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Tongues of Serpents

(The sixth book in the Temeraire series)

Naomi Novik 

For my father, Samuel Novik,

who also came over the sea to another country

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am hugely grateful to my longtime beta readers Georgina Paterson and Vanessa Len, who not only tromped all over the Blue Mountains with me, but helped me work out the plot for the last three forthcoming books of the Temeraire series over lunch in Sydney. Possibly drinks were involved also? (To determine whether or not this was a good thing, you will have to wait for me to write them. )

Many thanks for beta-reading also to Meredith Lynne and Alison Feeney, and to the wonderful Terri Oberkamper for all her help; and I am so thrilled to once again have Dominic Harman’s amazing cover art! Much love and gratitude to my fantastic editor, Betsy Mitchell, at Del Rey and my wonderful agent, Cynthia Manson, and a special thank-you to Rachel Kind, who has shepherded my books all over the world. Rachel, my crammed-full bookshelves might not be grateful, but I am!

And most of all to Charles, who gives me daily more gifts than words can ever adequately convey.

From the preface to An Inland Journey in Terra Australis in the year 1809 by Sipho Tsuluka Dlamini

[LONDON, 1819]

I have taken the liberty of marking the route of our journey upon a simplified version of the most extraordinary and beautiful map of the continent published by the late Mr. Matthew Flinders, of the Investigator, in his work A voyage to Terra Australis, omitting the soundings and those geographical features of the coastline which have therein been more thoroughly examined.

I must apologize to the reader for the incompleteness and undoubted inaccuracies of my annotations, which do not adequately represent the native holdings nor the variety and number of the tribes; I can only offer as my excuse that these observations were made at a young age, during a journey with no translator or guide, and my opportunities for research were regrettably limited and have not since been improved upon…

However, I think my information sufficient to illusttate the entire folly, which at present seems to dominate conversation regarding the interior, of asserting the presence of a vast central inland sea, either fresh or salt, which should conveniently lend itself to farming.

The lake which I have marked upon the map was the only sizeable body of water which we encountered upon our journey, and proved only seasonally potable. That the extraordinary aridity of the weather which we encountered, barring a handful of brief and unproductive storms, is rather a regular condition than an unusual case, is a supposition borne out not only by the testimony of all the natives with whom we had conversation, but by the most peculiarly adapted behavior of the local fauna, as my record will further demonstrate.

Part I

Chapter 1

THERE WERE FEW STREETS in the main port of Sydney which deserved the name, besides the one main thoroughfare, and even that bare packed dirt, lined only with a handful of small and wretched buildings that formed all the permanence of the colony. Tharkay turned off from this and led the way down a cramped, irregularly arranged alley-way between two wooden-slat buildings to a courtyard full of men drinking, in surly attitudes, under no roof but a tarpaulin.