew bruised with fatigue around them. They did not risk many lanterns inside the tent; when the sun set Laurence sat by Temeraire’s head in a darkness almost complete, listening to the wind howl.
‘Some call the karaburan the work of evil spirits,’ Tharkay said out of the dark; he was cutting some leather for fresh jesses for the eagle, presently subdued in its cage, head hunched invisibly into its shoulders. ‘You can hear their voices, if you listen,’ and indeed one could make out low and plaintive cries on the wind, like murmurs in a foreign tongue.
‘I cannot understand them,’ Temeraire said, listening with interest rather than dread; evil spirits did not alarm him. ‘What language is that?’
‘No tongue of men or dragons,’ Tharkay said seriously: the ensigns were listening, the older men only pretending not to, and Roland and Dyer had crept close, eyes stretched wide. ‘Those who listen too long grow confused and lose their way: they are never found again, except as bones scoured clean to warn other travellers away.’
‘Hm,’ Temeraire said sceptically. ‘I would like to see the demon that could eat me,’ which would certainly have required a prodigious kind of devil.
Tharkay’s mouth twitched. ‘That is why they have not dared to bother us; dragons of your size are not often seen in the desert.’ The men huddled rather closer to Temeraire, and no one spoke of going outside.
‘Have you heard of dragons having their own languages?’ Temeraire asked Tharkay a little later, softly; most of the men were drifting, half-asleep. ‘I have always thought we learnt them from men only.’
‘The Durzagh tongue is a language of dragons,’ Tharkay said. ‘There are sounds in it men cannot make: your voices more easily mimic ours than the reverse.’
‘Oh! Will you teach me?’ Temeraire asked, eagerly; Celestials, unlike most dragons, kept the ability to easily acquire new tongues past their hatching and infancy.
‘It is of little use,’ Tharkay said. ‘It is only spoken in the mountains: in the Pamirs, and the Karakoram.’
‘I do not mind that,’ Temeraire said. ‘It will be so very useful when we are back in England. Laurence, the Government cannot say we are just animals if we have invented our own language,’ he added, looking to him for confirmation.
‘No one with any sense would say it regardless,’ Laurence began, to be interrupted by Tharkay’s short snorting laugh.
‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘They are more likely to think you an animal for speaking a tongue other than English; or at least a creature unworthy of notice: you would do better to cultivate an elevated tone,’ and his voice changed quite on the final words, taking on the drawling style favoured by the too-fashionable set for a moment.
‘That is a very strange way of speaking,’ Temeraire said dubiously, after he had tried it, repeating over the phrase a few times. ‘It seems very peculiar to me that it should make any difference how one says the words, and it must be a great deal of trouble to learn how to say them all over again. Can one hire a translator to say things properly?’
‘Yes; they are called lawyers,’ Tharkay said, and laughed softly to himself.
‘I would certainly not recommend you to imitate this particular style,’ Laurence said dryly, while Tharkay recovered from his amusement. ‘At best you might only impress some fellow on Bond Street, if he did not run away to begin with.’
‘Very true; you had much better take Captain Laurence as your model,’ Tharkay said, inclining his head. ‘Just how a gentleman ought to speak; I am sure any official would agree.’
His expression was not visible in the shadows, but Laurence felt as though he were being obscurely mocked, perhaps without malice, but irritating to him nonetheless. ‘I see you have made a study of the subject, Mr. Tharkay,’ he said a little coldly. Tharkay shrugged.
‘Necessity was a thorough teacher, if a hard one,’ he said. ‘I found men eager enough to deny me my rights, without providing them so convenient an excuse to dismiss me. You may find it slow going,’ he added to Temeraire, ‘if you mean to assert your own: men with powers and privileges rarely like to share them.’
This was no more than Laurence had said, on many an occasion, but a vein of cynicism ran true and deep beneath Tharkay’s words which perhaps made them the more convincing: ‘I am sure I do not see why they should not wish to be just,’ Temeraire said, but uncertainly, troubled, and so Laurence found he did not after all like to see Temeraire take his own advice to heart.
‘Justice is expensive,’ Tharkay said. ‘That is why there is so little of it, and that it’s reserved for those few with enough money and influence to afford it.’
‘In some corners of the world, perhaps,’ Laurence said, unable to tolerate this, ‘but thank God, we have a rule of law in Britain, and those checks upon the power of men which prevent any from becoming tyrannical.’
‘Or which spread the tyranny over more hands, piecemeal,’ Tharkay said. ‘I do not know that the Chinese system is any worse; there is a limit to the evil one despot alone can do, and if he is truly vicious he can be overthrown; a hundred corrupt members of Parliament may together do as much injustice or more, and be the less easy to uproot.’
‘And where on the scale would you rank Bonaparte?’ Laurence demanded, growing too indignant