“If you wish to look like a ragged beggar, I suppose it can be accomplished,” Junichiro said, savagely, and closed the wall-panel behind him. But Laurence for the moment was as glad to be shut in with his own thoughts.
It seemed plain that the law here was inhospitable in the extreme to foreigners, and only some kind of vow—now-regretted—had impelled Kaneko to undertake the forms of charity towards him, evidently at real risk of his own disgrace. This Lady Arikawa, whoever she might be—perhaps his liege, certainly a person of authority—would be under no similar constraint. Kaneko might wish to leave his fate to the will of this lady, and so propitiate her, but Laurence felt not the slightest inclination to accommodate his plans. If return he owed, for hospitality so unwillingly given, then removing himself from the situation was all the return he was prepared to make.
The house was large, but hardly fortified, and he had seen only a few manservants. If the law generally barred the possession of blades, his own lack might not be an insurmountable obstacle if he could not get at the sword; although that, too, might be accomplished. The chief difficulty was not an escape, he thought, but its sequel. He could with an effort summon up the shape of the nation, on a chart, but he had never sailed this way in his life. If he had been asked to find Nagasaki by latitude and longitude, from memory, he might as well have made for Perdition straightaway.
But with any luck he could find his way back to the coast, whence perhaps some fisherman might be prevailed upon to carry him in secret to the port: and if he had not dreamt it in his delirium, the buttons of his coat had been gold. If not, in any case there might be a few coins in a pocket, or slipped through into the lining, if his things had not been pillaged.
They had not. Junichiro returned only a little while later with a servant trailing him, who set down on the floor just inside the room the bundle of clothing. And when the door had closed, and Laurence held the salt-stained and ruined clothes, he found the buttons, still firmly sewn on, were gold; and so, too, were the long narrow bars athwart each shoulder where the epaulettes had ought to be—
—and the coat itself was an aviator’s green.
The first order of business was plainly to get the ship afloat again: a ship sitting on rocks was of no use to anyone. “But shan’t the ocean get in, once those are underwater?” Lily said, her head tilted to examine the gaping holes where the rocks had pierced the hull and yet stood within, keeping the Potentate fixed upon the shoals.
“Oh! by no means,” Temeraire said. “They will patch it, with some timber and oakum, I believe; or perhaps with something else, it makes not a particle of difference. That is not our affair: that is for the sailors to worry about.”
He spoke with impatience, which he was aware Lily did not deserve, but he could not quite help himself. It was so very hard to stay here, especially when he was forced to overhear the officers, who insisted on speaking to one another in the certainty of Laurence’s death; even Granby, of whom Temeraire would have expected better, had only said to Hammond, “For Heaven’s sake, Hammond, let him think as he likes. It will take him dreadfully, when he does believe it.”
“Well, I am not going to believe it, so there,” Temeraire said, to himself; but it certainly did not improve his already-great anxiety to be away, searching for Laurence; and neither did Churki sitting there like a great unhelpful lump and wagging her head seriously and saying, “This is what comes of putting all your heart in just one person! Hammond, I should have mentioned before, I hope you are thinking of marriage, and do not fear that I am inclined to be unreasonable. As long as she is young enough to have a great many children, I will be very pleased, whatever your choice.”
Temeraire snorted: Churki might be considerably older, and very experienced from her service with the Incan army, but what did she know of it, anyway. He was quite done considering her opinion as particularly worthwhile; at least, on this subject.
But he very badly wished to go look for Laurence, anyway: and after all, there was no egg yet; there might not be an egg for days, and until there was an egg, it was none of his business but Iskierka’s, whatever she might say. And he would have gone, indeed—if only he could have persuaded himself that this explanation would hold the least weight with Laurence.