Chapter Text
Chapter 16
“So,” the queen of England trilled, interrupting the cacophony of voices shouting across the table, silencing them like so many trained dogs, “-to sum it up…?” Then she gestured at them to finish.
“Multiple French spies were caught sneaking into England while the southern patrols were occupied in skirmishes with smaller French Formations over the channel.” Brimsley addressed the Queen of England, inviting them to follow his lead.
“So far, we know they have multiple ships stationed between here and Copenhagen using flotillas to rest their heavy weights, and we have an armada chasing these ghost ships.” A Secretary offered.
“We have caught two unharnessed Plein-Vite smugglers, and - thanks to Captain Featherington and her Incan beast out in Scotland kicking over the hornet’s nest - we know their plans.” Admiral Jane Roland looked over the table at the assembled puffed bureaucrats and high ranking military men and cabinet members, and the queen herself with her elegantly raised eyebrows, daring them to challenge her statement. The lucky coincidence stirred their collective decision. Queen Charlotte could see the battle was won.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. Let us find some spies,” Queen Charlotte smiled wickedly.
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“Are you having a go at me?” Granby’s asked Hammond, with a shrill note underneath.
“I cannot believe you told him,” Iskierka informed Churki with irritation.
“I for one cannot believe you thought I wouldn’t.” Churki replied casually. She scratched at a spot on her impeccable scales, fabricating intense interest in a nonexistent spot of dirt. She was grinding her teeth in agitation, so her casual air was filled with trepidation like Swiss cheese is filled with holes. “Why do you always insist on crossing the line?”
“So Iskierka had them rebel…a little…-“ Augustine Little offered a red faced Hammond and a pale as a sheet Granby. “What is the worst that could happen?”
“This is NOT a rebellion…This is…this is madness.” Hammond mopped his sweaty brow.
“Would they…take up the invitation? Do you think?” Temeraire asked, intrepid, tail tucked under him protectively. “We did not leave on great terms.”
“We left as egg thieves; there is a difference.” Granby mumbled. “What the Tswana will think…”
“Why would you do this, Iskierka?” Temeraire interrupted that morbid reminder.
“How can you ask me why?” Iskierka told them, furious. “Would that I was a horse or a whore who you can sell for a pound, you turn my body over like-“
Granby cut her off. “Oh, oh, oh! So says the dragoness that would have seen me provide stud services to-“ Hammond slapped a hand over Granby’s mouth. The man was shouting louder than was truly appropriate.
“You know what I wanted!” Iskierka looked over them all with palpable frustration. Then she looked at Temeraire with visible misery. “There has only ever been one thing I wanted.”
She turned and launched herself away, taking off from the Dover Covert.
“Well, what in the world does she mean by that?” Hammond shouted after her, irritated.
“Oh.” Temeraire said.
“Indeed,” Little smiled, suddenly filled with mischief.
“I see…” William Laurence began, a blush forming over the man’s cheeks.
“Does someone want to fill me in?” Hammond inquired, glaring into the varied expressions of flummox and laughter.
“She followed Temeraire across the world.” Augustus Little reminded Hammond.
Granby exhaled violently. “The egg with the divine wind.”
“Do you think she’s…” Little asked, suddenly before trailing off.
Suddenly they all shifted, and Temeraire looked up at the distant speck of Iskierka. “I must…-“
“Temeraire…-“ Laurence began.
“The Incans-“ Hammond exploded.
“She’s with egg-“ Granby was pale.
They began to talk at once.
“Go to her, old chap!” Little laughed with real zeal over Hammond’s vociferous protestations.
In the cacophony, Temeraire looked to Laurence once, who nodded with understanding, and turned and leapt after her, disappearing into the sky while Hammond sputtered his disapproval and disappointment.
“Iskierka invited the Kaziliks to court, because her heart was set on Temeraire all along.” Little offered rationally, ever the picture of contrition.
“Oh, come off it.” Churki chuckled, to Hammond’s outrage. “These things tend to sort themselves out on their own. She can have more than a single egg, or a single sire. Besides, the Sapa Inca is unwed, and she need not receive a fire breathing egg from Iskierka yet, as long as she merely does not wed that miserable man, Napoleon.”
“The Turkish Sultan might have sided with Napoleon, but there is no reason Kaziliks cannot come visit,” Churki considered. “The invitation was for her family.”
“Bezaid and Sherazde.” William Laurence reminded them.
“They guard the palace of the Sultan, and his harem; I cannot imagine they would come.” Granby finished for him.
“Why ever not?” Churki inquired. “The invitation was to a party. To court amongst dragons, and feast in the English fashion.” She considered them. “You are aware Swiss and Scottish Ferals that care nothing for Napoleon dearly love to visit Lady Danbury’s for tea? Her cook makes the most delectable rabbit trifles.” Churki licked her lips at the memory.
Lady Danbury’s hosted a feeding ground for Ferals at her country estate and kept a rotation of guests at her London house, especially Maila Yupanqui and King Mokachane.
Danbury had also opened up a charity feeding ground, through Perscitia, more of a restaurant than a community kitchen, where any dragons who could pay and any who could fish tithed for a community kitchen, and where the poorest of mankind could eat for free. Her Majesty Queen Charlotte even thought the poor of London now possessed the highest regard for dragons of any in all of England, save surely, William Laurence.
“For a Danbury party, dragons would come from worlds away, believe you me.” As resolute as she was stubborn, Churki was assured she was correct.
“But…they…they cannot so easily leave the Sultan.” Hammond stuttered.
“Do they serve the Sultan in an administrative capacity?” Churki inquired of William Laurence, who shook his head, even while Hammond glared at him. “Then we should simply prepare to serve their embassy, in the English fashion,” she told them with satisfaction. “Perhaps the Sultan and his wives will come?”
Hammond groaned. “Perhaps not.” William Laurence replied, praying to a god he wished fervently was listening.
“Where is Temeraire?” Admiral Jane Roland called to them. “The Chinese Embassy approaches!”
---
The Chinese ambassador and the debutantes would arrive at the Palace in Kew with 40 dragons, 3 ruby reds to each blue, and a group of 16 Jade Dragons carrying banners. They were led by an imperial, who was unharnessed.
This procession flew into England from by sea over flotillas, group by group. They were escorted by six Winchesters bearing the British flag of King George. As the pack flew, they were saluted by the British ships on the blockade, glorious in their overwhelming martial strength. Once they reached the shores that made up the welshe coastline.
The Draconian Ambassador was an elderly red dragon by the name of Chu, who set down in the Palace gardens with a sigh alongside Lung Qin Mei, the Imperial that had so ardently held Temeraire’s affections. She was adorned in white silks, studded liberally with seed pearls.
The human Chinese party was no less splendid. In fact, so few persons had ever seen women of the imperial Chinese court that their hair ornaments, and the elaborate embroidery on their dresses drew sighs from the assembled ladies of Queen Charlotte’s court. They drew curious attention, but the beauty of each lady and the unique style of each debutante did not detract from the beauty of the others, and together the display was magnificent.
Queen Charlotte heartily approved, and looked forward to meeting their human envoy.
William Laurence’s mother, Lady Allendale had introduced her to a fine gentleman by the name of Gong Su, who had been employed at her residence after being hired by her son as a cook. Gong Su had worked with Perscitia to hire Danbury a dragon cook of her very own. After that, Gong Su was at her disposal, organizing the proceedings for William Laurence, and Temeraire, who was suspiciously absent.
For their part, the dragons had adjusted, and King Mokachane took prominence behind Charlotte, Danbury, and Moshueshue, while Maila and Excidium stood to either side, a glorious alter for their dias to sit in front of. Feral British dragons had been invited to greet the foreign envoys, alongside their harnessed fellows, the Tswana, the Incan dragons, minus Manca, who was still in Loch Laggan.
As the courts officially greeted one another, Queen Charlotte took a moment to admire the brilliance of Arthur Hammond and Gong Su’s scheme.
Her dossier on the Macartney expidition and William Laurence’s journey and subsequent adoption, and her afternoon with Lord Ambrose, of the Foreign Officers in Temeraire’s class, had come to good use.
In front of the dias, the Chinese embassy, even the dragons, gave the bow of obeisance, touching their heads to the earth eight times, down to a man. Her Majesty Queen Charlotte, Sapa Inca Anahuarque, Moshueshue I of the Tswana, Infanta Maria Braganza the crown princess of Portugal, and even Danbury, Soma, the princess of Sierra Leone, to these heads of state they bowed their heads, and kept their heads down.
Her Englishmen and gentle ladies, adorned in their most beautiful colors and designs down to a man gave their most elegant appearance. Her ladies collectively gave respectful curtsies, flourishing their skirts in a whimsical way, the men bowing in a refined fashion to their honored dignitaries, where they remained in solemn dignity. The Portuguese followed suit.
In their most ornamental fashions, the Tswana were eye catching, and, to a man, they too knelt to honor their Prince and King Mokachane I. The Incans also wore their most ceremonial traditional dress. Led by three virgins of the Sun in their reverence for the Sapa Inca, they also touched their heads to the earth, honoring her. Baron Henry Ferris was with them, sent back early from Loch Laggan only days before, matching his brother in grace, Titu Antisuyo, and Qawa, in her priestess of Inti robes, touching their heads to the earth for Pachamama, Inti, and Sapa Inca Anahuarque, the mother of mountains.
Once the formalities were addressed, only then was William Laurence ushered forward.
To his eternal surprise and continual frustration, before the ceremony, Queen Charlotte had Gong Su usher the Jade Prince aside to a royal dressing room, and present William Laurence with three choices: a fine new bottle green aviator dress coat, robes suiting his station as a prince of China, brokered through Gong Su’s mysterious retinue of connections, and a third suit of Vaudevillian proportions, made by Queen Charlotte’s personal seamstresses and a round dozen of Gong Su’s handpicked servants for embroidery.
The traditional robes included a full-length outer layer with a jacket and vest, with a short coat and trousers worn as inner garments, in Qizhuang fashion.
Even Madame Delacroix, the most popular London modiste, and Kusiwallpa, amused to find herself hand picked for the occasion, were brought in. Including the Incans in some fashion to design Laurence’s wardrobe pleased Anahuarque endlessly, and Baroness Kusiwallpa Collasuyo was the best dressed of the Incan maidens, drawing ardent fans from the English, the Tswana, and the Portuguese alike for her dedication to the height of fashion and willingness to stretch the boundaries of respectable design.
To Gong Su’s satisfaction, the third suit resembled the Qing Dynasty Princely robes, with embroidery straight from the road to Peking of the appropriate nine symbols for princes, and the appropriate symbols for his rank. But there was a distinctly British twist in the cut, here and there, that would make the man look just a touch dashing, and would make him distinguishable, yet suitable for any dance floor of the London Ton.
The greatest sticklers of Manchu nobility and Peking fashionistas alike would enjoy those pieces of Laurence’s wardrobe, for its utility in riding a horse and shooting, and the light amount of fur at the collar and the tail of the coat, the warmth of the vest, and the strange adherence to the slimmer shape of British formal wear, which would reflect in later fashion of the time even as women began to wear wider sleeves and larger ornaments later in the century. Kusiwallpa would say later that Gong Su insisted on certain pieces for Laurence’s new wardrobe that followed the exact specifications of the fashions of the imperial family to their most specific edict, down to the stitches, saying, “Huangchao liqi tushi,” and “Qizhuang” and over and over again, bowing his head to the floor and refusing to move until they were exasperated enough to agree to follow rules for William Laurence’s Chinese formal wear. Gong Su followed the guidelines for British party clothes in the Chinese fashion with excitement and interest, and was more than willing to get creative for his previous employer’s dress. Historians in the future would use all the tools at their disposal to find symbols of Pachamama and Inti tucked inside of these pieces where none but the most careful seamstresses might see.
No matter what he chose, there would be repercussions. William Laurence would sit in there for a long time before making his choice.
If only he realized that none would care what he wore, and that any and all who knew of him negatively would eye his choice of dress with disapproval regardless, he might have had more time to spend considering what he might do if certain members of the embassy had not come prepared with their own agendas.
In the absence of the emperor, the chief envoy was a nobleman by the name of Lord Bayan, the the loudest of the conservative faction of the Imperial Court.
Hammond had been immensely anxious over preparations for this ceremony, and impressed upon Laurence the need for relations to be strengthened, rather than cause any serious trouble or embarrassment that may harm their relationship with the imperial family, and the concessions that had been granted as a consequence of his adoption.
Weeks before, Gong Su had presented them with a missive from Mianning, the Crown Prince of China, stating. “The conservative party raised a great protest at the idea of this ‘marriage of nations,’ and the pact with the Tswana to end slavery. They suggested I am excessively partial towards your nation, and might be inclined to allow you too much license. They fear any potential marriage pacts you may broker. Bayan intends to keep you in check.”
With this thought at the forefront of his mind, everyone rose as one William Laurence, the Prince of Jade arrived. Then Lord Bayan strode forward, indifferent to Queen Charlotte, the Tswana, and the Incans, except for the Sapa Inca. To her, he stated quietly in perfect English accented with Portuguese: “I am full of desolation that the peace and tranquility of your days should have been profaned by so desperate an attack upon you by the Westerners, whom I am told have infested the palace grounds of other nations like so many termites gnawing away at live wood.”
Cooly, the Sapa Inca regarded the man without changing her expression. The man had gall, to misremember the French spies and the chain of French ships that pursued them across the Atlantic, and present this fiction before Inti and all present when only luck and goodwill led the British to shipwreck on her doorstep. When Ferris would lay down his life for hers, or Qawa’s, or Titu’s. This man knew little of the measure of a man’s soul. He also had no right to address her, and overstepped in sight of the delegations.
Moshueshue showed nothing of his true thoughts, but internally, he agreed that the west had overstepped in their territory wars, and he too wanted any and all the westerners foisted from his palace, and backyard. Until he considered hosting Lady Danbury and Mondrich and Basset and Richmond at his home, and then Laurence, someday, when the man’s wars were finally finished. And if he came, Admiral Roland too would come. Lord and Lady Allendale. And maybe Ferris…and Granby…and…and…and…and… Pondering his wealth of newfound friendships, he hardly noticed as Lord Bayan pompously took the lead upon the dias.
Her Majesty the Queen of England, on the other hand, gave a nasty little smile. She would not soon forgive being upstaged.
If this speech from Bayan were not enough to make his position plain, the look he gave Laurence, sidelong, would have sufficed alone: a mingling of disgust and disdain.
The man waved forward a pair of ruby red dragons, carrying a box suspended by chains between them. Another two trailed behind, carrying dozens of boxes, British in provenance.
“I scarcely know who to blame the more,” Lord Bayan began, “for this upheaval of the Imperial court and therefore of the state and the world, its mirror; for whatsoever evil found therein, it will show itself reflected tenfold throughout our nation! What madness should have permitted any man to lay a plot within their hearts upon the Jade Throne? What reckless actions, in pursuing foreign involvement and disregarding the sage wisdom of centuries and respect for tradition, should have driven otherwise loyal servants of the court into such madness?”
“Lung Tien Chuan is dead,” Lord Bayan told them, “and it is the British who delivered the poison.” While this remark sunk in, he begun to pace, like a Lion in a cage. “I have a gift for you. The man who delivered the poison that took the life of the most noble Lung Tian Xiang’s brother.” He told them, pompous, blustering past and real grief the British may feel towards the loss.
This stilled most of the assembled diplomatic parties. Was this a trial? Many began to wonder. Some began to mutter and fidget.
William Laurence’s heart began to pound. Chuan…Temeraire’s brother…Mianning’s companion…his thoughts began to race.
“And more,” Bayan gestured to the chests. With a flourish, they were opened, and inside, a prodigious amount of opium. “The drug used to fund the rebels that would seek to destroy the Jade Throne!”
Suddenly, Arthur Hammond was there, hissing in Laurence’s ear where Queen Charlotte and Danbury could hear, “There are any number of possible explanations. Perhaps these rebels meant to sell opium in order to fund their efforts; it does not follow that we must have been involved in their crimes.”
“And I suppose,” Laurence said, temper flaring, “that this band of rebels has somehow contrived to acquire the funds to purchase so enormous a supply?”Queen Charlotte quirked a single brow, while Danbury’s expression never once shifted. “Twenty chests of Indian opium, of the same make, packed together and certainly from a single British ship. This is no private, no individual endeavor; this was no concealed effort. This is no secret winking. This is deliberate, orchestrated defiance of the law, and our guilt there is undeniable.”No doubt Mianning and his Heavenly Father the Emperor knew of the provenance of this discovery.
Lord Bayan began to rant, desperate to sway the crowd of the guilt. “This man has worked to deliver opium into the hands of these rebels at the behest of this government that would put all the dragons of the world to the sword, flying crates of Opium into-“
Granby also appeared at Anahuarque’s side, Ninan at his back. “John,” Anahuarque began, clutching his shoulder. He caught her hand, and held it in the crook of his elbow, but leaned in close to Laurence.
“Where is this British dragon supposed to have come from, that he says was lugging these chests? It’s the sort of thing he might imagine: I dare say all their merchants ship goods dragon-back, here. We don’t; we haven’t any merchant dragons. Even our courier-beasts don’t come to China: we can scarcely get one to India four times a year.”
“-the shame of this-“ Bayan preached, and gestured at the ruby reds, to open the box.
Out tumbled a man, thin, dirty, stinking to high heaven. His hands were chained inside the box, so he was forced to scrabble in the dirt, broken hands and mangled fingers clutching at the soft grass of Kew’s garden. The poor man’s eyes flinched back from the light. He had been tortured, beaten, and starved.
It was Tenzing Tharkay.
All bets were off then, as William Laurence launched himself from the dias.
Two, three, then more guards of Bayans party went to stop him, and Laurence snarled at them in perfect Chinese, “Halt in the name of the Emperor, and your heavenly prince Mianning, this unworthy one’s most honored brother, or die where you stand.”
Some backed away and knelt in the grass, putting their heads to the ground. A few others went to crowd him, and he pulled his sword out. A man, presumably one of Bayan’s agents, switched from pulling him back to pulling a weapon on Laurence, which Laurence deflected with his good Chinese sword. He kicked the man in the chest, and knocked him back. Tenzing continued to gaze fearfully at the ground, cowering like an animal.
“Tenzing Tharkay!” Laurence roared. “Tenzing!”
Tenzing looked, eyes blurry, and there, in all his most glorious fury was William Laurence, the Jade Prince, fighting against a veritable army of rebel agents to save his miserable life.
”Will…” Tenzing mumbled.
Behind Laurence were Tharkay’s other friends, Granby, Ferris, even Emily Roland, who, for some inscrutable reason, was wearing a dress.
Behind them were his cousins from his father’s side, Ambrose, and his elderly aunts. For a moment he could not determine if this were heaven or hell, or a strange third place.
“That is quite enough!” Queen Charlotte bellowed, interrupting before the ceremony devolved into a garden variety brawl. “William Laurence, dear kinsman of my husband. My prince,” she demanded, exasperated, “-who is this man to you?”
Admiral Roland was the one who replied. Her voice was unsteady. “This is Tenzing Tharkay, he was Lau-…the Jade Prince’s guide, from Peking to Prussia, and brought twenty healthy dragons to defend us during the dragon Plague, and from Napoleon. Our country, nay, the world owes him a debt we still know not how to pay.”
“The Merlin of the Pamirs!” Penelope Featherington yelped, too short to be visible in the crowd. She was shushed by Eloise and elbowed rudely by Prudence.
Everyone began to whisper amongst themselves.
“That Merlin..-“
“…singing dragons from the trees…-“
“…pied piper of old…”
“He is a Wizard!” Penelope told Eloise with excitement in Chinese, as they had begun to do when in need of private conversations, and to practice.
“Oh. Why would he…have opium…if he is a hero of war…?” Eloise struggled to remember all the words.
One of the girls from the Chinese embassy overheard this and caught Eloise’s eye from where she stood towards the back of the jade maidens and debutantes. The girl quickly looked away, while Eloise continued to stare quite rudely.
Not all of the embassy’s girls cared for Bayan, and many of them eagerly awaited William Laurence as a potential prospect. Or the opportunity to curry favor with Crown Prince Mianning for taking the journey. A few were tragically young, wealthy widows. One was a particularly talented and diligent daughter of Bayan himself, and just two others were the highest of noble ladies of the imperial court. And one of those very highest of princesses heard Eloise’s remark, and thought to herself, “Would Bayan lie?” Before finishing that thought with, “Do fish swim?”
William Laurence, free of any who would dare keep him from the man who had repeatedly saved his life, knelt by Tenzing and went to see to his chains.
They required a blacksmith to remove. Laurence hollered for one, in English, and slowly, a prostrated man began to crawl over, key in hand raised above his head in supplication. He snatched it from the shrinking servant of the emperor, and used it to unlock Tenzing’s chains. Granby was there, along with Ferris to lift him away from the box. Emily Roland offered him water, the origin of which he dared not question too closely.
Even his cousin, Ambrose, and his aunts were there. To hold his head, and touch his battered shoulders in a prayer to the darkest unknowns, to preserve him.
The Aerial Corps took him away, while Bayan and his men tried to stop them.
“That man is a spy, an agent of the rebellion.” Bayan shouted, belligerent.
“What evidence do you have of this besides a pile of boxes, the provenance of which I cannot know, and your word, which is not worth the air you breathe?” Laurence snarled in Bayan’s face. “You know nothing of the honor of this man. That you so much as sit here while flinging these paltry lies before me is due to the love my country’s monarchs, King George and Queen Charlotte, bear your nation, and the love I bear my Heavenly Father who has honored me with his guidance and dedication.”
The man, a coward at heart, shrunk back by the vitriol of these remarks.
“If you found him at a rebel encampment, you must produce the men who said Tenzing worked on their behalf.” Laurence demanded.
“He was already in chains when we found him!” Bayan said, as he tried to defend himself. “Maybe he turned on them, or they him.”
“Or they kidnapped him! Simply because he was British. And you aided and abetted their brutality against a good man in your blind ignorance. Either the rebels framed him to create strife between our countries, or you did.” He hissed at Bayan, a knife in the older man’s heart with every word. Bayan flinched, at Laurence’s final accusation. “Did you kill Chuan too?” He shouted in Chinese into Bayan’s miserable silence.
Granby hauled William Laurence back from Bayan, with Ninan, Anaharque’s first and highest guard. Ferris and Emily Roland brought Tenzing before the queen, and the odd trio knelt before her, Emily’s dress getting filthy from the dirt and the evidence of Tenzing’s ill treatment.
“So this man is our lost Merlin of the Pamirs.” Queen Charlotte pondered.
“Tenzing!” Admiral Roland asked him gently. It was too quiet for the others in the audience to hear them. “Tenzing, where is Arkady?”
“Reds…” he told the admiral, “Reds took us. Arkady…heard from Temeraire…his egg was lost…We were going to Peking to take ship for Sydney. What happened to it? To the egg?”
“The egg is fine; Caesar is fine, his name is Caesar. A fine dragon, a very fine dragon.” Laurence told him, remembering the mad dash across the interior with Caesar and Rankin. A fine, righteous prick and a miser, as Temeraire might say whilst none were there to hear it, but perfectly fine in all other ways besides his deficient personality.
Admiral Roland wasn’t finished. “Where is Arkady?”
Innocent, and unable to defend himself from these charges against his character, Arkady had been been put into shackles and taken away moments before Tenzing had been shepherded from his cell in a mountain cave to a box, where he spent a very long time.
“Did you ever see rebels? Or opium? When they took you?” Laurence asked him.
“No!” He told them quietly, confused, groggy, in a great deal of pain. “The ones who took me were soldiers.”
Admiral Roland, sensing the lie, then directed this query to Bayan, who deflected and pushed and tried to whitewash it before he eventually admitted the worst, that Arkady had been put to death for Chuan’s murder.
Thankay’s shattered fingers covered his face to hide his shame, as tears sprang forth. His friends and his aunts and his cousin were there, afraid to touch him, but they shielded him from the worst of the stares.
This admission of their shame, was more than the Tswana were willing to tolerate. Clearly Moshueshue thought the same because he strode before Bayan, getting close to the man’s face like a tiger kept so long at the circus that it’s tamer forgot it could take his hand or his life.
“Does the emperor acknowledge our treaty to deliver the enslaved?” He asked Bayan directly. The man nodded, reluctantly. “Then you relinquish your right to this man due to our treaty.” Moshueshue bit the words out, stinging like acid in his mouth.
This statement was delivered like a bomb going off. Bayan even protested. But Moshueshue had decided, and he was immovable. “Innocent souls delivered from material chains,” he stressed, “taken from their families, will be relinquished to their ancestors from their bondage. That man,” he pointed at Tharkay, “has given you enough.”
Then Tharkay wept. Not a gross, exaggerated expression, but a pained river flowing forth from a broken dam as the fear washed over him and away, leaving him unsteady and uncertain without the terror that had become his daily companion to lean on.
His friends held him, and the tears wouldn’t stop coming. He shook like a leaf. With a look from the Queen, Ferris and Granby carried him away.
“Well said, darling,” Queen Charlotte told Moshueshue, with righteous approval. Clearly their audience of nobles from the world over thought so too, as cheers began to ring out from all over the Gardens at the palace of Kew.
The Chinese embassy exited after bearing witness to Bayan’s disgrace, and promises were exchanged, between Bayan and Laurence at the smallest whisper, that they were not yet finished.
And that day, something changed inside Tharkay. He didn’t feel quite so alone in that terrible darkness anymore.
The ceremonies, mostly abandoned, collapsed into a deep pile of conversation puddled about, where Incans and the Tswana and the Portuguese mingled with the English who relayed as much as they could of the proceedings, until every last man and woman caught themselves eagerly awaiting the next Whistledown.