“We must make a dash for it: down the stairs and out the nearest archway, and make for any open air you see,” Laurence said quietly, looking to be sure they had all heard.
“I’m no hand in a fight; I’ll take the Kazilik,” Fellowes said, leaving the rest of his leather in a heap on the floor. “Strap it to my back; and Mr. Dunne can help steady me.”
“Very good,” Laurence said, and told Martin and Digby off to the Akhal-Teke and the smaller Alaman; he and Granby drew their swords, and Tharkay, who had bound up his leg with some of the leather scraps, took out his knife: there would be no relying on their guns, after they had been soaking a quarter-of-an-hour together in the thick and humid atmosphere.
“Keep all together,” he said, and threw all the rest of the water in one great heave onto the hot stones and the coals themselves, and kicked open the door.
The great white billows of hissing steam carried them down the stairs and out into the baths; they were halfway to the archway before the air cleared enough to make anything out at all. Then the trailing steam blew away and Laurence found himself staring at an exquisitely beautiful woman, perfectly naked and holding an ewer full of water; her complexion was the exact color of milky tea, and her hair in long shining-wet ebony ropes was her only cover; she stared at him with extraordinarily large sea-green eyes, rimmed in brown, at first in confusion; and then she gave a piercing shriek, rousing all the other women too: more than a dozen of them, equally beautiful though of wholly different style, and all of their voices ringing out in wild and musical alarm.
“Oh, Christ,” Laurence said; deeply ashamed, he caught her by the shoulders, firmly set her out of the way, and dashed on to the archway, his men following after him. More of the guards were running into the room from the far sides, and two came nearly running directly into Laurence’s and Granby’s faces.
They were taken aback too much to swing at once, and Laurence was able to knock the sword out of his opposite’s hand and kick it away skittering over the floor. Together Laurence and Granby shoved them backwards and out into the hall, all of them half-slipping on the slick floors, and they burst out into the hallway and ran for the stairs, the two guards, knocked down, calling to their fellows.
Laurence and Granby ducked under Tharkay’s arms and helped him go limping up the stairs; the others were burdened with the eggs; yet all of them still went at great speed, the pursuit boiling up furiously behind them, and the women’s screams attracting still more attention. Running footsteps approaching from ahead warned them their original route had been cut off; instead Tharkay said sharply, “Go eastward, that way,” and they turned down another hallway to flee.
A draught of cold air, desperately welcome, came into their faces as they ran; and they emerged from a small marble cloister into an open-air quadrangle, all the windows blazing around them; Granby at once dropped to one knee and fired up his signal-flares: one and the next refused to go, too wet to fire, and cursing he flung the inert cylinders to the ground, but the third, which had been tucked more deeply into his shirt, at last went off, and the blue glittering trail went smoking up into the black sky.
Then they had to put down the eggs and turn and fight: the first guards were upon them, shouting, more spilling out of the building. One small grace, that for fear of damaging the eggs the Turkish guards had not resorted to their own guns, and were cautious in pressing too closely, trusting to their weight of numbers to overcome the invaders with only a little patience. Laurence struggled to hold off one of the guards, deflecting one blow and then another to either side; he was counting the moments in wingbeats, but he had scarcely reached half his expected total before Temeraire, roaring, swept down over the court, the great wind of his passage nearly flattening them all.
The guards scrambled back, crying out. There was not room for Temeraire to land without crushing the buildings, perhaps bringing them down, but Celestials could hover; his wings beating mightily, Temeraire kept almost directly above them. The thunder of his wings sent loosened bits of brick and stone crumbling down into the courtyard, and the many windows around the court were shattering in sharp explosive bursts, littering the ground with razor shards.
Cables were being flung down to them by the crew already aboard. They frantically tied on the eggs and sent them up, to be stowed away in the belly-rigging; Fellowes did not even take off his precious burden, but let himself be bundled aloft still lashed to the egg and thrust into the belly-netting, many hands reaching to latch his carabiners onto the harness.
“Hurry, hurry,” Temeraire called loudly; the alarm was truly given now, horns blowing wildly in the distance, more flares firing up into the sky, and then from the gardens to the north rose a terrible roaring, and a great jet of flame scorched glowing red upon the sky: the Kaziliks were rising into the air, spiraling up through their own smoke and flame. Laurence heaved Dunne up into the reaching hands of the bellmen and jumped for the rigging himself.
“Temeraire, we are aboard, go!” he shouted, dangling by his hands; the bellmen were helping them all get latched on, and Therrows had Laurence’s carabiners in hand. Below, the guards were returning with rifles in hand, caution giving way with the eggs so nearly lost to them; they were forming into a company, their rifles aimed together to a single point, the only likely way to injure a dragon with musket-fire.
Temeraire gathered himself, wings sweeping forward, and with a great thrust he was moving straight up and up, heaving himself aloft and higher. Digby cried out, “The egg, ’ware the egg,” and lunged for it: the little lemon-yellow Alaman egg, its silk coverings caught on some protrusion on the ground and unfurling in a long glorious red ribbon from underneath the leather straps, leaving the soft, moisture-slick egg too loose in its harness.
Digby’s grasping fingers caught on the shell; but still it slid free, easing out between the leather straps and the belly-netting, and he let go the harness and caught it with his other hand. His carabiners dangling loose were not yet latched on. “Digby!” Martin cried, reaching for him; but Temeraire’s leap could not be arrested: they were already above the roof and rising still with the force of his great wing-stroke, and Digby fell away startled and open-mouthed, still holding the egg against his breast.
Together the boy and the egg fell tumbling through the air and smashed together upon the courtyard stones, amidst the shouting guards. Digby’s arms lay flung wide against the white marble, the curled and half-formed serpentine body of the dragonet in the burst ruins of the shell, and the lantern-light shone grisly upon their small broken bodies lying in a slick of blood and egg-slime, as Temeraire lifted still higher and away.
Chapter 10
A LONG AND desperate flight, then, to the Austrian border; all of them sick at heart and only the urgency of the moment keeping them from an indulgence of their grief. Temeraire flung himself onward through the night without speaking, without answering to Laurence’s soft calls except to keen back his misery, and behind them a holocaust of fire raged, the wrath of the Kazilik dragons striped across the sky, trying to find them.
The moon had set; they flew on with no light but the clouded stars, and an occasional risked sliver of lantern-light to see the compass by. Temeraire’s midnight hide was nearly invisible in the dark, and his ears pricked sharp for the sound of dragon wings. Three times he veered away to one side or another as faster couriers dashed by, carrying the alarm outwards: all the countryside raised against them. But all the while they surged on, Temeraire stretching to the limits of his speed as he had never before done, the cupped wing-strokes like flashing oars dipping into the night, driving them on.