Date: 2009-02-20 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: kindle; fiction; sf; fantasy
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

NAOMI NOVIK

Empire of Ivory

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2007

Copyright © Naomi Novik 2007

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2014

Cover illustrations © Dominic Harman

Naomi Novik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007256730
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007318582
Version: 2019-03-19

Dedication

To Francesca,
may we always flee lions together

Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Dedication

Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
PART II
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
PART III
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen

Keep Reading
Acknowledgements
By the Same Author
About the Publisher

PART I

Chapter One

‘Send up another, damn you, send them all up, at once if you have to,’ Laurence said savagely to poor Calloway, who did not deserve to be sworn at: the gunner was firing off the flares so quickly his hands were scorched black, skin cracking and peeling to bright red where some powder had spilled onto his fingers; he was not stopping to wipe them clean before setting each flare to the match.

One of the little French dragons darted in again, slashing at Temeraire’s side, and five men fell screaming as a piece of the makeshift carrying-harness unravelled. They vanished at once beyond the lantern-light and were swallowed up by the darkness; the long twisted rope of striped silk, a pillaged curtain, unfurled gently in the wind and billowed down after them, threads trailing from the torn edges. A moan went through the other Prussian soldiers still clinging desperately on to the harness, and after it low, angry mutterings in German.

Any gratitude the soldiers might have felt for their rescue from the siege of Danzig had since been exhausted: three days flying through icy rain, no food but what they had crammed into their pockets in those final desperate moments, no rest but a few hours snatched along a cold and marshy stretch of the Dutch coast, and now this French patrol harrying them all this last endless night. Men so terrified might do anything in a panic; many of them had still their small-arms and swords, and there were more than a hundred of them crammed aboard, to the less than thirty of Temeraire’s own crew.

Laurence swept the sky again with his glass, straining for a glimpse of wings, an answering signal. They were in sight of shore, the night was clear: through his glass he saw the gleam of lights dotting the small harbours all along the Scottish coast, and below heard the steadily increasing roar of the surf. Their flares ought to have been plain to see all the way to Edinburgh; yet no reinforcements had come, not a single courier-beast even to investigate.

‘Sir, that’s the last of them,’ Calloway said, coughing through the grey smoke that wreathed his head, the flare whistling high and away. The powder flash went off silently above their heads, casting the white scudding clouds into brilliant relief, reflecting from dragon scales in every direction: Temeraire all in black, the rest in gaudy colours muddied to shades of grey by the lurid blue light. The night was full of their wings: a dozen dragons turning their heads around to look back, their gleaming pupils narrowing; more coming on, all of them laden down with men, and the handful of small French patrol-dragons darting among them.

All seen in the flash of a moment, then the thunderclap crack and rumble sounded, only a little delayed, and the flare dying away drifted into blackness again. Laurence counted ten, and ten again; still there was no answer from the shore.

Emboldened, the French dragon came in once more. Temeraire aimed a swipe which would have knocked the little Pou-de-Ciel flat, but his attempt was very slow, for fear of dislodging any more of his passengers; their small enemy evaded with contemptuous ease and circled away to wait for his next chance.

‘Laurence,’ Temeraire said, looking round, ‘where is everyone? Victoriatus is in Edinburgh; he at least ought to have come. After all, we helped him, when he was hurt; not that I need help, precisely, against these little dragons,’ he added, straightening his neck with a crackle of popping joints, ‘but it is not very convenient to try and fight while we are carrying so many people.’

This was putting a braver face on the situation than it deserved: they could not very well defend themselves at all, and Temeraire was taking the worst of it, bleeding already from many small gashes along his side and flanks, which the crew could not bandage up, so cramped were they aboard.

‘Only keep everyone moving towards the shore,’ Laurence said; he had no better answer to give. ‘I cannot imagine the patrol will pursue us over land,’ he added, but doubtfully. He would never have imagined a French patrol could come so near to shore as this, either, without challenge; and how he should manage to disembark a thousand frightened and exhausted men under bombardment he did not like to contemplate.

‘I am trying; only they will keep stopping to fight,’ Temeraire said, wearily, and turned back to his work. Arkady and his rough band of mountain ferals found the small, stinging attacks maddening, and they kept trying to turn around mid-air and go after the French patrol-dragons; in their contortions they were flinging off more of the hapless Prussian soldiers than the enemy could ever have accounted for. There was no malice in their carelessness: the wild dragons were unused to men except as the jealous guardians of flocks and herds, and they did not think of their passengers as anything more than an unusual burden; but with malice or none, the men were dying all the same. Temeraire could only prevent them by constant vigilance, and now he was hovering in place over the line of flight, cajoling and hissing by turns, encouraging the others to hurry onwards.

‘No, no, Gherni,’ Temeraire called out, and dashed forward to swat at the little blue and white feral: she had dropped onto the very back of a startled French Chasseur-Vocifère: a courier beast of scarcely four tons, who could not bear up under even her slight weight and was sinking in the air despite the frantic beating of its wings. Gherni had already fixed her teeth in the French dragon’s neck and was now worrying it back and forth with savage vigour; meanwhile the Prussians clinging to her harness were all but drumming their heels on the heads of the French crew, crammed so tightly not a shot from the French side could fail of killing one of them.

In his efforts to dislodge her, Temeraire was left open, and the Pou-de-Ciel seized the fresh opportunity; this time daring enough to make an attempt at Temeraire’s back. His claws struck so near that Laurence saw the traces of Temeraire’s blood shining black on the curved edges as the French dragon lifted away again; his hand tightened on his pistol, uselessly.

‘Oh, let me, let me!’ Iskierka was straining furiously against the restraints keeping her lashed to Temeraire’s back. The infant Kazilik would soon be a force to reckon with; as yet, however, scarcely a month out of the shell, she was too young and unpracticed to be a serious danger to anyone beside herself. They had tried as best they could to secure her, with straps and chains and lecturing, but the last she roundly ignored, and though she had been but irregularly fed these last few days, she had added another five feet of length overnight: neither straps nor chains were proving of much use in restraining her.

‘Will you hold still, for all love?’ Granby said despairingly; he was throwing his own weight against the straps to try and pull her head down. Allen and Harley, the young lookouts stationed on Temeraire’s shoulders, had to go scrambling out of the way to avoid being kicked as Granby was dragged stumbling from side to side by her efforts. Laurence loosened his buckles and climbed to his feet, bracing his heels against the strong ridge of muscle at the base of Temeraire’s neck. He caught Granby by the harness-belt when Iskierka’s thrashing swung him by again, and managed to hold him steady, but all the leather was strung tight as violin-strings, trembling with the strain.

‘But I can stop him!’ she insisted, twisting her head sidelong as she tried to work free. Eager jets of flame were licking out from the sides of her jaws as she tried once again to lunge at the enemy dragon, but their Pou-de-Ciel attacker, small as he was, was still many times her size and too experienced to be frightened off by a little show of fire; he only jeered, backwinging to expose all of his speckled brown belly to her as a target in a gesture of insulting unconcern.

‘Oh!’ Iskierka coiled herself tightly with rage, the thin spiky protrusions all over her sinuous body jetting steam, and with a mighty heave reared up on her hindquarters. The straps jerked painfully out of Laurence’s grasp, and involuntarily he caught his hand back to his chest, numb fingers curling over instinctively. Granby had been dragged into mid-air and was dangling vainly from her thick neck band, while she let loose a torrent of flame: thin and yellow-white, so hot that the air about it seemed to twist and shrivel away. It made a fierce banner against the night sky.

But the French dragon had cleverly put himself before the wind, coming strong and from the east; now he folded his wings and dropped away, and the blistering flames were blown back against Temeraire’s flank. Temeraire, still scolding Gherni back into the line of flight, uttered a startled cry and jerked away while sparks scattered over the glossy blackness of his hide, perilously close to the carrying-harness of silk and linen and rope.

‘Verfluchtes Untier! Wir werden noch alle verbrennen,’ one of the Prussian officers yelled hoarsely, pointing at Iskierka, and fumbled with a shaking hand in his bandoleer for a cartridge.

‘Enough there; put up that pistol,’ Laurence roared at him through the speaking-trumpet. Lieutenant Ferris and a couple of the topmen hurriedly unlatched their harness-straps and let themselves down to wrestle it out of the officer’s hands. They could only reach the fellow by clambering over the other Prussian soldiers, however, and though too afraid to let go of the harness, the men were obstructing their passage in every other way, thrusting out elbows and hips with abrupt jerks, full of resentment and hostility.

Lieutenant Riggs was giving orders, distantly, towards the rear; ‘Fire!’ he shouted, clear over the increasing rumble among the Prussians; the handful of rifles spoke with bright powder-bursts, sulphurous and bitter. The French dragon made a little shriek and wheeled away, flying a little awkwardly: blood streaked in rivulets from a rent in its wing, where a bullet had by lucky chance struck one of the thinner patches around the joint and penetrated the hide.

The respite came a little late; some of the men were already clawing their way up towards Temeraire’s back, snatching at the greater security of the leather harness to which the aviators were hooked by their carabiner straps. But the harness could not take all their weight too, not so many of them; if the buckles stretched open, or some straps gave way, and the whole began to slide, it would entangle Temeraire’s wings and send them all plummeting into the ocean together.

Laurence loaded his pistols fresh and thrust them into his waistband, loosened his sword, and stood up again. He had willingly risked all their lives to rescue these men from a trap, and he meant to see them safely ashore if he could; but he would not see Temeraire endangered by their hysteric fear.

‘Allen, Harley,’ he said to the boys, ‘run across to the riflemen and tell Mr. Riggs: if we cannot stop them, they are to cut the carrying-harness loose, all of it; and be sure you keep latched on as you go. Perhaps you had better stay here with her, John,’ he added, when Granby made to come away with him. Iskierka was quiet for the moment, her enemy having quit the field, but she still coiled and recoiled herself in sulky restlessness, muttering in disappointment.

‘Oh, certainly! I should like to see myself do any such thing,’ Granby said, taking out his sword; he had foregone pistols since becoming Iskierka’s captain, to avoid the risk of handling open powder around her.

Laurence was too unsure of his ground to pursue an argument; Granby was not properly his subordinate any longer, and the more experienced aviator of the two of them, counting years aloft. Granby took the lead as they crossed Temeraire’s back, moving with the sureness only a boy trained up from the age of seven could have aloft; at each step Laurence handed forward his own lead-strap and let Granby lock it on to the harness for him, which he could do one-handed, that they might go more quickly.

Ferris and the topmen were still struggling with the Prussian officer in the midst of a thickening clot of men; they were disappearing from view under the violent press of bodies, only Martin’s yellow hair visible. The soldiers were near full riot, men beating and kicking at one another, thinking of nothing but an impossible escape; the knots of the carrying-harness were tightening, giving up more slack, so all the loops and bands of it hung loose and swinging with the thrashing, struggling men.

Laurence came on one of the soldiers, a young man, eyes wide and staring in his wind-reddened face and his thick moustache wet-tipped with sweat, trying to work his arm beneath the main harness, blindly, though the buckle was already straining open, and he would in a moment have slid wholly free.

‘Get back to your place!’ Laurence shouted, pointing to the nearest open loop of the carrying-harness, and thrusting the man’s hand away from the straps. Then his ears started ringing, a thick ripe smell of sour cherries flooded his nostrils as his knees folded beneath him. He put a hand to his forehead slowly, stupidly; it was wet. His own harness-straps were holding him, painfully tight against his ribs with all his weight pulling against them. The Prussian had struck him with a bottle; it had shattered, and the liquor was dripping down the side of his face.

Instinct rescued him; he put up his arm to take the next blow and pushed the broken glass back at the man’s face; the soldier said something in German and let go the bottle. They wrestled together a few moments more; then Laurence caught the man’s belt and heaved him up and away from Temeraire’s side. The soldier’s arms were spread wide, grasping at nothing; Laurence, watching, abruptly recalled himself, and at once he lunged out, reaching to his full length; but too late, and he came thumping heavily back against Temeraire’s side with empty hands; the soldier was already gone from sight.

His head did not hurt over much, but Laurence felt queerly sick and weak. Temeraire had resumed flying towards the coast, having rounded up the rest of the ferals at last, and the force of the wind was increasing. Laurence clung to the harness a moment, until the fit passed and he was able to make his hands work properly again. There were already more men clawing up: Granby was trying to hold them back, but they were overbearing him by sheer weight of numbers, even though struggling as much against one another as him. One of the soldiers grappling for a hold on the harness climbed too far out of the press; he slipped, landed heavily on the men below him, and carried them all away; as a tangled, many-limbed mass they fell into the slack loops of the carrying-harness, and the muffled wet noises of their joints and bones cracking sounded together like a roast chicken being wrenched hungrily apart.

Granby was hanging from his harness-straps, trying to get his feet planted again; Laurence crab-walked over to him and gave him a steadying arm. Below he could just make out the washy sea foam, pale against the black water; Temeraire was flying lower and lower as they neared the coast.

‘That damned Pou-de-Ciel is coming round again,’ Granby panted, as he got back his footing; the French had somehow stretched a dressing over the gash in the dragon’s wing, even if the great white patch of it was awkwardly placed and far larger than the injury made necessary. The dragon looked a little uncomfortable in the air, but he was coming on gamely nonetheless; they must have spotted Temeraire’s vulnerability. If the Pou-de-Ciel were able to catch the harness and drag it loose, it might deliberately finish what the soldiers had begun in their panic, and the chance of bringing down a heavy-weight, much less one as valuable as Temeraire, would surely tempt them to great risk.

‘We will have to cut the soldiers loose,’ Laurence said, low and wretched, and looked upwards, where the carrying-loops attached to the leather; but to send a hundred men and more to their deaths, scarce minutes from safety, he was not sure he could bear; or ever to meet General Kalkreuth again, having done it; some of the general’s own young aides were aboard Temeraire, and doing their best to keep the other men quiet.

Riggs and his riflemen were firing short, hurried volleys; the Pou-de-Ciel was keeping just out of range, waiting for the best moment to chance his attack. Then Iskierka sat up and blew out another stream of fire: Temeraire was flying ahead of the wind, so the flames were not turned against him, this time; but every man on his back had at once to throw himself flat to avoid the torrent, which burned out too quickly before it could reach the French dragon.

The Pou-de-Ciel at once darted in while the crew was distracted; Iskierka was gathering herself for another blow, and the riflemen could not get up again. ‘Christ,’ Granby said; but before he could reach her, a low rumble like fresh thunder sounded, and below them small round red mouths bloomed with smoke and powder-flashes: shore batteries, firing from the coast below. Illuminated in the yellow blaze of Iskierka’s fire, a twenty-four-pound ball of round-shot flew past them and took the Pou-de-Ciel in the chest; he folded around it like paper as it drove through his ribs, and crumpled out of the air, falling to the rocks below: they were over the shore, they were over the land, and thick-fleeced sheep were fleeing before them across the snow-matted grass.

The townspeople of the little harbour of Dunbar were alternately terrified at the descent of a whole company of dragons onto their quiet hamlet, and elated by the success of their new shore-battery, put into place scarcely two months ago and never before tried. Half-a-dozen courier-beasts driven off and one Pou-de-Ciel slain, became a Grand Chevalier and several Flammes-de-Gloire overnight, all hideously slain. The town could talk of nothing else, and the local militia strutted through the streets to general satisfaction.

The townspeople grew less enthusiastic, however, after Arkady had eaten four of their sheep; the other ferals had made only slightly less extravagant depredations, and Temeraire himself had seized upon a couple of cows, shaggy yellow-haired Highland cattle, sadly reported afterwards to be prize-winning, and devoured them to the hooves and horns.

‘They were very tasty,’ Temeraire said, apologetically; and turned his head aside to spit out some of the hair.

Laurence was not inclined to stint the dragons in the least, after their long and arduous flight, and on this occasion was perfectly willing to sacrifice his usual respect for civil property for their comfort. Some of the farmers made noises about payment, but Laurence did not mean to try and feed the bottomless appetites of the ferals out of his own pocket. The Admiralty might reach into theirs, if they had nothing better to do than sit before the fire and whistle while a battle was carrying on outside their windows, and men dying for lack of a little assistance. ‘We will not be a charge upon you for long. As soon as we hear from Edinburgh, I expect we will be called to the covert there,’ he said flatly, in reply to the protests. The horse-courier left at once.

The townspeople were more welcoming to the Prussians, most of them young soldiers pale and wretched after the flight. General Kalkreuth himself had been among these final refugees; he had to be let down from Arkady’s back in a sling, his face white and sickly under his beard. The local medical man looked doubtful, but cupped a basin full of blood, and had him carried away to the nearest farmhouse to be kept warm and dosed with brandy and hot water.

Other men were less fortunate. The harnesses, cut away, came down in filthy, tangled heaps weighted by corpses already turning green: some had been killed during the French attacks, others smothered by their own fellows in the panic, or dead of thirst, or plain terror. They buried sixty-three men out of a thousand that afternoon, some of them nameless, in a long and shallow grave laboriously pick-axed out of the frozen ground. The survivors were a ragged crew, clothes and uniforms inadequately brushed, faces still dirty, attending silently. Even the ferals, though they did not understand the language, perceived the ceremony, and sat on their haunches respectfully to watch from a distance.

Word arrived back from Edinburgh only a few hours later, but with orders so queer as to be incomprehensible. They began reasonably enough: the Prussians to be left behind in Dunbar and quartered on the town; and the dragons, as expected, were summoned to the city. But there was no invitation to General Kalkreuth or his officers to come along. On the contrary, Laurence was strictly adjured to bring no Prussian officers with him. As for the dragons, they were not permitted to enter the large and comfortable covert at all, not even Temeraire. Instead Laurence was ordered to leave them sleeping in the streets about the castle, and to report to the admiral in command in the morning.

He stifled his first reaction, and spoke mildly of the arrangements to Major Seiberling, now the senior Prussian; implying as best he could without outright falsehood that the Admiralty meant to wait until General Kalkreuth was recovered before they gave him an official welcome.

‘Oh; must we fly again?’ Temeraire said. He heaved himself wearily back onto his feet, and approached the drowsing ferals to nudge them awake: they had all crumpled into somnolence after their dinners.

Their flight to Edinburgh was slow and the days were growing short. It was only a week to Christmas, Laurence realized abruptly. The sky was fully dark by the time they reached their destination; but the castle shone out for them like a beacon, its windows and walls bright with torches as it stood on its high rocky hill above the shadowed expanse of the covert. The narrow buildings of the medieval part of the city crammed together close around it.

Temeraire hovered doubtfully above the cramped and winding streets; there were many spires and pointed roofs to contend with, and not very much room between them, giving the city the appearance of a spear-pit. ‘I do not see how I am to land here,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I am sure to break one of those buildings; why have they built these streets so small? It was much more convenient in Peking.’

‘If you cannot do it without hurting yourself, we will go away again, and orders be damned,’ Laurence said; his patience was grown very thin.

But in the end Temeraire managed to let himself down into the old cathedral square without bringing down more than a few lumps of ornamental masonry; the ferals, being all of them considerably smaller, had less difficulty. They were a little anxious at being removed from the fields full of sheep and cattle, however, and suspicious of their new surroundings; Arkady bent low and put his eye to an open window to peer inside at the empty rooms, making sceptical inquires of Temeraire as he did so.

‘That is where people sleep, is it not, Laurence? Like a pavilion,’ Temeraire said, trying cautiously to rearrange his tail into a more comfortable position. ‘And sometimes it is where they sell jewels and other pleasant things. But where are all the people?’

Laurence was quite sure that all the people had fled; the wealthiest tradesman in the city would sleep in a gutter tonight, if it were the only bed he could find in the new part of town, safely away from the pack of dragons who had invaded his streets.

The dragons eventually disposed of themselves in some manner of reasonable comfort; the ferals, used to sleeping in rough-hewn caves, were even pleased with the soft, rounded cobblestones. ‘I do not mind sleeping in the street, Laurence, truly; it is quite dry, and I am sure it will all be very interesting to look at, in the morning,’ Temeraire said, consolingly, before falling asleep with his head lodged in one alleyway and his tail in another.

But Laurence minded for him; it was not the sort of welcome which he felt they might justly have looked for, a long year away from home, having been sent halfway round the world and back. It was one thing to find themselves in rough quarters while on campaign, where no man could expect much better and might be grateful for a cow-byre to lay his head upon. But to be deposited like baggage, on cold unsanitary stones stained dark with years of street refuse, was something other; the dragons might at least have been granted use of the open farmland outside the city.

Laurence knew it was unconscious malice: the common unthinking assumption made by men who treated dragons only as inconvenient, if elevated, livestock, to be managed and herded without consideration for their own sentiments. It was an ingrained assumption. Even Laurence had recognized it as outrageous only when forced to do so by witnessing by contrast the conditions he had observed in China, where dragons were received as full members of society.

‘Well,’ Temeraire said reasonably, while Laurence laid out his own bedroll inside the house beside his head, leaving the windows open so they might continue to speak, ‘we knew how matters were here, and so we cannot be very surprised. Besides, I did not come back to make myself more comfortable, or I would have stayed in China. We must improve the circumstances of our friends. Not,’ he added, ‘that I would object to having my own pavilion; but I would rather have liberty. Dyer, pray will you retrieve that bit of gristle from between my teeth? I cannot reach far enough to put my claw upon it.’

Dyer, startled from his half-doze upon Temeraire’s back, ran to fetch the small pick from their luggage, and then scrambled obediently into Temeraire’s open jaws to scrape away.

‘You would have more luck achieving the latter if there were more men ready to grant you the former,’ Laurence said. ‘I do not mean to counsel you to despair; indeed we must not. But I had hoped to find, upon our arrival, more respect for you than when we departed, not less. It would have brought material advantage to our cause.’

Temeraire waited until Dyer had climbed out again to answer. ‘I am sure they will listen to the merits of such reform,’ he said; a large assumption, which Laurence was not at all sanguine enough to share, ‘and all the more, when I have seen Maximus and Lily and they are ranged with me. And perhaps Excidium also, for he has been in the most battles: no one could help but be impressed by him. I am sure they will see the wisdom of my arguments; they will not be as stupid as Eroica and the others were,’ Temeraire added, with obvious shades of resentment. The Prussian dragons had at first rather disdained his attempts to convince them of the merits of greater liberty and education among dragons. They were as fond of their traditional rigorous military order as their handlers, and preferred to ridicule the habits that Temeraire had acquired in China as effete.

‘I hope you will forgive me for my bluntness; but I am afraid that even if you allied the hearts and minds of every dragon in Britain with your own, it would make very little difference. As a political party you have no influence with Parliament,’ Laurence said.

‘Perhaps we do not, but I imagine if we were to go to this Parliament, we would be attended to,’ Temeraire said, an image most convincing, if not likely to produce the sort of attention Temeraire desired.

He said as much, and added, ‘We must find some better means of drawing sympathy to your cause, from those who have the influence to foster political change. I am only sorry I cannot apply to my father for advice, as relations stand between us.’

‘Well, I am not sorry, at all,’ Temeraire said, putting back his ruff. ‘I am sure he would not have helped us; and we can do perfectly well without him.’ Aside from his loyalty, which would have made him resent coldness towards Laurence on any grounds, Temeraire viewed Lord Allendale’s objections to the Aerial Corps as objections to him personally. Despite them never having met, he felt violently towards anyone whose sentiments would have seen Laurence separated from him.

‘My father has been engaged in politics for half of his life,’ Laurence said. Lord Allendale made special effort towards abolition in particular, it was a movement that had been met with as much scorn at its inception, as Laurence anticipated for Temeraire’s own cause. ‘I assure you his advice would be of the greatest value; and I do mean to effect a repair, if I can, which would allow us to consult him.’

‘I would as soon have kept it, myself,’ Temeraire muttered, meaning the elegant red vase that Laurence had purchased in China as a conciliatory gift. It had since travelled with them five thousand miles and more, and Temeraire had grown as possessive of it. He sighed when it was finally sent away, with a brief and apologetic note.

But Laurence was all too conscious of the difficulties that faced them, and of his own inadequacy to progress so vast and complicated a campaign. He had been a boy when Wilberforce had come to their house. He came as the guest of one of Lord Allendale’s political friends, newly inspired with fervour against the slave trade and just beginning the parliamentary campaign to abolish it. That was twenty years ago, and despite the most heroic efforts by men of ability, wealth and power greater than his own, a million souls or more must have been carried away from their native shores since then.

Temeraire had been hatched for only a few years; for all his intelligence, he could not yet grasp the weary struggle which was the required path to a political position, however moral and just it was, however necessary, or contrary to their immediate self-interest it was. Laurence bade him good-night without further disheartening advice; but as he closed the windows, which began to rattle gently from the sleeping dragon’s breath, the distance to the covert beyond the castle walls seemed to him less easily bridged than all the long miles which had brought them home from China.

The Edinburgh streets were quiet in the morning, unnaturally so, and deserted but for the dragons sleeping in stretched ranks over the old grey cobbles. Temeraire’s great bulk was heaped awkwardly before the smoke-stained cathedral and his tail running down into an alleyway scarcely wide enough to hold it. The sky was clear, cold and very blue, only a scattering of terraced clouds ran out to sea, a faint suggestion of pink and orange lighting the stones.

Tharkay was awake, the only soul stirring; he sat crouched against the cold in one of the narrow doorways; an elegant home, the heavy door stood open behind him. He had a cup of tea, steaming in the air. ‘May I offer you one?’ he inquired. ‘I am sure the owners would not begrudge us.’

‘No, thank you; I must go up and see about the dragons,’ Laurence said; he had been woken by a runner from the castle, summoning him to a meeting in the castle, at once. Another piece of discourtesy, when they had arrived so late; and to make matters worse, the boy had been unable to tell him if any provision had been made for the hungry dragons. What the ferals would say when they awoke, Laurence did not like to think.

‘You need not worry; I am sure they can fend for themselves,’ Tharkay said blandly, not a cheering prospect, and offered Laurence his own cup as consolation; Laurence sighed and drained it, grateful for the strong, hot brew.

He was escorted from the castle gates to the admiral’s office by a young red-coated Marine, their path winding around to the headquarters building through the medieval stone courtyards, empty and free from hurry in the early morning dimness. The doors were opened, and he went in stiffly, straight-shouldered; his face had set into disapproving lines, cold and rigid. ‘Sir,’ he said, eyes fixed at a point upon the wall; and only then glanced down, and said, surprised, ‘Admiral Lenton?’

‘Laurence. Yes, sit; sit down.’ Lenton dismissed the guard, and the door closed upon them and the musty, book-lined room; the Admiral’s desk was nearly clear, but for a single small map, a handful of papers. Lenton sat for a moment silently. ‘It is damned good to see you,’ he said at last. ‘Very good to see you indeed. Very good.’

Laurence was very much shocked at his appearance. In the year since their last meeting, Lenton seemed to have aged ten: hair gone entirely white, and a vague, rheumy look in his eyes; his jowls hung slack. ‘I hope I find you well, sir,’ Laurence said, deeply sorry, no longer wondering why Lenton had been transferred north to Edinburgh, a quieter post. He wondered what illness had ravaged him so, and who had been made commander at Dover in his place.

‘Oh…’ Lenton waved his hand, fell silent. ‘I suppose you have not been told anything,’ he said, after a moment. ‘No, that is right; we agreed we could not risk word getting out.’

‘No, sir,’ Laurence said, anger kindling afresh. ‘I have heard nothing, and been told nothing. Our allies asked me daily for word of the Corps, until they knew there was no more use in asking.’

He had given his personal assurances to the Prussian commanders. He had sworn that the Aerial Corps would not fail them; that the promised company of dragons, which might have turned the tide against Napoleon in this last disastrous campaign, would still arrive at any moment. He and Temeraire had stayed and fought in their place when the dragons did not arrive, risking their own lives and those of his crew in an increasingly hopeless cause; but the dragons had never come.

Lenton did not immediately answer, but sat nodding to himself, murmuring. ‘Yes, that is right, of course.’ He tapped a hand on the desk, looked at some papers without reading them, a portrait of distraction.

Laurence added more sharply, ‘Sir, I can hardly believe you would have lent yourself to so treacherous a course, and one so terribly short-sighted; Napoleon’s victory was by no means assured, if the twenty promised dragons had been sent.’

‘What?’ Lenton looked up. ‘Oh, Laurence, there was no question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called for no decision. There were no dragons to send.’

Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust edged their rims, and dried pink foam lingered about the corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage. His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him: unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon’s foreleg; he did not move, even when they approached.

After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm. ‘Come, enough; let’s away.’ He turned slowly aside, leaning heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in irreparable gloom.

Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of refreshment. ‘It is a sort of consumption,’ Lenton said, looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard; Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and stones grown over with ivy.

‘How widespread?’ Laurence asked.

‘Everywhere,’ Lenton said. ‘Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere.’ He turned away from the windows and took his chair again. ‘We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it was only a cold, you see.’

‘But we had word of that before we had even rounded the Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east,’ Laurence said, appalled. ‘Has it lasted so long?’

‘In Halifax it started in September of the year five,’ Lenton said. ‘The surgeons think now it was the American dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland.’

‘You know we have brought you another twenty,’ Laurence said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

‘Yes, these fellows are from where, Turkestan?’ Lenton said: willing to follow. ‘Did I understand your letter correctly; they were brigands?’

‘I would rather say that they were jealous of their territory,’ Laurence said. ‘They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in them. Though what use twenty dragons can be, to cover all England—’ He stopped. ‘Lenton, surely something can be done? Must be done?’ he said.

Lenton only shook his head briefly. ‘The usual remedies did some good, at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Quieted the coughing, and so forth. They could still fly, if they did not have much appetite; and colds are usually such trifling things with them. But it lingered on so long, and after a while the possets seemed to lose their effect. Some began to grow worse—’

He stopped, and after a long moment he sighed and added with an effort, ‘Obversaria is dead.’

‘Good God!’ Laurence cried. ‘Sir, I am shocked to hear it – so deeply grieved.’ It was a dreadful loss: she had been flying with Lenton some forty years, the flag-dragon at Dover for the last ten, and though relatively young had produced four eggs already; she was perhaps the finest flyer in all England, with few to even compete with her for the title. ‘That was in, let me see, August,’ Lenton said, as if he had not heard. ‘After Inlacrimas, but before Minacitus. It takes some of them worse than others. The very young hold up best, and the old ones linger; it is the ones between who have been dying. Dying first, anyway; I suppose they will all go in the end.’

Chapter Two

‘Captain,’ Keynes said, ‘I am sorry, but any gormless imbecile can bandage up a bullet-wound, and a gormless imbecile is very likely to be assigned in my place. I cannot stay with the healthiest dragon in Britain when the quarantine-coverts are full of the sick.’

‘I perfectly understand, Mr. Keynes, and you need say no more,’ Laurence said. ‘Will you not fly with us as far as Dover?’

‘No; Victoriatus will not last the week; I will wait and attend the dissection with Dr. Harrow,’ Keynes said, with brutal practicality that made Laurence flinch. ‘I hope we may learn something about the characteristics of the disease. Some of the couriers are still flying; one will carry me onwards.’

‘Well,’ Laurence said, and shook the surgeon’s hand. ‘I hope we shall see you with us again soon.’

‘I hope you will not,’ Keynes said, in his usual acerbic manner. ‘If you do, I will otherwise be lacking for patients, which from the course of this disease, will mean they are all dead.’

Laurence could hardly say his spirits were lowered; they had already been reduced so far as to make the doctors loss make little difference. But he was sorry. Dragon-surgeons were not by and large near so incompetent as the naval breed, and despite Keynes’ words Laurence did not fear his eventual successor, but to lose a good man, his courage and sense proven and his eccentricities known, was never pleasant; and Temeraire would not like it.

‘He is not hurt?’ Temeraire pressed. ‘He is not sick?’

‘No, Temeraire; but he is needed elsewhere,’ Laurence said. ‘He is a senior surgeon; I am sure you would not deny his attentions to your comrades suffering from this illness.’

‘Well, if Maximus or Lily should need him,’ Temeraire said, crabbily, and drew furrows in the ground. ‘Shall I see them again soon? I am sure they cannot be so very ill. Maximus is the biggest dragon I have ever seen, even though we have been to China; he is sure to recover quickly.’

‘No, my dear,’ Laurence said, uneasily, and broke the worst of the news. ‘The sick… none of them have recovered, and you must take the very greatest care not to go anywhere near the quarantine-grounds.’

‘But I do not understand,’ Temeraire said. ‘If they do not recover, then—’ He paused.

Laurence only looked away. Temeraire had good excuse for not understanding at once. Dragons were hardy creatures, and many breeds lived a century and more; he might have justly expected to know Maximus and Lily for longer than a man’s lifetime, if the war did not take them from him.

At last, sounding almost bewildered, Temeraire said, ‘But I have so much to tell them – I came for them, so they might learn that dragons may read and write, and have property, and do things other than fight.’

‘I will write a letter for you, which we can send to them with your greetings, and they will be happier to know you are well and safe from contagion than for your company,’ Laurence said. Temeraire did not answer; he was very still, and his head bowed deeply to his chest. ‘We will be nearby,’ Laurence went on, after a moment, ‘and you may write to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our work.’

‘Patrolling, I suppose,’ Temeraire said, with a very unusual note of bitterness, ‘and more stupid formation-work; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing.’

Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate removal to Dover, where Temeraire’s expectations were likely to be answered in every particular.

He was not encouraged by their arrival at Dover. They reported their presence directly after they had landed, but Laurence was left to cool his heels in the hall outside the new admiral’s office for thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar too, and Laurence rose to his feet abruptly as the door was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered, his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious glare before he left.

‘Come in, Laurence, come in,’ Jane called, and he entered the room. She stood with the admiral, an older man dressed rather astonishingly in a black frockcoat and knee breeches with buckled shoes.

‘You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think,’ Jane said. ‘Sir, this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire.’

‘Sir,’ Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons were in quarantine, putting the covert in the charge of a physician was the sort of thing that would make sense to landsmen. The notion had once been advanced to him by a family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a less-fortunate relation, to put forward a surgeon – not even a naval surgeon – for the command of a hospital ship.

‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Captain,’ Dr. Wapping said. ‘Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene.’

‘Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their place; good day to you. Would you credit it, Laurence,’ Jane said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, ‘the wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat scarcely enough to feed a bird, but they must send us diseased stock and scrawny too?

‘But this is not any way to welcome you home.’ She caught him by the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. ‘You are a damned sight. Whatever has happened to your coat? Will you have a glass of wine?’ She poured for them both without waiting his answer and he took the drink it in a sort of appalled blankness. ‘I have all your letters, so I have a tolerable notion what you have been doing; you must forgive me my silence, Laurence. I found it easier to write nothing than to leave out the only matter of any importance.’

‘No. That is, yes, of course,’ he said, and sat down with her at the fire. Her coat had been thrown over the arm of her chair, and now that he looked, he could see the admiral’s fourth bar on the shoulders; and the front, which was now magnificently frogged with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the better: she had lost a stone of weight at least, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with grey.

‘Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin,’ she said ruefully, and laughed away his apologies. ‘No, we are all of us decaying, Laurence, there is no denying it. You have seen poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of his bedroom in an apoplexy. For a week he could not speak without slurring his words. He came along a good ways afterwards, but he is still only a shade of himself.’

‘I am deeply sorry for it,’ Laurence said, ‘though I drink to your promotion,’ and by a Herculean effort he managed it without a stutter.

‘I thank you, dear fellow,’ she said. ‘I would be full of pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it were not one annoyance after another. We glide along tolerably well when left to our own devices, but I must consistently deal with those doltish creatures from the Admiralty. They are told, before they come, and told again, and still they will simper at me, and coo, as if I had not been a-dragonback before they were out of dresses; and then they simply stare when I dress them down for behaving like kiss-my-hand squires.’

‘I suppose they find it a difficult adjustment,’ Laurence said, with private sympathy. ‘I wonder the Admiralty should have—’ He paused, sensing that he was treading on obscure and dangerous ground. One could not very well quarrel with the pursuit, by whatever means necessary, of reconciling Longwings – perhaps Britain’s most deadly breed – to service with the corps. The beasts would accept only female handlers, and some must be offered to them. Laurence regretted the necessity that thrust gently born women out of their rightful society and into harm’s way, but at least they were raised to it. And occasionally, they had chance perforce to act as formation-leaders, transmitting manoeuvres to their wings. But an admiralty was a far cry from flag rank, and she was in command of the largest covert in Britain, and perhaps the most critical at that.

‘They certainly did not like to give it to me, but they had precious little choice,’ Jane said. ‘Portland would not come from Gibraltar; Laetificat is not fit enough for the sea-voyage. So, it was Sanderson or I. He is making a cake of himself over the business; he goes off into corners and weeps like a woman, as though that would help anything. A veteran of nine fleet actions, if you would credit it!’ She ran her hand through her disordered crop and sighed. ‘Never mind, you are not to listen to me, Laurence, I am simply impatient; and his Animosia does poorly.’

‘And Excidium?’ Laurence ventured.

‘Excidium is a tough old bird, and he knows how to husband his strength: he has the sense to eat, even though he has no appetite. He will muddle along a good while yet. And you know, he has close on a century of service; many his age have already rid themselves of the whole business and retired to the breeding grounds.’ She smiled; it was not whole-hearted. ‘There; I have been brave. Let us move on to pleasanter things. I hear you have brought me twenty dragons, and by God do I have a use for them. Let us go and see them.’

‘She is a handful and a half,’ Granby admitted softly, as they considered the coiled serpentine length of Iskierka’s body, faint threads of steam issuing from the many needle-like spikes upon her body, ‘and I didn’t ride herd on her, sir, I am sorry.’

Iskierka had already established herself to her own satisfaction, if no one else’s, by clawing out a deep pit in the clearing next to Temeraire’s where she had been housed, and then filling it with ash acquired from the demise of some two dozen young trees, the largest she could manage at present. She had unceremoniously uprooted and burnt them inside her pit, then added a collection of boulders to the powdery grey mixture, which she fired to a moderate glow before falling asleep in her heated nest. The bonfire and its lingering smoulder were visible for some distance, even from the farmhouses nearest the covert; and after only a few hours, her arrival had produced several complaints and a great deal of alarm.

‘Oh, you have done enough keeping her harnessed out in the countryside, and without a head of cattle to your name,’ Jane said, giving the drowsing Iskierka’s side a pat. ‘They may bleat to me all they like, she’s a fire-breather and you may be sure the Navy will cheer your name when they hear we have our own at last. Well done; well done indeed, and I am happy to confirm you in your rank, Captain Granby. Should you like to do the honours, Laurence?’

Most of Laurence’s crew had already been employed in Iskierka’s clearing, beating out the stray embers which flew from her pit and threatened to ignite all the entire covert if left unchecked. Ash-dusty and tired as they all were, they had stayed, lingering consciously without the need of any announcement. They lined up on one muttered word from young Lieutenant Ferris to watch Laurence pin a second pair of gold bars upon Granby’s shoulders.

‘Gentlemen,’ Jane said, when Laurence had done, and they gave a cheek-flushed Granby three huzzahs, whole-hearted if a little subdued, and Ferris and Riggs stepped over to shake him by the hand.

‘We will see about assigning you a crew, though it is early days with her yet,’ Jane said, after the ceremony had dispersed, and they proceeded on to make her acquainted with the ferals. ‘I have no shortage of men now, more’s the pity. Feed her twice daily, see if we cannot make up for any growth she may have been shorted, and whenever she is awake I will start you on Longwing manoeuvres. I don’t know if she can scorch herself, as they can with their own acid, but we needn’t find out by trial.’

Granby nodded; he seemed not the least nonplussed at answering to her. Neither did Tharkay, who had been persuaded to stay on at least a little longer, as one of the few of them with any influence upon the ferals at all. He rather looked mostly amused, in his secretive way, once past the inquiring glance which he had first cast at Laurence: as Jane had insisted upon being taken to the new-come dragons at once, there had been no chance for Laurence to give Tharkay a private caution in advance of their meeting. He did not reveal any surprise, however, but only made her a polite bow, and performed the introductions calmly.

Arkady and his band had made no little less confusion of their own clearings than Iskierka, preferring to knock down all the trees between them and cluster together in a great heap. The chill of the December air did not trouble them, used as they were to the vastly colder regions of the Pamirs, but they spoke disapprovingly of the dampness, and on discovering the senior officer of the covert before them, at once demanded an accounting of their promised cows, from her: one apiece daily, was the offer by which they had been lured into service.

‘They make the argument that if they do not eat their share of cows upon a given day, that they are still owed the cattle, and may call the credit in at a future time,’ Tharkay explained, igniting Jane’s deep laugh.

‘Tell them they shall have as much as they can eat on any occasion, and if they are too suspicious for that to satisfy them, we shall make them a tally. Each of them may take one of the logs they have knocked over to the feeding pens, and mark it each time they take a cow,’ Jane said, more merry than offended at being met with a negotiation. ‘Pray ask, will they agree to a rate of exchange? Two hogs for a cow, or two sheep, should we bring in some variety of livestock?’

The ferals put their heads together and muttered, hissed and whistled among themselves in a cacophony made private only by the obscurity of their language. Finally Arkady turned back and professed himself willing to settle, on the proviso that the rate for goats would be three to one cow; they had some measure of contempt for the species being the animals most easily obtained in their former homeland, and they also suspected them of being scrawny.

Jane bowed to him to seal the arrangement, and he bobbed his head back. His expression was one of deeply satisfaction and rendered all the more piratical by the red splash of colour covering one of his eyes and spilling down his neck.

‘They are a gang of ruffians and make no mistake,’ Jane said, as she led them back to her offices, ‘but I have no doubt of their flying capabilities, at any rate: with that sort of wiry muscle they will fly circles around anything in their weight-class, or over it, and I am happy to stuff their bellies for them.’

‘No, sir; there’ll be no trouble,’ the steward of the headquarters said, rather quietly, promising to find rooms for Laurence and his officers. Most of the other captains and officers were encamped in the quarantine-grounds with their sick dragons, despite the cold and wet, and so the building was deserted; even more hushed and silent than it had been during the low-ebb before Trafalgar, when nearly all the formations had gone south to help bring down the French and Spanish fleets.

They all drank Granby’s health, but the party broke up early, and Laurence was not disposed to linger. A few wretched lieutenants sat at a dark table in the corner, without talking; an older captain snored, his head tipped against the side of his armchair and a bottle of brandy empty by his elbow. Laurence took his supper alone in his rooms and drank his port near the fire.

He opened the door at a faint tapping, expecting perhaps Jane, or one of his men had come with some word from Temeraire, but was startled to find Tharkay instead. ‘Pray come in,’ Laurence said, and belatedly added, ‘I hope you will forgive my state.’ The room was disordered, and he had borrowed a dressing-gown from a colleague’s neglected wardrobe. It was considerably too large around the waist, and badly crumpled.

‘I am come to say good-bye,’ Tharkay said, and, ‘No, I have nothing to complain of,’ when Laurence had made an awkward inquiry, ‘but I am not of your company. I do not care to stay as only a translator; it is a role which would soon pall.’

‘I would be happy to speak to Admiral Roland – perhaps a commission—’ Laurence said, trailing away; he did not know what might be done, or how such matters were arranged in the Corps, except to imagine them a good deal less formally prescribed than in the Army, or the Navy. Tharkay was an asset of inestimable value to them as a linguist; and Laurence would have argued gladly for any measure that might persuade him to stay.

‘I have already spoken to the Admiral,’ Tharkay said, ‘and have been given one, if not the sort you mean: I will go back to Turkestan and enlist more ferals, if any more can be persuaded into your service on similar terms.’

‘No matter how mean and scrawny they are,’ Jane said, entering the room without ceremony and stripping off her gloves, which were stained by the sour-milk odour of dragon mucus, and acrid smoke. ‘Pray don’t think me ungrateful, Laurence,’ she added, coming to warm her hands at the fire, ‘it is a miracle you should have brought us Iskierka and one egg whole, considering the way Bonaparte has been romping about the Continent, much less our amiable band of brigands with them; but I would be a good deal happier to have another twenty at such a price.’

Laurence would have been a good deal happier to have the first twenty ferals more manageable; a quality they were not more likely to gain after Tharkay’s departure. ‘I will pray for your safe return,’ Laurence said, and offered his hand in farewell. He could not object, it was hard to imagine that Tharkay’s pride might allow him to remain as a supernumerary, even if mere restlessness did not drive him on.

‘What an odd fellow you have found us, Laurence,’ Jane said, when Tharkay had gone. ‘I ought to give him his weight in gold, and would, if the Admiralty would not squawk. Twenty dragons talked out of the trees, like Merlin; or was it St. Patrick? Never mind, come to my rooms, if you please. This place has a cursed draft, and my maps are there.’

The map of Europe was laid out on her table, covered with great clots of markers, representing dragon positions from the western borders of Prussia’s former territory all the way to the footsteps of Russia. ‘From Jena to Warsaw in three weeks,’ she said, as one of her runners poured wine for them. ‘I would not have given a bad ha’penny for the news, if you had not brought it yourself, Laurence; and if we hadn’t had it from the Navy, too, I would have sent you to a physician.’

Laurence nodded. ‘And I have a great deal to tell you of Bonaparte’s aerial tactics too, they have changed entirely. Formations are of no use against him; at Jena, the Prussians were routed, wholly routed. We must begin devising counters to his new methods at once.’

But she was already shaking her head. ‘Do you know, Laurence, I have less than forty dragons fit to fly? Unless Bonaparte is a lunatic, he will not come across with less than a hundred. He shan’t need any fine tactics to do for us. For our part, there is no one to learn any new defence.’

The scope of the disaster silenced him: only forty dragons, to patrol the south coast, and give cover to the ships of the blockade.

‘What we need at present is time,’ Jane continued. ‘There are a dozen hatchlings in Ireland, preserved from contagion, and twice as many eggs due to hatch in the next six months. We bred a good many of them, early on. If our friend Bonaparte is good enough to give us a year, the rest of these new shore-batteries will be in place, the young dragons brought up, and we’ll have your ferals knocked into shape; not to mention Temeraire and our new fire-breather.’

‘Will he give us a year?’ Laurence said, low, looking at the counters. There were not many near the Channel yet; but he had seen first-hand how swiftly Napoleon’s dragon-borne army could move.

‘Not a minute, if he hears anything of our pitiable state,’ Jane said. ‘But our troubles aside, well, we hear he has made a very good friend in Warsaw, a Polish countess. They say she is a raving beauty, and he would like to marry a sister of the Tsar. We will wish him good fortune in his courting, and hope that he takes his long leisurely time about it. If he is sensible, he will want a winter night to make a crossing, and the days are already growing longer.

‘But we can be sure that if he learns how thin we are on the ground, he will come posting back quick as lightning, and damn the ladies. So our task of the moment is to keep him properly in the dark. In a year’s time we will have something to work with; but until then, for you all it must be—’

‘Oh, patrolling,’ Temeraire said, in tones of despair, when Laurence had brought their orders.

‘I am sorry, my dear,’ Laurence said, ‘very truly sorry; but if we can serve our friends at all, it will be by taking on those duties which they have had to set aside.’ Temeraire was silent and brooding. In an attempt to cheer him, Laurence added, ‘But we need not abandon your cause, not in the least. I cannot write my father, as relations between us stand; but I will write my mother, and those of my acquaintance who may have the best advice to give, on how we ought to proceed—’

‘Whatever sense is there in it,’ Temeraire said, miserably, ‘when all our friends are ill, and there is nothing to be done for them? It does not matter if one is not allowed to visit London, if one cannot even fly for an hour. And Arkady does not give a fig for liberty, anyway; all he wants are cows. We may as well patrol; or even do formations.’

This was the mood in which they went aloft, a dozen of the ferals behind them more occupied in squabbling amongst themselves than in paying any attention to the sky; Temeraire was in no way inclined to make them mind, and with Tharkay gone, the few hapless officers set upon their backs had very little hope of exerting any form of control.

These young men had been chosen for their language skills. The ferals all far too old, in draconic terms, to acquire a new tongue easily, so their officers would have to learn theirs instead. To hear them trying to whistle and cluck the awkward syllables of the Durzagh language had quickly palled as entertainment and become a nuisance to the ear. But it had also to be endured; no one aside from Temeraire knew the tongue fluently, and only a few of Laurence’s younger officers had acquired a smattering in the course of their journey to Istanbul.

Laurence had indeed lost two of his already-diminished number of officers to the cause: both Dunne, one of the riflemen, and Wickley of the bellmen had a good enough grasp of Durzagh to translate basic signals, and were not so young as to make command absurd. They had been set aboard Arkady in a highly theoretical position of authority; the natural bond which the first harnessing seemed to produce was absent of course, and Arkady was far more likely to obey his own whimsical impulse than any orders which they might give. The feral leader had already expressed his opinion that flying over the ocean was absurd, he proclaimed it a useless territory for which no reasonable dragon would have interest, and the likelihood that he would veer away at any given moment in search of better entertainment seemed to Laurence precariously high.

Jane had set them a course along the coastline, for their first excursion. There was no risk at all of action, so near to land, but at least the cliffs interested the ferals. The bustle of shipping around Portsmouth had drawn their eye, and they would gladly have investigated further if not called to order by Temeraire. They flew on past Southampton and westward along towards Weymouth, setting a leisurely pace. The ferals resorted to wild acrobatics for entertainment; swooping to heights that should have rendered them dizzy and ill, save for their habituation among the loftiest mountains on the earth. They plummeted into absurd and dangerous diving manoeuvres, skimming the sea so closely that they threw up spray from the waves. It was a sad waste of energy, but the ferals now were well-fed by comparison to their previous state, and they had a surfeit which Laurence was glad enough to see spent in so unrestrained a manner, even if the officers clinging sickly to their harnesses did not agree.

‘Perhaps we might try a little fishing,’ Temeraire suggested, turning his head around, when little Gherni abruptly cried out above them, and then the world spun and whirled as Temeraire flung himself sidelong; a Pêcheur-Rayé went flying past them, and the champagne-popping of rifle-fire spat at them from his back.

‘To stations,’ Ferris was shouting, men scrambling wildly; the bellmen were casting off a handful of bombs down on the recovering French dragon below while Temeraire veered away, climbing. Arkady and the ferals were shrilly calling to one another, wheeling excitedly; they flung themselves with eagerness on the French dragons: a light scouting party of six, as best Laurence could make out among the low-lying clouds, the Pêcheur the largest of the lot and the rest all light-weights or couriers; both outnumbered and outweighed, therefore, and reckless to be coming so close to British shores.

Reckless, or deliberately venturesome; Laurence thought grimly it could not have escaped the notice of the French that their last encounter had brought no answer from the coverts.

‘Laurence, I am going after that Pêcheur; Arkady and the others will take the rest,’ Temeraire said, curving his head around even as he dived.

The ferals were not shy by any means, and gifted skirmishers, from all their play; Laurence thought it safe to leave the smaller dragons entirely to them. ‘Pray make no sustained attack,’ he called, through the speaking-trumpet. ‘Only roust them from the shore, as quickly as you may—’ as the hollow thump-thump of bombs, exploding below, interrupted.

Their own battle was not a long one; without the hope of surprise, the Pêcheur knew himself thoroughly overmatched, Temeraire a more agile flyer and in a wholly different class so far as weight. Having risked and lost a throw of the dice, he and his captain were evidently not inclined to try their luck again; Temeraire had scarcely stooped before the Pêcheur dropped low to the water and beat away quickly over the waves, his riflemen keeping up a steady fusillade to clear his retreat.

Laurence turned his attention above, to the furious howling of the ferals’ voices: they could scarcely be seen, having lured the French high aloft, where their greater ease with the thin air could tell to their advantage. ‘Where the devil is my glass?’ he said, and took it from Allen. The ferals were making a sort of taunting game of the business, darting in at the French dragons and away, setting up a raucous caterwauling as they went, without very much actual fighting to be seen. It would have done nicely to frighten away a rival gang in the wild, Laurence supposed, particularly one so outnumbered, but he did not think the French were to be so easily diverted; indeed as he watched, the five enemy dragons, all of them little Poux-de-Ciels, drew into close formation and promptly bowled through the cloud of ferals.

The ferals, still focused on their show of bravado, scattered too late to evade the rifle-fire, and now some of their shrill cries expressed real pain. Temeraire was beating furiously, his sides belling out like sails as he heaved for the breath to get himself as high, but he could not easily gain such altitude, and would be at a disadvantage to the smaller French beasts when he did. ‘Give them a gun, quickly, and show the signal for descent,’ Laurence shouted to Turner, without much hope; but the ferals came plummeting down in a rush when Turner put out the flags, none too reluctant to position themselves around Temeraire.

Arkady was keeping up a low, indignant clamouring under his breath, nudging anxiously at his second Wringe, the worst-hit, her dark grey hide marred with streaks of darker blood. She had taken several balls to the flesh and one unlucky hit to the right wing, which had struck her on the bias and scraped a long, ugly furrow across the tender webbing and two spines; she was listing in mid-air awkwardly as she tried to favour it.

‘Send her below to shore,’ Laurence said, scarcely needing the speaking-trumpet with the dragons crowded so close that they might have been talking in a clearing and not the open sky. ‘And pray tell them again, they must keep well-clear of the guns; I am sorry they have had so hot a lesson. Let us keep together and—’ but this came too late, as the French were advancing down in arrow-head formation, and the ferals followed his first instruction too closely on and had spread themselves out across the sky.

The French also at once separated; even together they were not a match for Temeraire, who they had surely recognized, and by way of protection engaged themselves closely with the ferals. It must have been an odd experience for them; Poux-de-Ciel were generally the lightest of the French combat breeds, and now they were finding themselves the relative heavy-weights in battle against the ferals, who even where their wingspan and length matched were all of them lean and concave-bellied creatures, a sharp contrast against the deep-chested muscle of their opponents.

The ferals were now more wary, but also more savage, hot with anger at the injury to their fellow and their own smaller stinging wounds. They used their darting lunges to better effect, learning quickly how to feint in and provoke the rifle volleys, then come in again for a real attack. The smallest of them, Gherni and little motley-coloured Lester, were attacking one Pou-de-Ciel together, with the more wily Hertaz pouncing in every now and again, claws blackened with blood; the others were engaged singly, and more than holding their own, but Laurence quickly perceived the danger, even as Temeraire called, ‘Arkady! Bnezh s’li taqom—’ and broke off to say, ‘Laurence, they are not listening to me.’

‘Yes, they will be in the soup in a moment,’ Laurence agreed; the French dragons, though they seemed on the face of it to be fighting as independently as the ferals, were all manoeuvring skilfully, their backs to one another; indeed they were only allowing the ferals to herd them into formation, which should allow them to make another devastating pass. ‘Can you break them apart, when they have come together?’

‘I do not see how I will be able to do it, without hurting our friends; they are so close to one another, and some of them are so little,’ Temeraire said anxiously, tail lashing as he hovered.

‘Sir,’ Ferris said, and Laurence looked at him. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but we are always told, as a rule, to take a bruising before a ball; it don’t hurt them long, even if they are knocked properly silly, and we are close enough to give any of them a lift to land, if it should go so badly.’

‘Very good; thank you, Mr. Ferris,’ Laurence said, putting strong approval in it; he was still very glad to see Granby matched off with Iskierka, even more so when dragons would now be in such short supply, but he felt the loss keenly, as exposing the weaknesses in his own abbreviated training as an aviator. Ferris had risen to his occasions with near-heroism, but he had been but a third lieutenant on their departure from England, scarcely a year ago, and at nineteen years of age could not be expected to put himself forward to his captain with the assurance of an experienced officer.

Temeraire put his head down and puffed up his chest with a deep breath, then flung himself down among the shrinking knot of dragons, and barrelled through with much the effect of a cat descending upon an unsuspecting flock of pigeons. Friend and foe alike went tumbling wildly; and thankfully, the ferals, used to rough play, were none of them much the worse for wear, except for being flung into higher excitement. They flew around with much disorderly shrilling for a few moments, and as they did, the French righted themselves: the formation leader waved a signal-flag, and the Poux-de-Ciel wheeled together and away, escaping.

Arkady and the ferals did not pursue, but came gleefully romping back over to Temeraire, alternating complaints at his having knocked them about, with boastful prancing over their victory and the rout of the enemy, which Arkady implied was in spite of Temeraire’s jealous interference. ‘That is not true, at all,’ Temeraire said, outraged, ‘you would have been perfectly dished without me,’ and turned his back upon them and flew towards land, his ruff stiffened up with indignation.

Wringe was sitting and licking at her scarred wing in the middle of a field. A few clumps of bloodstained white wool upon the grass, and a certain atmosphere of carnage in the air, suggested she had quietly found herself some consolation; but Laurence chose to be blind. Arkady immediately set up as a hero for her benefit, and paraded back and forth to re-enact the encounter. So far as Laurence could follow, the battle might have raged a fortnight, and engaged some hundreds of enemy beasts, all of them vanquished by Arkady’s solitary efforts. Temeraire snorted and flicked his tail in disdain, but the other ferals proved perfectly happy to applaud the revised account, though they occasionally jumped up to interject stories of their own noble exploits.

Laurence meanwhile had dismounted; his new surgeon Dorset, a rather thin and nervous young man, bespectacled and given to stammering, was going over Wringe’s injuries. ‘Will she be well enough to make the flight back to Dover?’ Laurence inquired; the scraped wing looked nasty, what he could see of it; she uneasily kept trying to fold it close and away from the inspection, though fortunately Arkady’s theatrics were keeping her distracted enough that Dorset could make some attempt at handling it.

‘No,’ Dorset said absently, with not the shade of a stammer and a quite casual authority. ‘She needs to lie quiet a day or so under a poultice; and those balls must come out of her shoulder presently, although not now. There’s a courier-ground outside Weymouth, which has been taken off the routes and will be free from infection. We must find a way to get her there.’ He let go of her wing and turned back to Laurence blinking watery eyes.

‘Very well,’ Laurence said, bemused; at the change in his demeanour more than the certainty alone. ‘Mr. Ferris, have you the maps?’

‘Yes, sir; though it is twelve miles straight flying to Weymouth covert across the water, sir, if you please,’ Ferris said, hesitating over the leather wallet of maps.

Laurence nodded and waved them away. ‘Temeraire can support her so far, I am sure.’

Her weight posed less difficulty than her unease with the proposed arrangement, and, too, Arkady’s sudden fit of jealousy, which caused him to propose himself as a substitute: quite ineligible, as Wringe outweighed him by several tons, and they should not have lifted him a yard off the ground.

‘Pray do not be so silly,’ Temeraire said, as she dubiously expressed her reservations at being ferried. ‘I am not going to drop you unless you bite me. You have only to lie quiet, and it is a very short way.’

Chapter Three

They reached the Weymouth covert only a little short of dusk, somewhat dispirited. Wringe had expressed her intention seven times during the course of their flight, of climbing off mid-air and flying the rest of the way herself. Then she had accidentally scratched Temeraire twice, in startlement, and had even thrown a couple of the topmen clean off his back with her uneasy shifting. Their lives were saved only by their carabiner-locked straps. On landing, they were both handed down badly bruised and ill from the knocking they had taken, and assisted by their fellows, they limped away to be dosed liberally with brandy at the small barracks-house.

Wringe then put up a fuss upon having the bullets extracted, sidling her hindquarters away when Dorset approached, knife in hand. She insisted that she was quite well, but Temeraire was sufficiently exasperated by now to have lost patience with her evasions, and his low rumbling growl, resonating upon the hard-packed earth, made her flatten to the ground meekly and submit.

‘That will do,’ Dorset said, having pried out the third and final of the balls. ‘Now let’s have some fresh meat for her, just to be sure, and a night’s quiet rest. This dry ground is too hard,’ he added, with disapproval, as he climbed down from her shoulder, the three balls rattling bloodily in his little basin.

‘I do not care if it is the hardest ground in Britain; only let me have a cow and I will sleep,’ Temeraire said wearily, leaning his head so that Laurence could stroke his muzzle while his own shallow cuts were poulticed. He ate the cow in three tremendous tearing gulps, hooves to horns, tipping his head backwards to let the last bite of hindquarters slip down his throat. The farmer who had been prevailed upon to bring some of his beasts to the covert stood paralyzed in macabre fascination, his mouth agape, His two farm-hands stood likewise, their eyes starting from their heads. Laurence pressed a few more guineas into the man’s unresisting hand and hurried them all off; it would do Temeraire’s cause no good to have fresh and lurid tales of draconic savagery spreading.

The ferals disposed of themselves directly around the wounded Wringe, sheltering her from any draft and pillowing themselves one upon the other as comfortably as they could manage, the smaller ones among them crawling upon Temeraire’s back directly he had fallen asleep.

It was too cold to sleep out, and they had not brought tents with them on patrol; Laurence meant to leave the barracks, small enough in all conscience without dividing off a captain’s partition, to his men, and take himself to a hotel, if one might be had; in any case he would have been glad of a chance to send word back to Dover by the stage, that their absence would not occasion distress. He did not trust any of the ferals to go alone, yet, with their few officers so unfamiliar.

Ferris approached as Laurence made inquiry of the few tenants of the covert. ‘Sir, if you please, my family are here in Weymouth; I am sure my mother would be very happy if you chose to stay the night,’ he said, adding, with a quick, anxious glance that belied the easy way in which he issued this invitation, ‘I should only like to send word ahead.’

‘That is handsome of you, Mr. Ferris; I would be grateful, if I should not be putting her out,’ Laurence said. He did not miss the anxiety. It was likely that Ferris felt compelled to make the invitation out of courtesy, and would have done so even if his family had not so much as an attic corner and a crust of bread to spare. Most of his younger gentlemen, indeed most of the Corps, were drawn from the ranks of what could only be called the shabby-gentility. He knew that they were inclined to think him higher than he himself did: his father kept a grand state, certainly, but Laurence had not spent three months together at home since taking to sea, without much sorrow inflicted on either side, except perhaps for his mother’s, and so he was better accustomed to a hanging berth than a palace.

Even so, he would have spared Ferris out of sympathy but for the likely difficulty of finding other lodgings; and his own weary desire to be settled, even if it were indeed in an attic corner, with a crust of bread. With the noise of the day behind them, he was finding it difficult not to yield to a lowness of spirit. The ferals had behaved as badly as expected, and he could not help but think how impossible it would be to guard the Channel with such a company. The contrast to the fine and ordered ranks of British formations could not have been greater. But those ranks were now decimated, and he felt their absence keenly.

The word was sent accordingly and a carriage was summoned. It was waiting outside the covert gates by the time they had gathered their things and walked to meet it down the long narrow path which led away from the dragon-clearings.

A twenty minute drive brought them to the outskirts of Weymouth. Ferris grew more hunched as they bowled along, and became so miserably white that Laurence might have thought him taken ill with motion sickness if he had not known Ferris to be perfectly settled through thunderstorms aloft and typhoons at sea. He was not likely to be distressed by the motion of a comfortable, well-sprung chaise. The carriage turned, then, drawing into a heavily wooded lane. Shortly the forest parted and they drew abreast of the house: a vast and sprawling gothic edifice, its blackened stone barely visible behind centuries of ivy; the windows illuminated, threw a beautiful golden light onto a small ornamental brook which wound through the open lawn before the house.

‘A very fine prospect, Mr. Ferris,’ Laurence said as they rattled over the bridge. ‘You must be sorry not to be at home more often. Has your family resided here long?’

‘Oh, for an age,’ Ferris said, blankly, lifting his head. ‘It was built by some crusader or other, I think, I don’t much know.’

Laurence hesitated and then a little reluctantly offered, ‘My father and I have disagreed on occasion, I am sorry to say, so I am not often at home.’

‘Mine is dead,’ Ferris said. After a moment, he seemed to realize that this was rather an abrupt period to the conversation, and so added with some effort, ‘My brother Albert is a good sort, I suppose, but he has ten years on me and so we have never really come to know one another.’

‘Ah,’ Laurence said, left no more the wiser as to the cause of his dismay.

There was certainly nothing lacking in their welcome. Laurence had braced himself for the usual neglect. He expected to be shown directly to rooms out of sight of the rest of the company and was even tired enough now to hope to be slighted. But nothing of the sort: a dozen footmen were out with their lights lining the drive, another two waiting with the step to hand them down, and a substantial body of the staff coming outside to greet them despite the cold and what must surely have been a full house within to manage, a wholly unnecessary ostentation.

Ferris blurted desperately, just as the horses were drawn up, ‘Sir – I hope you will not take it to heart, if my mother – She means well—’ The footmen opened the door, and discretion forced Ferris’s mouth closed.

They were shown to the drawing-room and found company assembled to meet them: not very large, but decidedly elegant. The women wore clothing of an unfamiliar style, the surest mark of the height of fashion to a man who was often separated from society for a year at a time. Several of the gentlemen bordered on outright dandyism. Laurence noted it all mechanically; he wore trousers and Hessians himself, and those were dust-stained, but he could not be brought to care very much, even when he saw that the other gentlemen were dressed more formally in knee-breeches. There were also a couple of military men among their number, a colonel of the marines whose long, seamy, sun-leathered face held a vague familiarity that most likely meant they had dined together on one ship or another, and a tall army captain in a red coat, stood near him, lantern-jawed and blue-eyed.

‘Henry, my dear!’ A tall woman rose from her seat to come and greet them with both her hands outstretched: too like Ferris to mistake her, with the same high forehead and reddish-brown hair, and the same trick of holding her head very straight, which made her neck look longer. ‘How happy we are you have come!’

‘Mother,’ Ferris said, woodenly, and bent to kiss her obliging cheek. ‘May I present Captain Laurence? Sir, this is Lady Catherine Seymour, my mother.’

‘Captain Laurence, I am overjoyed to make your acquaintance,’ she said, offering him her hand.

‘My lady,’ Laurence said, giving her a formal leg. ‘I am very sorry to intrude upon you; I beg you will forgive us arriving in all our dirt.’

‘Any officer of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps is welcome in this house, Captain,’ she declared, ‘at any moment of day or night, I assure you, and should he come with no introduction at all, he should be welcome still.’

Laurence did not know what to say to this. He would no more have descended upon a strange house without introduction than loot one. The hour was late, but not uncivilized, and he was accompanied by her own son, so found such reassurances to be unnecessary, but having been invited and welcomed, he settled on a vague, ‘Very kind.’

The company was not similarly effusive. Ferris’s eldest brother Albert, the present Lord Seymour, was a little haughty. He made the early point, when Laurence complimented his house, of conveying that the house was called Heytham Abbey, and had been in their possession since the reign of Charles II. The head of the family had risen from knight to baronet to baron in a steady climb, and had there remained.

‘I congratulate you,’ Laurence said, dismissing the obvious opening to puff about his own consequence; he was an aviator now, and knew well that such evil outweighed any other considerations in the eyes of Society. He could not help but wonder why they should have sent a son to the corps; there was no sign of it being an encumbered estate: while appearances might be sustained on credit, so extravagant a number of servants could not have been managed.

Dinner was announced shortly after they arrived, to Laurence’s surprise; he had hoped for nothing more than a little cold supper, and thought it late even for that much. ‘Oh, think nothing of it, we are grown modern, and often keep town hours even when we are in the country,’ Lady Catherine cried. ‘We have so much company from London that it would be tiresome for them to be constantly adjusting their dinner-hour. Dishes would be sent away half-eaten, only to be wished for later. Now, we will certainly not stand on formality; I must have Henry beside me, for I am longing to hear all you have been doing, my dear, and Captain Laurence, you shall escort Lady Seymour, of course.’

Laurence could only bow politely and offer his arm, although Lord Seymour certainly ought to have preceded him, even if Lady Catherine chose to make a natural exception for her younger son. Her daughter-law looked for a moment as if she were going to balk at the offer, but then she laid her hand on his arm without any further hesitation, and he chose not to notice.

‘Henry is my youngest, you know,’ Lady Catherine said to Laurence over the second course; he was on her right. ‘Second sons in this house have always gone to the drum, and the third to the Corps, and I hope that may never change.’ This, Laurence thought might have been subtly directed at his dinner companion, but Lady Seymour gave no sign that she had heard her mother-in-law as she continued to speak with the gentleman on her right, the army captain, who was Ferris’s other brother, Richard. ‘I am very glad, Captain Laurence, to meet a gentleman whose family feels as I do on the matter.’

Laurence, who had only narrowly escaped being thrown from his house by his irate father due to his shift in profession, could not in honesty accept this compliment, and with some awkwardness said, ‘Ma’am, I beg your pardon, I must confess you do us credit and yet we have not earned it. Younger sons in my family are supposed to go to the Church, but I was mad for the sea, and would have no other.’ He was then forced to explain his accidental acquisition of Temeraire and subsequent transfer to the Aerial Corps.

‘I will not withdraw my remarks, sir. It is even more to their credit that you have principle enough to do your duty when it was presented to you,’ Lady Catherine said firmly. ‘It is shameful, the disdain that so many of our finest families profess for the Corps, and I will never hold with them in the least.’

The dishes were being changed once again as she made this ringing and overly-loud speech. Laurence noticed, baffled, that they were returning nearly untouched after all. The food had been excellent, therefore he could only conceive that Lady Catherine’s protestations were humbug, and that they had already dined earlier in the evening. He watched covertly as the next course was dished out, and indeed, the ladies in particular, picked unenthusiastically at the food, scarcely bothering to uphold the pretence of conveying morsels to their mouths. Of the gentlemen only Colonel Prayle seemed to make any serious progress. He caught Laurence looking and gave him just the slightest wink, then continued eating with the steady trencherman rhythm of a professional soldier, used to taking advantage of any food when it was before him.

If they had been a large party, coming late to an empty house, Laurence might have understood a gracious host holding back dinner for their convenience, or serving them a later second meal at the table, but the assumption that they might have been offended by a simple private supper, when the rest of the company had already dined, was absurd. He was obliged to sit through several more removes, uncomfortably aware that they were a pleasure for no one else. Ferris ate sparingly, with his head down; ordinarily he possessed as rapacious an appetite as any nineteen-year-old boy unpredictably fed of late.

When the ladies departed to the drawing room, Lord Seymour began to offer port and cigars, with a determined, if false, note of heartiness. Laurence refused all but the smallest glass for politeness’ sake. No one objected to rejoining the ladies quickly, most of them had already started to droop by the fire even though not half an hour had elapsed.

No one proposed cards or music; the conversation was low and leaden. ‘How dull you all are tonight!’ Lady Catherine rallied them, with a nervous energy. ‘You will give Captain Laurence a quite disgusting impression of our society.

‘You cannot often have been in Dorset, I suppose, Captain.’

‘No, I have not had the pleasure before, ma’am,’ Laurence said. ‘My uncle lives near Wimbourne, but I have not visited him in many years.’

‘Oh! The perhaps you are acquainted with Mrs. Brantham’s family?’

One of the ladies, who had been nodding off, roused long enough to say, with sleepy tactlessness, ‘I am sure he is not.’

‘It is not likely that I been introduced, ma’am; my uncle moves very rarely outside his political circles,’ Laurence said, after a pause. ‘Also, my service has kept me from enjoying wider society, particularly these last few years.’

‘But what compensations you must have had!’ Lady Catherine said. ‘I am sure it must be glorious to travel by dragon, without any worry that you could be sunk in a gale, and to arrive so much more quickly.’

‘Ha ha, unless your ship grows tired of the journey and eats you,’ Captain Ferris said, nudging his younger brother with his elbow.

‘Richard, what nonsense, as if there were any danger of such a thing! I must insist that you withdraw the remark,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘You offend our guest.’

‘Not at all, ma’am,’ Laurence said, discomfited; the vigour of her objection gave an undeserved weight to the joke. He could more easily have borne the jest than her compliments, which he could not help but feel were excessive and insincere.

‘You are kind to be so tolerant,’ she said. ‘Of course, Richard was only joking, but you would be simply appalled to know how many people in society say such things and believe them. I am sure it is very poor-spirited to be afraid of dragons.’

’ ‘I am afraid it is only the natural consequence,’ Laurence said, ‘of the unfortunate state of affairs that prevails in our country, which keeps dragons isolated in distant coverts and encourages horrific conjecture.’

‘But, what else is to be done with them?’ Lord Seymour said. ‘Are we to put them in the village square?’ He amused himself greatly with this suggestion; he was by now uncomfortably florid of face, having heroically performed his duty as host over a second dinner. Even now he did justice to another glass of port, over which he coughed as he laughed.

‘In China, they can be seen in the streets of every town and city,’ Laurence said. ‘They sleep in pavilions no more separated from residences than town-houses in London.’

‘Heavens;’ I would not sleep a wink,’ Mrs. Brantham said, with a shudder. ‘How dreadful these foreign customs are.’

‘It seems to me a most peculiar arrangement,’ Seymour said, his brows drawing together. ‘How do the horses stand it? My driver in town must go a mile out of his way when the wind is in the wrong quarter and blowing over the covert, because the beasts get so skittish.’

Laurence had to concede that even in China they did not cope well; horses were not often evident in the cities, except for trained cavalry beasts. ‘But I assure you their lack is not felt; they employ dragons as living carriages, and citizens of higher estate are conveyed individually by courier, at as you can imagine a much higher rate of speed. Indeed, Bonaparte himself has adopted the system, at least within his encampments.’

‘Oh, Bonaparte,’ Seymour said. ‘No; thank goodness we organize things more sensibly here. I have been meaning to congratulate you. Ordinarily, not a month goes by when my tenants do not complain about the patrols passing overhead, frightening their cattle to pieces and leaving their—’ he waved his hand expressively as a concession to the ladies ‘—everywhere, but this six-month there has been not a peep from them. I suppose you have implemented new routes, and none too soon. I had nearly made up my mind to raise the matter in Parliament.’

Though aware of the circumstance reducing the frequency of the patrols, Laurence could not answer this remark in a civil fashion; so he did not answer at all, and instead went to fill his glass again.

He took it away and went to stand by the window furthest from the fire, to keep his senses refreshed by the cool draught. Lady Seymour had taken a seat beside it for the same reason. She had put aside her wineglass and was slowly fanning herself. When he had stood there for a moment she made a visible effort to engage him. ‘So Captain, you were forced to shift from the Navy to the Aerial Corps? It must have been very hard. I suppose you must have gone to sea when you were fully mature?’

‘I first took ship at the age of twelve, ma’am,’ Laurence said.

‘Oh! But you must have come home, from time to time, surely? And twelve years is not as young as the schooling age of seven; no one can say there is no difference. Even so, I am sure your mother must never have thought of sending you from home at such an age.’

Laurence hesitated, conscious that Lady Catherine and indeed most of the other company, who had not dozed off, were now listening to their conversation. ‘I was fortunate to secure a berth more often than not, so I was not much at home.’ he said, as neutrally as he could. ‘I am sure it must be hard, for a mother, in either case.’

‘Hard! Of course it is hard,’ Lady Catherine said, interjecting. ‘What of it? We mothers ought to have the courage to send our sons, if we expect them to have the courage to go, and we should not view it as some sort of grudging sacrifice and send them off so late that they are too old to properly take to the life.’

‘I suppose,’ Lady Seymour said, with a tight, angry smile, ‘that we might also starve our children, to accustom them to privation, and force them to sleep in a pigsty, so they might learn to endure filth and cold.’

What little other conversation had gone forward, now was completely extinguished. Spots of colour stood high on Lady Catherine’s cheeks. Lord Seymour snored prudently by the fire, his eyes shut, and poor Lieutenant Ferris had retreated into the opposite corner of the room and was staring fixedly out the window into the pitch-dark grounds, where nothing was to be seen.

Laurence, sorry to have blundered into an long-standing quarrel, attempted to make peace, and said, ‘I hope you will permit me to say that I have found the Corps to be undeserving of the character it has been given. I believe it to be no more dangerous or distasteful day to day, than any other branch of the military; I can, from my own experience, say that our sailors face as much hard duty as the aviators, and I am sure that Captain Ferris and Colonel Prayle will attest to the privations of their respective services,’ he raised his glass to those gentlemen.

‘Hear, hear,’ Prayle said, coming to his aid, jovially, ‘aviators cannot claim all the hard luck. We fellows also deserve our fair share of your sympathy. But you may be sure that they will always possess the latest news of the war; Captain Laurence, you must know better than any of us, what is occurring on the Continent. Tell us, is Bonaparte preparing for invasion again, now that he has packed the Russians off home?’

‘Pray do not speak of that monster,’ Mrs. Brantham spoke up. ‘I am sure I have never heard anything half so dreadful as what he has done to the Queen of Prussia by taking both her sons away to Paris!’

At this, Lady Seymour, still flushed, spoke out, ‘Poor woman, she must be in agony. What mother’s heart could bear it! Mine would break to pieces, I know.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Laurence said, to Mrs. Brantham, breaking the awkward silence that followed. ‘They are very brave children.’

‘Henry tells me you have had the honour of meeting them, during your service, Captain Laurence, and the Queen too,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘I am sure you must agree, that however much her heart should break, she would never encourage her sons to be cowards, and hide behind her skirts.’

He could say nothing to this without prolonging the squabble, so simply gave her a bow. Lady Seymour was looking out the window, fanning herself with short jerky strokes. The conversation limped on a little longer, and as soon as he felt he could politely excuse himself, he did, on the grounds of their early departure.

He was shown to a very handsome room, which held signs of a hasty rearrangement; a comb by the washbasin suggested that it had been otherwise occupied until perhaps that very evening. Laurence shook his head at this fresh sign of over-solicitousness, and was sorry for the guest who had been inconvenienced on his account.

Before a full quarter of an hour had passed, Lieutenant Ferris knocked timidly on his door, and when admitted tried to express his regrets without precisely apologizing, as he could scarcely do. ‘I only wish she would not feel it so. I suppose it is because I did not want to go at the time, and she cannot forget that I wept,’ he said, fidgeting with the curtain uneasily. He was looking out the window to avoid meeting Laurence’s eyes. ‘But that was only fear of leaving home, as any child would experience; I am not sorry for it now, at all, and I would not give up the Corps for anything.’

He soon made his goodnights and escaped again, leaving Laurence to ruefully consider that the cold, open hostility of his father might yet be preferable to a welcome so anxious and smothering.

One of the footmen tapped at the door to offer valet services to Laurence, directly after Ferris had gone; but he had nothing to do. Laurence had grown so used to doing everything for himself, that his coat was already off, and his boots in the corner, although he was glad enough to send them away for blacking.

He had not long been abed before he was disturbed again, by a great barking clamour from the kennels and the mad shrilling of horses. He went to the window and saw lights coming on in the distant stables, and heard a thin faint whistling somewhere aloft, carrying clearly from a distance. ‘Bring my boots at once, if you please; and instruct the household to remain within,’ Laurence told the footman, who had responded hurriedly to his ring.

He went down in some disarray, tying his neck cloth with a flare in his hand. ‘Clear away, there,’ he called loudly to the servants who had gathered in the open court before the house. ‘Clear away: the dragons will need room to land.’

This intelligence emptied the courtyard. Ferris was already hurrying out, carrying his own signal-flare and a candle. He knelt down to ignite the blue light, which hissed into the air and burst high above them. The night was clear, and the moon only a thin slice; at once the whistling came again, louder: it was Gherni’s high ringing voice. She descended in a rustle of wings.

‘Henry, is that your dragon? Where do you all sit?’ asked Captain Ferris, coming down the stairs cautiously. Gherni, whose head did not reach the second storey windows, would have indeed been hard-pressed to carry more than four or five men. While no dragon could be described as charming, her blue-and-white china complexion was rather elegant, and the darkness softened the edges of her claws and teeth into a less threatening shape. Laurence was heartened to see that a few of the party, still more or less dressed, had gathered on the stoop to see her.

She cocked her head at Captain Ferris’ questions and said something in the dragon tongue that was quite incomprehensible, then sat up on her hind legs and called out a piercing answer to a cry that only she had heard.

Temeraire’s more resonant voice soon became audible, and he landed on the wide lawn behind Gherni. The lamps gleamed on his thousands of glossy obsidian scales, and his shivering wings kicked up a spray of dust and small pebbles that rattled against the walls like small-shot. He curved his great serpentine neck, so that his head was well clear of the roof. ‘Pray hurry, Laurence,’ he said. ‘A courier came to tell us that there is a Fleur-de-Nuit bothering the ships off Boulogne. I have sent Arkady and the others to chase him away, but I do not trust them to mind themselves without me there.’

‘No indeed,’ Laurence said, turning only to shake Captain Ferris’s hand; but there was no sign of him, or of any living souls but Ferris and Gherni. The doors had been shut tight, and the windows all were shuttered.

* * *

‘Well, we are in for it, make no mistake,’ Jane said, having received Laurence’s report in Temeraire’s clearing. They had fought the first skirmish off Weymouth, with the nuisance of chasing away the Fleur-de-Nuit, and then another alarm had roused them after just a few hours of snatched sleep; and quite unnecessarily so, for they arrived on the edge of dawn only to catch sight of a single French courier vanishing off over the horizon, chased by the orange gouts of cannon-fire from the fearsome shore battery, which had lately been established at Plymouth.

‘They were not real attacks,’ Laurence said. ‘Even that skirmish, though they provoked it. If they had bested us, they could not have stayed to take advantage of it; not upon such small dragons, and not if they wished to get themselves home before they collapsed.’

He had given his men leave to sleep a little on the way back, his own eyes closing once or twice during the flight, too; but that was nothing to seeing Temeraire almost grey with fatigue, and his wings tucked limply against his back.

‘No; they are probing our defences, more aggressively and sooner than I had expected,’ Jane said. ‘I am afraid they have grown suspicious. They chased you into Scotland with neither hide nor wing of another dragon to challenge them. The French are not fool enough to overlook the implications of that, however badly it ended for them. If one of their beasts reach the countryside and flies over the quarantine coverts, the game will be up: they will know they have license to invade.’

‘How have you kept them from growing suspicious this long?’ Laurence said. ‘Surely they must have noted the absence of patrols?’

‘We have managed to disguise the situation so far, by sending the sick on short rounds during clear days when they can be seen from a good distance,’ Jane said. ‘Many of them can still fly, and even fight for a little while, although none of them can stand a long journey. They tire too easily, and they feel the cold more than they should; they complain of aching bones, and the brisk winter has only made matters worse.’

‘If they lie upon the ground, I am not surprised they do not feel well,’ Temeraire said, lifting his head. ‘Of course they feel the cold; I feel it myself on this hard and frozen ground, and I am not at all sick.’

‘Dear fellow,’ Jane said, ‘I would make it summer again if I could; but there is nowhere else for them to sleep.’

‘They must have pavilions,’ Temeraire said.’

‘Pavilions?’ Jane asked.

Laurence went into his small sea-chest and brought out the thick packet which had come with them all the way from China, wrapped many times over with oilcloth and twine. The outer layers were stained almost black, the inner still pale. He unravelled them until he came to the thin fine rice paper inside, illustrating the plans for the dragon-pavilion, then handed the sheets to her.

‘Just see if the Admiralty will pay for such a thing,’ Jane said dryly, but she looked the designs over with a thoughtful more than a critical eye. ‘It is a clever arrangement, and I dare say it would make them a damned sight more comfortable than lying on damp ground. I hear those at Loch Laggan fare better; where they have the heat from the baths underground, and the Longwings quartered in sandpits hold up longer, though they do not like such confinement in the least.’

‘I am sure that if they only had the pavilions and some more appetizing food to eat, they would soon get well. I did not like to eat at all when I had my cold, until the Chinese cooked for me,’ Temeraire said.

‘I second that,’ Laurence agreed. ‘He scarcely ate at all before their intervention. Keynes was of the opinion that the strength of spices compensated, to some part, for his inability to smell or taste with the tongue.’

‘Well, I can certainly find a few guineas here and there for that; and manage to arrange a trial. We have not spent half of what we ordinarily would have on powder,’ Jane said. ‘It will not last for very long, not if we are to feed two hundred dragons spiced meals, and the problem of where I am to find cooks enough to manage it remains, but if we see some improvement from it, we may have some better luck persuading their Lordships to carry the project forward.

Chapter Four

Gong Su, the cook Laurence had hired in China, was enlisted to their cause, and over the course of a week had emptied his spice cabinets. He had made vigorous use of his sharpest peppers, much to the intense disapproval of the herdsmen, who were rousted from comfortable and easy posts, that usually required little more than dragging cows from the pen to slaughter, and had now been set to stirring the pungent cauldrons.

The effect of the new cuisine was a marked one: the dragons’ appetites were more startled awake than coaxed, and many of the near somnolent beasts began clamouring with fresh hunger. However, the spices were not easily replaced, and Gong Su shook his head with dissatisfaction over what the Dover merchants could provide, the cost of which was astronomical.

‘Laurence,’ Jane said, having called him to her quarters for dinner, ‘I hope you will forgive me for dealing you a shabby hand: I mean to send you off to plead our case. I would not like to leave Excidium for long now, and I cannot take him over London sneezing as he does. We can manage a couple of patrols here while you are gone, and so Temeraire may rest; he needs to in any case.

‘And thank Heaven, that fellow Barham, who I believe gave you some difficulty, is out. Grenville has the place now. He is not a bad fellow, so far as I can tell; he does not understand the first thing about dragons, but that hardly makes him unique.’

Later that evening, as Jane reached for her wine glass at the end of her bed and settled back against Laurence’s arm, she said, ‘But I should add, privately, that I would not hazard two pins for my chances of persuading him to anything. He yielded to Powys in the end, over my appointment, and can scarcely bear to address a note to me. The truth is, I have made use of his mortification to squeak through half-a-dozen orders for which I have not quite the authority, some of which I am sure he would have objected to, if he could have done so without summoning me. Our chances of agreement are precious small, but we will do a good deal better with you there.’

It did not prove to be the case, however; even Jane would not have been refused admittance. One of the Navy secretaries: a tall, thin, officious fellow, stood before Laurence speaking impatiently, ‘Yes, yes, I have your numbers written in front of me; and you may be sure we have taken note of the higher requisitions of cattle. But have any of them recovered? You say nothing of that. How many can fly now that could not manage it before, and for how long can they sustain it?’

Laurence resentfully felt as if he were inquiring about the improved performance of a ship, after changes of her cordage or sailcloth. ‘The surgeons are of the opinion, that with these measures we can certainly expect to retard the progress of the illness,’ he could not claim that any had recovered. ‘Which alone must be of benefit, and perhaps with the addition of these pavilions—’

The secretary was shaking his head. ‘If they will not improve further, I cannot give you any encouragement on the matter: we must still build shore batteries along the coastline, and if you think dragons expensive, you cannot imagine the cost of the guns.’

‘All the more reason to spend a little more on the dragons we have, to safeguard their remaining strength,’ Laurence said. In frustration he added, ‘And especially, sir, because it is no more than their just deserts for their service; these are sentient creatures, not dumb cavalry horses.’

‘Oh, such romantic notions,’ the secretary said, dismissively. ‘Captain; I regret to inform you that his Lordship is occupied today. We have your report, and you may be sure he will respond to it, when he has time. I can make you an appointment for next week, perhaps.’

Laurence restrained himself from replying to this incivility in a way he felt it deserved; and departed feeling that he had been a far worse messenger than Jane would have been. His spirits were not to be recovered even upon catching a glimpse of Lord Nelson in the courtyard: splendid in his dress uniform and row of peculiar misshapen medals. They had been partially melted to his skin at Trafalgar, when a pass by a Spanish fire-breather during the battle had caught his flagship, and his life had nearly despaired of from the dreadful burns he received. Laurence was glad to see him so recovered: a line of pink scarred skin was visible upon his jaw, running down his throat into the high collar of his coat; but this did not deter him from talking energetically with, or rather to, a small group of attentive officers, his one arm gesturing wildly.

A crowd had collected at a respectful distance to overhear, and Laurence had to push his way into the street through them, making his muttered apologies as softly as he could; at any other time he might have stayed to listen with them. At present he had to make his way through the streets, thick dark slurry of half-frozen ice and muck chilling his boots, back to the London covert, where Temeraire waited anxiously to receive the news.

‘But surely there must be some means of persuading him,’ Temeraire said. ‘I cannot bear that our friends should be allowed to grow worse, when we have so easy a remedy at hand.’

‘We will have to manage on what we can afford, and stretch that little out,’ Laurence said. ‘Some effect may be produced by simply the searing of the meat, or by stewing it; let us not despair, my dear, but hope that Gong Su’s ingenuity may yet find some answer.”

‘I do not suppose Grenville eats raw beef every night, with the hide still on it, and with no salt added, or that he goes to sleep on the cold ground,’ Temeraire said, resentfully. ‘I should like to see him try it for a week and then try to refuse us.’ His tail lashed dangerously at the already denuded treetops around the edge of the clearing.

Laurence agreed, and then it occurred to him that Grenville was likely to dine from home. He called Emily to fetch him some paper, and wrote several notes in quick succession. The season was not yet begun, but he had a dozen acquaintances besides his family that were likely to be in town for the opening of Parliament. ‘There is very little chance I will be able to catch him,’ he warned Temeraire, to forestall the raising of his hopes, ‘and even less that he will listen to me, if I do.’

He could not wish whole-heartedly for success in locating the man, either; he did not think he could restrain his temper in his present mood, against the further onslaught of casual insults that he was likely to face wearing his aviator’s coat. Indeed, any social occasion promised to be rather a punishment than a pleasure, but an hour before dinner, he received a reply from an old shipmate from the Leander, who had long since made post and was now a member himself, and who expected to meet Grenville that night at Lady Wrightley’s ball: that lady being one of his mother’s intimates.

There was a sad and absurd crush of carriages outside the great house, and a blind obstinacy on the part of two coach drivers who were not willing to give way to each other, narrowing the lane to an impasse so that no one else could move either. Laurence was glad to have resorted to an old fashioned sedan chair, even if he had done so simply due to the impossibility of hiring a horse-drawn carriage anywhere near the covert. He reached the steps unsplattered. Even if his coat were green, at least it was new and properly cut; his linen was beyond reproach and his knee breeches and stockings were a crisp white, so he felt he need not blush for his appearance.

He offered his card and was presented to his hostess, a lady he had met only once before, at one of his mother’s dinners. ‘Pray, how does your mother? I suppose she has gone to the country?’ Lady Wrightley said, perfunctorily extending her hand. ‘Lord Wrightley, this is Captain William Laurence, Lord Allendale’s son.’

A gentleman just lately entered stood beside Lord Wrightley, still speaking with him; he startled at the introduction, and insisted on being presented to Laurence as a Mr. Broughton, from the Foreign Office.

Broughton seized Laurence’s hand with great enthusiasm. ‘Captain Laurence, you must permit me to congratulate you,’ he said. ‘Or should I say, Your Highness, as I suppose we must address you now, ha ha!’

Laurence’s hurried, ‘I beg you will not—’ was thoroughly ignored as an astonished Lady Wrightley demanded an explanation.

‘Why, you have a prince of China attending your party, I will have you know, ma’am. The most complete stroke, Captain, the most complete stroke imaginable. We have had it all from Hammond: his letter has been worn to rags in our offices, and we go about wreathed in delight; we tell others of it just to have the pleasure of saying it over again. How Bonaparte must be gnashing his teeth!’

‘It was nothing to do with me, sir, I assure you,’ Laurence said with growing despair. ‘It was all Mr. Hammond’s doing – a mere formality—’ But he spoke too late, for Broughton was already regaling Lady Wrightley and half-a-dozen other interested parties with a account both colourful and highly inaccurate of Laurence’s adoption, which in truth had been nothing more than a means of saving-face. The Chinese had required the excuse in order to give Laurence their official imprimatur to serve as companion to a Celestial dragon, a privilege reserved solely for the Imperial family. He was quite sure that the Chinese had forgotten his existence the very moment he had departed: he had not entertained the least notion of trading upon the adoption at home.

The brangle of carriages outside had stifled the flow of newcomers causing a lull in the party, still in its early hours, which made everyone more willing to hear the exotic story, although its success had already been guaranteed by the fairy-tale colouration that it had acquired. And so, Laurence found himself the subject of much attention. Lady Wrightley was by no means embarrassed to pronounce Laurence’s attendance a coup rather than a favour done for an old friend.

He would have liked to go at once, but Grenville had not yet arrived, and so he clenched his teeth and bore the indignity of being presented around the room. ‘No, I am afraid I am not ranked in the line of succession,’ he said, over and over, privately thinking that he would like to see the reaction of the Chinese to such a suggestion; they had implied that he was an unlettered savage on more than occasion.

He had not expected to dance; society was perennially uncertain on the subject of the aviators’ respectability, and he did not mean to blight some lady’s reputation, nor open himself to the unpleasant experience of being fended off by a chaperone. But just before the first dance commenced, his hostess presented him deliberately to one of her guests, as an eligible partner. Miss Lucas was perhaps in her second or third season; a plump attractive girl, still delighted with the frivolity of a ball, and full of easy, cheerful conversation.

‘How well you dance!’ she exclaimed, after they had traversed the floor together, with rather more surprise than was complimentary. She asked a great many questions about the Chinese court, which he could not answer: the ladies had been kept thoroughly sequestered from their view. He entertained her a little instead with the description of a theatrical performance, but as he had been stabbed shortly after it ended, his memory proved somewhat imperfect, and naturally it had been carried out in Chinese.

Miss Lucas, in turn, told him a great deal about her family in Hertfordshire, and her tribulations with the harp, expressing the hope of one day playing for him, and then mentioned her next youngest sister who was due to be presented next season. She was nineteen, he surmised; and was struck abruptly when the realisation that Catherine Harcourt had been already Lily’s captain and had flown that year in the Battle of Dover at this age, struck him. He looked at the smiling muslin-clad girl with a hollow feeling, and then looked away. He had written two letters each to Harcourt and to Berkley, on Temeraire’s behalf and his own; but no answer had come. He knew nothing of how they, or their dragons, fared.

He politely returned the lady to her mother; but, having proved himself to be a satisfactory partner, was then forced to submit with to one set after another, until at last, near eleven o’clock, Grenville arrived with a small party of gentlemen.

‘I am expected in Dover tomorrow, sir, or would not trouble you here,’ Laurence said grimly after approaching him. He loathed the necessity of such an encroachment, and did not know whether he could have steeled himself to it, had he not been introduced to Grenville many years before,

‘Laurence, yes,’ Grenville said, vaguely, looking like he wished to move on swiftly. He was no great politician: his brother was the prime minister, and he had been made a lord out of loyalty, and not for his brilliance or even his ambition. He listened without enthusiasm to Laurence’s proposals; detailed carefully for the benefit of their interested audience, who had to remain in ignorance of the epidemic: once the general public was in possession of such information, there could be no concealing it from the enemy.

‘Provision is made,’ Laurence said, ‘for the relatives of the slain, for the sick and wounded, not least because such care will preserve them, or their offspring, for future service. The revisions we desire are nothing more than those attentions, sir, and they have been proven to be beneficial from the example set by the Chinese, whom all of the world acknowledge as being foremost in the understanding of dragonkind.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Grenville said. ‘The comfort and welfare of our brave sailors or aviators, and all of our good beasts, is always principal in the considerations of the Admiralty,’ a meaningless platitude to anyone who had ever visited an army hospital, or had, as Laurence, been forced to subsist upon the provisions deemed suitable for those brave sailors in times of crisis: rotting meat, weevil infested biscuits and the vinegar-water beverage which passed for wine. Veterans of his own crews, or their widows, had also been denied their pensions on scurrilous grounds on far too many occasions, rendering Grenville’s claim absurd.

‘May I hope, then, sir,’ Laurence said, ‘that you approve of us proceeding on this course?’ An avowal, which could not easily be refused without embarrassment; but Grenville was too slippery, and evaded the commitment without openly refusing.

‘We must consider the particulars of these proposals more extensively, Captain; before anything can be done,’ he said. ‘We must consult our best medical men,’ he continued in this vein without pause for some time, until he turned to another gentleman of his acquaintance who had arrived, and addressed him in a new topic: a clear dismissal, and Laurence knew that nothing would be done.

He limped back to the covert in the early hours of the morning; the sun’s faint light just beginning to show. Temeraire lay fast asleep and dreaming, his tail twitching idly back and forth. His crew had dispersed into the barracks or were tucked against his sides, the warmer, if less dignified sleeping place. Laurence went straight to the small cottage that had been provided for his use and sank gladly upon the bed. Wincing, he worked off the tight buckled shoes, still new and stiff, which had cut into his feet.

The morning was a silent one. Besides his failure, which had somehow been communicated throughout the covert, though he had told no one but Temeraire, Laurence had given the men a general furlough night before; and judging by their bloodshot eyes and wan faces, they had made good use of their leave. There was a certain degree of clumsiness and fatigue apparent in their movements, and Laurence watched anxiously as their breakfast, large pots of oat porridge, were manoeuvred precariously off the fire.

Temeraire meanwhile finished picking his teeth with a large leg-bone, the remnant of his own breakfast, a stew of tender veal with onions, and set it down. ‘Laurence, do you still mean to build the one pavilion, even if the Admiralty will give us no funds?’

‘I do,’ Laurence answered. Most aviators acquired only a small amount of prize-money from their battles, as the Admiralty paid little for the capture of a dragon compared to the requisition of a ship, the latter more easily put to use than the former, which required substantial expense in its upkeep. But Laurence had established a handsome level of capital while he was still a naval officer, against which he had little charge, his ordinary pay being sufficient to meet his needs. ‘I must consult with the tradesmen, but I hope that by economising upon the materials and reducing the pavilion in size, I will be able to afford to construct one for you.’

‘Then,’ Temeraire said, with a determined and heroic air, ‘I have been thinking: pray let us build it in the quarantine-grounds instead. I do not much mind my clearing at Dover, and I would rather Maximus and Lily were more comfortable.’

Laurence was surprised; generosity was not a common trait among dragons, who were rather jealous of anything that they considered their property, and a particularly things that were marks of status. ‘If you are quite certain, my dear; it is a noble thought.’

Temeraire toyed with the leg-bone and did not look entirely certain, but eventually made his assent final. ‘In any case,’ he added, ‘once we have built it, perhaps the Admiralty will see the benefit of them, and then I may have an even more handsome one: it would not be very pleasant to have a small poky one, when everyone else’s is nicer.’ This thought cheered him considerably, and he crunched up the bone with satisfaction.

Revived with strong tea and a good breakfast, the crew began to get Temeraire under harness for their return to Dover, only they were still a little slow; Ferris took special pains in seeing that the buckles were secure after Laurence dropped a quiet word in his ear.

‘Sir,’ little Dyer said, as he and Emily came in from the covert gates carrying the post bound for Dover, which they would carry with them, ‘there are some gentlemen approaching.’ Temeraire raised his head from the ground as Lord Allendale came into the covert with a slight, plainly dressed gentleman at his side.

Their progress was arrested as they stared at the great inquisitive head peering at them, and Laurence was very glad for the delay, which gave him time to gather his wits: he would not have been more shocked to receive a visit from the King, but he would have been a good deal more pleased. He could imagine only one cause for the visit: there had been more than one person of his parents’ acquaintance present at the ball, and the news of the foreign adoption must have travelled straight to his father’s ear. Laurence knew he had given his father just cause to reproach him by having submitted to a foreign adoption, however politically expedient it was, but he was by no means remorseful enough to endure reproach in front of his officers and his crew, aside from any consideration for what Temeraire’s reaction might be to seeing him so abused.

He handed away his coffee cup to Emily, and gave his clothing a surreptitious glance, grateful that the cold morning meant he had not been tempted to forgo coat or neckcloth. ‘I am honoured to see you, sir; will you take tea?’ he asked, crossing the clearing to shake his father’s hand.

‘No, we have breakfasted,’ Lord Allendale said, abruptly, his eyes still fixed on Temeraire. Only with some effort did he turn away to present to Laurence his companion, Mr. Wilberforce: one of the champions of the abolition movement.

Laurence had only met the gentleman once, long ago. Wilberforce’s face had settled into grave lines during the intervening decades, deepening now as he looked anxiously up at Temeraire; but there was still something warm and good humoured about his mouth, and a gentleness to his eyes, confirming the early impression of generosity which Laurence had carried away, if indeed his public works had not been testament enough to it. Twenty years of city air and incessant fighting had ruined his health, but not his character. Political intrigue and the West Indies’ interests had undermined his work, but he had persevered; and even besides his tireless labour against slavery, he had stood a resolute reformer all the while.

In the furthering of Temeraire’s cause, there was scarcely a man whose advice Laurence would have desired more; and if the circumstances had been other, and he had reached a rapprochement with his father, he would certainly have sought an introduction. However, he could not understand why his father should bring Wilberforce hence, unless perhaps he had some curiosity to encounter a dragon.

But the gentleman’s expression as he looked upon Temeraire did not seem enthusiastic. ‘I would be very happy for a cup of tea, in the quiet, perhaps?’ he said, and after some hesitation yielded to further question, ‘Is the beast quite tame?’

‘I am not tame,’ Temeraire said indignantly, his hearing perfectly capable of overhearing this exchange, ‘but I am certainly not going to hurt you, if that is what you are asking; you have more reason to fear being stepped upon by a horse.’ He twitched his tail angrily against his side, nearly knocking over a couple of the topmen engaged in pitching the travelling-tent upon his back, and so gave himself the lie even as he spoke. His audience was sufficiently distracted by his remarks not to notice this point, however.

‘It is most wonderful,’ Mr. Wilberforce said, after conversing with him a little longer, ‘to discover such excellent understanding in a creature so far removed from ourselves; one might call it even miraculous. But I see that you are making ready to depart; so I must beg your pardon,’ he bowed to Temeraire, ‘and yours, Captain, for so indelicately moving to the subject which has brought us here: in short, we seek your assistance.’

‘I hope you will speak frankly, sir,’ Laurence said, thoroughly mystified, and begged them to sit down, making his apologies for the surroundings. Emily and Dyer had dragged chairs out of the cabin for their use, as the small building was hardly fit for receiving guests, and arranged them near the embers of the fire for warmth.

‘I should be clear’,’ Wilberforce began, ‘that no one could be insensible of the service which the Right Honourable gentleman has rendered his country, or begrudge him the just rewards of that service, and the respect of the common man—’

‘You might better say blind adoration of the common man,’ Lord Allendale put in, with heavy disapproval. ‘And some persons not so common, who have less excuse; the influence that the man has upon the Lords is appalling. Every day that he is not at sea brings fresh disaster.’ After a few moments more of confusion, Laurence gathered that they were speaking of none other than Vice-Admiral Nelson.

‘Forgive me,’ Wilberforce stepped in diplomatically, ‘we have spoken so much of these matters, amongst ourselves, that we go too quickly.’ He drew a hand over his jaw, and rubbed his jowls. ‘I believe you know something of the difficulties which we have encountered, against our attempts to abolish the trade in human life?’

‘I do,’ Laurence said. Twice, victory had seemed within their reach, but the House of Lords had held up the resolution using some excuse connected with the examination of witnesses. On another attempt the bill had indeed gone through, but only after certain amendments that had changed immediate abolition to gradual abolition: so gradual that there had been no sign of it, even fifteen years later. At that time The Terror in revolutionary France had already made a bloody ruin of the word liberty, and put the derivative label of Jacobin into the mouths of the slave traders to be levelled against abolitionists. No further progress had been made, for many years.

‘But this last session,’ Wilberforce said, ‘we were on the verge of achieving a vital measure: an act, which should have barred new ships from joining the slave trade. It ought to have been passed, we had the votes in our grasp; and then Nelson came back from the country. He had just lately risen from his sickbed, and he chose to address Parliament upon the subject; the vigour of his opposition alone caused the measure to fail.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ Laurence said, though not surprised. Nelson’s views had been pronounced in public often enough. Like many a naval officer, he thought slavery a necessary evil, a nursery for her sailors and the foundation of her trade; he saw the abolitionists as cohort of quixotic enthusiasts bent on undermining Britain’s maritime power and threatening her hold upon her colonies. He believed that only this domination allowed her to hold fast against the looming threat of Napoleon. ‘Very sorry,’ he continued, ‘but I do not know what use I can be to you; I cannot claim any personal acquaintance with the gentleman that might give me the opportunity to attempt to persuade him—’

‘No, no; we have no such hope,’ Wilberforce said. ‘He has expressed himself too decidedly upon the subject. Many of his greatest friends, and sadly most of his creditors, are slave owners or are involved with the trade. I am sorry to say such considerations lead astray even the best and wisest of men.’

They sought, he explained while Lord Allendale continued to look morose, to offer the public a rival for their interest and admiration, and gradually Laurence understood through their circular approaches that they meant to offer him as this figure, on the grounds of his recent and exotic expedition and the very adoption which he had expected his father to condemn.

‘The public will take a natural interest in your late adventure,’ Wilberforce said, ‘and you have the authority of a military officer who has fought against Napoleon in the field; your voice can challenge Nelson’s assertions that the end of the trade will be the ruin of the nation.’

‘Sir,’ Laurence said, not certain if he was sorry to disoblige Mr. Wilberforce, or happy to be forced to refuse such an undertaking, ‘I hope you will not think me lacking in respect or conviction, but I am in no way fit for such a role; and could not agree to assist you, even if I wished to. I am a serving officer; my time is not my own.’

‘But here you are in London,’ Wilberforce pointed out gently, ‘and surely, when stationed at the Channel, you could on occasion be spared?’ It was a suggestion that Laurence could not easily contradict without betraying the secret of the epidemic, presently confined to the Corps and only the most senior officials of the Admiralty. ‘I know it cannot be a comfortable proposal, Captain, but we are engaged in God’s work here; we ought not scruple to use any tool which He has put in our path.’

‘For Heaven’s sake, you will have to do nothing but attend a dinner party, perhaps a few; kindly do not cavil,’ Lord Allendale said brusquely, tapping his fingers upon the arm of his chair. ‘Of course one cannot enjoy this self-puffery, but you have tolerated far worse indignities, and made a far greater spectacle of yourself, than what we ask of you: last night, if you like—’

‘You needn’t speak so to Laurence,’ Temeraire interrupted coldly, giving the gentlemen both a start. They had already forgotten that he was listening to their conversation. ‘We have chased off the French four times this last week, and flown nine patrols; we are very tired and have come to London only because our friends are sick and have been left to starve and die in the cold, because the Admiralty will do nothing to make them more comfortable.’

He finished stormily, a low threatening resonance building deep in his throat: the instinctive reaction to use the divine wind lingered as an echo after his words. No one spoke for a moment, and then Wilberforce said thoughtfully, ‘It seems to me that we need not be at cross-purposes; and we may advance your cause, Captain, with our own.’

They had meant, it seemed, to launch him at some social event, the dinner-party that Lord Allendale had mentioned, or perhaps even a staged ball, which Wilberforce then proposed to make a subscription-party. ‘It’s avowed purpose,’ he explained, ‘will be to raise funds for sick and wounded dragons, the veterans of Trafalgar and Dover. There are such veterans, among the sick, aren’t there Captain?’ he asked.

‘There are some,’ Laurence said. He did not admit it was all of them; all but Temeraire.

Wilberforce nodded. ‘Those are names to conjure with later. These dark days,’ he continued, ‘when all see Napoleon’s star in ascendancy over the Continent, will give further emphasis still, to your reputation as a hero of the nation, and make your words a stronger counterweight to Nelson’s.’

Laurence could scarcely bear to hear himself so described; and in comparison with Nelson, who had led four great fleet actions, destroyed all of Napoleon’s navy, and established Britain’s primacy at sea; Nelson who had justly won a ducal coronet by valour in battle, not been made a foreign prince through subterfuge and political machination. ‘Sir,’ he said, struggling to restrain himself from inflicting a violent rejection, ‘I must beg you not to speak so; there can be no just comparison.’

‘No, indeed,’ Temeraire said, energetically. ‘I do not think much of this Nelson, if he has anything to say for slavery. I am sure he cannot be half so nice as Laurence, no matter how many battles he has won. I have never seen anything half as dreadful as those poor slaves in Cape Coast; and I am very glad if we can help them, as well as our friends.’

‘And this, from a dragon,’ Wilberforce said, with great satisfaction, while Laurence was made mute by dismay. ‘What man can help but feel pity for those wretched souls, when their plight stirs such a breast? Indeed,’ he said, turning to Lord Allendale, ‘we ought to hold the assembly where we sit. I am certain it will answer all the better, producing a great sensation, and moreover,’ he added, with a glint of humour in his eye, ‘I should like to see the gentleman who can refuse to consider an argument made to him by a dragon, while the dragon stands before him.’

‘Out of doors, in this season?’ Lord Allendale said, with great scepticism.

‘We might organize it like the pavilion-dinners in China: long tables, with coal-pits underneath to warm them,’ Temeraire suggested, entering with enthusiasm into the spirit of the idea, while Laurence could only listen with increasing desperation, as his fate was sealed. ‘We might have to knock down some more trees to make room, but I can do that very easily, and if we were to hang panels of silk from the remaining ones, it will seem quite like a pavilion, and I am sure to keep warm besides.’

‘An excellent notion,’ Wilberforce said, leaving his chair to inspect the scratched diagrams which Temeraire was drawing in the dirt. ‘It will have an Oriental flavour, that is exactly what is needed.’

‘Well, if you think it so; all I can say in its favour, is that it will certainly be the latest nine days’ wonder, whether half a dozen curiosity-seekers come or not,’ Lord Allendale said, and rose brushing the dust from his trousers to say, ‘The preparations will require some time: let us say we hold it in three weeks, and fix the date for the twelfth of the new year.’

‘We can spare you for a night, now and again,’ Jane said, sinking Laurence’s final hope of escape. ‘Our intelligence is limited, now that we have no couriers to risk on spy missions, but the Navy do good business with the French fishermen on the blockade, and they say there has yet been no movement to the coast. They might be lying, of course,’ she added, ‘but if there were a marked shift in numbers, the price of the catches would have risen, with more livestock going to dragons.’

The maid brought in the tea, and Jane poured for him. ‘Do not I beg you repine too much upon it,’ she went on, referring to the Admiralty’s refusal to grant them more funds. ‘Perhaps this party of yours will do us some good in that quarter, and Powys has written me with the news that he has cobbled together something already, through a subscription among the retired senior officers. It will not make for anything extravagant, but I think we can at least keep the poor creatures in pepper, until then.’

Meanwhile, they set about building the experimental pavilion. The promise of such a substantial commission proved enough to tempt a handful of the more intrepid tradesmen to the Dover covert. Laurence met them at the gates with a party of crewmen, and escorted them the rest of the way to Temeraire, who in an attempt to be unalarming, had hunched himself down as small as any dragon of eighteen tons could, and had nearly flattened his ruff completely against his neck. But he could not resist insinuating himself into the conversation once the construction of the pavilion was well under discussion, and indeed his offerings proved quite necessary, as Laurence had not the faintest notion how to translate the Chinese measurements.

‘I want one!’ Iskierka said, having overheard too much of the proceedings from her nearby clearing. Heedless of Granby’s protests, she squirmed through the trees into Temeraire’s quarter, shaking a blizzard of ash, and greatly alarming the poor tradesmen with a hiccup of fire, which sent steam shooting out of her spines. ‘I want to sleep in a pavilion too: I do not like this cold dirt at all.’

‘Well, you cannot have one,’ Temeraire said. ‘This is for our sick friends, and anyway you have no capital to hand.’

‘Then I shall get some,’ she declared. ‘Where does one get capital, and what does it look like?’

Temeraire proudly rubbed his breastplate of platinum and pearl. ‘This is a piece of capital,’ he said, ‘and Laurence gave it to me. He won it taking a ship in a battle.’

‘Oh! that is very easy,’ Iskierka said. ‘Granby, let us go get a ship, and then I may have a pavilion.’

‘Lord, you cannot have anything of the sort, do not be silly,’ Granby said, nodding rueful apologies to Laurence as he entered the clearing along the trail of smashed branches and crushed hedge which his dragon had left in her wake. ‘You would burn it down in an instant: the thing is made of wood.’

‘Can it not be made of stone?’ she demanded, swinging her head around to eye one of the horrified tradesmen. She had not yet grown very large, despite the twelve feet in length she had acquired with a steady diet, since settling at Dover. She was sinuous rather than bulky, in the normal Kazilik style, and looked little more than a garden-snake next to Temeraire. But her appearance at close quarters was by no means as reassuring: the hissing-kettle-noise, of whatever internal mechanism produced her fire, was plainly audible and the vents of hot air issued from her spines, white and impressive in the cold air.

No one answered her, except the elderly architect, Mr. Royle. ‘Stone? No, I must advise against it. Brick would be a much more practical construction,’ he opined. He had not looked up from the plans since being handed them. Badly nearsighted, he inspected them with a jeweller’s loupe, held an inch from his watery blue eyes, and could most likely not make either dragon out. ‘Silly oriental stuff, this roof, do you insist on having it so?’

‘It is not silly oriental stuff at all,’ Temeraire said, indignantly, ‘it is very elegant: that design is my mother’s own pavilion, and it is in the best fashion.’

‘You will need linkboys on it all winter long to brush the snow clear, and I will not give a brass farthing for the gutters after two seasons,’ Royle said. ‘A good slate roof, that is the thing, do you not agree with me, Mr. Cutter?’

Mr. Cutter had no opinion to offer, as he had backed against the trees and looked ready to bolt; and would have if Laurence had not prudently stationed his ground-crew around the border of the clearing to forestall just such panic.

‘I am very willing to be advised by you, sir, as to the best plan of construction, and the most reasonable,’ Laurence said, while Royle blinked around looking for the source of the response. ‘Temeraire, our climate here is a good deal wetter, so we must cut our cloth to suit our station.’

‘Very well, I suppose,’ Temeraire said, casting a wistful eye at the upturned roof and the brightly painted wood.

Iskierka meanwhile, had been inspired and began to plot her acquisition of capital. ‘If I burn up a ship, is that good enough, or must I bring it back whole?’ she demanded.

Her piratical career began the next morning, when she presented Granby with a small fishing-boat, which she had picked out of the Dover harbour during the night. ‘Well, you did not say it must be a French ship,’ she said crossly, to their recriminations, and curled up to sulk. Stealthy little Gherni was hastily recruited to replace it the following night, under the cover of darkness, undoubtedly to the great consternation of its temporarily bereft owner.

‘Laurence, do you suppose that we could obtain more capital by taking French ships?’ Temeraire asked, with a level of thoughtfulness very alarming to Laurence, who had just returned from dealing with Iskierka’s pretty piece of confusion.

‘The French ships are penned in their harbours by the Channel blockade, thank Heaven, and we are not privateers, to go plying the lanes for their shipping,’ Laurence said. ‘Your life is too valuable to risk in such a selfish endeavour. In any case, once you have began to behave in such an undisciplined manner, you may be sure Arkady and his lot would follow your example and leave Britain undefended; not to mention the encouragement that Iskierka would take from it.’

‘Whatever am I to do with her?’ Granby said, wearily taking a glass of wine with Laurence and Jane in the officers’ common room at the covert headquarters that same evening. ‘I suppose being dragged hither and yon in the shell, has caused it; and all the fuss and excitement she has had since. But that cannot excuse it forever. I must manage her somehow, and I am at a standstill. I would not be surprised if one morning I awoke to find the entire harbour set alight, because she took it into her head that we would not have to sit about defending the city if it were all burned up. I cannot even make her sit still long enough to get her under full harness.’

‘Never mind; I will come by tomorrow, and see what I can do,’ Jane said, pushing the bottle over to him again. ‘She is a little young for work, but I think her energy had better be put to use, than cause all this fretting. Have you chosen your lieutenants yet, Granby?’

‘I will have Lithgow, for my first, if you’ve no objection, and Harper for a second, to act as captain of the riflemen also,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to take too many men, when we don’t know what her growth will be like.’

‘You would not like to turn them off later, you mean, when they, like as not, they cannot get another post.’ Jane said gently, ‘I know it will be hard if it comes to that; but we cannot short-change her, not with her so wild. Take Row also, as captain of the bellmen. He is old enough to retire if he must be turned off, and he is a good steady campaigner, who will not blink at her starts.’

Granby nodded a little, his head bowed. The next morning, with great state, Jane came to Iskierka’s clearing. She wore all of her medals, a gold-plated sabre and pistols on her belt and even her great plumed hat, which aviators scarcely used. Granby had assembled his new crew, and they saluted her with a great noise of arms. Iskierka nearly coiled herself into knots with excitement, and the ferals and even Temeraire peered over the trees to watch with interest.

‘Well, Iskierka; your captain tells me that you are ready for service,’ Jane said, putting her hat under her arm, and looking sternly at the little Kazilik, ‘but what are these reports I hear, that you will not mind his orders? We cannot send you into battle if you cannot follow orders.’

‘Oh! It is not true!’ Iskierka said. ‘I can follow orders as well as anyone, it is only that no one will give me any good ones. I am told only to sit, and not to fight, and to eat three times a day; I do not want any more stupid cows!’ she added, smoulderingly. The ferals, after having this translated for them by their own handful of officers, set up a low squabbling murmur of disbelief.

‘It is not simply the pleasant orders we must follow, but the tiresome as well,’ Jane said, when the noise had died down. ‘Do you suppose Captain Granby likes to sit in this clearing, forever waiting for you to grow more settled? Perhaps he would rather go back to service with Temeraire, and enjoy some fighting.’

Iskierka’s eyes stretched platter-wide, and her spikes hissed like a furnace. In an instant she had thrown a pair of jealous coils around Granby, which bade fair to boil him like a lobster in steam. ‘He would not! You would not, at all, would you?’ she appealed. ‘I will fight just as well as Temeraire, I promise; and I will even obey the stupidest orders, at least, if I may have some pleasant ones also,’ she qualified hastily.

‘I am sure she will mind better in future, sir,’ Granby managed coughing, his hair was already soaking, and plastered against his forehead and neck. ‘Pray don’t fret; I would never leave you, only I am getting wet,’ he added, plaintively.

‘Hm,’ Jane said, with frowning consideration. ‘Since Granby speaks for you, I suppose we will give you your chance.’ she said, at last, ‘You may even have your first orders, Captain, if she will let you come for them, and stand still for her harness.’

Iskierka immediately let him loose and stretched herself out for the ground-crew, only craning her neck a little to see the red-sealed and yellow-tasselled packet, which communicated their instruction in very ornate and important language, to do nothing more than run a quick, hour long patrol down to Guernsey and back. ‘And you may take her by that old heap of rubble at Castle Cornet, where the gunpowder blew up the tower. Tell her it is a French outpost, and that she may flame it from aloft,’ Jane added to Granby, in a soft tone, not meant for Iskierka’s ears.

Iskierka’s harness was a great deal of trouble to arrange as her spines were arranged quite randomly, and the frequent issuing of steam made her hide slick. An improvised collection of short straps and many buckles, had been constructed and were wretchedly easy to tangle, so she could not entirely be blamed for growing tired of the process. But the promise of action and the interested crowd made her more patient this time; and at some length she was properly rigged out. Granby said, with relief, ‘There, it is quite secure. Now, see if you can shake any of it loose, dear one.’

She writhed and beat her wings, twisting herself this way and that to inspect the harness. ‘You are supposed to say, ‘all lies well,’ if you are comfortable,’ Temeraire whispered loudly to her, after she had been engaged in this sport for several minutes.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, and settling again announced, ‘All lies well. Now, we shall go?’

In this way she was at least a little reformed, though no one could have called her obliging, and she invariably stretched her patrols further afield than Granby would have them; in hope of meeting an enemy more challenging than an old fort and a couple of innocent birds. ‘But at least she will take a little training, and is eating properly, which I call victory enough, for now,’ Granby said. ‘And after all, as much as she frightens us, she’ll give the Frogs a worse scare. Laurence, can you believe, we talked to the fellows up at Castle Cornet, and they set up a bit of sail for her at aim at, and she can set it alight from eighty yards away. That’s twice the range of a Flamme-de-Gloire, and she can go at it for five minutes straight! I don’t understand how she gets her breath while she does it.’

They’d had considerable trouble keeping her out of direct combat, for the French continued their harassment and scouting of the coast with ever-increasing aggression. Jane used the sick dragons more frequently for basic patrols to spare Temeraire and the ferals, who instead waited for most of the day on the cliff tops for the warning flare to go up, or listening with ears pricked for the report of a signal-gun, before dashing frantically to meet another incursion.

In the space of two weeks, Temeraire had four skirmishes with small groups, and once Arkady and a few of his band, sent on patrol by themselves while Temeraire snatched a few more hours of sleep, barely managed to turn back a Pou-de-Ciel who had daringly tried to slip past the shore-batteries at Dover, less than a mile away from having a clear view of the quarantine-grounds.

The ferals returned from their narrow victory naturally delighted with themselves, and Jane with quick cleverness took the opportunity to present to Arkady, with full ceremony, a long length of chain with a large dinner-platter inscribed with his name for a medal; almost worthless, being made only of brass, but polished to a fine golden shine. Arkady was rendered speechless as it was fastened about his neck; but for only a moment, after which he erupted into a torrent of carolling joy, and insisted that every single one of his fellows inspect his prize; even Temeraire did not escape this fate. He bristled and withdrew with indignity to his own clearing to polish his breastplate vigorously.

‘You cannot compare them.’ Laurence said, cautiously, ‘It is only a trinket, to make him complacent, and encourage them in their efforts.’

‘Oh, certainly.’ Temeraire said, haughtily. ‘Mine is much nicer; I would not want anything so common as brass.’ After a moment he added, muttering, ‘But his is very large.’

‘Cheap at double the price,’ Jane said the next day, when he came to give the morning report, for once uneventful. The ferals were more zealous than ever, and rather disappointed not to find more enemies. ‘They come along handsomely, just as we had hoped.’ But she spoke wearily.

Laurence poured her a small glass of brandy and brought it to her at the window, where she stood looking out at the ferals cavorting in mid-air over their clearing. ‘Thank you, I will.’ She took the glass, but did not drink at once. ‘Conterrenis has gone,’ she said abruptly. ‘The first Longwing we have lost; it was a bloody business.’ She sat down heavily. ‘He took a bad chill and suffered a haemorrhage in his lungs, so the surgeons tell me. At any rate, he could not stop coughing, and so his acid came and came; it began to build up on his spurs and sear his skin. It laid his jaw bare to the bone.’ She paused. ‘Gardenley shot him this morning.’

Laurence took the chair beside her, feeling wholly inadequate to the task of providing any comfort. After a little while she drank the brandy and set down her glass, and they turned back to the maps to discuss the next day’s patrolling.

He left her, ashamed now of dreading the party, now only a few days’ hence, and determined to put himself forward with no regard for his own mortification; for even the smallest chance of improving’ the conditions of the sick dragons.

… and I hope you will permit me to suggest, Wilberforce had written, that any Oriental touch to your wardrobe, even a little one, which might at a glance set you apart, would be most useful. I am happy to report that we have engaged some Chinese to serve, by offering a good sum in the ports, where occasionally a few of them may be found having taken service on an East Indiaman. They are not properly trained, of course, but they will only be carrying dishes to and from the kitchens, and we have instructed them most severely to show no alarm in the presence of the dragon, which I hope they have understood. However, I do have some anxiety as to their comprehension of what faces them, and should you have enough liberty to come early, hope that we may try their fortitude.

Laurence stifled his sighs, sent his Chinese coat to his tailors for refurbishment, and asked Jane her permission to go early. The Chinese servants did indeed cause a great commotion on their arrival, but only by abandoning their work and running to prostrate themselves before Temeraire, almost throwing themselves beneath his feet in their efforts to make the show of respect that they considered a Celestial’s due. The British workmen who were engaged in the final decoration of the covert were not nearly so complaisant, and vanished one and all, leaving the great panels of embroidered silk, ordered at vast expense, hanging askew from the tree branches and dragging upon the earth.

Wilberforce exclaimed in dismay as he came to greet Laurence; but Temeraire issued instructions to the Chinese servants, who set to work with great energy, and with the assistance of the crew the covert was a handsome sight in time to receive the guests. Brass lamps were tied onto branches to stand in place of Chinese paper lanterns, and small coal-stoves placed at intervals along the tables.

‘We may bring the business off, if it does not snow,’ Lord Allendale said, pessimistically, arriving early to inspect the arrangements. ‘It is a great pity your mother could not be here,’ he added, ‘but the child has not yet come, and she does not like to leave Elizabeth in her confinement,’ referring to the wife of Laurence’s eldest brother, soon to present him with his fifth child.

The night stayed clear, if cold, and the guests began to arrive in cautious dribs and drabs, keeping well away from Temeraire, who was ensconced in his clearing at the far end of the long tables, and peering at him not very surreptitiously through their opera glasses. Laurence’s officers were meanwhile standing by him, stiff and equally terrified in their best clothes: all new, fortunately, and Laurence was rewarded for the trouble he had taken in directing his officers to the better tailors in Dover, for the repairs which all their wardrobes required after their long stay abroad, by seeing them in well fitting coats and trousers.

Emily was the only one of them truly pleased, as she had acquired her first silk gown for the occasion; and if she tripped upon the hem a little she did not seem to mind. She was rather exultant over her kid gloves and string of pearls, which Jane had bestowed upon her. ‘It is late enough in all conscience for her to be learning how to manage skirts,’ Jane said. ‘Do not fret, Laurence. I promise you no one will be suspicious. I have made a cake of myself in public a dozen times, and no one has ever thought me an aviator for it. But if it gives you any comfort, you may tell them that she is your niece.’

‘I will do no such thing; my father will be there, and I assure you he is thoroughly aware of all his grandchildren,’ Laurence said. His father would immediately conclude Emily to be his own natural-born child, should he make such a claim. He privately decided that he would keep Emily close by Temeraire’s side, where she would be little seen; he had no doubt that his guests would keep a good distance away, whatever persuasion Mr. Wilberforce intended to apply.

That persuasion, however, took the most undesirable form. Mr. Wilberforce spotted Emily and said, ‘Come; behold this young girl who thinks nothing of standing within reach of the dragon. Even if you can permit yourself, madam, to be outdone by trained aviators, I hope you will not allow a child to outstrip you?’

With a sinking heart Laurence observed his father turning to cast an astonished eye on Emily, confirming his worst fears. Lord Allendale did not scruple, either, to approach and interrogate her. Emily, perfectly innocent of malice, answered him in her clear girlish voice, ‘Oh, I have lessons every day, sir, from the Captain, although it is Temeraire who gives me my mathematics, now, as Captain Laurence does not like arithmetic. But I would rather practice fencing,’ she added candidly, looking a little uncertain when she found herself laughed over and pronounced a dear by the pair of ladies who had been persuaded to venture close to the great table, by her example.

‘A masterful stroke, Captain,’ Wilberforce murmured softly. ‘Wherever did you find her?’ He did not wait for an answer as he then accosted a party of gentlemen who had risked coming closer, and continued to work upon them in the same fashion; embellishing his persuasions with if Lady So-and-So had been brave enough to approach Temeraire, surely they could not show themselves hesitant.

Temeraire was very interested in all of the guests, particularly admiring the more bejewelled ladies, and managed by accident to please the Marchioness of Carstoke, a lady of advanced years whose bosom was concealed only by a vulgar array of emeralds set in gold, by informing her that she looked a good deal more like a monarch, in his estimation, than did the Queen of Prussia, whom he had only seen in travelling clothes.

Several gentlemen challenged him to perform simple sums, a challenge to which he blinked a little, and having given them the answers, enquired whether this was the sort of game normally played at parties, and whether he ought to offer them a mathematical problem in return.

‘Dyer, pray bring me my sand-table,’ he said, and when this was agreed. Using his claw he sketched out a small diagram for the purpose of posing them a question on the Pythagorean theorem, which proved sufficient to baffle most of the gentlemen, whose own mathematical skill did not extend past the card tables.

‘But it is a very simple exercise,’ Temeraire insisted in some confusion, wondering aloud to Laurence if he had missed some sort of joke. At last a member of the Royal Society on a quest to observe certain aspects of Celestial anatomy, was able to provide the answer.

When Temeraire had spoken to the servants in Chinese, conversed in fluent French with several of the guests and failed to eat or crush anyone, fascination began at last to trump fear and draw more of the company towards him. Soon Laurence found himself quite neglected and of considerably less interest; a circumstance which would have delighted him, if only it had not left him to make awkward conversation with his father, who inquired stiltedly about Emily’s mother. He posed questions which if evaded would only have made Laurence seem more guilty, and yet whose perfectly truthful answers, that Emily was the natural-born daughter of Jane Roland, a gentlewoman living in Dover, and that he had taken charge of her education, still left entirely the wrong impression. And Laurence could no more correct this, than his father could outright ask.

‘She is a pretty well behaved girl, for her station in life. I hope she does not want for anything,’ Lord Allendale said, in a sort of sidling way. ‘I am sure that if there was to be any difficulty in finding her a respectable situation when she is grown, your mother and I would gladly be of assistance.’

Laurence did his best to make it clear that his handsome offer was unnecessary, in his desperation turning to a lie of omission, saying, ‘She has friends, sir, as must prevent her ever being in real distress. I believe there is already some arrangement made for her future.’ He gave no details, and his father, his sense of propriety satisfied, did not inquire further. Fortunate, as that arrangement, military service in the Corps, would hardly have recommended itself to Lord Allendale. The bleak notion came to Laurence only afterwards, that if Excidium were to die, Emily would have no dragon to inherit, and thus no assured post. Though a handful of Longwing eggs were presently being tended at Loch Laggan, there were more women serving in the Corps than would be needed to satisfy these new hatchlings.

He made his escape, saying that he saw Wilberforce beckoning him over. The gentleman indeed welcomed his company, even if he had not immediately been soliciting it, and took hold of Laurence’s arm to guide him through the crowd and introduce him to all of his prodigious acquaintances.

Many had come merely to be entertained, and for the excitement of seeing a dragon; or, more honestly, for the right to say they had been brave enough to. A good number of these were fashionable gentlemen, come late from heavy drinking sessions, whose noisy conversation would have become impenetrable smog in a smaller space.

The ladies and gentlemen who were active within the abolition movement, or similar evangelical causes, were easily distinguished by their markedly sombre appearance, both in dress and mien. The tracts that they handed to other guests ended up upon the ground, trodden into the earth.

There were also a great many patriots in attendance, both sincere and motivated by the desire to attach their names to a subscription list with the word Trafalgar upon it. Wilberforce had arranged for the event to be published in the newspapers, and had not been inclined to split hairs and state whether his veterans were dragons or men. Therefore, the political spectrum was fully represented, provoking more than one heated discussion lubricated further by liquor and enthusiasm. One stout, red-faced gentleman, identified by Wilberforce as a Member from Bristol, could be heard declaring to a pale and fervent young lady trying to hand him a tract that, ‘it is all nonsense, dear lady. The passage is perfectly safe, for it is in the interest of the traders to preserve their goods, is it not? And to be taken to a Christian land, will certainly be the best thing ever to happen to a black; so he may lose his heathen ways and be converted.’

‘That is excellent ground, sir, for importing the Gospel to Africa. It does less well in excusing the behaviour of Christian men, tearing Africans out of their homes for profit.’ He was answered, not by the young lady, but by a black gentleman, who had been standing a little way behind her, assisting in the distribution of the pamphlets. A narrow, raised scar, the thickness of a leather strap, ran down the side of his face, and ridged bands of scar tissue protruded from the ends of his sleeves, pale pink against his very dark skin.

The Bristolian had not the character to defend the trade in the face of one of its victims. He chose rather to retreat behind an expression of haughty offence at having been addressed without an introduction, and would have turned aside where it not for Wilberforce, who leaned forward and said with gentle malice, ‘Mr. Bathurst, allow me to present Reverend Erasmus, lately of Jamaica.’ Erasmus bowed; Bathurst gave a short jerking nod, and cravenly quitted the field, with an excuse too muttered to be intelligible.

Erasmus was an evangelical minister, ‘I hope to have my own missionary, soon,’ he added, shaking Laurence’s hand, ‘on my native continent.’ He had been taken, a boy of only six years, to suffer through that ‘healthy’ passage, with ankles and wrists chained to his neighbours in a space scarcely large enough to lie down in.

‘It was not at all pleasant to be chained,’ Temeraire said quietly, when Erasmus had been presented to him, ‘but at least I knew that they would be removed once the storm had passed; and anyway, I am sure I could have broken them.’ The chains, had indeed been attached for his own protection, to keep him secured to the deck through a three-day typhoon. But the occasion he described had also come close on the heels of them witnessing first hand, the brutal treatment of a party of slaves at the port of Cape Coast, and the sight had left an indelible impression.

Erasmus said simply, ‘As did a number of us; for the fetters were not well made. But they had nowhere to go, unless they threw themselves on the mercy of the sharks: we had not wings to fly.’

He spoke without rancour, though he would have been forgiven; and when Temeraire had expressed his angry wish that the slavers had been thrown overboard instead, Erasmus shook his head. ‘Evil should never be returned with evil,’ he said. ‘Their judgment belongs to the Lord. My response to their crimes can be only to return to my people with the word of God. I hope that the practice cannot continue once we are brothers in Christ, so that slaver and prey will both be saved.’

Temeraire was dubious about this great Christian speech, and after Erasmus had left them muttered, ‘I would not give a fig for slavers; and God ought really to judge them more quickly,’ a completely blasphemous remark which made Laurence blanch for fear that Wilberforce might have overheard; but his attention was fortunately elsewhere, fixed on a growing noise at the far end of the long clearing, where a large crowd was gathering.

‘I wonder he should have come,’ Wilberforce said. Nelson had entered the clearing in the company of several friends, some of them naval officers of Laurence’s acquaintance, and was paying his respects to Lord Allendale. ‘Of course we extended an invitation, but I had no real expectation; perhaps he accepted because it was sent in your name. Forgive me, Laurence, I will take myself off for a while; I am very happy enough to have him come and lend his reflected glow to our party, but he has said too much in public for me to converse easily with him.’

Laurence was better pleased, for his own part, to find Nelson unaffected by the whispers and comparisons that had spread; he was as amiable as one could have wished him to be, offering Laurence his good hand. ‘Captain William Laurence; you have come a long way since we last met. I think it was a dinner aboard the Vanguard in ninety-eight, before Aboukir Bay: how very long ago, but how short a time it seems!’

‘Indeed, sir; and I am honoured that your Grace should remember,’ Laurence said, and at his request rather anxiously lead him to be presented to Temeraire, adding, when Temeraire’s ruff ominously unfurled at the introduction, ‘I hope you will make his Grace most welcome, my dear; it is very kind of him to come and be our guest.’

Temeraire, never very tactful, was unfortunately not to be warned by so subtle a hint, and asked the admiral rather coldly, ‘What has happened to your medals? They are all quite misshapen.’

This, he certainly meant as a species of insult; however Nelson, who famously preferred only to win more glory than to speak of what he already had gained, could not have been more pleased for the excuse to discuss the battle, which the public had ruminated even before he had risen from his injuries, with an audience still innocent of the details. ‘Why, a rascal of a Spanish fire breather gave us a little trouble at Trafalgar, and they were caught in the flames,’ he said, taking one of the vacant chairs at the nearest table, and arranging bread rolls for the ships.

Temeraire, growing interested despite himself, leaned in closely to observe their manoeuvres on the cloth. Nelson did not flinch in the least, though the onlookers who had gathered to watch took several steps back. He described the passes of the Spanish dragon using a fork and much lurid detail, and further rescued his character, in Temeraire’s eyes, by concluding, ‘And very sorry I am that we did not have you there: I am certain you would have had no trouble in running the creature off.’

‘Well, I am sure too,’ Temeraire said candidly, and peered at the medals again with more admiration. ‘But would the Admiralty not give you fresh ones? That is not very handsome of them.’

‘Why, I consider these to be badges of honour, dear creature, so I could not apply for replacements,’ Nelson said. ‘Now, Laurence, do I recall correctly; could I possibly have read a report in the Gazette that stated this dragon of yours lately sank a French ship, called the Valérie, and in a single pass?’

‘Yes, sir; I believe Captain Riley of the Allegiance sent in his report, last year,’ Laurence said, uneasily. Riley’s document had rather understated the incident, and while he was proud of Temeraire’s ability, it was not the sort of thing he thought civilian guests would find reassuring; and less should any of them learn that the French now had their own Celestial, and realise that the same dreadful power might be turned against their own.

‘Astonishing; quite prodigious,’ Nelson said. ‘What was she, a sloop-of-war?’

‘A frigate, sir,’ Laurence answered, even more reluctantly. ‘Forty-eight guns.’

There was a pause. ‘I cannot be sorry, although it was hard on the poor sailors,’ Temeraire said, into the silence, ‘but it is not as though we began the fighting, and it was not very noble of them, stealing upon us during the night, when their dragon could see in the dark and I could not.’

‘Certainly,’ Nelson agreed, over a murmur from the assembled company. Having recovered from his surprise, he had a quick martial gleam in his eye, ‘Certainly, I congratulate you. I think I must have a conversation with the Admiralty, Captain, about your present station; you are on coastline duty at present, am I not correct? A waste; an unconscionable waste; you may be sure they will hear from me on the subject. Do you suppose he could manage as much on a ship-of-the-line?’

Laurence could not explain the impossibility of a change in their assignment without revealing too much; so he answered a little vaguely, with gratitude for his Grace’s interest.

‘Very clever,’ Lord Allendale said grimly, in later conference with Laurence and Wilberforce, when Nelson had gone away nodding his farewells to all who sought his attention, in the most affable manner. ‘I suppose we must consider it a sign of success that he should seek to send you away.’

‘Sir, I believe you are mistaken; I cannot believe his motives on this matter to be anything other than sincere. He wishes simply to make best use of Temeraire’s abilities,’ Laurence said stiffly.

‘It is very boring, always going up and down the coast,’ Temeraire put in, ‘and I should much rather have more interesting work, like fighting firebreathers, if we were not needed; but I suppose we must do our duty,’ he finished, not a trifle wistfully, and turned his attention back to the other guests, who were all the more eager to speak with him now in imitation of Nelson: the party most assuredly a success.

‘Laurence, may we fly over the quarantine-grounds as we go, and see how the pavilion comes along?’ Temeraire asked, the next morning, as they made ready for the flight back to Dover.

‘It will not be very far advanced,’ Laurence warned. Temeraire’s ulterior motive, to search the quarantine-grounds for Maximus and Lily, was transparent though understandable. There had been no reply to the letters which Laurence had sent, either to them or to their captains, and Temeraire had begun to inquire after them with increasing impatience. Laurence feared Temeraire’s reaction on seeing them so reduced by illness as he supposed them to be, but could think of no good reason by which to divert him.

‘But I should like to see it in all its stages,’ Temeraire said, ‘and if they have made any mistakes, we ought to correct them early, surely,’ he finished, triumphantly, with the air of having hit upon an unanswerable justification.

‘Is there any reason to fear infection in the air?’ Laurence questioned Dorset quietly. ‘Will there be a danger to flying over the grounds?’

‘No, not so long as he keeps a good distance from any of the sick beasts. It is certainly the phlegmatic humours that carry the infection. So long as he does not put himself directly in the way of a sneeze or a cough, I do not believe the danger substantial, not aloft,’ Dorset said absently, without much consideration, which did not fill Laurence with confidence.

But he settled for extracting a promise from Temeraire to stay well aloft, where he might perhaps be spared from seeing the ravages that had been inflicted on his friends. Nor should he approach any dragon in the air.

‘Of course I promise,’ Temeraire said, adding unconvincingly, ‘I only want to see the pavilion, after all. It is nothing to me if we see any dragons.’

‘You must be sure, my dear, or Mr. Dorset will not countenance our visit; we must not disturb the sick, who require their rest,’ Laurence said, resorting to stratagem, which at last won Temeraire’s sighs and agreement.

Laurence did not truly expect to see any dragons aloft. The sequestered beasts rarely left the ground these days, and then only on clear days for the brief show patrols, which Jane continued to use to keep up their illusion of strength for the French. The day was cloudy and drear, and as they flew towards the coast, they met a thin mist of rain blowing in from the Channel; such exertion would not be asked of the sick dragons.

But as they drew near the proscribed grounds, the borders marked with smoking torches and large red flags planted onto the earth, he saw there were three dragons aloft, and flying energetically: two on the heels of a much smaller third. Temeraire said, ‘Laurence, that is Auctoritas and Caelifera, from Dover, I am sure of it, but I do not know that other little dragon at all; I have never seen one of that kind.’

‘Oh, Hell, that is a Plein-Vite,’ Ferris said, after one borrowed look through Laurence’s glass. The three dragons were directly over the quarantine-grounds, and the great hulks of the sick beasts were plainly visible even through the mist, huddled upon the ground upon the bloodstained dirt. Already the sick dragons were falling off the pace and drooping earthwards, exhausted. The tiny French dragon darted, looped and evaded them, beating her wings mightily, before she flung herself past the borders of the grounds, and headed towards the Channel as quickly as she could go.

‘After her, Temeraire,’ Laurence said, and they leapt into pursuit. Temeraire’s enormous wings beat once to every five of her strokes, and he ate up the yards between them.

‘They haven’t much endurance, they’re close-couriers only, though they’re fast as bloody lightning. They must have brought her near the coast by boat, at night, to save her strength for the flight back,’ Ferris said, shouting over the knife-cut wind. Laurence only nodded, to save his voice. Bonaparte had likely been hoping so small a messenger-beast might slip through where the larger had not been able.

He raised the speaking-trumpet and bellowed, Rendez-vous. The flare they fired for emphasis, launched ahead of the little dragon’s nose, was a signal less easily misinterpreted. But there was no slackening of their furious pace. The Plein-Vite had only a pilot, a young boy scarcely older than Roland or Dyer, whose pale and frightened face Laurence saw plainly in his glass as the boy turned to look at the vast black-winged pursuit. The child turned back again to encourage his beast, casting off bits of harness and buckle as she flew. The boy even kicked off his shoes, and threw his belt overboard, its sword and pistol flashing in the sunlight as they turned end over end. Heartened by her rider’s example, the little dragon began to speed her strokes and pull away with an effort; her advantage in speed and small breadth before the wind began to tell.

‘We must bring her down,’ Laurence said, grimly, lowering his glass. He had seen how the divine wind effected enemy dragons of fighting weight, and soldiers under arms; what damage it might wreak upon so small and helpless a pair of targets, he did not like to think nor wished to witness, but their duty was plain. ‘Temeraire, you must stop them; we cannot let them slip away.’

‘Laurence, she is so very little,’ Temeraire objected unhappily, turning his head just enough to be heard. He pressed on after her, with all the will in the world, but she would not be caught.

‘We cannot try to board her,’ Laurence answered, ‘she is too small and too quick. It would be a death sentence to make a man attempt that leap. If she will not surrender, she must be brought down. She is pulling away; it must be now.’

Temeraire shuddered, then decisively drew breath and roared; but over the French dragon, not directly at her. She gave a shrill cry of alarm, backwinging as if she were trying to reverse, her pace halted abruptly for a moment. With a convulsive, gathered lunge, Temeraire was above her, folding his wings, and forcing her bodily towards the earth below. Soft pale yellow sand heaped in rolling dunes, and the little French dragon went tumbling pell-mell as she ploughed into the ground before them, oceanic waves of dust billowing up in a cloud around both dragons.

They slid across the ground some hundred yards, Laurence blind and trying to shield his mouth from the flying sand. He heard Temeraire hissing in displeasure and the French dragon squalling, then simply a triumphant ‘Hah!’ from Temeraire. ‘Je vous ai attrapé; il ne faut pas pleurer; oh, I beg your pardon, I am very sorry.’ Laurence wiped the grit from his face and nostrils, coughing violently, and upon clearing his stinging vision found himself looking directly into the alarming fiery pupil of a Longwing.

Excidium turned his head to sneeze, unintentionally spraying drops of acid with the gesture, which smoked briefly before the sand absorbed them. Laurence gazed in horror as the great head swung wearily back and Excidium said, in a harsh and rasping voice, ‘What have you done? You ought not to have come here.’

The sand-cloud settled to reveal half a dozen Longwings. Beside him, Lily raised her head out from her shielding wing. All of the dragons huddled close in the sand-pit that was their place of quarantine.

Chapter Five

They had no other companion in their isolated clearing but little Sauvignon, the French courier-beast, who had not even the solace of her captain. He, poor child, had been marched away in irons against her good behaviour, while she made piteous cries under the restraint of Temeraire’s reluctant but irresistible hold upon her back, his great claw nearly pinning her to the ground entirely.

She huddled in upon herself after he was gone, and was only gradually persuaded by Temeraire to eat a little, and then to talk. ‘Voici un joli cochon,’ Temeraire said, nudging over one of the spit-roasted hogs Gong Su had prepared for him, and lacquered in a dark orange sauce. ‘Votre capitaine s’inquiétera s’il apprend que vous ne mangez pas, vraiment.’

She took a few bites, then proceeded to eat with greater enthusiasm once Temeraire had explained to her that the recipe was à la Chinois. Her naïve remark that she was in fact eating ‘comme la Reine Blanche’ and a little more conversation, confirmed to Laurence that Lung Tien Lien, their bitter enemy, was now established in Paris, and was deep in Napoleon’s councils. The little courier, full of hero-worship for the other Celestial, was not to be led into exposing any plans, if she indeed knew of any, but Laurence needed nothing to confirm that Lien’s voice was likely loud for invasion. If Napoleon required any additional persuasion, she would strive to keep his attention firmly fixed upon Britain and no other part of the world.

‘She says Napoleon is having the streets widened, so Lien may walk through the entire city,’ Temeraire said, disgruntled, ‘and he has already built her a pavilion beside his palace. It does not seem fair that we have such difficulties here, when she has everything her own way.’

Laurence answered dully. He cared little anymore about what should happen, if he was only to watch Temeraire die as Victoriatus had; reduced to a hideous bloody wreckage. It would prove a devastation far more complete than any Lien might engineer from her malice. ‘You were with them for only a few moments; let us hope.’ Jane had said, but no more. From her lack of encouragement Laurence saw Temeraire’s death warrant signed and sealed; the sandpit was surely thick with the contagion. The Longwings had been penned there for the better part of a year, the effluvium was buried deep in the sand along with their poisonous acid.

He understood belatedly, why he had seen none of his former colleagues, why Berkley and Harcourt had not answered his letters. Granby came to visit him once, but neither could manage more than half a dozen words, and those painfully stilted. Granby consciously avoided the subject of his own healthy Iskierka, and Laurence did not wish to speak of Temeraire’s chances, especially not where Temeraire himself might overhear, and share his despair. At present Temeraire had no concern for himself, securely confident of his own strength, a comfort which Laurence had no desire to take from him before the inevitable course of the disease managed the job.

‘Je ne me sens pas bien,’ Sauvignon said on the morning of the fourth day, waking herself and them with a violent burst of sneezing. She was taken away to join the other sick beasts, leaving them to wait alone for their first herald of disease.

Jane had come to see him daily, with encouraging words for as long as he wished to hear them, and brandy for when he could no longer bear it. She reluctantly said, coming to see him on one such unhappy day, ‘I am damned sorry to speak of this so bluntly, Laurence, and you must forgive me; but has Temeraire begun to think of breeding yet, do you know?’

‘Breeding,’ Laurence said, bitterly, and looked away. It was natural, of course, that they should wish to preserve the rarest bloodline of all breeds, acquired with such difficulty, and now also in the possession of their enemy; yet to him it seemed like a desire to replace something irreplaceable.

‘I know,’ she said gently, ‘but we must expect it to come on him any day now, and most are disinclined once they get sick, and who can blame them.’

Her courage reproached him. He remembered that she suffered as much himself, with no outward show; he could not yield to his own feelings before her. In any case, there could be no shading of the truth, and he was forced to confess that Temeraire had, ‘grown very fond of a female Imperial, in the retinue of the Emperor, while we were in Peking.’

‘Well, I am glad to hear it. I must ask if he would oblige us with a mating, to begin as soon as tonight, now that he has been exposed,’ Jane said. ‘Felicita is not very poorly, and informed her captain two days ago that she thinks she has an egg at the ready. She had already given us two, good creature, before she fell sick. I know she is only a Yellow Reaper, and a middle-weight, and that it is not the sort of cross any decent breeder would choose to make, but I think that any Celestial blood will be better than none, and we have few enough who are in any state to bear.’

‘But I have never seen her in my life,’ Temeraire said later, puzzled, when the question was put to him, ‘why should I wish to mate with her?’

‘It is akin to a marriage of state, I suppose,’ Laurence said, uncertain how to answer this. The arrangement seemed to him, belatedly, to be a coarse sort of proposal. Temeraire was simply a prize stallion to be set on to a mare; neither of their preferences being consulted, and without prior introduction. ‘You need do nothing you do not like,’ he added abruptly. He would not see Temeraire forced in the least, any more than he should have lent himself to such an enterprise.

‘Well, it is not as though I expect I would mind,’ Temeraire said, ‘if she would like it so very much. I am rather bored only sitting about all day.’ he added, with rather less modesty than candour, ‘Only I do not understand at all why she should.’

Jane laughed a little, when Laurence had brought her this answer, and went out to the clearing and explained, ‘She would like to have an egg from you, Temeraire.’

‘Oh.’ Temeraire immediately puffed out his chest in gratification, and raised his ruff. With a gracious air, he bowed his head. ‘Then certainly I will oblige her,’ he declared. As soon as Jane had gone, he demanded that he be washed and his Chinese talon-sheaths, stored away as impractical for regular use, be brought out for him to wear.

‘She is so damned happy to be of use, I could weep,’ said Felicita’s Captain Brodin, a dark-haired Welshman not many years older than Laurence. He possessed a craggy face which looked as if it were made for the grim and brooding lines into which it had presently settled. They had left the two dragons outside in Felicita’s clearing to arrange the matter to their own liking, and from their noise were doing so with great enthusiasm, despite the difficulties which ought to have been present between two dragons of such disparate size. ‘And I know I have nothing much to complain of,’ he added bitterly, ‘she does better than nine-tenths of the Corps, and the surgeons think she will last ten years at this rate.’

He poured out an ample measure of wine, and left the bottle on the table between them. They did not speak much, but sat drinking together into the night, drooping gradually lower over their cups until the dragons fell quiet, and the shuddering aspen trees went still. Laurence was not quite sleeping, but he could not think of moving or even lifting his head, weighted as he was with a thick smothering stupor.

Brodin stirred him in the small hours of the morning. ‘We will see you again tonight?’ he asked, tiredly, as Laurence stood and bent back his shoulders to crack the angry muscles loose.

‘Best so, as I understand it,’ Laurence said, looking at his hands in vague surprise: they trembled.

He went out to collect Temeraire, whose profoundly smug and indecorous satisfaction might have caused him to blush, were he disposed to be critical of the pleasures Temeraire might enjoy under the present circumstances. ‘She has already had two, Laurence,’ Temeraire said, laying himself back down to sleep in his own clearing, drowsy but jubilant, ‘and she is quite sure she will have another; she said she could not tell at all that it was the first time I had sired.’

‘Is it?’ Laurence asked, feeling slow and stupid, ‘Did not you and Mei—’ The nature of the question stopped him.

‘That had nothing to do with eggs,’ Temeraire said, dismissively, ‘it is quite different,’ and coiling his tail neatly around himself went to sleep, leaving Laurence all the more confused, since he would not dream of prying further.

They repeated the visit the following evening. Laurence looked at the bottle but did not take it up again, and with an effort engaged Brodin in talk of other things: the customs of the Chinese and the Turks, their sea-journey to China; the campaign in Prussia and the great battle of Jena, which he could recreate in considerable detail, having observed the whole cataclysm from Temeraire’s back.

This was perhaps not the best way of relieving their anxiety. When he had laid out the whirling offensive, and the ranks of the Prussian army represented by walnut shells, had been swept from the table, he and Brodin sat back and looked at one another. Then Brodin stood and paced his small cabin restlessly. ‘I would rather that he came across while some of us can fight still, though I wouldn’t give more than ninepence for our chances if he did.’

It was a dreadful thing to hope for an invasion, particularly with an unspoken desire to be killed. Laurence felt uneasy, for it was a mortal sin and the extreme of selfishness even if it did not mean that England would be laid bare in its course. He was therefore troubled to find that he felt sympathetically. ‘We must not speak so. They do not fear their own deaths, and so God forbid that we should teach them to do so, or show less courage than they themselves do.’

‘Do you not think them past fear near the end?’ Brodin laughed shortly. ‘Obversaria scarcely knew Lenton, and he took her out of the shell with his own hands. She could only cry for water and respite, and he could give her neither. You may think me a heathen dog, but I would thank God, Bonaparte or the black devil himself for a clean death in battle.’ He poured the remainder of the wine, and when he was finished Laurence reached across the table for his glass.

‘The breeders prefer two weeks,’ Jane had said, ‘but we will be glad for as much time as he is able.’ So Laurence had dragged himself from his bed the next day too, his sleep shot to pieces from Brodin’s wine and the weight of his daily duties; and crept through his day supervising the harness-work and more lessons for Emily and Dyer, until it was time to go Felicita’s clearing again. They repeated the engagement twice more, and then on the fifth day, while they sat considering the chessboard dully, Brodin raised his head and asked Laurence abruptly, ‘Has he not yet begun to cough?’

‘Perhaps my throat is a little sore,’ Temeraire said judiciously. Laurence sat, his head bent nearly to his knees, scarcely able to bare the weight of hope resting upon his shoulders. Keynes and Dorset clambered over Temeraire like monkeys. They listened to his lungs with a great paper cone placed against his chest, and stuck their heads in his jaws to examine his tongue, which had remained a healthy and unspotted red colour.

‘We must cup him, I think,’ Keynes said at last, turning to his medical satchel.

‘But I am perfectly well,’ Temeraire objected, sidling away from the wickedly curved blade of the catling. ‘One ought not to be forced to take medicine when one does not ail. Anyone would think you had no other work to do,’ he said, aggrieved.

The operation was only achieved by persuading him of the noble service it would be, to the sick dragons, but it still required a dozen attempts. Temeraire kept withdrawing his leg at the last moment, until Laurence convinced him to keep his eyes turned in quite the opposite direction until the basin held by Dorset was filled and Keynes had clapped the cautery, heated in the fire, to the little nick.

They would have carried the steaming bowl of dark blood away without another word, if Laurence had not chased after them to demand their verdict. ‘No, of course he is not ill, and as far as I can tell, does not mean to be.’ Keynes said. ‘I will say no more at present; for we have work to do,’ and went away, leaving Laurence reeling in reaction to his comment. He felt like a man who had stepped out of the shadow of the gallows; two weeks of anxious dread gave way quite suddenly to shattering relief. It was very difficult not to yield to the force of his emotions, when Temeraire said, ‘It is not very nice to be cut open. I do not see what good it will do at all.’ He nosed the tiny seared wound experimentally, then nudged Laurence in alarm when he noticed the expression on his captain’s face, ‘Laurence? Laurence, pray do not worry; it does not hurt much at all, and look, it has already stopped bleeding.’

Jane continued to write energetically as Keynes made his report, her face alight. The grey shroud of sorrow and weariness was conspicuous only by its absence.

‘Let us not have any rioting, if you please: we cannot yet be certain that it is not merely a difference in his physiognomy,’ Keynes said, peevishly. His hands were still gory with blood crusted under his fingernails as he had come straight from comparing various samples of blood beneath his microscope. ‘There is no justification for it. It may well be an individual trait. I only said there is the merest possibility, and that it is worthy of a trial – A small trial, with no expectations—’ His protests were pointless, for she did not pause for a moment and Keynes looked likely to snatch away her pen.’

‘Nonsense; a little riot is just what we need,’ Jane said, without looking up, ‘and you will write the most damned encouraging report ever seen, if you please; you will give no excuses to the Admiralty.’

‘I am not speaking of the Admiralty at present,’ Keynes said, ‘and I do not care to spread unfounded hope. In all likelihood, he has never had the disease; it is probably some natural resistance unique to his breed; the cold which he suffered last year could be merely coincidental.’

Their hope was indeed a tenuous one. Temeraire had been ill en route to China, only briefly; the sickness had left him after little more than a week in Cape Town, and so had been dismissed as a trifling cold until his present resistance to the disease had caused Keynes to suspect that the illnesses might perhaps be one and the same. But even if he were not mistaken they still had no cure. Even if they knew of the cure it might not be easily found, and if it were found, it may not be brought back in time to save many of the sick.

‘And it is by no means unlikely,’ Keynes added peevishly, ‘that there exists no cure whatsoever. Many a consumptive has found temporary relief in warmer climes.’

‘I would not care a pin whether it be the climate, the waters or the food. If I must ship every dragon in England to Africa by boat to take the cure, you may be sure I will do it,’ Jane said. ‘I am almost as glad for a reason to lift our spirits as for the chance of a cure and you will do nothing to deflate them, if you please.’

Small hopes were riches to those who until lately had none, and were to be pursued by every means at hand. ‘Laurence, you and Temeraire must go, though I hate to give you up again,’ Jane said, handing him his orders, hastily written and scarcely legible, ‘but we must rely on him to remember what might have suited his taste at the time, as it could be the foundation of the cure. The ferals have come along as well as could be hoped, thank Heavens, and perhaps, having captured this latest spy, we will be lucky and Bonaparte will not be in such a hurry to send good dragons after bad.

‘And I am sending all of your formation along,’ she continued. ‘They are in urgent need, having been among the first to take sick; if you bring them back well, God willing, you can hold the Channel while we treat the others.’

‘Then I may see Maximus and Lily again,’ Temeraire said, jubilantly. He would not wait, but insisted that they go at once.

They had scarcely set down outside the barren clearing where Maximus slept, before Berkley, who had come out to meet them, seized Laurence by the arms and said ferociously, ‘For God’s sake, say that it is true and not some damned fairy-tale.’ He turned aside and covered his emotion when Laurence gave his assent.

Laurence pretended not to see. ‘Temeraire, I believe your harness is loose; there over the left flank, will you look at it?’ he said firmly, when Temeraire would have kept peering anxiously at Berkley’s bowed shoulders.

‘But Mr. Fellowes worked on it only last week,’ Temeraire said, suitably diverted and nosing over it experimentally. He delicately took a bit of the harness between his teeth and tugged on it. ‘No, it lies perfectly well; Laurence, it does not feel the least bit loose at all.’

‘Here, let’s have a look at you,’ Berkley interrupted brusquely, having mastered himself. ‘You’ve gained a good twelve feet since you sailed away to China, no? And you look well, Laurence; I expected to see you ragged as a tinker.’

‘You would certainly have found me so when we first returned,’ Laurence answered, gripping his hand. He could not return any compliment. At first glance, Berkley looked as if he had lost some six stones in weight, and it did not suit him; his jowls hung loosely from his cheeks.

Maximus looked even more dreadfully altered. His great scaly red-and-gold hide sagged in folds around the base of the neck and in front of his chest, the massive fretwork of his spine and shoulders held up his flesh like tent-poles; and his air-sacs lay swollen and bulging from his wasted sides. His eyes were nearly shut, and a thin raspy noise of breathing issued from his cracked-open jaws, a thin trail of drool puddling beneath them. Even his nostrils were caked over with dried flaking effluvia.

‘He will wake up in a bit, and be glad to see you both,’ Berkley said gruffly, ‘but I don’t like to wake him when he can get a little rest. The blasted cold will not let him sleep properly, and he doesn’t eat a quarter of what he should.’

Temeraire, having followed them into the clearing, made no sound. He crouched down, his neck curving back upon itself like a wary snake, and sat utterly still with disquiet, his wide unblinking gaze fixed on Maximus, who slept on, rasping. Laurence and Berkley conversed a little in low voices, discussing the sea-voyage. ‘It should be less than three months to the Cape,’ Laurence said, ‘to judge it by our last voyage. We had some fighting off the Channel to see us off, though, which did not speed matters along.’

‘However long it takes, it’s better to sail with some purpose than lie about like this, even if we all drown doing it,’ Berkley said. ‘We will be packed by morning, and the lummox will eat properly for once, if I have to march the cows down his gullet myself.’

‘Are we going somewhere?’ Maximus said sleepily, in a voice much thickened, and turned his head aside to cough low and deep, and spit into a small leaf-covered pit dug for the purpose. He rubbed each of his eyes against his foreleg, in turn, to clear away the mucous, and then upon seeing Temeraire slowly brightened, his head rising. ‘You are back! Was China very interesting?’ he asked.

‘It was, oh, it was, but,’ Temeraire burst out, ‘I am sorry I was not at home, while all of you were sick; I am so very sorry,’ and hung his head, miserably.

‘Why it is only a cold,’ Maximus said, only to be interrupted by another bout of coughing, after which he added regardless, ‘I will be perfectly hearty soon, I am sure. Only, I am so tired.’ He closed his eyes almost directly after he had said this, and fell once again into a light slumber.

‘They have the worst of it,’ Berkley said heavily, seeing Laurence away. Temeraire had crept very quietly out of the clearing so that they might go aloft without disturbing Maximus. ‘All the Regal Coppers have. It is their damned weight; they do not eat, so they cannot keep their muscle, and then one day they just cannot breathe. Four lost already, and Laetificat will not see the summer, unless we find your cure.’ He did not say that Maximus would follow soon after, if not precede her; he did not need to.

‘We shall find it,’ Temeraire said, fiercely, ‘we shall, we shall, we shall.’

‘I hope to find you and your charges well upon our return,’ Laurence said, shaking Granby’s hand. Behind him a great bustle and commotion were underway as the crew made their final preparations. They would depart tomorrow on the evening tide, the wind permitting, and must be well aboard by morning with so many dragons and their crews to be stowed. Emily and Dyer were busily folding his clothing into his battered old sea-chest, which had only just survived their most recent voyage, and Ferris was saying sharply, ‘Don’t think I cannot see that bottle, Mr. Allen; you may pour it out directly, do you hear?’

He had many new men aboard, replacements for the unhappy number of his crew lost during their year’s absence. Jane had sent them to him on trial, awaiting approval; but in the torment and anxiety of the past two weeks and the heavy work of those before, he had grown only indifferently acquainted with them. Now suddenly there was no more time, and he must make do with whoever had been given him. He was more than a little sorry to be making his farewells to men whose character he knew and understood, and upon whom he would have been happy to rely.

‘I expect you will find us all in pieces,’ Granby said, ‘with half of England on fire, and Arkady and his lot roasting cows in the ruins; it will be wonderful otherwise.’

‘Tell Arkady from me that they are all to mind themselves properly,’ Temeraire said, craning his head carefully so as not to dislodge the harness-men scurrying upon his back, ‘and that we will certainly be back very soon, so he need not think he has everything all to himself, even if he does have a medal now,’ he finished, still a little disgruntled.

As they prolonged their conversation over a cup of tea, a young ensign came for Laurence. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but there is a gentleman to see you,’ the boy said, adding in tones of wonder, ‘a black gentleman.’ So a very puzzled Laurence had to say his last farewells more abruptly and go.

He had no difficulty picking out his guest in the officer’s common room, although Laurence struggled for a moment before recalling his name: Reverend Erasmus, the missionary whom Wilberforce had presented to him, at the party two weeks before – had it been so short a time? ‘You are very welcome, sir; but I am afraid you find me at sixes and sevens,’ Laurence said, beckoning to the servants, who had not yet brought him any refreshment. ‘We are leaving port tomorrow. Will you have a glass of wine?’

‘Only a cup of tea, thank you,’ Erasmus said. ‘Captain, I knew as much; I hope you will forgive me for descending upon you at such a time, without notice. I was with Mr. Wilberforce this morning when your letter of apology arrived, informing him that you were bound for Africa: I have come to beg you for passage.’

Laurence was silent. He had every right to invite a number of guests as did all dragon captains aboard transports; but the situation was not a simple one. They travelled on the Allegiance, under a captain who, though one of Laurence’s dearest friends and former first officer, owed no small portion of his family fortune to substantial plantations in the West Indies, all manned by slaves. Erasmus himself, Laurence realized with a sinking feeling, might even have once toiled in their fields, as he believed some of Riley’s father’s holdings were in Jamaica.

Aside from the discomfort that opposing politics among shipmates might ordinarily engender Laurence had, on previous occasions, failed to conceal his sentiments toward the practice, and ill-feeling had been the unhappy result. To inflict upon Riley a passenger, whose very presence would seem a silent continuation of their argument, had the look of a calculated insult.

‘Sir,’ Laurence said slowly, ‘I believe you said you had been taken from Louanda? We are bound for Cape Town, far to the south. We will not visit your own nation.’

‘Beggars cannot be choosers, Captain.’ Erasmus said, simply, ‘and I prayed only for passage to Africa. If God has opened a path for me to Cape Town, I will not refuse it.’

He made no further appeal, but waited expectantly, his dark eyes levelled steadily across the table. ‘Then I am at your service, Reverend,’ Laurence said, as of course he must for politeness’ sake, ‘if you can manage to be ready in time. We cannot miss the tide.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Erasmus rose and shook his hand vigorously. ‘Have no fear. In hope of your consent, my wife had already made arrangements, and I hope by now will already be on the road with all our worldly substance; though there is not much of it,’ he added.

‘Then I will hope to see you tomorrow morning,’ Laurence said, ‘in Dover harbour.’

The Allegiance was waiting for them in the cold sunny morning, looking oddly squat with her masts stubby and bare. The topmasts and yards were laid out upon the deck and the enormous chains of her best bower and kedge anchors stretched out from the water, groaning softly as she rocked on the swell. She had come into harbour some four weeks earlier, Laurence and Temeraire having in the end reached England scarcely sooner than if they had sailed home with Allegiance after all.

‘I am happy to find you alive and well and not frozen skeletons in some Himalayan pass,’ Riley said, shaking his hand eagerly in welcome, almost before Laurence had stepped off Temeraire’s back. ‘And you brought us home a fire-breather after all. Yes, I could scarcely help but hear of her; the Navy is bursting with the news, and I believe the ships on blockade take it in turn to pass Guernsey and watch her flaming away at that old heap of rock.

‘But I am very happy we shall make shipmates again,’ he continued, ‘and though you will be a little more crowded, I hope that we will make shift to see you all comfortable; you are a party of seven this time, yes?’

He spoke with so much earnest friendliness and concern that Laurence was stricken with a sense of dishonesty so said abruptly, ‘Yes, we are a full complement; and Captain, I must tell you that I have brought a passenger along, with his family. He is a missionary bound for the Cape; he applied to me only yesterday afternoon – he is a freedman.’

He regretted his words as soon as he had spoken them. He had meant to make the introduction more gently, and was conscious that he had allowed guilt to make him clumsy. Riley was silent. ‘I am sorry I could not give you more warning,’ Laurence added, in an attempt to make apology.

‘I see,’ Riley said shortly, ‘—of course you may invite anyone you wish,’ and touching his hat went away without further conversation.

He made no pretence of courtesy to Reverend Erasmus when the gentleman came aboard a little later that morning, neglecting even to greet him, which would have offended Laurence on the part of any guest, much less a man of the cloth; but when he saw that the minister’s wife and their two small children had been left to sit in the small, poky boat which had collected them, with no offer made to rig a bo’sun’s chair over the side to bring them aboard, he decided he had had enough.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, leaning over the rail, ‘pray be easy, and do keep hold of the children; we will have you aboard in a moment. I beg you to not be alarmed,’ and then straightening said, ‘Temeraire if you please, will you lift that boat up, so that the lady may come aboard.’

‘Oh, certainly, and I will be very careful,’ Temeraire said, and leaning over the side of the ship – well-balanced by Maximus on her other side, still prodigious in weight despite his reduced state. He seized the boat carefully in one enormous foreclaw, and neatly plucked it dripping from the water. The boat’s crew were loud in their protestations of alarm, while the two little girls clung silent and terrified to their stoic-faced mother, who did not permit herself to look at all anxious. The entire operation scarcely covered the space of a moment, as Temeraire was set the little boat upon the dragondeck.

Laurence offered his hand to Mrs. Erasmus. She silently accepted, and having climbed down, reached in herself to lift out the children, one after another, and then her own portmanteau and satchel. She was a tall, stern-faced woman, more substantial in build and considerably darker of skin than her husband, with her hair pinned severely down under a plain white kerchief. Her two small daughters stood by quietly in their perfectly white pinafores, having been admonished briefly to stay out of the way. They clutched each other’s hands tightly.

‘Roland, perhaps you will see our guests to their cabin,’ Laurence said to Emily quietly, hoping her presence might comfort them a little. Much to his regret, it was time to give over any attempt to conceal her gender. The progression of a year and more had meted out natural consequences upon her figure, which bid to take after her mother’s. It would soon be quite impossible to deceive anyone, and he would henceforth simply brazen out any challenge, hoping for the best. Thankfully, in the present case, it did not matter what the Erasmuses should think of her, as they were to be left securely behind in Africa.

‘There is nothing to be afraid of,’ Emily informed the girls blithely as she led them away, seeing their stares, ‘at least, not the dragons; although we had some terrific storms on our last voyage,’ which plainly left them exactly as easy in their minds as they had been; they looked very meek as they followed her below to their quarters.

Laurence turned back to Lieutenant Franks, in command of the boat’s crew, who had gone very silent, having been set down amidst seven dragons. ‘I am sure Temeraire would be happy to put the boat back in her traces,’ he said. But when the young man only stammered miserably in reply, a pang of guilt made him add, ‘Although perhaps you have another return to make,’ and on Franks’ relieved assent, had Temeraire set the boat back down onto the water.

He then went below to his cabin, much reduced from his former voyage, as the space would now be divided with six other captains; but he had been given a forward room, with a share of the bow windows, and it was better than many a cabin he had endured in the Navy. He did not have to wait long before Riley knocked – unnecessarily as the door was standing open – and begged the favour of a word.

‘That will do, Mr. Dyer,’ Laurence said, to the young runner presently ordering his things, ‘pray go see if Temeraire needs anything, then you may attend to your lessons,’ as he wanted no audience.

The door was shut; Riley began stiffly, ‘I hope you are settled to your satisfaction.’

‘I am.’ Laurence did not mean to begin the quarrel; if Riley wished to stand upon the point, he might do so.

‘Then I am sorry to say,’ Riley said, not looking very sorry, only pale with anger, ‘I am very sorry to say, that I have received a report, which I could scarcely credit until I had seen with my own eyes—’

He was not speaking loudly, yet; the door swung open in the middle of his sentence, and Catherine Harcourt looked in. ‘Pray forgive me,’ she said, ‘but I have been trying to find you these twenty minutes past, Captain Riley; this ship is too damned large. Not that I mean to complain of her in the least, of course: we are very obliged to you indeed for our passage.’

Riley stammered a vague polite reply, staring fixedly at her head. He had not known her to be a woman at the time of their first meeting, which had lasted little more than a day, and a day after a battle. Catherine had a slimmer stature than Jane; with her hair pulled back snugly in her customary plait, her wide pleasant face with its snub nose freckled and brown with sun and wind, she might easily be mistaken for a boy by the unsuspecting. But the secret had slipped out during their voyage to China, and Riley had been very shocked and disapproving of the intelligence.

‘And I hope you are comfortably settled – Your cabin –’ he said now, trailing off, at a loss for the correct form of address.

‘Oh, my bags have been stowed, I suppose I will find them sometime,’ Harcourt said briskly, either unconscious or deliberately ignoring Riley’s awkward constraint, ‘That makes no nevermind; it is the tubs of oiled sand, for Lily to rest her head upon. I am very sorry to have to trouble you, but we are quite at a loss to where they should be stowed: we must have them near the dragondeck, in case she should suffer a fit of sneezing and we are forced to change them out quick.’

As the acid of a Longwing was perfectly capable, if left unchecked, of eating through an entire ship, straight down to the hull, sinking her, so this topic naturally engaged all the interest of the ship’s captain. Riley answered her with renewed energy, his discomfort forgotten in the practical concern. They settled that the tubs would be stored in the galley, directly below the dragon-deck, and with this decided, Catherine nodded and thanked him, adding, ‘Will you dine with us tonight?’ an inconvenient friendliness for Laurence, but of course it was her prerogative. She was technically his superior officer, as their original assignment as part of Lily’s formation still stood, although Temeraire had operated under independent orders for so long that Laurence himself barely remembered the fact.

But it was delivered informally, at least, so it did not seem offensive when Riley said, ‘I thank you, but I must be on deck tonight, I am afraid,’ a polite excuse, which she accepted on its face, and nodding her farewells left him alone with Laurence once again.

It was awkward to resume their quarrel with the first impulse of anger interrupted and blunted so, but with a will they rose to the occasion. After only a few moderate exchanges, Riley said, ‘And I hope, sir, that I need never see the ship’s crew or her boats subjected to, I am sorry to name it so, outright interference; under not only the permission but the encouragement—’

Which sped Laurence to reply, ‘And for my part, Captain Riley, I would be very glad to never again witness such positive disdain, not only for the universal requirement of courtesy, but particularly for the very safety of the passengers of one of His Majesty’s vessels, from her very crew! I will not say deliberate insult—’

They were soon in fine a form as might be expected from two men possessing the habit of command, and both of full voice. Their former acquaintance made it less difficult to touch upon such the subjects that might provoke the most dramatic reaction. ‘You cannot claim,’ Riley said, ‘not to have a proper understanding of precedence in these matters; you can make no such excuse. You know your duty perfectly well. You set your beast deliberately onto the ship’s crew; without permission. You might have asked for a chair if you wished one slung—’

‘If I had not imagined that such a request needed to be made, particularly upon what I had supposed to be a well run ship when a lady was waiting to come aboard—’ Laurence said.

‘I suppose our understanding of the term differs,’ Riley retorted, sarcastic and quick.

He looked heartily embarrassed as soon as the remark had escaped him, but Laurence felt no inclination to allow him to retract it, and said angrily, ‘It would grieve me indeed to impute any ungentlemanly motive, or selfish consideration, which might prompt a man to make intolerable remarks regarding the character and respectability of a clergyman’s wife; a lady wholly unknown to him and who therefore has offered no reasonable ground to merit his scorn – save perhaps that she is alternative, and that such behaviour is preferable to the examination of his own conscience—’

The door was flung open without a knock, and Berkley thrust his head into the cabin. They stopped at once, united in appalled indignation at his perfect disregard of privacy and shipboard etiquette. Berkley paid no attention to their stares. He was unshaven and gaunt; Maximus had passed an uncomfortable night after his short flight onto the ship, and Berkley had slept no more than his dragon. He said bluntly, ‘We can hear every damned word on deck. Temeraire will pull up the planking and stick his nose in at any moment. For God’s sake go and knock each other down somewhere quietly and have done with it.’

This outrageous advice, more suitable for a pair of schoolboys than grown men, was certainly not heeded, but the quarrel was ended by the reproof, and Riley begged to be excused and went at once away.

‘Henceforth, I am afraid I must ask you to mediate for us,’ Laurence said to Catherine sometime after, when his temper had calmed as much as it could from violently pacing the narrow length of his cabin. ‘I know we agreed that I should manage it, but matters have arisen so that—’

‘Of course Laurence, you need say no more,’ she interrupted in a practical tone, leaving him unsure of the discretion of his fellow aviators. It was an agreed understanding aboard ship, that one should pretend not to have overheard anything that circumstance had made perfectly audible, so he hardly knew how to answer her frankness, ‘and I will give him a private dinner instead of one with us all in attendance, so there will be no difficulty. But I am sure you will make up over the matter in a trice. What is there worth arguing about, when we have three months of sailing together ahead of us; unless you mean to entertain us all with gossip?’

Laurence did not like to imagine himself the subject of whispers in the least, but he knew her optimistic hopes to be ill-founded. No unforgivable remarks had been made but many unforgettable ones, a good number by him he was sorry to recall, and even if honour did not demand they avoid one another entirely, he felt they could no longer enjoy such terms of camaraderie as they had formerly known. He wondered if he were to blame, perhaps for continuing to think of Riley as his subordinate; or if he had presumed too far on their relationship.

He went to sit with Temeraire as the ship made ready to weigh anchor. The familiar shouts and exhortations were strangely distant from him, and he felt more disconnected from the life of the ship than he had ever expected to be; almost as though he had never been a sailor at all.

‘Look there, Laurence,’ Temeraire said. South of the harbour, a small ragged knot of dragons could be seen winging away from the covert; towards Cherbourg, Laurence guessed by their line of flight, though his glass was not to hand. They were only marginally larger than a flock of birds, at too far a distance to make out their individual markings, but as they flew, one of their number briefly discharge a small exuberant tongue of flame, which burst yellow-orange against the blue sky. Iskierka had been sent on patrol with a handful of the ferals, for the first time; a measure of the desperate circumstances which they left behind them.

‘Are we not leaving soon, Laurence?’ Temeraire asked; he was painfully impatient to be underway. ‘I would be happy to pull us along at any time, if it meant we would make better speed,’ and he turned to look at little Dulcia, presently lying in an uneasy sleep upon his back, coughing miserably every so often without even opening her eyes.

She and Lily, who lay with her head buried to her bone spurs in a great wooden tub full of sand, were still in much better state than the rest of the formation. Poor Maximus had made the flight to the ship in easy short stages, and even then with much difficulty. He had been given all of the far side of the dragondeck and slept there already, heedless of the furious bustle around him as the last of the preparations for launch commenced. Nitidus lay sprawled in exhaustion tucked against Maximus’s side, though once the little Pascal’s Blue would have lain comfortably on his back. Immortalis and Messoria, huddled to either side of Lily in the middle of the deck, had grown a sort of pale lemon yellow like milk custard.

‘I could drag up the anchors in a trice. I am sure it would be much quicker,’ Temeraire added. The topmasts had been sent up, and the yards; they were warping up to the kedge: four hundred men could heave on the massive quadruple-capstan at once, all of them needed to bring up the massive weight of the best bower. Most of the sailors on deck had already stripped to the waist, despite the cold morning. Temeraire certainly could have provided material aid, but Laurence was under no illusion as to how such an offer would be received now.

‘We would only be in the way,’ Laurence said, ‘they will manage quicker without us.’ He laid his hand on Temeraire’s side, looking away from the labour in which they could have no part, to the open ocean ahead.

PART II

Chapter Six

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, in a very strange tone. Then he pitched forward and vomited tremendously all over the open ground before him, heaving up an acrid stinking mess in which the traces of banana leaves, goat horns, cocoa-nut shells and long green ropes of braided seaweed could be distinguished among the yellowish mulch scattered with unrecognizable scraps of cracked bones and shreds of hide.

‘Keynes!’ Laurence bellowed, having leapt out of the way just in time. To the two hapless medicine men who had offered this latest remedy, he said savagely, ‘Get you gone, and take that worthless draught with you.’

‘No, let me have it, if you please; and the receipt,’ Keynes said, approaching gingerly, and bending to sniff at the pot which they presented to him. ‘A purgative may be of some use on future occasions, if this is not simply a case of excess. Were you feeling ill before?’ Keynes demanded of Temeraire, who only moaned a little and closed his eyes. He lay limp and wretched, having crept a little way off from the former contents of his stomach, which steamed unpleasantly even in the overheated late summer air. Laurence covered his mouth and nostrils with a handkerchief and beckoned to the deeply reluctant groundsmen to bring the midden-shovels and do away with the refuse at once.

‘I wonder if it is not the effects of the protea,’ Dorset said absently, poking through the pot with a stick and fishing out the remnants of a spiny blossom. ‘I do not believe we have seen it used as an ingredient before. The Cape vegetation has quite a unique construction within the plant kingdom. I must send the children for some specimens.’

‘As glad as we are to have delivered you a curiosity, it is certainly not something he has eaten before. Perhaps you might consider how we are to proceed, without making him ill?’ Laurence snapped, and went to Temeraire’s side before he could make a further display of ill-temper and frustration. He laid a hand on the slowly heaving muzzle, and Temeraire twitched his ruff in an attempt at bravery.

‘Roland, you and Dyer may fetch some sea-water from beneath the dock,’ Laurence said. Taking a cloth, he used the cool water to wipe down Temeraire’s muzzle and his jaws.

They had been in Cape Town now for two days, experimenting lavishly. Temeraire was perfectly willing to sniff or swallow anything which anyone should give him, as it could by chance be a cure. He exercised his memory for what he might have sampled, so far without any notable success, and Laurence considered this latest episode another failure, whatever the surgeons might say. But he did not know how to refuse them, though it seemed to him that they were trying a great deal of local quackery, without any real grounds for hope; and making a reckless trial of Temeraire’s health.’

‘I already feel a good deal better,’ Temeraire said, but his eyes were closing in exhaustion as he said it, and he did not want to eat anything the next day; but said wistfully, ‘I would be glad of some tea, if it would not be much trouble.’

Gong Su made a great kettle of the stuff for him, using an entire weeks’ supply, and then watched in disgust as they added a brick of sugar. Temeraire drank it with great pleasure when it had cooled enough, and afterwards stoutly declared himself perfectly recovered. But he looked rather dismal later when Emily and Dyer came huffing back from the markets, hung all over with the day’s new acquisitions in net-bags and parcels, and stinking from ten yards distance.

‘Well, let us see,’ Keynes said, and went poking through the materials with Gong Su. There were a great many local vegetables, including a long pendulous fruit like an oversized yam, which Gong Su dubiously picked up and thumped against the ground. The skin did not even split, until he at last took it into the castle, to the smith, and had it smashed open upon the forge.

‘That is from a sausage tree,’ Emily said. ‘Maybe it is not quite ripe though. We also found some of the hua jiao today, from a Malay stall keeper,’ she added, showing Laurence a small basket of red peppery seeds, for which Temeraire had acquired a great liking.

‘Not the mushroom?’ Laurence asked. They all recalled vividly, the hideously pungent specimen which in its cooking had rendered the castle near uninhabitable from its noxious fumes. Laurence had an instinctive faith in unpleasant medicine, and secretly, the best part of his own hopes lay on the thing. But it was surely a wild growth and uncultivated, for no one in possession of all their senses would deliberately eat the thing, and so far it was not to be found anywhere, for any price.

‘We found a boy, who had a little English and told him that we would pay gold for it, if he would bring some,’ Dyer piped up. A group of native children had brought them the first example mostly as a curiosity.

‘Perhaps the seeds, in combination with another of the native fruits,’ Dorset suggested, examining the hua jiao with more respect. He had already burnt the skin of his finger by stirring them incautiously: a few of the berries had burst. ‘They might have been used on any number of dishes.’

Keynes snorted, and dusting his hands as he straightened from the survey, shook his head at Gong Su. ‘No, let his innards have another day of rest, and leave off this unwholesome stuff. I am increasingly of the opinion that the climate alone must cook the sickness out of them.’

He prodded the ground with the stick he had been using to turn over the vegetables. It was dry and hard for several inches down, with only the stubborn frizz of short yellow grass to hold it together; the roots long and thin and spidery. It lacked only a few days to March, deep in a South African summer, and the consistent heat had made the hard-packed earth a baking stone, which shimmered in the sun during the peak of the day.

Temeraire cracked open an eye from his restorative drowse. ‘It is very pleasant, but it is not any warmer than the courtyard at Loch Laggan,’ he said doubtfully. In any case the suggestion was not a very satisfying one, as this cure could not be tried until the other dragons arrived.

For the moment they were alone, although the Allegiance was expected imminently. As soon as the ship had come within flying distance of the Cape, Laurence had packed the surgeons and the barest handful of men and supplies aboard Temeraire’s back, and taken them on ahead, so that they might begin their desperate business of attempting to find the cure.

It had not been merely an excuse: their orders unequivocally stated without the loss of a moment, and Maximus’s ragged, gurgling cough was a constant spur to their sides. But in all honesty, Laurence had not been in the least sorry to go, for the quarrel had not been reconciled.

* * *

Laurence had made attempts. Once, three weeks into the journey he and Riley had passed one another by chance belowdecks, and Laurence had removed his hat; but Riley barely touched his own brim and shouldered by, a surge of red colour quickly mounting in his cheeks. This had stiffened Laurence for another week; long enough to refuse an offer of a share in one of the ship’s milch goats, when the animal which he had provided himself ran dry and was sacrificed instead to the dragons.

Then regret won out again, and he said to Catherine, ‘Perhaps we ought to invite the Captain and the ship’s officers to dinner?’ He spoke as they walked on the deck and it was perfectly audible to anyone who might be curious, so that when the invitation was sent it could not be mistaken as anything but a peace offering. But though Riley attended with his officers, he was utterly withdrawn and scarcely spoke, except when Catherine questioned him and even then never lifted his eyes from his plate. His officers, of course, would not speak unless he or another captain addressed them, so it was a strange and silent affair, even the younger aviators stifled by the sense that their manners did not suit the formality of the occasion.

With such a standing quarrel among the officers, the men, who at no time made a secret of their dislike of the dragons and aviators, now made still less of one. Their hostility was leashed tightly by their fear, of course, even among those who had sailed with Laurence and Temeraire on the previous voyage to China, for seven dragons made a great difference to just the one. The sudden violent fits of coughing and sneezing which wracked the poor creatures and ate at their strength only made them all the more fearsome and unpredictable to the common sailors, who could scarcely be made to ascend the foremast for its proximity to the beasts. Worse, their officers corrected them none too sharply for their hesitation, with predictable results: off the coast of the Horn, Reliant missed stays and had to be hurriedly box-hauled, because the men were moving too slowly on the dragondeck to shift over the jib and foretop-mast staysail sheets. The manoeuvre jarred the dragons sadly about, setting them to coughing; and then nuisance nearly became tragedy as Nitidus went tumbling off Temeraire’s back and knocked Lily’s head askew.

Her greasy tub of oiled sand slid with ponderous majesty over the edge of the dragondeck, and plunged immediately into the ocean. ‘Over the side, dearest, put your head over the side,’ Catherine cried, her crew rushing to fetch one of the replacements from the galley below. Lily had with a tremendous effort lunged forward and now was clutching precariously at the edge of the ship, her head thrust out over the water and her shoulders curled up into great knots as she tried to hold from coughing. Drops spilled from the bone spurs around her jaws and smoked thin black hissing streams from the tarry sides of the ship: the Allegiance was coming up through the wind, which blew them straight back against the wood.

‘Shall I try and carry you away from the ship?’ Temeraire asked anxiously, wings half-spread. ‘Will you climb on my back?’ A dangerous manoeuvre at the best of times, without a dragon dripping poisonous acid from her jaws, even if Lily could have managed to scale his side.

‘Temeraire,’ Laurence called instead, ‘will you see if you can break the deck, here,’ and Temeraire turned his head. Laurence had only meant him to try and wrench the planks up, but instead Temeraire opened his jaws experimentally over the place and gave a queer, throttled version of his roar. Four of the planks cracked, one opened up along the ring-pattern of the wood, the knot dropping onto the startled heads of the galley cooks, who crouched and covered themselves out of terror.

The space was nearly wide enough: with a few frantic moments of work they had enlarged it and Temeraire could reach down and heave up the tub directly. Lily pressed her jaw down into the sand and coughed and coughed, miserably and long, the fit worsened by her having repressed it at first. The oily sand hissed and smoked and stank with the fumes of the acid, and the deck gaped with the splintered hole, jagged edges threatening the dragons’ bellies and letting the steam out of the galley which kept them warm.

‘A damned disgrace; we might as well be sailing on a Frenchman,’ Laurence said, angrily and not low; it had already been in his mind that tacking into the wind was incautious for so large and ponderous a vessel, better suited to old-fashioned wearing about, particularly when weighted down as she was with so many dragons.

Riley had appeared on the quarterdeck, the sound of his furious voice drifted faintly across the ship, calling Owens, the deck officer, to account, and the men to fresh order. But Laurence’s voice carried too; there was a momentary pause in Riley’s tirade, and then it finished abruptly.

Riley made his stiff and formal apologies for the incident only to Catherine, catching her as she came off the dragon-deck to go below at the end of the day, in what Laurence could only imagine to be a design to avoid speaking to all of the aviators together. Her hair had come loose from its plait and her face was smudged with smoke and charred soot; she had taken off her coat to pad under Lily’s jaw, where the bare edge of the tub had chafed.

When he stopped her, she straightened and put her hand through her hair, loosening it entirely about her face, and his speech, undoubtedly prepared with care, quite fell apart. He only said, ‘I beg your pardon – deeply regret—’ incoherently, and looked confused until she interrupted tiredly, ‘Yes, of course, only pray not again, and do let us have the carpenters make the repairs at once tomorrow. Good-night,’ and then brushed past him and went below.

She meant nothing by it; she was simply tired, and wished to go to sleep, but it looked cutting to one who did not know her well enough to understand that Catherine was not in the least likely to resort to social stratagem to express offence; and perhaps Riley was ashamed. In any case, by morning all the ship’s carpenters were at work on the dragondeck before even the aviators arose; and with not a word of grumbling or fear, even if there was a great deal of sweating, when the dragons roused and began watching them with close interest. By the end of the day they had not only repaired the injury, but also put in a smooth hatch, which could be opened up into the galley if the operation required repeating.

‘Well, I call that handsome,’ Catherine said, though Laurence felt it small amends for the earlier neglect; and when she added, ‘we ought to thank him for it,’ glancing at him, he said nothing and made no shifts to agree. When she did go and ask Riley to dine again, this time Laurence was careful to absent himself for the meal.

This of course meant an end to any hope of resolution. The rest of the journey passed in a cold distance between them, with barely an exchange of greetings, just the briefest gesture when passing on deck or below, made rarer still as the Navy officers were quartered to the stern.

There could be nothing comfortable in travelling aboard a ship while at unconcealed and bitter odds with her captain. The officers were likewise cold, as if they had never served with Laurence, or were otherwise stiff with discomfort. These constant chafing indignities of cold treatment from the ship’s complement daily refreshed not only the pain of the quarrel but his resentment of Riley’s anger.

There was one saving grace; isolated from the life of the ship he was brought into closer contact with his fellow captains, and so this time he sailed not as a navy man, but as an aviator, which was a very different experience and he startled himself by preferring it. They had little practical work to do; by noon the daily slaughter was over and the dragondeck had been holystoned as much as could be managed without shifting the dragons too much. The younger officers were examined on their schoolwork, and were then at liberty – as much liberty as could be had within the confines of a fully occupied dragondeck and their small cabins below.

‘Do you mind if we knock down the bulkhead, Laurence?’ Chenery said, putting in his head, scarcely three days into the journey, as Laurence was writing letters in his cabin: a habit he had much neglected on shore of late. ‘We want to set up a card-table, but it is too wretchedly cramped.’

He gave his assent, a little taken back, but it was pleasant to have the larger space restored, and to write his letters with the companionable background noise of their game and conversation. It became so settled a practice among them that the crewmen would take the bulkheads down without asking as soon as had they finished dressing; and restored them only for sleeping.

They took their meals almost always in common company: a convivial and noisy atmosphere, with Catherine presiding and all talking across the table heedless of etiquette. The junior officers were squeezed together at the lower half, more by their promptness in arrival than their rank. Afterwards she gave the loyal toast standing on deck, which was followed with coffee and cigars in the company of their dragons, who had been dosed with a posset against coughing, for what little relief it gave them, in the cooler hours of the evening. After supper, he would read to Temeraire in the evenings, occasionally from the Latin or the French, with Temeraire translating for the other dragons.

Laurence had assumed Temeraire particularly unusual, among dragons, for his scholarship; to better suit all the other dragons, he kept, at first, to their small store of literature, and only then gave way to those mathematical and scientific treatises, which Temeraire doted upon and he himself found hard going. Many of these interested the company as little as Laurence had expected, but he was a little astonished in reading a sadly wearing treatise upon geometry to be interrupted by Messoria, who said sleepily, ‘Pray skip ahead a little; we do not need it proven, anyone can tell that it is perfectly correct,’ referring to great circles, and the notion that a curved course rather than a straight was the shortest distance for sailing, which had confused Laurence for a good week when he had been obliged to learn it for the Navy lieutenant’s examination.

The next evening he was further puzzled to be interrupted in his reading by Nitidus and Dulcia taking up an argument with Temeraire about Euclid’s postulates, one of which, referring to the principle of parallel lines, they felt quite unreasonable.

‘I am not saying it is correct,’ Temeraire protested, ‘but you must accept it and go on: everything else in the science is built upon it.’

‘But what use is it, then!’ Nitidus said, getting agitated enough to flutter his wings and bat his tail against Maximus’s side; Maximus murmured a small reproof without quite waking. ‘Everything must be quite wrong if he begins so.’

‘It is not that it is wrong,’ Temeraire said, ‘only that it is not as plain as the others—’

‘It is wrong, it is perfectly wrong,’ Nitidus cried decidedly, while Dulcia pointed out more calmly, ‘Only consider a moment: if you should begin in Dover, and I a little south of London, on the same latitude, and we should then both fly straight northwards, we should certainly meet at the Pole if we did not mistake our course, so what on earth is the sense of arguing that straight lines will never meet?’

‘Well,’ Temeraire said, scratching at his forehead, ‘that is certainly true, but I promise you the postulate makes good sense when you consider all the useful calculations and mathematics which may be arrived at, starting with the assumption. Why, all of the ship’s design, which we are upon, is at base worked out from it, I imagine,’ a piece of intelligence which made nervous little Nitidus give the ship a very doubtful eye.

‘But I suppose,’ Temeraire continued, ‘that we might try beginning without the assumption, or the contrary one—’ and they put their heads together over Temeraire’s sand-table and began to work out their own geometry, discarding those principles which seemed to them incorrect. They made a game of developing the theory which entertained them a good deal more than most amusements Laurence had ever seen dragons engage in, with those listening applauding particularly inventive notions as if they were performances.

Shortly it became quite an all-encompassing project, engaging the attention of the officers as well as the dragons. Laurence was soon forced to press into service the scant handful of aviators with good penmanship, for the dragons began to expand upon their cherished theory quicker than he alone could take their dictation. They insisted upon this partly from intellectual curiosity, and partly because they very much liked the physical representation of their work, and insisted on having them copied out, one for each of them. They treated their documents in much the same way that Temeraire treated his much beloved jewels.

‘I will make you a handsome edition of it, bound up like that nice book that you see Laurence reading from,’ Laurence found Catherine saying to Lily, shortly, ‘if only you will eat a little more. Here, have a few more bites of this tunny,’ a bribe which succeeded where almost all else had failed.

‘Well, perhaps just a little more,’ Lily said, with a heroic air, adding, ‘and may it have gold hinges, too, like that one?’ although the hinges in question were only made of brass.

Laurence might have enjoyed this society, but he was a little ashamed to prefer what he could not, in justice, call anything but ramshackle. But for all their courage and good humour, improved by the interest of the voyage, the dragons still coughed their lungs away little by little. What would have otherwise seemed to be a pleasure cruise carried on under a ceaseless pall, where each morning the aviators came on the deck and put their crews to work washing away the bloodstained relics of the night’s misery, and each night lay in their cabins trying to sleep through the wet, rattling accompaniment of the weary hacking above. All their noise and gaiety possessed a forced and hectic edge, a defiance of their fear as much as real pleasure: fiddling as Rome burned.

The sentiment was not confined to the aviators, either. Riley might have had other excuses besides the political for preferring not to have Reverend Erasmus aboard, for the ship was already loaded with a large number of passengers, most of them forced upon him by influence with the Admiralty and well-founded in baggage. A number of them departed at Madeira to take other ships for the West Indies or Halifax, but others were bound for the Cape as settlers, and some were even going on to India. It was an uneasy migration driven, Laurence was forced to suspect although he did not like to think ill of perfect strangers, by a dread of invasion.

He had some evidence for his suspicion; the passengers, when he happened to overhear them as they took the air on the windward side of the quarterdeck, spoke wistfully amongst themselves of the faint chances of peace, and uttered Bonaparte’s name with pronounced fear. There was little direct communication between the aviators and passengers, separated as the dragondeck was; nor did the passengers make much effort to become friendly, but on a few occasions Reverend Erasmus joined Laurence for dinner. Erasmus did not tell tales, of course, but only asked, ‘Captain, is it your opinion that invasion is a settled certainty?’ with a curiosity which to Laurence spoke of its being a topic much discussed among the passengers with whom he ordinarily dined.

‘Bonaparte would like to try,’ Laurence said, ‘and being a tyrant he may do as he likes; but if he is so outrageously bold as to make a second attempt where the first failed so thoroughly, I have every confidence he will be pushed off once again,’ which contained some measure of patriotic exaggeration; but he had no intention of disparaging their chances publicly.

‘I am glad to hear you say so,’ Erasmus said, and added after a thoughtful moment, ‘It must be a confirmation of the doctrine of original sin, I think, that the noble promise of liberty and brotherhood which the revolution in France first brought to light should have so quickly been drowned by blood and treasure. Man begins in corruption, and cannot achieve true grace striving only for victory over the injustices of the world, without striving also for God, and obeying His commandments.’

Laurence offered Erasmus the dish of stewed plums a little awkwardly, in lieu of agreement which would have felt dishonest; he was uneasily aware that he had not attended a service for the better part of a year; barring Sundays onboard, when Mr. Britten, the ship’s official chaplain, had droned through his sermon with a notable lack of both inspiration or sobriety. Laurence had customarily sat beside Temeraire, to keep him from interrupting.

‘Do you suppose, sir,’ Laurence ventured instead to ask, ‘that dragons are subject to original sin?’ This question had preyed upon him from time to time. He had quite failed to interest Temeraire in the Bible; scripture rather induced the dragon to pursue such blasphemous lines of questioning that Laurence had soon given it up entirely, from a superstitious feeling that to continue would only invite greater disaster.

Erasmus considered his question, and gave his opinion that they were not, ‘For surely the Bible would mention if any had eaten of the fruit besides Adam and Eve; and though resembling the serpent in some particulars, the Lord said unto the serpent that upon its belly it should go, whereas dragons are as creatures of the air, and cannot be considered under the same interdiction,’ he added convincingly, ’so it was with a heart a little lightened that Laurence could return to the deck that evening, to once again try and persuade Temeraire to take a little more to eat.

Though Temeraire had not taken sick, which was Laurence’s secret dread, he grew limp and faded in sympathy with his ill companions, and, ashamed of his appetite when they could not share in it, began to disdain his food. Laurence coaxed and cajoled with little effect, until Gong Su at last came to him on deck, and in flowery Chinese of which Laurence understood one word in six, offered his resignation in shame because his cooking was no longer acceptable. He dwelt, at elaborate length, upon the stain on his honour and that of his teacher and his family, which he would never be able to repair, and declared his intentions to somehow return home at the nearest opportunity, so that he might remove himself from the scene of failure.

‘But it is very good, I promise, only I am not hungry just now,’ Temeraire protested, which Gong Su refused to credit as anything but a polite excuse, and added, ‘Good cooking ought to make you hungry, even if you are not!’

‘But I am hungry, only—’ Temeraire finally admitted, and looked sadly at his sleeping companions, and sighed when Laurence gently said, ‘My dear, you do them no good by starving yourself, and indeed some harm; you must be at your full strength and healthy when we reach the Cape.’

‘Yes, but it feels quite wrong, to be eating and eating when everyone else has stopped and gone to sleep; it feels as though I am sneaking food behind their backs, which they do not know about,’ Temeraire said, a perplexing way of viewing the situation, as he had never shown the least compunction about out-eating his companions while they were awake, or jealously guarding his own meals from the attention of other dragons. But after this admission, they gave him his food in smaller portions throughout the day, while the other dragons were wakeful; and Temeraire exhibited no more reluctance, even though the others still refused any more food themselves.

But he was not happy with their situation, any more than was Laurence; and grew less so as they travelled southwards, Riley’s caution keeping them near the shore. They did not put in at Cape Coast, or at Louanda or Benguela; and from a distance these ports looked gay enough, full of white sails clustering together. But they were reminded of their grim commerce, as the ocean was full of sharks who came eagerly to the ship’s wake, trained like dogs by the common passage of slave-ships to and from those harbours.

‘What city is that?’ Mrs. Erasmus asked him, abruptly. She had come to take the air with her daughters, who were parading themselves decorously back and forth under a shared parasol, for once unattended by their mother.

‘Benguela,’ Laurence said, a little surprised to be addressed; in nearly two months of sailing she had never spoken to him direct before. She had never been forward on any occasion, but was rather in the habit of keeping her head bowed and her voice low; her English still heavily accented with Portuguese when she used it at all. He knew from Erasmus that she had gained her manumission only a little while before her marriage, and not through kind indulgence but by her master’s ill fortune. The gentleman, a landowner from Brazil on business to France, had been a passenger on a merchant ship taken as a prize in the Atlantic; his personal slaves made free, when the prize had been brought in to Portsmouth.

She was drawn up very tall and straight, both her hands gripping the rail, though she had excellent sea legs and scarcely needed the support. She stood there a for long time, until the port had vanished again from sight; even after the little girls had grown tired of their promenade and abandoned both parasol and decorum to go scrambling over the ropes with Emily and Dyer.

A great many slave-ships went to Brazil from Benguela, Laurence recalled; he did not ask her, but offered her instead his arm to go below again for some refreshment when at last she turned away. She refused both, with only a shake of her head, and called her children back to order with a quick low word; they left off their game, abashed, and she took them down below.

Past Benguela there were no more slave-ports; both from the hostility of the natives to the trade, and the inhospitable coastline, but the oppressive atmosphere on board was not lessened. Laurence and Temeraire often went aloft to escape it, flying in closer to shore than Riley would risk the Allegiance and pacing her from there, so they might watch the African coastline wear away: here impenetrably forested, there spilling yellow rock and yellow sand into the ocean, the shore crammed with lazy seals; then the long endless stretch of orange desert, bound regularly in thick banks of fog, which made the sailors wary. Almost hourly the officer of the watch called for soundings of the ocean floor to be taken, their voices muffled and oddly far-away in the mist. Very occasionally a few black men might be glimpsed on shore, observing them in turn with wary attention; but for the most part there was only silence, watchful silence, except for the shrieking of birds.

‘Laurence, surely we can reach Cape Town from here, quicker than the ship can go,’ Temeraire said, weary of the oppressive atmosphere. They were still a good month’s sailing from port, and the country too dangerous to risk a long overland passage. The interior of the continent was notoriously impenetrable and savage, and had without leaving a trace swallowed whole parties of men, and more than one courier-dragon who had been tempted off the coastal route. But the suggestion appealed, with its prospects of quitting sooner the unhappy conditions of the voyage, and advancing the crucial research a little more quickly.

At last Laurence persuaded himself that he should not be derelict in going on early, when they should be near enough to make the flight one which might be accomplished in a day, if a strenuous one. With this incentive, Temeraire was persuaded to eat properly and go daily for long and uninteresting circular flights around the ship, to build up his strength; and no one else raised objection to their departure. ‘If you are quite sure you will reach in safety,’ Catherine said, with only the most obligatory reluctance; none of the aviators could help but share the urgent desire to have the work begun, now they were so close

‘You shall of course do as you please,’ Riley said, when informed for form’s sake, without looking Laurence in the face; and bent his head down again over his maps and pretended to be making calculations: a pretence which succeeded not at all, Laurence being perfectly aware that Riley could not do so much as a sum in his head without scratching it out on paper.

‘I will not take all of the crew,’ Laurence told Ferris, who looked dismal, but even he did not protest over-much. Keynes and Dorset would come, of course, and Gong Su: the cooks in the employ of Prince Yongxing, on their previous visit, had experimented with great enthusiasm on the local produce, which thus formed one of the surgeons’ foremost hopes of reproducing the cure.

‘Do you suppose you can prepare these ingredients in the same way as they might?’ Laurence asked Gong Su.

‘I am not an Imperial chef!’ Gong Su protested, and to Laurence’s dismay explained that the style of cooking in the south of China, whence he hailed, was entirely different. ‘I will try my poor best, but it is not to be compared; although Northern cooking is not very good usually,’ he added, in a burst of parochialism.

Roland and Dyer came to assist him; to and run and fetch in the markets, their slight weight a negligible burden. For the rest, Laurence packed aboard a chest of gold, and took little more baggage than his sword and pistols and a pair of clean shirt and stockings. ‘I do not feel the weight at all; I am sure I could fly for days,’ Temeraire said, grown still more urgent: Laurence had forced himself to let caution keep them back a full week, so they were now less than two hundred miles distant: still a desperately long flight for a single day, but not an impossible one.

‘If the weather holds until morning,’ Laurence said.

One final invitation he made, which he did not think would be accepted, was to Reverend Erasmus. ‘Captain Berkley begs me to inform you that he would be happy if you continued aboard as his guests,’ Laurence said, rather more elegantly than Berkley’s ‘Yes, of course. Damned formal nonsense; we are not going to put them overboard, are we,’ could be said to have deserved. ‘But of course you are my personal guests, and are welcome to join me, if you would prefer it.’

‘Hannah, perhaps you would rather not?’ Erasmus said, looking to his wife.

She lifted her head from her small text on the local language, whose phrases she had been forming silently with her mouth. ‘I do not mind,’ she said; and indeed climbed up to Temeraire’s back without the least sign of alarm, settling the girls around her and chiding them firmly for their own anxiety.

‘We will see you in Cape Town,’ Laurence told Ferris, and saluted Harcourt; with one grateful leap they were gone, flying and flying over clean ocean, with a good fresh wind at their heels.

A day and a night of flying saw them come in over the bay at dawn. The flat-topped fortress wall of Table Mount stood dusty and golden behind the city, light spilling onto the striated rock face and the smaller jagged sentinel peaks to either side. The bustling town crammed full the crescent slice of level ground at the base of the slope, with the Castle of Good Hope at its heart upon the shore. The settlement’s outer walls formed a star-shape from above, with the butter-yellow pentagon of the fort nested within, gleaming in the early morning as her cannon fired the welcoming salute to leeward.

The parade grounds where Temeraire was lodged were beside the castle, only a few dragon-lengths from where the ocean came grumbling onto the sandy beach: a inconvenient distance when the wind was blowing too strongly at high tide, but which otherwise made a pleasant relief against the summer heat. Although the courtyard, enclosed within the fort itself, was large enough to house a few dragons in times of emergency, it would not have made a comfortable situation, either for the soldiers stationed in the castle barracks, or for Temeraire. Happily, the grounds had been much improved since their last visit breaking their journey to China.

While the couriers no longer flew routes this far south, too remote for their failing strength, a fast frigate had been sent on from Dover ahead of the Allegiance with dispatches to warn the acting-governor, Lieutenant-General Grey, both of their arrival and, secretly, of their urgent purpose. He had widened the grounds to house all the formation, and put up a low fence around.

‘Not that I am afraid you will be pestered; but it will keep away prying eyes, and I hope stifle some of this damned noise,’ he said to Laurence, referring to the protests of the colonists at their arrival. ‘It is just as well that you have come on ahead, it will give them some time to get over the notion before we have seven dragons. By the way they wail, you would think they had never heard of a formation at all.’

Grey had himself reached the Cape only in January; he was the lieutenant governor, and would soon be superseded by the arrival of the Earl of Caledon, so at present his position had all the awkwardness of a temporary situation, and lacked a certain degree of authority. He was much beset by cares increased not a little by their arrival. The townspeople and the settlers who had established their farms and estates further out into the countryside and down the coast, disliked the military occupation. Indeed, they despised it or anything in the shape of government that would have interfered with their independence, which they considered dearly and sufficiently paid for by the risk that they ran pressing the frontier into the wild interior of the continent. They viewed the advent of a formation of dragons with the deepest suspicion, especially as they were not permitted to know the real purpose.

Thanks to cheaply acquired slave labour during the earlier years of the colony, the settlers had come to disdain the practice of physical toil for themselves and their families. Their farms, vineyards and herds had expanded to take advantage of the many hands that they could forcibly put to work. Slaves were not exported from the Cape, for they wanted rather more slaves than they could get; Malay by preference, or natives purchased from West Africa. But they did not disdain either the unhappy servitude of the local Khoi tribesmen, who if not precisely slaves, were no little less constrained, and their wages scarcely worthy of the term free.

Having thus arranged to be outnumbered, the colonists now maintained the serenity of their establishments by exerting harsh restrictions and had an absolutely free hand with punishments. A resentment lingered that under the previous British government, the torture of slaves had been prohibited; on the further outskirts of the town might yet be observed the barbaric custom of leaving the corpse of a hanged slave upon his gibbet, as an illustrative example to his fellows of the cost of disobedience. The colonists were well informed, also, of the campaign against the trade, which they viewed with indignation as likely to cut them off from additional supply; and Lord Allendale’s name was not unknown to them.

‘And if that were not enough,’ Grey said tiredly, when they had been in residence a few days, ‘you brought this damned missionary with you. Now half the town thinks the slave trade has been abolished, the other half that their slaves are all to be set free at once and given license to murder them in their beds; and all are certain are you are here to enforce it. I must ask you to present me to the fellow; he must be warned to keep a little more quiet. It is a miracle he has not been already stabbed in the street.’

Erasmus and his wife had taken over a small establishment belonging to the London Missionary Society, lately abandoned due to the death of its previous tenant, a victim of malarial fever, and in far from an ordered state. There was neither a school nor a church building, yet, only a mortally plain little house, graced by a few depressed and straggling trees. A bare plot of land around it was meant for a vegetable garden, and it was where Mrs. Erasmus presently laboured in the company of her daughters and several of the young native women, who were being shown how to stake tomato plants.

She stood up when Laurence and Grey came into view, and with a quiet word left the girls at work while she led the two of them inside the small house. Built in the Dutch style, the walls were made of thick clay, with broad wooden beams exposed above supporting the thatched roof; the windows and door all stood open to air the smell of fresh whitewash. Inside, the house was little more than a single long room divided into three; Erasmus was seated in the midst of a dozen native boys scattered around on the floor, showing them the letters of the alphabet upon a slate.

He rose to greet them, and sent the boys outside to play, an eruption of gleeful yells drifting in as they spilled out into the street. Mrs. Erasmus disappeared into the small kitchen, with a clatter of kettle and pot.

‘You are very advanced, sir, for three days’ residence,’ Grey said, looking after the horde of boys in some dismay.

‘There is a great thirst for learning here, and for the Gospel too,’ Erasmus said, with pardonable satisfaction. ‘Their parents come at night, after they have finished working in the fields, and we have already had our first service.’

He invited them to sit, but as there were only two chairs, it would have made an awkward division, and they remained standing. ‘I will come at once to the point,’ Grey said. ‘There have been, I am afraid, certain complaints made.’ He paused, and repeated, ‘Certain complaints,’ uneasily, though Erasmus had said nothing. ‘You understand, sir, we have but lately taken charge of the colony and the settlers here are a difficult lot. They have made their own farms, and estates, and with some justice consider themselves entitled to be masters of their own fate. There is some sentiment – In short,’ he said abruptly, ‘you would do very well to moderate your activity. You need not perhaps have so many students – Take three or four, most promising; let the rest return to work. I am informed the labour of the students is not easily spared,’ he added, a little weakly.

Erasmus listened, saying nothing, until Grey had done; then he said, ‘Sir, I appreciate your position: it is a difficult one. I am very sorry I cannot oblige you.’

Grey waited, but Erasmus said nothing more whatsoever, offering no ground for negotiation. Grey looked at Laurence, a little helplessly, then turning back said, ‘Sir, I will be frank; I am by no means confident of your continued safety, if you persist. I cannot assure it.’

‘I did not come to be safe, but to bring the word of God,’ Erasmus said, smiling and immovable, and his wife brought in the tea tray.

‘Madam,’ Grey said to her, as she poured the cups at the table, ‘I entreat you to use your influence, I beg you to consider the safety of your children.’ She raised her head abruptly. The kerchief which she had been wearing outside to work had slipped, a little, pulling her hair back away from her face to reveal a dull scarred brand upon her forehead; the initials of a former owner blurred but legible still, and superimposed on an older tattooed marking, of abstract pattern.

She looked at her husband, and he said gently, ‘We will trust in God, Hannah, and in His will.’ She nodded and made Grey no direct answer, but went silently back outside to the garden.

There was of course nothing more to be said. Grey sighed, and when they had taken their leave, said dismally, ‘I suppose I must put a guard upon the house.’

A heavy moist wind was blowing from the southeast draping the Table Mount in a blanket of clouds; but it abated that evening, and the Allegiance was sighted the next afternoon by the castle lookout, heralded by the fire of the signal-guns. The atmosphere of suspicion and hostility was settled by then, throughout the town; although sentiments less bitter would have sufficed to make her arrival unsettling for the inhabitants.

Laurence watched her come in, by Grey’s invitation, from a pleasant cool antechamber set atop the castle. Seeing her from this unfamiliar and reversed direction he was struck by her overwhelming impression: not only her sheer vastness, but the hollow eyes of her thirty-two-pounders, glaring brutally out of port-holes. There seemed at this distance a veritable horde of dragons coiled upon her deck, uncountable for they lay so intertwined that their heads and tails could not quite be separated from one another.

She advanced slowly into harbour, dwarfing all the shipping in the port into insignificance. A kind of grim silence descended upon the town as she fired her salute to the fort: a rolling thunder of guns that echoed back from the face of the mountain, and settled gently upon the town like a fog. Laurence could taste the powder-smoke at the back of his mouth. The women and children had vanished from the streets by the time her anchors were let down.

It was dreadful to see how little they had to fear, when Laurence went down to the shore to aid with the manoeuvres to get the dragons transferred off the deck. The long cramped journey had stiffened them all badly, and though the Allegiance had made good time, every day of the last two months had eaten steadily away at their strength. The castle was established only steps from the sandy beach, the parade grounds beside it, but even this short flight wearied them now.

Nitidus and Dulcia, the smallest, came across first; they drew deep breaths and lunged valiantly off the deck, their short wings beating sluggish and slow, giving them very little lift, so that their bellies nearly scraped the top of the low fence around the parade grounds. They landed heavily and sank down into a heap on the warm ground without even folding their wings back. Messoria and Immortalis then dragged themselves to their feet so wearily that Temeraire, who was watching anxiously from the grounds, called out, ‘Pray wait, and I will come and carry you in,’ and ferried them one after another upon his back, heedless of the small scrapes and scratches which he took from their claws, as they clutched at him for balance.

Lily nosed Maximus gently, on the deck. ‘Yes, go on, I will be there in a moment,’ he said sleepily, without opening his eyes. She gave a dissatisfied rumble of concern.

‘We will get him across, never fear,’ Harcourt said, coaxingly; and at last Lily was persuaded to submit to their precautionary arrangements for her own transfer. A muzzle had to be fitted over her head, from which a large metal platter was suspended beneath her jaws, and this covered with more of the oiled sand.

Riley had come to see them off. Harcourt turned to him and held out her hand, ‘Thank you, Tom; I hope we will be coming back across soon, and that you will visit us on land.’ He took her hand in an awkward sideways grip and bowed over it, somewhere between saluting her and shaking her hand, and backed away stiffly. He avoided looking at Laurence at all.

Harcourt put her boot on the railing and jumped on to Lily’s back. She took hold of the harness to steady it, and Lily unfurled her great wings, the feature from which her breed took their name. They were rippled along the edges in narrow bands of black and white, the dark blue of her body shading across their length to a brilliant deep orange the colour of deep marmalade; they shone iridescent in the sun. Fully extended, they made double the length of her entire body, and once she had launched herself aloft, she scarcely needed to beat them, but glided stately along without great exertion.

They managed the flight across without spilling too much of the sand, or dripping acid upon the castle battlements or the dock; and then there was only Maximus left upon the deck. Berkley spoke to him quietly, and with a great heaving sigh the enormous Regal Copper pushed himself up to his feet, causing the Allegiance to rock a little in the water. He took two slow gouty steps to the edge of the dragondeck and sighed again; his shoulder muscles creaked as he tried his wings and he let them sink against his back again, his head drooped.

‘I could try,’ Temeraire offered, calling from shore; quite impractically: Maximus still made almost two of him by weight.

‘I am sure I can manage it,’ Maximus said, hoarsely, then bent his head and coughed, spitting more greenish phlegm out over the side. He did not move.

Temeraire’s tail was lashing at the air, and then with a decisive air he plunged into the surf and came swimming out to them instead. He reared up putting his forelegs on the edge of the ship and thrust his head up over the railing to say, ‘It is not very far. Pray come into the water. I am sure together we can swim to the shore.’

Berkley looked at Keynes, who said, ‘I expect a little sea bathing can do no harm, and perhaps even some good. It is warm enough and we will have sun another four hours at this time of year, to dry him off.’

‘Well, then, into the water with you,’ Berkley said, gruffly, patting Maximus’s side and stepping back. Crouching down awkwardly, Maximus plunged forequarters-first into the ocean; the massive anchor cables groaned with deep voice as the Allegiance recoiled from the force of his leap, and ten-foot ripples swelled up and went shuddering away from him to nearly overturn some of the unsuspecting slighter vessels riding at anchor in the bay.

Maximus shook water from his head, bobbing up and down in the water, and paddled a few strokes along before stopping, sagging in the water; the buoyancy of the air sacs kept him afloat, but he listed alarmingly.

‘Lean against me, and we shall go together,’ Temeraire said, swimming up to his side to brace him up. Little by little they progressed towards the shore until the ocean floor came up abruptly to meet them, clouds of white sand stirring up like smoke. Maximus could stop to rest a while, half-submerged, with the waves lapping against his sides.

‘It is pleasant in the water,’ he said, despite another fit of coughing. ‘I do not feel so tired here,’ but he had still to get onto the shore. No little task, but he managed it in slow easy stages, with all the assistance that Temeraire and the oncoming tide could offer, crawling the final dozen yards nearly on his belly.

Here they let him rest, and brought him the choicest cuts from the dinner that Gong Su had spent the day preparing to tempt the dragons’ appetites after their exertion. Local cattle, fat and tender, had been spit-roasted with a crust of pepper and salt pressed into their flesh, strong enough to overcome the dulling effect of the illness on the dragons’ senses, and stuffed with their own stewed tripe.

Maximus ate a little, drank a few swallows of the water which they carried out to him in a large tub, and afterwards fell back into sluggish torpor, coughing. He slept the night through on shore with the ocean still coming in and his tail riding up on the waves like a tethered boat. Only in the cool early hours of the morning did they get him the rest of the way to the parade grounds. They settled him in the best place at its edge, beneath the young stand of camphor trees, where he might have a little shade as well as sun, and very near the well which had been sunk to easily bring them water.

Berkley saw him well established, and then took off his hat and went to the water trough, to duck his head and bring a couple of cupped handfuls to his mouth to drink. He wiped his red and sweating face. ‘It is a good place,’ he said, his head bent, ‘a good place; he will be comfortable here—’ and ending abruptly, went inside the castle, where they breakfasted together in silence. They did not discuss the matter, but no discussion was required; they all knew that without a cure Maximus would not leave again, and they had brought him otherwise to his grave.

Chapter Seven

Aboard the Allegiance they had counted every day; they had hurried, they had fretted, and now they had arrived they could only sit and wait while the surgeons went through their fastidious experiments, and refused to give any opinion whatsoever. More outrageous local supplies were brought to them, presented to Temeraire, occasionally tried on one of the sick dragons, and then discarded. This proceeded without any sign of useful effect, and on one unfortunate occasion again distressed Temeraire’s digestive system, so that the shared dragon-midden took on a very unpleasant quality, and had at once to be filled in and a new one dug. The old one promptly sprang up a thick carpet of grass and a bright pink weedy flower, which to their great exasperation could not be rooted out and attracted a species of wasps viciously jealous of their territory.

Laurence did not say so, but it was his private opinion that all this experimentation was only half-hearted, and meant to occupy their attention while Keynes waited for the climate to do its work. Though Dorset still made careful notes of each trial in his small and regular hand, in a slim leather-bound journal, going from one dragon to the next in rounds thrice daily, he inquired with heartless indifference how much the patient had coughed, what pains he suffered, how he ate. This last entry was never much.

At the close of the first week, Dorset finished his latest interrogation of Captain Warren, on the condition of Nitidus, and shut his book and went and spoke quietly with Keynes and the other surgeons. ‘I suppose they are prodigious clever, but if they keep on with these secret councils, and telling us nothing, I will begin to want to push their noses in for them,’ Warren said, coming to join the rest of them at the card-table, which had been set up under a pavilion in the middle of the grounds. The game was mostly a polite fiction to occupy the days; they did not have much attention to give the cards at any time, and now had none at all as they all watched the surgeons huddled together in deep discussion.

Keynes evaded them skilfully for two more days, and finally cornered into giving some report said crabbily, ‘it is too soon to tell,’ but admitted that they had seen some improvement; which was, as far as they could determine, merely from the climate. The dragons had shown some resurrection of appetite and energy, and they coughed less.

‘It will be no joke, ferrying all the Corps down here,’ Little said quietly, after their first early jubilation. ‘How many transports have we, in all?’

‘Seven, I think, if the Lyonesse is out of dry-dock,’ Laurence said.

There was a pause, then he added strongly, ‘But consider, we scarcely need to send ships of a hundred guns only to move dragons. Transports are meant to deliver them to the front,’ this being not entirely a misrepresentation, but only because there was very little other cause than war that would prompt the difficulty and expense of shifting dragons about. ‘We can put them on barges at Gibraltar instead, and send them along the coast, with an escort of frigates to keep the French off them.’

It sounded well enough, but they all knew that if not inherently impractical, such an operation was still unlikely to be carried out on the scale of the entire Corps. They might return with the dragons of their own formation preserved, but such a cure was likely to be denied to half their comrades or more. ‘It is better than nothing,’ Chenery said, a little defiantly, ‘and is more than we had. There is not a man in the Corps who would not take such odds,’ but the odds would be unequal ones.

No expense or difficulty would be spared to preserve Longwings and Regal Coppers, the heavy-combat dragons and the rarer breeds, but for the rest – common Yellow Reapers or quick-breeding Winchesters, or any older dragons likely to be difficult when their captains died, the weaker or less-skilled flyers – these, a brutal political calculus would not count worth the saving. They would be left to die in neglect and misery, isolated undoubtedly in the most distant quarantines that could be arranged. Laurence privately thought he would not put it past the Admiralty to cut their supply of food entirely, once the beasts had sickened so far that they were unable to go raiding the countryside for themselves.

Their cautious satisfaction was dimmed, and Sutton and Little took it worst, going very quiet; their dragons were both Yellow Reapers, and Messoria was forty. But even guilt could not overshadow all their hope. They slept very little that night, counting coughs instead, tallies to go into Dorset’s book. In the morning, with only a little coaxing, Nitidus was persuaded to try his wings. Laurence and Temeraire went with him and Warren, for company and in case the little Pascal’s Blue should exhaust his strength; Nitidus was panting hoarsely from his mouth and coughing, now and again, as they flew.

They did not go far. The local hunger for grazing land and timber had scraped the fields and hillsides down to scrubby low grass, all the way to the base of Table Mountain and its satellite peaks, where the slopes grew prohibitive. Loose conglomerations of grey and yellow rock formed stepped terraces that looked like old rotting stone walls barely held together by grass and green moss with clayey dirt for mortar. They halted, only up to the base of the Table Mount, and there rested on the loose scrubby ground, broken grey and yellow rock clutched by grass and shrubs, in the shadow of the sheer cliff wall. An extensive scurrying went on in the underbrush as the small game fled from their presence, small furry creatures like brown badgers.

‘It is a very strange sort of mountain,’ Temeraire observed, craning his head to look back and forth along the long ridge of the peak above them, sheared smooth and flat as if by a levelling knife.

‘Yes; oh, very; and how hot it is,’ Nitidus said, meaninglessly and half-asleep, and tucked his head beneath his wing to nap. They let him sleep in the sun, and Temeraire yawned too and followed his example; Laurence and Warren stood together looking back down into the deep bowl of the harbour where it ran down into the ocean, the Allegiance a toy ship among ants at this distance, and the castle a neat yellow geometric pentagon drawn upon the dark earth, with the dragons small, still lumps upon the parade grounds beside it.

Warren took off his glove and rubbed the back of his hand across his brow to wipe the sweat off; he left a careless smudge. ‘I suppose you would go back to the Navy, if it were you?’ he asked abruptly.

‘If they would have me,’ Laurence said, which he privately thought by no means likely.

‘A fellow might buy a cavalry commission, I suppose,’ Warren said. ‘There will be no shortage of soldiers needed if Bonaparte continues to have things his way; but it could hardly compare.’

They were silent a while, considering the unpleasant options which would be the portion of so many men cast effectively on shore, by the death of the dragons on which they served.

‘Laurence,’ Warren went on, after a moment, ‘this fellow Riley, what sort of a man is he? Ordinarily, I mean; I know you were lately both standing on your honour.’

Laurence was astonished to be appealed to in such a way, but answered, ‘A gentleman and one of the finest officers of my acquaintance; I cannot say a word against him, personally.’

He wondered what should have spurred the inquiry. With the Allegiance confined by her orders to harbour, until the dragons should once again be ready to depart, Riley had of course come to the castle and dined with General Grey on more than one occasion. Laurence had absented himself, but Catherine and the other captains had gone more often than not. Perhaps some quarrel had taken place to give rise to such a question, and Laurence hoped that perhaps Warren would elaborate. But Warren only nodded, and changed the subject to whether the wind would change before their return, so Laurence’s curiosity remained unsatisfied and the question had only the effect of making him sorry afresh for the quarrel; which he now supposed should never be made up, and meant the termination of their friendship.

‘Nitidus does seem better, does he not?’ Temeraire murmured to Laurence, in confidential tones audible only to anyone within twenty feet, while they made ready to return. Laurence thought so as well, and when they returned to the parade grounds, the light-weight ate almost to his healthy standard, putting a period to two goats before he again fell asleep.

On the morrow Nitidus did not want to repeat the exercise, and Dulcia would only go half so far before dropping down to rest. ‘But she did for a whole one of those oxen, a yearling calf,’ Chenery said, doing for a substantial glass of whiskey and water himself, ‘and a damned good sign I call it; she has not eaten so much in a six month.’

The next day neither of them would go, but sat down again, almost as soon as they had been persuaded to get up on their feet, and begged to be excused. ‘It is too hot,’ Nitidus complained, and asked for more water; Dulcia said more plaintively, ‘I would much rather sleep some more, if you please.’

Keynes put a cup to her chest to listen, and straightening up shook his head. None of the others could be stirred much beyond their sleeping-places. When the tallies over which the aviators had laboured were examined closely together, the dragons did indeed cough less, but it was not much less; and this benefit had been exchanged, their anxious observers soon perceived, for listlessness and lethargy. The intense heat made the dragons sleepy and disinclined to move, the interest of their new surroundings having now palled, and the brief resurgence in their appetites had evidently been spurred only by the better eating available on shore.

Gong Su laboured daily now in two capacities; still concocting whatever messes he could conceive out of the experimental ingredients which they brought him, and more regularly trying to excite the general appetite of the dragons. There was a substantial body of Malay servants and slaves in the town, and from the markets which catered for these communities he was able to obtain a variety of Eastern spices, so the parade grounds soon stank of cardamom and turmeric and anise, and the dragons’ tongues were stained yellow as ochre, their breath coloured with the spice-smells.

‘The rate of progress of the disease has been slowed,’ Keynes reported: the best which could be said, at the close of their second week. ‘It is not an inconsequential benefit,’ he added, little consolation for their better hopes.

‘I would not have regretted it, not at all,’ Sutton said, muttered, hunched over the table and speaking to himself, but so violently that it could not but be overheard. ‘How could there be any regret, in such circumstances; there could be none,’ He spoke as if his guilt over his want of a cure for his own Messoria, when so many others might be left to die, had been the very cause of failure; and Little was so white and stricken that Chenery took him into his tent, and plied him with rum until he slept.

Laurence took Temeraire away flying, and kept him on the shore all the night, to spare his fellow captains at least briefly the contrast between Temeraire’s health and that of their own dragons. He felt keenly his own portion of guilt and shame, the confused mirror of Sutton’s unhappiness and Little’s. He would not have contemplated trading Temeraire’s health for all the rest, and though he knew his fellow captains would understand perfectly and feel each of them the same for their own partner, in as irrational a way he felt the failure a punishment for this private selfishness.

In the morning, new sails stood in the harbour. The Fiona, a quick-sailing frigate, had come in during the night, with dispatches. Catherine opened them slowly, at the breakfast-table, and read off the names: Auctoritas, Prolixus, Laudabilis, Repugnatis; gone since the new year.

Laurence too had a letter, from his mother:

All is desolation; we are done, for at least another year, and likely more, if the Government should fall again. The Motion was carried in the Commons; the Lords again defeated it, despite everything which could be done, and a most extraordinary Speech, by Mr. Wilberforce, which should have moved the Possessor of any Soul deserving of the name. The Newspapers at least are with us, and speak with all the Outrage merited by so disgusting an Event: the Times writes, ‘Those Nay-sayers who give no Thought to the Future may sleep easy this Night; the others must try if they can to find Rest, in the sure Knowledge that they have laid up a Store of Misery and Sorrow, which they shall be asked to repay, if not in this World, than in that To Come,’ only a just Reproach …

He folded it and put it aside in his coat pocket; he had no heart to read further, and they left the dining room silently.

The castle barracks were large enough to house a larger party than they made, but with the disease still slowly marching along, the captains by silent agreement preferred to stay closer by their sick beasts. The other officers and men not wishing to be outdone, a small battalion of tents and pavilions sprang up about the grounds, where most of them spent their days and nights, barring the infrequent rain. All the better to discourage the occasional invasion of the local children, who remembered Temeraire’s last visit of a year ago well enough to have lost some of their fear. They had now formed the game of working one another up, until one, challenged past the point of endurance, would make a mad flurrying dash through the parade grounds among the sleeping dragons, before fleeing back out again to receive the congratulations of his peers.

Sutton quelled these escalating adventures for good one afternoon, when a boy dashed in and slapped his hand against Messoria’s side, like a game of tag, and startled her out of a rare sound sleep. She reared up her head into snorting wakefulness, and the guilty culprit fell over into the dust, scuttling crablike backwards on hands and feet and rump in his alarm, much greater than hers.

Sutton rose from the card table and went over to take the boy by the arm, heaving him up to his feet. ‘Bring me a switch, Alden,’ he said to his runner, and leading the intruder stumbling out of the grounds, applied himself with vigour, while the other children scattered and ran a little distance away, peeking out from behind the bushes. At length the unlucky boy’s howls faded to whimpering sobs, and Sutton returned to the table. ‘I beg your pardon, gentlemen,’ he said, and they resumed their desultory play; there were no more incursions that day.

But Laurence woke shortly after dawn, the subsequent morning, and went out of his own tent to find a loud squabbling at their gates, two knots of older children wrestling and kicking at each other with a polyglot confusion of yelling. A handful of Malay and Dutch boys were pitted against a smaller band of the Cape’s black natives, who were Khoi; although previously they had been equal offenders together. Unhappily their quarrel had roused the dragons, who thus began their morning bouts of coughing an hour early. Maximus, who had suffered badly during the night, gave a heavy sighing groan. Sutton came rushing out of his tent in a mottled rage, and Berkley would have set among the lot of them with the flat of his sword, if Lieutenant Ferris had not thrown himself in the way, his arms outspread as Emily and Dyer scrambled out from the dusty melee.

‘We did not mean to,’ she said, muffled by the hand with which she tried to stanch her bloodied nose, ‘only they both brought some,’ and it came out that by some evil genius, the two parties had at the same time after weeks of searching finally uncovered some of the mushroom. Laurence had privately increased the bounty for the thing still further, in an uneasy attempt to assuage his guilt; and now the rival bands were squabbling over their claim to be the first to present the enormous mushroom caps, two feet and more across, and stinking even in their natural state to high heaven.

‘Lieutenant Ferris, let us have a little order, if you please,’ Laurence said, raising his voice, ‘and let them know they will all of them be paid: there is not the least need for this fuss.’

Despite attempts to convey this reassurance, it took some time to drag apart the angry combatants, who if they did not speak one another’s language certainly understood the salient phrases which were being exchanged, at least well enough to keep their tempers fired up, and who kicked and swung their arms at each other even when hauled apart by main force. They stopped abruptly, however: Temeraire, having woken up also, put his head over the low fence to snuffle with appreciation at the caps, left abandoned by both sides in the grass while they attempted to settle their quarrel by might at arms.

‘Ah, mm,’ said Temeraire, and licked his chops; in spite of their earlier bravado, the boys did not dare to run at him and snatch them away from his jaws, but they all joined into a general cry of protest, seeing themselves on the verge of being robbed, and were at last convinced to settle down and accept their payment, counted out in gold coins with precisely equal amounts on both sides.

The Dutch and Malay contingent were inclined to grumble, as theirs had been the larger specimen, with three separate caps arranged upon a single stem, as compared to the two upon the Khoi’s, but a speaking glare from Sutton silenced them all. ‘Bring us some more, and you shall be paid again,’ Laurence said, but this produced discouraged looks rather than hope, and they looked at his closed-up purse a little resentfully before they scattered away, to quarrel now amongst themselves over the division of spoils.

‘They cannot be edible?’ Catherine said doubtfully, in a stifled voice, her handkerchief pressed over her mouth as she examined the things. They were growths more than proper mushrooms, lopsided and bulging oddly, a pallid clayey white irregularly spotted with brown.

But Temeraire said, ‘Certainly I remember these; they were very tasty,’ and only regretfully let Gong Su carry the mushrooms away, which he did by holding them at arm’s-length, gingerly, with two very long sticks.

Having learned from their earlier experience, they set up the cauldron out of doors instead of within the castle kitchens, Gong Su directing the crews to lay a substantial bonfire underneath the big iron pot, suspended from stakes, with a ladder beside it so he might stir from afar with a long-handled wooden ladle.

‘Perhaps the red peppercorns,’ Temeraire offered, ‘or maybe the green; I do not quite remember,’ he said apologetically, as Gong Su consulted his spice-box at length in attempts to reproduce the former recipe.

Keynes shrugged and said, ‘Stew the thing and have done; if we must rely on your reproducing some trick of spicing invented a year ago by five cooks, we may as well go back to England now.’

They stewed it all the morning, Temeraire bending over the pot, sniffing at the bouquet as critically as any drinker of wine and making further suggestions: until at last he licked up a taste from the rim of the cauldron and pronounced it a success, ‘Or at least, it seems to me familiar; and it is very good,’ he added, to an audience of none: they had all been driven away to the edge of the clearing, choking, and barely heard him. Poor Catherine had been taken violently ill, and was still retching behind a bush.

They covered their noses and carried Maximus the posset, which he seemed to enjoy, even stirring enough to put a talon inside the cauldron to tip it over, so he might lick out the last scrapings. After an initial somnolence, it put him in a thoroughly good mood. So much so that he roused up and ate all of the tender kid that Berkley had acquired for his dinner, more in hope than in expectation, and even asked for a little more, though he fell asleep again before this could be arranged.

Berkley would have woken him to feed him another goat, and his own surgeon Gaiters agreed, but Dorset took the strongest exception. He would have denied him even the first goat, on the grounds that his digestive processes might interfere with the effect of the posset. This shortly devolved into an argument, as violent as hissing whispers could make it, until Keynes said finally, ‘Let him sleep,’ overruling both men, ‘but henceforth we will feed him as much as he can eat, after each dose. The importance of restoring his weight cannot be overstated to the cause of his general preservation. Dulcia is better-fleshed, so we will try her on the posset tomorrow as well, without food.’

‘I ate it with some oxen; or perhaps some antelope,’ Temeraire said reminiscently, nosing a little sadly at the empty pot. ‘There was some very nice fat, I remember that particularly, the fat with the mushroom sauce; so perhaps it was the oxen after all,’ the local breed possessing a queer fatty shoulder-hump over the forequarters.

A single meal had been Temeraire’s prior experience, but Keynes had divided their meagre sample, and Maximus and Dulcia were fed upon it three days in succession, until all the supply was gone. Laurence remembered that the concoction had made Temeraire mostly drowsy, and so Maximus became, but on the third day Dulcia alarmed them all on by turning unexpectedly manic with excitement. She insisted on going for a long hectic flight, quite likely beyond her strength, and at the least sure not to be beneficial to her health.

‘I can, I am well, I am well!’ she cried, her wings fanning at the air as she went hopping about the parade grounds evasively on her back legs with the surgeons chasing after in attempts to calm her. Chenery was of no use, he had spent the intervening days since the failure of their hopes keeping himself and Captain Little half-drunk, and in defiance of all the pessimism which Keynes could inflict would happily have thrown himself aboard and gone up with her.

Dulcia was finally persuaded not to go flying off, with the temptation of a couple of lambs dressed hastily by Gong Su with some of the peppery local seed-pods which Temeraire liked. No one suggested she should not be allowed to eat, this time, and she devoured them so readily as to spray bits of meat around the feeding ground, though ordinarily a rather delicate eater.

Temeraire watched her a little enviously. Not only was he forbidden more than a taste of the posset, which he so enjoyed, but as his belly was still inclined to be delicate after his excessive adventuring, Keynes had placed him on a strict and uninteresting diet of plain-roasted meat, which his palate now disdained. ‘Well, at least we have found the cure, then, surely?’

Dulcia, having finished her repast, fell down asleep and began at once snoring loudly, with a thin wheezing whine on the exhale. Nevertheless, it was an improvement, as she had lately been unable to breathe save through her mouth.

Keynes came over and sat down heavily on the log beside Laurence, mopping his sweating red face with a kerchief, and said disgruntled, ‘Enough, enough of this casting ourselves into alt. Have none of you learnt your lesson? Her lungs are by no means clear.’

A heavy bank of clouds blew in during the night, so they all woke to a steady dripping grey rain and clammy wet ground. The air was still unpleasantly hot and clung damply to the skin like sweat. Dulcia was worse again, drooping and tired after her previous day’s cavorting, and the dragons were all more inclined to sneeze than ever. Even Temeraire sighed and shivered, trying to get more of the rain off his hide and out of the hollows of bone and muscle where it collected. ‘I do miss China,’ he said, picking unhappily at his wet dinner; Gong Su had been unable to sear the antelope carcass properly.

‘It must be something else. We will find it, Laurence,’ Catherine said, giving him his coffee cup at the breakfast-table inside the castle. Laurence accepted it mechanically and sat down among the rest of them; they ate silently, only the clatter of forks and plates; no one even offered around the salt cellar, or asked for it. Chenery, ordinarily their life and gaiety, had bruised hollows under his eyes as if he had been beaten about the face, and Berkley had not come in to breakfast at all.

Keynes came in stamping his feet clear of mud, his coat sodden with rain and traces of whitish mucous, and said heavily, ‘Very well then, we must have more of the thing.’ They looked at him, made uncomprehending by his tone, and he glared back ferociously before he admitted with reluctance, ‘Maximus can breathe again,’ and sent them all running for the door.

Keynes disliked greatly giving them even this much hope, and resisted all their demands for more; but they could stand by Maximus’s head and hear for themselves the slow wheeze of air through his nostrils, and the same for Dulcia also. The two of them still coughed and coughed, but the aviators all agreed amongst themselves that the tenor of the sound was entirely altered. It was a salutary and productive cough, and not the wet terrible lung-rattle that did not end; or so they contrived to persuade one another.

However, Dorset still made his daily implacable notations, and the surgeons continued with the other experiments. A sort of custard made out of green bananas and cocoanut meat was offered to Lily, who tasted one mouthful and refused any more point-blank. Messoria was persuaded to lie curled on one side and allow a battery of candles to be melted onto her skin, lit and cupped, in an attempt to heat her lungs, but with no apparent effect except to leave great streaks of wax upon her hide.

A tiny white-haired Khoi matron appeared at their gates dragging behind her a laundry tub nearly her own size, packed to the brim with a preparation made of monkey livers. With broken pidgin Dutch she managed to convey that she had brought them a sovereign remedy for any illness whatsoever, but when tried on Immortalis, he ate one unenthusiastic bite and left the rest, so they had still to pay for it. The remainder was quickly raided by Dulcia, who cleaned out the tub and then looked for more.

Her appetite increased by leaps and bounds as her sensation of taste returned, and she coughed less daily; by the end of the fifth day almost not at all, except for an occasional hacking. Maximus coughed a while longer, but in the middle of the night towards the end of the week, they were all woken by a terrible squealing, distant shrieks of terror and fire. In a panic they burst out from the tents to discover Maximus attempting guiltily to sneak back into the parade grounds carrying, in his bloodied jaws, a spare ox. This he hurriedly swallowed down almost entire, on finding himself observed, and then pretended not to know what they were talking about, insisting he had only risen to stretch his legs and settle himself more comfortably. The dusty track of his dragging tail, spotted liberally with blood, led them to a nearby stable now half-collapsed. Only the wreckage of a fence circled the paddock, and the owners were apoplectic with rage and terror at the loss of their valuable team of oxen.

‘It is just that the wind turned, and they smelled so very good,’ Maximus confessed finally, when confronted with the evidence, ‘and it has been so long since I have had a nice fresh cow, with no cooking or spices.’

‘Why you ridiculous lummox, as though we would not feed you whatever you liked,’ Berkley said, without any heat whatsoever, petting him extravagantly. ‘You will have two of them tomorrow.’

‘And let us have no more damned excuses out of you for not eating, during the day, when you will go wandering about at night like a rampaging lion to stuff your belly,’ Keynes added more peevishly, scruffy with his night’s growth of beard and disgruntled. He had for once sought his bed at a reasonable hour, after having sat up nearly every night observing the dragons. ‘Why you did not think to tell anyone, I cannot understand.’

‘I did not like to wake Berkley: he has not been eating properly,’ Maximus said earnestly, at which accusation Berkley, who had indeed shed another two stone of weight since their arrival, nearly spluttered himself into a fit.

Afterwards they fed Maximus on the ordinary British diet of fresh-slaughtered cattle, occasionally sprinkled with a little salt, and he began to eat through the local herds – and their own purses – at a truly remarkable rate, until Temeraire was recruited to hunt for him north of the Cape among the vast herds of wild buffalo; although these were not as tasty in Maximus’s mournful opinion.

By then even Keynes had ceased to affect displeasure, and they were wholly engaged on a fresh, a desperate search, for more of the wretched fungus. The local children had given up the search as too unlikely of return. Despite every promise which Laurence and his fellow captains could make of their open and waiting purses, none seemed inclined to hazard their time on the pursuit.

‘We can do it ourselves, I suppose,’ Catherine said doubtfully. So in the morning Laurence and Chenery took a party of men out to seek hunting grounds less picked-over, including Dorset to confirm the identity of the mushroom. The other captains would not willingly leave their sick dragons, and Berkley was plainly not up to a long traipse through wilderness, although he offered to go.

‘No need, old fellow,’ Chenery said, cheerfully, very cheerfully. Since Dulcia’s recovery he was little short of getting on a table to sing for joy, given the least encouragement. ‘We will manage all right, and you had better stay here and eat with your dragon; he is right, you need fattening up again.’

He then proceeded to put himself together in the most outlandish manner imaginable, leaving off his coat and tying his neckcloth around his forehead to keep sweat off his face, and arming himself with a heavy old cavalry sabre from the castle armoury. The resulting appearance would not have shamed a pirate, but emerging into the clearing, Chenery looked at Laurence, who was waiting for him in coat and neckcloth and hat, with an expression as dubious as the one which Laurence himself, with more tact, was repressing.

The dragons struck out north, out over the bay with Table Mountain at their backs, the Allegiance flashing by below; crossed the glass-green shallows and scalloped curve of pale gold-sand beach at the farther shore, and curved their course northeast and inland, towards a long solitary ridge, the Kasteelberg, which jutted out alone from the rich heartland, an outlier of the mountain ranges further inland.

Chenery and Dulcia took the lead, waving signal-flags exuberantly, and carried them past the settlements and over a swath of thickening wilderness, setting a brisk and challenging pace that stretched Temeraire’s wings and kept her ahead and out of hailing distance until very nearly the dinner-hour. Only reluctantly did she finally set down, upon a riverbank some ten miles beyond the mountain where they had meant to stop, and seek advice on their course from the settlers.

Laurence did not have the heart to say anything. He doubted the wisdom of going so far when the mushrooms were perhaps native to the Cape. They also knew nothing about the territory into which they were flying, but Dulcia was stretching her wings out to the sun, drinking deep from the running river, great gulps travelling down her throat visibly. She cast her neck back in an ecstatic spray, and Chenery laughed like a boy and pressed his cheek against her foreleg.

‘Are those lions?’ Temeraire asked with interest as he folded his wings, his head cocked to listen. There was a deal of angry roaring off into the bush; not the drum-and-bassoon thunder-roll of dragons, but a deep huffed breathy noise, perhaps in protest at the invasion of their territory. ‘I have never seen a lion,’ Temeraire added. Nor was likely to, so long as the lions had anything to do with the matter: however annoyed they might be, they would surely not venture anywhere in range.

‘Are they very large?’ Dulcia said, anxiously. Neither she nor Temeraire were enthusiastic about letting the crew continue on foot into the dense ground cover, despite the party of riflemen that had been brought for their protection. ‘Perhaps you ought to stay with us?’

‘Pray, how are we to see any mushrooms from the air?’ Chenery said. ‘You shall have a nice rest, and maybe eat something, and we will be back in a trice. We will manage quite well if we meet any lions; we have six guns with us, my dear.’

‘But what if there are seven lions?’ Dulcia said.

‘Then we shall have to use our pistols,’ Chenery said to her cheerfully, showing her his own as he reloaded them fresh to give her comfort.

‘I promise you, no lion will come to us to be shot,’ Laurence said to Temeraire. ‘They will run as soon as they hear the first gun, and we will fire away a flare if we need you.’

‘Well; so long as you are careful,’ Temeraire said, and settled his head on his forelegs, disconsolate.

Chenery’s old sabre served well to hack their way into the forest as Dorset thought the mushroom most likely to be found in the cool and damp soil. All the game they saw, slim antelopes and birds, were at a distance and bounding away quickly; frightened away by the noise of their passage, which was incredible. The undergrowth was ferocious: full of immense silver thorn bushes, their teeth nearly three inches long and sharp as needles at the tip and treacherously buried in a wealth of green leaves. They fought the clinging vines and tearing branches continuously, except where they occasionally broke across the trail of some large animals who had trampled a path, leaving behind them trees scraped free of bark with red weeping sores like blood. But these offered only brief respite. Dorset would not let them follow the trails for long, anxious of meeting their creators, who were most likely elephants. He was in any case doubtful that they would find any of the mushrooms there.

They were very hot and tired indeed by supper time. No man among them had escaped bloody scratches, and they would have been wholly lost but for their compasses, but at last Dyer, who had suffered less being a small boy, gave a cry of triumph. Throwing himself flat on his belly, he wriggled beneath a thorn bush and emerged again backwards holding a specimen which had been growing against the base of a dead tree.

It was small and clotted with dirt, but had two caps. This success at once renewed all their energy, and after giving Dyer a huzzah and sharing a glass of grog, they at once threw themselves again into the task and into the brush with a will.

‘How long,’ Chenery said, panting as he hacked away, ‘do you suppose it would take, to save every dragon in England, if we must find them all like this?’

Then there sounded a low crackling from the brush, like water droplets sizzling in a skillet of hot fat, and a low dyspeptic coughing noise came from the other side of the choked-off shrub. ‘Be cautious – cautious,’ Dorset stammered as Riggs went closer. Chenery’s first lieutenant Libbley held out his hand, and Chenery gave him the sword. ‘There may be—’

He stopped. Libbley had worked the sword into the brush and cut away the entangling moss. Riggs had pulled apart the branches and a massive head regarded them thoughtfully through the empty space. It was a pebbled leathery grey, with two enormous horns in line with the end of its snout. The black eyes were piggishly small and hard looking, and its odd hatchet-shaped lip moved as it chewed. It was not large compared to a dragon, but compared to an ox or even the local buffalo it was massively built and armoured so that it took on an inexorable quality.

‘Is it an elephant?’ Riggs asked in a hushed voice, turning his head, and abruptly the thing snorted and came at them, smashing the thicket into splinters. It was astonishingly fast for so heavy a creature, with its head bowed forward so the horns thrust out before it as it came. There was a confused clamour of yells and shouts, and Laurence had barely the presence of mind to take hold of the gawking Dyer and Emily’s collars and pull them back against the trees; groping only afterwards for his pistol and his sword. Too late: the thing had already gone crashing away madly and not one of them had made a shot.

‘A rhinoceros,’ Dorset was saying, calmly. ‘They are shortsighted, and prone to ill-temper, or so I understand from my reading. Captain Laurence, will you give me your neck cloth?’ and Laurence looked up to see Dorset working busily on Chenery’s leg, a copious flow of blood pumping freely from the thigh where a thick jagged branch jutted out.

Dorset sliced open his breeches with a large catling, intended for use on the more delicate membranes of draconic flesh, manoeuvring the tip deftly he performed a skilful ligature of the pumping vein, and afterwards wrapped the neck cloth several times around Chenery’s thigh. Meanwhile Laurence had directed the others in the making of a litter from tree branches and their coats.

‘It is only the merest scratch,’ Chenery said, vaguely, ‘pray do not disturb the dragons,’ but at the quick negative shake of Dorset’s head, Laurence paid no attention to Chenery’s protests and fired the blue gun, setting up the flare.

‘Only lie easy,’ he said, ‘they will come in a moment, I am sure.’

Almost instantly the great shadow of dragon wings came spilling over them. Temeraire’s dark form was backlit to a dense black against the sun, his outline too bright to look at directly. The trees and branches crackled and shattered under his weight, and he thrust a great reddish head with ten curving ivory tusks set in its upper lip in among them, sniffing: it was not Temeraire at all.

‘Christ preserve us,’ Laurence said involuntarily, reaching for his pistol. The beast was not very much smaller than Temeraire, but larger than any feral dragon he had seen. It had heavily built shoulders, which had a double ridge of spikes the colour of red-brown mud, patterned liberally with yellow and grey. ‘Another gun, Riggs, another gun—’

Riggs fired away, and the feral dragon hissed in irritation, batting too late at the streaking flare that burst blue light overhead. His head snaked back towards them, the pupils of his virulent yellow-green eyes narrowing, and he bared his jaws. Then Dulcia came darting through the canopy of the trees, crying, ‘Chenery, Chenery,’ and flung herself clawing madly at the much larger feral’s head.

Caught unawares by the ferocity of her reckless attack, the red-brown dragon recoiled at first, but then snapped back at her with astonishing speed, catching the leading edge of her wing in his mouth. He shook her up and down by it, and she shrilled in pain. When he let her go, apparently satisfied that she had learnt her lesson, she dived back at him again, her teeth bared, despite blood spider webbing blackly over the membrane of her wing.

He backed away a few paces, with rather a bewildered air, crushing more trees with his rump in the close press of the forest, and hissed at her again. Dulcia put herself between the men and the feral and spread her wings wide and sheltering, rearing up and making herself appear as large as she could, fore claws raised. Still she looked rather toy-like next to his massive bulk.

Instead of attacking, he sat back on his haunches and scratched his nose against his foreleg in an attitude like embarrassed confusion. Laurence had often seen Temeraire express a similar reluctance to fight a smaller beast, conscious of the difference in their weight class; but smaller dragons did not ordinarily offer battle to one so much larger, without supporting allies to make the contest a more equal one; only the incentive of her captain’s safety was inducing Dulcia to do so now.

Temeraire’s shadow fell over them then, and the feral jerked his head up, his shoulders bristling. He launched himself aloft to meet the new threat, more his match.

Laurence could not see very well what was going forward, though he craned desperately. They had Dulcia to contend with on the ground, who in her anxiety to see Chenery and gauge his injuries was bending close and interfering. ‘Enough, let us get him aboard,’ Dorset said, rapping her smartly upon the breast until she backed away. ‘In the belly-rigging; he must be strapped down properly,’ and they hurriedly secured the makeshift litter to the harness.

Meanwhile above the feral darted back and forth about Temeraire in short half-arcs, hissing and clicking at him like a kettle on the boil. Temeraire paused in mid-air, his wings beating the hovering stroke which only Chinese dragons could manage, and his ruff came up and spread wide as his chest expanded deeply. The feral promptly beat away a few more wing-spans, widening the distance between them, and kept his position until Temeraire gave his terrible thundering roar: the trees shaking with the force of it so that a hail of old leaves and twigs, trapped in the canopy, came shedding down upon them, and also some ugly lumpen sausage-shaped fruits, so hard their impact made a loud aggressive thumping sound and left dents in the ground, where they did not smash completely open. Laurence rubbed dust and pollen from his face, looking up. The feral looked rather impressed, as well he might be, and after a moment’s more hesitation he peeled away and flew out of their sight.

Chenery was carried aboard with no less haste, and they flew at once back to Cape Town, Dulcia constantly craning her head down towards her own belly to see how he did. They unloaded him sadly in the courtyard, and he was carried into the castle, already become feverish and excited, to be examined by the governor’s physician, while Laurence took the one poor sample that was all the day’s work had won them.

Keynes regarded it sombrely, and finally said, ‘Nitidus. If we must worry about ferals in the forests, even so near, you must have a small dragon to carry you into the woods; and Dulcia will not go away when Chenery is so ill.’

‘The thing grows hidden, under bushes,’ Laurence said. ‘We cannot be hunting from dragon-back.’

‘You cannot go about getting yourselves knocked about by rhinoceros and eaten by ferals, either,’ Keynes snapped. ‘We are not served, Captain, by a cure which consists in losing more dragons than are made healthy, in the process of acquiring it,’ and turning, stamped away with the sample to Gong Su, to have it prepared.

Warren swallowed when he heard Keynes’ decision, and said in a voice which did not rise very high, ‘Lily ought to have it,’ but Catherine said strongly, ‘We will not quarrel with the surgeons, Micah. Mr. Keynes must make all such determinations.’

‘When we have enough,’ Keynes said quietly, ‘we may experiment to see how far the dose may be stretched. At present we must have some strength in dragons to get more, and I am by no means confident that this quantity would do for Lily’s size. Maximus will be in no condition to do more than a little easy flying for weeks yet.’

‘I understand perfectly, Mr. Keynes, let us say not another word on the subject,’ she said, so Nitidus was fed upon the posset, and Lily continued to cough, miserably; Catherine sat by her head all the night, stroking her muzzle, heedless of the real danger to herself from the spatters of acid.

Chapter Eight

‘Wholly unlikely – wholly unlikely,’ Dorset said, severely, when Catherine suggested in despair, that they might have already acquired all the specimens to be found in the world, two weeks later.

Nitidus had suffered less than most of the dragons, although complained somewhat more, and he recovered with greater speed even than Dulcia had, despite a nervous inclination to cough even after the physical necessity had gone. ‘I am sure I feel a little thickness in my head again this morning,’ he said fretfully, or his throat was a little sensitive, or his shoulders ached.

‘It is only to be expected,’ Keynes said of the last complaint, scarcely a week after Nitidus had been given his last dose, ‘when you have been lying about for months with no proper exercise. Warren, you had better take him out tomorrow, and enough of his caterwauling,’ he added, and stamped away.

With this encouraging permission, they promptly renewed their search, confining the sphere to the immediate environs of the Cape. Two more weeks had passed, in which they had met with no more feral dragons, but with no more success. They had brought back several other varieties of mushroom, not entirely dissimilar in appearance, in desperation. Two of them proved instantly poisonous to the furry local rodents, which Dorset made their first recipients.

Keynes prodded the small curled dead bodies and shook his head. ‘It is not to be risked. You are damned fortunate not to have poisoned Temeraire with the thing in the first place.’

‘What the devil are we to do, then?’ Catherine demanded. ‘If there is no more to be had—’

‘There will be more,’ Dorset said with assurance, and for his part, he continued to perform daily rounds of the marketplace, forcing the merchants there to look at his detailed sketch of the mushroom, rendered in pencil and ink. His steady perseverance was rewarded by the merchants growing so exasperated that one of the Khoi, whose Dutch and English encompassed only what he required to sell his wares, finally appeared at their gates with Reverend Erasmus, having sought his assistance to put a stop to the constant harassment.

‘He wishes you to know that the mushroom does not grow here in the Cape, if I have understood correctly,’ Erasmus explained, ‘but that the Xhosa—’ he was here interrupted by the Khoi merchant, who impatiently repeated the name quite differently, incorporating an odd sort of clicking noise at the beginning which reminded Laurence of nothing more than the Durzagh language, difficult for a human tongue to render.

‘In any case,’ Erasmus said, after another unsuccessful attempt to repeat the name properly, ‘he refers to a tribe who live further along the coast, and having more dealings inland, they may know where more are to be found.’

Pursuing this intelligence, Laurence soon discovered that to make any contact would be difficult in the extreme. The tribesmen who dwelt nearest the Cape had withdrawn farther and farther from the Dutch settlements, after their last assault upon the castle had failed some eight years before. They were now settled into an uneasy and often-broken truce with the colonists, and only at the very frontiers was any intercourse still to be had with them.

‘That,’ Mr. Rietz informed Laurence, ‘and the pleasure of having cattle stolen. Twice a month we lose a cow or more, for all they have signed one truce after another.’

The two men communicated through equally halting German. Rietz was one of the chief men of Swellendam, one of the oldest villages of the Cape. It was nearly as far inland as any of the settlers had successfully established themselves, nestled at the foot of a sheltering ridge of mountains, which deterred incursions by the ferals. The vineyards and farmland were close-huddled around the neat and compact whitewashed homes, only a handful of heavily fortified farmhouses were more widely flung.

The settlers were wary of the feral dragons that often came raiding from over the mountains. They had built a small central fort, bolstered with two six-pounders, and were resentful of their black neighbours, of whom Rietz further added, ‘They are rascals, and I advise you against any dealings with them. The Hottentots or the Kaffirs, are savages to a man, and more likely to murder you while you sleep than be of any use. None of them will do an honest day’s work, we have to buy Malays for the vineyards.’

Having said this much under the unspoken but no less potent duress of Temeraire’s presence on the outskirts of his village, he considered it to be final, and was not willing to be of further assistance. He sat mutely until Laurence gave it up and let him go back to his accounts.

‘Those certainly are very handsome cows,’ Temeraire said, with a healthy admiration of his own, when Laurence rejoined him. ‘You cannot blame the ferals for taking them when they do not know any better and the cows are just sitting there in the pen, doing no one any good. But how are we to find any of these Xhosa, if the settlers will not help? I suppose we might fly about looking for them?’ a suggestion which would certainly ensure that they would not catch the least sight of a people who were as likely to be victims of the ferals dragons as the settlers were.

General Grey snorted when Laurence reported Rietz’s reaction upon returning to Cape Town to seek an alternative. ‘Yes, and I imagine that if you asked one of the Xhosa, that he will make the very same complaint in reverse. They are forever stealing cattle from one another, and the only thing they might agree on, I suppose, is to complain that the ferals are worse. It is a bad business,’ he added, ‘these settlers want more grazing land, and because they cannot get it they have nothing to do but quarrel with the tribesmen over what land the ferals leave to them.’

‘Can the ferals not be deterred?’ Laurence asked. He did not know how ferals were managed, precisely. In Britain he knew they were largely confined to the breeding grounds by the regular provision of easy meals.

‘No, there must be too much wild game,’ Grey said. ‘At any rate, they are not persuaded strongly enough to leave the settlements alone, and there have been trials enough to prove it. Every year a few young hotheads make a push inland, for what good it does them.’ He shrugged. ‘Most of the adventurers are not heard from again, and of course the inaction of the government is blamed for their loss. But they will not understand the expense and difficulty involved. I tell you I should not undertake to carve out any more sizable territory here without at the least a six-dragon formation, and two companies of field artillery.’

Laurence nodded; there was certainly no likelihood of the Admiralty sending such assistance at present, or for that matter in the foreseeable future; even apart from the disease, which had so wracked their aerial strength, any significant force would naturally be committed to the war against France.

‘We will just have to make shift as best we can,’ Catherine said, when he had grimly reported his lack of success that night. ‘Surely Reverend Erasmus can help us; he can speak with the natives, and perhaps that merchant will know where we can find them.’

Laurence and Berkley went to apply to him the next morning at the mission, already much altered since the last visit which Laurence had made the plot of land was now a handsome vegetable-garden, full of tomato and pepper plants; a few Khoi girls in modest black shifts tended the rows, tying up the tomato plants to stakes. Another group sitting beneath a broad mimosa tree were sewing diligently, while Mrs. Erasmus and another missionary lady, a white woman, took it in turn to read to them out of a Bible translated into their tongue.

Inside, the house was almost wholly given over to students scratching laboriously away at writing on scraps of slate, paper too valuable to be used for such an exercise. Erasmus came walking outside with them, for lack of room to talk, and said, ‘I have not forgotten to be grateful to you for our passage here, Captain, and I would gladly be of service to you. But there is likely as much kinship between the Khoi tongue and that of the Xhosa as there is between French and German, and I am by no means yet fluent even in the first. Hannah does better, and we do remember a little of our own native tongues; but those will be of even less use: we were both taken from tribes much farther north.’

‘You still have a damned better chance to jaw with them than any of us do,’ Berkley said, bluntly. ‘It cannot be that bloody difficult to make them understand: we have a scrap of the thing left, and we can wave it in their faces to show them what we want.’

‘Surely having lived neighbour to the Khoi themselves,’ Laurence said, ‘there may those among them who speak a little of that tongue, which would allow you to open some communication? We can ask only,’ he added, ‘that you try: a failure would leave us no worse than we stand.’

Erasmus stopped before the garden gate, watching where his wife was reading to the girls, then said low and thoughtfully, ‘I have not heard of it, if anyone has brought the Gospel to the Xhosa yet.’

Though barred from much expansion inland, the settlers had been creeping steadily out along the coast eastward from Cape Town. The Tsitsikamma River, some two long days’ flight away, was now a theoretical sort of border between the Dutch and the Xhosa territories: there were no settlements nearer than Plettenberg Bay, and if the Xhosa were lurking in the brush five steps beyond the boundaries of the outermost villages, as many of the settlers imagined they were, no one would have been any the wiser. But they had been pushed across the river in the last fighting, it was a convenient line upon a map, and so it had been named in the treaties.

Temeraire kept to the coastline for their flight. They saw a strange and beautiful series of low curved cliffs, thickly crusted with green vegetation and in some places lichen of bright red, with cream and brown rocks spilling from their feet. Beaches of golden sand lay below, some littered with squat little penguins too small to be alarmed by their passage overhead: they were not prey for dragons. Late in their second day of flying they passed the lagoon of Knysna sheltered behind its narrow mouth to the ocean, and arrived late in the evening on the banks of the Tsitsikamma, the river driving its way inland, deep in its green-lined channel.

In the morning, before crossing the river, they tied onto two stakes large white sheets, as flags of parley, to avoid giving provocation; and set these streaming out to either side of Temeraire’s wings. They flew cautiously onwards into Xhosa territory until they came to an open clearing, large enough to permit them to settle Temeraire, which was divided by a narrow, swift-running stream; no real obstacle, but perhaps enough of a boundary to provide comfort to someone standing on the other side.

Besides a small but substantial heap of gold guineas, Laurence had brought with him an assortment of those things that were commonly used for local barter, in the hope of tempting the natives. Foremost among them were several great chains of cowrie shells strung on silk thread; in some parts of the continent these were used as currency, and sense of their value persisted more widely. Locally they were highly prized as jewellery. Temeraire was for once unimpressed: the shells were not brightly coloured, neither glittery nor iridescent, and did not awaken his magpie nature. He eyed the narrow chain of pearls that Catherine had contributed to the cause with much more interest.

The crew laid out the entire collection upon a large blanket, near enough the edge of the stream to be visible plainly to an observer on the other bank, hoping to coax some response. Temeraire crouched down as best he could on the sandy bank, and then they waited. They had made enough noise, to be sure, but the region was vast: they had flown two days to reach the river, and Laurence was not sanguine.

They slept that night on the bank with no response. The second day also passed without event, except that Temeraire went briefly hunting and brought back four antelope, which they roasted on a spit for dinner, not very successfully. Gong Su had remained back at the camp, to feed the sick dragons, and young Allen, detailed to turn the spit, grew distracted and forgot, so that they were scorched black on one side and unappetizingly raw on the other. Temeraire put back his ruff in disapproval; he was, Laurence sadly noted, becoming excessively fussy in his tastes: an unfortunate habit in a soldier.

The third day crept onward, hot and clinging from the first, and the men wilted gradually into silence; Emily and Dyer scratched unenthusiastically at their slates, and Laurence forced himself to rise at intervals to pace back and forth, so that he would not fall asleep. Temeraire gave a tremendous yawn and put down his head to snore. At an hour past noon they had their dinner, only bread and butter and a little grog, but no one wanted more in the heat, even after the debacle of the previous evening’s meal. The sun dipped only reluctantly back towards the horizon; the day stretched.

‘Are you comfortable, ma’am?’ Laurence asked, bringing Mrs. Erasmus another cup of grog; they had set her up a little pavilion with the travelling-tents, so she might keep in the shade: the little girls had been left back at the castle, in the charge of a maid. She inclined her head and accepted the cup, seeming as always quite careless of her own comfort. A necessary quality, to be sure, for a missionary’s wife being dragged the length of the globe, yet it felt uncivilized to be subjecting her to the violence of the day’s heat for so little evident use; she did not complain, but she could not have enjoyed being packed aboard a dragon, however well she concealed her fears, and she wore a high-necked gown with sleeves to the wrist, of dark fabric, while the sun beat so ferociously that it glowed even through the leather of the tent.

‘I am sorry we have imposed upon you,’ he said. ‘If we hear nothing tomorrow, I think we must consider our attempt a failure.’

‘I will pray for a happier outcome,’ she said, in her deep steady voice, briefly, and kept her head bowed down.

Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, ‘Laurence, there is someone coming, there,’ and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.

A very slight man emerged in the half-light on the far bank: bare-headed and naked but for a small blanket, draped rather too casually around his body to preserve modesty. He was carrying a long, slim-hafted assegai, the blade narrow and spade-shaped, and over his other shoulder was slung a rather skinny antelope. He did not come across the stream, keeping a wary eye on Temeraire; he craned his neck a little to look over their blanket of goods, but plainly he would come no further.

‘Reverend, perhaps if you would accompany me,’ Laurence said softly and set out, Ferris following along doggedly behind them without having been asked. Laurence paused at the blanket and lifted up the most elaborate of the cowrie chains, a neck-collar in six or seven bands of alternating dark and light shells, interspersed with gold beads.

They forded the river, shallow here and not coming over the tops of their boots; Laurence surreptitiously touched the butt of his pistol, looking at the javelin: they would be vulnerable, coming up the bank. But the hunter only backed away towards the woods as they emerged from the water, so he was very nearly invisible in the dim light, against the underbrush, and could easily have dived back into the obscurity which this afforded: Laurence supposed he had more right than they to be alarmed, alone to their large party, with Temeraire behind them sitting catlike on his haunches and regarding the situation with anxiety.

‘Sir, pray let me,’ Ferris said, so plaintively Laurence surrendered the neck-chain to him. He edged cautiously out across the distance, the necklace offered across his palms. The hunter hesitated, very obviously tempted, and then he tentatively held out the antelope towards them, with a slightly abashed air, as if he did not think it a very fair exchange.

Ferris shook his head, and then he abruptly stiffened: the bushes behind the hunter had rustled. But it was only a small boy, no more than six or seven, his hands parting the leaves so he could peek out at them with large, curious eyes. The hunter turned and said something to him sharply, in a voice which lost some of its severity by cracking halfway through the reprimand. He was not stunted at all, but only a boy himself, Laurence realized; there could scarcely have been a handful of years between him and the one hiding.

The small boy vanished again instantly, the branches closing over his head, and the older one turned back to Ferris again, with a defiant wary look; his hand was clenched sufficiently on the assegai to show pale pink at the knuckles.

‘Pray tell him, if you can, that we mean them no harm,’ Laurence said quietly to Erasmus. He did not wonder very much what might have lured them here to take a risk perhaps others of his clan had preferred not to run; the hunter was painfully thin, and the younger boy’s face had none of the soft-cheeked look of childhood.

Erasmus nodded, and approaching tried his few words of dialect, without success. Retreating to more simplistic communication, he tapped his chest and said his name. The boy in return gave his as Demane; this exchange, and the passage of time with no threat offered, at least served to make him grow a little easier: he did not seem quite so ready to bolt, and he suffered Ferris to approach him closer, to show him the small sample of the mushroom which they had saved for the purpose.

Demane exclaimed, and recoiled in disgust at the thing; with no little cause: its confinement in the leather bag during the day’s heat had not improved its aroma. He laughed at his own reaction, though, and came back; but though they pointed to the mushroom, and the string of shells in turn, he continued to look perfectly blank; although he kept reaching out to touch the cowries with rather a wistful expression, rubbing them between thumb and forefinger.

‘I suppose he cannot conceive anyone should want to trade for it,’ Ferris said, not very much under his breath, his face averted as much as he could.

‘Hannah,’ Erasmus said, turning to her and startling Laurence: he had not noticed Mrs. Erasmus come to join them, her skirts dripping over her bare feet. Demane stood a little straighter, and dropped his hand from the shells, very like he had been caught at something by a schoolteacher, and edged back from her. She spoke to him a little while in her low voice, slowly and clearly; taking the mushroom from Ferris, she held it out, imperiously gesturing when Demane made a face. Once he had gingerly taken it from her, she grasped him by the wrist and showed him holding it out to Ferris. Ferris held out the shells in return, miming the transfer, and comprehension finally dawned.

A small voice piped up from the bushes; Demane answered it shortly, then began to talk volubly at Mrs. Erasmus, a speech full of the odd clicking, which Laurence could not imagine how he produced, at such speed; she listened, frowning intently as she tried to follow. He took the mushroom and knelt down to put it on the ground, next to the base of a tree, then mimed pulling it up and throwing it on the ground. ‘No, no!’ Ferris sprang only just in time to rescue the precious sample from being stamped upon by his bare heel.

Demane observed his behaviour with a baffled expression. ‘He says it makes cows sick,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, and the gesture was plain enough: the thing was considered a nuisance, and torn up where it was found; which might explain its scarcity. It was no wonder, the local tribesmen being cattle-herders by livelihood, but Laurence was dismayed, and wondered where they should look for the enormous quantities necessary to their cause if it had been the settled practice of generations, perhaps, to eradicate what to them was nothing more than an unpleasant weed.

Mrs. Erasmus continued to speak to the boy, taking the mushroom, and stroking it gently, to show him that they valued it. ‘Captain, will you have them bring me a pot?’ she asked, and when she had put the mushroom into it, and made stirring motions. Demane looked at Laurence and Ferris with a very dubious expression, but then shrugged expressively, and turning back to her pointed upwards, drawing his hand from horizon to horizon in a sweeping arc. ‘Tomorrow,’ she translated, and the boy pointed at the ground where they stood.

‘Does he think he can find us some?’ Laurence asked intently, but either the question or the response she was unable to convey, and only shook her head after a moment. ‘Well, we must hope for the best; tell him if you can that we will return,’ and the next day, at the same hour near dusk, the boys came out of the brush again, the younger now trotting at Demane’s heels, perfectly naked, and with them a small raggedy dog, its mongrel fur mottled yellow and brown.

It planted itself beside them and yapped piercingly and continuously at Temeraire while the older boy attempted to negotiate for its services over the noise. Laurence eyed it dubiously, but Demane took the mushroom piece again and held it out to the dog’s nose, then kneeling down covered the dog’s eyes with his hands. The younger boy ran and hid the mushroom deep in the grass, and came back again; then Demane let the dog go again, with a sharp word of command. It promptly returned to barking madly at Temeraire, ignoring all his instructions, until, looking painfully embarrassed, Demane snatched up a stick and hit it on the rump, hissing at it, and made it smell the leather satchel where the mushroom had been kept. At last reluctantly it left off and went bounding across the field, and came trotting back with the mushroom held in its mouth, and dropped it at Laurence’s feet, wagging its tail with enthusiasm.

Having decided, very likely, that they were fools; or at least very rich, Demane now turned up his nose at the cowries, wishing rather to be paid in cattle, evidently the main source of wealth among the Xhosa: he opened the negotiations at a dozen head.

‘We will pay nothing of the sort,’ Laurence said, exasperated. ‘Tell him we will give them one cow, for a week of service,’ Laurence said. ‘If he leads us to a good supply of the mushroom, we will consider extending the bargain, otherwise we will return them here with their payment.’ Demane inclined his head and accepted the diminished offer with a tolerable attempt at calm gravity; but the wide eyes of the younger boy, whose name was Sipho, and his rather excited tugging at Demane’s hand, made Laurence suspect he had even so made a poor bargain by local standards.

Temeraire put his ruff back when the dog was carried squirming towards him. ‘It is very noisy,’ he said disapprovingly, to which the dog barked an answer equally impolite, by the tone of it, and tried once again to jump out of its master’s arms and run away; the boys were no less anxious, hanging back nervously from Temeraire. Mrs. Erasmus sought to coax them a little closer, speaking to them slowly and encouragingly, and reached out to pat Temeraire’s forehand to show there was no danger: perhaps not the best encouragement, since it drew their attention to the very substantial talons: Demane pushed Sipho behind him, the wriggling dog still clutched against him with his other arm, and shaking his head vocally refused to come nearer.

Temeraire cocked his head. ‘That is a very interesting sound,’ he said, and repeated one of the words, mimicking the clicking noise with more success than any of them but still not quite correctly. The little boy laughed and said the word to him again; after a few repetitions Temeraire said, ‘Oh, I have it,’ although the clicking issued a little oddly, from somewhere deeper in his throat than the boys produced it; they then began to teach him variations; gradually reconciled by the small exchange, they were at last persuaded to hand the dog and themselves over to being loaded aboard.

Laurence had learned the art of carrying livestock aboard a dragon from Tharkay, in the East, by drugging the beasts with opium before they were loaded on, but they had none of the drug with them at present, so with a dubious spirit of experimentation they put the whining creature aboard by main force, and strapped it down instead. It was inclined to squirm and struggle against the makeshift harness, making several abortive attempts to leap off into the air, until Temeraire lifted away; then after a few yelps of excitement, it sat down on its haunches with its mouth open and tongue lolling out, thrashing its tail furiously with delight, better pleased than its unhappy masters, who clung anxiously to the harness, although they were well hooked on with carabiners.

‘Proper circus you make,’ Berkley said, with a snort of laughter Laurence considered unnecessary, when they landed in the clearing and set the dog down; it promptly went tearing around the parade grounds, yelling at the dragons. For their part they were only interested and curious until the dog bit a too-inquisitive Dulcia on the tender tip of her muzzle, at which she hissed in anger; the dog yelped and fled back to the dubious shelter of Temeraire’s side; he looked down at it in irritation, and tried unsuccessfully to nudge it away.

‘Pray be careful of the creature; I have no idea how we should get or train another,’ Laurence said, and Temeraire at last grumbling allowed it to curl up beside him.

Chenery limped out to eat with them that evening in the parade grounds to reassure Dulcia of his improvement, professing himself too tired for any more bed-rest, so they made a merry meal of optimism and roast beef, and passed around the bottle freely; perhaps too freely, for shortly after the cigars were passed, Catherine said, ‘Oh, damnation,’ and getting up went to the side of the clearing to vomit.

It was not the first time she had been ill lately, but the bout was an enthusiastic one. They politely averted their faces, and in a little while she rejoined them at the fire, with a dismal expression. Warren offered her a little more wine, but she shook her head and only rinsed her mouth with water and spat on the ground, and then looking around them all said heavily, ‘Well, gentlemen, I am sorry to be indelicate, but if I am going to be sickly like this all the way through, you had better know now. I am afraid I have made a mull of it – I am increasing.’

Laurence only gradually realized that he was staring, with an intolerably rude gaping expression. He closed his mouth at once and held himself still with rigid force, fighting the almost irrepressible inclination to turn his head and look at his fellow captains, the five of them sitting around the fire, and study them in the light of candidates.

Berkley and Sutton, both senior to him by ten years, he thought stood more in the relation of uncle to Catherine than anything else. Warren also was older, and had been matched to his rather nervous beast Nitidus for the very steadiness of his nature, which made it difficult to easily imagine him in the light of a lover, under their present circumstances.

Chenery was a younger man of high and cheerful spirits, thoroughly innocent of any sense of decorum, and made more handsome by his smiles and a rough careless charm than his looks deserved, being a little thin in the chest and face, with an unfortunately sallow complexion and hair generally blown straight as straw. He was perhaps in personality the most likely, although Immortalis’ captain, Little, of a similar age was the better-looking, despite a nose which was inclined to beakishness, with china-blue eyes and wavy dark hair kept a little long in a poetic style; but this, Laurence suspected, was due more to a lack of attention than any deliberate vanity, and Little was rather abstemious in his habits than luxurious.

There was of course Catherine’s first lieutenant, Hobbes, an intense young man only a year her junior, but Laurence could scarcely believe she would engage herself with a subordinate, and risk all the resentment and difficulties which he had known similar practices, albeit of more illegal nature, to produce aboard ship. No; it must be one of them; and Laurence could not help but see, from the corner of his eye, that Sutton and Little at least bore expressions more or less of surprise, and that he was being looked at with the same spirit of speculation he himself had been unable to repress, exhibited more openly.

Laurence was unhappily conscious that he could not object. He had committed an exactly equal indiscretion, without ever considering what he should say, or do, if he and Jane were to similarly be taken aback. He could hardly imagine his father’s reaction and even his mother’s, on being presented with such a match: a woman some years his senior, with a natural-born child, of no particular family wholly aside from her complete sacrifice of respectability to her duty. But marriage it would have to be. Anything else would be as good as offering insult to one who deserved from him the respect of a gentlewoman and a comrade in arms, and would expose her and the child to the censure of all society.

Therefore to just such a dreadful situation he had willingly hazarded himself, and he could hardly complain if he were now to suffer a share of that pain on another party’s behalf. Only the one who knew himself guilty could know the truth, of course; and so long as he remained unconfessed, Laurence and his fellow captains should all jointly have to endure the curiosity of the world, however unpleasant, without remedy.

‘Well, it is damned bad luck,’ Berkley said, setting down his fork. ‘Whose is it?’

Harcourt said easily, ‘Oh, it is Tom’s, I mean Captain Riley; thank you, Tooke,’ and held out her hand for the cup of tea which her young runner had brought her, while Laurence blushed for all of them.

Laurence passed an uncomfortable and wakeful night, suffering the incessant shrill barking of the dog outside, and, within, all confusion over whether to speak to Riley, and on what grounds, Laurence scarcely knew.

He felt a certain responsibility for Catherine’s honour and the child’s; irrational under the circumstances, perhaps, when she herself seemed wholly unconcerned. But though she might not care for the good opinion of society or feel herself, nor her fellow aviators dishonoured, Laurence was well aware that Riley could claim no such disdain for the eyes of the world. All Riley’s odd constraint towards the end of the voyage, now bespoke a guilty conscience. Certainly, he had not approved the notion of women officers, and Laurence did not for a moment imagine that his opinion had altered in consequence of this affair. Riley had only taken personal advantage where it became available to him, and with full knowledge had entered into what for him must be seen as the ruin of a gentlewoman, an act selfish if not vicious, and deserving of the strongest reproof. But Laurence had no standing whatsoever in the world to pursue it. Any attempt would only make a thorough scandal of the whole, and as an aviator he was forbidden to enter into personal challenges in any case.

To complicate matters still further, he had a wholly separate inclination to drive him to speaking, to give Riley intelligence of the child’s existence, of which Laurence suspected him ignorant. Jane Roland, at least, thought nothing of her daughter Emily’s illegitimacy; by her own admission she had not so much as seen the father since the event of conception, nor seemed to think he had anything to do with the child in the least. Catherine evidently shared this perfect lack of sensibility. Laurence had not dwelt long on this pragmatic ruthlessness before this event; but now he put himself in Riley’s place, and felt that Riley at once deserved all the difficulties of the situation, and the opportunity of rising to meet them.

Laurence rose undecided and unrested, and without much enthusiasm entered into their first attempt to take out the dog. Seeing them make ready, the cur did not wait to be carried aboard, but leapt onto Temeraire’s back and settled itself in pride of place at the base of Temeraire’s neck, just where Laurence ordinarily sat, and barked officiously to hurry the rest of their preparations. ‘Can it not ride with Nitidus?’ Temeraire said, disgruntled, craning his neck to give it a repressive hiss. Familiarity had already bred contempt; the dog only wagged its tail back at him.

‘No, no; I do not want it in the least,’ Nitidus said, mantling his wings in resistance. ‘You are bigger, it does not weigh on you at all.’ Temeraire flattened his ruff against his neck and muttered.

They crossed over the mountains again and settled themselves just past the leading edge where the settlements petered out, on a slope lately somewhat bared by a rockslide, which offered the dragons the best opportunity to land deep in the undergrowth. Nitidus managed to wedge himself into a gap left among the trees, where a larger one had fallen, but Temeraire was forced to try and make himself a landing place by trampling down the smaller but more stubborn shrubs which had invaded the space. The acacia thorns were long and slender enough to probe between his scales, and catch the flesh beneath, so he flinched to one side or another several times before at last he had something like sure footing and could let them clamber down off his back, to hack themselves out a little more room and pitch the tents once again.

The dog made itself a nuisance while they made camp, inclined to frolic and startle up the fat brown-and-white pheasants, which ran away from it unhappily, their heads bobbing; until all at once it went very quiet, and its lean rangy body stiffened with excitement. Lieutenant Riggs raised his rifle to his ear, and they all froze, remembering the rhinoceros; but in a moment a troop of baboons came out from among the trees. The largest, a grizzled fellow with a long sour face and a shining rump of bright scarlet protruding from his fur, impossible to ignore, sat back on his haunches and gave them a jaundiced eye; then the band ambled off, the smallest clinging to their mothers’ fur and turning their heads around to stare with curiosity as they were carried away again.

There were very few large trees; the thickness was made rather of yellow grass everywhere, higher than a man’s head, which filled in every gap the green thornbrake allowed. Above, the thin trees threw up little cloud-like clusters of branches, which gave no relief from the sun. The air was close and hot and full of dust, crumbled grass and dried leaves, and clouds of small birds twitting each other in the brush. The dog led them on an aimless straggling path through the ferocious underbrush; it more easily than they could work through the tangled shrubs and deadwood.

Demane gave the dog occasional encouragement by lectures and yelling, but for the most part gave it his head. He and his brother followed closely on its heels quicker than the rest of them could manage, occasionally disappearing up ahead. Their young clear voices came calling back impatiently to guide them, now and then, and at last, in the mid-afternoon, Laurence came stumbling out of the brush and caught them up to find Sipho proudly holding out one of the mushrooms for their inspection.

‘Better by far, but we will still need a week at this rate to get enough for the rest of the formation alone,’ Warren said that evening, offering Laurence a glass of port in front of his small tent, an old stump and a smooth rock serving them as formal seating. The dog had found them three more mushrooms on the way back to camp, all of them small ones which would have escaped their attention otherwise. They were happy to have them, but they would not make much of the posset, or the draught.

‘Yes, at least,’ Laurence said, tiredly; his legs ached from their unaccustomed labour. He unfolded them with an effort towards the heat of the small twiggy fire, smoky from the green wood but pleasantly hypnotic.

Temeraire and Nitidus had made good use of their idleness to improve upon the camp, trampling down the earth of the slope to make it more level and tearing up several trees and bushes to clear more ground. Temeraire had rather vengefully hurled the bristling acacia far down the slope, where it could now be seen, incongruously, sitting caught upon two tree-tops with a great clump of dirt around its roots in mid-air.

They had provided also a couple of antelopes for the party’s dinner, or had meant to; but the hours had dragged, and with nothing better to do they had eventually eaten most of the kill themselves, and were found licking their chops and empty-handed at the end of the day. ‘I am sorry, but you were so very long,’ Temeraire said, apologetically. Happily, Demane showed them the trick of catching the plentiful local pheasants, by driving them towards a waiting collaborator with a net. Roasted quickly on a spit and rounded out with ship’s biscuit, they made the company a pleasant enough dinner, not in the least gamy, having fed evidently only on the local grass-seeds and berries.

Now the dragons had curled themselves around the borders of their camp; protection enough to ward off any nightly dangers; the crews had arranged themselves for sleep on beds of crumpled brush, coats used haphazardly for pillows; or were playing at dice and cards in distant corners, murmuring their wagers and occasionally a cry of victory or despair. The boys, who had been eating like wolves, and already looked rather better fleshed, were stretched upon the ground at Mrs. Erasmus’s feet. She had persuaded them to put on some loose duck trousers, donated by the local mission, at least inside the camp. Her husband was methodically laying out stiff picture cards on the ground in front of them, one at a time, illustrating objects he wanted them to identify in their language. He rewarded them with doled-out sweetmeats while she noted down the answers in her log book.

Warren prodded the fire with a long branch, idly, and Laurence felt at last that they were near enough alone to satisfy discretion that he might speak, however awkwardly.

‘No, I did not know about the child,’ Warren said, with not the least discomfiture at the inquiry, but gloomily. ‘It is a bad business. God forbid she should come to a bad pass here; that little runner of yours is the only girl we have, and she is nowise ready to make a captain, even if Lily would have her. And what the devil we would do for Excidium if she did, I should like to know. The admiral cannot be running about having another child now, not with Bonaparte on the other side of the Channel ready to toss his glove across at any minute.

‘I damned well hope you have been taking precautions? But I am sure Roland knows her business,’ Warren added, without waiting for reply. Just as well, for Laurence had never been asked a question he would have less liked to answer. It had abruptly and appallingly illuminated certain curious habits of Jane’s, which he had never thought to question, and explained her regular consultations of the calendar.

‘Oh, pray don’t take me wrong,’ Warren said, misunderstanding Laurence’s fixed expression. ‘I don’t mean to carp in the least. Accidents will happen, and Harcourt has had every excuse for distraction. These last months have been enough for us, but what the devil will become of her? Half pay would keep body and soul together, but money doesn’t make a woman respectable. That is why I asked you, before, about the fellow; I thought, if Lily died, they might make a match of it.’

‘Catherine has no family?’ Laurence asked.

‘None left, none to speak of. She is old Jack Harcourt’s daughter. He was a lieutenant on Fluitare. He cut straps in the year two. Damned shame, but at least he knew she’d been tapped for Lily, by then,’ Warren said. ‘Her mother was a girl down Plymouth way, near the covert there. She went off in a fever when Catherine was scarce old enough to crawl. She had no relations to take her in, so that is how she was thrown on the Corps.’

Laurence said, ‘Then, under the present circumstances – I know it is damned officious, but if she has no one else, ought one not speak to him? Of the child, I mean,’ he added, awkwardly.

‘Why, what is there for him to do?’ Warren said. ‘If it is a girl, God willing, the Corps needs her with both hands; and if it is a boy – He could go to sea instead, I suppose, but whatever for? It can only hurt him to be a by-blow there, and meanwhile a captain’s son in the Corps is pretty sure to get a dragon, if he has any merit of his own.’

‘But that is what I mean,’ Laurence said, puzzled to find himself so misunderstood. ‘There is no reason the child must be illegitimate; they might easily be married at once.’

‘Oh, oh,’ Warren said, dawning wonder and confusion. ‘Why, Laurence, no. There’s no sense in it, you must see that. If she had been grounded, it might have answered; but thank God, there’s no need to think of that anymore, or anything like,’ and he jerked his chin gladly at the tightly lidded box which held the fruits of their day’s labours, to be carried back to Cape Town in the morning. Lily would certainly be the next recipient. ‘A comfortable wife she would make him, with orders to follow and a dragon to look after. I dare say they would not see one another one year in six, him posted to one side of the world and she to the other. Ha! What a notion!’

Laurence was a little disgruntled to find his sentiments so unaffectedly laughed at, but more so for the uncomfortable sensation that there was some rational cause for so dismissive an answer; and he was forced to go to sleep with his resolution yet unformed.

Chapter Nine

‘Mr. Keynes,’ Catherine said, cutting through the raised voices, ‘perhaps you will be so good as to explain which alternative to Mr. Dorset’s suggestion, you prefer.’

Experience had improved their rate of return, a little, and Nitidus had carried their spoils back to Cape Town daily. They had returned, after a tired and dusty week, to find Lily, Messoria and Immortalis dosed, and a small and putrid heap of mushrooms yet remaining. Of these, two had been preserved in oil, two in spirits of wine, two only wrapped in paper and oilcloth, and the lot boxed neatly up with the receipt for the cure. They would be sent back to England on the Fiona, a quick-sailing frigate that had put into port only a few days before: she would return with the next tide.

But there was no sentiment of triumph at their dinner back, only muted satisfaction. At best the results of all their hunting would not do for more than three dragons; six if the surgeons back in Dover took the risk of halving the dose, or used it on smaller beasts, and that only if all three methods preserved whatever virtue the mushrooms held. Dorset would have liked to dry some, also, but there were not enough of them for this final experiment.

‘Well, we are not going to do any better, not unless we hire an army of men and hounds; and where to get them, you may tell me and much obliged,’ Warren said, holding the bottle in one hand as he drained his glass in the other, so he might refill the tumbler straight away. ‘Nemachaen is a clever little beast,’ meaning the dog, which had acquired this grandiose name after the lion, courtesy of some of the younger ensigns presently being subjected to a haphazard education in the classics, ‘but there is only so much blasted forest we can hack through in a day, to find one mushroom or two at a time when we need scores of the things.’

‘We must have more hunters,’ Laurence said, but they were rather in danger of losing those they had; the agreed-on week having passed, Demane gave signs of wishing for himself and Sipho, who was his younger brother, to be returned to their home village with their reward. Laurence with many unpleasant pangs of conscience had refused to immediately understand his signs, and instead had taken him to see the pen near the castle, where the cow had been set aside: a large, handsome milch cow, placid, with her six-months’ calf browsing the grass beside her; the boy ducked through the fence slats and slipped in to touch her soft brown side with cautious, almost dazed wonder. He looked at the calf, and back at Laurence, a question in his face. Laurence nodded to say they would give him the other too. Demane came out, all protests silenced by this species of bribery, and Laurence went away feeling that he had behaved himself like a desperate scrub; he hoped very much the boys did not have family to be made anxious for them, although he had rather gained the impression they were orphaned, and at the very least neglected.

‘Too slow,’ Dorset said, very decidedly despite his stammer. ‘Too slow, by half. All the searching in the world – we will only help to stamp it out. It has been the target of systematic eradication; we cannot hope to find much nearby. Who knows how long, how many years, the herdsmen have been digging it up. We must go away, farther away, where it may yet grow in quantity—’

‘Perfect speculation,’ Keynes snapped, ‘on which to recommend the pursuit of wild chances. How much distance will satisfy you? I dare say all the continent has been used for herding, at some time or another. To risk the formation, dragons scarcely risen from their sickbeds, and go deep into feral territory, on such a hope? The height of folly—’

The argument rose, grew warm, surged across the table; Dorset’s stammer grew more violent so he was scarcely comprehensible, and Gaiters and Waley, Maximus and Lily’s surgeons, were ranged with Keynes against him; until at last Catherine silenced all of them, standing up to make her demand with her hands planted on the cloth.

‘I do not quarrel with your concern,’ she added, more quietly, ‘but we did not come here to find a cure only for ourselves. You have heard the latest dispatches; nine more dead since March, and by now more gone, when we could not spare any of them in the least.’ She looked at Keynes steadily. ‘Is there any hope?’

He was silent, displeased, and only with a surly lowering look allowed there to be some chance of a better harvest, farther away; she nodded and said, ‘Then we will endure the risk, and be glad that our own dragons are well enough to do so.’

There was no question, yet, of sending Maximus, who had only lately begun to try flying again: with a deal of flapping and kicking up dust, often ending only in an exhausted collapse. He could not quite manage the launching spring, which was necessary to get him aloft, although once in the air he could remain aloft for some time. Keynes shook his head and felt at his paunchy sides.

‘The weight is coming back unevenly. You are doing your exercises?’ he demanded; Maximus protested that he was. ‘Well, if we cannot get you in the air, we must find you room to walk,’ Keynes said, and so Maximus had been set to making a circuit of the town, back and forth several times daily: the only stretch of cleared ground large enough for him, as he could not go far up the mountain-slopes without pulling them down in small avalanches.

No-one was very happy with this solution. It was ridiculous to have a dragon the size of a frigate ambling about like a lap-dog out for an airing, and Maximus complained of the hard ground, and the pebbles which introduced themselves into his talons. ‘I do not notice them at first,’ he said, unhappily, while Berkley’s runners struggled with hoof-picks and knives and tongs to pry them out from under the hard, calloused hide around the base of the claws, ‘not until they are quite far down, and then I cannot easily say how very unpleasant it becomes.’

‘Why do you not swim, instead?’ Temeraire said. ‘The water is very pleasant here, and perhaps you might catch a whale,’ which suggestion brightened Maximus remarkably, and infuriated the fishermen, particularly the owners of the larger boats; they came in a body to protest.

‘I am damned sorry to put you out,’ Berkley said to them. ‘You may come with me, and tell him yourselves you do not like it.’

Maximus continued his outings, in peace, and might be seen daily paddling about the harbour. Sadly the whales and dolphins and seals, too clever by half, stayed well-clear of him, much to his disappointment: he did not much like tunny or sharks, the latter of which occasionally beat themselves against his limbs in confused fits perhaps provoked by some traces of blood or flesh from his latest repast. On one occasion he brought back one of these to show off; a monster some nineteen feet in length, weighing close on two tonnes, with its angry brutish face full of teeth. When he laid the shark down on the parade grounds before them, it abruptly went into a paroxysm of thrashing: knocking over Dyer, two ensigns, and one of the Marines, snapping and gnashing furiously, before Dulcia managed to pin it to the ground with her fore talons.

Messoria and Immortalis, both older beasts, were perfectly happy to lie in the parade grounds and sleep in the sun, after their short daily flights for exercise; but Lily, having stopped coughing, displayed the same restless energy that had overcome Dulcia, and had began to insist on activity. But if she were to fly anywhere, it must be far away, where any stray lingering sneeze or cough would not spray anyone below. Keynes, quite ignoring the covert gestures, and the signals of nearly every senior officer, examined her and declared that she was perfectly fit to fly, ‘Had better fly, I should say. This agitation is unnatural, and must be worked off.’

Laurence eventually voiced the reluctance that the captains all privately shared, and then together they began to suggest flights out over the ocean, along the scenic and settled coastline and back; gentle exercise.

‘I hope,’ Catherine said, going pink clear up to her forehead in a wave of colour, ‘I hope that no one is going to fuss; I would dislike fuss extremely,’ and insisted on joining the hunting party, with Dulcia and Chenery, who likewise declared himself perfectly well, although Dulcia would only agree if he were bundled aboard in a heavy cloak, with a warming brick at his feet.

‘After all, it cannot hurt to have more of us: we can make several parties and cover more ground; we do not need the dog so badly if the notion is we are looking for larger patches of the stuff,’ Chenery said. ‘Just as well to have more of the dragons in hailing-distance, if any of us should run into a larger band of ferals, and your natives can keep us out of trouble with the animals.’

Laurence applied to Erasmus and his wife for their persuasive assistance, and pressed the cowrie necklace on Demane to open the conversation, as a preliminary bit of bribery. He objected vehemently nonetheless, his voice rising in high complaint, and Mrs. Erasmus said, ‘He does not like to go so far, Captain: he says that country belongs to the dragons, who will come and eat us.’

‘Pray tell him there is no reason why the feral dragons should be angry with us; we will only stay a very little while, to get more of the mushrooms, and our own will protect us if there is any difficulty,’ Laurence said, waving at the fine display the dragons made now. Since their recovery, even the older beasts who had not acquired the habit of bathing had been stripped of their harnesses and scrubbed in the warm ocean until their scales shone, and all the leather worked and polished until it too gleamed, warm and supple, the buckles glittering bright in the sun.

The parade grounds themselves had been ploughed clean, and the refuse-pits filled in, now there was only occasional coughing to manage; the whole fit to welcome an admiral for inspection, aside from the wreckage of a couple of goats, whose bones Dulcia and Nitidus were presently meditatively gnawing. Maximus alone still had a fragile air, but he was bobbing in the ocean a little way off, his hollow sides buoyed up by the water and the somewhat faded orange and red of his hide refreshed by the lingering sunset pouring in over the wide ripples of the water. The rest of the dragons were rather bright-eyed and tigerish, worn lean over the course of the sickness, their appetites now reawakened and savage.

‘And that is another reason it will be just as well for us all to go,’ Chenery said, when Demane had at last been brought around to reluctant agreement, or at least worn out from trying to convey his objections through translation. ‘Grey is a good fellow, and he has not said as much outright, yet, but the townsfolk are kicking up a real dust. It is not just having the dragons about: we are eating them out of hearth and home. The game is getting shy, and as for cattle, no one can afford to eat beef any more, and the prices are only getting higher. We had much better get out into wild country and shift for ourselves, where we needn’t annoy anyone.’

It was settled: Maximus would stay and continue his recovery, and Messoria and Immortalis to sleep and hunt for him locally; Temeraire and Lily would go abroad as far as a strong day’s flight could take them, with little Nitidus and Dulcia to ferry back their acquisitions, perhaps every other day, and bring back messages.

They were packed and gone with the sun in the morning, in the usual pell-mell way of aviators. The Fiona lay at anchor in the harbour rising up and falling with the swell, a great deal of activity on her deck in preparation for the morrow. The Allegiance was riding further out to sea; the watch would be changing in a moment, but for now all was quiet aboard her. Riley had not come ashore; Laurence had not written. He turned his face away from the ship and towards the mountains, dismissing the matter for the present with a vague sense of leaving the question up to fate; by the time they returned with mushrooms in sufficient quantity, perhaps there would be no need to speak. They would have to go home by way of the Allegiance, and it could not be hidden forever. He wondered if Catherine did not already look a little plumper.

Lily was setting a fine, fast pace; the wind poured over Temeraire’s back as Table Bay rolled away behind them. Barring a few banks of clouds, penned up against the slopes, the weather held clear and not windy, good flying, and there was an extraordinary relief in being once again in company: Lily on point, with Temeraire bringing up the rear and Nitidus and Dulcia flying in wing positions, so their shadows falling on the ground below, at noon, made the points of a diamond, skimming over the tree-tops, the vineyard rows making neat perforated lines of red and brown, past their first autumnal splendour.

Thirty miles on the wing northwest from the bay took them past the swelling outcroppings of grey granite at Paarl, the last settlement in this direction; they did not stop, but continued on into the rising mountains. Intrepid farmsteads could be glimpsed, as they wound through the passes, clinging to sheltered folds of the mountain slopes; the fields browning, the isolated houses nearly impossible to see without a glass, buried as they were in stands of trees and their roofs disguised with brown and green paint.

They stopped to water after mid-day, having come to another valley between the mountain lines, and to discuss their course; they had not seen a cultivated field for some half-an-hour now.

‘Let us go on another hour or two, and then we shall stop at the first likely place to make a search,’ Harcourt said. ‘I do not suppose that there is any chance of the dog scenting them from aloft? The smell of the things is so very strong.’

‘The best-trained foxhound in the world cannot pick up a vixen’s trail from horseback, much less from mid-air,’ Laurence said, but they had been aloft again only a turn of the glass when the dog began barking in furious excitement, and trying to wriggle free of its harness in the most heedless way.

Fellowes had gradually taken over the handling of the dog, disapproving of Demane’s haphazard discipline. His father had been a master of hounds in Scotland, and he had been giving the thin creature a gobbet of fresh meat every time it discovered them a mushroom. By now it would tear away after the least trail of scent with the greatest enthusiasm.

Temeraire had scarcely landed when it escaped its straps and went skidding down his side and abruptly vanished into the high grasses at a place where the slope rose up sharply. They had come into a warm, wide valley, cupped within a bowl of mountains and still richly green despite the advancing season. There were fruit trees everywhere in curiously even rows.

‘Oh; I can smell it too,’ Temeraire said, unexpectedly, and when Laurence had slid down from his shoulder, he was no longer surprised at the dog’s frenzy: the smell was pronounced, hanging like a miasma in the air.

‘Sir,’ Ferris said, calling: the dog was still invisible, but its barking was coming to them with a hollow echoing ring, and Ferris was bending down to the slope; Laurence came up to him and saw half-hidden by a thick there was an opening, a fissure in the dirt and limestone rock. The dog went silent; in another moment it came scrambling out of the hole and back up to them, an enormous, an absurdly enormous mushroom in its mouth, so large its third cap was dragging upon the ground between the dog’s legs and making it stumble.

It flung the mushroom down, wagging. The opening was near five feet high, and a gentle slope led downwards. The stench was astonishing. Laurence pushed up the clot of vines and moss which hung over the fissure like a curtain, and stepped inside and down, eyes watering from the smoky torch which Ferris had improvised out of rags and a tree-branch. There was surely a draught somewhere at the far end of the cavern; it drew like a chimney. Ferris was looking at him with a half-disbelieving, half-joyful expression, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Laurence made out the strange hillocky appearance of the cavern floor, and knelt to touch: the floor was covered, covered in mushrooms.

‘There is not a moment to lose,’ Laurence said. ‘If you hurry, the Fiona may not yet have gone. If she has, you must go and recall her – she will not have gone far – she will not have yet rounded Paternoster Bay.’

All the crews were busy, breathless; the grass of the field had been trampled flat, and Temeraire’s belly-netting and Lily’s was spread out on the ground, every bag and chest emptied out to be filled with mushrooms, heaps and heaps. A small pale cream-coloured breed shared the cavern with the great double-and triple-capped monsters, and also a large black fungus which grew in slabs, but the harvesters were making no attempt to discriminate: sorting could wait. Nitidus and Dulcia were already vanishing into the distance, sacks and sacks slung across their backs giving them a curiously lumpy appearance in silhouette against the sky.

Laurence had the map of the coastline dug out of Temeraire’s bags, and showed him the likely course the Fiona would follow. ‘Go as quickly as you can, and bring back more men; Messoria and Immortalis too, if they can manage the flight. And tell Sutton to ask the governor for everyone who can be spared from the castle, all the soldiers, and no damned noise about flying, either.’

‘Tell him to get them drunk if need be,’ Chenery grinned, without lifting his head. He sat by the netting keeping a tally as the mushrooms were thrown in, his lips moving in the count along with his fingers. ‘So long as they can stumble back and forth by the time you have got them here, they may be soused to their skulls.’

‘Oh, and barrels, also,’ Harcourt added, looking up from the stump where she was sitting, with a cool cloth soaked in water upon her forehead: she had attempted to help with the harvest, but the stink had overwhelmed her, and after a second round of vomiting, painful to all of them to hear, Laurence had at last persuaded her to go and sit outside instead. ‘That is, if Keynes thinks the mushrooms had better be preserved here; and oil and spirits.’

‘But I do not like leaving you here,’ Temeraire said a little mulishly. ‘What if that big feral should come back again, or another one? Or lions; I am sure I hear lions, not very far away.’ There was not the least sound of anything but monkeys, howling in the treetops at a fair distance, and birds clamouring.

‘We will be perfectly safe from dragons and lions too,’ Laurence said. ‘We have a dozen guns and more, and we need only step into the cave to hold them off forever. That mouth would not let in an elephant, much less a dragon; they would not be able to fetch us out.’

‘But Laurence,’ Temeraire said quietly, putting his head down to speak confidentially; at least, as he fancied. ‘Lily tells me that Harcourt is carrying an egg; surely at least she ought to come, and I am sure she will not, if you refuse.’

‘Why, damn you for a lawyer; I suppose you have cooked this up between the two of you,’ Laurence said, outraged at the deliberate calculation of this appeal, and Temeraire had the grace to look ashamed of himself, but only a little. Lily did not even do that much, but abandoning subterfuge said to Harcourt, wheedling, ‘Pray, pray, do come.’

‘For Heaven’s sake, enough cosseting,’ Catherine said. ‘In any case, I will do much better sitting here in the cool shade than tearing back and forth, weighing you down to no purpose when you might be carrying another pair of hands instead. No, not a man will you take; only make all the speed in the world, and the sooner you have gone, the sooner you will come back again,’ she added.

The belly-netting was as full as it could be without cramming, and Temeraire and Lily were got off at last, still making wistful complaints. ‘Near enough five hundred, already,’ Chenery said, triumphantly, looking up from his tally, ‘and most of them fat, handsome things; enough to dose half the Corps, if only they will last the journey.’

‘We will give them their damned herd of cows,’ Laurence said to Ferris, meaning Demane and Sipho, who were now taking their ease stretched out upon the ground before the cavern mouth, making grass whistles and refusing to pay much attention to Reverend Erasmus’s attempts to read them an instructive tract for children, his first attempt at translation into their tongue; his wife was helping with the harvest.

Ferris blotted his forehead against his sleeve and said, in stifled, choked tones, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘We will need larger quantities than required of the fresh,’ Dorset said, joining them. ‘Should some potency be lost in the journey, a concentrated dose will compensate for the preservation. Pray stop the harvesting a while: at this rate no one will be left to carry.’ The frantic pace had already slackened, with the wearing away of the first flush of excitement and the urgency of getting the dragons loaded, and many of the men looked sick and wan; several were being noisily sick into the grass.

The tents had all gone to make sacks of mushrooms, and there would certainly be no sleeping in the cavern, so they cleared instead the ground before it, chopping through the thorn bushes with swords and axes. The remnants they used to build a low encircling break about the edge of the clearing, thorny and obdurate enough to give pause to smaller beasts, and a few parties were set collecting dry wood for fire. ‘Mr. Ferris, let us establish a watch,’ Laurence said, ‘and now that we have all been rested, we will go to work in shifts: I should like to see a more efficient job of it.’

A quarter of an hour seemed like a long time inside that damp, dark space, with only the narrow crack of white light at one end. Besides the mushrooms themselves, there was a grassy stink very like damp manure throughout, and the sour smell of fresh vomit. Where they had already cleared the mushrooms, the earth was strangely springy underfoot, almost matted, not like dirt at all.

Laurence staggered out again into the fresh air, gratefully, with his arms full. ‘Captain,’ Dorset said, following him out: he was not carrying a mushroom, and when Laurence had deposited his armload before the newly organized sorters, Dorset showed him a torn-edged square of matted grass and muck, the flooring of the cave. Laurence gazed at it uncomprehendingly. ‘It is elephant dung,’ Dorset said, breaking apart the chunk, ‘and dragon also.’

‘Wing, two points west of north,’ Emily Roland’s treble voice rang out high and sharp, before Laurence had fully understood; at once all was a confused hurrying into the shelter of the cave. He looked for Reverend Erasmus and the children, but saw Demane, with one quick look at the oncoming dragon, snatch his brother and run away into the underbrush, with the dog dashing off after them. Its barking was heard twice more, and was then cut off into a muzzled whine.

‘Leave the mushrooms, take the guns,’ Laurence roared, over the commotion. He snatched up his own sword and pistols, put aside to help with the carrying, and gave Mrs. Erasmus his hand to descend into the cavern, past the riflemen already crouched down by the door; shortly the rest of them were crammed in also, all of them jostling involuntarily to keep as near the entrance and its fresh air as they could, until the dragon landed with an earth-trembling heavy thud, and thrust his muzzle directly up against the opening.

It was the self-same feral: dark red-brown, with the queer ivory tusks in his muzzle. The hot queasy kerosene smell of dragon-breath came in upon them as it roared furiously, and the faint undertaste of rot from old meals. ‘Hold fast, men,’ Riggs was yelling, by the entrance, ‘hold fast, wait for it—’ until the dragon shifted its position, its open jaws before them, and the volley went off into the soft flesh of its mouth.

The dragon squalled in fury and jerked back. Its talons came scrabbling in at the edges of the hole, too large to come all the way inside, and began to pull and claw at the rock. Small pebbles and stones worked loose; dirt rained down upon them from the ceiling. Laurence looked around for Mrs. Erasmus: she was silent, and only bracing herself against the wall of the cavern for steadiness, her shoulders rigid. The riflemen were coughing as they reloaded, urgently; but the dragon had already learned, and did not present them another target. Its claws came curling in on both sides of the fissure, and then it began to throw its weight back, until the entire chamber trembled and groaned.

Laurence drew his sword and leaped forward to hack at the talons, then to stab, the hard scaly flesh resisting the edge but not the point; Warren was beside him, and Ferris, in the dark. The dragon roared again outside and flexed its talons, blindly knocking them down as easily as gnats might be swatted. The hard polished bony curve of one claw slid across Laurence’s coat in a line over the belly, thrusting him hard against the matted cavern floor, and the tip caught and pulled a long green thread from the seam as the talons withdrew again from the fissure.

Warren caught Laurence by the arm and together they staggered back from the entry. The gunpowder smoke was bitter and acrid, overlaid on the rotting-sweet stink of the mushrooms; already Laurence could scarcely breathe for the slaughterhouse thickness of the place, and he heard to all sides men heaving, like the lower decks of a ship in a roaring gale.

The feral did not immediately renew the attack. They cautiously crept forward again to peer out: it had settled itself in the clearing outside; by bad luck, far back enough to be out of firing-range of their rifles, and its pale yellow-green eyes were fixed malevolently upon the fissure. It was licking at its hacked-about talons, and making grimaces with its mouth, pulling its lips back from its serrated teeth and forward again, spitting occasionally a little bit of blood upon the ground, but plainly it had taken no great harm. As they watched, it raised its head up and roared again thunderously in anger.

‘Sir, we might put gunpowder in a bottle, sir,’ his gunner Calloway said, crawling over to Laurence, ‘or the flash-powder, maybe, would give it a start; I have the sack here—’

‘We are not going to frighten that beauty away with a little flash and bang, not for long,’ Chenery said, craning his head back and forth to study their enemy. ‘My God. Fifteen tons at least, or I miss my guess. Fifteen tons in a feral!’

‘I would call it closer to twenty, and damned unfortunate too,’ Warren said.

‘We had better save what you have, Mr. Calloway,’ Laurence said to the gunner. ‘It will do us no good only to startle him away briefly; we must wait until the dragons return, and reserve our fire to give them support.’

‘Oh, Christ; if Nitidus or Dulcia are the first back,’ Warren said, and did not need to continue: the little dragons would certainly be frantic, and wholly overmatched.

‘No; they will all be loaded down, remember?’ Harcourt said. ‘The weight will tell on the lightweights more, and keep them back; but however are they to fight when they get here—’

‘Lord, let us not be borrowing trouble, if you please,’ Chenery interrupted them. ‘That big fellow is no trained flyer; a nice thing if four dragons of the Corps couldn’t black his eye in a trice, even if Messoria and Immortalis don’t come along. We have only to keep quiet in here until they come.’

‘Captain,’ Dorset said, stumbling back towards them, ‘I am – I beg to recall your attention – The floor of the cavern—’

‘Yes,’ Laurence said, recalling the earlier sample which Dorset had shown him, of the dung upon the floor of the cave, elephant and dragon, where neither animal could have managed entry. ‘Do you mean there is another way into this cavern somewhere, where it could come in upon us?’

‘No, no,’ Dorset said. ‘The dung has been spread. Deliberately,’ he added, seeing their confusion. ‘These are cultivated.’

‘What, do you mean men, farming the things?’ Chenery said. ‘What the devil would a person want with the nasty stuff?’

‘Did you say there was dragon dung?’ Laurence said, and a shadow falling over the mouth of the cave drew their attention outside: two more dragons landing, smaller creatures but sleek, wearing harness made of ropes, and a dozen men armed with assegai, leaping down off their sides.

The new arrivals all stayed well out of rifle range, conferring. After a little while, one of them came towards the entry cautiously and called something in at them. Laurence looked at Erasmus, who shook his head uncomprehending and turned to his wife; she was staring out the door. She had her handkerchief pressed over her mouth and nostrils to hold out the smell, but she lowered it and edging a little closer called back, haltingly. She turned and said, ‘They say to come out, I think.’

‘Oh, certainly.’ Chenery was rubbing his face against his sleeve; some grit had entered his eyes. ‘I am sure they would like it of all things; you may tell them to—’

‘Gentlemen,’ Laurence said, breaking in hastily, since Chenery had evidently forgotten his audience, ‘these are no ferals after all, plainly, but under harness; and if we have trespassed upon the cultivated grounds of these men, we are in the wrong: we ought make amends if we can.’

‘What a wretched mischance,’ Harcourt said, agreeing. ‘We should have been perfectly happy to pay for the damned things, after all. Ma’am, will you come out and speak to them with us? We should of course understand if you do not wish it,’ she added, to Mrs. Erasmus.

‘A moment,’ Warren said, low and cautiously, catching at Harcourt’s sleeve. ‘Let us remember that we have never heard of anyone coming through the interior; couriers have been lost, and expeditions, and how many settlements have we heard tell of, destroyed, in just this region north of the Cape? If the dragons are not feral, then these men have been responsible, viciously responsible; we are not to rely on their character.’

Mrs. Erasmus looked at her husband. He said slowly, ‘If we do not conciliate them, there will surely be battle when your dragons come back, for they will attack in fear for your safety. It is our Christian duty to make peace, if it can be done,’ and she nodded and said softly, ‘I will go.’

‘I believe I am senior, gentlemen,’ Warren said, ‘as our dragons are not here,’ a specious claim, as precedence in the Corps went by dragon-rank regardless, with no such qualifier involved, outside flag-rank. Coming from the Navy, with its rigid adherence to seniority, Laurence had often found the system confusing if not outright maddening, but it was a pragmatic concession to reality: dragons had their own native hierarchies, and in nature the twenty years old handler of a Regal Copper had more authority, on the battlefield, over the instinctive obedience of other dragons, than did a thirty-year veteran on the back of a Winchester.

‘Pray let us have no nonsense—’ Harcourt began, impatiently, before her first lieutenant Hobbes broke in to say, ‘It is all a hum; you shan’t go at all, none of you, and you ought know better,’ a little reproachfully. ‘Myself and Lieutenant Ferris shall escort the parson and his lady, with their permission, and if all goes well, we will try and bring one of the fellows back here, to speak with you.’

Laurence could not like the arrangement in the least, but for its keeping Catherine out of harm’s way, but the other captains looked guilty and did not argue. They cleared back from the entrance, the riflemen covering the open ground from either side. Mrs. Erasmus cupped her hands over her mouth and called a warning, then Hobbes and Ferris stepped out, one after another, cautiously, each with a pistol held muzzle-down and ready, swords loosened on their belts.

The strangers had stood back again, spears held lightly, the tips pointing towards the ground, but gripped ready to pull back and let fly. They were tall men, all of them, with close-cropped heads and very dark colouring, skin so deep black it had almost a bluish cast in the sunlight. They were dressed very scantily, in loincloths of a remarkable deep purple, decorated in a running fringe with what looked like gold beads, and wore thin laced leather sandals which left the tops of their feet bare, and rose to mid-thigh.

They did not move to attack, and when Hobbes turned and beckoned, Reverend Erasmus climbed out of the cave, and gave his wife his hand to assist her. They joined the lieutenants, and Mrs. Erasmus began speaking, slowly and clearly: she had taken a mushroom from the cave, and held it out to them to show. The red-brown dragon stooped suddenly, its head bending towards her, and spoke; she looked directly up at him, startled but not visibly afraid, and it jerked its head back with an ugly, squawking cry: not a roar or a growl, wholly unlike any sound Laurence had ever heard from a dragon’s throat.

One of the men reached out and catching her by the arm drew her towards him. His other hand pressed her forehead backwards, bending her neck in an awkward exposed curve, and where his hand pushed her hair away from her face, where the scar and the tattoo marred her forehead.

Erasmus sprang forward, and Hobbes on his other side, to pull her free. The man let her go, without resistance, and took a step towards Erasmus, speaking low and rapidly, pointing at her. Ferris caught her in his arms as she fell back shaking.

Erasmus spread his hands placating, and spoke even while he carefully sought to interpose himself before her. He was plainly not understood, so he shook his head and tried again in the Khoi language. When this too was not comprehended, he tried another. Haltingly, and tapping his own chest he said, ‘Lunda.’

The dragon snarled, and with no other warning, the man took up his spear and drove it directly through Erasmus’s body, in one unbroken and terrible motion.

Hobbes fired and the man fell. Erasmus also went toppling to his knees wearing an expression of mild surprise on his face; his hand was on the spear-haft, protruding from just above his breastbone. Mrs. Erasmus gave a single hoarse cry of horror; he turned his head a little in his wife’s direction and tried to lift his hand towards her; it fell, limply, and he dropped to the ground.

Ferris half-carried, half-dragged Mrs. Erasmus back towards the cave, while she cried and struggled against him. The red-brown dragon lunged, and Hobbes went down in spraying blood under that raking claw. Ferris pushed Mrs. Erasmus into the cavern, backing her into their waiting arms, just before the dragon flung itself at the entrance again, roaring at a wild, shrieking pitch; its talons scrabbling madly at the opening and shaking the hollow hill entirely.

Laurence caught Ferris by the arm as he fell stumbling backwards from the impact, blood in a thin streak crossing his shirt and face. Harcourt and Warren had Mrs Erasmus. ‘Mr. Riggs,’ Laurence shouted, over the rattling din outside, ‘a little fire; and Mr. Calloway, let us have those flares, if you please.’

They gave the dragon another volley and a blue light, straight into the face, which at least made it recoil momentarily. The two smaller dragons leapt into the breach and made an effort to herd the larger one back from the cavern, speaking to it in shrill voices, and at last it drew away again, its sides heaving, and dropped back into its crouch at the far end of the clearing.

‘Mr. Turner, do you have the time?’ Laurence asked his signal-officer, coughing: the clouds from the flare were not dying away.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I forgot to turn the glass for a while,’ the ensign said, unhappily, ‘but it is past four in the afternoon watch.’

Temeraire and Lily had not left until past one: four hours’ flight in either direction, and a great deal of labour and packing to be done in Cape Town, before they would even begin the return journey. ‘We must try and get a little sleep by watches,’ Laurence said quietly, to Harcourt and Warren; Dorset had taken charge of Mrs. Erasmus and guided her deeper into the cave. ‘We can hold them at the fissure, I think, but we must stay vigilant—’

‘Sir,’ Emily Roland said, ‘beg pardon, sir, but Mr. Dorset says to tell you, there is smoke coming into the cave, from the back.’

Through a narrow vent at the back, higher up than they could reach, and propped up on Mr. Pratt’s broad shoulder, Laurence could see the orange glow of the fire, which the men outside had set to smoke them out. He dropped back to his own feet and cleared away. Fellowes and Larring, Harcourt’s ground-crew master, were trying together with their men to block the vent with scraps of harness and leather, using their own coats and shirts besides. They were having little success, and time worked against them; already the cavern was nearly unbreathable, and the rising heat only worsened the natural stench.

‘We cannot last long this way,’ Catherine said, hoarse but steady, when Laurence had come back to the front of the cave. ‘I think we had better make a dash for it, while we still can, and try and lose them in the forest.’

Outside the entrance, the thorny brush which they had torn up to make their camp was now being heaped up closer by the dragons, forming stacks higher than a man’s head all around the cavern mouth, and the dragons had arranged themselves carefully behind it: screened from rifle-fire, and blocking their avenues of escape. There would be precious little hope of breaking through, but no better alternative would offer itself.

‘My crew is the largest,’ Laurence said, ‘and we have eight rifles. I hope you will all agree we should make the first attempt, and the rest of you come upon our heels: Mr. Dorset, perhaps you will be so kind as to wait with Mrs. Erasmus until we have cleared a little way, and I am sure Mr. Pratt will assist you,’ he added.

The order of emergence was settled upon, in haste; they agreed upon a rendezvous point in the woods, consulting their compasses. Laurence felt his neck cloth, to be sure it was tied, and shrugged back into his coat in the dark, adjusting the gold bars upon his shoulders; his hat was gone. ‘Warren, Chenery; your servant, Harcourt,’ he said, shaking their hands. Ferris and Riggs were crouched by the opening, ready; his own pistols were loaded. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, and drawing his sword went through the cavern exit, a roar of God and King George behind him.

Chapter Ten

Laurence stumbled as the rough hands dragged him up; his legs would not answer, and when he was flung forward they crumpled at once, casting him on the ground beside the other prisoners. They had been flung roughly into a rig much like their own belly-netting, but made of coarser rope and designed less for passengers than for baggage. In a few sharp jerks, they were hauled up and slung below the red-brown dragon’s belly, their arms and legs left to dangle through the large haphazardly knotted gaps, and their bodies crammed in atop one another. The netting was loose, and swung in great sickening curves with every shift in the wind or direction, every sudden diving movement.

There was no guard set to watch them, nor any personal restraint, but they were thoroughly immobilized regardless, and had no opportunity to shift their positions or speak to one another. He was low in the netting, with his face pressed directly into the raw cords, which scraped him now and again; but he was grateful for the air despite the thin ribbons of blood that dripped past him, and the wider arc of swinging. Dyer was pushed up against his side. Laurence had his arm around the boy, to keep him in, for the netting was uneven and the moving cords might easily let the small boy slip through to plunge to his death.

The wounded had been thrown in without any consideration. A young midwingman from Chenery’s crew lay badly clawed, with his jaw pressed against Laurence’s arm: blood seeped slowly from the corner of his mouth, soaking through the sleeve. Sometime during the night he died, and Laurence felt his corpse stiffen slowly as they flew on. He could distinguish no one else around him, only the anonymous pressure of a boot in the small of his back, and a knee jammed up against his own, so that his leg was bent back upon itself.

He had glimpsed Mrs. Erasmus only briefly, in the dreadful confusion of their taking, as the nets were flung down upon them from the trees; she had certainly been dragged away alive. He did not wish to think on it; he could do little else, and Catherine’s fate weighed on him heavily.

They did not stop. He slept, or at least passed into a state more distant from the world than wakefulness, the wind passing over his face in gusts, the rocking of the netting not wholly unlike the querulous motion of a ship riding at anchor in a choppy cross-sea. A little while after dawn, the dragon brought up sharp, cupping the wind in its wings as it descended, bird-like, and came to the ground jarringly, skipping a few steps along the earth before dropping onto its forelegs.

The netting was cut loose, roughly, and having been rolled a little way apart from one another, they were picked over quickly and efficiently, the men prodding them with the butt ends of their spears, and heaving away the corpses. Laurence could not have risen to his legs with all the liberty in the world to do so, his knee afire with returning blood, but he raised his head, and saw Catherine lying a little way distant: flat upon her back, pale and her eyes shut, with blood on the side of her face. There were two bloody rents in her coat, near the arm; her hair was still back in its tight plait, and there was no sign she had been treated differently to the men.

No time for anything more: a little water was splashed in their faces, and the netting folded back over their heads; the dragon stepped over them again and they were hoisted back up with quick, jerking pulls. Away again. The motion was worse in daylight, and they were a lighter load now, swaying more easily with the wind and every slight change of current; the Corps was a service that hardened the stomach, but even so filth trickled down through the press of bodies, seeping the sour smell of bile. Laurence breathed through his mouth so far as he could, and turned his face to the ropes when he had himself to vomit.

There was no more sleep until at last, with the coming of the sun, they descended again. This time at last they were taken out from the netting one and two at a time, weak and ill. They were lashed together at wrists, upper arms, and ankles, into a human chain, and fixed to a pair of trees at either end. Their captors came around with water in dripping leather bags, fresh and delicious; the spout dragged too soon away from seeking mouths. Laurence held the last swallow on his parched tongue as long as he could.

He leaned forward and glanced down the line. He did not see Warren at all, but Harcourt looked up at him, and gave a quick nod. Ferris and Riggs looked as well as could be expected, and Roland was tied up on at the very end of the chain, her head drooping against the tree to which she was fastened. Chenery was on the other side of Dyer, his head tipped awkwardly onto his own shoulder and his mouth hung open in exhaustion. He wore great purple bruises across his face, and he had his hand clenched upon his thigh, as though the older wound pained him.

They were near the banks of a river, Laurence gradually became aware, hearing the slow soft gurgling of the water behind him though he could not turn about to look, a torment when they were all still thirsty. They were in a matted grassy clearing; sending his eyes to the side he could see a border of large stones encircling the flattened grounds, and a fire-pit blackened with use: a hunting camp, perhaps, used regularly; the men were walking around the boundary, tearing up the greenery which had sent encroaching tendrils into the clearing.

The great red-brown beast settled itself at the far side of the fire-pit, and closing its eyes down to slits went to sleep; the other two took wing again: a mottled green, and a dark brown creature, both with pale grey underbellies gilded with a kind of iridescence, which quickly made them melt into the deepening sky above on their leap. ’

A long-legged plover wandered through the clearing, picking at the ground for seeds and chirping, a high metallic sound like a small bell struck with a hammer. In a little while the smaller dragons returned, carrying the limp bodies of several antelope. Two of these were respectfully deposited before the red-brown dragon, who tore into them with appetite; another they shared amongst themselves, and the last was given to the men, butchered quickly and put into a large cauldron, already steaming.

Their captors were quiet over their dinner, clustering to one side of the fire, and eating from bowls with their fingers. When one of them reached into the boiling-pot again, the flames leapt with the sizzle of water, and Laurence glimpsed briefly Mrs. Erasmus on the other side of the fire beside the dragon. She bent over the bowl in her hands, eating steadily and calmly. Her hair had come loose from its ruthless restraints and now curved around her face in a stiff bell-shape. She had no expression at all, and her dress was torn.

After their own meal, the men came over and in a handful of bowls fed them all off the remnants, a kind of grain-porridge cooked in meat broth. There was not a great deal for any of them, and humiliating to have to eat with their faces bent forward into the bowl held for them, like rooting in a trough, the remnants left dripping from their chins. Laurence closed his eyes and ate, and when Dyer would have left some broth in the bowl said, ‘You will oblige me by eating everything you can; there is no telling when they will feed us again.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Dyer said, ‘only they will put us back aboard, and I am sure I will have it all up again.’

‘Even so,’ Laurence said, and thankfully it seemed that their captors did not mean to set out again immediately. They instead spread out woven blankets upon the ground, and carried out a long bundle from among their things; they set it down upon the blankets and undid the wrappings, and Laurence recognized the corpse: the man whom Hobbes had shot, the one who had murdered Erasmus. They laid him out with ceremony, and washed him down with water carried from the spring, then wrapped him again in the skins of the antelopes lately caught. The bloody spear they set beside him, as a trophy perhaps. One of them brought out a drum; others took up dry sticks from the ground, or began simply clapping or stamping their feet, and with their hands and voices made a chant like a single unending cry, one taking up the thread when another paused for breath.

It was grown wholly dark; they were still singing. Chenery opened his eyes and looked over at Laurence. ‘How far do you suppose we have come?’

‘A night and day, flying straight, at a good pace; making steadily north by north-east, I think,’ Laurence said. ‘I cannot tell more; what speed do you think he would make, the big one?’

Chenery studied the red-brown dragon and shook his head. ‘Wingspan’s equal to his length, not too thickset; he’d go thirteen knots at a guess, if he didn’t want to throw the lightweights off his pace. Call it fourteen.’

‘More than three hundred miles, then,’ Laurence said, his heart sinking; three hundred miles, and not a track left behind them to show the way. If Temeraire and the others could have caught them, he would have had no fear, not of this small rag-tag band; but in the vastness of the continent, they could disappear as easily as if they had been killed and buried, and might waste the rest of their lives imprisoned.

Already they had scarcely any hope of making their way back to the Cape overland, even setting aside the great likelihood of pursuit. If they made directly westwards for the coast, avoiding all native perils and managing to find food and water enough to sustain them over a more reasonable month’s march, they might at last reach the ocean, but then what? A raft, perhaps, might be contrived; or a pirogue of a sort. Laurence did not set himself up as a Cook or a Bligh, but he supposed he could navigate them to a port if they escaped gale and dangerous currents, and bring back aid for the survivors. There were a great many ifs, all of them unlikely in the extreme, and sure to grow the further away they were carried. Meanwhile Temeraire would certainly search the interior for them, panicking and exposing himself to the worst sort of danger.

Laurence twisted his wrists against the ropes: they were good stuff, strong and tightly woven, and there was little yield. ‘Sir,’ Dyer said, ‘I think I have my pocket-knife.’

Their captors were winding down their ceremony; the two small dragons were digging a hole, for the burial. The pocketknife was not very sharp, and the ropes were tough; Laurence had to saw a long time to free one arm, awkwardly, the thin wooden hilt slippery in his sweating hand, and his fingers cramping around it as he tried to bend it against the bindings around his wrist. At last he succeeded, and passed it along to Chenery; with one arm free he could work on the knots between him and Dyer.

‘Quietly, Mr. Allen,’ Laurence said, on his other side; the ensign was tugging clumsily at the knots holding him to one of Catherine’s midwingmen.

The mound was raised and their captors were asleep, before they had more than half disentangled themselves. There was a noisy groaning of hippopotami in the darkness; it sounded very near-by at times, and occasionally one of the dragons would raise a sleepy head, listening, and make a quelling growl, which silenced all the night around them.

They worked more urgently now, and those of them already freed risked creeping from their places to help the others; Laurence worked with Catherine, whose slim fingers made quick work of the worst knots, and then he whispered softly, when they had loosed her man Peck, the last, ‘Pray take the others into the woods and do not wait for me. I must try and free Mrs. Erasmus.’

She nodded, and pressed the pocket-knife on him: dulled to uselessness, but at least a moral support; and then they quietly one by one crept into the forest, away from the camp, except for Ferris, who crawled over to Laurence’s side. ‘The guns?’ he asked softly.

Laurence shook his head. Unhappily, the rifles had been bundled away by their captors, into the rest of their baggage, which lay tucked beside the head of one of the snoring dragons. There was no way to get at them. It was dreadful enough to have to creep by the slumbering men, lying exhausted and sprawled upon the ground after the catharsis of their celebration. Every sleeping snuffle was magnified a hundredfold, and the occasional low crackles of the fire were like thunderclaps. His knees were inclined to go weak, and some of his steps sagged involuntarily, almost so they brushed the ground. He had to frequently steady himself with a hand against the dirt.

Mrs. Erasmus was lying apart from the men, to one side of the fire, very near the head of the great red-brown dragon. His forelegs were curled shallowly to either side of her. She was huddled very small, with her hands tucked beneath her head, but Laurence was glad to see she did not seem injured. She jerked almost loose when Laurence’s hand came over her mouth, the whites of her eyes showing all around, but her trembling quieted at once when she saw him; she nodded, and he lifted his hand away again, to help her to her feet.

They crept as softly away, and slowly, around the great taloned claw, the black horny edges serrated and gleaming with the red firelight, the dragon’s breath coming deep and evenly; his nostrils flared in their regular pace, showing a little pink within. They were ten paces away, eleven; the dark eyelid cracked, and the yellow eye slid open upon them.

He was up and roaring at once. ‘Go!’ Laurence shouted, pushing Mrs. Erasmus onward with Ferris; his own legs would not answer quickly, and one of the men waking leapt upon him, taking him by the knees and to the ground. They fell wrestling in the dust and dirt, near the fire; Laurence grimly hoping for nothing more, now, than to cover the escape. It was a clumsy, drunken struggle, like the last rounds of a mill with both parties weaving and bloodied; both of them exhausted and Laurence’s weakness matched by his opponent’s confusion of having been woken from sound sleep. Rolling upon his back, Laurence managed to lock an arm around the man’s throat, and pulled with all his might upon his own wrist to hold it; he lashed out with his booted foot to trip another who was snatching for his spear.

Ferris had pushed Mrs. Erasmus towards the forest. A dozen of the aviators were running to her and Laurence’s aid. ‘Lethabo!’ the dragon cried. Whatever the threat or meaning was, it brought her to a distracted halt. The dragon lunged for Ferris.

She called out in protest herself, and running back to where Ferris had dived to the ground in desperate defence, threw herself between them holding up a hand. The claw stopped descending and the dragon put it down again before her.

This time the men set a watch, learning from their mistake, and tied them near the fire. There would be no second attempt. The two small dragons had herded them back to the camp with contemptuous ease, and an air of practice. In the process they had also stampeded a small herd of antelope, but they did not mind, and made a late supper to console themselves for the effort.

They were missing Kettering, one of Harcourt’s riflemen, Peck and Bailes, both harnessmen. The latter two stumbled demoralized back into camp and surrendered early in the morning, with the intelligence that Kettering had been killed trying to ford the river near a hippo. Their pale and nauseated expressions precluded any wish to know more.

‘It was my name,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, her hands tight around her cup of dark red tea. ‘Lethabo. It was my name when I was a girl.’

She had not been permitted to come and speak to them, but at her pleading they had eventually consented to bring Laurence over to her, hobbled at the ankles with his wrists tied together before him. One of the spearmen stood watch lest he try to reach towards her. The red-brown dragon himself was bent over their conversation alertly, with a malevolent eye fixed on Laurence at every moment.

‘Are these men of your native tribe, then?’ he asked.

‘The men, no. Their tribe, I think, are cousins to my own, or at least allied. I am not very sure, but they can understand me when I speak. But—’ she paused, and said, ‘I do not understand it properly myself, but Kefentse,’ she nodded towards the great hovering beast, ‘says he is my great-grandfather.’

Laurence was baffled, and supposed she had misunderstood, or had translated it incorrectly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, you must be right. There are many words I do not remember well. I was taken with many others and some of us were sold together; we called all the older men Grandfather, for respect. I am sure that is all it means.’

‘Have you enough of the tongue to explain to him we meant no harm?’ Laurence asked. ‘That we only sought the mushrooms—’

She made the halting attempt, but the dragon snorted in a disdainful manner before she had even finished. He at once insinuated his great taloned forehand between them, glaring as if Laurence had offered her an insult, and spoke to the men: they at once pulled Laurence to his feet and dragged him back to the line of prisoners.

‘Well,’ Chenery said, when Laurence had been tied up with them again, ‘it sounds a little promising. I dare say when she has had a chance to talk to him, she will be able to bring him round. And in the meantime, at least they do not mean to kill us, or I expect they would have done so already and saved themselves the trouble of our keep.’

The motive for which they had been preserved, however, was still quite unclear. No attempt had been made to question them, and Laurence was growing more bewildered as their journey extended past the reasonable extent of a small tribe’s territory, even one in the possession of dragons. He might have thought they were circling about, to lose any pursuit, but the sun during the day and the Southern Cross at night made that theory a lie. Their course was steady and purposeful, always north by north-east, veering away only to bring them to a more comfortable situation for the night, or to running water.

Early the next day they stopped by a wide river, almost orange from its muddy bottom, and populated by more of the noisy hippopotamus. They darted away through the water with surprising speed, submerging through wide ripples to evade the pouncing dragons. At last one was caught by the two small dragons, who cornered it from both sides, and laid it down to be butchered in the clearing.

Their captors had grown confident enough to untie a few of them to assist with the tedious labour. Dyer and Catherine’s young runner Tooke were set to carrying water. fetching it uneasily from the water’s edge; a large crocodile rested on the far bank, its green eye wide open and fixed upon them. Its flesh was evidently not a temptation to the dragons, for it showed not the least sign of fear.

The dragons lay drowsing in the sun, their tails flicking idly at the enormous flies, and their heads pillowed on their forelegs. Mrs. Erasmus was speaking into Kefentse’s ear; mid-sentence, he reared abruptly up and began to ask questions of her, demandingly. She flinched back, but shook her head, refusing. At last he left off, and cast his eyes southward, sitting on his haunches and resembling a coat of arms: a dragon sejant erect, gules. Slowly, he settled himself back down and spoke to her once more, pointedly shutting his eyes.

‘Well, I don’t suppose we need ask what he thinks of letting you go,’ Chenery said, when she had crept around to them.

‘No,’ she said, speaking low to keep from rousing the dragons up again, ‘and matters are only worse: I spoke of my daughters, and now Kefentse wants nothing more than to go back for them also.’

Laurence was ashamed to feel an eager leap of hope, at a situation which naturally could cause her only the greatest anxiety; but such an attempt would at least reveal to the rest of the formation the identity of their captors. ‘And I assure you, ma’am,’ he said, in an attempt to reassure her, ‘that any such demand would be received with the utmost scorn. I am confident that our fellow officers and General Grey will consider your children their own charge.’

‘Captain, you do not understand,’ she said. ‘I think he would be ready to attack the colony to get at them. He thinks there may be more of their stolen kindred there, too, among the slaves.’

‘I am sure I wish them much luck, if they like to try it,’ Chenery said. ‘Pray don’t be worried for the girls: even if these fellows have another few beauties like this grandfather of yours at home, it would take a little more than that to crack a nut like the castle. There are twenty-four-pounders there; not to speak of pepper guns, and a full formation. I don’t suppose he would like to come back with us, instead; to England, I mean?’ he added, with a flash of cheerful optimism. ‘If he has taken to you so strong, you ought to be able to persuade him.’

But it was very soon clear that Kefentse, whatever else he meant by calling himself her great-grandfather, certainly considered himself her elder; even though she now thought that she vaguely recalled his hatching. ‘Not well, but I am almost sure of it,’ she said. ‘I was very young, but there were many days of feasting, and presents; and I remember him often in the village, afterwards,’ which Laurence realised answered for her lack of fear of dragons. She had been taken as a girl of some nine years’ age, old enough to have lost the instinctive terror.

Remembering her only as a child, Kefentse, far from being inclined to obey, had instead concluded from her efforts to secure their freedom that she was their dupe, either frightened or tricked into lying for their sake, and he was grown all the angrier for it. ‘I beg you do not risk any further attempts at persuasion,’ Laurence said. ‘We must be grateful for his protection of you; I would have you make no more fruitless attempts, which might cause him to reconsider his sentiments.’

‘He would do nothing to hurt me,’ she said, a strange certainty; perhaps the restoration of some childhood confidence.

‘Nothing but murder her husband,’ Chenery said, under his breath, when she had gone back across the clearing, in answer to Kefentse’s jealous summons.

Laurence did not answer, heavy with his own sense of regret; he still could not imagine why Erasmus had been so brutally murdered, and wondered a little, too, at her quick suppression of distress. There had been too much grief in her first outcry, for him to imagine she did not mourn; but it seemed as though she had put it off her like a coat.

Having breakfasted on roasted hippo, they flew on some hours more and landed again only a little while before dark, beside what seemed to be a small farming village. The clearing where they descended was full of children at play, who shrieked with delight at their arrival, and ran eagerly around the dragons, chattering away at them without the slightest evidence of fear; although they peered very nervously at the prisoners.

A broad spreading mimosa tree stood at the far end of the clearing, giving pleasant shade, and beneath it stood an odd little shed with no front, raised several feet from the ground and housing within it a dragon egg of substantial size. Around it a circle of women sat with mortar and pestle, pounding grain; they put aside their tools and patted the dragon egg, as if speaking to it, and rose to greet the visitors as they leapt down from the smaller dragons’ backs, and to stare with curiosity.

Several men came in from the village, to clasp arms with the handlers and greet the dragons. An elaborately carved elephant’s tooth hung from a tree, the narrow end cut open to make a horn, and one of the villagers took this down and blew on it, several long hollow ringing blasts. Shortly, another dragon landed in the clearing, a middleweight of perhaps ten tons. It was a delicate dusty shade of green with yellow markings and sprays of red spots upon his breast and shoulders. Two sets of long fore teeth protruded over his jaw above and below. The children were even less shy of this newcomer, clustering about his forelegs, even climbing upon his tail and pulling on his wings, a treatment that he bore with perfect patience while he talked with the visiting dragons.

The dragons settled themselves around the enshrined dragon egg, in company with their handlers and the men of the village. An older woman, whose dress – a skirt of animal skins, strung with long beads that looked like reed-joints and heaped with necklaces of animal claws and coloured beads – marked her apart from the others, sat with them too. The rest of the women brought them their supper: a large steaming pot of porridge, the grain boiled up in milk rather than broth; fresh greens cooked in garlic and dried meat preserved in salt. It was a little tough, but flavourful, vinegary and well spiced.

Bowls were brought for the prisoners, and their hands were untied to allow them to eat for themselves for once, their captors less wary with so large a company around them. In the celebratory bustle, Mrs. Erasmus was able to slip away from Kefentse to join them once again. The dragon was lost in the occasion, evidently entitled to great respect he had been given pride of place beside the dragon egg, and presented with a large cow to eat. They seemed to be withholding the evening’s entertainment until he had finished.

Only when the remnants of the carcass on which he feasted had been carried away, and fresh dirt scattered over the ground before him to soak up the blood, did the oddly dressed old woman get up. She stood before the dragon egg began to sing and clap.

The audience took up the rhythm, with clapping and with drums, and their voices joined with her on the refrains. Each verse was different, without rhyme or pattern that Laurence could see. ‘She is saying – She is telling the egg,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, staring at the ground, intent upon following the words. ‘She is telling him of his life. She is saying, he was a founder of the village. He brought them to a good safe country, past the desert, where the kidnappers do not come. He was a great hunter, and killed the lion with his own hands, when it would have raided the cattle. They miss his wisdom in the council, and he must hurry up and come back to them, as it is his duty—’

Laurence stared, entirely baffled. The old priestess had finished her verses, and began to direct the men of the village to stand in front of the egg and recite, with a little prompting assistance from her. ‘They say they are his sons, and they tell him that they long to hear his voice again,’ Mrs. Erasmus continued. ‘That is his grandson, born after his death,’ she explained when one of the men carried an infant in swaddling to the egg. The babe patted its small hand against the shell. ‘It is only some heathen superstition, of course,’ Mrs. Erasmus added, but uneasily.

The dragons joined their own voices to the ceremony. The local beast addressed the egg as an old friend, whose return was eagerly awaited; the smaller dragons of the general pleasures of the hunt, of taking wing, and of seeing their descendants prosper. Kefentse was silent, until the priestess chided him, and coaxed. Then at last in his deep voice he gave them a warning rather than encouragement. He spoke of his grief at failing in his duty; of coming back to the deserted village, and the smoke of its dying fires, all the houses empty and his children lying still in the dust, unable to answer his calls; and of the hyena slinking through the herds. ‘He searched, and searched, until he came to the shore, and at the ocean he knew – he knew he would not find us,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, and Kefentse put his head down and moaned very low. She rose abruptly and crossed the clearing to join him, placing her hands upon his lowered muzzle.

There was a certain sluggishness to the next morning’s preparations for departure, the dragons and men both having indulged in some brewed liquor, late in the evening’s festivities, which now rendered them all dragging; the small green dragon yawned and yawned, as if he would unhinge his jaw.

Woven baskets were brought out to the clearing, so large they required two men each to carry. They were full of foodstuffs: small pale yellow kidney beans spotted black and dried hard; red-brown grains of sorghum; small onions of yellow and purple-red; more strips of the pungent dried meat. The men of their party nodded over the tribute, and the baskets were covered with woven lids, tied securely with strips of tough thin rope braided of bark. The baskets in pairs were slung over the necks of the smaller dragons, which bent their heads to receive them.

There was at all times a watchful guard upon them, however; and also upon the perimeters of the village: younger boys, with a large cow-bell sort of contraption, which they could have rung out in an instant. It was a shameful consequence of the rapacity of the slave trade, that having exhausted the natural supply of prisoners of war among the kingdoms of the coast, the native suppliers of the trade had turned to kidnapping and raiding, without even the thin excuse of a quarrel over territory, solely to acquire more human chattel. These efforts had gone on extending further into the interior with every year, and had evidently made the villagers begin to be wary.

It was not a long standing condition, for the village was not designed upon defensible lines, being only a collection of handsome but small and low-roofed houses made of clay and stones and roofed in straw. These were circular, with nearly a quarter of the circumference open to the elements to let the smoke of their cooking-fires out, and would have offered little shelter against a marauding band intent on capture or slaughter. Indeed there was no great wealth here, which they should naturally have studied to protect: only a small herd of cattle and goats, browsing idly beyond the village boundaries under the attention of a few older children; respectable fields, adequate for subsistence and a little more; a few of the women and older men wore handsome trinkets of ivory and gold and brightly woven cloth. But nothing which would have tempted the rapacity of an ordinary robber, save the inhabitants themselves, for their being peaceful, healthy and well-fleshed; and the caution sat new and uneasily upon their shoulders.

‘They have had no one stolen here, yet,’ Mrs. Erasmus said. ‘But three children were snatched from a village a day’s flight from here. One was hiding nearby, and slipped away to give the warning; so the ancestors – the dragons – caught them.’ She paused and said, oddly calm, ‘That is why they killed all my family; even the old or ones too young to take. So that no one could not tell Kefentse where they had taken us.’

She stood up and went to go stand watching the village, while the packing went forward: the smallest children at play before their grandmothers, the other women working together, pounding flour out of sorghum, and singing. Her dark, high-collared dress was dusty and torn, incongruous among their bright if immodest garments, and Kefentse lifted his head to watch her with anxious, jealous attention.

‘He must have gone half-mad,’ Chenery said to Laurence in an undertone, ‘as though his captain and all his crew were gone in an instant.’ He shook his head. ‘This is a kettle and no mistake: he will never let her go.’

‘Perhaps she may find an opportunity to slip away.’ Laurence said, grimly. He reproached himself bitterly that they had ever involved her and Erasmus at all.

For another day and night they did not stop again, except very briefly for water, and Laurence’s heart sank at the vast expanse of hard, dry desert which rolled away below them, a succession of red-brown sands and arid scrubland, and great white salt pans barren of all life. Their course continued northeast, bearing them still further inland and away from the coast; their thin hopes of escape or rescue wasting away entirely.

At last they left behind the wastelands, and the desert yielded to milder scenery of green trees and yellow ground overgrown with thick grasses; late in the morning, the belly of the dragon rumbled loud above them with his roar of greeting: answered momentarily with several voices from up ahead, and they came abruptly into view of an astonishing prospect: a vast moving herd of elephants, creeping slowly across the savannah as they tore at the shrubs and low-hanging branches in their path, and enduring with perfect docility the supervision of two dragons and some thirty men, who ambled along comfortably behind, only a few lengths short of the rear of the herd.

The herdsmen carried long sticks with dangling rattles, by which means they kept the herd from turning back; a little further along, perhaps a quarter of a mile into the wreckage the herd had left behind, women worked busily, spreading great bushels of red-stained manure and planting young shrubs, which further along still had taken root, and already were growing fresh green leaves: they sang as they worked, rhythmically.

The prisoners were let down. Laurence was almost distracted from the water bag for staring at the fat, sluggish creatures, larger than any elephant he had ever heard bragged of. He had visited India twice, as a naval officer, and once seen an impressive old beast carrying a native potentate and his retinue upon its head, some six tons in weight. The most impressive here would have he guessed outweighed that one by half again, and rivalled Nitidus or Dulcia in size, with great ivory tusks that jutted out like spears some three feet beyond its head. Another of the behemoths put its head down against a young tree, of no mean size, and with a groaning implacable push brought it crashing to the ground; pleased with its success, the elephant ambled lazily down its length, to devour at leisure the tender shoots from the crown.

After some little conversation with their captors, the herd-dragons went aloft and chivvied away a few of the beasts from the main body of the herd; older animals, by the length of their tusks, without young. Having been coaxed downwind, behind the line of herdsmen, Kefentse and the two other dragons fell upon them skilfully. A single piercing of talons slew the creatures, before they could make any outcry that might have distressed the rest. The dragons made their repast greedily, murmuring with evident satisfaction over the meal, as might a contented gentleman exclaim over his pleasing dinner; when they were done, the hyenas crept out of the grass to deal with the bloody remains, and cackled all through the night.

Over the next two days, they were scarcely an hour aloft without some sight of other dragons, calling greetings from afar. More villages flashed past beneath them, and occasionally small fortifications with walls of clay and rock, until in the distance they glimpsed a tremendous plume of smoke, rising like a great grass-fire, and a thin silvery line winding away over the earth.

‘Mosi Oa Tunye,’ Mrs. Erasmus had told them, was the name of their destination, meaning smoke that thunders; and a low and continuous roaring built higher around them as Kefentse angled directly towards the plume.

The narrow shining line upon the earth resolved itself swiftly into a river of great immensity. Slow and very broad, it fractured into many smaller streams, all winding together past rocks and small grassy islets towards a narrow crack in the earth, where it suddenly boiled up and plunged into the thunder of a waterfall more vast than anything Laurence could have conceived. The gorges of its descent were so full of white plumed spray that its base could not be seen.

Into these narrow gorges, which seemed barely wide enough for him to go abreast, Kefentse dived. Pocket rainbows gleamed in the puddles collected upon his hide through the first clouds of steam. Pressed hard up against the netting, Laurence wiped water from his face and one-week’s beard, and palmed it away from the hollows of his eyes, squinting as they broke through into a widening canyon.

The lower slopes were thickly forested, a jewel-green tangle of tropical growth reaching some half-way up the walls, where the vegetation ended abruptly and the cliff faces rose sheer and smooth to the plain above, gleaming like polished marble and pock-marked only by the gaping holes of caverns.

And then Laurence realized he was not looking at caverns, but at great carved archways, mouths for vaulted halls which penetrated deep within the mountainside. The cliff walls did not gleam like polished marble, they were polished marble, or as good as. It was a smooth speckled stone, with quantities of ivory and gold inlaid directly into the rock in fantastical patterns.

Façades were carved and sculpted around the openings, ornamented gorgeously in vivid colour and odd abstract patterns. The arches were towering, and more vast than Westminster or St. Paul’s, which were the only and inadequate measures of comparison that Laurence possessed. Narrow stairs, their railings carved of stone and smoothed by the water-spray, stretched between them to provide perspective. Five ordinary town houses laid on top of one another might just have accommodated the height of the largest.

Kefentse was going at a lazy speed now, the better to avoid collision: the gorge was full of dragons. Dragons flew back and forth busily among the halls, some carrying baskets or bundles, some carrying men on their backs. Dragons lay sleeping upon the carved ledges, tails drooping downward from the mouths. Upon the stairways and in the halls, men and women could be seen talking or at labour. They dressed in animal-skins or wrapped cloth garments of dazzling-bright colours, indigo and red and yellow ochre against their dark brown skin; many wore elaborate chains of gold. Above the sound of their mingled speech came the unending voice of the softly running water.

Chapter Eleven

Kefentse rudely deposited them within one of the smaller caverns dug into the face of the rock. He could not fit inside, so simply balanced upon the lip of the cave while the netting was undone. They were shaken out onto the floor in a heap, still tied up, and he flew at once away, taking poor Mrs. Erasmus with him, and abandoning them to work themselves loose. There was no sharp edge to help them, as the cavern walls were smoothed to perfection. It was a strange prison, with neither guard nor bars upon the door, but it was as confined as any fortress. There were no carved steps leading from their cavern; nothing but the yawning gorge beneath. Dyer and Roland and Tooke managed eventually to squirm their smaller hands out of their bindings, and began to help untie the others.

Thirty of them left altogether, from four crews. They were not crowded, nor could their circumstances be called cruel; the floor was strewn liberally with dry straw to soften the hard rock, and despite the lingering day’s heat outside, the chamber remained cool and pleasant. A necessary pit was carved out of the stone at the back of the chamber; it must surely have connected with a drainage channel somewhere beneath, but the opening was small, and drilled through solid rock: there was no way to get to it. There was a small pool also, in the back, refreshed continuously from a trickling channel and waist-deep on a man, large enough to swim across a few strokes: they would not die of thirst.

The scale of the whole, the carved and gothic ceiling vaulting overhead, would have made a comfortable stall for a small to middling dragon; it ought to have seemed an airy and spacious environment, but had the effect rather of making them feel Lilliputian than comfortable, children wandering in a giant’s house, their numbers painfully small and dwindled.

Dorset was alive, with a terrible bruising down along the side of his face, and he pressed his hand now and again to his side, as if his ribs or his breathing pained him. ‘Mr. Pratt is dead, Captain,’ he said. ‘I am very sorry to be sure: he tried to stand before Mrs. Erasmus, and the beast carved him to the hip,’ a grievous loss, the smith’s quiet capability no less than his immense strength.

There was no way to be certain of the full extent of their losses. Hobbes had been killed before their eyes, and Laurence had seen Chenery’s midwingman Hyatt die. Chenery’s lieutenant Libbley remembered that the surgeon Waley had also fallen; but another dozen at least had been heaved out after that first night, the rest of them too sick and dazed to recognize anyone in the dim lighting. And more had been left dead upon the field. Others, they hoped, had slipped away in the general confusion, to leave at least some faint direction of the behind. No one had seen Warren.

‘I hope to God Sutton has the sense to turn back straightaway,’ Harcourt said. ‘No one could conceive that we have been brought so far; they will wear themselves to rags with fretting and never find a trace. We must at least find some way to send them word. Those men had seen guns before, did you notice? There must be some trade, some merchants must be tempted to come this way. They have more ivory than they know what to do with when they have to build walls out of the stuff.’

They ventured cautiously to the edge of the cavern mouth to look out again into the gorges. The first impression of immensity and splendour was not to be undone, but the degree perhaps fell off a little here, further from the falls. The façade of their prison was plain rock, although polished to a smoothness that would have defied a climbing monkey.

Chenery bent down over the ledge and rubbed his hand over the wall, as far down as he could reach, and came up discouraged. ‘Not a finger-hold to be had: we are not going anywhere, until we manage to sprout wings of our own.’

‘Then we had better rest, while we may,’ Harcourt said, in practical tones, ‘and if you gentlemen will be so good as to give me your backs, I am going to bathe.’

They were roused early, not by any attentions paid to them, for there were none, but by a dreadful noise similar to a swarm of angry horse flies in continuous agitation. The sun had not yet penetrated into the twisting canyons, though the sky above was the deep blue of midmorning. A faint glaze of mist clung to the smooth rock near the cavern mouth.

Across the gorge, a pair of dragons were engaged in a peculiar exercise, flying back and forth hauling alternately upon what looked to be a thick grey hawser, coiled about and passed through the end of a tremendous iron shaft, spinning it steadily. The other end was plunged into the depths of another cavern only partially hollowed-out, and from here issued the malevolent buzzing. Dust and chalky powder blew out in great gusts, speckling the dragons’ hides so they were coated thickly ochre; occasionally one or the other would turn his head and sneeze powerfully, without ever losing the rhythm.

A great cracking noise heralded a leap forward: loose pebbles and great stones came spilling from the mouth of the hall into a large sack stretched out upon a frame to catch them. The dragons paused in their labour, and withdrew the enormous drill. One clung on to the rough, unpolished cliff, holding the mechanism suspended, while the other perched upon the ledge and scraped out the boulders and loose rock which had shattered. A third dragon, smaller, came winging down the gorge when the operation was complete; then he carried away the laden sack, to let the pair resume. While this work proceeded, another cavern almost directly above them crawled with human masons finishing off the rough work. The distant musical plink-plink of their tapping hammers on the rock drifted across the divide.

They were very industrious all the morning, then at midday they stopped their work. Their tools were heaped inside the cavern, the vast drill too, and the dragons collected the men, who without any harness leapt fearlessly onto the dragon’s backs, wings and limbs; holding on to the handful of woven straps, or merely clinging, to be borne away along the gorge, back to the more settled area.

Still no one had come for them. They had among their pockets some biscuit and a little dried fruit, which would not have made a meal for even one man. It was pressed on Catherine, who at first disdained it scornfully, until Dorset insisted upon it as a medical matter.

The workmen did not return, but several dragons appeared upon the plain on the far side of the gorge, each carrying a goodly sized bundle of wood, and began to lay down a large bonfire. One among them bent its head and breathed out a flame, igniting the whole. It was not perhaps a great stream of fire, but was enough for the present circumstance. ‘Oh, that is a pity,’ Chenery said, understating the case.

They grew only sorrier when another pair arrived, carrying what looked to be the component parts of three or four elephants among them, butchered and neatly skewered on long iron stakes, to roast over the bonfire. The wind was in their quarter, carrying towards the caves. Laurence had to wipe his mouth with his handkerchief twice. Even the very back of the cavern offered no shelter from the torment of the delicious smell. It was very disheartening to observe the dragons cast away the scorched and cracked bones into the massive thicket of jungle, which lined the floor of the gorge below. Still more for the satisfied growls and yelping that rose up in reply; lions perhaps, or wild dogs: a further obstacle to any escape.

Two hours more passed, or nearly, by the cracked glass which Turner had managed to salvage from the wreck of their capture. It began to grow dark. Dragons flew to many of the plain cave-mouths near-by, carrying nettings full of men whom they let down inside the caves, just as the aviators had been deposited. The dragons had a trick of setting their hind legs upon the lip of each cavern and their fore-claws into some ridges carved above the mouth, while their riders unhooked the netting, so they did not have to squeeze into some of these smaller caverns. It bore some resemblance to the passenger-dragons that Laurence had seen in China, save for their perfect disregard for the comfort of their passengers.

When these deliveries had finished, they at last saw a small dragon flying down the gorge towards them, with many baskets slung over its shoulders. It halted in sequence at the other cave-mouths, leaving behind a few of its bundles every time until at last it reached their own. There was a single man upon its back, who looked over their number with a critical eye, then untied some three of the baskets before immediately taking wing again.

Each held a cold and thickened mass of sorghum-porridge cooked in milk: filling if not savoury, and the portions not quite so large as desirable. ‘One basket for every ten men,’ Harcourt said, counting mouths, ‘so there is as many as fifty men in that large one. They must have near a thousand prisoners here, spread out.’

‘A regular Newgate,’ Chenery said, ‘but less damp, for which we must be thankful. Do you suppose they mean to sell us? It would be a charming solution, if we could get ourselves shipped to Cape Coast and not a French port; and if they were not unpleasant about it.’

‘Maybe they will eat us,’ Dyer said thoughtfully, his piping voice quite clear. There was a general pause. ‘That is a thoroughly morbid suggestion, Mr. Dyer. Let me hear no more of this sort of speculation, please.’ Laurence said, quite taken aback.

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Dyer said, surprised, and went directly back to his dinner, with no particular sign of dismay. Some of the younger ensigns looked green, and it required a full minute before hunger once again overcame their qualms.

The line of sunlight crept up the far wall and slid away over the edge; twilight came early into the narrow gorge. They slept, for lack of anything else to do, while the sky above was still a day-lit blue, and so were roused the next morning from an uneasy slumber into darkness, when the dreadful buzzing of the drill was suddenly muffled. Dyer’s breathless, ‘Sir, sir—’ sounded in Laurence’s ear.

Kefentse was there. He had thrust his head into the opening of their cavern, blocking both light and noise from outside. Mrs. Erasmus was with him, difficult to recognize in the native dress she wore, and weighted down as if she were in danger of floating away. She wore earrings, and armbands coiled like snakes on her upper and lower arms; a great neck-collar of gold pieces strung on wire hung around her neck, interspersed with pieces of ivory, dark green jade, and ruby. It was certainly worth fifty thousand pounds at least, but was not as costly as the great egg-sized emerald, set in gold, which pinned a turban of silk upon her head.

Most of the native women which they had seen from their vantage point, had been carrying water, or hung washing to dry upon the steps, and wore only a kind of leather skirt that reached to the knees but left their breasts quite bare: much to the covert interest of the younger officers. Perhaps formal garments were of different style, or maybe she had prevailed upon them to give her more modest dress. She wore instead a long skirt of plain white cotton, and over it another length of cloth woven of bright colours, wrapped and folded elaborately about her shoulders.

She required the assistance of a hand on her elbow to climb down from Kefentse’s back. ‘They would have me wear more if it did not make it impossible for me to walk. It is tribal property,’ she said. It was evasion; her expression remained uneasy, and after a moment’s pause she said, ‘I am sorry, Kefentse is here to take our leader to speak with the king.’

Harcourt paled but stayed composed. ‘I am senior here, ma’am. He may take me.’

‘He may sooner go to the devil,’ Chenery said. ‘Laurence, shall we draw lots for it?’ Taking up a small twig from the rushes he snapped it in two and held them out with the top ends even, the lower concealed. Happily Laurence observed a small pale scrape left on the longer piece, at the break, and so could ensure the outcome.

It was at least a good deal more comfortable to be carried in Kefentse’s talons, than in the netting; and Laurence did not feel his appearance wholly disgraceful. Thanks to the convenience of the water-pool, he had sponged his coat as best he could, and thoroughly washed his breeches and his all linen. He had not shaved, but that could not be helped.

The roar of the falls increased steadily, as did the tangle of jungle below, until they were brought at last to a curve of the gorge very near the falls. A great hall stood open, three times the width of the other archways, the entryway pillared for support. Kefentse dived low and coming to a stop, rolled Laurence unceremoniously out of his talons onto the damp floor, before more carefully setting Mrs. Erasmus onto her feet.

Laurence had come to expect these indignities, and picked himself up without much irritation, an emotion that was promptly vanquished by concern. A makeshift workshop had been established along the right side of the chamber and besides the rifles which the aviators themselves had lost, some sixty or seventy muskets more were laid out upon the floor on woven mats, in various states of disassembly and repair. Worse, far worse was the six-pound gun, its housing cracked but not gone, and a barrel of gunpowder besides. A small group of men were working upon the collection, taking another specimen apart and pressing low harsh questions on a man sitting dejectedly on a stool before them. His back, turned to Laurence, was marked with half a dozen bloody weals, and flies crawled upon it.

A young man was overseeing their work with great attention, but left them as Kefentse landed, and approached the dragon. He was tall, with a long face infused with a certain quality of sorrow, not evident from any emotional aspect but only the angle of his cheekbones. He was like a hound; his nose sculpted and emphasised by the narrow black beard around his full mouth. He had a small escort of warriors, all of them bare-chested and armed with short spears. Also leather skirted, he was distinguished from the rest by a thick neck-collar of gold, fringed with the claws of some great cat, and a leopard-skin cape draped over his shoulders. He was physically powerful, and his eyes were shrewd.

Laurence bowed, but the young man ignored him, looking to the other side of the great hall. From a chamber within entered a great creature of golden-bronze hide, the underside of her wings lined in purple like royalty. She was in battle-array, as formidable as a Crusader, with heavy plates of iron slung across the vulnerable expanse of her breast, with a fine mesh of chain beneath to protect the belly. The spikes bristling down her spine were sheathed in caps of iron, as were her talons. They were discoloured a little with blood. Mrs. Erasmus helped him to understand that the dragon was King Mokhachane, and the man, his eldest son Moshueshue.

She, or he? Laurence was at a loss. He stood scarcely a length away, and could see that the king was quite certainly, quite visibly, a female dragon – seated sphinx-like on the floor, with her tail curled along her flanks. She regarded Laurence with a cold amber eye. The young man, Moshueshue, seated himself on a wooden throne, which had been brought to him and set by the dragon’s side. Several older women trailed after the King, and settled themselves on wooden stools behind the Prince. They were identified as the king’s wives.

Kefentse lowered his head respectfully, and began to speak, evidently giving his account of their capture and journey. Mrs. Erasmus with great courage dared to dispute his story, at several points, on their behalf; all while trying to help Laurence understand the accusations that had been made. That they had stolen medicines cultivated for the use of the king’s own subjects, was their least offence; the foremost, that they had offered a territorial challenge, by invading in the company of their ancestors, as Kefentse considered the dragons of the formation to be. They were also in league with enemy tribes that had been stealing their children. For this he offered, as one portion of evidence, the fact that they had been travelling with a man of the Lunda, notorious kidnappers—

Mrs. Erasmus paused and said, unevenly, ‘—he means my husband.’

She did not continue her translation, but instead pressed a fold of her gown briefly to her face, while Kefentse bent low and anxiously over her, crooning, and snapping at Laurence with a hiss, when he would have offered his arm for her support.

‘The medicine we took only for necessity, because our own dragons were ill; and without knowing the mushroom were cultivated,’ Laurence said. He did not know how else to defend himself. That they had brought the dragons, and affirmed their territorial claim, was a fact that he as a serving-officer could certainly not deny. The British and the Dutch would have been surprised to know that their colony had been thought unworthy of notice until the arrival of the formation.

He was in no fair way prepared to justify the practice of slavery, or to deny that it was carried on at the behest of white men, even if he might refute some few of the particulars which were levelled against them. ‘No, good God, of course we do not eat them,’ he said, but beyond this could make very little more argument. The dreadful incident on the Zong, where more than a hundred slaves had been deliberately flung overboard, for the sake of insurance-money came uncomfortably to mind, and made him blush for the guilt and shame of his nation; made him look a liar, if they had not already thought him so.

He could only repeat that he was not a slaver, but was not surprised to find that this excuse held no water with them, not even when Mrs. Erasmus had explained her husband’s perfect innocence. The magnitude of the crime was of greater consequence than such small personal roles. There was no sympathy offered for the illness, which had driven them to seek the medicine; Laurence rather received the impression that they thought it their just deserts, drawing as they did no particular distinction between the British and their dragons. Their tempers grew rather more fixed, than less, for all Laurence’s attempts to explain.

The King turned, and in response to a beckoning flick of her tail, Laurence was led further back into the chamber, where a low table of enormous size stood no higher than his knee, but some twelve feet square. The women folded away the wooden covers, and a hollow space perhaps a foot deep was revealed within, like a sort of display-case. Inside laid a sculpture in the shape of the African continent. It was a map, an enormous map in thick relief to show elevation. The craftsmen had used gold dust for sand and fashioned mountains of bronze, jewel-chip forests and rivers of silver. With great dismay Laurence even perceived the puff of white down used to represent the falls. It stood almost halfway between the tip of the continent, where Cape Town lay, and the sharp jutting prominence of the African Horn. In his worst fears, he had not imagined that they had travelled so far into the interior.

They did not let him look at it long; instead they drew him to the other end, where the table had been lately extended. The wood was darker than the rest, and the sections of the map were laid down in soft painted wax. He did not at first know what to make of it. Then, only by its relative position did he recognise the blue oval stretch of water at the top of the continent to be the Mediterranean, and slowly realized that this section was meant to represent Europe. The outlines of Spain, Portugal and Italy were misshapen and the whole continent had shrunk. Britain was itself nothing more than a scattering of small whitish lumps in the upper corner. The Alps and the Pyrenees stood in pinched-up relief, approximately correct, but the Rhine and Volga were strangely meandering, and smaller than he was used to see them marked.

‘They wish you to draw it properly,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, and one of the prince’s men handed him a stylus. Laurence gave it back to him, but the man repeated the instructions in his own tongue, exaggeratedly, as if Laurence were a slow child; and attempted to press it into his hand once more.

‘I beg your pardon; I will not,’ Laurence said, shaking off his hand. The man spoke loudly and struck him abruptly across the face. Laurence pressed his lips together and said nothing, his heart pounding in a furious temper. Mrs. Erasmus had turned to speak urgently to Kefentse, but the dragon was shaking his head.

‘Having been taken prisoner, under conditions I must consider to be an act of war, I must refuse to answer any questions whatsoever,’ Laurence said.

Prince Moshueshue shook his head, but the dragon-king only fixed him with a glittering and furious eye. She came so close he could see that what he had taken for tusks on Kefentse, were actually a kind of jewellery. Ivory rings banded with gold, pierced the flesh of her upper lip like ear-rings. She snorted hot breath across his face, and bared her serrated teeth; but he been close to dragons for too long to be frightened thus, and her eyes slitted down angrily as she drew her head back.

The king said coldly, ‘You were taken as a thief, and as a kidnapper in our country. You will answer for your crimes, or—’ and Mrs. Erasmus paused and said, ‘Captain, you will be flogged.’

‘Brutality will not alter my determination,’ Laurence said, ‘and I beg your pardon, ma’am, if you are forced to witness it.’

His answer provoked her only further. Moshueshue laying a hand on the king’s foreleg, spoke in low tones, but she shivered impatiently and threw him off. She spoke in a low angry continuous rumble, which Mrs. Erasmus could only manage to convey piecemeal, ‘You dare speak of brutality to us, kidnapper, invader – you will answer – we will hunt you all, we will break the eggs of your ancestors.’

She finished and violently cracked her tail above her back, issuing orders. Kefentse held his forehand out to Mrs. Erasmus. She threw Laurence one look of deep concern before she was carried briskly away. He would have been glad to think it unmerited, then his arms were seized on either side, and his coat cut away down the middle of his back. They also removed his shirt, and he was forced to his knees with the rags still hanging from his shoulders.

He fixed his gaze out through the archway, which opened upon the loveliest view he had ever beheld. The sun was still low in the sky beyond the falls; newly risen, and glowing small and molten through the gusting clouds of mist. Torrents of water churned to pure white, roared steadily over the verge, and tangled branches of trees yearned for the water from the canyon-walls where they had taken root. The gauzy insubstantial suggestion of a rainbow, which refused to be seen head-on, clung to the edge of his vision. His shoulders ached as they drew him taut.

He had seen men take a dozen lashes without a sound; foremast hands, under his very own orders, he reminded himself after every stroke. By the tenth, however, the argument lost its potency, and he was only trying raggedly to endure the pain, which no longer ceased between the strokes, but now ebbed and flowed. The whip struck awry once, and the man holding his right arm cursed. The lash had caught the edge of his hand, and he yelled a complaint at the flogger, good-naturedly. The whip did not cut the skin straight away, but the tender weals split after some time; and blood ran down over Laurence’s ribs.

He was not precisely insensible when another dragon returned him to the cave, just very far away; his throat raw and stretched to ruin. He was grateful for it, otherwise he would have screamed again when they put their hands on him, even though he lay face-downwards and they did not touch his torn back as they lifted him. Every nerve had been woken to pain. Sleep did not come, only a kind of murky absence of thought, which darkened by degrees into unconsciousness.

Water was put to his lips. Dorset ordered him to drink with sharp authority, and only the habit of obedience carried Laurence through the effort. He faded again, and for a long time a grey heat stifled him. He thought perhaps he drank a little more, and another time dreamt his mouth was welling up with salty blood, and choking half-woke to Dorset squeezing cold broth into his mouth from a rag, before again he slept and wandered in fever-dreams.

‘Laurence, Laurence,’ Temeraire said, through the haze, in a strange hollow voice, and Ferris was hissing in his ear, saying, ‘Captain, you must wake up, you must, he thinks you’re dead—’ His voice was full of so much fear that Laurence tried to comfort him, although his mouth would not form words properly. Then the dream fell away into a terrible roaring, and he felt as though the earth shook. Then all gone, down into a comfortable darkness.

Chapter Twelve

The next he knew of the world was a cup of clean water held for him by Emily Roland. Dorset was kneeling on the floor beside him, bracing him around by the waist. Laurence managed to put a hand around the cup and guide it to his mouth, spilling a little. He was as palsied as an old man and trembled as he lay on his stomach on a thin pallet of gathered straw covered with shirts. He was bare to the chest himself; and desperately hungry.

‘Just little at a time,’ Dorset said, feeding him small round balls of cooled porridge, one after another. They had eased him onto his side to eat.

‘Temeraire?’ Laurence said, around his gluttony, wondering gloomily if he had only dreamed it. He could not move his arms freely, as his back had scabbed over, and if he reached too far forward the edges split, sending fresh blood trickling down his skin.

Dorset did not at once answer. ‘Was he here?’ Laurence asked more sharply.

‘Laurence,’ Harcourt said, kneeling down by him, ‘Laurence, pray do not get distressed. You have been ill for a week. He was here, but I am afraid they ran him off, though I am sure he is quite well.’

‘Enough, you must sleep,’ Dorset said, and for all the will in the world, Laurence could not resist the command; he was already fading again. ’

When he woke it was daylight outside, and the cavern was nearly empty, except for Roland and Dyer and Tooke. ‘They have taken the others to work, sir, in the fields,’ she said. They gave him a little water, and reluctantly at his insistence the support of their shoulders, so he might stagger to the edge of the cave and look outside.

The cliff-face, opposite, was cracked, and the dark stains of dragon blood showed deep burnt-orange red on the stripped walls. ‘It is not his, sir, or not much of it,’ Emily said anxiously, looking up at him.

She could tell him nothing more. Not how Temeraire had found them, nor if he had been alone, nor anything about his health. There had been no time for conversation. With the many dragons flying through the gorges at all hours, Temeraire had tried to pass in the throng, but he was too large and remarkably coloured to escape notice, and when he had put his head into the caves to search them, he had at once raised an alarm.

Temeraire had only penetrated so far because their captors evidently did not anticipate a dragon incursion so deep into their stronghold. But now a guard had been stationed above their cell; Laurence could see its tail hanging down from the top of the cliff if he painfully turned his neck, and looked directly upwards. ‘I expect that means he got clear away from them,’ Chenery said, comfortingly, when the others had been returned late in the afternoon. ‘He can fly rings around half the Corps, Laurence. I am sure he gave them the slip.’

Laurence would have liked to believe it more than he did. Three days had gone by since his delirium had broken, and if Temeraire had been able, Laurence knew very well he would have made another attempt against any opposition. Perhaps he had, and had been injured again, or worse.

The next morning, he was not taken with the others. They had been set beside other prisoners of war working in the elephant-fields, spreading the manure; much to the satisfaction of the young women to whom the work ordinarily fell. ‘Nonsense; I would be perfectly ashamed if I could not manage it,’ Catherine said, ‘when all those girls do. A good many of them are further along than I, and it is not as though I have not been brought up to work. Besides, I am perfectly stout; indeed I am much better than I was. But you have been very sick, Laurence, and you are to listen to Dr. Dorset and stay lying down, when they come.’

She was very firm, and Dorset also; but they had been gone little more than an hour before another dragon came for Laurence. The rider issued peremptory commands, and beckoned to him. Roland and Dyer were ready to back him into the depths of the cave, but the dragon was a smallish creature, not much bigger than a courier, and could easily have put himself inside. Laurence struggled to his feet, and for decency’s sake took one of the sweat and blood-stained shirts which had helped make up his pallet to cover himself, if he was not truly fit to be seen.

He was carried back to the great hall. The king was not there, but the iron-works were in full swing under the supervision of Prince Moshueshue. The smiths were engaged in casting bullets, with the help of a dragon, who nursed their forge regularly with narrow tongues of flame, rousing the coals within. They had somehow acquired several bullet-moulds, and there were even more muskets stacked upon the floor, if marked here and there with bloody fingerprints. The room was sweltering, even though a couple of smaller dragons fanned vigorously in an effort to make the air move; but the prince looked satisfied.

He took Laurence towards the map again. Already it looked a little improved. An entirely new addition had been made to the west, a vague distance allowed for the Atlantic, and then the approximate shapes of the American continents had been drawn out: the great harbour of Rio most prominently marked. The islands of the West Indies were placed a little tentatively somewhere to the north. Laurence was glad to see that it held none of the exactness that would be needed to use it for practical navigation. He was now far from repeating his earlier complacency, which had dismissed their captors as a threat against the colony; there were too many dragons here.

Mrs. Erasmus had also been brought to the hall, and Laurence braced himself for a further interrogation. He would not allow himself to feel unequal to the threat, but Moshueshue did not repeat the king’s demands or his violence. Instead his servants gave Laurence a drink of pressed fruits and water and cocoa-nut milk, oddly sweet, and the Prince’s questions were only of generalities and trade, and were wide-ranging. He had a bolt of cloth to show Laurence, calico-patterned and certainly from the mills of England; some bottles of whiskey, unpleasantly harsh and cheap by the smell, also of foreign manufacture. ‘You sell these things to the Lunda,’ Moshueshue said, ‘and those also?’ indicating the muskets.

‘They have lately fought a war against them,’ Mrs. Erasmus said, quickly adding her own explanation, at the tail of the translation. They won a battle two days’ flight from the falls. ‘Northwest, I think,’ she said, and asked Moshueshue permission to show him the territory on the great map: northwest, still deep inland, but within a few days’ striking distance of the ports of Louanda and Benguela.

‘Sir,’ Laurence said, ‘I had never heard of the Lunda before two weeks ago. I believe they must receive these goods from the Portuguese traders, upon the coast.’

‘And do you only want captives, or will you take other things in trade? The medicines you stole, or—’ at Moshueshue’s beckoning, one of the women carried over a box of absurdly magnificent jewels, which would have made the Nizam stare. Polished emeralds tumbled like marbles with diamonds, and the box itself was made of gold and silver. Another woman carried a tall curious vase made of woven wire strung occasionally with beads in an elaborate pattern, and another bore an enormous mask, nearly tall as she was, carved out of a dark wood and inlaid with ivory and jewels.

Laurence wondered a little if this were meant for another sort of inducement. ‘A trader would oblige you, sir, I am sure. But I myself am not a merchant. We would be glad – would have been glad – to pay you for the medicines, in what barter you desired.’

Moshueshue nodded, and the treasure was taken away. ‘And the – cannon?’ he used the English word, himself, with tolerable pronunciation. ‘Or your boats which cross the ocean?’

There were enough jewels in the box to have tolerably purchased and outfitted a fleet of merchantmen, but Laurence did not think the Government would be very pleased to see such a project go forward. He answered cautiously, ‘These are dearer, sir, for the difficulty in their construction, and would do you very little good without men who understand their operation. But some men might be found, willing to take service with you, and such an arrangement made possible; if there were peace between our countries.’

Laurence thought this was not further than he could in justice go, and as much attempt at diplomacy as he knew how to make; he hoped as a hint, it would not be badly received. Moshueshue’s intentions were not disguised; it was not wonderful that he, more than the king, should have taken to heart the advantages of modern weaponry, more easily grasped at musket-scale by men than by dragons, and should have cared to establish access to them.

Moshueshue put his hand on the map-table and gazed thoughtfully down upon it. At last he said, ‘You are not engaged in this trade, you say, but others of your tribe are. Can you tell me who they are, and where they may be found?’

‘Sir, I am sorry to say, that there are too many engaged in the trade for me to know their names, or particulars,’ Laurence said, awkwardly, and wished bitterly that he might have been able to say with honesty it had been lately banned. Instead he could only add, that he believed it soon would be; which was received with as much satisfaction as he had expected.

‘We will ban it ourselves,’ the prince said, the more ominously for the lack of any deliberately threatening tone. ‘But that will not satisfy our ancestors.’ He paused. ‘You are Kefentse’s captives. He wants to trade you for more of his tribe. Can you arrange such an exchange? Lethabo says you cannot.’

‘I have told them that most of the others cannot be found,’ Mrs. Erasmus added quietly, ‘—it was nearly twenty years ago.’

‘Perhaps some investigation could locate the survivors,’ Laurence said to her, doubtfully. ‘There would be bills of sale, and I suppose some of them must yet be on the same estates, where they first were sold – you do not think it so?’

She said after a moment, ‘I was taken into the house when I was sold. Those in the fields did not live long, most of them. A few years; maybe ten. There were not many old slaves.’

Laurence did not quarrel with her finality, and he thought she did not translate her own words, either; likely to shield him from the rage which they could provoke. She said enough to convince Moshueshue of the impossibility, however, and he shook his head. ‘However,’ Laurence said, trying, ‘we would be glad to ransom ourselves, if you would arrange a communication with our fellows at the Cape, and to carry an envoy with us, to England, to establish peaceful relations. I would give my own word, to do whatever could be done to restore his kin—’

‘No,’ Moshueshue said. ‘There is nothing I can do with this now. The ancestors are too roused up; it is not Kefentse only who has been bereft, and even those who have not lost children of their own are angry with them. My father’s temper was not long when he was a man, and it is shorter since his change of life. Perhaps after, once we have made an end to the trade.’ He did not entertain any further discussion, but issued orders to the attending dragons: without a chance to speak, Laurence was snatched up, and carried out at once.

The dragon did not turn back for the prison-cave, however, but turned instead for the falls, rising up out of the gorge and to the level of the plateau across which the great river flowed. Laurence clung to the basketing talons as they flew along its banks and over another of the great elephant-herds, too quickly for him to recognize if any of his compatriots were among the followers tending the ground; and to a distance at which the sound of the falls was muted, although the fine cloud of smoke yet remained visible, hovering perpetual in place to mark their location. There were no roads below at all, but at regular intervals Laurence began to notice cairns of stones, in circles of cleared ground, which might have served as signposts; and they had flown ten minutes when there came rearing up before them a vast amphitheatre.

It was near to nothing, in his own experience, but the Coliseum; built entirely of blocks of stone fitted so snugly that no mortar seemed to hold them together. The outer enclosure was built in an oval shape, with few entrances at the base, and formed with great overlapping slabs of stone laid against one another like the old stone circles in England. It stood in the middle of a grassy field, undisturbed, as he would have expected from some ancient unused ruin; only a few faintly worn tracks showed where men had come in on foot, mostly from the river, where stakes had been driven in the ground and a few simple boats were tied up.

But they flew in directly over the walls. The same dry mortar method of construction had raised a series of terraces, topped and levelled out with more stone slabs, laid flat, and irregularly arranged. Instead of even tiers, narrow stairways divided the theatre into sections, each a haphazard arrangement of boxes intended for human use and filled with wooden benches and stools, some beautifully carved, and large stalls surrounding them for dragons. The higher levels simplified further into wide open stands with sections marked off only with rope, and at the centre of it all, on a level with the ground, a large grassy oval stood bare, broken up with three large stone platforms. On the last of these stood a prisoner with drooping head: Temeraire.

Laurence was set down a few lengths away, with the usual carelessness, jarring his back sorely; at his repressed gasp, Temeraire growled, a deep and queerly stifled noise. He had been muzzled, with a piece of dreadful iron basketry, secured upon his head with many thick leather straps, which allowed his jaws a scant range of motion: not enough to roar. A thick iron collar around his throat, at the top of his neck, was leashed with three of the massive grey hawsers, which Laurence could now see were made of braided wire, rather than rope; these were fixed to iron rings set in the ground, equidistant from one another, and preventing Temeraire from throwing his weight against any one of them more than the others.

‘Laurence, Laurence,’ Temeraire said, straining his head towards him with all the inches the cables would yield; Laurence would have gone to him at once, but the dragon which had brought him set its foreleg down between them.

‘Pray do not hurt yourself, my dear; I am perfectly well,’ Laurence called, forcing himself to straighten; he was anxious lest Temeraire should do himself some mischief flinging himself against the collar: it looked to be digging into his flesh. ‘You are not very uncomfortable, I hope?’

‘Oh, it is nothing,’ Temeraire said, panting with distress that belied his words, ‘nothing, now I see you again; only I could not move very much, and no one comes to talk to me, so I did not know anything: if you were well or hurt; and you were so strange when I saw you last.’

He backed slowly and cautiously one pace and let himself down again, still breathing heavily, and gave his head a little shake, as much as the chains would allow, so they rang around him; like a horse in traces. ‘And it makes eating a little difficult,’ he added, bravely, ‘and water taste of rust, but it does not matter. Are you sure you are well? You do not look well.’

‘I am, and very glad to see you,’ Laurence said, though in truth he was at some pains to keep his feet, ‘if beyond words with surprise; we were mortally certain we should never be found.’

‘Sutton said we would never find you, by roaming wild about the continent,’ Temeraire said, low and angry, ‘and that we ought to go back to Cape Town. But I told him that was a very great piece of nonsense, for however unlikely we should find you looking in the interior, it was very much less likely we should find you back at the Cape. So we asked directions—’

‘Directions?’ Laurence said, baffled.

He had consulted with some of the local dragons, who, living further to the south, had not been subject yet to the slave-raiding, and were not so disposed to be hostile. ‘At least, not once we had made them a few presents of some particularly nice cows – which, I am sorry, Laurence, we took quite without permission, from some of the settlers, so I suppose we must pay them when we go back to Cape Town,’ Temeraire added, as confidently as if nothing stood in the way of their return. ‘It was a little difficult to make them understand what we wanted at first, but some of them understood the Xhosa language, which I had got a little of from Demane and Sipho. I learned a little of their tongue as we came closer: it is not very difficult, and there are many bits which are like Durzagh.’

‘Forgive me; I do not mean to be ungrateful,’ Laurence said, ‘the mushrooms? What of the cure? Were there any left?’

‘We had already given all those we collected to the Fiona,’ Temeraire said, ‘and if those were not enough, then Messoria and Immortalis could very well take back the rest without us,’ he finished defiantly, ‘so Sutton had no right to complain; and hang orders anyway.’

Laurence did not argue with him; he had no wish of giving any further distress, and in any case Temeraire’s insubordination having been answered by a success so improbable, he would certainly not be inclined to listen to any criticism on the subject: the sort of break-neck reckless venture crowned inevitably, he supposed, by either triumph or disaster; speed and impudence having their own virtue. ‘Where are Lily and Dulcia, then?’

‘They are hiding, out upon the plains,’ Temeraire said. ‘We agreed that first I should try, as I am big enough to carry you all; and then if anything should go wrong, they would still be loose.’ He switched his tail with something halfway between irritation and unease. ‘It made very good sense at the time, but I did not quite realize, that anything would go wrong, and then I would not be able to help them plan,’ he added, plaintively, ‘and now I do not know what they mean to do; although I am sure they will think of something,’ but he sounded a little dubious.

As well he might; while they had been speaking, dragons had been coming in a steady stream, carrying in large woven baskets or upon their backs men and women and even children, and settling all down within the stands: a vast company, larger than Laurence had yet suspected. The people arranged themselves in a hierarchy of wealth, those sitting on the lowest levels dressed in the most elaborate finery, panoply of furs and jewellery in a splendid vulgar display. There was a great variety among the beasts, in size and shape, and no sign of recognizable breeds, save perhaps a tendency towards similar colouring, in those that sat near-by one another, or in their pattern of markings; but it was rather a mongrel crowd. There was one constant, or nearly, however: the hostile looks which were bent upon Laurence and Temeraire, from all sides. Temeraire flared his ruff, as best he could with the constricting straps, and muttered, ‘They needn’t all stare so; and I think they are great cowards for keeping me chained.’

Soldiers were being brought in, now, by dragons more armoured than ornamented, and many of them in bloodstained gear: no mark of slovenly habits but deliberate, worn proudly; many of the stains were fresh as though they had come straight from the recent battle which Mrs. Erasmus had mentioned. These took up places around the floor of the great stadium, in even ranks, while servants began to cover the large central stage with furs, lion skins and leopard, and also draped a wooden throne; drums had been carried in, and Laurence was thankful when they set up a great thunder, and drew all eyes away: the king and the prince had arrived.

The soldiers beat their short-hafted spears against the shields, and the dragons roaring their own salute set up a wave of rattling noise, on and on, while the royalty seated themselves upon the central dais. When they were settled, a small dragon, wearing an odd sort of necklace of fur tails around his neck, leapt up on his haunches, beside the dais, and clearing his throat hushed the crowd with startling speed; his next deep breath was audible in the sudden silence. And then he launched himself into something between story and song: chanted, and without rhyme, to the beat of only one soft drum which kept time for him.

Temeraire tilted his head, to try and make it out; but when he turned to Laurence to comment, the dragon guarding them gave him a shocked glare, which quelled him in embarrassment.

The chant finished at sunset, and the raucous applause burst out again as torches were lit all around the dais. It had evidently been, from what Temeraire could gather, a kind of history, retelling the deeds of the king and his ancestors, and more generally of the many assembled tribes, and delivered entirely from memory, covering some seven generations.

Laurence could not help but feel the liveliest anxiety for the purpose of the convocation; the opening ceremonies thus completed, it proceeded swiftly to angry speeches, greeted with roaring approval and again that thunder of spears against shields. ‘That is not true at all,’ Temeraire said indignantly, during one of these, having picked out a few of the words. One highly decorated dragon, a grey-black fellow of middleweight size, wearing a thick neck-collar of tiger furs banded with gold, had come and ranged himself opposite Temeraire, and was gesturing at him pointedly. ‘I would not want your crew anyway, I have my own.’

He and Laurence were evidently figuring, in most of these exhortations, as material evidence, to prove the existence of the threat and of its magnitude; of course they could not know that Temeraire was nearly unique in the world, much less among British dragons, and in Laurence’s company, they made him out as an obvious ally to the slave-owning settlers of the Cape, and the Portuguese traders of the coast.

Another dragon, very old, whose wing-spurs dragged upon the ground, and whose eyes were milky with cataracts, was led out into the field by a small escort of hard-faced men whose box, upon the lowest level, was left empty by their departure: they had no family with them. No one spoke as the dragon crept to the dais, and heaved himself upon it; he raised his trembling head, his speech a thin and fragile lament which silenced all the crowd, and made the women draw to them their children, the dragons curl anxious tails around the clustered knots of their nearest tribesmen; one of the escort wept silently, with his hand over his face, his fellows giving him the courtesy of pretending they did not see.

When he had done, and returned slowly to his place, several of the soldiers began to stand forward to make their remarks: one general, a heavy barrel-chested gentleman, discarded his leopard-skin drape impatiently as he paced, with so much energy his skin gleamed in the torchlight with sweat, arguing vehemently in a voice projected to reach the highest tiers, gesturing at them at regular intervals, striking his fist into his hand, and pointing occasionally at Temeraire. His speech roused them all not only to cheering, but to agreement, grim nodding; he was warning them, that many more such dragons would come, if they did not take action now.

The night dragged on, grim and long; when the children had all fallen into exhausted sleep, some of the dragons and the women carried them away; those left kept speaking, climbing lower down in the stands as room opened, and voices grew more hoarse. Fatigue at last freed Laurence from dread; they had not been stoned yet, nor offered any other violence but words, and his back throbbed and itched and burned, sapping the energy even to be afraid. It was still not easy to stand and be pilloried, even if Laurence thankfully could escape the understanding of the better part of the accusations levelled against them; he solaced himself by keeping as straight as he could make himself, and fixing his gaze beyond the top ranks of the audience. But he was looking not to see, unfocused, so he did not immediately notice, until a vigorous waving made him realize, with a start, that Dulcia was perched on the top rank of seats, now empty.

She was small enough, and her green and mottled colouring sufficiently common, to pass for one of the company, whose attention was in any case fixed upon the speakers; when she saw she had Laurence’s eyes, she sat up and held up in her forehands a ragged grey sheet. Laurence had no notion what it was, at first; and then realized it was an elephant hide, with three holes painstakingly sawed out of it, in the shape of signal-flags: tomorrow, was all the message, and when he had seen it, and nodded to her, she as quickly vanished away again into the dark.

‘Oh; I hope they will come and let me loose, first,’ Temeraire murmured, fretful at the prospect of a rescue in which he had no say. ‘There are so many dragons; I hope they will not do anything rash,’ which was a little much coming from one who had flown headlong into the enemy stronghold.

‘Oh! I do too,’ Harcourt said, anxiously, when Laurence had been returned to them, well roasted and spat upon, after the conclusion of the ceremonies; she went to the mouth of the cave at once to peer up at their sentinel. The dragon was slumped rather unhappily upon his ledge, with his head drooping down; in the distance the drums were still going, in a celebration which bid fair to continue deep into the night.

They could not prepare, save in the most general way, by drinking as much as they could hold, and washing up, but they all applied themselves to these tasks with more energy than they deserved. ‘Bother; it is moving again,’ Harcourt said, as she squeezed out her wet hair, and she put her hand to the small of her back and rubbed. Inconveniently she had just begun to show; her breeches were now obliged to be left open, and the sides held together over her middle with a bit of bark-string left from their bindings; her shirt was loose, to cover the arrangement. ‘Oh, if only it is a girl! I will never, never be so careless again.’

By grace they slept well: the masons did not return to their work, perhaps given holiday, and so for once they were not woken with the dawn. No dragon came to carry any of them to the fields; although for an unpleasant balance, no dragon came to bring them any porridge, either, so they would have to make their attempt empty-stomached. There were still a good many dragons flying back and forth through the gorges, all day, but as evening fell their activity reduced; and the women went back early to their cavern-halls, singing, with the baskets full of washing balanced upon their heads.

Of course they had all expected the rescue to be made at night, rationally; but without certain knowledge, the day was full of tension and constant anxiety, and the urge to be always looking out of the cavern mouth, in a way which could only have roused suspicion. Sunset roused them all to feverish attention; no-one spoke, all of them straining, until a little while after dark the heavy sailcloth-flapping of Lily’s enormous wings could be heard, distantly, on the quiet air.

They all waited for the sound to approach more closely, to see her head in the cavern entrance; but it did not come. There was only a sneeze, and then another, and a third; concluded shortly with a sort of grumbling cough, and then the retreat of her wings. Laurence looked at Catherine, perplexed, but she was edging towards the cave-mouth, beckoning him and Chenery over; a faint sizzling noise, like bacon on a too-hot frying pan, a pinched sharp vinegary stink: there were a few pock-marks bubbling on the floor near the cavern mouth.

‘Oh,’ Catherine said softly, ‘she has made us handholds,’ and she pointed where thin smoky trails rose, barely visible, from the cliff face.

‘Well, I daresay we can manage the climb, but what do we do when we are down?’ Chenery said, with more optimism than Laurence felt. He had been made to go rock-climbing at Loch Laggan, by the training master Celeritas, some twenty years past the time most aviators began the habit, and had learned thereby to manage upon a dragon’s back without too much discredit to himself; but he remembered the experience, cramped beetle-like creeping one hand or foot at a time, without anything like pleasure, and there he had been wearing carabiners.

‘If we walk along the line of the gorge, away from the falls, we are sure to get past the borders of their territory,’ Catherine said. ‘The dragons will have to find us, from there, I suppose.’

The waiting now graduated into sheer agony: they could not begin to climb down, until the acid had eaten itself away into the rock. The salvaged quarter-glass alone kept them on any real sense of time, and the wheeling Southern Cross in the sky above. Twice Laurence looked, to be sure Turner had not missed the glass running out, only to find it nearly full; then by an exercise of will he forced himself not to watch, but rather to close his eyes, and press his hands against his sides, beneath his arms, for warmth. It was the first week of June, and the night was grown sharply and unexpectedly chill.

‘Sir, that’s nine,’ Turner said, softly, at last, and the hissing of the acid had faded. They poked a twig into one of the pitted depressions by the entrance: a good two inches deep, and the stick came out unmarked, except for the very end, which smoked a little.

‘And his tail hasn’t moved, sir,’ Dyer reported, in a whisper, meaning the guard-dragon, up above, after he had put his head out to peer quickly.

‘Well, I think it may do,’ Catherine said, when she had cautiously felt around with a rag. ‘Mr. Ferris, you may begin. Gentlemen, no more conversation; no calls, no whispers.’

Ferris had tied his boots together by their laces and slung them backwards around his neck, to keep them out of his way. He tucked a few twists of straw from the floor of the cavern into his waist, then put his head over the side, reaching down to feel cautiously around. He looked up and nodded, then swung his leg over; in a moment he vanished. Laurence risked a quick look over the edge, and saw that Ferrris was fifteen feet down already, a darker blot on the surface of the wall, and moving with the limber quickness of youth.

There was no waving, no calling from below; but their ears were stretched. Turner held the glass still before him. Fifteen minutes went, then twenty, and no sound of disaster. Libbley, went to the edge next and let himself over, in similar array, and after him the ensigns and midwingmen began to go two and three at a time. Lily had sprayed the wall thoroughly, so there were handholds broadly scattered across the cliff’s surface.

Chenery went next, and a little after him, Catherine, followed by her midwingman Drew. Most of the younger aviators had already gone. ‘I’ll go below you, sir, and guide your feet,’ Martin said very softly, his yellow hair darkened with rubbed-in mud. ‘Let me have your boots.’ Laurence nodded, silently, and handed them over, and Martin tied them up with his own.

Martin’s hand on his ankle guided his foot to one of the narrow holds: a rough shallow scrape in the face of the rock, which just admitted the grip of his toes; another, to the right. Laurence eased himself over the edge, groping for handholds beneath the lip. He could not see the face of the cliff beneath him, his own body blocking what little glimmer the stars provided, and could only rely on his sense of touch. The stone was cold beneath his cheek, and his breathing loud in his own ears, with a strange amplified quality like being underwater. Blind and deaf, he pressed his body flat as he could against the rock.

There was a dreadful moment when Martin touched his ankle again, and waited for him to lift it from the cliff. Laurence thought he would not be able to make himself yield to the support. He willed the movement; but nothing happened. Then he took another breath and at last his foot moved. Martin drew him gently downward, toes brushing lightly over the rock, to another hold.

The second foot, then one hand, then the next, mindlessly. It was easier to continue once he had gained a steady momentum, so long as he did not again allow himself to settle into a fixed position. A slow bruising ache began between his shoulders, and in his thighs. The tips of his fingers burned a little too as he went, and he wondered if it was some trace of Lily’s acid, then tried not to; he did not trust his grip well enough to wipe them against the rag hanging uselessly from his waistband.

Bailes, Dulcia’s harness-man, was near him, just a little way further down. He was a heavyset man and he proceeded cautiously; ground-crew men did not ordinarily go into combat, and had less practice of climbing. Suddenly Bailes gave a queer, deep grunt, and jerked his hand. Laurence looked down and saw the man’s face pressed open-mouthed into the rock, making a horrible, low sound. His free hand clawed madly at the stone: clawed, and came to shreds, white bone gleaming at their finger tips. Abruptly Bailes flung out his arm and fell away, his bared teeth clenched and visible only for the briefest moment.

Branches cracked below. Martin’s hand was on his ankle, and was still but for a faint tremor. Laurence did not try to look up, only held to the rock face and breathed, softly, softly. If they were revealed, there was nothing to be done: one sweep of a dragon’s foreleg could scrape them off the wall.

At last they resumed. Down again; and then to the side. Laurence caught the gleam of translucent rock on the surface: a vein of quartz, perhaps, on which the venom might have pooled, unabsorbed.

Eons later, a dragon flew by, shooting quickly through the night. It was well overhead. Laurence felt it passing only as wind and the faint sound of wings. His hands were numb with cold and raw. There were pockets of grass beneath his seeking fingers, and in a few more steps he found a slope, scarcely less than vertical; then a tree-root was beneath his heel, and they were nearly down, their feet were in dirt and the bushes were catching at them. Martin tapped his ankle, and they turned and slithered the rest of the way down on their rumps, until they could stand up to put their boots back on.

The rushing water could be heard somewhere below; the jungle, a tangle of palm leaves and tough-skinned vines, hung across their path. The clean, damp smell of moving water and fresh earth filled the air, and trembling dew was thick upon the leaves; their shirts were soon wet through and chill against their skin. It was a different world entirely than the dusty brown and ochre of the cliffs above.

They had all agreed not to wait for long, but to go on ahead in small parties, hoping that if they were discovered at this stage then at least some might yet escape. Winston, one of Laurence’s harness-men, was waiting a little way on, squatting and rising to stretch out his legs; also young Allen, nervous and gnawing on the side of his thumb, and his fellow ensign Harley. The five of them went on together, following the cliff wall. The earth was soft, and the vegetation full of juice and compliant; easier by far to work through than the dry underbrush, even if the vines reached up to trip them from time to time. Allen stumbled almost continuously, his latest growth had made him gangly and awkward, all long coltish limbs. They could not avoid some degree of noise; the pocket knife had gone dull as brass, so they could not cut their way through, and from time to time were forced to haul upon the vines to slacken them enough to climb through, with corresponding groans of protest from the branches on which they hung.

‘Oh,’ Harley breathed out, very softly, as he froze. Eyes looked back at them, cat-pupil, bright. They regarded the leopard; it regarded them; but no one moved. Then it turned its head and melted away, solitary and unconcerned.

They went on a little faster when they could, still following the channel of the gorge, until at last the jungle thinned out and dredged up to a point where the river’s course had divided. Laurence could see through the last stretch of jungle to where Lily and Temeraire waited anxiously astride the narrow banks, squabbling a little.

‘But what if you had missed?’ Temeraire was muttering, a little disconsolate and critical. ‘You might have hit the cave-mouth, or some of our crews.’

Lily mantled at this suggestion, her eyes very orange. ‘I hope I do not need to be near-by to hit a wall,’ she replied briskly, and then leaned eagerly forward as Harcourt came stumbling down the wet slope towards her. ‘Catherine, Catherine. Oh, are you well? Is the egg all right?’

‘Hang the egg,’ Catherine said, putting her head against Lily’s muzzle. ‘No, there, dearest; it has only been a nuisance, but I am so very glad to see you. How clever you were!’

‘Yes,’ Lily said, complacently, ‘and indeed it was much easier than I thought it would be; there was no one about to pay any mind, except that fellow on the hill, and he was asleep.’

Temeraire nuzzled Laurence gratefully, too, all his quibbling silenced: he still wore the thick iron collar, much to his disgust, and a few clubbed lengths of cable dangling off it, blackened and brittle at the ends where Lily’s acid had weakened the metal enough for the two of them to break it. ‘But we cannot leave without Mrs. Erasmus,’ Laurence said to him; but looked up as Dulcia landed among them, Mrs. Erasmus clutching to the harness on her back.

They fled cautiously but quickly homeward, the rich husbanded countryside providing for them. Temeraire was savage and quick, cutting out elephants from their herd, while the smaller herd-dragons yelled angry imprecations. They did not dare give pursuit when he had roared them down. Lily had cause to double back on herself sharply, when a heavy-weight roused from a village on their course, bellowed challenge. She turned to spit with unerring precision at a branch of the great sprawling baobab tree beside him; her acid sending it crashing down upon his shoulders. He had jumped and thought better of giving chase. Looking back he could be seen gingerly nosing the thick branch, large as a tree, away from the clearing.

The aviators wove grasses into makeshift cords to tie themselves on with, and pinned their limbs under straps of harness so that whenever they paused for water, they all went down in staggering heaps, pounding on their thighs against the prickling of returning blood. They flew across the desert almost without pause. It was all pale rock and yellow dust, the curious heads of small animals popping out of holes in the ground in the hope of rain as the dragon-shadows passed by like racing clouds. Temeraire had taken all of Dulcia’s crew but Chenery himself; and also some of Lily’s. The three of them made all the haste that could be imagined, and they broke over the mountains into the narrow coastal province of the settlements in the hour before dawn on the sixth day of flight, and saw the tongues of flame as the cannons of the Cape spoke.

Narrow pillars of smoke lay against their view of Table Mountain as they came across the bay and drove into the city, drifting before a hard wind. There were fires all through the city. Ships were beating desperately out of harbour into the wind, close-hauled as they could go. The cannon of the castle were firing without pause, the thunder-roll of broadsides from the Allegiance in the harbour adding voice. Her deck was swathed deeply in grey powder-gusts that spilled down her sides and rolled away on the water.

Maximus was fighting in mid-air, above the ship: his sides still gaunt, but the enemy dragons gave him still a wide, respectful berth, and fled from his charges. Messoria and Immortalis flanked him, and Nitidus was using their cover to harry the enemy in their retreat. So far they had preserved her, but their position was untenable. They were only trying to hold the ship long enough to carry away those who could be saved: the harbour was full of boats, crammed and wallowing boats, all trying to get to her shelter.

Berkley signalled from Maximus’s back as they came on: holding well, retrieve company; so they flashed on past and towards the shore where the castle lay under full siege. A vast body of spearmen, crouched beneath great shields of ox-hide and iron, before its walls. Many of their fellows lay dead in the fields just before the battlements, cut dreadfully apart by canister-shot, and musketry; other corpses bobbed in the moat. They had failed to scale the walls by climbing, but the survivors had withdrawn past the substantial rubble that had been made of the nearby houses by the cannon-fire, and now sheltered there from the guns, waiting with terrible patience for a breach in the walls.

Another corpse lay dreadfully stretched upon the parade ground. It was a yellow-and-brown dragon, its eyes cloudy and its body half-burst upon the ground by impact, a gaping hole torn into its side by the round-shot which had brought it down. Scraps of its bloody hide littered the grass even a hundred yards distant.

There were some thirty dragons in the air making passes from above, dropping not bombs but sacks of narrow iron blades, flat and triangular and sharpened along every edge, which drove even into stone. As Temeraire landed the courtyard, Laurence could see them bristling from the ground as if the earth been sowed with teeth; there were many dead upon the heights.

The king was standing on the lower slopes of Table Mountain clear of cannon-shot, observing the scene grimly, occasionally mantling her wings in yearning when one of the men or dragons were struck. She was still a dragon of no great age, and her natural instinct would have normally driven her to the battlefield. Men hovered around her flanks and others ran back and forth to the company gathered before the fortress walls, carrying commands. Laurence could not see if the prince was by her side.

The city itself had been left untouched: the castle alone bore the attack, although the streets had nevertheless been deserted. Large bloodstained boulders lay strewn in the corners, trailing behind them a line of smashed bricks, red under their yellow paint. The soldiers were mostly on the walls, sweating as they worked the guns, and a great crowd of settlers, men and women and children together, huddled in the shelter of the barracks waiting for the boats to return.

Mrs. Erasmus sprang almost at once from Temeraire’s back when they had landed, giving scarcely a hand to the harness. General Grey, hurrying to greet them, looked with astonishment as she passed him without a word.

‘She has gone for her children,’ Laurence said, sliding down himself. ‘Sir, we must take you off, at once; the Allegiance cannot hold the harbour long.’

‘But who the devil is she?’ Grey said, and Laurence realized she must have been quite unrecognizable to him in her native dress. ‘And damn the bloody savages, yes; we were lucky to hit one of those beasts, even with pepper-shot; they will have the walls down soon if the place does not catch, first. This station was not built to hold against three companies of dragons. Where have they all come from?’

He was already turning, giving orders, his aides running to organize the withdrawal. It would be an orderly, formal retreat, the men spiking their own guns before abandoning them, only a few gun-crews at a time, and hurling the barrels of powder into the moat. Mr. Fellowes had gone with the ground crew to find the dragons’ battle-gear: still where it had been stowed, fortunately, in the smithy. They came running with the belly-netting, and all the spare carabiner-straps they had. ‘The armour, sir, we can’t manage, unless he should come and lift it himself,’ he said, panting, as they began in haste to rig Temeraire’s belly-netting again, and Lily’s. Dulcia had gone aloft again, her riflemen armed now with pepper-shot, to keep the enemy off their heads at least for a little while.

‘Leave it,’ Laurence said when they brought more plate; this would be no prolonged struggle, but a quick dash for safety, and back again for more of the men; they needed speed more than the protection of the armour, when the enemy had no guns.

Temeraire crouched for the first group of soldiers to climb into the netting. The men stumbled, some pale and sweating with fear, driven by their officers; others were dazed with the noise and smoke. Laurence now bitterly regretted that he had not asked Fellowes to rig up some of the Chinese silk carrying-harnesses, back in England, which would now have allowed them to take many more than the allotted number for retreat; thirty for a heavy-weight, when by weight Temeraire could have managed two hundred or more.

They crammed some fifty men in, regardless, and hoped the netting would hold for the short flight. ‘We will—’ Laurence began, meaning to say they would return, but he was cut short by a shrieked warning from Dulcia. Temeraire sprang aloft only just in time. Three of the enemy, using a net made of the metal hawsers, had brought an enormous boulder roughly the size of an elephant overhead and let it fly. It smashed the delicate cup of the bell-tower with a sour, ringing clang, and came down through the short passage of the entryway, brick and mortared stone crumbling everywhere, and the portcullis moaned and sagged open to the ground.

Temeraire sped to the Allegiance, to let the men down onto the dragondeck, and hastened back to the shore. The spearmen were coming in through the rubble of the narrow passageway, charging with yells into the teeth of the musket-fire that Grey had mustered, and then flooding by them towards the guns. They encircled the manned emplacements, stabbing the gun-crews to death with quick, short, jerking motions, until their spear-heads were wet and red with blood. One after another the cannon-roars were silenced, and the dragons overhead began circling like ominous crows, waiting for the longest pause so they might descend.

Temeraire reared up onto the roof and knocked flat a dozen of the attackers with a swipe of his foreleg, snarling. ‘Temeraire, the guns,’ Laurence called. ‘Smash the guns they have taken—’

The attackers had seized three cannon not yet spiked, and were trying to turn the first to bring it to bear on the courtyard, where they could fire at Temeraire and Lily. Temeraire simply put his fore-claw on the housing and thrust the cannon and the six men clinging onto it through the notched brick battlements. It plunged into the moat with a terrific splash, the men, undaunted, let go and swam through the water towards the bank.

Lily, landing behind them to take on more of the retreat, spat, and the second cannon began to hiss and smoke, the barrel thumping to the ground as the wooden housing dissolved quicker than the metal. It went rolling free like a deadly ninepin, knocking men down and spreading the acid everywhere, so splatters hissed upon the brick and dirt.

The earth beneath them shook so violently Temeraire stumbled and dropped back to all four legs in the courtyard: another massive boulder had dropped, and smashed another section of the outer walls, this time at the far and undefended end of the courtyard. A fresh wave of men came surging through the gap, quicker than Grey’s men could turn to meet them, and charged those still defending the ruined entryway of the castle. The riflemen ranged across Temeraire’s back set up a quick irregular fire into their mass. Then the spearmen were in and grappling furiously with the soldiers and their bayonets, and a strange quiet descended. The guns were scarcely firing anymore, and only a scattering of occasional musket-and pistol-shot broke the soft grunting noise of panting, struggling men, the groans of the wounded and the dying.

All the yard was a great confusion. With no clear avenue of retreat or line of battle, men ran in all directions, now trying to evade, now trying to seek combat, crowded by frightened and bellowing livestock, horses and cows and sheep. These had been brought into the castle, against a siege expected to last longer, and penned in the smaller second courtyard: maddened by the noise of battle and the dragons wild overhead, they had got loose and now went careening indiscriminately through the grounds, a flock of hens crying around their feet, until they broke their legs or necks in flight, or found their way by chance outside the castle grounds.

In the crowd, Laurence was surprised to catch sight of Demane clinging with grim desperation to the collar of the heifer, which he had been promised. The beast plunged and bellowed madly against his slight weight, while her calf tried to follow, moaning. She was dragging him out into the melee. Sipho hung back under the archway between the two courtyards of the castle, gnawing upon his small bunched fist, his face wrenched with terror. Then with sudden decision he dashed out after his brother, his hand reaching for the lead-rope, which straggled out behind the cow.

A pair of soldiers bayoneted one of the enemy to death, savagely, as the cow went dragging by; one straightened and wiped blood across his mouth, panting, and shouted, ‘Fucking little thief, couldn’t wait till we’re cold—’

Demane saw, let go the cow and lunged, Sipho went down beneath him; the bayonet flashed. The battle carried the soldiers away a moment later leaving two small bodies huddled on the ground, bloody. The cow stumbled away over the rubble, picking her way out of the courtyard through the open gap in the walls, the calf trotting after her.

‘Mr. Martin,’ Laurence said, very low. Martin nodded, and tapped Harley on the shoulder; they let themselves down the harness and dashed out across the field. They carried the boys back to be lifted into the netting. Demane was limp, Sipho wept softly against Harley’s shoulder.

A handful of the spearmen had got in among the settlers congregated in the barracks, and a terrible confused slaughter was underway. The women and children were pushed aside, the attackers sometimes setting them bodily against the walls as they went about laying the men at their feet. The settlers fired their muskets and rifles wildly, striking friend and foe alike. The emptied boats were coming back for more passengers, but the sailors at the oars hesitated to pull in, despite the furious swearing of the cox’n, his profanities carrying across the water.

‘Mr. Ferris,’ Laurence shouted, ‘Mr. Riggs, clear them some space there, if you please,’ and himself slid down, to take charge of loading the retreating soldiers in Ferris’s place. Someone handed him a pistol and a cartridge box, still sticky with the blood of the corpse from which they had come. Laurence slung it quickly over his shoulder, and tore open the paper cartridge with his teeth. He had the pistol loaded, and drew out his sword. A spear-man came running at him, but he had no opportunity to shoot. Temeraire, catching sight of the threat, cried out his name and lunged to slash at the man violently, dislodging three of the wavering soldiers trying to get into his netting as he did so.

Laurence clenched his jaw, and permitted himself to be concealed behind the closed ranks of his ground-crew. He handed his pistol forward to Mr. Fellowes, and instead went to the netting, to speed aboard the now-desperate men, harried on all sides, into the stretching leather of the netting.

Lily, who could not take as many, had been loaded already. She lifted away and spat at the flood of men coming in through the ruined wall, filling the empty space with smoking, hideously twisted corpses. But she had to go towards the ship, and the survivors behind at once began to knock down more of the rubble from the walls to bury the remnants of acid.

‘Sir,’ Ferris said, panting as he came back; his hand was tucked into his belt, and a gash brilliant cerise decorated his shirt, running the length of his arm, ‘we have embarked them all, I think; the settlers, I mean, those left.’

They had cleared the courtyard, and Temeraire with more savage work had killed the invaders manning the guns. Only a few of their gun-crews still laboured, their irregular fire all that still kept off the dragons. The Allegiance’s boats dashed away over the sea, the sailors pulling on the oars with frantic back-straining haste. The barracks were awash with blood, bodies of black men and white rising and lowering together in the pink-stained froth where the waves were coming in upon the strand.

‘Get the General aboard,’ Laurence said, ‘and signal all retreat, if you please, Mr. Turner.’ He offered Mrs. Erasmus his hand to climb aboard; Ferris had escorted her back, and her daughters in their pinafores, dirty and marked with soot, were clinging to her skirts.

‘No, Captain, thank you,’ she said. He did not understand, at first, and wondered if she were injured; if she did not realize the boats had left. She shook her head. ‘Kefentse is coming. I told him that I would find my daughters, and wait for him here in the castle. That is why he let me go.’

He stared, bewildered. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘he cannot pursue us, not long, not from shore. If you fear his capturing you again—’

‘No,’ she said again, simply. ‘We are staying. Do not be afraid for us,’ she added. ‘The men will not hurt us. It is dishonour to stain their spears with a woman’s blood, and anyway I am sure Kefentse will be here soon.’

The Allegiance was already weighing anchor, her guns roaring in fresh vigour to clear her skies to make sail. On the battlements, the last gun-crews had abandoned their posts, and were running madly for escape to Temeraire.

‘Laurence, we must go,’ Temeraire said, very low and resonant, his head craning from side to side. His ruff was stretched to its full extent, and even on the ground he was instinctively breathing in long, deep draughts, his chest expanding. ‘Lily cannot hold so many of them, all alone; I must go help her.’ She was now their only shelter from the enemy beasts, who were cautious of her acid having seen its effects now at close range. But they would encircle her and have her down in a moment; or draw her far aloft, so that some of their number could plunge down upon Temeraire while he remained vulnerable upon the ground.

More of their adversaries had poured into the courtyard. They kept beyond Temeraire’s reach, but spread out along the far wall in a half-circle. Individually they could do no great harm, but by rushing together with their spears might drive Temeraire aloft. Above them Laurence could see some of the dragons skilfully manoeuvring around Lily into lower positions, ready to receive him with their claws. There was no time to persuade Mrs Erasmus, and in any case Laurence did not think, looking at her face, that she would be easily persuaded. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘your husband—’

‘My husband is dead,’ she said, with finality, ‘and my daughters will be raised as proud children of the Tswana here, not as beggars in England.’

He could not answer her, she was a widow, and beholden to no one. He had no right to compel her. He looked at the children holding on to her, their faces gaunt and hollow, too exhausted to be afraid any longer. ‘Sir, that’s everyone,’ Ferris said anxiously at his shoulder.

She nodded her farewell to Laurence’s answering silence, and then bent to lift her little girl onto her hip. With a hand on her older girl’s shoulder, she guided them towards the shelter of the raised covered porch of the governor’s residence, where it rose oddly decorous out of the bloody wreckage of the battle scattered all around it. They picked their way over the corpses sprawled upon the curving steps.

Laurence said, ‘Very well,’ and turning pulled himself fully aboard; there was no more time. Temeraire reared up onto his haunches, and roaring sprang aloft. The dragons scattered in alarm before his Divine Wind, the nearest crying out shrilly in pain as they fell away. Lily and Dulcia fell in with him and together they bent away towards the Allegiance, a broad spread of sail white against the ocean, already carrying out of the harbour into the Atlantic.

In the courtyard, the dragons began to land in the ruins to pillage the cattle running free. Mrs. Erasmus stood straight-backed at the top of the steps, her little girls clasped in her arms, their faces turned skyward. Kefentse was already arrowing across the water towards them, calling loud in a joyful voice.

PART III

Chapter Thirteen

‘Pray am I disturbing you?’ Riley said, awkwardly. He could not knock, because there was no door. There were a great many women aboard, refugees, to the service of whose meagre comfort nearly all the cabins and bulkheads had gone. A little ragged sailcloth was all that presently divided Laurence’s berth from Chenery’s, on one side, and from Berkley’s on the other. ‘May I ask you to take a turn with me, on the dragondeck?’

They had already spoken, of course, from necessity, in those first distracted hours. All the officers had united in the effort to make some sense of seven dragons, wailing children, wounded men, several hundred inconvenient passengers, and all the confusion which might be expected on a ship three times the size of a first-rate, launched with no preparation directly into a brutal headwind, with a lee-shore ready to receive her at any time and her deck still littered with the large metal-shod stones which had served the enemy for missiles.

In the melee Laurence had nevertheless seen Riley looking anxiously, if covertly, over the newly arrived company. The sight of Harcourt calling orders to her crew visibly relieved his anxiety, but another few chance observations altered his relief to puzzlement and then to suspicion. Riley had come up to the dragondeck on the excuse of requesting the dragons to shift their places to bring the ship a little more by the stern, and so obtained a better view of Catherine’s condition. It was just as well Laurence understood what he meant, as the way Riley conveyed his request became a confused scheme, putting Maximus at the head of the deck with Lily apparently on his back, and Temeraire stretched along the port rail, which would likely have ended with half the dragons in the water, and the ship turning in stately circles.

Laurence pronounced himself willing to help, and they went above in silence; a necessary silence, to some extent, as Laurence had to follow Riley single file through the narrow lanes, all that was left of the navigable space, and up the ladders. The crammed-in passengers having been given the liberty of the quarterdeck, for light and exercise, so the dragondeck afforded them more privacy than was to be had anywhere else on the ship, so long as one did not mind an interested audience of dragons.

They were for the moment mostly inanimate; Temeraire and Lily and Dulcia worn-out, by their long and desperate flight as well as the excitement at its end, and Maximus making the forestay hum with the resonance of his deep, sonorous snores. It was just as well they were tired enough to sleep without eating, as there was little to be had, nor would there be again until the ship could put in at some port for more supplies. When they woke they would have to fish for their supper.

‘I am afraid,’ Riley said, diffidently, breaking their silence as they walked along the railing, ‘that we may have to water at Benguela. I regret it very much, if it should give you any pain. I am considering whether we ought not to try for St. Helena instead.’

St. Helena was not a slave port, but was out of their way. Laurence was deeply mindful of the degree of apology embodied in this offer, and at once said, ‘I do not think it can be recommended. We could easily find ourselves blown to Rio on the easterlies, and even though both the cure and word of the loss of the Cape will precede us, our formation must still be needed urgently back in England.’

Riley as gratefully received this gesture in return, and they walked several passes up and down the deck much more comfortably together. ‘Of course we cannot lose a moment,’ Riley said, ‘and for my own part I have reason enough to wish us home again, as quickly as we might go, or thought I did, until I realized she meant to be obstinate. Laurence, I beg you will forgive me for speaking freely: I would be grateful for a headwind all the way, if it meant we should not arrive before she has married me.’

The other aviators had already begun referring, in uncharitable terms, to what they viewed as Riley’s quixotic behaviour, Chenery going so far as to say, ‘If he will not leave off harassing poor Harcourt, one will have to do something; but how is he to be worked on?’

Laurence had rather more sympathy for Riley’s plight. He was a little shocked by Catherine’s refusal to marry rather than burn, when the choice was put before her, and he was forcibly reminded to regret Reverend Erasmus, for the lack of what he was sure would have been that gentleman’s warm and forceful counsel in favour of the marriage. Mr. Britten, Riley’s official chaplain, assigned by the Admiralty, could not have brought a moral argument to bear on anyone, even if he were sober long enough to do so.

‘But at least he is ordained,’ Riley said, ‘so there would be no difficulty about the thing whatsoever. Everything would be quite legal. But she will not hear of it. And she cannot say, in fairness,’ he added half-defiantly, ‘that it is because I am some sort of scoundrel, because I did not try to speak before. It was not as though – I was not the one who—’ he cut off hastily, and ended more plaintively by saying, ‘and, I did not know how to begin. Laurence, has she no family who might prevail upon her?’

‘No, Catherine is quite alone in the world,’ Laurence said. ‘And, Tom, you must know that she cannot leave the service. Lily cannot be spared.’

‘Well,’ Riley said, reluctantly, ‘if no one else can be found to take the beast on,’ a notion which Laurence did not bother to try and disabuse him of, ‘but it does not matter, I am not such an outrageous scrub as to abandon her. And the governor was kind enough to tell me that Mrs. Grey is perfectly willing to receive her, which is generous beyond what anyone might expect, and sure to make everything easier for her in England. They have a large acquaintance in the best circles. But she will not listen to reason.’

‘Perhaps she fears the disapproval of your family,’ Laurence said, more from consolation than conviction. He was sure Catherine had not given a thought to the feelings of Riley’s family, nor would have, if she had determined on the marriage.

‘I have already promised her that they would do all that is proper, and so they would,’ Riley said. ‘I do not mean to say it is the sort of match they would have looked out for me; but I have my capital, and can marry to please myself without any accusation of imprudence, at least. I dare say that my father at least will not care two pins, if only it is a boy; my brother’s wife has not managed anything but girls, the last four years ago, and everything entailed,’ he finished, very nearly flinging up his hands.

‘But it is all nonsense, Laurence,’ Catherine said, equally exasperated, when he approached her later. ‘He expects me to resign the service.’

‘I believe,’ Laurence said, ‘that I have conveyed to him the impossibility of such a thing, and he is reconciled to the necessity, if not pleased by it; and you must see,’ he added, ‘the very material importance of the circumstance of the entailment.’

‘I do not see, at all,’ she said. ‘It is something to do with his father’s estate? What has it to do with me, or the child? He has an older brother, has he not, with children?’

Laurence, who had not so much been instructed in the legal structures of inheritance and entailment as absorbed them through the skin, stared; and then he hastily made her understand that the estate would descend in the male line, and her child, if a boy, stood to inherit after his uncle. ‘If you refuse, you deny him his patrimony,’ Laurence said, ‘which I believe likely to be substantial, and entailed in default on a distant relation who would care nothing for the interest of Riley’s nieces.’

‘It is a stupid way of going on,’ she said, ‘but I do see; and I suppose it would be hard luck on the poor creature, if he grew up knowing what might have been. But all I am hoping for is not a boy at all, but a girl; and then what use is she to him, or I?’ She sighed, and rubbed the back of her hand across her brow, and finally said, ‘Oh, bother; I suppose he can always divorce me. Very well: but if it is a girl, she will be a Harcourt,’ she added, with decision.

The marriage was briefly postponed for want of anything suitable to make a wedding-feast, until they had managed to replenish supplies. Already extremity had driven them to shore on several occasions. There was no safe harbour on their charts along the southern coastline, where the Allegiance might have safely put in. Instead they roped together the empty water casks and draped them upon the dragons, who daily flew the twenty miles over open water which Riley’s caution left between them and the coast, and tried to find some nameless river emptying into the sea.

On the fifteenth of June, as they drew near Benguela, they passed a pair of tattered ships with blackened sides and makeshift sails that even a pirate would have been ashamed to rig. They took them for fellow refugees from the Cape, choosing to make east for St. Helena. The Allegiance did not offer to heave-to; they had no water or food to spare. In any case the smaller ships ran away from them, likely fearing to be pressed either for supplies or men, not without cause. ‘I would give a good deal for ten able seamen,’ Riley said soberly, watching them go over the horizon. He did not speak of what he would give for a proper dole of clean water. The dragons licked the sails in the morning, for their dew, and all the company had been put on half rations.

They saw the smoke first, rising from a long way off. As they drew near the harbour, the steady ongoing smoulder of the massive bonfires of damp wood resolved themselves into the overturned hulks of ships, which had been dragged from the ocean onto the beach. Little more than the stout keels and futtocks remained, like the ribcages of beached leviathans who had flung themselves onto the sands to die. The fortifications of the Dutch factory had been reduced to rubble. There was no sign of life.

With all their gun-ports open, and the dragons alert to the least sign of danger, the ship’s boats went to the shore full of empty water-casks. They came back again, pulling more quickly despite their heavier load. In Riley’s cabin, Lieutenant Wells reported uneasily. ‘More than a week, sir, I should say,’ he said. ‘There was food rotting in some of the houses, and all that is left of the fort is perfectly cold. We found a large grave dug in the field behind the port; there must have been at least a hundred dead.’

‘It cannot have been the same band who came on us in Cape Town,’ Riley said, when he had done. ‘It cannot. Dragons cannot have flown here, so quickly, surely?’

‘Fourteen hundred miles, in less than a week’s time? Not if they meant to fight at the end of it,’ Catherine said, measuring upon the map with her fingers. She had the chair, as Riley had managed to carry the point of giving her the large stern-cabin for the journey home. ‘They needn’t have; there were dragons enough at the falls to make another raiding party of the same size, or another ten, for that matter.’

‘Well, and I am sorry to sound like a damned ill-wishing crow,’ Chenery said, grimly, ‘but I don’t see a blessed reason why they shouldn’t have gone for Louanda, while they were at it.’

Another day’s sailing brought them in range of the second port. Dulcia and Nitidus set off, beating urgently before the wind, and some eight hours later returned to the Allegiance in the dark, lit by the beacons in the tops.

‘The whole place burned to the ground,’ Chenery said, tipping back the cup of grog, thirstily. ‘Not a soul to be seen, and all the wells full of dragon shit; begging your pardon.’

The magnitude of the disaster began gradually to dawn upon them all. Not only had Cape Town been lost, but two of the largest harbours in Africa besides. If the enemy’s purpose had been to seize control of the ports, all the intervening territory must have first been conquered. But if simple destruction was all they desired, no such long, drawn-out labour was required. Without aerial forces to oppose them, the dragons could fly over with ease any defences or mustered force, and go directly to their target, carrying their light infantry with them; and then expend all their energy upon the hapless town, which had incurred their wrath.

‘The guns were all gone,’ Warren said quietly. ‘And the shot; we found the empty caissons where they had been stored. I would imagine they took the powder too, we did not see any left behind.’

All the long homeward journey along the coast was attended by the clouds of smoke and ruin, and preceded by their harbingers the scorched and tattered ships, full of survivors, making their limping way back to safe harbour.

The Allegiance did not attempt again to put in, relying instead on the dragons’ short flights to the coast to bring them fresh water, until two weeks more brought them to Cape Coast. Riley felt it was their duty to at least make an accounting of the dead at the British port, though they hoped that the fortifications, older and more extensive than those in the other ports, might have preserved some survivors.

The castle that had served as headquarters was built in stone, and remained largely intact, but for the gaping and scorched roof. The guns, which had been useless to defend her fixed seaward, had all gone, as were the heaped piles of roundshot from the courtyard. The Allegiance, being subject to the vicissitudes of the wind and current, could not match the regular pace of dragons, and had moved more slowly than the wave of attacks. Laurence suspected three weeks at least had passed since the assault.

While Riley organized his crew in the sad work of exhuming and making a count of the dead from their mass grave, Laurence and his fellow captains divided amongst themselves the richly forested slopes north and surrounding the wreckage of the town, in hopes of ensuring enough game for them all. Fresh meat was badly needed, the ship’s supplies of salt pork growing rapidly thin, and the dragons were always hungry. Temeraire alone was satisfied with fish, and even he had wistfully expressed the desire for ‘a few tender antelope, for variety’s sake. Or an elephant would be beyond anything, for they are so very rich.’

In the event, he was able to satisfy his hunger with a couple of smallish, red-furred buffalo, while the riflemen shot another half a dozen, as many as he could conveniently carry back to the ship in his fore claws. ‘A little gamy, but not at all unpleasant; perhaps Gong Su can try stewing one with a little dried fruit?’ Temeraire said thoughtfully, rattling the horns in his mouth in a horrible fashion to pick his teeth, before he fastidiously deposited them upon the ground. Then he pricked up his ruff. ‘Someone is coming, I think.’

‘For God’s sake are you white men?’ the cry came a little faintly, from the forest, and shortly the handful of dirty, exhausted men staggered into their clearing, and received with many pitiful expressions of gratitude their canteens of grog and offerings of ship’s biscuit. ‘We scarcely dared to hope, when we heard your rifles,’ said their chief, a Mr. George Case of Liverpool, who with his partner David Miles, and their handful of assistants, had not been able to escape the disaster in time.

‘We have been hiding in the forest ever since the monsters descended,’ Miles said. ‘They took up all the ships that had not fled quick enough, and broke or burnt them, before they left again; and us out here with scarcely any bullets left. We have been ready to despair: I suppose they would all have starved, in another week.’

Laurence did not understand, until Miles brought them to the makeshift pen, concealed in the woods, where their last string of some two hundred slaves remained. ‘Bought and paid for, and in another day we should have had them loaded aboard,’ Miles said, and spat with philosophical disgust upon the ground, while one of the gaunt and starving slaves, his lips badly cracked, turned his head inside the enclosure and made a pleading motion with his hand, for water.

The smell of filth was dreadful. The slaves had made some attempt, before weakness had overcome them, to dig small necessary-pits within their enclosure, but they were shackled ankle to ankle, and unable to move far from one another. There was a running stream which emptied into the sea, some quarter of a mile distant; Case and his men did not look thirsty, or very hungry themselves; there was the remnant of an antelope over a spit, not twenty feet from the enclosure.

Case added, ‘If you will take credit for our passage, we will make it good in Madeira; or,’ with an air of great generosity, ‘you are welcome to buy them outright if you prefer: we will give you a good price, you may be sure.’

Laurence struggled to answer; he would have liked to knock the man down. Temeraire did not suffer any similar pangs; he simply seized the gate in his fore claws and without a word tore it entirely from its setting, and threw it down on the ground, panting over it in anger.

‘Mr. Blythe,’ Laurence said, grimly, ‘strike these men’s irons, if you please.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Blythe said, and fetched his tools; the slavers gaped.” ‘My God, what are you about?’ Miles said, and Case cried out that they should sue, they should certainly sue; until Laurence turning on them said low and coldly, ‘Shall I leave you here, to discuss the matter with these gentlemen?’ which shut their mouths at once. It was a long and unhappy process: the men were shackled one to another, with iron fetters, and in groups of four were fastened about the necks with rope; a handful with their ankles cuffed to thick billets of wood, which had rendered it nearly impossible for them to even stand.

Temeraire tried to speak to the slaves as Blythe freed them, but they spoke a wholly different language, and shrank from his lowered head in fear; they were not men of the Tswana, but of some local tribe, which did not have similar relations with dragons. ‘Give them the meat,’ Laurence said quietly, to Fellowes; this gesture required no translation, and at once the stronger among the former captives began to arrange cooking fires, and prop up the weaker to gnaw upon the biscuit which Emily and Dyer distributed among them, with the help of little Sipho. Many of the slaves preferred to flee at once, despite their obvious weakness; before the meat was on the spit, nearly half of them had vanished into the forest, to make their way homeward as best they could, Laurence supposed; there was no way of knowing how far they had been brought, or from what direction.

Temeraire sat stiff with disgust as the slavers were put aboard him; and when they continued to murmur turned his head to snap his teeth at them, and say in dangerous tones, ‘Speak of Laurence so again, and I will leave you here myself; you should be ashamed of yourselves, and if you have not enough sense, then you may at least be quiet.’ The crew also regarded them with great disapproval. ‘Ungrateful sods,’ was the muttered opinion of Bell, as he rigged out makeshift straps for them.

Laurence was glad to unload them again, on deck, and see them disappear among the rest of the Allegiance’s passengers. The other dragons had returned with better luck from their hunting, and Maximus triumphantly deposited on the deck a pair of smallish elephants, of which he had already eaten three. He pronounced them very good eating, and Temeraire sighed a little, but they were earmarked at once for the celebration; which though necessarily muted by their larger circumstances, could not be much longer delayed and yet leave the bride in a state convenient to walking the deck of a rolling ship.

The wedding was a rather muddled occasion, although Chenery, with his usual fine disdain of any notion of polite manners, had ensured the sobriety of the officiant by taking Britten by the ear and dragging him up onto the dragondeck, the night before, and instructing Dulcia not to let him stir an inch. The minister was thoroughly sober and petrified by morning, and Harcourt’s runners brought him his clean shirt and his breakfast on the dragondeck, and brushed his coat for him on the spot, so he could not slip away and fortify himself back into insensibility.

But Catherine had not thought at all of providing herself with a dress, and Riley had not thought at all that she would not have done so, with the result that she had to be married in her trousers and coat; giving the ceremony a very strange appearance, and putting poor Mrs. Grey to the blush, and several other of the respectable Cape Town matrons who had attended. Britten himself looked very confused, without the comforting haze of liquor, and stuttered rather more than less over his phrases. To crown the event, when he invited onlookers to express any objections, Lily, despite Harcourt’s many reassuring conversations on the subject, put her head over the lip of the dragondeck to the alarm of the assembled guests and said, ‘Mayn’t I?’

‘No, you may not!’ Catherine said, and Lily heaved a disgruntled sigh, and turning her lurid orange eye on Riley said, ‘Very well, then; but if you are unpleasant to Catherine, I will throw you in the ocean.’

It was not a very propitious entry to the state of matrimony, but the elephant meat was indeed delicious.

The lookout saw the light off Lizard Point on the tenth of August as they came at last into the Channel, the dark mass of England off their port bow. He also caught sight of a few lights running past them to the east: not ships of the blockade. Riley ordered their own lights doused, and put her on a southeast heading, paying careful attention to his maps. When morning came, they had the mingled pain and pleasure of bringing up directly behind a convoy of some eight ships bound unmistakably for Le Havre: six merchantmen, and a couple of frigates escorting them, all lawful prizes, any of which they would certainly have struck at once if only they had been in range. But they were a good sixty miles away, and catching sight of the Allegiance, hurriedly pressed on more sail and immediately began to run clear away.

Laurence leaned on the rail beside Riley watching them go, wistfully. The Allegiance had not been scraped properly clean since leaving England, and her bottom was unspeakably foul. At her best she did not make eight knots, and even the frigate at the rear of the convoy was running at eleven. Temeraire’s ruff was quivering as he sat up to watch them. ‘I am sure we could catch them,’ he said. ‘We could certainly catch them; at least by afternoon.’

‘There are her studding sails,’ Riley said, watching through the glass. The sluggish frigate leapt forward, evidently having waited until her charges had pulled ahead.

‘Not with this wind,’ Laurence said. ‘Or you might, but not the others, and we have no armour. In any case, we could not take them: the Allegiance would be quite out of sight until after dark.’

Temeraire sighed and put his head down again on his forelegs. Riley shut up his glass. ‘Mr. Wells, let us have a heading north-northeast, if you please.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Wells said sadly, turning to make the arrangements.

Abruptly, the frigate in the lead checked her way, and bent her course sharply southwards, with much frantic activity in the rigging visible through the glass. The convoy all were turning, as if they meant to make now for Granville, past the Jersey Islands. It was a poor risk, and Laurence could not imagine what they meant by it, unless perhaps they had caught sight of some ship of the blockade. Indeed, Laurence wondered that they should not have seen any such ship before now, unless the blockade had lately been driven up the Channel by a gale.

The Allegiance had now the advantage of sailing to head them off, rather than directly in their train. Riley said, ‘We may as well keep on them a little while longer,’ with studied calm, and put the ship after them, much to the unspoken but evident satisfaction of the crew. If only the other ship, which as yet they could not see, were fast enough! Even a single frigate might do, imbued by the near and awful presence of the Allegiance with greater force, and so long as the Allegiance was on the horizon at the climax of the chase, she should have a share in any prize taken.

They searched the ocean anxiously, sweeping with their glasses, without success; until Nitidus, who had been jumping aloft at intervals, landed and said breathlessly, ‘It is not a ship; it is dragons.’

They strained to see, but the oncoming specks kept being lost among the clouds. But they were certainly coming fast, and before the hour had closed, the convoy had altered their course yet again: they were now trying only to get under cover of some French gun emplacement along the coast, risking the danger of running for a lee-shore with the wind behind them. The Allegiance had closed the distance to some thirty miles.

‘Now may we go?’ Temeraire said, turning his head around; all the dragons were thoroughly roused by now, and though crouched to keep from checking the ship’s way, their heads were craned up on their necks, fixed intently upon the chase.

Laurence closed up his glass and turning said, ‘Mr. Ferris, the fighting crew to go aboard, if you please.’ Emily held out her hand for the glass, to carry it away; Laurence looked down at her and said, ‘When you are finished, Roland, I hope you and Dyer may be of use to Lieutenant Ferris, on the lookouts.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, in almost a breathless squeak, and dashed to stow the glass. Calloway gave her and Dyer each a pistol, and Fellowes their harnesses a tug, before the two of them scrambled aboard.

‘I do not see why I must go last,’ Maximus said petulantly, while Temeraire and Lily’s crews scrambled aboard; Dulcia and Nitidus already aloft, Messoria and Immortalis to make ready next.

‘Because you are a great mumping lummox and there is no damned room to rig you out until the deck is cleared away,’ Berkley said. ‘Sit quiet and they will be off all the sooner.’

‘Pray do not finish all the fighting until I am there,’ Maximus called after them, his deep bellow receding and growing faint with the thunder of their passage; Temeraire was stretching himself, outdistancing the others, and for once Laurence did not mean to check him. With support so near at hand, there was every reason to take advantage of his speed; they needed only to harry and delay the convoy a little while in order to bring up all the pursuit, which should certainly make the enemy shipping strike.

But Temeraire had only just reached the convoy when the clouds above the leading frigate abruptly boiled away in a sudden blazing eruption like cannon fire. Iskierka came diving down through the unearthly ochre glow, her spikes dragging ragged shreds of mist and smoke along behind her, and shot a flamboyant billowing arc of flame directly across the ship’s bows. Arkady and the ferals came pouring after her, their yowling fit for a nuisance of cats, and went streaking up and down the length of the convoy, hooting and shrilling, quite in range of the ships’ guns; but what looked like recklessness was not so, for they were going by so swiftly that only the very merest chance could have allowed a hit, and the force of their wings set all the sails to shivering.

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, doubtfully, as they went dashing crazily past him, and paused to hover. Iskierka meanwhile was flying in coiled circles over the frigate, yelling down at them to strike, to strike, or she would burn them all up to a tinder; and she jetted off another burst of flame for emphasis, directly into the water, which set up a monstrous hissing pillar of steam.

The colours came promptly down, and the rest of the convoy followed suit meekly. Where Laurence would have expected the lack of prize crews to pose many difficulties, there were none: the ferals at once busily and in a practiced manner set about herding the prizes as skilfully as sheepdogs tending their flock, snapping at the wheelmen, and nudging them by the bows to encourage them to turn their heads for England. The littlest of the ferals, like Gherni and Lester, landed on the ships directly, terrifying the poor sailors almost mortally.

‘Oh, it is all her own notion,’ Granby said ruefully, shaking Laurence’s hand, on the bow of the Allegiance; when that vessel had met them half-way and travelling now in company they had resumed their course for Dover. ‘She refused to see why the Navy ought to get all the prizes and I am afraid she has suborned those damned ferals. I am sure she has them secretly flying the Channel at night looking for prizes; and when they tell her of one, she pretends that she has just taken it into her head to go in the same direction.’

The remainder of the ferals were aloft, singing lustily together in their foreign tongue, and larking about with satisfaction. Iskierka however had crammed herself in among the formation, and in particular had seized the place along the starboard rail where Temeraire preferred to nap. She was no small addition: having gained her full growth in the intervening months since they had seen her, she was now enormously long and sprawling, the heavy coils of her serpentine body at least as long as Temeraire, and draped over anything which happened to be in her way, most inconveniently.

‘There is not enough room for you,’ Temeraire said ungraciously, nosing away the coil she had deposited upon his back, and picking up his foot out of the other, which slithered around it. ‘I do not see why you cannot fly back to Dover.‘

‘You may fly to Dover if you like,’ Iskierka said, flicking the tip of her tail dismissively. ‘I have flown all morning, and anyway I am going to stay with my prizes. Look how many of them there are,’ she added, exultant.

‘They are all our prizes,’ Temeraire said.

‘As it is the rule, I suppose we must share with you,’ she said, with an air of condescension, ‘but you did nothing except come late, and watch,’ a remark which Temeraire instinctively felt the justice of, rather than disputed, and he hunched down to sulk over the situation in silence.

Iskierka nudged him. ‘Look how fine my captain is,’ she added, to heap on coals of fire; and much to poor Granby’s embarrassment: he was indeed a little ridiculously fine, gold-buttoned and be-ringed, and the sword at his waist gold-hilted, with a great absurd diamond at the pommel, which he did his best to conceal with his hand.

‘She fusses for days, if I do not, every time she takes another prize,’ Granby muttered, crimson to the ears.

‘How many has she taken?’ Laurence said, rather dubiously.

‘Oh – five, since she set about it in earnest, some of them strings like this one,’ Granby said. ‘They strike to her right off, as soon as she gives them a bit of flame; and we have not a great deal of competition for them: I do not suppose you know, we have not been able to hold the blockade.’

They exclaimed over this news, with alarm. ‘It is the French patrols,’ Granby said. ‘I don’t know how, but I would swear they have another hundred dragons more than they ought, on the coast; we cannot account for them. They only wait until we are out of sight, and then they go for the ships on blockade: dropping bombs, and as we haven’t enough dragons well yet to guard at all hours, the Navy must stand ship and ship, to fend them off. It is a damned good thing you have come home.’

‘Five’ prizes,’ Temeraire said, very low, and his temper was not improved when they reached Dover, where upon a jutting promontory above the cliffs Iskierka now had a large pavilion made of blackened stone, sweating from the exhalations of her spines and surely over-warm in the summer heat. Temeraire nevertheless regarded it with outrage, particularly after she had smugly arranged herself upon the threshold, her coils of vivid red and violet displayed to advantage against the stone, and informed him that he was very welcome to sleep there, if he should feel at all uncomfortable in his clearing.

He swelled up and said very coolly, ‘No, I thank you,’ and retreating to his own clearing did not even resort to his usual consolation, of polishing his breastplate, but only curled his head beneath his wing and sulked.

Chapter Fourteen

HIDEOUS SLAUGHTER AT THE CAPE

Thousands Slain Cape Coast Destroyed

Louanda and Benguela Burnt

It will require yet some time before a complete Accounting will render final all the worst fears of Kin and Creditors alike, throughout these Isles, as to the extent of the Disaster, which has certainly encompassed the Wreck of several of our foremost citizens, for the destruction of many of their Interests, and left us to mourn without certain knowledge the likely Fate of our brave Adventurers and our noble Missionaries. Despite the territorial Questions, associated with the War with France, which lately made us Enemies, the deepest Sympathies must be extended now across the Channel to those bereaved Families, in the Kingdom of Holland, who in the Settlers at the Cape Colony have lost in some cases all their nearest Relations. All voices must be united in lamenting the most hideous and unprovoked Assault imaginable, by a Horde of violent and savage Beasts, egged on by the Jealousy of the native

Tribesmen, resentful of the rewards of honest Christian labour…

Laurence folded the paper, from Bristol, and threw it beside the coffee-pot, with the caricature facing downwards: a bloated and snaggle-toothed creature labelled Africa, and several unclothed natives of grinning black visage prodding with spears a small knot of women and children into its open maw, while the pitiful victims uplifted their hands in prayer and cried O Have You No Pity in a long issuing banner from their mouths.

‘I must go and see Jane,’ he said. ‘I expect we will be bound for London, this afternoon; if you are not too tired.’

Temeraire was still toying with his last bullock, not quite sure if he wanted it or not; he had taken three, greedy after the short commons of their voyage. ‘I do not mind going,’ he said, still a little disgruntled, ‘and perhaps we may go a little early, and see our pavilion; there can be no reason not to go near the quarantine-grounds now, surely.’

If they did not bring the first intelligence of the wholesale disaster in Africa, having been preceded in their flight by many a swifter vessel, certainly they carried the best. Before their arrival, no one in England had any notion of the identity of the mysterious and implacable foe who had so comprehensively swept clean the African coast. Laurence and Harcourt and Chenery had of course written dispatches, describing their experiences, and handed them on to a frigate which had passed them off Sierra Leone, and to another in Madeira; but in the end, these had only anticipated their arrival by a few days. In any case, formal dispatches, even the lengthy ones produced over the leisure of a month at sea, were by no means calculated to satisfy the clamouring demands of the Government for information on so comprehensive a disaster.

Jane at least did not waste their time with a recounting of the facts. ‘I am sure you will have enough of that before their Lordships,’ she said. ‘You will both have to come, and Chenery also; although perhaps I can beg you off, Harcourt, if you like: under the circumstances.’

‘No, sir, thank you,’ Catherine said, flushing. ‘I should prefer no special treatment.’

‘Oh, then I will take all the special treatment we can get, with both hands,’ Jane said. ‘At least it will make them give us chairs, I expect; you look wretched.’

Jane herself was much improved, from when Laurence had left her; her hair was shot more thoroughly with silver, but her face, better fleshed, showed all the effects of cares lightened and a return to flying: a healthier wind-burnt colour in the cheek, and lips a little chapped. She frowned at Catherine, who despite possessing a perpetual lobsterish colour from the sun, still managed to look faintly bluish under the eyes, and pallid. ‘Are you still being taken ill?’

‘Not very often,’ Catherine said, without candour; Laurence – indeed, all the ship’s company – had been witness to her regular visits to the rail, aboard ship. ‘And I am sure that I will be better now we are not at sea.’

Jane shook her head disapprovingly. ‘At seven months I was as well as ever I have been in my life. You have not put on nearly enough weight. It is an engagement like any other, Harcourt, and we must be sure you are up to the mark.’

‘Tom wishes me to see a physician, in London,’ Catherine said.

‘Nonsense,’ Jane said. ‘A sensible midwife is what you need; I think my own is still in harness, here in Dover. I will find her direction for you. I was damned glad of her, I will tell you. Twenty-nine hours’ labour,’ she added, with the same dreadful reminiscent satisfaction as a veteran of the wars.

‘Oh,’ Catherine said.

‘Tell me, do you find—’ Jane began, and shortly Laurence sprang up, and went to interest himself in the map of the Channel, which was laid out on Jane’s desk, striving rather desperately not to hear the rest of their conversation.

The map was not as distressing in the visceral sense, although this was perhaps rather a sign of improper sensibility on his part, as the circumstances it depicted were as unfortunate as could be imagined. All the French coastline of the Channel was now littered with markers, blue representing companies of men, white for the individual dragons. Clustered around Brest there were fifty thousand men at least, and another fifty at Cherbourg. At Calais a force half that number again; and scattered among these positions some two hundred dragons.

‘Are these figures certain?’ Laurence asked, when they had finished their exchange, and joined him at the table.

‘No, more’s the pity,’ Jane said. ‘He has more; dragons, at any rate. Those are only the official estimates. Powys insists he cannot be feeding so many beasts, so close together, when we have the ports blockaded; but I know they are there, damn them. I get too many reports from the scouts, more dragons than they ought to be seeing at a time; and the Navy tell me they cannot get a smell of fish, so they catch it themselves, the price of meat has gone so dear across the way. Our own fishermen are rowing over to sell their catches.

‘But let us be grateful,’ she added. ‘If the situation were not so damned dire, I am sure they would keep you in Whitehall a month, answering questions about this business in Africa; as it is, I will be able to extract you without much more than a day or two of agony.’

Laurence lingered, when Catherine had left; Jane filled his glass again. ‘And you would do as well with a month at the sea-shore yourself, to look at you,’ she said. ‘You have had rather a dreadful time of it, I find, Laurence. Will you stay to dinner?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Temeraire wishes to go up to London while it is still light out.’ He thought perhaps he ought to excuse himself; he rather felt that he wished to talk to her, more than knew what he wanted to say, and he could not be standing there stupidly.

She rescued him though, saying, ‘I am very grateful to you, by the bye, for the compliment to Emily. I have sent on to Powys at Aerial Command to confirm her and Dyer in rank as ensign, just so there should be nothing haveycavey about the business; but there shan’t be any trouble about that. I don’t suppose you have any likely boys in mind for their places?’

‘I do,’ he said, rather steeling himself, ‘if you please: the ones I brought from Africa.’

Demane had passed the weeks after their escape from Cape Town deep in delirium, with his side, where the bayonet had gone in, swelled out beneath the small scabbed cut as if an inflated bladder had sat beneath the skin; and Sipho too distressed even to speak, refusing to leave the sickbed except to creep away and fetch water or gruel, which he patiently fed his brother spoon by spoon. The southern coast had slipped rapidly away to starboard, taking with it any hope of kin to whom they might have been returned, long before the ship’s surgeon had informed Laurence that the boy would make a recovery. ‘It is to your credit, sir,’ Laurence had said, even while wondering whatever was to be done with the boys now; by then the Allegiance had seen Benguela, and there could be no question of turning back.

‘It is no such thing,’ Mr. Raclef had retorted, ‘a wound in the vitals of this sort is invariably fatal, or ought to be; there was nothing to be done but make him comfortable,’ and he went away again muttering, vaguely offended at having so obvious a diagnosis defied.

The patient persisted in his defiance, making good proofs of the resilience of youth, and very shortly had reacquired the two stone of weight lost in his illness, and another for good measure. Demane was dismissed the sick bay before they had crossed the equator, and the two were installed in the passenger quarters together, in a tiny curtained-off compartment scarcely large enough to sling their one small hammock: the older boy’s wariness would not permit them to sleep at the same time, and he insisted alternating watches.

He was not without justification nervous of the general crowd of refugees from the Cape, who regarded the boys with simmering anger as representatives of the ‘kaffirs’ they blamed for the destruction of their homes. It was useless to try and explain to the settlers that Demane and Sipho were of a wholly different nation than the one which had attacked them, and there was great indignation that the boys should be housed among them, particularly from the elderly shopkeeper and the farm-hand whose respective nooks had each been shortened by the width of seven inches for their sake.

A few quiet belowdecks scuffles with the settler boys predictably followed. These ceased quickly, it becoming rapidly evident that a boy, even lately ill, who had been for several years entirely dependent for his survival upon his own hunting skills, and by necessity forced to contend against lions and hyena for his supper, was not an advisable opponent for boys whose experience ended at schoolyard squabbling. They resorted instead to the petty torments of smaller children, covert pinching and prodding, small malicious traps of slush or filth left just beside the hammock, and the ingenious use of weevils. The third time Laurence found the boys sleeping on the dragondeck, tucked up against Temeraire’s side, he did not send them back to their small compartment below.

Temeraire, being nearly their solitary point of familiarity and the only one left among the company who had any grasp of their language whatsoever, quickly lost whatever lingering horrors he had possessed for them; the more so, as they were sure, in his company, to avoid their tormentors. The boys were soon as apt to be clambering over his back, in their games, as any of the younger officers, and through his tutelage acquiring a reasonable command of English, so that a little while after they had left Cape Coast, Demane might come to Laurence and ask, in a steady voice betrayed only by his hand clutching tightly at the railing, ‘Are we your slaves now?’

Laurence stared, shocked, and the boy added, ‘I will not let you sell Sipho away from me,’ defiantly, but with a note of such desperation as showed his understanding that he had not much power, to defend himself or his brother from such a fate.

‘No,’ Laurence said, at once; it was a dreadful blow, to find himself regarded as a kidnapper. ‘Certainly not; you are—’ but he was here stopped by the uncomfortable lack of any position to name, and forced to conclude, lamely, ‘you are by no means slaves. You have my word you shall not be parted,’ he added. Demane did not look much comforted.

‘Of course you are not slaves,’ Temeraire said, in dismissive tones, to rather better effect, ‘you are of my crew,’ an assumption springing from his native possessiveness, which serenely made them his own in spite of all the obvious impracticality of such an arrangement, and forced Laurence to recognize he could see no other solution, which should give them the respectability they might have earned, among their own tribe, for the services which they had performed.

No one could have called them gentlemanlike, in birth or in education, and Laurence was dismally aware that while Sipho was a biddable, good-natured child, Demane was too independent, and more likely to be obstinate as a pig, if not belligerent, towards anyone wishing to effect an alteration in his manners. But difficulty alone could not be permitted to stand in the way: he had taken them from home, from all the relations which they might have, and robbed them of all standing in the world. If, at the end, there had been no practical way to restore them, he could not escape responsibility for the situation having arisen; he had wilfully contributed to it, to the material benefit of the Corps and his mission.

‘Captains can choose whom they like; that has always been the way of it.’ Jane said, ‘but I will not say there shan’t be a noise about it: you may be sure that as soon as the promotions are posted in the Gazette, I will be hearing from a dozen families. At present we have more likely boys trained up than places for them, and you have got yourself the reputation of a proper schoolmaster, even if they did not like to see their sprouts on a heavy-weight: it is a pretty sure road to making lieutenant, if they do not cut straps before then.’

‘I must surely give the greater weight,’ he said, ‘to those who have given so much in our service; and Temeraire already counts them as his own crew.’

‘Yes; but the carpers will say you ought to take them as personal servants, or at best ground-crew,’ she said. ‘But damn them all; you shall have the boys, and if anyone complains of their birth, you may always declare them princes in their native country, without any fear of being proven false. Anyway,’ she added, ‘I will put them on the books, quietly, and we will hope they slip past. Will you let me give you a third? Temeraire’s complement allows for it.’

He assented, of course; and she nodded. ‘Good: I will send you Admiral Gordon’s youngest grandson, and that will make him your best advocate, instead of your loudest critic. No one has as much time for writing letters and making noise as a retired admiral, I assure you.’

Sipho was very willing to be pleased, when informed of their elevation, but Demane said a little suspiciously, ‘We take messages? And ride the dragon?’

‘And other errands,’ Laurence said, and then puzzled over how to explain errands, until Temeraire said, ‘Those are small boring things, which no one very much likes to do,’ which did not reduce their suspicion.

‘When will I have time to hunt?’ the boy demanded.

‘I do not suppose you will,’ Laurence said, taken aback, and only after a little more exchange gathered that the boy did not realize that they would be fed and clothed: at Laurence’s expense, of course, as they had no family sponsoring them, and cadets drew no pay. ‘You cannot think we would let you starve; what have you been eating so far?’

‘Rats,’ Demane said succinctly, explaining belatedly to Laurence’s satisfaction the unusual lack of those delights more civilly referred to as millers, which had been much-lamented among the midshipmen whose traditional prey they were, ‘but now we are on land again, I took two of those small things last night,’ and gestured to make long ears.

‘Not from the grounds of Dover Castle?’ Laurence said; certainly there would not have been many of them nearer-by, with the smell of so many dragons about. ‘You must not, again; you will be taken up for poaching.’

He was not perfectly sure Demane was convinced, but at last Laurence declared a private victory and detailed the two of them to Roland and Dyer’s supervision, to be led through their tasks a while.

It was a short flight to the quarantine-grounds, and the pavilion had been established to good effect in a sheltered valley, sacrificing prospect for a windbreak. It was not empty: two rather thin and exhausted Yellow Reapers were sleeping inside, still coughing occasionally, and a limp little Greyling; not Volly, but Celoxia, and her captain Meeks. ‘On the Gibraltar route, I think,’ Meeks said, to their inquiry, ‘if he has not been broken-down again,’ he added rather bitterly. ‘I don’t mean to carp at you, Laurence; God knows you have done all you can, and more. But they seem to think at the Admiralty that the cure is like putting the wheel back on a cart. They want us flying all the old routes again at once: Halifax and back, by way of Greenland and a transport, anchored in the middle of the north fifties, with ice-water coming over the bow with every wave. So of course she is coughing again.’ He stroked the little dragon’s muzzle; she sneezed plaintively.

The floor was very comfortably warm, at least, and if the wood-fire was a little smoky, worming up through the square stone slabs of the floor, the open plan arrangements blew the fumes away. It was a simple practical building, not at all elegant or ornate. Temeraire might have slept in it, though it could not have been called spacious, on his scale. He regarded it with brooding disappointment, and was not disposed to linger; the crew did not even have the opportunity to dismount before he wished to be off again, putting the pavilion at his back, and flying with rather a drooping ruff.

Laurence tried to console him by remarking on the sick dragons yet sheltering there, even in the summer’s heat. ‘Jane tells me that they would pile them in ten at a time,’ he said, ‘the surgeons are quite certain it saved a dozen lives during the winter.’

Temeraire only muttered, ‘Well, I am glad it has been useful,’ ungraciously. Such distant triumphs, achieved out of his sight and several months before, were not quite satisfactory. ‘That is an ugly hill,’ he added, ‘and that one, also. I do not like them,’ inclined to be displeased even with the landscape, when ordinarily he was mad for anything out of the common way, and would point out anything of the most meagre interest to Laurence’s attention, with delight.

The hills were odd; irregular and richly covered with grass, they drew the eye queerly as they went overhead. ‘Oh,’ said Emily suddenly, on the forward lookout, craning her head over Temeraire’s shoulder to look down at them, and shut her mouth hurriedly in embarrassment at the solecism of having spoken without a warning to give. Temeraire’s wing-beats slowed. ‘Oh,’ he said.

The valley was full of them: not hills but barrow-mounds, raised over the dragons where they had breathed their last. Here and there an outthrust horn or spike came jutting from the sod. In places a little fall of earth had bared the white curve of a jawbone. No one spoke; Laurence saw Allen reach down and close his hands around the jingle of his carabiners, where they hooked on to the harness. They flew on silently, above the verdant deserted green, Temeraire’s shadow flowing and rippling over the spines and hollows of the dead.

They were still quiet when Temeraire came in to the London covert, and the little unpacking necessary carried on subdued. The men carried the bundles to be stacked at the side of the clearing, and went back for others. The harness-men had none of their usual cheerful squabbling over who was to manage the belly-netting, but Winston and Porter went to it together in silence. ‘Mr. Ferris,’ Laurence said, voice deliberately raised, ‘when we are in reasonable order, you may give a general leave, through tomorrow dinner; barring any pressing duties.’

‘Yes, sir; thank you,’ Ferris said, trying to match his tone. It did not quite take, but the work went a little more briskly, and Laurence was confident a night’s revelry would soon finish the work of rousing the men out of the sense of oppression.

He went and stood at Temeraire’s head, putting his hand comfortingly on his muzzle. ‘I am glad it was useful,’ Temeraire said, low, and slumped more deeply to the ground.

‘Come, I would have you eat something,’ Laurence said. ‘A little dinner; and then I will read to you, if you like.’

Temeraire did not find much consolation in philosophy, or even mathematics; and he picked at his food, until pricking up his ruff, he raised his head and put a protective forehand over his cow, and Volly came tumbling into the clearing, kicking up a furious hovering cloud of dust behind him.

‘Temrer,’ Volly said happily, and butted him in the shoulder, then immediately cast a wistful eye on the cow.

‘Don’t be taken in,’ James said, sliding down from his back. ‘Fed not a quarter of an hour ago, while I was waiting for the mails in Hyde Park, and a perfectly handsome sheep, too. How are you, Laurence? Tolerably brown, I see. Here’s for you, if you please.’

Laurence gladly accepted the parcel of letters for his crew, with one on top, to his personal direction. ‘Mr. Ferris,’ he said, handing the packet over, to be distributed. ‘Thank you, James; I hope we find you well?’

Volly did not look so bad as Meeks’ report had made Laurence fear, if with a degree of rough scarring around the nostrils, and a slightly raspy voice. It did not inhibit him from rambling happily on to Temeraire, with an enumeration of the sheep and goats which he had lately eaten, and a recounting of his triumph at having sired, early in the recent disaster, an egg, himself. ‘Why, that is very good,’ Temeraire said. ‘When will it hatch?’

‘Novembrer,’ Volly said, delightedly.

‘He will say so,’ James said, ‘although the surgeons have no notion. It hasn’t hardened a tick yet, and it would be early. But the blessed creatures do seem to know, sometimes, so they are looking out for a likely boy for the thing.’

They were bound for India, ‘Tomorrow, or the day after, maybe; if the weather keeps fair,’ James said, airily.

Temeraire cocked his head. ‘Captain James, do you suppose that you might carry a letter for me? To China,’ he added.

James scratched his head to receive such a request. Temeraire was unique among British dragons, so far as Laurence knew, in writing letters; indeed, not many aviators managed the habit themselves. ‘I can take it to Bombay,’ he said, ‘and I suppose some merchantman is bound to be going on; but they’ll only go to Canton.’

‘I am sure if they give it to the Chinese governor there, he will see it delivered,’ Temeraire said, with justifiable confidence; the governor was likely to consider it an Imperial charge.

‘But surely we ought not delay you, for personal correspondence,’ Laurence said, a little guiltily; if James did seem a little careless of his schedule.

‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself,’ James said. ‘I don’t quite like the sound of his chest yet, and the surgeons don’t either. Since their Lordships aren’t disposed to worry, so neither am I. I’m happy enough to linger in port a few days, and let him fatten himself up and sleep a while.’ He slapped Volly on his flank and led him away to another clearing, the small Greyling following on his heels like an eager hound, if a hound were the size of a moderate elephant.

The letter was from his mother, but it had been franked: a small but valuable sign of his father’s approval, and of its having been sent with replies to his last letter:

We are very shocked by the News you send us from Africa, which in many respects exceeds that appearing in the Papers, and pray for the Solace of those Christian souls caught in the Wrack, but we do not repudiate some Sentiment, which the Abhorrence of such dreadful Violence cannot wholly silence, that the Wages of Sin are not always held in Arrears to be paid off on the Day of Reckoning, but Malefactors by God’s Will may be held to account even in this earthly life; Lord Allendale considers it a Judgment upon the failure of the Vote. He is much satisfied by your Account, that the Tswana (if I have it correctly) might perhaps have been appeased, by the Ban; and we have hopes that this necessary Period, to that evil trade, may soon lead to a better and more humane Condition for those poor Wretches who yet suffer under the Yoke.

She concluded more unfortunately by saying,

… and I have taken the Liberty of enclosing a small Trinket, which amused me to buy, but for which I have no Use, as your Father has mentioned to me that you have taken an Interest in the Education of a Young Lady, who I hope may find it suitable.

It was a fine string of garnets, set in gold. His mother had only one granddaughter, a child of five, out of three sons and now five grandsons, and there was a wistful note between the closely-written lines. ‘That is very nice,’ Temeraire said, peering over at it with an appraising and covetous eye, although it would not have gone once around one of his talons.

‘Yes,’ Laurence said, sadly, and called Emily over to deliver the necklace to her. ‘My mother sends it you.’ ‘That is very kind of her,’ Emily said pleased, and if a little perplexed, quite happy to forgo that sentiment in favour of enjoying her present. She admired it, over her hands, and then thought a moment, and a little tentatively inquired, ‘Ought I write to her?’

‘Perhaps I will just express your thanks, in my reply,’ Laurence said. His mother might not dislike receiving the letter, but it would only have encouraged the misunderstanding, and his father would certainly look with disfavour on any gesture that suggesting expectations of a formal acknowledgment; and there was no easy way to explain to him the perfect lack of foundation for such a concern.

Laurence was sadly puzzled how, even in his own letter, to avoid adding to the confusion, as he could not in civility omit that he had delivered the gift, seen it received, and heard thanks. All of which alone revealed that he had seen Emily very lately, and by the speed of his reply, it would seem regularly. He wondered how he might explain the situation to Jane. He had the vague thought that she would find it highly amusing, and nothing to be taken seriously. She would probably not at all mind being taken for – and here his pen stuttered and halted with his thoughts, because of course, she was the mother of a child born out of wedlock. She was not a respectable woman, and it was not only the secret of the Corps which would have prevented him ever making her known to his mother, or explaining the circumstances of Emily’s birth.

Chapter Fifteen

‘Jane,’ Laurence said, ‘will you marry me?’

‘Why, no, dear fellow,’ she said, looking up in surprise from the chair where she was drawing on her boots. ‘It would be a puzzle to give you orders, you know, if I had vowed to obey; it could hardly be comfortable. But it is very handsome of you to have offered,’ she added, and standing up kissed him heartily, before she put on her coat.

A timid knock at the door prevented anything more he might have said. It was one of Jane’s runners, come to tell her that the carriage was ready at the gates of the covert. ‘I will be glad when we are back in Dover; what a miserable swamp,’ Jane said, already blotting her forehead on her sleeve as she left the small barracks-house. Its London setting had added the stifling heat and the heavy moisture-laden air to the city’s unrivalled stench and the mingling of barnyard with the acrid stink of the small covert’s presently overburdened dragon-middens.

Laurence said something or other about the heat, and offered her his handkerchief mechanically. He did not know how to feel. The offer had come from some deeper impulse than conscious decision; he had not meant to speak, and certainly not yet, not in such a manner. An absurd moment to raise the question, almost as if he wished to be refused; but he was not relieved, he was by no means relieved.

‘I suppose they will keep us past dinnertime,’ Jane said, meaning their Lordships, an opinion which seemed to Laurence rather optimistic; he thought it very likely they should be kept for days, if Bonaparte were not so obliging as to invade, with no warning. ‘So I must look in on Excidium before we go: he ate nothing at all, last night; nothing, and I must try and rouse him up to do better today.’

‘I do not need to be scolded,’ Excidium murmured, without opening his eyes, ‘I am very hungry,’ but he was scarcely able to rouse himself from his somnolence even to nudge briefly at her hand. Though naturally one of those earliest dosed with the supply of mushroom sent on by frigate from Cape Town, he was by no means yet fully recovered from his ordeal. The disease had been well advanced in his case by the time the cure had arrived, and only in the last few weeks had it been judged safe for him to leave the uncomfortable sand pits, which had been his home for more than a year. Nevertheless he had insisted on managing the flight to London, instead of letting Temeraire carry Jane with Laurence, and was now paying for his pride with near-prostration. He had done nothing but sleep since their arrival, the afternoon before.

‘Then try and take a little while I am here, for my comfort,’ Jane said, and stepped back to the clearing’s edge to keep her best coat and trousers from being spattered by the fresh-butchered sheep carried hurriedly over by the covert herdsmen, and hacked apart directly in front of Excidium’s jaws, which ground methodically away at the joints of meat as they were put in his mouth.

Laurence took the opportunity of escaping her company for a moment, and went to the neighbouring clearing where Temeraire was busily engaged, despite the early hour, with his two sand-tables, upon the letter. He was working upon an account of the disease, and its treatment, which he meant to send to his mother in China, with Mr. Hammond as his proxy, against the danger that a similar outbreak might one day there occur. ‘You have made that Lung look more like Chi,’ he said, casting a severe eye over the work of his coterie of secretaries. Emily and Dyer had been disgruntled to learn that their promotion to the exalted rank of ensign had not relieved them of all responsibility of schoolwork, and with them Demane and Sipho, who were at least at no greater disadvantage learning Chinese script than anyone else would have been.

He might have asked her the other day, after they had disposed of the fate of the boys. They had been closeted alone together, without interruption, nearly an hour; that, at any rate, would have been a more opportune moment to speak, he thought now, barring any scruple at introducing a subject so intimate in the precincts of her office. Or he might have spoken yesterday night, when they had left the dragons sleeping and retired together to the barracks-house; or, better still, he ought to have waited some weeks, until the settling of this first furious bustle of activity after their arrival: hindsight serving powerfully to show him how he might better have forwarded the suit he had not wholly intended to make.

Her rejection had been too practical, too quick, to give him much encouragement to renew his addresses under any future circumstances. In the ordinary way, he should have considered it to be a necessary end to their relations, but the mode of her refusal made it seem petulant to be wounded. Yet he was conscious of his lowering unhappiness. Perhaps, in turning Catherine’s advocate towards the state of matrimony, he had become one for himself, and without quite knowing had set his heart upon wedlock, or at any rate set his convictions

Temeraire finished his present line upon the sand-table, and lifting his foreleg away to let Emily carefully exchange it with the second, caught sight of Laurence. ‘Are you going?’ he inquired. ‘Will you be very late?’

‘Yes, I am quite sure,’ he said, and Temeraire lowered his head and peered at him searchingly. ‘Never mind,’ Laurence said, putting his hand on Temeraire’s muzzle. ‘It is nothing; I will tell you later.’

‘Perhaps you had better not go,’ Temeraire suggested.

‘There can be no question of that,’ Laurence said. ‘Mr. Roland, perhaps you will go and sit with Excidium this afternoon, and see if you can convince him to take a little more food, if you please.’

‘Yes, sir. May I take the children?’ Emily said, from the advanced age of twelve, meaning Demane and Sipho, the oldest of whom lifted his head indignantly at the name. ‘I have been teaching them how to read and write in English, in the afternoons,’ she added importantly, which filled Laurence with anticipatory horror at the results of this endeavour, as Emily’s penmanship most often resembled nothing more than snarled thread.

‘Very good,’ he said, consigning them to their fate, ‘if Temeraire does not need them.’

‘No; we are almost finished, and then Dyer may read to me,’ Temeraire said. ‘Laurence, do you suppose we have enough mushroom to spare, that we may send a sample with my letter?’

‘I hope so; Dorset tells me that they have managed to find a way to cultivate the thing, in some caves in Scotland, so what remains need not all be preserved against future need,’ Laurence said.

The carriage was old and not very comfortable, close and very hot and rattled horribly over the streets, which were in any case none too good this close to the covert. Chenery, so ordinarily irrepressible, was sweating and silent. Harcourt very pale, although this had a more prosaic cause than anxiety, and halfway along she was obliged in a choked voice to request they stop, so she might vomit into the street.

‘There, I feel better,’ she said, leaning back in, and looked only a little shaky when she stepped down from the carriage. She refused Laurence’s arm for the short walk through the courtyard into the offices.

‘A glass of wine, perhaps, before we go in?’ Laurence said to her softly, but she shook her head. ‘No; I will just take a touch of brandy,’ she said, and moistened her lips from the flask which she carried.

The new First Lord of the Admiralty and the other commissioners received them in the Board room. The Government had changed again in their absence, over the question of Catholic emancipation, Laurence gathered; and the Tories were in once more. Lord Mulgrave sat now at the head of the table, a little heavy by the jowls, with a serious expression and pulling a little at the end of his nose; the Tories did not think much of the Corps, under any circumstances.

But Nelson was there, also; and quite in defiance of the general atmosphere he rose as soon as they had entered, and remained standing, until in some embarrassment the other gentlemen at the table struggled to their feet; then coming forward he shook Laurence’s hand, in the handsomest manner, and asked to be presented.

‘I am filled with admiration,’ he declared, on being named to Catherine, and making her a noble leg, ‘and indeed humbled, Captain Harcourt, on having read your account. I have been accustomed,’ he added, smiling, ‘to think a little well of myself, and to like a little praise, I will be the first to admit it! But your courage stands above any example that I can easily recollect, in a lifetime of service. But we are keeping you standing; and you must have something to drink.’

‘Oh – no, nothing,’ Catherine said, so mortally crimson her freckles stood out as pale spots. ‘Nothing, thank you, sir; and it was nothing, I assure you, nothing which anyone else would not have done; which my fellow-officers did not do,’ she added, confusing her refusals of both refreshment and praise.

Lord Mulgrave did not look entirely satisfied to have his precedence thus usurped. A chair had of course to be offered her, and perforce them all; some shuffling ensued so they were ranged together in a close row along the farther side of the table, with the naval lords facing them along the other, but still it did not quite have the court-martial quality of standing for interrogation.

They went first through a tedious summation of events, and a reconcilement of the accounts: Chenery had set down ten days, for the flight which had carried them prisoner to the falls; Laurence had made it twelve, Catherine eleven; which difference consumed nearly an hour, and required several maps to be dug out by the secretaries, none of which precisely agreed with one another on the scale of the interior. ‘Sir, we would do better to apply to the dragons, for our facts,’ Laurence said finally, raising his head from the fourth of these, when they had only been able to agree conclusively that there had been a desert somewhere in the middle, and it had not been less than nine days’ flying. ‘I will vouch that Temeraire is well able to judge distances in flight, and while they did not follow directly in our course, I am certain at least he can tell us where the borders of the desert are, which we crossed, and the larger of the rivers.’

‘Hm,’ Mulgrave said, not encouragingly, stirring the report before him with a forefinger. ‘Well, put it aside; let us move to the matter of insubordination. If I understand correctly, all three beasts disregarded Captain Sutton’s orders, to return to Cape Town?’

‘Why, if you like to call it insubordination,’ Jane said. ‘It is a good deal more to the point that all three of them listened at all, and that they did not go haring off wild into the interior as soon as they knew their captains stolen. They displayed remarkable discipline, I assure you; more than I would have looked for under the circumstances.’

‘Then I should like to know what else it is to be called,’ Lord Palmerston said, from his seat further down. ‘A direct order disobeyed—’

‘Oh—’ Jane made half an impatient gesture with her hand, aborted. ‘A dragon of twenty tons is not to be called to account by any means that I know of, other than persuasion, and if they did not value their captains enough to disobey orders for them, they would not ever obey at all, so it is no use complaining. We might as well say that a ship is insubordinate because it will not go forward when there is no wind: you can command the first as easily as the latter.’

Laurence looked down at the table. He had seen dragons enough in China, who without any captain or handler whatsoever behaved with perfect discipline, to know her defence was flawed. He did not know a better name for it than insubordination, himself, and was not inclined to dismiss it so lightly; it in some way seemed to him more insulting than otherwise, to suggest that the dragons did not know better. That Temeraire had known where his duty lay, Laurence was quite certain; that Temeraire had disobeyed Sutton’s orders wilfully, only because he did not like to follow them, was also certain. He as surely had considered that disobedience justified and natural, not even requiring an explanation, and would have been surprised to find anything else truly expected of him; but he would never have denied the responsibility.

To draw such a fine point, however, before a hostile audience, perhaps inducing them to demand an irrational punishment, Laurence did not deem prudent; even if he were inclined to contradict Jane in such a setting. He was silent, while a brief wrestling over the question ensued. It finished unresolved, when Jane had said, ‘I am quite willing to lecture them on the subject, if you should like it, my Lords; or put them to a court-martial, if that seems to you sensible; and the best use of our time at present.’

‘For my part, gentlemen,’ Nelson said, ‘I think it cannot come as a surprise to those here, when I say that victory is the best of all justifications, and to answer it with reproaches looks to me very ill. The success of the expedition proves its merit.’

‘A very fine success,’ Admiral Gambier said sourly, ‘which has left a crucial colony not merely lost but in ruins, and seen the destruction of every port along the coast of Africa; most notably meritorious.’

‘No one could have expected a company of seven dragons to hold the African continent against a plague of hundreds, under any circumstances,’ Jane said, ‘and we had better be grateful to have, instead, what intelligence we have gained from the successful recovery of our officers.’

Gambier did not contradict her directly, but snorted and went on to inquire about another small discrepancy, in the reports. As the session dragged on, it became gradually clear through his line of questioning, and Lord Palmerston’s, they meant to imply that the prisoners had provoked the invasion deliberately, and subsequently had colluded to conceal the act. How they had gone about it was not specified; nor were their motives, until at last Gambier added, in an ironical tone, ‘And of course, it is the slave trade to which they objected so violently. Although, as everyone knows, the natives of the continent have made a practice of it themselves, long preceding the arrival of Europeans on their shore. Perhaps I should say, then it is they, who objected to the trade. I believe, Captain Laurence, that you have strong views on the subject; I cannot be speaking out of turn to say so.’

Laurence said only, ‘No, sir, you are not.’ He offered no further remark. He would not dignify the insinuation with a defence.

‘Have we nothing more pressing,’ Jane said, ‘that we must spend our time on the possibility, that a large company of officers arranged to have themselves abducted, and a dozen good men killed, so they could go and be offensive enough, among a foreign nation where they did not speak a word, to provoke them into assembling a dozen wings for immediate assault? Which, I suppose, should have been accomplished nearly overnight, for Heaven knows there are no difficulties in providing support, to a hundred dragons.’

The questioning, with its grinding focus on minutiae, was sullenly given up in another hour, when it had not provoked confession. There were no official grounds for court-martial, as no dragon had been lost, and if their Lordships meant to seek a trial for the loss of the Cape, it would have to be General Grey who faced it, and there was certainly no public sympathy for such an inquest. There was nothing left for them but to be deeply dissatisfied; and nothing left for Laurence and his fellow captains but to sit and listen to their complaints.

Several measures for recapturing the ports were proposed which had not the least chance of success. With poorly concealed exasperation, Jane forced their Lordships to recall the parade of failures that had been occasioned by attempts to establish colonies in the face of organized aerial hostilities: Spain in the New World, the total destruction of Roanoke and the disasters in Mysore. ‘You would need ships capable of throwing twenty tons of metal, and six formations to take the Cape long enough to secure the fort again, if they have not ripped it all down,’ she said, ‘and when you were done, you would have to leave two of those formations behind with a first-rate’s worth of guns, and I hardly like to think how many soldiers; and somehow supply them monthly, if the enemy did not have the bright notion of attacking the supply-ships further north.’

The proposals subsided. ‘My Lords, you are already aware, that I see no grounds to quarrel with Admiral Roland’s figures,’ Nelson said, ‘if I am perhaps, not so pessimistic of our chances to succeed, where the attempts of a previous century had failed. But even half such a force cannot be easily mustered, and certainly not unobserved; nor could it be transported from any civilized port, to any province of Africa, without the knowledge of the Navy, and indeed without its complaisance in the matter: I will stand surety for it.

‘If we cannot retake the Cape, therefore, or re-establish a foothold upon the continent, we may nevertheless satisfy ourselves that no other nation may do so. France, certainly, cannot aspire to it. I will not say that Napoleon may not conquer any place in the world from Calais to Peking, so long as he can walk to it; but if he must put to sea, he is at our mercy.

‘Indeed,’ he added, ‘I will go further. Without in any way ceasing to lament the dreadful loss we have suffered, in property and lives, from the savagery of this unprovoked assault, I will as a question of strategy declare myself heartily content to exchange all the convenience of our possession of the Cape, for the lack of any need to defend that position, henceforth. We have spoken before, gentlemen, in these halls, of all the expense and difficulty of improving the fortifications and patrolling the vast and uninhabited southern border against French incursion: an expense and difficulty which will now be borne instead by our erstwhile enemies.’

Laurence was by no means disposed to argue with him, but he could not comprehend at first, why the Admiralty should have feared such an incursion at all. The French had never shown the least ambition to seize the Cape, which if a valuable port in general was unnecessary to them, holding as they did the Île de France, off the eastern coast of Africa, and certainly a difficult nut to crack; they had enough to do to hold what maritime possessions they already had.

Mulgrave pulled at his nose a little, without comment. ‘Admiral Roland,’ he said at last reluctantly, as if he did not like to pronounce her title, ‘what is our present strength at the Channel, if you please?’

‘From Falmouth to Middlesbrough, eighty-three I put at fighting; another twenty who could rise to the occasion. Seventeen of those heavy-weight, and three Longwings, besides the Kazilik and the Celestial. At Loch Laggan we have another fourteen, hatchlings in training, but old enough to bring up; and more, of course, along the North Sea coast. We would be hard put to feed them, for an action of more than a day, but they would make a good relief.’

‘What is your estimation of our chances, should he make another attempt to invade by means of airships, such as he used at the Battle of Dover?’ Nelson asked.

‘If he doesn’t mind leaving half of them on the ocean floor, he might be able to land the rest, but I shouldn’t recommend it him,’ Jane said. ‘The militia will set them on fire as quick as they can come in past us. No; I asked for a year, and it has not been so long, but the cure makes up for all that, and having Lily and Temeraire back in fighting trim: the French cannot come by air.’

‘Yes, the cure,’ Nelson said. ‘It is I trust secured? There is no chance it might be stolen? I believe I heard of an incident—’

‘Why, I beg you will not blame the poor fellow,’ Jane said.

‘He is a lad of fourteen, and his Winchester was in a bad way. There were some sorry rumours, I am afraid to say, that there was not enough of the cure to go about, because we began a little slowly, to see how small the dose might be kept before we ran around pouring it down their gullets. There was no harm done, and he confessed it all himself, quite rightly, when I put it to all the captains. We put a guard on the supply, afterwards, to prevent temptation, and no one else has gone poking about.’

‘But if another attempt should be made?’ Nelson said. ‘Might the guard be easily increased, and perhaps some fortification arranged?’

‘After feeding every blessed dragon in Britain and the colonies on the stuff, there is precious little of it left to steal, if anyone should want to,’ Jane said, ‘except what the gentlemen of the Royal Society have managed to persuade to take root up at Loch Laggan; and as for that, if anyone wants to try and take it from the middle of a covert, they are welcome.’

‘Very good. So, gentlemen,’ Nelson said, turning to the other commissioners, ‘you see that as a result of these events, deplorable as they may be in themselves, we may now be quite certain in our control of the cure: at least as certain as our own efforts could have made us.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Laurence said, making sense at last he thought of his preoccupation, and with dismay, ‘is there reason to believe the disease has been communicated to the Continent? Are the French dragons taken ill?’

‘We hope so,’ Nelson said, ‘although we yet lack confirmation upon the point; but the spy-courier, the Plein-Vite whom we captured, was sent over to them two days ago, and we hope any day to receive word that they have been contaminated with the disease.’

‘The only damned silver lining to the bloody mess,’ Gambier said, to a general murmur of agreement. ‘It will be some reparation to see the Corsican’s face, when his own beasts are all coughing blood.’

‘Sir,’ Laurence managed; beside him Catherine was sickly-wan with horror, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. ‘Sir, I must protest against—’ He felt as though he were choking. He remembered little Sauvignon, who had kept Temeraire company that long dreadful week when they thought all hope was lost; when Laurence had expected to see his dragon coughing blood, at any moment.

‘I should damn well hope so,’ Jane said, standing up. ‘This is why you had her sent to Eastbourne, I suppose; a splendid creeping business. Will we be driving a plague-ship into their harbour, next, pray tell me, or poisoning their convoys of grain? Like a parcel of damned scrubs—’

Musgrave straightened in his chair, outraged he snapped, ‘Ma’am, you are out of order’

Admiral Gambier said, ‘This is what comes of—’

‘Why damn you, Gambier, come around here and say so,’ she said, putting her hand to her sword, and the room devolved very quickly to shouting and scorn, so even the Marines outside the door put in their heads, timidly.

‘You cannot mean to do this,’ Laurence said. ‘Your Grace, you have met Temeraire, spoken to him; you cannot imagine they are not thinking creatures, beasts to be put to the slaughter—’

Palmerston said, ‘Tender-hearted womanish folly—’ seconded by Gambier, and Ward.

‘—the enemy,’ Nelson said, over the noise, trying to reply, ‘and we must seize the opportunity which has been offered us, to level the distinction between our aerial forces and theirs—’

The sly, underhanded way it had all been managed, proved well enough that the commissioners had expected opposition, and chosen to avoid it. They were no more ready to be harangued after the fact, and when Jane had shortly grown a little louder, they had reached the limits of their tolerance. ‘—and this,’ Jane was shouting, ‘is how I am told: days past the event, when the stupidest scuttling crab might conceive that as soon as he knows what has happened, he will not fail to come across at once. At once, if he is not a gawping fool. And you drag me here to Dover, with two Longwings and our Celestial, with the damned Channel hanging open like Rotten Row—’ when Musgrave rising beckoned to the guards, to stand open the door.

‘Then we must not keep you,’ he said, rather icily, and added, when Jane would have gone on, ‘You are dismissed, madam,’ holding out the formal orders for the defence of the Channel, the papers crumpling savagely in Jane’s fist as she stormed out from the room.

Catherine leaned heavily on Chenery’s arm as they left, pale with her lip bitten to dark red. Nelson, following, stopped Laurence in the hall before he could go far after them, with a hand to his arm; and spoke to him at length: about what, Laurence did not entirely follow; a cutting-out expedition which he proposed to make, to Copenhagen, the Danish fleet to be seized there. ‘I would be glad to have you, Captain,’ he finished, ‘and Temeraire, if you can be spared from the defence of the Channel, at least for a week’s time.’

Laurence stared at him, feeling heavy and stupid, baffled at Nelson’s easy manner. He had met Temeraire, had spoken with him; he could not plead ignorance. He might not have been the prime mover, of this experiment; but he was no opponent of it, whose opposition might have been everything, would have been everything, surely.

The silence grew strained, then oppressive. Nelson paused, said, with a little more hauteur, ‘You are fresh from a long voyage, and I am sure tired from the questioning; I have considered it an unnecessary waste, from the first. We will speak again tomorrow; I will come to the covert in the morning, before you must return.’

Laurence touched his hat; there was nothing he could say.

Out of the building and into the street, sick to his heart and wretched, seeing nothing; the touch on his elbow made him startle, and he stared at the small, shabby man standing next to him. The expression Laurence wore must have shown some sign of what he felt; the small man bared a mouthful of wooden teeth in an attempt at a placating smile, thrust into Laurence’s hand a packet of papers, and touching his own forelock dashed away, without a word spoken.

Mechanically Laurence unfolded it: a suit for damages in the amount of ten thousand three hundred pounds, two hundred and six slaves valued at fifty pounds a head.

Temeraire was asleep in the lingering, slanted light; dappled. Laurence did not wake him, but sat down on the rough-hewn log bench beneath the shelter of the pine-trees, facing him, and silently bent his head: in his hands he turned over the neat roll of crisp rice-paper, the seal in red ink already affixed, which Dyer had handed him. The letter could not be allowed to go, he supposed; too much chance of interception, risk that the intelligence might find its way back somehow to Lien, if she yet retained any allies in the Chinese court.

The clearing was empty: the men still out on their leave. From the small forge, past the trees, Blythe’s hammer steadily rang on the harness-buckles, a thin metallic sound exactly like the odd voice of the African bird, calling along the river, and Laurence found the dust of the clearing thick in his nostrils, the new-copper smell of blood and dirt vividly recalled, the scent of sour vomit. He had the strong sensation of rope, pressing into the skin of his face, and he rubbed his hand uneasily over his cheek as if he might find a mark there, though they had all faded.

Jane joined him after a little while, her fine coat and neckcloth discarded; there were bloodstains on her shirt. She sat down on the bench and leaned forward mannishly with her elbows braced against her knees, her hair still plaited back but the finer strands about the face wisping free.

‘May I beg a day’s leave of you?’ Laurence asked, eventually. ‘I must see my solicitors, in the City. I know it cannot be for long.’

‘A day,’ she said. She chafed her hands together absently, though it was not cold in the least, even with the sun making its last farewells behind the barracks-house. ‘Not longer.’

‘Surely they will keep her quarantined?’ Laurence said, low. ‘Her captain saw our own quarantine-grounds; he must have realized she was taken ill, as soon as he saw her. He would never expose the other dragons.’

‘Oh, they thought it out with both hands; never fear,’ Jane said. ‘I have had the account of it all, now. He was sent home by boat, she was let to see him off, from a distance, and told that he had been sent to the covert outside of Paris, where the mail-couriers nest. I dare say she flung herself directly into their ranks. O, what a filthy business. By now it has been well spread, I am sure: the couriers go every quarter of an hour, and new come in, as often.’

‘Jane,’ Laurence said, ‘Napoleon’s couriers go to Vienna. They go to Russia and to Spain, and all through Prussia – the Prussian dragons themselves are penned in French breeding-grounds; our allies whom we deserted, in their hour of need – they go even to Istanbul, and from there, where will the disease not be carried?’

‘Yes, it is very clever,’ she said, smiling, with a parchment thinness to the corners of her mouth. ‘The strategy is very sound; no one could argue with it. At a stroke we go from very nearly the weakest aerial force, in Europe, to the strongest.’

‘By murder,’ Laurence said. ‘It can be called nothing else; murder.’ Nor was there any reason why the devastation should end in Europe. All the maps over which he had laboured, through their half-year’s journey home from China, unfolded again for him without any need for their physical presence; the wavering course of their journey now made a track for slow creeping death to run along in reverse. Strategy, strategy, would call it a victory to see the Chinese aerial legions decimated: without them, the Chinese infantry and cavalry could hardly stand against British artillery. The distant corners of India brought under control, Japan humbled; perhaps a sick beast might be delivered to the Inca, and the fabled cities of gold flung open at last.

‘I am sure they will find a prettier name for it, in the history books,’ Jane said. ‘It is only dragons, you know; we ought think nothing more of it, than if we were to set fire to a few dozen ships in their harbour, which we would gladly enough do.’

He bowed his head. ‘And this is how wars should be fought.’

‘No,’ she said tiredly. ‘This is how they are won.’ She put her hands on her knees, and pushed herself standing. ‘I cannot stay, I must take the courier for Dover at once; I have persuaded Excidium to let me go. I will need you by tomorrow night.’ She rested her hand on his shoulder a moment, and left him.

He did not move, a long while, and when he at last raised his head, Temeraire was awake and watching him, the slitpupilled eyes a faint gleam in the dark. ‘What has happened?’ Temeraire asked, quietly, and quietly Laurence told him.

Temeraire was not angry, precisely; he listened, and grew rather intent than savage, crouched low; when Laurence had done, he said, simply, ‘What are we to do?’

Laurence wavered uncertainly, he did not understand; he had expected some other response, something more than this. He said at last, ‘We are to go to Dover—’ And stopped.

Temeraire had drawn back his head. ‘No,’ he said, after a moment’s strange stillness. ‘No; that is not what I meant, at all.’

Silence. ‘There is nothing to – no protest which – she is already sent,’ Laurence said, finally. He felt thick-tongued and helpless. ‘The invasion is to be expected at any moment, we are to stand guard at the Channel—’

‘No,’ Temeraire said loudly. There was a terrible resonance in his voice; the trees murmured back with it, shivering. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘We must take them the cure. How can we come at it? We can go back to Africa, if we must—’

‘You are speaking treason,’ Laurence said, without feeling, oddly calm; the words only a recitation of fact, distant.

‘Very well,’ Temeraire said, ‘if I am an animal, and we may be poisoned off like inconvenient rats, I cannot be expected to care; and I do not. You cannot tell me I should obey; you cannot tell me I should stand idle—’

‘It is treason!’ Laurence said.

Temeraire stopped, and looked at him only. Laurence said, low and exhausted, ‘It is treason. Not disobedience, not insubordination; it cannot – there is no other name which it can bear. This Government is not of my party; my King is ill and mad; but still I am his subject. You have sworn no oath, but I have.’ He paused. ‘I have given my word.’

They were silent again. There was a clamour back in the trees; some of the ground-crew men returning from their day’s leave, noisy with liquor; a snatch of raised song – that saucy little trim-rigged doxy – and roar of laughter, as they went into the barracks-house, their lanterns vanishing.

‘Then I must go alone,’ Temeraire said, wretchedly, so softly that for once there was real difficulty in hearing the words. ‘I will go alone.’

Laurence breathed once more. Hearing it said aloud, made everything quite clear. He was now grateful that Jane had refused; that he had not that pain to give. ‘No,’ he said, and stepped forward, to put his hand on Temeraire’s side.

Chapter Sixteen

Laurence wrote to Jane, the merest word; no apology could suffice, and he would not insult her, by asking her to sympathize, adding only:

… and I wish to make clear, that I have in no way made my thoughts known to, nor received Aid of, my officers, my crew, or any man; and, neither deserving nor soliciting any excuse for my own Part, do heartily entreat that all blame attaching to these my actions should be laid at my door alone, and not upon those who cannot even be charged, as might on similar occasions be merited, with culpable blindness, my Resolve having been formed bare minutes before setting ink to this Page, and will upon its enclosure be immediately carried out.

I will not trespass further upon the Patience which I fear I have already tried past all hope of endurance, and beg you only to believe me, in despite of the present Circumstances,

Yr obdt Svt, etc.

He folded it over twice, sealed it with especial care, and laid it flat upon his neatly made cot, the address face upwards; and left his small quarters, walking between the narrow rows of snoring men to go outside again. ‘You may be dismissed, Mr. Portis,’ he said to the officer of the watch, nodding at the edge of the clearing. ‘I will take Temeraire up for a turn; we will not have a quiet flight again in some time.’

‘Very good, sir,’ Portis said, barely concealing a bloodshot yawn, and did not stay to be persuaded further: not quite drunk, but his gait a little shambling as he went back to the barracks house.

It was not quite nine. In an hour, at most two, Laurence supposed, they should be missed; he relied on scruple to forbid Ferris’s opening the letter, addressed to Jane, until he began to suffer a greater degree of anxiety, which might save another hour; but then the pursuit would be furious. There were some five couriers in the covert sleeping now; more by Parliament; some of the fastest flyers in all Britain. They had not only to outrun them to Loch Laggan, but after to the coast: every covert, every shore-battery from Dover to Edinburgh would be roused to bar their passage.

Temeraire was waiting, ruff pricked, agitated and crouched small to conceal it. He put Laurence upon his neck, and launched quickly; London falling away, a collection of lamps and lanterns and the bitter smoke of ten thousand chimneys, ships’ lights moving gently down the Thames, and only the rushing hollow sound of wind. Laurence shut his eyes, until they had grown accustomed, then looked at his compass to give Temeraire the direction: four hundred miles, north by northwest, into the dark.

It was strange to be alone on Temeraire’s back again with purpose and not merely a pleasure-flight; the ordinary round of duty did not often allow it. Unburdened but by the triviality of Laurence’s weight and the barest harness, Temeraire stretched himself and drove high aloft, to the margins where the air grew thin; clouds passing beneath them over the ground. His ruff was flattened down, and the wind came whistling hard over his back, cold at these heights even in the midst of August. Laurence drew his leather coat more snugly close, and put his hands beneath his arms. Temeraire was going very fast; his wings beating a full, cupped stroke, and the world beneath blurred when Laurence looked over his shoulder.

Close towards dawn, Laurence saw to the distant west faintly an eerie glow which illuminated the curve of the earth, as if the sun meant to rise the wrong way round; a colour broken, now and again, by belching smoke: Manchester, and its mills, he guessed, so they had gone some hundred and sixty miles, in less than seven hours. Twenty knots, twenty-five.

A little after dawn, Temeraire landed, without a word, at the shores of a small lake. He drank deeply, his head thrust partway beneath the water, gulps travelling convulsively down his throat; he stopped, and panted, and drank some more. ‘Oh, no; I am not tired; not very tired, only I was so thirsty,’ he said a little thickly, turning his head back: despite his brave words he shook himself all over, and blinked away a dazed expression before he asked, in a more normal tone, ‘Shall I set you down a moment?’

‘No; I am very well,’ Laurence said; he had his grog-flask with him, and in his pocket a little biscuit, which he had not touched. He wanted nothing; his stomach was closed. ‘You are making good time, my dear.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Temeraire said, complacently. ‘Oh! It is more pleasant than anything, to go so quickly, in pleasant weather, only the two of us; I should like it above all, if only,’ he added, looking round sorrowfully, ‘I did not fear that you were unhappy, dear Laurence.’

Laurence would have liked to reassure him; he could not. They had passed over Nottinghamshire during the night; they might have passed over his home, his father’s house. He rubbed his hand upon the neck-scales, and said quietly, ‘We had better be off; we are more visible, in the day.’

Temeraire drooped, and did not answer, but launched himself aloft again.

They came in over Loch Laggan after seven hours more, at the dinner hour; Temeraire without even the pretence of courtesy or warning dived directly into the feeding grounds, and not waiting for the herdsmen seized two surprised cows out of the pen: his descent too swift even for them to bellow. Alighting with them on the ledge overlooking the training flights, he crammed them one after another down his throat, not pausing even to swallow the first before he began upon the second.

He gave a relieved sigh, afterwards, and belched replete; then daintily began to lick clean his talons before he made a guilty start: they were observed.

Celeritas was lying in the waning sun, upon the ledge, his eyes half-lidded. He looked aged, as he had not during their training, so long ago and yet scarcely three years gone; the lustre of his pale jade-coloured markings had faded, as cloth washed in too-hot water, and the yellow darkened to a bronzy tone. He coughed, a little hoarsely. ‘You have put on some length, I see.’

‘Yes, I am almost as long as Maximus,’ Temeraire said, ‘or anyway, not much shorter; and also I am a Celestial,’ he added, smugly: they had left off their training under the pressure of the last threat of invasion, in the year four, at the time unaware of Temeraire’s real breed or his particular curious ability of the Divine Wind and thinking him instead an Imperial: still a most valuable breed, but not as vanishingly rare.

‘So I had heard,’ Celeritas said. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said. ‘Well—’

Laurence let himself down and stepped forward. ‘I beg your pardon, sir; we are here from London, for some of the mushrooms: may I ask where they are kept?’ They had resolved on this brazen frontal assault, as offering the best chance of success; even if Temeraire might look daunted now.

Celeritas snorted. ‘They are nursing the things like eggs: downstairs, in the baths,’ he said. ‘You will find Captain Wexler at table, I believe; he is commander of the fort now,’ and turned to Temeraire inquisitively, while Temeraire went hunching steadily down. Laurence did not like to leave him alone, to face all the pain of lying in the face of the friendly, unwary curiosity of his old training-master, but there was no time: Celeritas would soon begin to wonder at the absence of their crew, and the most hardened liar could scarcely have concealed this treachery for long.

It was strange to walk the corridors again, now familiar instead of alien; the cheerful roar of the communal dining-tables, which he could hear around the corners, like the blurred continuous noise of a distant cataract: welcoming, and yet closed to him utterly now; he felt himself already set apart. There were no servants in the halls, likely all of them busy with the dinner service, but for one small lad running by with a stack of clean napkins, who did not give him a second glance.

Laurence did not go to Captain Wexler: his excuse could not withstand the absence of orders, of any real explanation; instead he went directly to the narrow, humid stairway which led down to the baths, and in the dressing-room put off swiftly his boots, his coat, flung down upon the shelves with his sword laid down beside them; his trousers and shirt he left on, and taking with him a towel went into the great tiled steam room. He could dimly see a few somnolent forms drowsing, but in the clouds no faces could be easily made out, and he moved on with quick purpose; no one spoke to him, until he had nearly reached the far door, then a fellow lying with a towel over his face lifted it off. Laurence did not know him: an older lieutenant perhaps, or a younger captain, with a thick bristling moustache dripping water off its corners. ‘Beg pardon,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ Laurence said, stiffening.

‘Be a good fellow and shut the door quick, if you mean to go through,’ the man said, and putting himself down covered his face again.

Laurence did not understand, until he had opened the door to the large bathing-room beyond and the thick miasmic stench of the mushrooms assaulted him, mingled with the pungent smell of a dragon-midden. He pulled the door to behind him, quickly, and put his hand over his face, breathing deep through his mouth. The room was deserted, nearly; the dragon-eggs sat gleaming wetly in their niches, safe behind the wrought-iron fence along the back of the room, and beneath them on the floor great tubs of black fertile soil, speckled reddish-brown with dragon waste for fertilizer, and mushrooms like round buttons poking from the dirt.

There were two young Marines, undoubtedly without much seniority, standing guard: very unhappy, and nearly red enough in the face to match their coats from the room’s intense heat; their white trousers were stained with lines of running dye. They looked at Laurence rather hopefully as, if nothing else, a distraction; he nodded to them and said, ‘I am come from Dover, for more of the mushrooms; pray bring out one of those tubs.’

They looked dubious, and hesitated; the older ventured, ‘Sir, we aren’t supposed to, unless the commander says so, himself.’

‘Then I beg your pardon for the irregularity; my orders said nothing of the sort,’ Laurence said. ‘Be so kind as to send and confirm them, with him, if you please; I will wait here,’ he said to the younger soldier, who did not stay to be invited again, much to the poorly stifled outrage of the older man: but he had the key, hanging from the chain on his belt, so he could not be allowed to go.

Laurence waited, as the metal door swung-to again; waited; the ship turning slowly through the wind, her broadside coming to bear, the enemy’s stern in sight; the clang sounded, as a bell, and he struck the Marine a heavy blow, just below the ear, as the man gazed scowling after his fellow.

The man fell staggering to one knee, his face turning up in surprise, his mouth opening; Laurence struck him again, hard, his knuckles bursting and leaving smears of blood along the Marine’s cheekbone and jaw; the soldier fell heavily and was still. Laurence found that he was breathing raggedly. He had to steady his hands before he could unlatch the key.

The tubs were of varied sizes, half-barrels of wood filled with dirt, most of them large and unwieldy. Laurence seized the smallest, and threw over it the towel he had brought, hot and damp already only from the moist air of the baths. He went out by the far door, walking quickly through the rest of the circuit, back to the dressing rooms: still deserted, but dinner would by now be far advanced, and men left the tables as they pleased. He could expect interruption at any moment; sooner if the Marine were more inclined to be dutiful than dawdling, and reached the commander. Laurence flung on his boots and coat haphazardly over his wet things, and went up the stairs with the tub balanced on his shoulder, his other hand gripping tight to the rail: not recklessly; he did not mean to do this much, and fail. He burst out into the hall, and went hurriedly around a corner to straighten his clothes: if he were not so plainly disordered, he would not make a spectacle enough to draw conscious attention, he hoped, despite the odd burden of the tub. The linen covering did not wholly muffle the stench, but it wafted behind him rather than before.

The noise of the dining hall was indeed already less; he heard voices, nearer, in the corridors; and passed a pair of servants laden down with dirty dishes. Looking down another corridor which crossed his own, he saw a couple of young midwingmen go racing across from one door to the next, shouting like boys, gleefully. In another moment he heard more running footsteps, boots falling heavily, fresh shouting: but the tone was very different.

He abandoned circumspection and ran, clumsy with the tub and shifting it every moment, until he burst out onto the ledge. Celeritas looked over at him with his dark green eyes perplexed and doubtful; Temeraire said in a sudden rush, ‘Pray forgive me, it is all a hum, we are taking them to France so all the dragons there do not die, and tell them Laurence did not like to do it, at all, only I insisted upon it,’ not a pause for breath or punctuation, and snatching Laurence with the tub up in his talons, he flung himself away into the air.

They went rushing away bare moments before five men charged out after them; bells were ringing madly, and Temeraire had not settled Laurence back upon his neck before the beacon-fire went alight and dragons came pouring out of the castle grounds like smoke.

‘Are you safe?’ Temeraire cried. ‘Go, go at once,’ Laurence shouted for an answer, lashing harness straps around the tub to hold it down before him, and Temeraire whipped himself straight and flew, flew; the pursuit was hot upon them. Not all were dragons that Laurence knew: there was one gangly-looking Anglewing, nearly in the lead, and a few Winchesters gaining quickly on them: not to much purpose, but perhaps able to interfere a little with their flight, and delay them for the others. Temeraire said, ‘Laurence, I must go higher; are you warm enough?’

He was soaked through, and chilled to the skin already by their flight, despite the heat of the sun. ‘Yes,’ he said, and pulled his coat closer about him. A bank of clouds pressed down upon the crowns of the mountains, and Temeraire pushed into them, the clinging mist springing up in fat droplets on the buckles, the waxed and oiled leather of the harness, Temeraire’s glossy scales. The dragons chasing called to one another, roaring, and plunged in after them, distant obscure shadows in the fog, their voices echoing and muffled at odd alternate turns. He scaled upwards through a strange and formless landscape without direction, haunted by their ghostly images.

He burst clear just short of a towering white mountain-face, stark against the open blue, and Temeraire roared as he came: a hammer-blow against the solid-packed ice and snow; Laurence clung to the harness, shivering involuntarily, as Temeraire pulled up nearly vertical, climbing along the face of the mountain, and the pursuit came chasing out of the clouds only to recoil from the thundering, steady roar of avalanche, coming down upon them like a week’s snowstorm compressed into a heartbeat: the Winchesters all squalling, and scattering away from it like a flock of sparrows.

‘South, due south,’ Laurence said, calling forward to Temeraire, pointing him the way as they came over the peak and broke away, losing the more distant followers. But Laurence could see the beacons going up already down the long line to the coast: the beacons which ordinarily would have warned of invasion, instead now carrying the warning in the other direction and ahead of them. Every covert, every dragon would be alert, even without knowing what was the matter precisely, and would try to stop them in their flight. They could not fly in any direction which would bring them upon a covert, and see them headed off and caught between two forces; their only hope for an escape lay along the more sparsely guarded North Sea coast, short of Edinburgh. Yet they had also to be near enough to make it across to the Continent; with Temeraire already tired.

Night would come, soon; three hours more would give them the safety of dark. Three hours; Laurence wiped his face against his sleeve, and huddled down.

Temeraire came at last exhausted to ground, in darkness, six hours later; his pace had slackened, little by little, the slow measured flap of his wings like a timepiece winding down, until Laurence looking over had seen not a single flickering light; not a shepherd’s bonfire, not a torch, as far as his sight could reach, and said at last, ‘Down, my dear; you must have some rest.’

He thought they were in Scotland still, or perhaps Northumberland; he was not certain. They were well south of Edinburgh and Glasgow now, somewhere in a shallow valley; he could hear water trickling somewhere near, but they were too tired to go find it. He ate all his biscuit, ravenous suddenly, and took the last of his grog, huddled up against the curve of Temeraire’s neck: it sprawled out untidily from his body, his bedraggled wings; he slept as he had landed.

Laurence stripped to the skin, and laid his wet things out on Temeraire’s side, to let the native heat of the dragon’s body do what it could to dry them; then rolled himself in his coat to sleep as best he could. The wind was cool enough, among the mountains, to keep the chill upon his skin. Temeraire gave a low rumbling murmur, somewhere in his belly, and twitched; there was distantly a hurried rustling, a clatter of frightened hooves; but Temeraire did not wake.

The next he knew it was morning, and Temeraire was feasting red-mouthed upon a deer, with another lying dead beside it; he swallowed down his meal and looked at Laurence anxiously. ‘It is quite nice raw, too, and I can tear it up for you small; or perhaps you can use your sword?’ he suggested.

‘No; I pray you eat it all. I have not been at hard labour as have you: I can stand to be parted from my dinner a little longer,’ Laurence said, getting up to scrub his face in the small trickling creek, some ten paces only from where they had collapsed, and to put back on his clothes. Temeraire had attempted to spread them out upon a warm sunny rock, with his claws: they were not very damp anymore, but a little mauled about; at least the tears did not show much, under the long coat.

After Temeraire had finished his breakfast, Laurence sketched out the line of the North Sea coastline, and the Continent. ‘We cannot risk going much south of York,’ Laurence said. ‘Once past the mountains the country is too settled; we will be seen at once by day and perhaps by night also. We must make for the mountains on the coast near Scarborough, pass there the night, and make Holland our final mark across the sea: the country there is unsettled enough I hope we need not fear immediate challenge. Then along the coastline to France; and we shall hope they do not shoot us down without a word.’

He put his tattered shirt upon a stick, in the end, to make a ragged flag of parley; and waved it mightily against the side of Temeraire’s neck, while they came in over Dunkirk. Beneath them in the harbour, nevertheless, there was a frantic alarm aboard the French ships, when they saw Temeraire coming, to show that the fame of his sinking of the Valérie had spread this far, and many useless attempts were made, at firing cannon at him, although he was considerably too high aloft to be in range.

The French dragons came charging in a determined cloud: already some of them were coughing, and they were none of them in a mood to converse, until Temeraire roared out like thunder in their faces, and took them all aback, then loudly said, ‘Ârret! Je ne vous ai pas attaqué; il faut que vous m’écouter: nous sommes venus pour vous apporter du médicament.’

As the first handful were mulling this over, flying circles around them, another party came flying fresh from the covert roaring their own defiance; the two groups grew rapidly more confused, captains shouting at one another over their speaking-trumpets, until at last signals were issued, and they were escorted to the ground by a wary honour-guard, six dragons on either side and more preceding them and behind. When they had been brought down, in a wide and pleasant meadow, there was a good deal of shuffling and edging back, not frightened but wary, and anxious murmurs from the dragons as their officers descended.

Laurence unstrapped the tub, and unlatched his own carabiners: men were already swarming up the sides of Temeraire’s harness, and there were pistols levelled at him before he stood. ‘You will surrender,’ a young lieutenant said, narrow-eyed and thickly accented.

‘We already have,’ Laurence said, tiredly, and held out to him the wooden tub; the young man looked at it, perplexed, wincing away from the stench. ‘They are to cure the cough,’ Laurence said, ‘la grippe, des dragonnes,’ and pointed to one of the coughing dragons.

It was taken from him with much suspicion, but passed down, if not as the priceless treasure it was, at least with some degree of care. The tub vanished from his sight, at any rate, and so beyond his concern; a great sinking weariness was spreading through him, and he fumbled with more awkwardness even than usual at the harness-straps, climbing down, until he slipped and fell the last five feet to the ground.

‘Laurence,’ Temeraire cried urgently, leaning towards him; another French officer sprang forward and seizing Laurence by the arm dragged him up and put the muzzle of a pistol, cold and gritty with powder-grains, to his neck.

‘I am well,’ Laurence said, restraining with an effort a cough; he did not wish to jar the pistol. ‘I am well, Temeraire, you do not need to—’

He was permitted to say no more; there were many hands upon him, and the officers gathering tight around him like a knot; he was half-carried across the meadow towards the tense and waiting line of French dragons, a prisoner, and Temeraire made a low wordless cry of protest as he was dragged away.

Chapter Seventeen

Laurence spent the night in a solitary uncomfortable cell, in the bowels of the covert headquarters: clammy and hot, without a breath of air. The narrow barred window at the top of wall looked out on a barren parade ground, and let in only dust. They gave him a little thin porridge and a little water; a little straw had been left on the floor for a bed; but there was none of that humane self-interest which would have let him buy greater comfort, though he had a little money in his pockets.

They did not rob him, but his hints were ignored: a cold resentful suspicion in their looks, and some muttered colloquial remarks that he thought he was meant to understand better than his limited French would allow. He supposed the news had spread, by now, among them: the nature of the disease, the virulence; and he would have been as little forgiving as they were. The guards were all old aviators, former ground crewmen with wooden legs, or missing arms; a sinecure, he supposed, like the post of cook aboard a ship; although no cook he had ever known would have refused a neat bribe for a cup of his slush, not from the devil himself.

It did not touch him in a personal way, however. He gave up the attempt, and threw himself down on the dirty pallet with his coat wrapped around him, and slept dreamless and long; when he roused with the gaolers’ clanging delivery of the morning’s porridge, he looked down at the floor, where the window square of sunlight lay divided neatly into its barred sections, and shut his eyes again, without bothering to rise and eat.

He had to be woken in the afternoon by rough shaking, and he was brought afterwards to another room with a handful of grim-faced senior officers arranged before him, along the long side of a table. They interrogated him with some harshness as to the nature of the mushrooms, the disease, and his purpose in bringing the cure, if a cure it was. He was forced to repeat himself, and exhorted to speak more quickly when he went slowly in his stumbling French; when he tried for a little more speed, and misspoke, the errors were seized upon, and shaken like a rat-killing dog might, to squeeze all the life there was out of them.

Having been served such a black turn to begin with, they had some right to suspect him the instrument of some further underhanded trick, instead of one acting to prevent it; nevertheless he found it hard to bear up; and when they began to ask him other questions, of the position of ships in the Channel, the strength in the Dover covert, he nearly answered at first, only from fatigue and the habit of replying, before he caught himself up.

‘You do know we may hang you as a spy,’ one of the officers said coldly, when Laurence had flatly refused to speak. ‘You came in without colours, without uniform—’

‘If you wish to object, because I had made my shirt a parley-flag, it would be kind of you at least to arrange for me to have another,’ Laurence said, wondering with black humour if next they would offer to flog him. ‘As for the rest, I had rather hang for a British spy, than be French.’

He ate the cold waiting porridge when they had put him back into his cell, mechanically, and went to look out of the window at what nothing there was to see. He was not afraid, only still very tired.

The interrogations went on a week, but eased gradually from suspicion to a wary and bewildered sort of gratitude, in step with the progress of the trial they had made, of one of the mushrooms. Even when they had been convinced the cure was as real as the disease, the officers did not know what to make of Laurence’s actions; they came at him with the question in one way and then another, and when he repeated that he had only come to bring the cure, to save the dragons’ lives, they said, ‘Yes, but why?’

As he could give them no better answer, they settled for thinking him quixotic, with which he could not argue, and his keepers grew sufficiently mellow to let him buy some bread and the occasional stewed fowl. At the end of the week, they put a fetter on his leg, and took him out to see Temeraire, established in respectful state in the covert, and under guard only by one unhappy Petit Chevalier, not much smaller than he, whose nose dripped continuously upon the ground. One small tub of course would not do, to cure all those infected, and although it had evidently been delivered successfully to the charge of several expert Brêton mushroom-farmers, many of the sick dragons would have to suffer for several months more before there was enough of the cure to go around. Where the disease might spread further, Laurence could only hope that with the cure established in England and France, the quarrel of the two powers must deliver it to their respective allies also, and cupidity among such a widened number of keepers lead to its eventual dispersal.

‘I am very well,’ Temeraire said. ‘I like their beef here, and they have been obliging enough to cook it for me, do you know? The dragons here at least are perfectly willing to try cooked food, and Validius here,’ he nodded to the Petit Chevalier, who sneezed to acknowledge it, ‘had a notion, that they might stew it for us with wine; I have never understood what was so nice about it, that you were always drinking it, but now I do; it has a very nice flavour.’

Laurence wondered how many bottles had been sacrificed, to sate the hunger of two very large dragons; perhaps not a very good year, he thought, and hoped they had not yet formed the notion of drinking spirits unadulterated by cooking. ‘I am glad you are so comfortably situated,’ he said, and made no complaint of his own accommodation.

‘Yes, and,’ Temeraire added, with not a little smugness, ‘they would like me to give them five eggs, all to very large dragons, and one of them a fire-breather; although I have told them I cannot,’ he finished wistfully, ‘because of course they would teach the eggs French, and make them attack our friends, in England; they were surprised that I should mind.’

This was of a piece with the questions Laurence had faced: all the worse grief, that he could so naturally be taken for a whole-hearted turncoat, judged by his own acts; it was the greater curiosity to all when he did not offer to be a traitor. He was glad to see Temeraire contented, and sincerely so; but he returned to his cell lower in his spirits, conscious that Temeraire would be as happy here, as he was in England; happier, perhaps.

‘I would be grateful for a shirt, and trousers,’ Laurence said, ‘if my purse can stand it; I want for nothing else.’

‘The clothing I insist you will permit me to arrange from my own part,’ DeGuignes said, ‘and we will see you at once in better accommodations; I am ashamed,’ he added, with a cold look over his shoulder that made the gaolers quail away from where they were listening and peeping in at the door, ‘that you should have met with such indignity, monsieur.’

Laurence bowed his head. ‘You are very kind, sir; I have no complaint to make of my treatment, and I am very sensible of the honour which you do in coming so far to see me,’ he said quietly.

They had last met under very different circumstances: at a banquet in China, DeGuignes there at the head of Napoleon’s envoy, and Laurence with the British. Although a political enemy, he had been impossible to dislike; and Laurence without knowing it had already endeared himself to the gentleman, some time before, by taking some pains to preserve the life of his nephew, taken prisoner in a failed boarding attempt; so the encounter had been, so far as personal matters went, a friendly one.

That he had come all this way was however a marked kindness; Laurence knew himself to be a prisoner of no great importance or rank, except as surety for Temeraire’s good behaviour, and DeGuignes must have been thoroughly occupied. While his embassy had failed in its original designs, DeGuignes had succeeded in one marked particular: seducing Lien to Napoleon’s cause, and bringing her back with him to France. He had been promoted for it, to some higher office in the foreign service; Laurence had heard something of it, interested more in the name than in the rank. Certainly DeGuignes now showed all the signs of prosperity and position, in his handsome rings and in the elegance of his silk and linen coat.

‘It is little enough amends for what you have suffered,’ DeGuignes said, ‘and I am here not only in my own person, but to bear you all the assurances of His Majesty that you will soon better feel the gratitude of France, which you have so richly earned.’

Laurence said nothing; he would have preferred to remain in his cell, starved, stripped naked, and fettered with iron, than be rewarded for his actions. But Temeraire’s fate stopped his mouth: there was one at least in France, who far from feeling any sentiments of gratitude, had all cause in the world to hate and wish them ill: Lien herself. She, at least in rumour, had Napoleon’s confidence, and would gladly have seen Temeraire suffering the torments of the damned. Laurence would not disdain what little protection from her malice the public avowals of imperial gratitude might provide.

It had certainly a more immediate effect: DeGuignes had scarcely left the room before Laurence was at once shifted to a handsome chamber upstairs, appointed plainly but with some eye to comfort; a pleasant view of the open harbour, gaily stocked with sails, outside his window. The shirt and trousers materialized by morning: of very fine linen and wool, with silk thread, and with them clean stockings and linen; in the afternoon arrived a notable coat to replace his own much-battered and stained article: cut of black leather, with skirts lower than the tops of his boots, and buttons in gold so pure they were already no longer quite circular.

Temeraire admired the results, very much, when in the morning they were reunited to be transferred to Paris; and barring an inclination to complain that Laurence was not permitted to ride upon him, for the journey, was perfectly satisfied with their change of venue; although he glared ferociously at the small and quailing Pou-de-Ciel who would serve as transport, as if he suspected her of planning to carry Laurence off for some nefarious ends. He indeed set a pace rather difficult for his escort to match, with occasional fits and starts where he doubled back upon them, to come alongside the Pou-de-Ciel and call out remarks to Laurence; so the other dragons, most of them showing early signs of the illness, were rather exhausted when they came in sight of the Seine.

Laurence had not been to Paris since the year one, during the last period of peace, and had never before seen it from dragon-height; but even with so little acquaintance, he couldn’t fail to notice a transformation of such huge scale: a broad avenue had been driven straight through the heart of the city, demolishing the old medieval alleyways. Extending from the Tuileries towards the Bastille, it continued along the line of the Champs-Elysees, but dwarfed that road into a country lane: the new avenue was perhaps half as wide as the massive main square in Peking, which stood before the Forbidden City, and it was even longer. Dragons hovered over it, lowering great stacks of paving-stones into the street.

A triumphal arch of monumental scale was going up, in the Place de l’Étoile, half still presently mocked up in wood, and new embankments upon the Seine; more prosaically, in other places the ground had been opened up to a great depth, and new sewers were being laid in mortared cobblestones. On the city’s border an enormous bank of slaughterhouses stood behind a newly raised wall, with a plaza open beside them, and a handful of cows on spits roasting; a dragon was sitting there eating one, holding it on the spit like an ear of corn.

Below them directly, the gardens of the Tuileries had been widened, out from the banks of the Seine nearly an additional quarter of a mile in the opposite direction, swallowing up the Place Vendôme; and overlooking the riverbank, at right corners to the palace, a great pavilion in stone and marble was going up: an edifice in the Roman style, but on a different scale, and in the stone courtyard already laid down beside it, Lien lay sunning herself in a coil, like a thin white garden-snake seen from so far aloft, easy to make out among the other dragons which were scattered at decorous distance around her.

They were brought down in those gardens: not where Lien slept, but in another plaza before the palace, with a makeshift pavilion of wood and sailcloth hastily erected in their honour. Laurence had scarcely time to see Temeraire established, before DeGuignes took his arm and smiling invited him inside; smiling, but with a firm grip, and the guards gripped their muskets tightly: still honoured guest and prisoner both.

The apartments where they conducted him might have befitted a prince; he might have wandered blindfold through the room for five minutes without knocking into a wall. Used as he was to cramped quarters, Laurence found their scale irritating rather than luxurious: the walk from the chamber pot to the dressing-table would be a nuisance, and the bed looked too soft and was over-burdened with hangings for the hot weather; standing alone under the high and muraled ceiling, he felt like an actor in a bad play, with eyes and mockery upon him.

He sat down at the writing table in the corner, to have somewhere to put himself, and pushed up the cover: paper aplenty, and good pens, and fresh ink. He closed the jar slowly again. He owed six letters; they would never be written.

Outside it grew dark; from his window he could see the pavilion on the riverbank, illuminated with many colourful lanterns. Lien was now lying across the open floor, her wings folded to her back, watching the light on the water, a silhouette more than a shape. She turned her head, and Laurence saw a man come walking down the broad path towards her, and ascend into the pavilion: lanterns shone red on the uniforms of his guard, which he had left at the foot of the stair.

DeGuignes came the next morning a little while past breakfast, all renewals of kindness and generous sentiments, and took him walking down to see Temeraire, with only a moderate guard. Temeraire was awake and by the lashing of his tail in a state of near-agitation; ‘She has sent me an invitation,’ he said plaintively, as soon as Laurence had sat down. ‘I do not know what she means by it; I am not going to go and talk to her, at all.’

The invitation was a handsomely calligraphed scroll, in Chinese characters, tied with a tassel of red and gold; it was not long, and merely requested the pleasure of the company of Lung Tien Xiang at the Pavilion of the Seven Pillars for drinking tea and restful repose, in the heat of the day. ‘There is nothing evidently insincere in it; perhaps she means it as a gesture of reconciliation,’ Laurence said, though he did not think much of the chances.

‘No, she does not,’ Temeraire said darkly. ‘I am sure if I go, the tea will be very unpleasant, at least my tea will be, and I will have to drink it or look ill-mannered. Or she will make remarks which do not seem offensive, until I have gone away and thought them over; or she will try and have you murdered while I am not there: you are not to go anywhere without a guard, and if anyone tries to murder you, you must call for me very loud,’ he added. ‘I am sure I could knock down a wall of that palace, if I had to, to reach you,’ a remark which left DeGuignes with a peculiar rigid expression; he could not forbear a glance at the substantial stone wall of the Tuileries, overlooking the pavilion.

‘I assure you from my heart,’ he said, recovering his aplomb, ‘that no one could be more sensible of the generosity which you have shown to France; Madame Lien has been among the first, to receive the cure which you have delivered us—’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, disgruntled.

‘—and, as all of the nation, she welcomes you with open arms,’ DeGuignes carried on manfully.

‘Stuff,’ Temeraire said. ‘I do not believe it at all; and I do not like her anyway, even if she does mean it, so she may keep her invitations and her tea; and her pavilion too,’ he added, low, with an envious twitch of his tail.

DeGuignes coughed, and did not attempt further to persuade him. Instead he said, ‘I will make your regrets, then; in any event, you may be occupied with preparations, as tomorrow morning His Majesty wishes to meet you, and to convey to you all the thanks of the nation. He wishes you to know it grieves him very much that the formalities of war should attend such a meeting; and that for his part, he welcomes you as brothers, and not as prisoners at all,’ he added, with a look at once tactful and significant: a delicate hinting that they need not be prisoners for their part, either, if they chose.

The whole speech, his earnest manner, had a vaguely mercenary quality, which, to do justice to the man’s humanity, he gave with a very faint, dismissive air; so to accept would have needed only a nod. Laurence looked away instead; to hide his expression of distaste; but Temeraire said, ‘If he does not like us to be prisoners, it seems to me he is the Emperor, and can let us go if he likes. We are not going to fight for you against our own friends back in England, if that is what you mean.’

DeGuignes smiled without any sign of offence. ‘His Majesty would never invite you to any dishonourable act.’ A pretty sentiment, and one which Laurence was inclined to trust from Bonaparte as much as from the Lords of the Admiralty. DeGuignes rose gracefully and said, ‘I hope you will excuse me now to my other duties: Sergeant Lasalle and his men will escort you to your quarters for dinner, Captain, when you have finished your conversation,’ and so left them strategically, to let them contemplate his vague suggestions alone.

They did not say anything a while; Temeraire scratched at the ground. ‘I suppose we cannot stay,’ he said, muttered, half-ashamedly, ‘even if we did not fight? I thought we would go back to China, but then we have still left everything in Europe as it is. I am sure I can protect you from Lien, and perhaps I might help work upon that road; or I might write books. It seems very nice here,’ he added. ‘One could go walking, here in the gardens, or in the road, and meet people.’

Laurence looked down at his hands, which held no answer. He did not mean to grieve Temeraire, or to distress him, but he had known his own fate since first they had embarked upon this adventure; and at last he said quietly, ‘My dear, I hope you will stay, and have whatever profession you desire; or that Bonaparte will give you passage back to China if you prefer it. But I must go home to England.’

Temeraire paused, and then he said, uncertainly, ‘But they will hang you—’

‘Yes,’ Laurence said.

‘I will not, I will never let them,’ Temeraire said. ‘Laurence—’

‘I have committed treason,’ Laurence said. ‘I will not now add cowardice to that crime, nor let you shield me from its consequences.’ He looked away; Temeraire was silent and trembling, and it was painful to look at him. ‘I do not regret what we have done,’ he said quietly. ‘I would not have undertaken the act, if I were not willing to die for it; but I do not mean to live a traitor.’

Temeraire shuddered, and drew himself back onto his haunches, staring blindly out into the gardens; motionless. ‘And if we stay,’ he said, eventually, ‘they will say it was all self-interest – That we brought the cure for a reward, so that we should have a pleasant life, here or in China – Or perhaps that we were cowards, and thought Napoleon would win the war, and we did not want to fight. They will never admit that they were in the wrong; and that we have sacrificed our own happiness, to prevent what never ought to have been done, in the first place.’

Laurence had not so articulated his decision; he did not need to, to know what he must do. For his own part, he did not care what should be thought of it, and said so. ‘What will be thought of it, I already know, and I do not suppose anything now will alter those sentiments; if that were of any importance, we should not have gone. I am not returning to make a political gesture, but because it must be done; if there is any honour to be preserved after such an act.’

‘Well, I do not really give a fig for honour; it is not practical,’ Temeraire said. ‘But I do care about the lives of our friends, and that those lords should learn to be ashamed of what they have done; which I suppose they will never do, but others might, if they were not given so convenient an excuse to dismiss the whole matter.’ He bowed his head. ‘Very well; we will go home, if he will set us free; and if he does not, I suppose we can escape and return, on our own.’

‘No,’ Laurence said, recoiling. ‘My dear, there is no sense in it; you had much better go back to China. They will only throw you in the breeding grounds.’

‘Oh! certainly! that I should run away, but not you, when you have done it for me, you never thought of it but for me?’ Temeraire heaped scorn upon the notion. ‘No; if they mean to put you to death, they will have to put me to death also; I am as guilty or more, and I will certainly not let you be killed while I am alive. And if they do not like to execute me, I will go lie down in front of Parliament, until they have changed their minds.’

They were escorted across the gardens to the great pavilion, together, Laurence marched in a company of Imperial Guards, splendid and sweating in their tall black shakos and blue coats. Lien was lying upon the riverbank, observing benevolently the traffic which went up and down the Seine before her, and turned her head when they came, inclining it politely. Temeraire went very stiff, and rumbled, deep in his throat.

She shook her head disapprovingly at his manners. ‘You needn’t shake your head at me,’ Temeraire retorted, ‘because I do not care to pretend that we are friendly; it is only that I am not deceitful: so there.’

‘How is it deceitful, when you know we are not friendly, and so do I,’ Lien pointed out, ‘and all who are in our confidence? There is no one deceived, who has any right to know, but those who prefer to take no notice of it; except with your boorish behaviour, no one about can avoid knowing, and being made to feel awkward.’

Temeraire subsided muttering, and crowded up as close as he could to the nervous guards, trying to hover protectively near Laurence; a dish of tea was brought him, which he sniffed suspiciously and then disdained, and a glass of cold sillery, which Laurence did not. A slight cooling breeze came off the water and greenery of the park, and the vast marbled space was pleasant, with somewhere hidden a running gurgle of water over stone, but the day was still very hot, even with the morning not yet far advanced.

The soldiers went to attention; and then Bonaparte was coming down the walk, trailing guards and secretaries, one of whom was writing a little desperately even as they came: taking down a letter. The valedictions were added as they came up the steps, then Bonaparte turned away, came through the two files of guards, and seizing Laurence by the shoulders kissed him on both cheeks.

‘Your Majesty,’ Laurence said, rather faintly. He had seen the emperor once before, briefly and from concealment, while Napoleon had been overlooking the field of Jena; and had been impressed at that time with the intensity and the nearly cruel anticipation in his expression, the remote eye, the hawk about to stoop. There was no less intensity now, but perhaps a little softening; the emperor looked a little stouter, his face a little more rounded, than on that peak; but the grey eye was no less brilliant.

‘Come, walk with me,’ Napoleon said, and drew him by the arm down to the water, where Laurence was not himself required to walk, but rather to stand and let the emperor pace before him, gesturing, with a restless energy. ‘What do you think of the new Paris?’ he asked, waving his hand towards the sparrow-cloud of dragons visible, working on the new road. ‘Few men have had the opportunity to see my designs, as you have, from above.’

‘An extraordinary work, your Majesty,’ Laurence said, sorry to be so sincere; it was the kind of work which only tyranny, he supposed unhappily, could achieve, and characteristic of all Napoleon’s works, smashing through tradition with a kind of heedless forward motion. He would have preferred to find it ugly, and ill-reasoned. ‘It will expand all the character of the city.’

Napoleon nodded, satisfied with this remark, and said, ‘It is only a mirror held up to the expansion of the national character, however, that I am going to achieve. I will not allow men to fear dragons: if cowardice, it is dishonourable; if superstition, distasteful; and there are no rational objections. It is only habit, and a habit which can and must be broken. Why should Peking be superior to Paris? I will have this, the most beautiful city in the world, of both men and dragons.’

‘It is a noble ambition,’ Laurence said, low.

‘But you do not agree with it,’ Bonaparte said, pouncing suddenly; Laurence could only stumble back from the sudden assault, very nearly of palpable force. ‘But you will not stay, and see it done, though you have already been given proof of the perfidy, the dishonourable measures to which a government of oligarchs will stoop: it can never be otherwise,’ he added; more declaration than an attempt to convince, ‘when money becomes the driving force of the state: there must be some moral power beneath, some ambition, that is not only for wealth and safety.’

Laurence did not think very much of Bonaparte’s method, which substituted an insatiable hunger for glory and power, at the cost of men’s lives and liberty; but he did not try to argue. It would have been hard indeed, he thought, to marshal any argument in the face of the monologue, which Napoleon did not mind continuing, having met no opposition; he ranged widely across philosophy and economics, the useless folly of government by clerks, the differences, which he detailed minutely on philosophical grounds quite beyond Laurence’s apprehension, between the despotism of the Bourbons and his own imperial state: they had been tyrants, parasites, holding power through superstition and for their own personal pleasure, lacking in merit; he was the defender of the Republic, and the servant of the nation.

Laurence only withstood, as a small rock in a deluge; and the gale past said simply, ‘Your Majesty, I am a soldier, not a statesman; and I have no great philosophy but that I love my country. I came because it was my duty as a Christian and a man; now it is my duty to return.’

Bonaparte regarded him, frowning, displeased, a tyrant’s lowering look; but it flitted quickly away, then he stepped closer, and gripped Laurence by the arm, persuasive, ‘You mistake your duty. You would throw away your life: all right, you might say, but it is not yours alone. You have a young dragon, who has devoted himself to your interest, and who has given you all his love and confidence. What can a man not accomplish, with such a friend, such a councillor, free from any trace of envy or self-interest? It has made you who you are. Think where would you now be, without the stroke of fortune that put his heart into your keeping?’

At sea, like as not, or at home: a small estate in England perhaps, married, by now his first child here; Edith Woolvey, née Galman, had been delivered of her first four months before. Marching steadily up the post-list towards flag-rank; he would probably have been sitting presently on blockade, beating up and down off Brest or Calais, a tedious but necessary routine. A prosperous and an honest life, and if no great chance of glory, as far from treason as from the moon; he had never asked for anything else, or expected it.

The vision stood at a distance almost bewildering, now; mythical, softened by a comfortable blind innocence. He might have regretted it; he did regret it, now, except there was no room in the gardens of that house for a dragon to be sleeping in the sun.

Bonaparte said, ‘You do not suffer from the disease of ambition – so much the better. Let me give you an honourable retirement. I won’t insult you by offering you a fortune, only his keep and yours. A house in the country, a cattle-herd. Nothing will be asked of you that you do not want to give.’ His hand tightened, when Laurence would have drawn away. ‘Will your conscience be more clear when you have delivered him into captivity? Into a long captivity,’ he added, sharply, ‘—they will not tell him when they put you to death.’

Laurence flinched; and through the grip Bonaparte felt it and pursued, as a breach in his lines. ‘Do you think they would hesitate to forge your name to letters? You know they will not, and in any case the messages will only be read aloud. A few words – you are well, you think of him, you hope that he is obedient – and he will be imprisoned by them better than iron bars. He will wait and linger and hope for many years, starved and cold and neglected, long after you have swung from a gibbet. Can you be satisfied to condemn him to it?’

Laurence knew all this sprang from a selfish concern: if Bonaparte could not have Temeraire’s active complaisance, even in the matter of breeding, he would still have been glad at least to deny him to the British; and he probably had hopes of persuading them, in time, to do more. That knowledge, cold and impersonal, gave Laurence no comfort; it did not matter to him that Bonaparte was interested, when he was very likely also right.

‘Sir,’ Laurence said, unevenly, ‘I wish you may persuade him to stay. – I must go back.’

The words had to be forced. He spoke past a constriction, as one who has been running a race uphill, for a long time: since that moment in the clearing, since they had left London behind. But now the hill was past; he had reached the summit, and he stood there breathing hard; there was nothing more he had to say or bear; his answer was fixed. He looked over at Temeraire, waiting anxiously inside the open pavilion. He thought he would try and put himself in Temeraire’s hands, at least, rather than be marched back to prison; if he was killed in the attempt, it did not make much difference.

Bonaparte recognized it; he let go Laurence’s arm, and turned away from him to pace frowning up and down; but at last he turned. ‘God forbid I should alter such a resolve. Your choice is the choice of Regulus, and I honour you for it. You will have your liberty – you must have your liberty,’ he said, ‘and more: a troop of my Old Guard will escort you to Calais; Accendare’s formation see you across the Channel, under flag of truce: and all the world will know that France at least can recognize a man of honour.’

The covert at Calais was busy: fourteen dragons were not easily gotten in order, and Accendare herself was inclined to snap and be difficult, irritable and weary with coughing. Laurence turned away from the confusion, and wished only, dully, to be gone; to have done with everything, all the hollow ceremony: eagles and flags, polished buckles, the fresh pressed blue of the French uniforms. The wind was fair for England; their party was expected, letters having travelled across and back to arrange the parley. There would be dragons and chains to meet them: perhaps even Jane, or Granby, or strangers who knew nothing more of him than his crime. By now his family surely would know all.

DeGuignes was rolling up the map of Africa from the table; Laurence had shown him the valley, where they had found the mushroom supply. It was nothing materially more than he had already done; the mushrooms were growing, but Bonaparte did not care to wait, Laurence supposed, or risk a failure of the harvest. They meant at once to send an expedition, which was even now outfitting in the harbour: two sleek frigates, and he believed another three going from La Rochelle, in hopes that at least one would evade the blockade and reach their destination, and by stealth or negotiation acquire an immediately useful supply. Laurence hoped only they should not all be taken prisoner, but even if they were, he supposed it could not matter; the cure was established and would spread; no more dragons would die. It was a small satisfaction, at least, if a dry and tasteless one.

He had feared some last attempt at bribery or seduction, but DeGuignes did not even ask him to say anything, with a great sensitivity, but brought out a dusty bottle of brandy, and poured him a generous glass. ‘To the hope of peace between our people,’ he proposed; Laurence moistened his lips, polite, and left the cold collation untouched; and when it had been cleared, he went outside to Temeraire.

Temeraire was not embroiled in the general clamour; he was sitting quietly hunched on one side, looking out to sea over the straits: the white cliffs were plainly visible, from their perch. Laurence leaned against his side and shut his eyes, the steady heartbeat beneath like the rushing tide in a conch shell. ‘I beg you will stay,’ Laurence said. ‘You serve me not at all, nor your own cause; it will only be thought blind loyalty.’

Temeraire said, after a moment, ‘If I do, will you tell them that I carried you away, against your will, and made you do it?’

‘Never, good God,’ Laurence said, straightening, and wounded even to be asked; too late he realized he had been led up to the mark.

‘Napoleon said that if I stayed, you might tell them so if you liked,’ Temeraire said, ‘and then they might spare you. But I said you would never say such a thing at all, so it was no use; and so you may stop trying to persuade me. I will never stay here, while they try to hang you.’

Laurence bowed his head, and felt the justice of it. He did not think Temeraire ought to stay, but only wished that he would, and be happy. ‘You will promise me not to stay forever in the breeding-grounds,’ he said, low. ‘Not past the New Year, unless they let me visit you in the flesh.’ He was very certain they would execute him by Michaelmas.

Extracts from

THE

TSWANA KINGDOM

A BRIEF HISTORY

BY

SIPHO TSULUKA DLAMINI

[1838]

IN THREE VOLUMES

LONDON, CHAPMAN & HALL LIMITED

Being a history of the Tswana Kingdom from its origins to the present day, and a complete geographical survey of its territories, with particular reference to the capital at Mosi oa Tunya, and several interesting remarks on the native customs.

The gradual process of consolidation of the Tswana and Sotho peoples brought together a loose confederation of tribal kingdoms, founded originally, according to tribal historians, throughout the southern part of the continent in the latter part of the first millennium, by a general but unintended southerly and eastern migration, whose impetus has been lost to us: perhaps a search for fresh hunting grounds, and new territory, by an expanding population both human and dragon.

The first vague beginnings of elephant-farming are believed to have developed shortly after this vast migration was mostly complete, and the pressures of hunger might no longer be relieved by further nomadic progress. A study of the art of the ivory-carvers gives testament to the success of the breeding project which rendered the domesticated beasts more bovine-docile, and considerably larger than their wild counterparts: a succession of tusks held at the capital, each pair the largest harvested within a generation, carved elaborately and presented to the (then largely ceremonial) king…

These tribes, previously united only by distant ties of blood, mutually intelligible dialect, and certain shared customs and religious observance, most notable among these of course the practice of dragon-rebirth, first began to collaborate more closely for the joint administration of the elephant herds, which demanded more labour than could be organised by a single tribe… [A] centralisation further encouraged from the seventeenth century onwards by the increasing demand for ivory and gold, which penetrated to the African interior for several decades before the hunger for slaves was risen to a sufficient pitch to overcome the reluctance of the more aggressive slave-taking tribes to venture into dragon-territory; and spurring, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the rapid development of gold-mining (a venture which the Tswana authorities indicate is most productively pursued through the co-operation of at least ten dragons, more than belong to nearly any individual tribe), and of the ivory trade, which by the open of the present century was sending some 60,000 pounds a year to the coast without any suspicion on the part of the European traders, who carried the elephant teeth away, that these were obtained by, and not in despite of, the dragons who barred any further entry to the interior…

On Mosi oa Tunya:

The falls at Mosi oa Tunya, so justly celebrated by all who have beheld them, were, despite their beauty, as a settlement inconvenient to men alone, who could not easily navigate the gorges, and in their natural state offered no real haven to feral dragons; admired and occasionally visited, either for mere scenic pleasure or religious observation, they were yet undeveloped and uninhabited when the first Sotho-Tswana peoples moved into the region, and quickly made them their ceremonial capital, a further centralising tie among the tribes… [T]he desire of the dragon-ancestors for more comfortable shelter impelled the first attempts at cave-drilling, the relics of which may yet be seen at the falls, in the holiest and roughest chambers, low in the cliff-side… and which later were to prove the foundation of the efficient gold-mining operations…

The practice of rebirth here requires a few words, to expand upon the treatment it has received in the British press, at the hands of well-meaning missionary reporters, who in their zeal have too-easily disposed of it as a matter of pure pagan superstition, urgently to be eradicated in favour of Christianity… It will not be found that anyone of the Tswana imagines that the human is naturally reborn, in the manner espoused, for instance, by the Buddhist or the Hindu, and if one should propose leaving a selected dragon egg alone in the wilderness, in accordance with the suggestion of Mr. Dennis to snatch such an egg ‘to demonstrate to the heathen the wild fancy of their custom,’ by proving that the resulting hatchling would have no recollection of its former life, no tribesman would dispute this as the natural consequence, but merely abuse the bad husbandry and irreligiosity united, which should so waste a dragon-egg, and insult the spirit of the dead ancestor.

That the feral dragon in the wilderness is no more a reborn human than is a cow is perfectly understood by them, and viewed as no contradiction to their practice. Careful coaxing and ritual are necessary, besides a suitable housing, to induce an ancestral spirit to take up residence again in material form; the article of faith is to believe, once this has been achieved, that the dragon is certainly the human reborn, a belief much harder to dislodge, by its being firmly held not only by the men but the dragons, and of so much practical importance within the tribe.

The dragon-ancestors at once serve as a substantial source of labour and military power, and as repositories of tribal history and legend, compensating for the neglect of the written word. Furthermore, each tribe will consider carefully the disposal of the eggs of their own dragon-ancestors, common tribal property, which may be used to reincarnate one of their own, should there be one of sufficient standing to merit the honour, or, far more commonly, traded to a remote tribe in more urgent need, through a complex network of communications sure to bring the news of a suitable egg to those seeking the same, this network serving to knit together tribes which might otherwise have grown more distinct, left to act in isolation. Nor are these dragon bloodlines ignored, as might be expected by one who imagines a sort of simplistic literal belief; rather, such an exchange of eggs is held to establish a kind of distant familial relation between the receiving tribe and the donor, much like state marriages, further strengthening ties…

Mokhachane I (h), a Sotho chieftain, carved out a relatively minor territory which proved notable for its position on the extremes of the Sotho-Tswana tribal regions, touching upon Xhosa territory to the south, and thus indirectly receiving at least vague intelligence of the growing Dutch settlements at the Cape, and having some communication with the beleaguered Monomotapa kingdoms on the East African coast, the descendants of the Zimbabwe-builders.

Broader relations were established with this latter power near the turn of the century under the urging of his son, Moshueshue I (h), demonstrating from his youth that wisdom for which his name was to become a byword, which relations were to have great significance after Mokhachane’s (h) death in raiding during the year 1798, when Moshueshue was able to negotiate the acquisition of a large dragon egg of the Monomotapa royal lines, for his father’s rebirth; the Monomotapa government by this time fracturing under increasing pressure from the Portuguese gold-hunters along the eastern coast, and in need of the gold and the military reinforcements which Moshueshue could provide, as a result of negotiations with neighbouring Tswana tribes…

The acquisition of so powerful a dragon, in conjunction with Moshueshue’s coming-of-age, which eliminated the last barriers to his being received as an equal by other tribal chieftains, very shortly vaulted the tribe to pre-eminence in the southernmost regions of the Tswana lands. Mokhachane I (d) easily established dominance over the dragon-ancestors of neighbouring tribes, in joint raiding which Moshueshue organized, and together they were soon able to establish several new mines, both of gold and of precious stones, in the formerly unexploited region; and with the steady increase in wealth and respect soon acquired a primacy which enabled them, in the year 1804, to claim the central seat, at Mosi oa Tunya, and the title of king.

The depredations of the slave-takers had by this time for several years been making systematic inroads into the Tswana territories, as more than isolated incidents, and were a not inconsiderable factor in the willingness of the smaller kingdoms to submit formally to central leadership, in hopes of making a united answer to those raids, and repulsing them decisively, an argument which Moshueshue did not fail of making, in his careful solicitations of fealty from his fellow tribal chieftains, who might otherwise have resisted from pride. The practical as well as ceremonial reign of Mokhachane I was confirmed by the conquest of Cape town and the Slave Coast raids of 1807, and the Tswana themselves date the founding of their kingdom from this year…

If you enjoyed Empire of Ivory, check out these other great Naomi Novuk titles.

TEMERAIRE:
After a skirmish with a French ship, Captain William Laurence finds himself in charge of a rare cargo: a dragon egg bound for the Emperor Napoleon himself. Dragons are much prized: properly trained, they can mount a fearsome attack from the skies. Laurence must take the beast in hand and join the aviators' cause, thus relinquishing all hope of a normal life.

THRONE OF JADE:
The dragon, Temeraire, was meant to be the companion of the Emperor Napoleon and not captained by a mere officer in the British Air Corps. The Chinese have demanded his return and the British government cannot afford to provoke the Asian superpower into allying with the French – even if it costs them the most powerful weapon in their arsenal, and forces Laurence and Temeraire apart forever.

BLACK POWDER WAR:
British flyer Will Laurence and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, gratefully anticipate their voyage home from China. But before they set sail, they are waylaid by urgent new orders: the British Government, having purchased three valuable dragon eggs from the Ottoman Empire, now require Laurence and Temeraire to make a more perilous overland journey instead, stopping off in Istanbul to collect and escort the precious cargo back to England.

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Laurence and Temeraire have betrayed the British. They have foiled their attempts to inflict death upon the French dragons by sharing the cure they found in Africa with their enemy.

But following their conscience has a price. Laurence feels he must return to face the consequences, and as soon as they land they are taken into custody. Laurence is condemned to the gallows and Temeraire faces a life of captivity in the breeding grounds. None of their friends or allies can come to their aid, for every hand is needed elsewhere. Britain is completely unprepared for Bonaparte invasion and the advanced tactics of his own celestial dragon – Temeraire's mortal enemy – Lien.

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Laurence and Temeraire have been banished from the country they’ve fought so hard to protect - and the friends they have made in the British Aerial Corps.

Found guilty of treason, man and dragon have been deported to Australia to start a new life and many new adventures.

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Former Aerial Corps captain Will Laurence and his faithful dragon, Temeraire, have been put out to pasture in Australia – and it seems their part in the war has ended just when they are needed most.

The French have invaded Spain, forged an alliance with Africa’s powerful Tswana empire, and brought revolution to Brazil. With Britain’s last desperate hope of defeating Napoleon in peril, the government that sidelined Laurence swiftly offers to reinstate him, convinced that he’s the best man to enter the fray and negotiate peace. So the pair embark for Brazil, only to meet with a string of unmitigated disasters that forces them to make an unexpected landing in the hostile territory of the Incan empire. With the success of the mission balanced on a razor’s edge, an old enemy appears and threatens to tip the scales toward ruin. Yet even in the midst of disaster, opportunity may lurk – for one bold enough to grasp it.

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Shipwrecked and cast ashore in Japan with no memory of Temeraire or his own experiences as an English aviator, Laurence finds himself tangled in deadly political intrigues that threaten not only his own life but England’s already precarious position in the Far East. Age-old enmities and suspicions have turned the entire region into a powder keg ready to erupt at the slightest spark – a spark that Laurence and Temeraire may unwittingly provide, leaving Britain faced with new enemies just when they most desperately need allies instead.

For to the west, another, wider conflagration looms. Napoleon has turned on his former ally, the emperor Alexander of Russia, and is even now leading the largest army the world has ever seen to add that country to his list of conquests. It is there, outside the gates of Moscow, that a reunited Laurence and Temeraire – along with some unexpected allies and old friends – will face their ultimate challenge ... and learn whether or not there are stronger ties than memory.

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Napoleon’s invasion of Russia has been roundly thwarted. But even as Capt. William Laurence and the dragon Temeraire pursue the retreating enemy through an unforgiving winter, Napoleon is raising a new force, and he’ll soon have enough men and dragons to resume the offensive. While the emperor regroups, the allies have an opportunity to strike first and defeat him once and for all – if internal struggles and petty squabbles don’t tear them apart.

Aware of his weakened position, Napoleon has promised the dragons of every country – and the ferals, loyal only to themselves – vast new rights and powers if they fight under his banner. It is an offer eagerly embraced from Asia to Africa – and even by England, whose dragons have long rankled at their disrespectful treatment. But Laurence and his faithful dragon soon discover that the wily Napoleon has one more gambit at the ready – one that that may win him the war, and the world.

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Acknowledgements

Among many works, Basil Davidson’s survey of primary sources, African Civilization Revisited, stands out as a priceless resource, as does the UNESCO General History of Africa, for illuminating the history of the continent outside colonization. I am also deeply indebted to the guides at the Ker & Downey camps in the Okovango Delta of Botswana for sharing their expertise and tolerating endless questions, with particular thanks to our brilliant camp manager at Okuti, Paul Moloseng.

Empire of Ivory has been in some ways the most difficult of the Temeraire books to write so far, and I have to give deep and heartfelt thanks to all my beta readers for heroic work under the gun, as I hardly gave them a weekend for comment on the draft before I was tearing onward into revisions: Holly Benton, Sara Booth, Alison Feeney, Shelley Mitchell, Georgina Paterson, Meredith Rosser, L. Salom, Kellie Takenaka, and Rebecca Tushnet. And much gratitude to Betsy Mitchell, Emma Coode and Jane Johnson, my wonderful editors, and to my agent, Cynthia Manson.

And always always, both gratitude and love to Charles, my first and best and most beloved reader.

By the Same Author

Temeraire
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada

Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower

22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor

Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca

India

HarperCollins India

A 75, Sector 57

Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

Rosedale 0632

Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com