Blood of Tyrants Read Online Free PDF Page A

instead.”
    He had hoped, at first, that they might simply be able to lift the ship with all of them working together, but the ship’s master Mr. Ness had categorically made this impossible as a matter of weight. When he had worked the figures large enough to see clearly, Temeraire had been forced to admit as much: why on earth anyone had put five hundred tons of pig iron and another four hundred of shingle at the very bottom of the
Potentate
’s hold was quite a mystery to him, and he could not in the least work out how she stayed afloat ordinarily, but lifting her straight up by even an inch would certainly be beyond their power.
    “If only we might rig a pulley!” he added again, but his best ingenuity had failed at contriving any way to establish a pulley in mid-air, above the ship, out in the middle of the ocean. “Or a lever—”
    “Well, what about a lever?” Maximus said, gingerly sitting back on his haunches on the shoals, giving over his own attempts to inspect the holes: the ocean was too rough to see them from any distance. “That is only a stick, put underneath and pushed, ain’t it?” and Temeraire paused. He had been stopped, by the size of the ship, but perhaps—
    “Where the devil are we to get a lever big enough to move her?” Mr. Ness called down at them, in exasperation. “Why, it should have to be taller than Babel.”
    “We do not want
one
lever,” Temeraire said, with a sudden burst of inspiration. “We want three: one for me, and Maximus, and Kulingile, all to push on at once; and we will get trees from the shore to make them.”
    Laurence would have given a great deal for a pair of boots. He contented himself, in the meantime, by working out a way of lacing the sandals more closely to his feet with the unraveled remnants of his woolen stockings, braided to make thin ropes. The coat he made into a bundle with his trousers: at least in the native clothing, he hoped he would not be utterly conspicuous at a glance, when he had tied a rag over his hair.
    The bundle he left in the corner of the room when the servants came with the evening meal, and despite the reawakening of his sense of taste, he forced himself to eat even the fermented fish with its sour, vinegared rice; he could not anticipate another meal, any time soon. When it was cleared away, and the noises of the house began to die away along with the light filtering in through the rice-paper walls, Laurence debated with himself the merits of going after the sword. All practicality argued against it. He could not be sure the sword would yet be in Kaneko’s office, nor that the chamber would be unguarded; if he did retrieve it, the blade should then have to be concealed somehow, or draw unwanted attention. A sword wrapped in a bundle of clothing would be of little use if hewere confronted unexpectedly by a few pursuers; and only if he were taken so might he hope to escape.
    “Well,” Laurence said, standing, “I may as well have a look: if it does not come easy to hand, I may always withdraw.” He felt awkward, uneasy in the decision: irrational, when so many sensible arguments stood against it. He could not have said why; some inarticulate feeling only revolted. He did not want to leave the sword.
    He mentally told himself to wake at four bells of the middle watch, and slept until the deep of the night, rousing from another strange and unpleasant dream: great chains tangled around his wrists, dragging him through deep water. He took his bundle, slung over a shoulder by his belt, and stepped cautiously out into the hallway: the soft matting did not betray him as he walked, barefoot to keep the slap of the sandals from making any noise.
    The walls were a faint luminescent grey, paler than their frames. He kept the very tips of his fingers lightly against the surface of the paper, guiding his steps through the dark. There was a yellow glow of lantern-light somewhere on his right—outside the house, he thought; within, all the