Naomi Novik - Temeraire 02 by Throne of Jade

Author:Throne of Jade [Jade, Throne of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-15T22:52:19.948000+00:00

Laurence roused the next morning to yells of dismay and feet running overhead; he dashed at once for the deck to find the foremainsail yard tumbled to the deck in two pieces, the enormous sail draped half over the forecastle, and Temeraire looking at once miserable and embarrassed. “I did not mean to,” he said, sounding gravelly and quite unlike himself, and sneezed again, this time managing to turn his head away from the ship: the force of the eruption cast up a few waves that slopped against the larboard side.

Keynes was already climbing up to the deck with his bag, and laid his ear against Temeraire’s chest. “Hm.” He said nothing more, listening in many places, until Laurence grew impatient and prompted him.

“Oh, it is certainly a cold; there is nothing to be done but wait it out, and dose him for coughing when that should begin. I am only seeing if I might hear the fluid moving in the channels which relate to the divine wind,” Keynes said absently. “We have no notion of the anatomy of the particular trait; a pity we have never had a specimen to dissect.”

Temeraire drew back at this, putting his ruff down, and snorted; or rather tried to: instead he blew mucus out all over Keynes’s head. Laurence himself sprang back only just in time, and could not feel particularly sorry for the surgeon: the remark had been thoroughly tactless.

Temeraire croaked out, “I am quite well, we can still go flying,” and looked at Laurence in appeal.

“Perhaps a shorter flight now, and then again in the afternoon, if you are still not tired,” Laurence offered, looking at Keynes, who was ineffectually trying to get the slime from his face.

“No, in warm weather like this he can fly just as usual if he likes to; no need to baby him,” Keynes said, rather shortly, managing to clear his eyes at least. “So long as you are sure to be strapped on tight, or he will sneeze you clean off. Will you excuse me?”

So in the end Temeraire had his long flight after all: the Allegiance left dwindling behind in the blue-water depths, and the ocean shading to jeweled glass as they drew nearer the coast: old cliffs, softened by the years and sloping gently to the water under a cloak of unbroken green, with a fringe of jagged grey boulders at their base to break the water. There were a few small stretches of pale sand, none large enough for Temeraire to land even if they had not grown wary; but otherwise the trees were impenetrable, even after they had flown straight inland for nearly an hour.

It was lonely, and as monotonous as flying over empty ocean; the wind among the leaves instead of the lapping of the waves, only a different variety of silence. Temeraire looked eagerly at every occasional animal cry that broke the stillness, but saw nothing past the ground cover, so thickly overgrown were the trees. “Does no one live here?” he asked, eventually.

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