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Laurence no longer took the delight of his former days in balls, dinners, or society; but on this humid summer’s evening in Prague he knew his duty well enough. The British consul-general was new in post, and his young wife eager to make the occasion a success: she had taken Laurence’s arm, and was introducing him to all and sundry around the room, basking in the glow of having secured a renowned war hero, together with his dragon, as guests at her event.
After a pause for some iced punch, Lady Morley was adamant that she must show Laurence the house’s new-built orangery, which was large, lavish even. Laurence sighed inwardly and told himself that after one final turn about the room he could make his excuses, check in with Temeraire, and return to his hotel; no-one could then complain that he had not shown willing.
They walked through the palm-fronded and glass-walled orangery, glittering with many lights, Lady Morley happily greeting the couples and small groups dotted here and there among the luxuriant plants.
“Oh, but here is someone you must meet,” she exclaimed, guiding Laurence down a side path where—
A solitary figure stood by the open side door, facing away from them. Not tall, but lean; wearing a fashionable claret-coloured coat with a nipped-in waist; short, dark hair. He was holding a glass of wine.
Laurence would have known that back, those shoulders, that nonchalant stance anywhere. He felt suddenly dazed, as if in a dream, but Lady Morley’s voice was chattering away, high pitched in his ear, and she drew him inexorably on towards the figure.
Laurence hardly heard her saying, “Ah, Lord Strathvagan, might I introduce you?” as the man turned towards them. “Lord Strathvagan, may I present Sir William Laurence; Sir William, Lord Strathvagan.”
Their eyes met for the first time in near three years.
Automatically, Laurence held out his hand. “My lord,” he said, noting all at once the passage of time on Tharkay’s face: a few more fine lines around his eyes, new shadows under his cheekbones. He was thinner, more severe-looking perhaps. He had let his hair grow a little longer; it suited him. In defiance of all convention, he still wore his gold ear-ring.
Tharkay’s expression was unreadable. He placed his almost untouched wine to one side, and grasped Laurence’s hand, murmuring, “Sir William.” Laurence could feel Tharkay’s scars, his crooked fingers under his own. In a rush he recalled the last time those hands had been on his body: an infinitely painful dawn after an agonised night, in a silent bedroom a thousand miles, more, and three weary years distant from this night’s festivities.
He could not look away from Tharkay’s dark eyes. A pause; Lady Morley was looking, puzzled, between the two of them.
“But,” she said, clearly feeling a little on the back foot, “perhaps you are already acquainted?”
Tharkay was still staring at Laurence; they had not unclasped their hands. Without looking at Lady Morley, he responded, shortly, “We served together during the war.”
And Laurence, also not looking away, added, “Lord Strathvagan had at one time a commission in the Aerial Corps.”
“Oh, how very wonderful for you to meet here, then,” said Lady Morley in a great show of relief; as if she had expected from the intensity of their gazes that they nursed some long-held grievance and might instantly call one another out. “I will leave you to catch up, my lord, Sir William.”
They barely heard or noticed her departure.
Laurence realised with a start that they were still holding hands; hurriedly he released Tharkay’s. Glancing down, he saw with a frisson of surprise that Tharkay was wearing a familiar gold signet ring. Its twin encircled Laurence’s finger; over the past three years he had never quite managed to break the habit of putting it on each morning. To begin with, its weight and heft had been a daily reminder of loss, like pouring salt water on an open wound; these days it felt more like pressing on a tender spot. But still, each day he could not feel fully dressed without it.
He had not thought that Tharkay would have maintained the same habit. Laurence, and perhaps Laurence alone, knew that Tharkay harboured, deeply hidden, a sentimental streak; but when he pictured Tharkay’s life without him—which was more often than he would perhaps admit—he had all unconsciously imagined Tharkay returned to the man he had been when they first met in Macao: supremely practical, travel-worn, solitary among the desert sands. Not the kind of man who would still be wearing a ring engraved with Laurence’s initials.
Yet here Tharkay stood, the ring on his finger; and its observation gave Laurence a sharp surge of something he was not easily able to identify: something bittersweet, like fondness and grief mixed.
And then Tharkay was saying, “I am pleased to see you well, Laurence. I beg you will excuse me; but pray give my regards to Temeraire.” He was turning, and making as if to slip out of the door into the grounds; as if to disappear out of Laurence’s life once more. It could not be borne.
“Tenzing, wait—”
Tharkay paused in the doorway, but did not look around.
“Will you not come and greet Temeraire?” Laurence switched to Chinese, awkward and rusty in his unpracticed mouth. “He has missed you terribly, you know.”
Tharkay turned, but his face remained inscrutable. “I have missed him, too,” he said in the same language; and continued, wryly, “Are you sure that is quite wise? He cannot be happy with me.” One corner of his lip twisted up; almost the beginnings of a smile.
“On the contrary,” said Laurence, with relief at seeing some emotion, finally, on the other man’s face. “He agreed with you. And I know he would be excessively pleased to see you again.”
Tharkay stiffened. Laurence found that despite the years apart, he was still able to read his tiny, almost imperceptible tells: surprise, then: Tharkay had not expected his statement, had not expected to retain Temeraire’s regard.
But Tharkay glossed over his startlement quickly, pushing his hair back from where it had fallen over his brow. “Well, in that case, it would be unconscionably churlish to refuse.”
Laurence, who had seen Tharkay eel out of uncountable social occasions and tedious introductions, and who knew very well how churlish Tharkay was generally prepared to be, smiled inwardly at this. What he said was, “He is presently in the gardens; shall we walk?”
They walked into the dark gardens together. All of Laurence’s senses were wholly focused on Tharkay’s physical presence by his side: the sound of his footsteps, the movement of his shadow falling on the path, his even breathing, the faint lingering smell of tobacco and sandalwood. What to say to him? Every possible conversational gambit seemed utterly banal. How could he offer this man, who had once been almost everything to him, a comment on the weather, or the sights of the city?
Laurence was aware, largely through Granby’s irregular correspondence, that Tharkay had spent much of the intervening years travelling, and was these days rarely at Strathvagan. Granby had drawn a discreet veil over any other knowledge he might have about Tharkay’s life; Laurence had not the first idea of what he might be doing in Prague, or why, or (most painfully) who he might be associating with. Nor, of course, could he ask.
The silence between them lingered; Laurence felt almost desperate.
“You still have the Breguet, I see,” he said finally, having noted the watch’s fine chain across Tharkay’s waistcoat.
“I do,” said Tharkay, inclining his head. His hand twitched as though to reach for it, but he suppressed the movement.
He did not seem set to say anything more. Laurence again attempted, “It still keeps good time, I hope?” and then cursed himself for the uselessness of the question. Three years, and this was all he could come up with?
Tharkay halted on the path; they were now far from the house, and the noises of the party’s merriment were distant. In the dark his expression was hidden.
“It does; but I have often had cause to regret it.” He paused, as if weighing what to say next. “Will, if I had never told you—” But he broke off, shaking his head. “Forgive me; that is an unfair question; pray ignore it.”
Laurence barely knew how to respond. So, Tharkay, too, had visited and revisited his memories of the night that had broken them, wondering whether its ending was inevitable, or whether it could have taken a different turn.
“You never lied to me, Tenzing. If not that night, you would have told me soon enough.”
“I suppose you are right,” Tharkay said, with a bitter laugh.
“That is not to say that I do not wish—that I have not regretted—”
But Tharkay interrupted this speech before it could become even more painful. “What’s done is done.” He started down the path again. “Where shall we find Temeraire? This garden cannot be so big as to wholly conceal a twenty ton dragon.”
And yet, when they turned the corner that should have revealed Temeraire, he was not there: only a couple of small dragons, courier-sized, lounging beneath some lanterns hanging from the trees.
The smaller of the two popped up, speaking rapidly in French. “Oh! Are you Sir William? Temeraire asked me to tell you: he and some of the others have gone to take a look at the Old Town and castle. He asked that you await him: he will return before the hour is up.”
Laurence thanked the dragon, and turned to Tharkay. “Well, after three years can you wait another quarter hour, perhaps?”
Tharkay did not answer him directly, but observed, “It is a pleasant enough night.” Reaching into his coat he pulled out a cigarette case. He opened it, gesturing to Laurence. “Should I assume you still do not—?”
Laurence shook his head. “Thank you, no.” Because of Laurence’s distaste for the habit, disapproval even, Tharkay had rarely smoked in his presence, before; of course, he had no especial reason to refrain from doing so now. And Laurence found himself mesmerised, unable to look away from Tharkay’s fingers as they pulled out a cigarette, tapping it on the case and placing it between his lips. He closed the case and patted his pockets before drawing out his lighter. Its spark briefly illuminated the planes of his cheekbones; and then the cigarette lit, and Laurence watched, transfixed, as he took the first deep drag.
Tharkay was beautiful; remained beautiful, as Laurence had always thought him, even before they were together.
“Many of the rebels’ sentences were commuted to transportation,” Laurence said, surprising himself with this complete non sequitur. “I always thought you might have had a hand in it.”
Tharkay merely raised an eyebrow, and blew out a thin stream of smoke; but to Laurence it was as good as a confirmation.
“Tenzing, I—” but Laurence had little idea of how to continue. What to say about his initial flight to Wollaton and then to China, where even Temeraire’s great delight in the travel had not been enough to shake Laurence’s heartbreak? How to describe the way he still felt in the small hours of the night, as if his very bones ached for Tharkay’s sleeping presence beside him? How to explain the gaping wound that their parting had left in his life, worse, he had often thought, than any of the physical injuries he had sustained?
—and what, even, would be the point of articulating any of it? As Tharkay had said, what was done was done. Laurence lapsed into silence.
They could not find anything else to say to one another, but meandered a little around the gardens without talking, watching as the two small dragons took wing into the night sky. Tharkay smoked two cigarettes, one after another, and seemed about to reach for a third when they both looked up in unison, hearing the wingbeats that signalled Temeraire’s imminent arrival.
There was the usual great downdraft as Temeraire came into land, folding back his wings as he settled on the ground in the empty cleaning. Laurence risked a glance over at Tharkay; as he expected, the other man was hastily smoothing his windblown hair back down. He felt a pang at the familiarity of the gesture; how many times had he watched Tharkay make that exact motion?
“Laurence, Laurence, the castle is magnificent—” Temeraire was saying as he settled, swinging his head around to locate Laurence. And then he paused, his ruff pricking up, his tongue scenting the air; and his voice was tentative and uncertain as he asked, “—Tharkay?”
Tharkay stood before him like a man awaiting his doom. “It is good to see you, Temeraire.”
“Is it really you? But what are you doing here, in Prague?” Temeraire asked, and then, swiftly, plaintively, “Tharkay, you left us. You left Laurence; it has been three years! How could you—?”
“It was rather the other way around, I believe,” Tharkay replied softly. “But in the essential point you are correct: it was my fault.”
Laurence was surprised to hear him say so with such bluntness. He recalled Tharkay’s anger, the night they had parted; his insistence that he had been driven to act by Laurence’s failure to heed his warnings. He rather thought that, at that point, Tharkay had not considered himself wholly to blame.
“Well, you are back now, and I am glad of it,” said Temeraire matter-of-factly. “Laurence has not been near as happy as he ought to be, since we left Strathvagan.”
“My dear—” Laurence began to interject, but Temeraire had already reached his huge head down to nose at Tharkay; nearly knocking him over, as always. Laurence could not avoid seeing the smile bloom on Tharkay’s face at the contact.
But he was sorry to see that Tharkay tucked the smile away as he straightened his clothes. “Temeraire, I am pleased to see you again; but you misunderstand: I am not back.”
“Whyever not?” said Temeraire, indignant. He switched to Chinese in a belated attempt at concealment. “It is because of you that Laurence was not sentenced to be hanged, again”— here a touch of the divine wind echoed in his voice—”and I cannot see what is so very bad about that, even if Laurence would insist that he should have been consulted.”
Laurence felt the need to interrupt. “Temeraire, it is more complicated—”
“Well, I know you have kept saying it is,” Temeraire retorted, “but I do not see why it should be.”
Tharkay attempted an explanation. “Temeraire, the actions I took were against Will’s principles, and without his knowledge. Whatever my desired ends, it was an unwarranted betrayal.” He swallowed. “Will is not to blame in this.”
Laurence was surprised to hear himself say, “You know that is not entirely fair, Tenzing. Had I listened to you from the beginning—”
“Even so—” said Tharkay, and the two men stared at one another, wonderingly.
“I think it is a perfect nonsense to continue to stay apart when it is making you both miserable,” Temeraire said. “For you must be miserable, is that not so, Tharkay, without us?”
Tharkay looked down at his hands, twisting the signet ring on his finger, and did not answer.
Temeraire peered down at them both. “It seems to me that you both have a great deal to talk about. And you know, Tharkay, Laurence is staying at a very nice hotel.” To Laurence’s great chagrin, Temeraire continued, with a significant look, “Laurence, should you not invite Tharkay to your rooms for a drink? I am sure he would admire the furniture and fixtures; they are very fine, you know,”—this last comment directed to Tharkay.
“Temeraire,” Laurence hissed, and he could feel himself reddening; but then Temeraire was begging them to excuse him, claiming a sudden onset of exhaustion, and securing a commitment from Laurence to breakfast with him the next morning; as well as expressing his fervent desire to see Tharkay again “very soon, perhaps over breakfast as well, if that suits.”
They made their farewells; and the two men stood in the dark, watching as the dragon sprang into the sky.
“Well,” said Laurence, awkwardly. All the pain of being alone with Tharkay, a mere two feet away physically while entirely sundered emotionally, came rushing back. He could not very well invite Tharkay for further conversation, or for a drink, now, after Temeraire’s transparent attempt at meddling.
There was a pause. “Well,” echoed Tharkay, and the next lie was smooth in his mouth. “It was a pleasure to see you both again. It is late—” and he gestured vaguely to the night.
“I think the carriages are arriving,” Laurence agreed. He felt a leaden sensation in his chest as wordlessly they both turned to head back to the house.
Tharkay pulled out his cigarette case once more. This time, Laurence could not help but notice that he struggled with the lighter, his fingers not quite obeying his will; they had perhaps been out in the evening air too long. Laurence wondered how Tharkay fared, these days; the trajectory of his injured hands had always been towards greater pain, and more erratic functioning, as the years passed.
Of course, Laurence was no longer permitted to inquire; no longer permitted to have any special care for Tharkay’s health. More than a decade ago, Laurence had nursed Tharkay back almost from the brink, after those terrible hurts from Fela’s torturers; and after that, he had seen him through the usual winter grippes and agues, mopped his brow whenever the malarial fever seized him, held him in their shared bed after night terrors; but the privilege was no longer his.
Tharkay paused on the pathway to thumb at the lighter’s sparkwheel once more; but this time he fumbled, cursing, and the lighter fell from his stiff grasp into the soft grass. Laurence could not look away from the line of Tharkay’s back as he bent to retrieve it.
“Allow me,” he said, and was half amazed when Tharkay permitted him to pluck the lighter from his grip. Laurence flicked the wheel, the spark flared up, and Tharkay leaned forward, cigarette in mouth, to connect with the flame. Once again the sight of Tharkay’s face, lit from below, took Laurence’s breath away.
Tharkay inhaled, nostrils flaring, and let the hand with the cigarette fall to his side as he exhaled heavily. Laurence knew, just as surely as if Tharkay had voiced it, that the conversation with Temeraire had taken a toll, had set Tharkay’s worldview and expectations all awry.
Laurence’s mind was a perfect blank; he had no more thoughts at all. Without any conscious awareness, he reached for Tharkay’s other wrist. “Tenzing—” he said.
Their eyes met again; Laurence was suddenly, achingly alert to Tharkay’s pulse beating against the pads of his fingertips. He came back to himself with a start, releasing Tharkay’s wrist.
“I beg your pardon—” he began, just as Tharkay said, “Will—”
Another moment; Laurence searched Tharkay’s face. “Temeraire is not wrong,” he said, “For it has been hard to be content, since we left Strathvagan.”
“Strathvagan has not been the same without you,” Tharkay admitted. “I find there is not much to keep me there these days.” He smiled ruefully, and Laurence could not look away from the precious curve of his mouth.
“I wish—” began Laurence. “I wish that matters might be different, between us.” He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that unthinkingly he had conjured up for both of them the memory of a hot, fevered night in Istanbul. Nearly two decades ago now; and he was suddenly staggered to think of all that had transpired between them since.
“I do not know how we begin again,” said Tharkay, simply; and then, after another pause, “but, if you wish it, I would not refuse the attempt.”
“Neither would I,” replied Laurence, fervently; but he, too, had not the slightest idea of how they might start to mend the gulf between them, how to begin to overcome the hurt and lost years.
Tharkay looked at the cigarette in his hand with a wry expression. He took one final drag, and then dropped it, grinding it out under his heel.
“New beginnings, then,” he said, and Laurence reached out for his proffered hand with a feeling very much like coming home.