Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik

certainly think better of attacking us, then.”
    “Dear God,” Captain Blaise said, and seized Granby by the arm to object violently to any such proceeding: the sailors were really unreasonable on the subject of fire, Temeraire felt; it was not as though Iskierka had proposed setting the sails alight.
    He withdrew along the line of the shoals to wait alone until the tide should rise, and simmered quietly beneath the steady cold wash of the waves. He would
not
go on to Nagasaki. He did not know where precisely Nagasaki was, but it was not near-by; he did not mean to abandon the search for Laurence an instant longer than the ship’s rescue required. The egg would be quite safe, once they were afloat again.
    The emptiness of the coast he had flown over with Ferris lingeredin the back of his mind like an unpleasant aftertaste. It had been three days and nights since Laurence had been swept away—already any visible signs upon the shore might have been lost. Laurence would have gone inland for water, perhaps; or perhaps he had even been lying under some tree for shelter, or calling up to Temeraire from a distance, unheard. Temeraire still had not the least doubt of Laurence’s survival, but that alone would be of little use if he could not
find
Laurence.
    “Temeraire!” Dulcia landed on his back and knocked him on the shoulder with her head. “We have been calling and calling: it is time to get the ship off the rocks.”
    “Oh!” Temeraire said, rousing, and found himself very cold and stiff indeed coming out of the great dark circling of his thoughts; the water was almost halfway up his hindquarters, and the short harness about his shoulders was sodden and heavy and dragging as he went into the air, a reminder of his empty back.
    Messoria and Immortalis launched themselves with the cables; Dulcia and Nitidus each took another cable, for what help they could give, and Captain Blaise gave the word to throw the sea-anchor over the side beyond them, to help if it might. The tree-tops had been wedged in carefully under the hull, and their long trunks were jutting up from the ocean, froth churning up around them.
    “Are you quite ready?” Temeraire asked Maximus and Kulingile.
    “I still say there is something strange about this,” Demane said, from the dragondeck, gripping the railing hard; he had been reluctant to see Kulingile lent to the attempt at all. “Kulingile, you are sure you will do this? I don’t see how it can work—”
    “I’ve told you!” his brother Sipho hissed at him.
    Temeraire flattened his ruff: he understood a little Demane’s anxiety—there was every reason to believe the Admiralty would be delighted to push him and his brother off if Kulingile were lost: he had still not been confirmed in his rank, and Laurence had been his only patron. But it seemed to Temeraire that this was all the more reason to help him find Laurence and bring him back.
    “Oh, I don’t mind trying,” Kulingile said easily, however. “If it don’t work, we will only sit on those logs for a while, and nothing much will happen.”
    Temeraire drew breath to explain, yet again, why it
would
work, after all; then he forced himself not to argue. “If you are quite ready,” he said, and together they flung themselves down upon the levers, and as one exhaled as deeply as they could, from all their air-sacs.
    Temeraire had worked it all out on paper, or rather, Sipho had worked it out to his direction, with help from a still-doubtful Ness; but paper made nothing to the experience of plunging deep into the icy cold water, feeling his body pulling at him as though an anchor. He had to scrabble desperately to keep himself upon the lever; his own weight would have dragged him instantly deep beneath the surface of the water.
    “Hold on, there, you damned lummox!” Berkley was bellowing, over the railing. “Breathe in again!” Maximus was struggling beside him, and Kulingile was sinking so deep the water was nearly to his