His Majesty's Dragon

Chapter 4

“NO, THROW YOUR chest out deeper, like so.” Laetificat stood up on her haunches and demonstrated, the enormous barrel of her red-and-gold belly expanding as she breathed in.

Temeraire mimicked the motion; his expansion was less visually dramatic, as he lacked the vivid markings of the female Regal Copper and was of course less than a fifth of her size as yet, but this time he managed a much louder roar. “Oh, there,” he said, pleased, dropping back down to four legs. The cows were all running around their pen in manic terror.

“Much better,” Laetificat said, and nudged Temeraire’s back approvingly. “Practice every time you eat; it will help along your lung capacity.”

“I suppose it is hardly news to you how badly we need him, given how our affairs stand,” Portland said, turning to Laurence; the two of them were standing by the side of the field, out of range of the mess the dragons were about to make. “Most of Bonaparte’s dragons are stationed along the Rhine, and of course he has been busy in Italy; that and our naval blockades are all that is keeping him from invasion. But if he gets matters arranged to his satisfaction on the Continent and frees up a few aerial divisions, we can say hail and farewell to the blockade at Toulon; we simply do not have enough dragons of our own here in the Med to protect Nelson’s fleet. He will have to withdraw, and then Villeneuve will go straight for the Channel.”

Laurence nodded grimly; he had been reading the news of Bonaparte’s movements with great alarm since the Reliant had put into port. “I know Nelson has been trying to lure the French fleet out to battle, but Villeneuve is not a fool, even if he is no seaman. An aerial bombardment is the only hope of getting him out of his safe harbor.”

“Which means there is no hope, not with the forces we can bring to it at present,” Portland said. “The Home Division has a couple of Longwings, and they might be able to do it; but they cannot be spared. Bonaparte would jump on the Channel Fleet at once.”

“Ordinary bombing would not do?”

“Not precise enough at long range, and they have poisoned shrapnel guns at Toulon. No aviator worth a shilling would take his beast close to the fortifications.” Portland shook his head. “No, but there is a young Longwing in training, and if Temeraire will be kind enough to hurry up and grow, then perhaps together they might shortly be able to take the place of Excidium or Mortiferus at the Channel, and even one of those two might be sufficient at Toulon.”

“I am sure he will do everything in his power to oblige you,” Laurence said, glancing over; the dragon in question was on his second cow. “And I may say that I will do the same. I know I am not the man you wished in this place, nor can I argue with the reasoning that would prefer an experienced aviator in so critical a role. But I hope that naval experience will not prove wholly useless in this arena.”

Portland sighed and looked down at the ground. “Oh, hell,” he said. It was an odd response to make, but Portland looked anxious, not angry, and after a moment he added, “There is just no getting around it; you are not an aviator. If it were simply a question of skill or knowledge, that would mean difficulties enough, but—” He stopped.

Laurence did not think, from the tone, that Portland meant to question his courage. The man had been more amiable this morning; so far, it seemed to Laurence that aviators simply took clannishness to an extreme, and once having admitted a fellow into their circle, their cold manners fell away. So he took no offense, and said, “Sir, I can hardly imagine where else you believe the difficulty might lie.”

“No, you cannot,” Portland said, uncommunicatively. “Well, and I am not going to borrow trouble; they may decide to send you somewhere else entirely, not to Loch Laggan. But I am running ahead of myself: the real point is that you and Temeraire must get to England for your training soonest; once you are there, Aerial Command can best decide how to deal with you.”

“But can he reach England from here, with no place to stop along the way?” Laurence asked, diverted by concern for Temeraire. “It must be more than a thousand miles; he has never flown further than from one end of the island to the other.”

“Closer to two thousand, and no; we would never risk him so,” Portland said. “There is a transport coming over from Nova Scotia; a couple of dragons joined our division from it three days ago, so we have its position pretty well fixed, and I think it is less than a hundred miles away. We will escort you to it; if Temeraire gets tired, Laetificat can support him for long enough to give him a breather.”

Laurence was relieved to hear the proposed plan, but the conversation made him aware how very unpleasant his circumstances would be until his ignorance was mended. If Portland had waved off his fears, Laurence would have had no way of judging the matter for himself. Even a hundred miles was a good distance; it would take them three hours or more in the air. But that at least he felt confident they could manage; they had flown the length of the island three times just the other day, while visiting Sir Edward, and Temeraire had not seemed tired in the least.

“When do you propose leaving?” he asked.

“The sooner, the better; the transport is headed away from us, after all,” Portland said. “Can you be ready in half an hour?”

Laurence stared. “I suppose I can, if I have most of my things sent back to the Reliant for transport,” he said dubiously.

“Why would you?” Portland said. “Laet can carry anything you have; we shan’t weigh Temeraire down.”

“No, I only mean that my things are not packed,” Laurence said. “I am used to waiting for the tide; I see I will have to be a little more beforehand with the world from now on.”

Portland still looked puzzled, and when he came into Laurence’s room twenty minutes later he stared openly at the sea-chest that Laurence had turned to this new purpose. There had hardly been time to fill half of it; Laurence paused in the act of putting in a couple of blankets to take up the empty space at the top. “Is something wrong?” he asked, looking down; the chest was not so large that he thought it would give Laetificat any difficulty.

“No wonder you needed the time; do you always pack so carefully?” Portland said. “Could you not just throw the rest of your things into a few bags? We can strap them on easily enough.”

Laurence swallowed his first response; he no longer needed to wonder why the aviators looked, to a man, rumpled in their dress; he had imagined it due to some advanced technique of flying. “No, thank you; Fernao will take my other things to the Reliant, and I can manage perfectly well with what I have here,” he said, putting the blankets in; he strapped them down and made all fast, then locked the chest. “There; I am at your service now.”

Portland called in a couple of his midwingmen to carry the chest; Laurence followed them outside, and was witness, for the first time, to the operation of a full aerial crew. Temeraire and he both watched with interest from the side as Laetificat stood patiently under the swarming ensigns, who ran up and down her sides as easily as they hung below her belly or climbed upon her back. The boys were raising up two canvas enclosures, one above and one below; these were like small, lopsided tents, framed with many thin and flexible strips of metal. The front panels which formed the bulk of the tent were long and sloped, evidently to present as little resistance to the wind as possible, and the sides and back were made of netting.

The ensigns all looked to be below the age of twelve; the midwingmen ranged more widely, just as aboard a ship, and now four older ones came staggering with the weight of a heavy leather-wrapped chain they dragged in front of Laetificat. The dragon lifted it herself and laid it over her withers, just in front of the tent, and the ensigns hurried to secure it to the rest of the harness with many straps and smaller chains.

Using this strap, they then slung a sort of hammock made of chain links beneath Laetificat’s belly. Laurence saw his own chest tossed inside along with a collection of other bags and parcels; he winced at the haphazard way in which the baggage was stowed, and was doubly grateful that he had been careful in his packing: he was confident they might turn his chest completely about a dozen times without casting his things into disarray.

A large pad of leather and wool, perhaps the thickness of a man’s arm, was laid on top of all, then the hammock’s edges were drawn up and hooked to the harness as widely as possible, spreading the weight of the contents and pressing them close to the dragon’s belly. Laurence felt a sense of dissatisfaction with the proceedings; he privately thought he would have to find a better arrangement for Temeraire, when the time came.

However, the process had one significant advantage over naval preparations: from beginning to end it took fifteen minutes, and then they were looking at a dragon in full light-duty rig. Laetificat reared up on her legs, shook out her wings, and beat them half a dozen times; the wind was strong enough to nearly stagger Laurence, but the assembled baggage did not shift noticeably.

“All lies well,” Laetificat said, dropping back down to all fours; the ground shook with the impact.

“Lookouts aboard,” Portland said; four ensigns climbed on and took up positions at the shoulders and hips, above and below, hooking themselves on to the harness. “Topmen and bellmen.” Now two groups of eight midwingmen climbed up, one going into the tent above, the other below: Laurence was startled to perceive how large the enclosures really were; they seemed small only by virtue of comparison with Laetificat’s immense size.

The crews were followed in turn by the twelve riflemen, who had been checking and arming their guns while the others rigged out the gear. Laurence noticed Lieutenant Dayes leading them, and frowned; he had forgotten about the fellow in the rush. Dayes had offered no apology; now most likely they would not see one another for a long time. Perhaps it was for the best; Laurence was not sure that he could have accepted the apology, after hearing Temeraire’s story, and as it was impossible to call the fellow out, the situation would have been uncomfortable to say the least.

The riflemen having boarded, Portland walked a complete circuit around and beneath the dragon. “Very good; ground crew aboard.” The handful of men remaining climbed into the belly-rigging and strapped themselves in; only then did Portland himself ascend, Laetificat lifting him up directly. He repeated his inspection on the top, maneuvering around on the harness with as much ease as any of the little ensigns, and finally came to his position at the base of the dragon’s neck. “I believe we are ready; Captain Laurence?”

Laurence belatedly realized he was still standing on the ground; he had been too interested in the process to mount up himself. He turned, but before he could clamber onto the harness, Temeraire reached out carefully and put him aboard, mimicking Laetificat’s action. Laurence grinned privately and patted the dragon’s neck. “Thank you, Temeraire,” he said, strapping himself in; Portland had pronounced his improvised harness adequate for the journey, although with a disapproving air. “Sir, we are ready,” he called to Portland.

“Proceed, then; smallest goes aloft first,” Portland said. “We will take the lead once in the air.”

Laurence nodded; Temeraire gathered himself and leapt, and the world fell away beneath them.

Aerial Command was situated in the countryside just south-east of Chatham, close enough to London to permit daily consultation with the Admiralty and the War Office; it had been an easy hour’s flight from Dover, with the rolling green fields he knew so well spread out below like a checkerboard, and London a suggestion of towers in the distance, purple and indistinct.

Although the dispatches had long preceded him to England and he must have been expected, Laurence was not called to the office until the next morning. Even then he was kept waiting outside Admiral Powys’s office for nearly two hours. At last the door opened; stepping inside, he could not help glancing curiously from Admiral Powys to Admiral Bowden, who was sitting to the right of the desk. The precise words had not been intelligible out in the hall, but he could not have avoided overhearing the loud voices, and Bowden was still red-faced and frowning.

“Yes, Captain Laurence, do come in,” Powys said, waving him in with a fat-fingered hand. “How splendid Temeraire looks; I saw him eating this morning: already close on nine tons, I should say. You are to be most highly commended. And you fed him solely on fish the first two weeks, and also while on the transport? Remarkable, remarkable indeed; we must consider amending the general diet.”

“Yes, yes; this is beside the point,” Bowden said impatiently.

Powys frowned at Bowden, then continued, perhaps a little too heartily, “In any case, he is certainly ready to begin training, and of course we must do our best to bring you up to the mark as well. Of course we have confirmed you in your rank; as a handler, you would be made captain anyway. But you will have a great deal to do; ten years’ training is not to be made up in a day.”

Laurence bowed. “Sir, Temeraire and I are both at your service,” he said, but with reserve; he perceived in both men the same odd constraint about his training that Portland had displayed. Many possible explanations for that constraint had occurred to Laurence during the two weeks aboard the transport, most of them unpleasant. A boy of seven, taken from his home before his character had been truly formed, might easily be forced to accept treatment which a grown man would never endure, and yet of course the aviators themselves would consider it necessary, having gone through it themselves; Laurence could think of no other cause that would make them all so evasive about the subject.

His heart sank further as Powys said, “Now then; we must send you to Loch Laggan,” for it was the place Portland had mentioned, and been so anxious about. “There is no denying that it is the best place for you,” Powys went on. “We cannot waste a moment in making you both ready for duty, and I would not be surprised if Temeraire were up to heavy-combat weight by the end of the summer.”

“Sir, I beg your pardon, but I have never heard of the place, and I gather it is in Scotland?” Laurence asked; he hoped to draw Powys out.

“Yes, in Inverness-shire; it is one of our largest coverts, and certainly the best for intensive training,” Powys said. “Lieutenant Greene outside will show you the way, and mark a covert along the route for you to spend the night; I am sure you will have no difficulty in reaching the place.”

It was clearly a dismissal, and Laurence knew he could not make any further inquiry. In any event, he had a more pressing request. “I will speak to him, sir,” he said. “But if you have no objection, I would be glad to stop the night at my family home in Nottinghamshire; there is room enough for Temeraire, and deer for him to eat.” His parents would be in town at this time of year, but the Galmans often stayed in the country, and there might be some chance of seeing Edith, if only briefly.

“Oh, certainly, by all means,” Powys said. “I am sorry I cannot give you a longer furlough; you have certainly deserved it, but I do not think we can spare the time: a week might make all the difference in the world.”

“Thank you, sir, I perfectly understand,” Laurence said, and so bowed and departed.

Armed by Lieutenant Greene with an excellent map showing the route, Laurence began his preparations at once. He had taken some time in Dover to acquire a collection of light bandboxes; he thought that their cylindrical shape might better lie against Temeraire’s body, and now he transferred his belongings into them. He knew he made an unusual sight, carrying a dozen boxes more suitable for ladies’ hats out to Temeraire, but when he had strapped them down against Temeraire’s belly and seen how little they added to his profile, he could not help feeling somewhat smug.

“They are quite comfortable; I do not notice them at all,” Temeraire assured him, rearing up on his back legs and flapping to make certain they were well seated, just as Laetificat had done back in Madeira. “Can we not get one of those tents? It would be much more comfortable for you to ride out of the wind.”

“I have no idea how to put it up, though, my dear,” Laurence said, smiling at the concern. “But I will do well enough; with this leather coat they have given me, I will be quite warm.”

“It must wait until you have your proper harness, in any case; the tents require locking carabiners. Nearly ready to go, then, Laurence?” Bowden had come upon them and interjected himself into the conversation without any notice. He joined Laurence standing before Temeraire’s chest and stooped a little to examine the bandboxes. “Hm, I see you are bent on turning all our customs upside down to suit yourself.”

“No, sir, I hope not,” Laurence said, keeping his temper; it could not serve to alienate the man, for he was one of the senior commanders of the Corps, and might well have a say in what postings Temeraire received. “But my sea-chest was awkward for him to bear, and these seemed the best replacement I could manage on short notice.”

“They may do,” Bowden said, straightening up. “I hope you have as easy a time putting aside the rest of your naval thinking as your sea-chest, Laurence; you must be an aviator now.”

“I am an aviator, sir, and willingly so,” Laurence said. “But I cannot pretend that I intend to put aside the habits and mode of thinking formed over a lifetime; whether I intended it or no, I doubt it would even be possible.”

Bowden fortunately took this without anger, but he shook his head. “No, it would not. And so I told—well. I have come to make something clear: you will oblige me by refraining from discussing, with those not in the Corps, any aspects of your training. His Majesty sees fit to give us our heads to achieve the best performance of our duty; we do not care to entertain the opinions of outsiders. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Laurence said grimly; the peculiar command bore out all his worst suspicions. But if none of them would come out and make themselves plain, he could hardly make an objection; it was infuriating. “Sir,” he said, making up his mind to try again to draw out the truth, “if you would be so good as to tell me what makes the covert in Scotland more suitable than this for my training, I would be grateful to know what to expect.”

“You have been ordered to go there; that makes it the only suitable place,” Bowden said sharply. Yet then he seemed to relent, for he added, in a less harsh tone, “Laggan’s training master is especially adept at bringing inexperienced handlers along quickly.”

“Inexperienced?” Laurence said, blankly. “I thought an aviator had to come into the service at the age of seven; surely you do not mean that there are boys already handling dragons at that age.”

“No, of course not,” Bowden said. “But you are not the first handler to come from outside the ranks, or without as much training as we might care for. Occasionally a hatchling will have a fit of distemper, and we must take anyone we can get it to accept.” He gave a sudden snorting laugh. “Dragons are strange creatures, and there is no understanding them; some of them even take a liking to sea-officers.” He slapped Temeraire’s side, and left as abruptly as he had come; without a word of parting, but in apparently better humor, and leaving Laurence hardly less perplexed than before.

The flight to Nottinghamshire took several hours, and afforded him more leisure than he liked to consider what awaited him in Scotland. He did not like to imagine what Bowden and Powys and Portland all expected him to disapprove so heartily, and he still less liked to try to imagine what he should do if he found the situation unbearable.

He had only once had a truly unhappy experience in his naval service: as a freshly made lieutenant of seventeen he had been assigned to the Shorewise, under Captain Barstowe, an older man and a relic of an older Navy, where officers had not been required to be gentlemen as well. Barstowe was the illegitimate son of a merchant of only moderate wealth and a woman of only moderate character; he had gone to sea as a boy in his father’s ships and been pressed into the Navy as a foremast hand. He had displayed great courage in battle and a keen head for mathematics, which had won him promotion first to master’s-mate, then to lieutenant, and even by a stroke of luck to post-rank, but he had never lost any of the coarseness of his background.

What was worse, Barstowe had been conscious of his own lack of social graces, and resentful of those who, in his mind, made him feel that lack. It was not an unmerited resentment: there were many officers who looked askance and murmured at him; but he had seen in Laurence’s easy and pleasing manners a deliberate insult, and he had been merciless in punishing Laurence for them. Barstowe’s death of pneumonia three months into the voyage had possibly saved Laurence’s own life, and at the least had freed him from an endless daze of standing double or triple watches, a diet of ship’s biscuit and water, and the perils of leading a gun-crew composed of the worst and most unhandy men aboard.

Laurence still had an instinctive horror when he thought of the experience; he was not in the least prepared to be ruled over by another such man, and in Bowden’s ominous words about the Corps taking anyone a hatchling would accept, he read a hint that his trainer or perhaps his fellow trainees would be of such a stamp. And while Laurence was not a boy of seventeen anymore, nor in so powerless a position, he now had Temeraire to consider, and their shared duty.

His hands tightened on the reins involuntarily, and Temeraire looked around. “Are you well, Laurence?” he asked. “You have been so quiet.”

“Forgive me, I have only been woolgathering,” Laurence said, patting Temeraire’s neck. “It is nothing. Are you tiring at all? Should you like to stop and rest awhile?”

“No, I am not tired, but you are not telling the truth: I can hear you are unhappy,” Temeraire said anxiously. “Is it not good that we are going to begin training? Or are you missing your ship?”

“I find I am become transparent before you,” Laurence said ruefully. “I am not missing my ship at all, no, but I will admit I am a little concerned about our training. Powys and Bowden were very odd about the whole thing, and I am not sure what sort of reception we will meet in Scotland, or how we shall like it.”

“If we do not care for it, surely we can just go away again?” Temeraire said.

“It is not so easy; we are not at liberty, you know,” Laurence said. “I am a King’s officer, and you are a King’s dragon; we cannot do as we please.”

“I have never met the King; I am not his property, like a sheep,” Temeraire said. “If I belong to anyone, it is you, and you to me. I am not going to stay in Scotland if you are unhappy there.”

“Oh dear,” Laurence said; this was not the first time Temeraire had showed a distressing tendency to independent thought, and it seemed to only be increasing as he grew older and started to spend more of his time awake. Laurence was not himself particularly interested in political philosophy, and he found it sadly puzzling to have to work out explanations for what to him seemed natural and obvious. “It is not ownership, exactly; but we owe him our loyalty. Besides,” he added, “we would have a hard time of it keeping you fed, were the Crown not paying for your board.”

“Cows are very nice, but I do not mind eating fish,” Temeraire said. “Perhaps we could get a large ship, like the transport, and go back to sea.”

Laurence laughed at the image. “Shall I turn pirate king and go raiding in the West Indies, and fill a covert with gold from Spanish merchant ships for you?” He stroked Temeraire’s neck.

“That sounds exciting,” Temeraire said, his imagination clearly caught. “Can we not?”

“No, we are born too late; there are no real pirates anymore,” Laurence said. “The Spanish burned the last pirate band out of Tortuga last century; now there are only a few independent ships or dragon-crews, at most, and those always in danger of being brought down. And you would not truly like it, fighting only for greed; it is not the same as doing one’s duty for King and country, knowing that you are protecting England.”

“Does it need protecting?” Temeraire asked, looking down. “It seems all quiet, as far as I can see.”

“Yes, because it is our business and the Navy’s to keep it so,” Laurence said. “If we did not do our work, the French could come across the Channel; they are there, not very far to the east, and Bonaparte has an army of a hundred thousand men waiting to come across the moment we let him. That is why we must do our duty; it is like the sailors on the Reliant, who cannot always be doing just as they like, or the ship will not sail.”

In response to this, Temeraire hummed in thought, deep in his belly; Laurence could feel the sound reverberating through his own body. Temeraire’s pace slowed a little; he glided for a while and then beat back up into the air in a spiral before leveling out again, very much like a fellow pacing back and forth. He looked around again. “Laurence, I have been thinking: if we must go to Loch Laggan, then there is no decision to be made at present; and because we do not know what may be wrong there, we cannot think of something to do now. So you should not worry until we have arrived and seen how matters stand.”

“My dear, this is excellent advice, and I will try to follow it,” Laurence said, adding, “but I am not certain that I can; it is difficult not to think of.”

“You could tell me again about the Armada, and how Sir Francis Drake and Conflagratia destroyed the Spanish fleet,” Temeraire suggested.

“Again?” Laurence said. “Very well; although I will begin to doubt your memory at this rate.”

“I remember it perfectly,” Temeraire said with dignity. “But I like to hear you tell it.”

What with Temeraire making him repeat favorite sections and asking questions about the dragons and ships which Laurence thought even a scholar could not have answered, the rest of the flight passed without giving him leisure to worry any further. Evening was far advanced by the time they finally closed in upon his family’s home at Wollaton Hall, and in the twilight all the many windows glowed.

Temeraire circled over the house a few times out of curiosity, his pupils open very wide; Laurence, peering down himself, made a count of lit windows and realized that the house could not be empty; he had assumed it would be, the London Season being still in full train, but it was now too late to seek another berth for Temeraire. “Temeraire, there ought to be an empty paddock behind the barns, to the south-east there; can you see it?”

“Yes, there is a fence around it,” Temeraire said, looking. “Shall I land there?”

“Yes, thank you; I am afraid I must ask you to stay there, for the horses would certainly have fits if you came anywhere near the stables.”

When Temeraire had landed, Laurence climbed down and stroked his warm nose. “I will arrange for you to have something to eat as soon as I have spoken with my parents, if they are indeed home, but that may take some time,” he said apologetically.

“You need not bring me food tonight; I ate well before we left, and I am sleepy. I will eat some of those deer over there in the morning,” Temeraire said, settling himself down and curling his tail around his legs. “You should stay inside; it is colder here than Madeira was, and I do not want you to fall sick.”

“There is something very curious about a six-week-old creature playing nursemaid,” Laurence said, amused; yet even as he spoke, he could hardly believe Temeraire was so young. Temeraire had seemed in most respects mature straight out of the shell, and ever since hatching he had been drinking up knowledge of the world with such enthusiasm that the gaps in his understanding were vanishing with astonishing speed. Laurence no longer thought of him as a creature for whom he was responsible, but rather as an intimate friend, already the dearest in his life, and one to be depended upon without question. The training lost a little of its dread for Laurence as he looked up at the already-drowsing Temeraire, and Barstowe he put aside in his memory as a bugbear. Surely there could be nothing ahead which they could not face together.

But his family he would have to face alone. Coming to the house from the stable side, he could see that his first impression from the air had been correct: the drawing room was brightly lit, and many of the bedrooms had candlelight in them. It was certainly a house party, despite the time of year.

He sent a footman to let his father know he was home, and went up to his room by the back stairs to change. He would have liked a bath, but he thought he had to go down at once to be civil; anything else might smack of avoidance. He settled for washing his face and hands in the basin; he had brought his evening rig, fortunately. He looked strange to himself in the mirror, wearing the new bottle-green coat of the Corps with the gold bars upon the shoulders in place of epaulettes; it had been bought in Dover, having been partly made for another man and adjusted hastily while Laurence waited, but it fit well enough.

More than a dozen people were assembled in the drawing room, besides his parents; the idle conversation died down when he entered, then resumed in hushed voices and followed him through the room. His mother came to meet him; her face was composed but a little fixed in its expression, and he could feel her tension as he bent to kiss her cheek. “I am sorry to descend on you unannounced in this fashion,” he said. “I did not expect to find anyone at home; I am only here for the night, and bound for Scotland in the morning.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear it, my dear, but we are very happy to have you even briefly,” she said. “Have you met Miss Montagu?”

The company were mostly long-standing friends of his parents whom he did not know very well, but as he had suspected might be the case, their neighbors were among the party, and Edith Galman was there with her parents. He was not sure whether to be pleased or unhappy; he felt he ought to be glad to see her, and for the opportunity which would otherwise not have come for so long; yet there was a sense of a whispering undercurrent in the glances thrown his way by the whole company, deeply discomfiting, and he felt wholly unprepared to face her in so public a setting.

Her expression as he bowed over her hand gave him no hint of her feelings: she was of a disposition not easily ruffled, and if she had been startled by the news of his coming, she had already recovered her poise. “I am glad to see you, Will,” she said, in her quiet way, and though he could not discover any particular warmth in her voice, he thought at least she did not seem angry or upset.

Unfortunately, he had no immediate opportunity to exchange a private word with her; she had already been engaged in conversation with Bertram Woolvey, and with her customary good manners, she turned back once they had completed their greetings. Woolvey made him a polite nod, but did not make any move to yield his place. Though their parents moved in the same circles, Woolvey had not been required to pursue any sort of occupation, being his father’s heir, and lacking any interest in politics, he spent his time hunting in the country or playing for high stakes in town. Laurence found his conversation monotonous, and they had never become friends.

In any event, he could not avoid paying his respects to the rest of the company; it was difficult to meet open stares with equanimity, and the only thing less welcome than the censure in many voices was the note of pity in others. By far the worst moment was coming to the table where his father was playing whist; Lord Allendale looked at Laurence’s coat with heavy disapproval and said nothing to his son at all.

The uncomfortable silence which fell upon their corner of the room was very awkward; Laurence was saved by his mother, who asked him to make up a fourth in another table, and he gratefully sat down and immersed himself in the intricacies of the game. His table companions were older gentlemen, Lord Galman and two others, friends and political allies of his father; they were dedicated players and did not trouble him with much conversation beyond what was polite.

He could not help glancing towards Edith from time to time, though he could not catch the sound of her voice. Woolvey continued to monopolize her company, and Laurence could not help but dislike seeing him lean so close and speak to her so intimately. Lord Galman had to gently call his attention back to the cards after his distraction delayed them; Laurence apologized to the table in some embarrassment and bent his head over his hand again.

“You are off to Loch Laggan, I suppose?” Admiral McKinnon said, giving him a few moments in which to recapture the thread of play. “I lived not far from there, as a boy, and a friend of mine lived near Laggan village; we used to see the flights overhead.”

“Yes, sir; we are to train there,” Laurence said, making his discard; Viscount Hale, to his left, continued the play, and Lord Galman took the trick.

“They are a queer lot over there; half the village goes into service, but the locals go up, the aviators don’t come down, except now and again to the pub to see one of the girls. Easier than at sea for that, at least, ha, ha!” Having made this coarse remark, McKinnon belatedly recalled his company; he glanced over his shoulder in some embarrassment to see if any of the ladies had overheard, and dropped the subject.

Woolvey took Edith in to supper; Laurence unbalanced the table by his presence and had to sit on the far side, where he could have all the pain of seeing their conversation with none of the pleasure of participating in it. Miss Montagu, on his left, was pretty but sulky-looking, and she neglected him almost to the point of rudeness to speak to the gentleman on her other side, a heavy gamester whom Laurence knew by name and reputation rather than personally.

To be snubbed in such a manner was a new experience for him and an unpleasant one; he knew he was no longer a marriageable man, but he had not expected this to have so great an impact upon his casual reception, and to find himself valued less than a wastrel with blown hair and mottled red cheeks was particularly shocking. Viscount Hale, on his right, was only interested in his food, so Laurence found himself sitting in almost complete silence.

Still more unpleasantly, without conversation of his own to command his attention, Laurence could not help overhearing while Woolvey spoke at length and with very little accuracy on the state of the war and England’s readiness for invasion. Woolvey was ridiculously enthusiastic, speaking of how the militia would teach Bonaparte a lesson if he dared to bring across his army. Laurence was forced to fix his gaze upon his plate to conceal his expression. Napoleon, master of the Continent, with a hundred thousand men at his disposal, to be turned back by militia: pure foolishness. Of course, it was the sort of folly that the War Office encouraged, to preserve morale, but to see Edith listening to this speech approvingly was highly unpleasant.

Laurence thought she might have kept her face turned away deliberately; certainly she made no effort to meet his eye. He kept his attention for the most part fixed upon his plate, eating mechanically and sunk into uncharacteristic silence. The meal seemed interminable; thankfully, his father rose very shortly after the women had left them, and on returning to the drawing room, Laurence at once took the opportunity to make his apologies to his mother and escape, pleading the excuse of the journey ahead.

But one of the servants, out of breath, caught him just outside the door of his room: his father wanted to see him in the library. Laurence hesitated; he could send an excuse and postpone the interview, but there was no sense in delaying the inevitable. He went back downstairs slowly nevertheless, and left his hand on the door just a moment too long: but then one of the maids came by, and he could not play the coward anymore, so he pushed it open and went inside.

“I wonder at your coming here,” Lord Allendale said the moment the door had shut: not even the barest pleasantry. “I wonder at it indeed. What do you mean by it?”

Laurence stiffened but answered quietly, “I meant only to break my journey; I am on my way to my next posting. I had no notion of your being here, sir, or having guests, and I am very sorry to have burst in upon you.”

“I see; I suppose you imagined we would remain in London, with this news making a nine days’ wonder and spectacle of us? Next posting, indeed.” He surveyed Laurence’s new coat with disdain, and Laurence felt at once as poorly dressed and shabby as when he had suffered such inspections as a boy brought in fresh from playing in the gardens. “I am not going to bother reproaching you. You knew perfectly well what I would think of the whole matter, and it did not weigh with you: very well. You will oblige me, sir, by avoiding this house in future, and our residence in London, if indeed you can be spared from your animal husbandry long enough to set foot in the city.”

Laurence felt a great coldness descend on him; he was very tired suddenly, and he had no heart at all to argue. He heard his own voice almost as if from a distance, and there was no emotion in it at all as he said, “Very good, sir; I shall leave at once.” He would have to take Temeraire to the commons to sleep, undoubtedly scaring the village herd, and buy him a few sheep out of his own pocket in the morning if possible or ask him to fly hungry if not; but they would manage.

“Do not be absurd,” Lord Allendale said. “I am not disowning you; not that you do not deserve it, but I do not choose to enact a melodrama for the benefit of the world. You will stay the night and leave tomorrow, as you declared; that will do very well. I think nothing more needs to be said; you may go.”

Laurence went back upstairs as quickly as he was able; closing the door of his bedroom behind him felt like allowing a burden to slip off his shoulders. He had meant to call for a bath, but he did not think he could bear to speak to anyone, even a maid or a footman: to be alone and quiet was everything. He consoled himself with the reminder that they could leave early in the morning, and he would not have to endure another formal meal with the company, nor exchange another word with his father, who rarely rose before eleven even in the country.

He looked at his bed a moment longer; then abruptly he took an old frock coat and a worn pair of trousers from his wardrobe, exchanged these for his evening dress, and went outside. Temeraire was already asleep, curled neatly about himself, but before Laurence could slip away again, one of his eyes half-opened, and he lifted his wing in instinctive welcome. Laurence had taken a blanket from the stables; he was as warm and comfortable as he could wish, stretched upon the dragon’s broad foreleg.

“Is all well?” Temeraire asked him softly, putting his other foreleg protectively around Laurence, sheltering him more closely against his breast; his wings half-rose, mantling. “Something has distressed you. Shall we not go at once?”

The thought was tempting, but there was no sense in it; he and Temeraire would both be the better for a quiet night and breakfast in the morning, and in any case he was not going to creep away as if ashamed. “No, no,” Laurence said, petting him until his wings settled again. “There is no need, I assure you; I have only had words with my father.” He fell silent; he could not shake the memory of the interview, his father’s cold dismissiveness, and his shoulders hunched.

“Is he angry about our coming?” Temeraire asked.

Temeraire’s quick perception and the concern in his voice were like a tonic for his weary unhappiness, and it made Laurence speak more freely than he meant to. “It is an old quarrel at heart,” he said. “He would have had me go into the Church, like my brother; he has never counted the Navy an honorable occupation.”

“And is an aviator worse, then?” Temeraire said, a little too perceptive now. “Is that why you did not like to leave the Navy?”

“In his eyes, perhaps, the Corps is worse, but not in mine; there is too great a compensation.” He reached up to stroke Temeraire’s nose; Temeraire nuzzled back affectionately. “But truly, he has never approved my choice of career; I had to run away from home as a boy for him to let me go to sea. I cannot allow his will to govern me, for I see my duty differently than he does.”

Temeraire snorted, his warm breath coming out as small trails of smoke in the cool night air. “But he will not let you sleep inside?”

“Oh, no,” Laurence said, and felt a little embarrassed to confess the weakness that had brought him out to seek comfort in Temeraire. “I only felt I would rather be with you, than sleep alone.”

But Temeraire did not see anything unusual in it. “So long as you are quite warm,” he said, resettling himself carefully and sweeping his wings forward a little, to encircle them from the wind.

“I am very comfortable; I beg you to have no concern,” Laurence said, stretching out upon the broad, firm limb, and drawing the blanket around himself. “Good night, my dear.” He was suddenly very tired, but with a natural physical fatigue: the bone-deep, painful weariness was gone.

He woke very early, just before sunrise, as Temeraire’s belly rumbled strongly enough for the sound to rouse them both. “Oh, I am hungry,” Temeraire said, waking up bright-eyed, and looked eagerly over at the herd of deer milling nervously in the park, clustered against the far wall.

Laurence climbed down. “I will leave you to your breakfast, and go to have my own,” he said, giving Temeraire’s side one final pat before turning back to the house. He was in no fit state to be seen; fortunately, with the hour so early, the guests were not yet about, and he was able to gain his bedroom without any encounter which might have rendered him still more disreputable.

He washed briskly, put on his flying dress while a manservant repacked his solitary piece of baggage, and went down as soon as he thought acceptable. The maids were still laying the first breakfast dishes out upon the sideboard, and the coffeepot had just been laid upon the table. He had hoped to avoid all the party, but to his surprise, Edith was at the breakfast table already, though she had never been an early riser.

Her face was outwardly calm, her clothing in perfect order and her hair drawn up smoothly into a golden knot, but her hands betrayed her, clenched together in her lap. She had not taken any food, only a cup of tea, and even that sat untouched before her. “Good morning,” she said, with a brightness that rang false; she glanced at the servants as she spoke. “May I pour for you?”

“Thank you,” he said, the only possible reply, and took the place next to her; she poured coffee for him and added half a spoonful of sugar and cream each, exactly to his tastes. They sat stiffly together, neither eating nor speaking, until the servants finished the preparations and left the room.

“I hoped I might have a chance to speak with you before you left,” she said quietly, looking at him at last. “I am so very sorry, Will; I suppose there was no other alternative?”

He needed a moment to understand she meant his going into harness; despite his anxieties on the subject of his training, he had already forgotten to view his new situation as an evil. “No, my duty was clear,” he said, shortly; he might have to tolerate criticism from his father on the subject, but he would not accept it from any other quarter.

But in the event, Edith only nodded. “I knew as soon as I heard that it would be something of the sort,” she said. She bowed her head again; her hands, which had been twisting restlessly over each other, stilled.

“My feelings have not altered with my circumstances,” Laurence said at last, when it was clear she would say nothing more. He felt he already had received his answer, by her lack of warmth, but she would not say, later on, that he had not been true to his word; he would let her be the one to put an end to their understanding. “If yours have, you need merely say a word to silence me.” Even as he made the offer, he could not help but feel resentment, and he could hear an unaccustomed coldness creeping into his voice: a strange tone for a proposal.

She drew a quick, startled breath, and said almost fiercely, “How can you speak so?” For a moment he hoped again; but she went on at once to say, “Have I ever been mercenary; have I ever reproached you for following your chosen course, with all its attendant dangers and discomforts? If you had gone into the Church, you would certainly have had any number of good livings settled upon you; by now we could have been comfortable together in our own home, with children, and I should not have had to spend so many hours in fear for you away at sea.”

She spoke very fast, with more emotion than he was used to seeing in her, and spots of color standing high on her cheeks. There was a great deal of justice in her remarks; he could not fail to see it, and be embarrassed at his own resentment. He half-reached out his hand to her, but she was already continuing: “I have not complained, have I? I have waited; I have been patient; but I have been waiting for something better than a solitary life, far from the society of all my friends and family, with only a very little share of your attention. My feelings are just as they have always been, but I am not so reckless or sentimental as to rely on feeling alone to ensure happiness in the face of every possible obstacle.”

Here at last she stopped. “Forgive me,” Laurence said, heavy with mortification: every word seemed a just reproach, when he had been pleased to think himself ill-used. “I should not have spoken, Edith; I had better have asked your pardon for having placed you in so wretched a position.” He rose from the table and bowed; of course he could not stay in her company now. “I must beg you to excuse me; pray accept all my best wishes for your happiness.”

But she was rising also, and shaking her head. “No, you must stay and finish your breakfast,” she said. “You have a long journey ahead of you; I am not hungry in the least. No, I assure you, I am going.” She gave him her hand and a smile that trembled very slightly. He thought she meant to make a polite farewell, but if that was her intention, it failed at the last moment. “Pray do not think ill of me,” she said, very low, and left the room as quickly as she might.

She need not have worried; he could not. On the contrary, he felt only guilt for having felt coldly towards her even for a moment, and for having failed in his obligation to her. Their understanding had been formed between a gentleman’s daughter with a respectable dowry and a naval officer with few expectations but handsome prospects. He had reduced his standing through his own actions, and he could not deny that nearly all the world would have disagreed with his own assessment of his duty in the matter.

And she was not unreasonable in asking more than an aviator could give. Laurence had only to think of the degree of his attention and affection which Temeraire commanded to realize he could have very little left to offer a wife, even on those rare occasions when he would be at liberty. He had been selfish in making the offer, asking her to sacrifice her own happiness to his comfort.

He had very little heart or appetite left for his breakfast, but he did not want to stop along his way; he filled his plate and forced himself to eat. He was not left in solitude long; only a little while after Edith had gone, Miss Montagu came downstairs, dressed in a too-elegant riding habit, something more suitable for a sedate canter through London than a country ride, which nevertheless showed her figure to great advantage. She was smiling as she came into the room, which expression turned instantly to a frown to see him the only one there, and she took a seat at the far end of the table. Woolvey shortly joined her, likewise dressed for riding; Laurence nodded to them both with bare civility and paid no attention to their idle conversation.

Just as he was finishing, his mother came down, showing signs of hurried dressing and lines of fatigue around her eyes; she looked into his face anxiously. He smiled at her, hoping to reassure, but he could see he was not very successful: his unhappiness and the reserve with which he had armored himself against his father’s disapproval and the curiosity of the general company was visible in his face, with all he could do.

“I must be going shortly; will you come and meet Temeraire?” he asked her, thinking they might have a private few minutes walking, at least.

“Temeraire?” Lady Allendale said blankly. “William, you do not mean you have your dragon here, do you? Good Heavens, where is he?”

“Certainly he is here; how else would I be traveling? I left him outside behind the stables, in the old yearling paddock,” Laurence said. “He will have eaten by now; I told him to make free of the deer.”

“Oh!” said Miss Montagu, overhearing; curiosity evidently overcame her objections to the company of an aviator. “I have never seen a dragon; pray may we come? How famous!”

It was impossible to refuse, although he would have liked to, so when he had rung for his baggage, the four of them went out to the field together. Temeraire was sitting up on his haunches, watching the morning fog gradually burn away over the countryside; against the cold grey sky he loomed very large, even from a considerable distance.

Laurence stopped for a moment to pick up a bucket and rags from the stables, then led his suddenly reluctant party on with a certain relish at Woolvey and Miss Montagu’s dragging steps. His mother was not unalarmed herself, but she did not show it, save by holding Laurence’s arm a little more tightly, and stopping several paces back as he went to Temeraire’s side.

Temeraire looked at the strangers with interest as he lowered his head to be washed; his chops were gory with the remains of the deer, and he opened his jaws to let Laurence clean away the blood from the corners of his mouth. There were three or four sets of antlers upon the ground. “I tried to bathe in that pond, but it is too shallow, and the mud came into my nose,” he told Laurence apologetically.

“Oh, he talks!” Miss Montagu exclaimed, clinging to Woolvey’s arm; the two of them had backed away at the sight of the rows of gleaming white teeth: Temeraire’s incisors were already larger than a man’s fist, and with a serrated edge.

Temeraire was taken aback at first; but then his pupils widened and he said, very gently, “Yes, I talk,” and to Laurence, “Would she perhaps like to come up on my back, and see around?”

Laurence could not repress an unworthy flash of malice. “I am sure she would; pray come forward, Miss Montagu, I can see you are not one of those poor-spirited creatures who are afraid of dragons.”

“No, no,” she said palely, drawing back. “I have trespassed on Mr. Woolvey’s time enough, we must be going for our ride.” Woolvey stammered a few equally transparent excuses as well, and they escaped at once together, stumbling in their haste to be away.

Temeraire blinked after them in mild surprise. “Oh, they were just afraid,” he said. “I thought she was like Volly at first. I do not understand; it is not as though they were cows, and anyway I have just eaten.”

Laurence concealed his private sentiment of victory and drew his mother forward. “Do not be afraid at all, there is not the least cause,” he said to her softly. “Temeraire, this is my mother, Lady Allendale.”

“Oh, a mother, that is special, is it not?” Temeraire said, lowering his head to look at her more closely. “I am honored to meet you.”

Laurence guided her hand to Temeraire’s snout, and once she made the first tentative touch to the warm hide, she soon began petting the dragon with more confidence. “Why, the pleasure is mine,” she said. “And how soft! I would never have thought it.”

Temeraire made a pleased low rumble at the compliment and the petting, and Laurence looked at the two of them with a great deal of his happiness restored; he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty. “Temeraire is a Chinese Imperial,” he told his mother, with unconcealed pride. “One of the very rarest of all dragons: the only one in all Europe.”

“Truly? How splendid, my dear; I do recall having heard before that Chinese dragons are quite out of the common way,” she said. But she still looked at him anxiously, and there was a silent question in her eyes.

“Yes,” he said, trying to answer it. “I count myself very fortunate, I promise you. Perhaps we will take you flying someday, when we have more time,” he added. “It is quite extraordinary; there is nothing to compare to it.”

“Oh, flying, indeed,” she said indignantly, yet she seemed satisfied on a deeper level. “When you know perfectly well I cannot even keep myself on a horse. What I should do on a dragon’s back, I am sure I do not know.”

“You would be strapped on quite securely, just as I am,” Laurence said. “Temeraire is not a horse, he would not try to have you off.”

Temeraire said earnestly, “Oh yes, and if you did fall off, I dare say I could catch you,” which was perhaps not the most reassuring remark, but his desire to please was very obvious, and Lady Allendale smiled up at him anyway.

“How very kind you are; I had no idea dragons were so well-mannered,” she said. “You will take prodigious care of William, will you not? He has always given me twice as much anxiety as any of my other children, and he is forever getting himself into scrapes.”

Laurence was a little indignant to hear himself described so, and to have Temeraire say, “I promise you, I will never let him come to harm.”

“I see I have delayed too long; shortly the two of you will have me wrapped in cotton batting and fed on gruel,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek. “Mother, you may write to me care of the Corps at Loch Laggan covert, in Scotland; we will be training there. Temeraire, will you sit up? I will sling this bandbox again.”

“Perhaps you could take out that book by Duncan?” Temeraire asked, rearing up. “The Naval Trident? We never finished reading about the battle of the Glorious First, and you might read it to me as we go.”

“Does he read to you?” Lady Allendale asked Temeraire, amused.

“Yes; you see, I cannot hold them myself, for they are too small, and also I cannot turn the pages very well,” Temeraire said.

“You are misunderstanding; she is only shocked to learn that I am ever to be persuaded to open a book; she was forever trying to make me sit to them when I was a boy,” Laurence said, rummaging in one of his other boxes to find the volume. “You would be quite astonished at how much of a bluestocking I am become, Mother; he is quite insatiable. I am ready, Temeraire.”

She laughed and stepped back to the edge of the field as Temeraire put Laurence up, and stood watching them, shading her eyes with one hand, as they drove up into the air; a small figure, vanishing with every beat of the great wings, and then the gardens and the towers of the house rolled away behind the curve of a hill.

Chapter 5

THE SKY OVER Loch Laggan was full of low-hanging clouds, pearl grey, mirrored in the black water of the lake. Spring had not yet arrived; a crust of ice and snow lay over the shore, ripples of yellow sand from an autumn tide still preserved beneath. The crisp cold smell of pine and fresh-cut wood rose from the forest. A gravel road wound up from the northern shores of the lake to the complex of the covert, and Temeraire turned to follow it up the low mountain.

A quadrangle of several large wooden sheds stood together on a level clearing near the top, open in the front and rather like half a stable in appearance; men were working outside on metal and leather: obviously the ground crews, responsible for the maintenance of the aviators’ equipment. None of them so much as glanced up at the dragon’s shadow crossing over their workplace, as Temeraire flew on to the headquarters.

The main building was a very medieval sort of fortification: four bare towers joined by thick stone walls, framing an enormous courtyard in the front and a squat, imposing hall that sank directly into the mountaintop and seemed to have grown out of it. The courtyard was almost entirely overrun. A young Regal Copper, twice Temeraire’s size, sprawled drowsing over the flagstones with a pair of brown-and-purple Winchesters even smaller than Volatilus sleeping right on his back. Three mid-sized Yellow Reapers were in a mingled heap on the opposite side of the courtyard, their white-striped sides rising and falling in rhythm.

As Laurence climbed down, he discovered the reason for the dragons’ choice of resting place: the flagstones were warm, as if heated from below, and Temeraire murmured happily and stretched himself on the stones beside the Yellow Reapers as soon as Laurence had unloaded him.

A couple of servants had come out to meet him, and they took the baggage off his hands. He was directed to the back of the building, through narrow dark corridors, musty smelling, until he came out into another open courtyard that emerged from the mountainside and ended with no railing, dropping off sheer into another ice-strewn valley. Five dragons were in the air, wheeling in graceful formation like a flock of birds; the point-leader was a Longwing, instantly recognizable by the black-and-white ripples bordering its orange-tipped wings, which faded to a dusky blue along their extraordinary length. A couple of Yellow Reapers held the flanking positions, and the ends were anchored by a pale greenish Grey Copper to the left, and a silver-grey dragon spotted with blue and black patches to the right; Laurence could not immediately identify its breed.

Though their wings beat in wholly different time, their relative positions hardly changed, until the Longwing’s signal-midwingman waved a flag; then they switched off smoothly as dancers, reversing so the Longwing was flying last. At some other signal Laurence did not see, they all backwinged at once, performing a perfect loop and coming back into the original formation. He saw at once that the maneuver gave the Longwing the greatest sweep over the ground during the pass while retaining the protection of the rest of the wing around it; naturally it was the greatest offensive threat among the group.

“Nitidus, you are still dropping low in the pass; try changing to a six-beat pattern on the loop.” It was the deep resounding voice of a dragon, coming from above; Laurence turned and saw a golden-hued dragon with the Reaper markings in pale green and the edges of his wings deep orange, perched on an outcropping to the right of the courtyard: he bore no rider and no harness, save, if it could be called so, a broad golden neck-ring studded with rounds of pale green jade stone.

Laurence stared. Out in the valley, the wing repeated its looping pass. “Better,” the dragon called approvingly. Then he turned his head and looked down. “Captain Laurence?” he said. “Admiral Powys said you would be arriving; you come in good time. I am Celeritas, training master here.” He spread his wings for lift and leapt easily down into the courtyard.

Laurence bowed mechanically. Celeritas was a mid-weight dragon, perhaps a quarter of the size of a Regal Copper; smaller even than Temeraire’s present juvenile size. “Hm,” he said, lowering his head to inspect Laurence closely; the deep green irises of his eyes seemed to turn and contract around the narrowed pupil. “Hm, well, you are a good deal older than most handlers; but that is often all to the good when we must hurry along a young dragon, as in Temeraire’s case I think we must.”

He lifted his head and called out into the valley again, “Lily, remember to keep your neck straight on the loop.” He turned back to Laurence. “Now then. He has no special offensive capabilities showing, as I understand it?”

“No, sir.” The answer and the address were automatic; tone and attitude alike both declared the dragon’s rank, and habit carried Laurence along through his surprise. “And Sir Edward Howe, who identified his species, was of the opinion that it was unlikely he should develop such, though not out of the question—”

“Yes, yes,” Celeritas interrupted. “I have read Sir Edward’s work; he is an expert on the Oriental breeds, and I would trust his judgment in the matter over my own. It is a pity, for we could well do with one of those Japanese poison-spitters, or waterspout-makers: now that would be useful against a French Flamme-de-Gloire. But heavy-combat weight, I understand?”

“He is at present some nine tons in weight, and it is nearly six weeks since he was hatched,” Laurence said.

“Good, that is very good, he ought to double that,” Celeritas said, and he rubbed the side of a claw over his forehead thoughtfully. “So. All is as I had heard. Good. We will be pairing Temeraire with Maximus, the Regal Copper currently here in training. The two of them together will serve as a loose backing arc for Lily’s formation—that is the Longwing there.” He gestured with his head out at the formation wheeling in the valley, and Laurence, still bewildered, turned to watch it for a moment.

The dragon continued, “Of course, I must see Temeraire fly before I can determine the specific course of your training, but I need to finish this session, and after a long journey he will not show to advantage in any case. Ask Lieutenant Granby to show you about and tell you where to find the feeding grounds; you will find him in the officers’ club. Come back with Temeraire tomorrow, an hour past first light.”

This was a command; an acknowledgment was required. “Very good, sir,” Laurence said, concealing his stiffness in formality. Fortunately, Celeritas did not seem to notice; he was already leaping back up to his higher vantage point.

Laurence was very glad that he did not know where the officers’ club was; he felt he could have used a quiet week to adjust his thinking, rather than the fifteen minutes it took him to find a servant who could point him in the right direction. Everything which he had ever heard about dragons was turned upon its head: that dragons were useless without their handlers; that unharnessed dragons were only good for breeding. He no longer wondered at all the anxiety on the part of the aviators; what would the world think, to know they were trained—given orders—by one of the beasts they supposedly controlled?

Of course, considered rationally, he had long possessed proofs of dragon intelligence and independence, in Temeraire’s person; but these had developed gradually over time, and he had unconsciously come to think of Temeraire as a fully realized individual without extending the implication to the rest of dragonkind. The first surprise past, he could without too much difficulty accept the idea of a dragon as instructor, but it would certainly create a scandal of extraordinary proportions among those who had no similar personal experience.

It had not been so long, only shortly before the Revolution in France had cast Europe into war again, since the proposal had been made by Government that unharnessed dragons ought to be killed, rather than supported at the public expense and kept for breeding; the rationale offered had been a lack of need at that present time, and that their recalcitrance likely only hurt the fighting bloodlines. Parliament had calculated a savings of more than ten million pounds per annum; the idea had been seriously considered, then dropped abruptly without public explanation. It was whispered, however, that every admiral of the Corps stationed in range of London had jointly descended upon the Prime Minister and informed him that if the law were passed, the entire Corps would mutiny.

He had previously heard the story with disbelief; not for the proposal, but for the idea that senior officers—any officers—would behave in such a way. The proposal had always seemed to him wrong-minded, but only as the sort of foolish short-sightedness so common among bureaucrats, who thought it better to save ten shillings on sailcloth and risk an entire ship worth six thousand pounds. Now he considered his own indifference with a sense of mortification. Of course they would have mutinied.

Still preoccupied with his thoughts, he walked through the archway to the officers’ club without attention, and only caught the ball that hurtled at his head by reflex. A mingled cheer and cry of protest both went up at once.

“That was a clear goal, he’s not on your team!” A young man, barely out of boyhood, with bright yellow hair, was complaining.

“Nonsense, Martin. Certainly he is; aren’t you?” Another of the participants, grinning broadly, came up to Laurence to take the ball; he was a tall, lanky fellow, with dark hair and sunburnt cheekbones.

“Apparently so,” Laurence said, amused, handing over the ball. He was a little astonished to find a collection of officers playing children’s games indoors, and in such disarray. In his possession of coat and neckcloth, he was more formally dressed than all of them; a couple had even taken off their shirts entirely. The furniture had been pushed pell-mell into the edges of the room, and the carpet rolled up and thrust into a corner.

“Lieutenant John Granby, unassigned,” the dark-haired man said. “Have you just arrived?”

“Yes; Captain Will Laurence, on Temeraire,” Laurence said, and was startled and not a little dismayed to see the smile fall off Granby’s face, the open friendliness vanishing at once.

“The Imperial!” The cry was almost general, and half the boys and men in the room disappeared past them, pelting towards the courtyard. Laurence, taken aback, blinked after them.

“Don’t worry!” The yellow-haired young man, coming up to introduce himself, answered his look of alarm. “We all know better than to pester a dragon; they’re only going to have a look. Though you might have some trouble with the cadets; we have a round two dozen of ’em here, and they make it their mission to plague the life out of everyone. Midwingman Ezekiah Martin, and you can forget my first name now that you have it, if you please.”

Informality was so obviously the usual mode among them that Laurence could hardly take offense, though it was not in the least what he was used to. “Thank you for the warning; I will see Temeraire does not let them bother him,” he said. He was relieved to see no sign of Granby’s attitude of dislike in Martin’s greeting, and wished he might ask the friendlier of the two for guidance. However, he did not mean to disobey orders, even if given by a dragon, so he turned to Granby and said formally, “Celeritas tells me to ask you to show me about; will you be so good?”

“Certainly,” Granby said, trying for equal formality; but it sat less naturally on him, and he sounded artificial and wooden. “Come this way, if you please.”

Laurence was pleased when Martin fell in with them as Granby led the way upstairs; the midwingman’s light conversation, which did not falter for an instant, made the atmosphere a great deal less uncomfortable. “So you are the naval fellow who snatched an Imperial out of the jaws of France. Lord, it is a famous story; the Frogs must be gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair over it,” Martin said exultantly. “I hear you took the egg off an hundred-gun ship; was the battle very long?”

“I am afraid rumor has magnified my accomplishments,” Laurence said. “The Amitié was not a first-rate at all, but a thirty-six, a frigate; and her men were nearly falling down for thirst. Her captain offered a very valiant defense, but it was not a very great contest; ill fortune and the weather did our work for us. I can claim only to have been lucky.”

“Oh! Well, luck is nothing to sneeze at, either; we would not get very far if luck were against us,” Martin said. “Hullo, have they put you at the corner? You will have the wind howling at all hours.”

Laurence came into the circular tower room and looked around his new accommodation with pleasure; to a man used to the confines of a ship’s cabin, it seemed spacious, and the large, curved windows a great luxury. They looked out over the lake, where a thin grey drizzle had started; when he opened them, a cool wet smell came blowing in, not unlike the sea, except for the lack of salt.

His bandboxes were piled a little haphazardly together beside the wardrobe; he looked inside this with some concern, but his things had been put away neatly enough. A writing desk and chair completed the furnishings, beside the plain but ample bed. “It seems perfectly quiet to me; I am sure it will do nicely,” he said, unbuckling his sword and laying it upon the bed; he did not feel comfortable taking off his coat, but he could at least reduce the formality of his appearance a little by this measure.

“Shall I show you to the feeding grounds now?” Granby said stiffly; it was his first contribution to the conversation since they had left the club.

“Oh, we ought to show him the baths first, and the dining hall,” Martin said. “The baths are something to see,” he added to Laurence. “They were built by the Romans, you know; and they are why we are all here at all.”

“Thank you; I would be glad to see them,” Laurence said; although he would have been happy to let the obviously unwilling lieutenant escape, he could not say otherwise now without being rude; Granby might be discourteous, but Laurence did not intend to stoop to the same behavior.

They passed the dining hall on the way; Martin, chattering away, told him that the captains and lieutenants dined at the smaller round table, then midwingmen and ensigns at the long rectangle. “Thankfully, the cadets come in and eat earlier, for the rest of us would starve if we had to hear them squalling throughout our meals, and then the ground crews eat after us,” he finished.

“Do you never take your meals separately?” Laurence asked; the communal dining was rather odd, for officers, and he thought wistfully that he would miss being able to invite friends to his own table; it had been one of his greatest pleasures, ever since he had won enough in prize-money to afford it.

“Of course, if someone is sick, a tray will be sent up,” Martin said. “Oh, are you hungry? I suppose you had no dinner. Hi, Tolly,” he called, and a servant crossing the room with a stack of linens turned to look at them, an eyebrow raised. “This is Captain Laurence; he has just flown in. Can you manage something for him, or must he wait until supper?”

“No, thank you; I am not hungry. I was speaking only from curiosity,” Laurence said.

“Oh, there’s no trouble about it,” the man Tolly said, answering directly. “I dare say one of the cooks can cut you a fair slice or two and dish up some potatoes; I will ask Nan. Tower room on the third floor, yes?” He nodded and went on his way without even waiting for a reply.

“There, Tolly will take care of you,” Martin said, evidently without the least consciousness of anything out of the ordinary. “He is one of the best fellows; Jenkins is never willing to oblige, and Marvell will get it done, but he will moan about it so that you wish you hadn’t asked.”

“I imagine that you have difficulty finding servants who are not bothered by the dragons,” Laurence said; he was beginning to adjust to the informality of the aviators’ address among themselves, but to find a similar degree in a servant had bemused him afresh.

“Oh, they are all born and bred in the villages hereabouts, so they are used to it and us,” Martin said, as they walked through the long hall. “I suppose Tolly has been working here since he was a squeaker; he would not bat an eye at a Regal Copper in a tantrum.”

A metal door closed off the stairway leading down to the baths; when Granby pulled it open, a gust of hot, wet air came out and steamed in the relative cold of the corridor. Laurence followed the other two down the narrow, spiraling stair; it went down for four turns and opened abruptly into a large bare room, with shelves of stone built out of the walls and faded paintings upon the walls, partly chipped away: obvious relics of Roman times. One side held heaps of folded and stacked linens, the other a few piles of discarded clothes.

“Just leave your things on the shelves,” Martin said. “The baths are in a circuit, so we come back out here again.” He and Granby were already stripping.

“Have we time to bathe now?” Laurence asked, a little dubiously.

Martin paused in taking off his boots. “Oh, I thought we would just stroll through; no, Granby? It is not as though there is a need to rush; supper will not be for a few hours yet.”

“Unless you have something urgent to attend to,” Granby said to Laurence, so ungraciously that Martin looked between them in surprise, as if only now noticing the tension.

Laurence compressed his lips and held back a sharp word; he could not be checking every aviator who might be hostile to a Navy man, and to some extent he understood the resentment. He would have to win through it, just like a new midwingman fresh on board. “Not in the least” was all he said. Though he was not sure why they had to strip down merely to tour the baths, he followed their example, save that he arranged his clothes with more care into two neat stacks, and laid his coat atop them rather than creasing it by folding.

Then they left the room by a corridor to the left, and passed through another metal door at its end. He saw the sense in undressing as soon as they were through: the room beyond was so full of steam he could barely see past arm’s length, and he was dripping wet instantly. If he had been dressed, his coat and boots would have been ruined, and everything else soaked through; on naked skin the steam was luxurious, just shy of being too hot, and his muscles unwound gratefully from the long flight.

The room was tiled, with benches built out of the walls at regular intervals; a few other fellows were lying about in the steam. Granby and Martin nodded to a couple of them as they led the way through and into a cavernous room beyond; this one was even warmer, but dry, and a long, shallow pool ran very nearly its full length. “We are right under the courtyard now, and there is why the Corps has this place,” Martin said, pointing.

Deep niches were built into the long wall at regular intervals, and a fence of wrought-iron barred them from the rest of the room while leaving them visible. Perhaps half the niches were empty; the other half were padded with fabric, and each held a single massive egg. “They must be kept warm, you see, since we cannot spare the dragons to brood over them, or let them bury them near volcanoes or suchlike, as they would in nature.”

“And there is no space to make a separate chamber for them?” Laurence said, surprised.

“Of course there is space,” Granby said rudely; Martin glanced at him and leapt in hastily, before Laurence could react.

“You see, everyone is in and out of here often, so if one of them begins to look a bit hard we are more likely to notice it,” he said hurriedly.

Still trying to rein in his temper, Laurence let Granby’s remark pass and nodded to Martin; he had read in Sir Edward’s books how unpredictable dragon egg hatching was, until the very end; even knowing the species could only narrow the process down to a span of months or, for the larger breeds, years.

“We think the Anglewing over there may hatch soon; that would be famous,” Martin went on, pointing at a golden-brown egg, its sides faintly pearlescent and spotted with flecks of brighter yellow. “That is Obversaria’s get; she is the flag-dragon at the Channel. I was signal-ensign aboard her, fresh out of training, and no beast in her class can touch her for maneuvering.”

Both of the aviators looked at the eggs with wistful expressions, longingly; of course each of those represented a rare chance of promotion, and one even more uncertain than the favor of the Admiralty, which might be courted or won by valor in the field. “Have you served with many dragons?” Laurence asked Martin.

“Only Obversaria and then Inlacrimas; he was injured in a skirmish over the Channel a month ago, and so here I am on the ground,” Martin said. “But he will be fit for duty again in a month, and I got a promotion out of it, so I shouldn’t complain; I am just made midwingman,” he added proudly. “And Granby here has been with more; four, is that not right? Who before Laetificat?”

“Excursius, Fluitare, and Actionis,” Granby answered, very briefly.

But the first name had been enough; Laurence finally understood, and his face hardened. The fellow likely was friend to Lieutenant Dayes; at any rate, the two of them had been the equivalent of shipmates until recently, and it was now clear to him that Granby’s offensive behavior was not simply the general resentment of an aviator for a naval officer shoehorned into his service, but also a personal matter, and thus in some sense an extension of Dayes’s original insult.

Laurence was far less inclined to tolerate any slight for such a cause, and he said abruptly, “Let us continue, gentlemen.” He allowed no further delays during the remainder of the tour, and let Martin carry the conversation as he would, without giving any response that might draw it out. They came back to the dressing room after completing the circuit of the baths, and once dressed again, Laurence said quietly but firmly, “Mr. Granby, you will take me to the feeding grounds now; then I may set you at liberty.” He had to make it clear to the man that the disrespect would not be tolerated; if Granby were to make another fling, he would have to be checked, and better by far were that to occur in private. “Mr. Martin, I am obliged to you for your company, and your explanations; they have been most valuable.”

“You are very welcome,” Martin said, looking between Laurence and Granby uncertainly, as if afraid of what might happen if he left them alone. But Laurence had made his hint quite unmistakable, and despite the informality Martin seemed able to see that it had nearly the weight of an order. “I will see you both at supper, I imagine; until then.”

In silence Laurence continued with Granby to the feeding grounds, or rather to a ledge that overlooked them, at the far end of the training valley. The mouth of a natural cul-de-sac was visible at the far end of the valley, and Laurence could see several herdsmen there on duty; Granby explained, in a flat voice, that when signaled from the ledge, these would pick out the appropriate number of beasts for a dragon and send them into the valley, where the dragon might hunt them down and eat, so long as no training flight was in progress.

“It is straightforward enough, I trust,” Granby said, in conclusion; his tone was highly disagreeable, and yet another step over the line, as Laurence had feared.

“Sir,” Laurence said quietly. Granby blinked in momentary confusion, and Laurence repeated, “It is straightforward enough, sir.”

He hoped it would be enough to warn Granby off from further disrespect, but almost unbelievably, the lieutenant answered back, saying, “We do not stand on ceremony here, whatever you may have been used to in the Navy.”

“I have been used to courtesy; where I do not receive it, I will insist at the least on the respect due to rank,” Laurence said, his temper breaking loose; he glared savagely at Granby, and felt the color coming into his face. “You will amend your address immediately, Lieutenant Granby, or by God I shall have you broken for insubordination; I do not imagine that the Corps takes quite so light a view of it as one might gather from your behavior.”

Granby went very pale; the sunburn across his cheeks stood out red. “Yes, sir,” he said, and stood sharply at attention.

“Dismissed, Lieutenant,” Laurence said at once, and turned away to gaze out over the field with arms clasped behind his back until Granby had left; he did not want to even look at the fellow again. With the sustaining flush of righteous anger gone, he was tired, and miserable to have met with such treatment; in addition he now had to anticipate with dismay the consequences he knew would follow on his having checked the man. Granby had seemed on their first instant of meeting to be friendly and likable by nature; even if he were not, he was still one of the aviators, and Laurence an interloper. Granby’s fellows would naturally support him, and their hostility could only make Laurence’s circumstances unpleasant.

But there had been no alternative; open disrespect could not be borne, and Granby had known very well that his behavior was beyond the pale. Laurence was still downcast when he turned back inside; his spirits rose only as he walked into the courtyard and found Temeraire awake and waiting for him. “I am sorry to have abandoned you so long,” Laurence said, leaning against his side and petting him, more for his own comfort than Temeraire’s. “Have you been very bored?”

“No, not at all,” Temeraire said. “There were a great many people who came by and spoke to me; some of them measured me for a new harness. Also, I have been talking to Maximus here, and he tells me we are to train together.”

Laurence nodded a greeting to the Regal Copper, who had acknowledged the mention of his name by opening a sleepy eye; Maximus lifted his massive head enough to return the gesture, and then sank back down. “Are you hungry?” Laurence asked, turning back to Temeraire. “We must be up early to fly for Celeritas—that is the training master here,” he added, “so you will likely not have time in the morning.”

“Yes, I would like to eat,” Temeraire said; he seemed wholly unsurprised to have a dragon as training master, and in the face of his pragmatic response, Laurence felt a little silly for his own first shock; of course Temeraire would see nothing strange in it.

Laurence did not bother strapping himself back on completely for the short hop to the ledge, and there he dismounted to let Temeraire hunt without a passenger. The uncomplicated pleasure of watching the dragon soar and dive so gracefully did a great deal to ease Laurence’s mind. No matter how the aviators should respond to him, his position was secure in a way that no sea captain could hope for; he had experience in managing unwilling men, if it came to that in his crew, and at least Martin’s example showed that not all the officers would be prejudiced against him from the beginning.

There was some other comfort also: as Temeraire swooped and snatched a lumbering shaggy-haired cow neatly off the ground and settled down to eat it, Laurence heard enthusiastic murmuring and looked up to see a row of small heads poking out of the windows above. “That is the Imperial, sir, is he not?” one of the boys, sandy-haired and round-faced, called out to him.

“Yes, that is Temeraire,” Laurence answered. He had always made an effort towards the education of his young gentlemen, and his ship had been considered a prime place for a squeaker; he had many family and service friends to do favors for, so he had fairly extensive experience of boys, most of it favorable. Unlike many grown men, he was not at all uncomfortable in their company, even if these were younger than most of his midshipmen ever had been.

“Look, look, how smashing,” another one, smaller and darker, cried and pointed; Temeraire was skimming low to the ground and collecting up all three sheep that had been released for him, before stopping to eat again.

“I dare say you all have more experience of dragonflight than I; does he show to advantage?” he asked them.

“Oh, yes,” was the general and enthusiastic response. “Corners on a wink and a nod,” the sandy-haired boy said, adopting a professional tone, “and splendid extension; not a wasted wingbeat. Oh, ripping,” he added, dissolving back into a small boy, as Temeraire backwinged to take the last cow.

“Sir, you haven’t picked your runners yet, have you?” another dark-haired one asked hopefully, which at once set up a clamor among all the others; all of them announcing their worthiness for what Laurence gathered was some position to which particularly favored cadets were assigned, in a dragon-crew.

“No; and I imagine when I do it will be on the advice of your instructors,” he said, with mock severity. “So I dare say you ought to mind them properly the next few weeks. There, have you had enough?” he asked, as Temeraire rejoined him on the ledge, landing directly on the edge with perfect balance.

“Oh yes, they were very tasty; but now I am all over blood, may we go and wash up?” Temeraire said.

Laurence realized belatedly this had been omitted from his tour; he glanced up at the children. “Gentlemen, I must ask you for direction; shall I take him to the lake for bathing?”

They all stared down at him with round surprised eyes. “I have never heard of bathing a dragon,” one of them said.

The sandy-haired one added, “I mean, can you imagine trying to wash a Regal? It would take ages. Usually they lick their chops and talons clean, like a cat.”

“That does not sound very pleasant; I like being washed, even if it is a great deal of work,” Temeraire said, looking at Laurence anxiously.

Laurence suppressed an exclamation and said equably, “Certainly it is a great deal of work, but so are many other things that ought to be done; we shall go to the lake at once. Only wait here a moment, Temeraire; I will go and fetch some linens.”

“Oh, I will bring you some!” The sandy-haired boy vanished from the windows; the rest immediately followed, and scarcely five minutes later the whole half a dozen of them had come spilling out onto the ledge with a pile of imperfectly folded linens whose provenance Laurence suspected.

He took them anyway, thanking the boys gravely, and climbed back aboard, making a mental note of the sandy-haired fellow; it was the sort of initiative he liked to see and considered the making of an officer.

“We could bring our carabiner belts tomorrow, and then we could ride along and help,” the boy added now, with a too-guileless expression.

Laurence eyed him and wondered if this was forwardness to discourage, but he was secretly cheered by the enthusiasm, so he contented himself with saying firmly, “We shall see.”

They stood watching from the ledge, and Laurence saw their eager faces until Temeraire came around the castle and they passed out of sight. Once at the lake, he let Temeraire swim about to clean off the worst of the gore, then wiped him down with particular care. It was appalling to a man raised to daily holystoning of the deck that aviators should leave their beasts to keep themselves clean, and as he rubbed down the sleek black sides, he suddenly considered the harness. “Temeraire, does this chafe you at all?” he asked, touching the straps.

“Oh, not very often now,” Temeraire said, turning his head to look. “My hide is getting a great deal tougher; and when it does bother me I can shift it a little, and then it is better straightaway.”

“My dear, I am covered with shame,” Laurence said. “I ought never have kept you in it; from now on you shall not wear it for an instant while it is not necessary for our flying together.”

“But is it not required, like your clothing?” Temeraire said. “I would not like anyone to think I was not civilized.”

“I shall get you a larger chain to wear about your neck, and that will serve,” Laurence said, thinking of the golden collar Celeritas wore. “I am not going to have you suffering for a custom that so far as I can tell is nothing but laziness; and I am of a mind to complain of it in the strongest terms to the next admiral I see.”

He was as good as his word and stripped the harness from Temeraire the moment they landed in the courtyard. Temeraire looked a little nervously at the other dragons, who had been watching with interest from the moment the two of them had returned with Temeraire still dripping from the lake. But none of them seemed shocked, only curious, and once Laurence had detached the gold-and-pearl chain and wrapped it around one of Temeraire’s talons, rather like a ring, Temeraire relaxed entirely and settled back down on the warm flagstones. “It is more pleasant not to have it on; I had not realized how it would be,” he confided quietly to Laurence, and scratched at a darkened spot on his hide where a buckle had rested and crushed together several scales into a callus.

Laurence paused in cleaning the harness and stroked him in apology. “I do beg your forgiveness,” he said, looking at the galled spot with remorse. “I will try and find a poultice for these marks.”

“I want mine off, too,” chirped one of the Winchesters suddenly, and flitted down from Maximus’s back to land in front of Laurence. “Will you, please?”

Laurence hesitated; it did not seem right to him to handle another man’s beast. “I think perhaps your own handler is the only one who ought to remove it,” he said. “I do not like to give offense.”

“He has not come for three days,” the Winchester said sadly, his small head drooping; he was only about the size of a couple of draft horses, and his shoulder barely topped Laurence’s head. Looking more closely, Laurence could see his hide was marked with streaks of dried blood, and the harness did not look particularly clean or well-kept, unlike those of the other dragons; it bore stains and rough patches.

“Come here, and let me have a look at you,” Laurence said quietly, as he took up the linens, still wet from the lake, and began to clean the little dragon.

“Oh, thank you,” the Winchester said, leaning happily into the cloth. “My name is Levitas,” he added shyly.

“I am Laurence, and this is Temeraire,” Laurence said.

“Laurence is my captain,” Temeraire said, the smallest hint of belligerence in his tone, and an emphasis on the possessive; Laurence looked up at him in surprise, and paused in his cleaning to pat Temeraire’s side. Temeraire subsided, but watched with his pupils narrowed to thin slits while Laurence finished.

“Shall I see if I cannot find what has happened to your handler?” he told Levitas with a final pat. “Perhaps he is not feeling well, but if so I am sure he will be well soon.”

“Oh, I do not think he is sick,” Levitas said, with that same sadness. “But that feels much better already,” he added, and rubbed his head gratefully against Laurence’s shoulder.

Temeraire gave a low displeased rumble and flexed his talons against the stone; with an alarmed chirp, Levitas flew straightaway up to Maximus’s back and nestled down small against the other Winchester again. Laurence turned to Temeraire. “Come now, what is this jealousy?” he said softly. “Surely you cannot begrudge him a little cleaning when his handler is neglecting him.”

“You are mine,” Temeraire said obstinately. After a moment, however, he ducked his head in a shamefaced way and added in a smaller voice, “He would be easier to clean.”

“I would not give up an inch of your hide were you twice Laetificat’s size,” Laurence said. “But perhaps I will see if some of the boys would like to wash him, tomorrow.”

“Oh, that would be good,” Temeraire said, brightening. “I do not quite understand why his handler has not come; you would never stay away so long, would you?”

“Never in life, unless I was kept away by force,” Laurence said. He did not understand it himself; he could imagine that a man harnessed to a dim beast would not necessarily find the creature’s company satisfying intellectually, but at the least he would have expected the easy affection with which he had seen James treat Volatilus. And though even smaller, Levitas was certainly more intelligent than Volly. Perhaps it was not so strange that there would be less dedicated men among aviators as well as in any other branch of the service, but with the shortage of dragons, it seemed a great pity to see one of them reduced to unhappiness, which could not help but affect the creature’s performance.

Laurence carried Temeraire’s harness with him out of the castle yard and over to the large sheds where the ground crews worked; though it was late in the day, there were several men still sitting out in front, smoking comfortably. They looked at him curiously, not saluting, but not unfriendly, either. “Ah, you’d be Temeraire’s,” one of them said, reaching out to take the harness. “Has it broken? We’ll be having a proper harness ready for you in a few days, but we can patch it up in the meantime.”

“No, it merely needs cleaning,” Laurence said.

“You haven’t a harness-tender yet; we can’t be assigning you your ground crew till we know how he’s to be trained,” the man said. “But we’ll see to it; Hollin, give this a rub, would you?” he called, catching the attention of a younger man who was working on a bit of leatherwork inside.

Hollin came out, wiping grease off onto his apron, and took the harness in big, capable-looking hands. “Right you are; will he give me any trouble, putting it back on him after?” he asked.

“That will not be necessary, thank you; he is more comfortable without it, so merely leave it beside him,” Laurence said firmly, ignoring the looks this won him. “And Levitas’s harness requires attention as well.”

“Levitas? Well now, I’d say that’s for his captain to speak to his crew about,” the first man said, sucking on his pipe thoughtfully.

That was perfectly true; nevertheless, it was a poor-spirited answer. Laurence gave the man a cold, steady look, and let silence speak for him. The men shifted a little uncomfortably under his glare. He said, very softly, “If they need to be rebuked to do their duty, then it must be arranged; I would not have thought any man in the Corps would need to hear anything but that a dragon’s well-being was at risk to seek to amend the situation.”

“I’ll do it along of dropping off Temeraire’s,” Hollin said hurriedly. “I don’t mind; he’s so small it won’t take me but a few shakes.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hollin; I am glad to see I was not mistaken,” Laurence said, and turned back to the castle; he heard the murmur behind him of “Regular Tartar, he is; wouldn’t fancy being on his crew.” It was not a pleasant thing to hear, at all; he had never been considered a hard captain, and he had always prided himself on ruling his men by respect rather than fear or a heavy hand; many of his crew had been volunteers.

He was conscious, too, of guilt: by speaking so strongly, he had indeed gone over the head of Levitas’s captain, and the man would have every right to complain. But Laurence could not quite bring himself to regret it; Levitas was clearly neglected, and it in no way fit his sense of duty to leave the creature in discomfort. The informality of the Corps might for once be of service to him; with any luck the hint might not be taken as direct interference, or as truly outrageous as it would have been in the Navy.

It had not been an auspicious first day; he was both weary and discouraged. There had been nothing truly unacceptable as he had feared, nothing so bad he could not bear it, but also nothing easy or familiar. He could not help but long for the comforting strictures of the Navy which had encompassed all his life, and wish impractically that he and Temeraire might be once again on the deck of the Reliant, with all the wide ocean around them.

Chapter 6

THE SUN WOKE him, streaming in through the eastern windows. The forgotten cold plate had been waiting for him the night before when he had finally climbed back up to his room, Tolly evidently being as good as his word. A couple of flies had settled on the food, but that was nothing to a seaman; Laurence had waved them off and devoured it to the crumbs. He had meant only to rest awhile before supper and a bath; now he blinked stupidly up at the ceiling for the better part of a minute before getting his bearings.

Then he remembered the training; he scrambled up at once. He had slept in his shirt and breeches, but fortunately he had a second of each, and his coat was reasonably fresh. He would have to remember to find a tailor locally where he could order another. It was a bit of a struggle to get into it alone, but he managed, and felt himself in good order when at last he descended.

The senior officers’ table was nearly empty. Granby was not there, but Laurence felt the effect of his presence in the sideways glances the two young men sitting together at the lower end of the table gave him. Nearer the head of the room, a big, thickset man with a florid face and no coat on was eating steadily through a heaped plate of eggs and black pudding and bacon; Laurence looked around uncertainly for a sideboard.

“Morning, Captain; coffee or tea?” Tolly was at his elbow, holding two pots.

“Coffee, thank you,” Laurence said gratefully; he had the cup drained and held out for more before the man even turned away. “Do we serve ourselves?” he asked.

“No, here comes Lacey with eggs and bacon for you; just mention if you like something else,” Tolly said, already moving on.

The maidservant was wearing coarse homespun, and she said, “Good morning!” cheerfully instead of staying silent, but it was so pleasant to see a friendly face that Laurence found himself returning the greeting. The plate she was carrying was so hot it steamed, and he had not a fig to give for propriety once he had tasted the splendid bacon: cured with some unfamiliar smoke, and full of flavor, and the yolks of his eggs almost bright orange. He ate quickly, with an eye on the squares of light traveling across the floor where the sun struck through the high windows.

“Don’t choke,” said the thickset man, eyeing him. “Tolly, more tea,” he bellowed; his voice was loud enough to carry through a storm. “You Laurence?” he demanded, as his cup was refilled.

Laurence finished swallowing and said, “Yes, sir; you have the advantage of me.”

“Berkley,” the man said. “Look here, what sort of nonsense have you been filling your dragon’s head with? My Maximus has been muttering all morning about wanting a bath, and his harness removed; absurd stuff.”

“I do not find it so, sir, to be concerned with the comfort of my dragon,” Laurence said quietly, his hands tightening on the cutlery.

Berkley glared straight back at him. “Why damn you, are you suggesting I neglect Maximus? No one has ever washed dragons; they don’t mind a little dirt, they have hide.”

Laurence reined in his temper and his voice; his appetite was gone, however, and he set down knife and fork. “Evidently your dragon disagrees; do you suppose yourself a better judge than he of what gives him discomfort?”

Berkley scowled at him fiercely, then abruptly he snorted. “Well, you are a fire-breather, make no mistake; and here I thought you Navy fellows were all so stiff and cautious-like.” He drained his teacup and stood up from the table. “I will be seeing you later; Celeritas wants to pace Maximus and Temeraire out together.” He nodded, apparently in all friendliness, and left.

Laurence was a little dazed by this abrupt reversal; then he realized he was near to being late, and he had no more time to think over the incident. Temeraire was waiting impatiently, and now Laurence found himself paying for his virtue, as the harness had to be put back on; even with the help of two ground crewmen he called over, they barely reached the courtyard in time.

Celeritas was not yet in the courtyard as they landed, but only a short while after their arrival, Laurence saw the training master emerge from one of the openings carved into the cliff wall: evidently these were private quarters, perhaps for older or more honored dragons. Celeritas shook out his wings and flew over to the courtyard, landing neatly on his rear legs, and he looked Temeraire over thoroughly. “Hm, yes, excellent depth of chest. Inhale, please. Yes, yes.” He sat back down on all fours. “Now then. Let us have a look at you. Two full circuits of the valley, first circuit horizontal turns, then backwing on the second. Go at an easy pace, I wish to assess your conformation, not your speed.” He made a nudging gesture with his head.

Temeraire leapt back aloft at full speed. “Gently,” Laurence called, tugging at the reins to remind him, and Temeraire slowed reluctantly to a more moderate pace. He soared easily through the turns, and then the loops; Celeritas called out, “Now again, at speed,” as they came back around. Laurence bent low to Temeraire’s neck as the wings beat with great frantic thrusts about him, and the wind whistled at a high pitch past his ears. It was faster than they had ever gone before, and as exhilarating; he could not resist, and gave a small whoop for Temeraire’s ears only as they went racing into the turn.

The second circuit completed, they winged back towards the courtyard again; Temeraire was scarcely breathing fast. But before they crossed half the valley there came a sudden tremendous roaring from overhead, and a vast black shadow fell over them: Laurence looked up in alarm to see Maximus barreling down towards their path as though he meant to ram them. Temeraire jerked to an abrupt stop and hovered in place, and Maximus went flying past and swept back up just short of the ground.

“What the devil do you mean by this, Berkley?” Laurence roared at the top of his lungs, standing in the harness; he was in a fury, his hands shaking but for his grip on the reins. “You will explain yourself, sir, this instant—”

“My God! How can he do that?” Berkley was shouting back at him, conversationally, as though they had not done anything out of the ordinary at all; Maximus was flying sedately back up towards the courtyard. “Celeritas, do you see that?”

“I do; pray come in and land, Temeraire,” Celeritas said, calling out from the courtyard. “They were flying at you on orders, Captain; do not be agitated,” he said to Laurence as Temeraire landed neatly on the edge. “It is of utmost importance to test the natural reaction of a dragon to being startled from above, where we cannot see; it is an instinct that often cannot be overcome by any training.”

Laurence was still very ruffled, and Temeraire as well: “That was very unpleasant,” he said to Maximus reproachfully.

“Yes, I know, it was done to me also when we started training,” Maximus said, cheerful and unrepentant. “How do you just hang in the air like that?”

“I never gave it much thought,” Temeraire said, mollified a little; he craned his neck over to examine himself. “I suppose I just beat my wings the other way.”

Laurence stroked Temeraire’s neck comfortingly as Celeritas peered closely at Temeraire’s wing-joints. “I had assumed it was a common ability, sir; is it unusual, then?” Laurence asked.

“Only in the sense of it being entirely unique in my two hundred years’ experience,” Celeritas said dryly, sitting back. “Anglewings can maneuver in tight circles, but not hover in such a manner.” He scratched his forehead. “We will have to give some thought to the applications of the ability; at the least it will make you a very deadly bomber.”

Laurence and Berkley were still discussing it as they went in to dinner, as well as the approach to matching Temeraire and Maximus. Celeritas had kept them working all the rest of the day, exploring Temeraire’s maneuvering capabilities and pacing the two dragons against each other. Laurence had already felt, of course, that Temeraire was extraordinarily fast and handy in the air; but there was a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction at hearing Celeritas say so, and to have Temeraire easily outdistance the older and larger Maximus.

Celeritas had even suggested they might try and have Temeraire fly double-pace, if he proved to retain his maneuverability even as he grew: that he might be able to fly a strafing run along the length of the entire formation and come back to his position in time to fly a second along with the rest of the dragons.

Berkley and Maximus had taken it in good part to have Temeraire fly rings around them. Of course Regal Coppers were the first-rates of the Corps, and Temeraire would certainly never equal Maximus for sheer weight and power, so there was no real basis for jealousy; still, after the tension of his first day, Laurence was inclined to take an absence of hostility as a victory. Berkley himself was an odd character, a little old to be a new captain and very queer in his manners, with a normal state of extreme stolidity broken by occasional explosions.

But in his strange way he seemed a steady and dedicated officer, and friendly enough. He told Laurence abruptly, as they sat at the empty table waiting for the other officers to join them, “You will have to face down a damned sight of jealousy, of course, for not having to wait for a prime ’un as much as anything. I was six years waiting for Maximus; it was well worth it, but I don’t know that I would be able not to hate you if you were prancing about in front of me with an Imperial while he was still in the shell.”

“Waiting?” Laurence said. “You were assigned to him before he was even hatched?”

“The moment the egg was cool enough to touch,” Berkley said. “We get four or five Regal Coppers in a generation; Aerial Command don’t leave it to chance who mans ’em. I was grounded the moment I said yes-thank-you, and here I sat staring at him in the shell and lecturing squeakers, hoping he wouldn’t take too much bloody time about it, which by God he did.” Berkley snorted and drained his glass of wine.

Laurence had already formed a high opinion of Berkley’s skill in the air after their morning’s work, and he did indeed seem the sort of man who could be entrusted with a rare and valuable dragon; certainly he was very fond of Maximus and showed it in a bluff way. As they had parted from Maximus and Temeraire in the courtyard, Laurence had overheard him telling the big dragon, “I suppose I will get no peace until you have your harness taken off too, damn you,” while ordering his ground crew to see to it, and Maximus nearly knocking him over with a caressing nudge.

The other officers were beginning to file into the room; most of them were much younger than himself or Berkley, and the hall quickly grew noisy with their cheerful and often high-pitched voices. Laurence was a little tense at first, but his fears did not materialize; a few more of the lieutenants did look at him dubiously, and Granby sat as far away as possible, but other than this no one seemed to pay him much notice.

A tall, blond man with a sharp nose said quietly, “I beg your pardon, sir,” and slipped into the chair beside him. Though all the senior officers were in coats and neckcloths for dinner, the newcomer was noticeably different in having his neckcloth crisply folded, and his coat pressed. “Captain Jeremy Rankin, at your service,” he said courteously, offering a hand. “I believe we have not met?”

“No, I am just arrived yesterday; Captain Will Laurence, at yours,” Laurence answered. Rankin had a firm grip, and a pleasant and easy manner; Laurence found him very easy to talk to, and learned without surprise that Rankin was a son of the Earl of Kensington.

“My family have always sent third sons to the Corps, and in the old days before the Corps were formed and dragons reserved to the Crown, my however-many-great-grandfather used to support a pair,” Rankin said. “So I have no difficulties going home; we still maintain a small covert for fly-overs, and I was often there even during my training. It is an advantage I wish more aviators could have,” he added, low, glancing around the table.

Laurence did not wish to say anything that might be construed as critical; it was all right for Rankin to hint at it, being one of them, but from his own lips it could only be offensive. “It must be hard on the boys, leaving home so early,” he said, with more tact. “In the Navy we—that is, the Navy does not take lads before they are twelve, and even then they are set on shore between cruises, and have time at home. Did you find it so, sir?” he added, turning to Berkley.

“Hm,” Berkley said, swallowing; he looked a little hard at Rankin before answering Laurence. “Can’t say that I did; squalled a little, I suppose, but one gets used to it, and we run the squeakers about to keep them from getting too homesick.” He turned back to his food with no attempt to keep the conversation going, and Laurence was left to turn back and continue his discussion with Rankin.

“Am I late—oh!” It was a slim young boy, his voice not yet broken but tall for that age, hurrying to the table in some disarray; his long red hair was half coming out of his plaited queue. He halted abruptly at the table’s edge, then slowly and reluctantly took the seat on Rankin’s other side, which was the only one left vacant. Despite his youth, he was a captain: the coat he wore had the double golden bars across the shoulders.

“Why, Catherine, not at all; allow me to pour you some wine,” Rankin said. Laurence, already looking in surprise at the boy, thought for a moment he had misheard; then saw he had not, at all: the boy was indeed a young lady. Laurence looked around the table blankly; no one else seemed to think anything of it, and it was clearly no secret: Rankin was addressing her in polite and formal tones, serving her from the platters.

“Allow me to present you,” Rankin added, turning. “Captain Laurence of Temeraire, Miss—oh, no, I forget; that is, Captain Catherine Harcourt of, er, Lily.”

“Hello,” the girl muttered, not looking up.

Laurence felt his face going red; she was sitting there in breeches that showed every inch of her leg, with a shirt held closed only by a neckcloth; he shifted his gaze to the unalarming top of her head and managed to say, “Your servant, Miss Harcourt.”

This at least caused her to raise her head. “No, it is Captain Harcourt,” she said; her face was pale, and her spray of freckles stood out prominently against it, but she was clearly determined to defend her rights; she gave Rankin a strangely defiant look as she spoke.

Laurence had used the address automatically; he had not meant to offend, but evidently he had. “I beg your pardon, Captain,” he said at once, bowing his head in apology. It was indeed difficult to address her so, however, and the title felt strange and awkward on his tongue; he was afraid he sounded unnaturally stiff. “I meant no disrespect.” And now he recognized the dragon’s name as well; it had struck him as unusual yesterday, but with so much else to consider, that one detail had slipped his mind. “I believe you have the Longwing?” he said politely.

“Yes, that is my Lily,” she said, an involuntary warmth coming into her voice as she spoke her dragon’s name.

“Perhaps you were not aware, Captain Laurence, that Longwings will not take male handlers; it is some odd quirk of theirs, for which we must be grateful, else we would be deprived of such charming company,” Rankin said, inclining his head to the girl. There was an ironic quality to his voice that made Laurence frown; the girl was very obviously not at ease, and Rankin did not seem to be making her more so. She had dropped her head again, and was staring at her plate with her lips pale and pressed together into an unhappy line.

“It is very brave of you to undertake such a duty, M—Captain Harcourt; a glass—that is to say, to your health,” Laurence said, amending at the last moment and making the toast a sip; he did not think it appropriate to force a slip of a girl to drink an entire glass of wine.

“It is no more than anyone else does,” she said, muttering; then belatedly she took her own glass and raised it in return. “I mean: and to yours.”

Silently he repeated her title and name to himself; it would be very rude of him to make the mistake again, having been corrected once, but it was so strange he did not entirely trust himself yet. He took care to look at her face and not elsewhere. With her hair pulled back so tightly she did look boyish, which was some help, along with the clothes that had allowed him to mistake her initially; he supposed that was why she went about in male dress, appalling and illegal though it was.

He would have liked to talk to her, although it would have been difficult not to ask questions, but he could not be steadily talking over Rankin. He was left to wonder at it in the privacy of his own thoughts; to think that every Longwing in service was captained by a woman was shocking. Glancing at her slight frame, he wondered how she supported the work; he himself felt battered and tired after the day’s flying, and though perhaps a proper harness would reduce the strain, he still found it hard to believe a woman could manage it day after day. It was cruel to ask it of her, but of course Longwings could not be spared. They were perhaps the most deadly English dragons, to be compared only with Regal Coppers, and without them the aerial defenses of England would be hideously vulnerable.

With this object of curiosity to occupy his thoughts, and Rankin’s civil conversation as well, his first dinner passed more pleasantly than he had to some extent expected, and he rose from the table encouraged, even though Captain Harcourt and Berkley had been silent and uncommunicative throughout. As they stood, Rankin turned to him and said, “If you are not otherwise engaged, may I invite you to join me in the officers’ club for some chess? I rarely have the chance of a game, and I confess that since you mentioned that you play, I have been eager to seize upon the opportunity.”

“I thank you for the invitation; it would give me great pleasure as well,” Laurence said. “For the moment I must beg to be excused, however; I must see to Temeraire, and then I have promised to read to him.”

“Read to him?” Rankin said, with an expression of amusement that did not hide his surprise at the idea. “Your dedication is admirable, and all that is natural in a new handler. However, allow me if I may to assure you that for the most part dragons are quite capable of managing on their own. I know several of our fellow captains are in the habit of spending all their free time with their beasts, and I would not wish you based on their example to think it a necessity, or a duty to which you must sacrifice the pleasure of human company.”

“I thank you kindly for your concern, but I assure you it is misplaced in my case,” Laurence said. “For my own part, I could desire no better society than Temeraire’s, and it is as much for my own sake as for his that we are engaged. But I would be very happy to join you later this evening, unless you keep early hours.”

“I am very happy to hear it, on both counts,” Rankin said. “As for my hours, not at all; I am not in training, of course, only here on courier duty, so I need not keep to a student’s schedule. I am ashamed to admit that on most days I am not to be found downstairs until shortly before noon, but on the other hand that grants me the pleasure of expecting to see you this evening.”

With this they parted, and Laurence set out to find Temeraire. He was amused to find three of the cadets lurking just outside the dining hall door: the sandy-haired boy and two others, each clutching a fistful of clean white rags. “Oh, sir,” the boy said, jumping up as he saw Laurence coming out. “Would you need any more linens, for Temeraire?” he asked eagerly. “We thought you might, so we brought some, when we saw him eating.”

“Here now, Roland, what d’you think you’re about, there?” Tolly, carrying a load of dishes from the dining hall, stopped on seeing the cadets accost Laurence. “You know better’n to pester a captain.”

“I’m not, am I?” the boy said, looking hopefully at Laurence. “I only thought, perhaps we could help a little. He is very big, after all, and Morgan and Dyer and I all have our carabiners; we can lock on without any trouble at all,” he said earnestly, displaying an odd harness that Laurence had not even noticed before: it was a thick leather belt laced tightly around his waist, with an attached pair of straps ending in what looked at first glance like a large chain link made of steel. On closer examination, Laurence saw that this had a piece which could be folded in, and thus open the link to be hooked on to something else.

Straightening, Laurence said, “As Temeraire does not yet have a proper harness, I do not think you can lock on to the straps with these. However,” he added, hiding a smile at their downcast looks, “come along, and we shall see what can be done. Thank you, Tolly,” he said, nodding to the servant. “I can manage them.”

Tolly was not bothering to hide his grin at this exchange. “Right you are,” he said, carrying on with his duties.

“Roland, is it?” Laurence asked the boy, as he walked on to the courtyard with the three children trotting to keep up.

“Yes, sir, Cadet Emily Roland, at your service.” Turning to her companions, and thus remaining blithely unconscious of Laurence’s startled expression, she added, “And these are Andrew Morgan and Peter Dyer; we are all in our third year here.”

“Yes, indeed, we would all like to help,” Morgan said, and Dyer, smaller than the other two and with round eyes, only nodded.

“Very good,” Laurence managed, looking surreptitiously down at the girl. Her hair was cut bowl-fashion, just like the two boys’, and she had a sturdy, stocky build; her voice was scarcely pitched higher than theirs: his mistake had not been unnatural. Now that he gave a moment’s thought to the matter, it made perfect sense; the Corps would naturally train up a few girls, in anticipation of needing them as Longwings hatched, and likely Captain Harcourt was herself the product of such training. But he could not help wondering what sort of parent would hand over a girl of tender years to the rigor of the service.

They came out into the courtyard and were met by a scene of raucous activity: a great confusion of wings and dragon voices filling the air. Most if not all of the dragons had just come from feeding and were now being attended by members of their crews, who were busy cleaning the harnesses. Despite Rankin’s words, Laurence scarcely saw a dragon whose captain was not standing by its head and petting or talking to it; this evidently was a common interlude during the day when dragons and their handlers were at liberty.

He did not immediately see Temeraire; after searching the busy courtyard for a few moments, he realized that Temeraire had settled outside the exterior walls, likely to avoid the bustle and noise. Before going out to him, Laurence took the cadets over to Levitas: the little dragon was curled up alone just inside the courtyard walls, watching the other dragons with their officers. Levitas was still in his harness, but it looked much better than it had on the previous day: the leather looked as though it had been worked over and rubbed with oil to make it more supple, and the metal rings joining the straps were brightly polished.

Laurence now guessed that the rings were intended to provide a place for the carabiners to latch on; though Levitas was small compared with Temeraire, he was still a large creature, and Laurence thought he could easily sustain the weight of the three cadets for the short journey. The dragon was eager and happy for the attention, his eyes brightening as Laurence made the suggestion.

“Oh yes, I can carry you all easily,” he said, looking at the three cadets, who looked back at him with no less eagerness. They all scrambled up as nimbly as squirrels, and each of them locked on to two separate rings in an obviously well-practiced motion.

Laurence tugged on each strap; they seemed secure enough. “Very well, Levitas; take them down to the shore, and Temeraire and I will meet you there shortly,” he said, patting the dragon’s side.

Having seen them off, Laurence wove through the other dragons and made his way out of the gate. He stopped short on his first clear look at Temeraire; the dragon looked strangely downcast, a marked difference from his happy attitude at the conclusion of the morning’s work, and Laurence hurried to his side. “Are you not feeling well?” Laurence asked, inspecting his jaws, but Temeraire was bloodstained and messy from his meal, and looked to have eaten well. “Did something you ate disagree with you?”

“No, I am perfectly well,” Temeraire said. “It is only— Laurence, I am a proper dragon, am I not?”

Laurence stared; the note of uncertainty in Temeraire’s voice was wholly new. “As proper a dragon as there is in the world; what on earth would make you ask such a question? Has anyone said anything unkind to you?” A quick surge of temper was rising in him already at the mere possibility; the aviators might look at him askance and say what they liked, but he was not going to tolerate anyone making remarks to Temeraire.

“Oh, no,” Temeraire said, but in a way that made Laurence doubt the words. “No one was unkind, but they could not help noticing, while we were all feeding, that I do not look quite like the rest of them. They are all much more brightly colored than I am, and their wings do not have so many joins. Also, they have those ridges along their backs, and mine is plain, and I have more talons on my feet.” He turned and inspected himself as he catalogued these differences. “So they looked at me a little oddly, but no one was unkind. I suppose it is because I am a Chinese dragon?”

“Yes, indeed, and you must recall that the Chinese are counted the most skilled breeders in the world,” Laurence said firmly. “If anything, the others should look to you as their ideal, not the reverse, and I beg you will not for a moment doubt yourself. Only consider how well Celeritas spoke of your flying this morning.”

“But I cannot breathe fire, or spit acid,” Temeraire said, settling back down, still with an air of dejection. “And I am not as big as Maximus.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “He and Lily ate first; the rest of us had to wait until after they were done, and then we were allowed to hunt as a group.”

Laurence frowned; it had not occurred to him that dragons would have a system of rank among themselves. “My dear, there has never been a dragon of your breed in England, so your precedence has not yet been established,” he said, trying to find an explanation which would console Temeraire. “Also, perhaps it has something to do with the rank of their captains, for you must recall that I have less seniority than any other captain here.”

“That would be very silly; you are older than most of them are, and have a great deal of experience,” Temeraire said, losing some of his unhappiness in indignation over the idea of a slight to Laurence. “You have won battles, and most of them are only still in training.”

“Yes, though at sea, and things are very different aloft,” Laurence said. “But it is quite true that precedence and rank are not guarantors of wisdom or good breeding; pray do not take it so to heart. I am sure that when we have been in service a year or two, you will be acknowledged as you deserve. But for the moment, did you get enough to eat? We shall return to the feeding grounds at once if not.”

“Oh, no, there was no shortage,” Temeraire said. “I was able to catch whatever I wanted, and the others did not get in my way very much at all.”

He fell silent, and was clearly still inclined to be dismal; Laurence said, “Come, we must see about getting you bathed.”

Temeraire brightened at the prospect, and after the better part of an hour spent playing with Levitas in the lake and then being scrubbed by the cadets, his spirits were greatly restored. Afterwards, he curled happily about Laurence in the warm courtyard when they settled down together to read, apparently much happier. But Laurence still saw Temeraire looking at his gold-and-pearl chain more often, and touching it with the tip of his tongue; he was beginning to recognize the gesture as a desire for reassurance. He tried to put affection in his voice as he read, and stroked the foreleg on which he was comfortably seated.

He was still frowning with concern later that evening, as he came into the officers’ club; a left-handed blessing, for the momentary hush that fell when he came into the room bothered him far less than it might otherwise have done. Granby was standing at the pianoforte near the door, and he pointedly touched his forehead in salute and said, “Sir,” as Laurence came in.

It was an odd sort of insolence that could hardly be reprimanded; Laurence chose to answer as if it had been sincere, and said politely, “Mr. Granby,” with a nod that he made a general gesture to the room, and walked on with what haste was reasonable. Rankin was sitting far back in a corner of the room by a small table, reading a newspaper; Laurence joined him, and in a few moments the two of them had set up the chessboard which Rankin had taken down from a shelf.

The buzz of conversation had already resumed; between moves, Laurence observed the room as well as he could without making himself obvious. Now that his eyes were opened, he could see a few female officers scattered in the crowd here, also. Their presence seemed to place no restraint on the general company; the conversation though good-natured was not wholly refined, and it was made noisy and confused by interruptions.

Nevertheless there was a clear sense of good-fellowship throughout the room, and he could not help feeling a little wistful at his natural exclusion from it; both by their preference and his own he did not feel that he was fitted for participation, and it could not but give him a pang of loneliness. But he dismissed it almost at once; a Navy captain had to be used to a solitary existence, and often without such companionship as he had in Temeraire. And also, he might now look forward to Rankin’s company as well; he returned his attention to the chessboard, and looked no more at the others.

Rankin was perhaps out of practice a little, but not unskilled, and as the game was not one of Laurence’s favorite pastimes they were reasonably well-matched. While they played, Laurence mentioned his concern for Temeraire to Rankin, who listened with sympathy. “It is indeed shameful that they should have not given him precedence, but I must counsel you to leave the remedy to him,” Rankin said. “They behave that way in the wild; the deadlier breeds demand first fruits of the hunt, and the weaker give way. He must likely assert himself among the other beasts to be given more respect.”

“Do you mean by offering some sort of challenge? But surely that cannot be a wise policy,” Laurence said, alarmed at the very idea; he had heard the old fantastic stories of wild dragons fighting among themselves, and killing one another in such dueling. “To allow battle among such desperately valuable creatures, for so little purpose?”

“It rarely comes to an actual battle; they know one another’s capabilities, and I promise you, once he feels certain of his strength, he will not tolerate it, nor will he meet with any great resistance,” Rankin said.

Laurence could not have great confidence in this; he was certain it was no lack of courage that prevented Temeraire from taking precedence, but a more delicate sensibility, which had unhappily enabled him to sense the lack of approbation of the other dragons. “I would still like to find some means of reassuring him,” Laurence said sadly; he could see that henceforth all the feedings would be a source of fresh unhappiness to Temeraire, and yet they could not be avoided, save by feeding him at different times, which would only make him feel still more isolated from the others.

“Oh, give him a trinket and he will settle down,” Rankin said. “It is amazing how it restores their spirits; whenever my beast becomes sulky, I bring him a bauble and he is at once all happiness again; just like a temperamental mistress.”

Laurence could not help smiling at the absurdity of this joking comparison. “I have been meaning to get him a collar, as it happens,” he said, more seriously, “such as the one Celeritas wears, and I do believe it would make him very happy. But I do not suppose there is anywhere here where such an item may be commissioned.”

“I can offer you a remedy for that, at any rate. I go to Edinburgh regularly on my courier duties, and there are several excellent jewelers there; some of them even carry ready-made items for dragons, as there are many coverts here in the north within flying distance. If you care to accompany me, I would be happy to bear you there,” Rankin said. “My next flight will be this Saturday, and I can easily have you back by suppertime if we leave in the morning.”

“Thank you; I am very much obliged to you,” Laurence said, surprised and pleased. “I will apply to Celeritas for permission to go.”

Celeritas frowned at the request, made the next morning, and looked at Laurence narrowly. “You wish to go with Captain Rankin? Well, it will be the last day of liberty you have for a long time, for you must and will be here for every moment of Temeraire’s flight training.”

He was almost fierce about it, and Laurence was surprised by his vehemence. “I assure you I have no objection,” he said, wondering in astonishment if the training master thought he meant to shirk his duties. “Indeed, I had not imagined otherwise, and I am well aware of the need for urgency in his training. If my absence would cause any difficulty, I beg you to have no hesitation in refusing the request.”

Whatever the source of his initial disapproval, Celeritas was mollified by this statement. “As it happens, the ground crewmen will need a day to fit Temeraire out with his new gear, and it will be ready by then,” he said, in less stern tones. “I suppose we can spare you, as long as Temeraire is not finicky about being harnessed without you there, and you may as well have a final excursion.”

Temeraire assured Laurence he did not mind, so the plan was settled, and Laurence spent part of the next few evenings making measurements of his neck, and of Maximus’s, thinking the Regal Copper’s current size might be a good approximation for what Temeraire could reach in future. He pretended to Temeraire that these were for the harness; he looked forward to giving the present as a surprise, and seeing it take away some of the quiet distress that lingered, casting a pall over the dragon’s usually high spirits.

Rankin looked with amusement at his sketches of possible designs. The two of them had already formed the settled habit of playing chess together in the evenings, and sitting together at dinner. Laurence so far had little conversation with the other aviators; he regretted it, but could see little point in trying to push himself forward when he was comfortable enough as he was, and in the absence of any sort of invitation. It seemed clear to him that Rankin was as outside the common life of the aviators as he was, perhaps set aside by the elegance of his manners, and if they were both outcast for the same reason, they might at least have the pleasure of each other’s society for compensation.

He and Berkley met at breakfast and training every day, and he continued to find the other captain an astute airman and aerial tactician; but at dinner or in company Berkley was silent. Laurence was not sure either that he wished to draw the man into intimacy, or that a gesture in that direction would be welcome, so he contented himself with being civil, and discussing technical matters; so far they had known each other only a few days, and there would be time enough to take a better measure of the man’s real character.

He had steeled himself to react properly on meeting Captain Harcourt again, but she seemed shy of his company; he saw her almost only at a distance, though Temeraire was soon to be flying in company with her dragon, Lily. One morning however she was at table when he arrived for breakfast, and in an attempt to make natural conversation, he asked how her dragon came to be called Lily, thinking it might be a nickname like Volly’s. She flushed to her roots again and said very stiffly, “I liked the name; pray how did you come to name Temeraire?”

“To be perfectly honest, I did not have any idea of the proper way of naming a dragon, nor any way of finding out at the time,” Laurence said, feeling he had made a misstep; no one had remarked on Temeraire’s unusual name before, and only now that she had brought him to task for it did he guess that perhaps he had raised a sore point with her. “I called him after a ship: the first Téméraire was captured from the French, and the one presently in service is a ninety-eight-gun three-decker, one of our finest line-of-battle ships.”

When he had made this confession, she seemed to grow more easy, and said with more candor, “Oh; as you have said as much, I do not mind admitting that it was nearly the same with me. Lily was not properly expected to hatch for another five years at the earliest, and I had no notion of a name. When her egg hardened, they woke me in the middle of the night at Edinburgh covert and flung me on a Winchester, and I barely managed to reach the baths before she broke the shell. I simply gaped when she invited me to give her a name, and I could not think of anything else.”

“It is a charming name, and perfectly suits her, Catherine,” Rankin said, joining them at the table. “Good morning, Laurence; have you seen the paper? Lord Pugh has finally managed to marry off his daughter; Ferrold must be desperately hard up.” This piece of gossip, concerning as it did people whom Harcourt did not know at all, left her outside the conversation. Before Laurence could change the subject, however, she excused herself and slipped away from the table, and he lost the opportunity to further the acquaintance.

The few days remaining in the week before the excursion passed swiftly. The training as yet was still more a matter of testing Temeraire’s flying abilities, and seeing how best he and Maximus could be worked into the formation centered on Lily. Celeritas had them fly endless circuits around the training valley, sometimes trying to minimize the number of wingbeats, sometimes trying to maximize their speed, and always trying to keep them in line with one another. One memorable morning was spent almost entirely upside down, and Laurence found himself dizzy and red-faced at the end of it. The stouter Berkley was huffing as he staggered off Maximus’s back after the final pass, and Laurence leapt forward to ease him down to the ground as his legs gave out from under him.

Maximus hovered anxiously over Berkley and rumbled in distress. “Stop that moaning, Maximus; nothing more ridiculous than a creature of your size behaving like a mother hen,” Berkley said as he fell into the chair that the servants had hurriedly brought. “Ah, thank you,” he said, taking the glass of brandy Laurence offered him, and sipped at it while Laurence loosened his neckcloth.

“I am sorry to have put you under such a strain,” Celeritas said, when Berkley was no longer gasping and scarlet. “Ordinarily these trials would be spread over half a month’s time. Perhaps I am pressing on too quickly.”

“Nonsense, I will be well in a trice,” Berkley said at once. “I know damned well we cannot spare a moment, Celeritas, so do not be holding us back on my account.”

“Laurence, why are matters so urgent?” Temeraire asked that evening after dinner, as they once again settled down together outside the courtyard walls to read. “Is there to be a great battle soon, and we are needed for it?”

Laurence folded the book closed, keeping his place with a finger. “No; I am sorry to disappoint you, but we are too raw to be sent by choice directly into a major action. Still, it is very likely that Lord Nelson will not be able to destroy the French fleet without the help of one of the Longwing formations presently stationed in England; our duty will be to take their place, so they may go. That will indeed be a great battle, and though we will not participate in it directly, I assure you our part is by no means unimportant.”

“No, though it does not sound very exciting,” Temeraire said. “But perhaps France will invade us, and then we will have to fight?” He sounded rather more hopeful than anything else.

“We must hope not,” Laurence said. “If Nelson destroys their fleet, it will pretty well put paid to any chance of Bonaparte’s bringing his army across. Though I have heard he has something like a thousand boats to carry his men, they are only transports, and the Navy would sink them by the dozens if they tried to come across without the protection of the fleet.”

Temeraire sighed and put his head down over his forelegs. “Oh,” he said.

Laurence laughed and stroked his nose. “How bloodthirsty you are,” he said with amusement. “Do not fear; I promise you we will see enough action when your training is done. There is a great deal of skirmishing over the Channel, for one thing; and then we may be sent in support of a naval operation, or perhaps sent to harass the French shipping independently.” This heartened Temeraire greatly, and he turned his attention to the book with restored good humor.

Friday they spent in an endurance trial, trying to see how long both dragons could stay aloft. The formation’s slowest members would be the two Yellow Reapers, so both Temeraire and Maximus had to be kept to that slower pace for the test, and they went around and around the training valley in an endless circle, while above them the rest of the formation performed a drill under Celeritas’s supervision.

A steady rain blurred all the landscape below into a grey monotony and made the task still more boring. Temeraire often turned his head to inquire, a little plaintively, how long he had been flying, and Laurence was generally obliged to inform him that scarcely a quarter of an hour had passed since the last query. Laurence at least could watch the formation wheeling and diving, their bright colors marked against the pale grey sky; poor Temeraire had to keep his head straight and level to maintain the best flying posture.

After perhaps three hours, Maximus began to fall off the pace, his great wings beating more slowly and his head drooping; Berkley took him back in, and Temeraire was left all alone, still going around. The rest of the formation came spiraling down to land in the courtyard, and Laurence saw the dragons nodding to Maximus, inclining their heads respectfully. At this distance he could not make out any words, but it was clear they were all conversing easily among themselves while their captains milled about and Celeritas gathered them together to review their performance. Temeraire saw them as well, and sighed a little, though he said nothing; Laurence leaned forward and stroked his neck, and silently vowed to bring him back the most elegant jewels he could find in the whole of Edinburgh, if he had to draw out half his capital to do so.

Laurence came out into the courtyard early the next morning to say farewell to Temeraire before his trip with Rankin. He stopped short as he emerged from the hall: Levitas was being put under gear by a small ground crew, with Rankin at his head reading a newspaper and paying little attention to the proceedings. “Hello, Laurence,” the little dragon said to him happily. “Look, this is my captain, he has come! And we are flying to Edinburgh today.”

“Have you been talking with him?” Rankin said to Laurence, glancing up. “I see you were not exaggerating, and that you do indeed enjoy dragon society; I hope you will not find yourself tiring of it. You will be taking Laurence along with myself today; you must make an effort to show him a good pace,” he told Levitas.

“Oh, I will, I promise,” Levitas said at once, bobbing his head anxiously.

Laurence made some civil answer and walked quickly to Temeraire’s side to cover his confusion; he did not know what to do. There was no possible way to avoid the journey now without being truly insulting; but he felt almost ill. Over the last few days he had seen more evidence than he liked of Levitas’s unhappiness and neglect: the little dragon watched anxiously for a handler who did not come, and if he or his harness had been given more than a cursory wipe, it was because Laurence had encouraged the cadets to see to him, and asked Hollin to continue attending to his harness. To find Rankin the one responsible for such neglect was bitterly disappointing; to see Levitas behaving with such servility and gratitude for the least cold attention was painful.

Perceived through the lens of his neglect of his dragon, Rankin’s remarks on dragons took on a character of disdain that could only be strange and unpleasant in an aviator; and his isolation from his fellow officers also, rather than an indication of nice taste. Every other aviator had introduced himself with his dragon’s name ready to his lips; Rankin alone had considered his family name of more importance, and left Laurence to find out only by accident that Levitas was assigned to him. But Laurence had not seen through any of this, and now he found he had, in the most unguarded sort of way, encouraged the acquaintance of a man he could never respect.

He petted Temeraire and made him some reassurances meant mostly for his own comfort. “Is anything wrong, Laurence?” Temeraire said, nosing at him gently with concern. “You do not seem well.”

“No, I am perfectly well, I assure you,” he said, making an effort to sound normal. “You are quite certain you do not mind my going?” he asked, with a faint hope.

“Not at all, and you will be back by evening, will you not?” Temeraire asked. “Now that we have finished Duncan, I was hoping perhaps you could read me something more about mathematics; I thought it was very interesting how you explained that you could tell where you are, when you have been sailing for a long time, only through knowing the time and some equations.”

Laurence had been very glad to leave behind mathematics after having forced the basics of trigonometry into his head. “Certainly, if you like,” he said, trying to keep dismay out of his voice. “But I thought perhaps you would enjoy something about Chinese dragons?”

“Oh, yes, that would be splendid too; we could read that next,” Temeraire said. “It is very nice how many books there are, indeed; and on so many subjects.”

If it would give Temeraire something to think about and keep him from becoming distressed, Laurence was prepared to go as far as to bring his Latin up to snuff and read him Principia Mathematica in the original; so he only sighed privately. “Very well, then I leave you in the hands of the ground crew; I see them coming now.”

Hollin was leading the party; the young crewman had attended so well to Temeraire’s harness and seen to Levitas with such goodwill that Laurence had spoken of him to Celeritas, and asked to have him assigned to lead Temeraire’s ground crew. Laurence was pleased to see the request had been granted; because this step was evidently a promotion of some significance, there had been some uncertainty about the matter. He nodded to the young man. “Mr. Hollin, will you be so good as to present me to these other men?” he asked.

When he had been given all their names and repeated them silently over to fix them in his memory, he deliberately met their eyes in turn and said firmly, “I am sure Temeraire will give you no difficulty, but I trust you will make a point of consulting his comfort as you make the adjustments. Temeraire, please have no hesitation about informing these men if you notice the least discomfort or restriction upon your movement.”

Levitas’s case had provided him with evidence that some crewmen might neglect their assigned dragon’s gear if a captain was not watchful, and indeed anything else was hardly to be expected. Though he had no fear of Hollin’s neglecting his work, Laurence meant to put the other men on notice that he would not tolerate any such neglect where Temeraire was concerned; if such severity fixed his reputation as a hard captain, so be it. Perhaps in comparison with other aviators he was; he would not neglect what he considered his duty for the sake of being liked.

A murmur of “Very good” and “Right you are” came in response; he was able to ignore the raised eyebrows and exchanged glances. “Carry on, then,” he said with a final nod, and turned away with no small reluctance to join Rankin.

All his pleasure in the expedition was gone; it was distasteful in the extreme to stand by while Rankin snapped at Levitas and ordered him to hunch down uncomfortably for them to board. Laurence climbed up as quickly as he could, and did his best to sit where his weight would give Levitas the least difficulty.

The flight was brief, at least; Levitas was very swift, and the ground rolled away at a tremendous pace. He was glad to find the speed of their passage made conversation nearly impossible, and he was able to give brief answers to the few remarks Rankin ventured to shout. They landed less than two hours after they had left, at the great walled covert which spread out beneath the watchful looming eye of Edinburgh Castle.

“Stay here quietly; I do not want to hear that you have been pestering the crew when I return,” Rankin said sharply to Levitas, after dismounting; he threw the reins of his harness around a post, as if Levitas were a horse to be tethered. “You can eat when we return to Loch Laggan.”

“I do not want to bother them, and I can wait to eat, but I am a little thirsty,” Levitas said in a small voice. “I tried to fly as fast as I could,” he added.

“It was very fast indeed, Levitas, and I am grateful to you. Of course you must have something to drink,” Laurence said; this was as much as he could bear. “You there,” he called to the ground crewmen lounging around the edges of the clearing; none of them had stirred when Levitas had landed. “Bring a trough of clean water at once, and see to his harness while you are about it.”

The men looked a little surprised, but they set to work under Laurence’s hard eye. Rankin did not make any objection, although as they climbed up the stairs away from the covert and onto the streets of the city he said, “I see you are a little tender-hearted towards them. I am hardly surprised, as that is the common mode among aviators, but I must tell you that I find discipline answers far better than the sort of coddling more often seen. Levitas for instance must always be ready for a long and dangerous flight; it is good for him to be used to going without.”

Laurence felt all the awkwardness of his situation; he was here as Rankin’s guest, and he would have to fly back with the man in the evening. Nevertheless, he could not restrain himself from saying, “I will not deny having the warmest sentiments towards dragons as a whole; in my experience thus far I have found them uniformly appealing and worthy of nothing but respect. However, I must disagree with you very strongly that providing ordinary and reasonable care in any way constitutes coddling, and I have always found that deprivation and hardship, when necessary, can be better endured by men who have not been subjected to them previously for no cause.”

“Oh, dragons are not men, you know; but I will not argue with you,” Rankin said easily. Perversely it made Laurence even angrier; if Rankin had been willing to defend his philosophy, it could have been a sincere if wrongheaded position. But clearly it was not; Rankin was only consulting his own ease, and these remarks were merely excuses for the neglect he performed.

Fortunately they were at the crossroads where their paths were to diverge. Laurence did not have to endure Rankin’s company any longer, as the man had to go on rounds to the military offices in the city; they had agreed to meet back at the covert before their departure, and he escaped gladly.

He wandered around the city for the next hour without direction or purpose, solely to clear his mind and temper. There was no obvious way to ameliorate Levitas’s situation, and Rankin was clearly inured to disapproval: Laurence now recalled Berkley’s silence, Harcourt’s evident discomfort, the avoidance of the other aviators in general, and Celeritas’s disapproval. It was unpleasant to think that by showing such an evident partiality for Rankin’s company, he had given himself the character of approving the man’s behavior.

Here was something for which he had rightly earned the cold looks of the other officers. It was of no use to say he had not known: he ought to have known. Instead of putting himself to the trouble of learning the ways of his new comrades-in-arms, he had been happy enough to throw himself into the company of one they avoided and looked at askance. He could hardly excuse himself by saying he had not consulted or trusted their general judgment.

He calmed himself only with difficulty. He could not easily undo the damage he had done in a few unthinking days, but he could and would alter his behavior henceforth. By putting forth the dedication and effort that was only Temeraire’s due in any case, he could prove that he neither approved nor intended to practice any sort of neglect. By courtesy and attention to those aviators with whom he would be training, like Berkley and the other captains of the formation, he could show that he did not hold himself above his company. These small measures would take a great deal of time to repair his reputation, but they were all he could do. The best he could do was resolve upon them at once, and prepare to endure however long it would take.

Having finally drawn himself from his self-recrimination, he now took his bearings and hurried on to the offices of the Royal Bank. His usual bankers were Drummonds, in London, but on learning that he was to be stationed at Loch Laggan, he had written to his prize-agent to direct the funds from the capture of the Amitié here. As soon as he had given his name, he at once saw that the instructions had been received and obeyed; for he was instantly conducted to a private office and greeted with particular warmth.

The banker, a Mr. Donnellson, was happy to inform him, on his inquiry, that the prize-money for the Amitié had included a bounty for Temeraire equal to the value that would have been placed on an unhatched egg of the same breed. “Not that a number could easily be settled upon, as I understand it, for we have no notion of what the French paid for it, but at length it was held equal to a Regal Copper egg in value, and I am happy to say that your two-eighths share of the entire prize comes to nearly fourteen thousand pounds,” he finished, and struck Laurence dumb.

Having recovered over a glass of excellent brandy, Laurence soon perceived the self-serving efforts of Admiral Croft behind this extraordinary assessment. But he hardly objected; after a brief discussion which ended in his authorizing the Bank to invest perhaps half of the money into the Funds for him, he shook Mr. Donnellson’s hand with enthusiasm and took away a handful of banknotes and gold, along with a generously offered letter which he might show to merchants to establish his credit. The news restored his spirits to some extent, and he soothed them further by purchasing a great many books and examining several different pieces of valuable jewelry, and imagining Temeraire’s happiness at receiving them both.

He settled finally upon a broad pendant of platinum almost like a breastplate, set with sapphires around a single enormous pearl; the piece was designed to fasten about the dragon’s neck with a chain that could be extended as Temeraire grew. The price was enough to make him swallow, but he recklessly signed the cheque regardless, and then waited while a boy ran to certify the amount with the Bank so he could immediately bear away the well-wrapped piece, with some difficulty due to its weight.

From there he went straight back to the covert, even though there was another hour to the appointed meeting time. Levitas was lying unattended in the same dusty landing ground, his tail curled around himself; he looked tired and lonely. There was a small herd of sheep kept penned in the covert; Laurence ordered one killed and brought for him, then sat with the dragon and talked to him quietly until Rankin returned.

The flight back was a little slower than the one out, and Rankin spoke coldly to Levitas when they landed. Past the point of caring if it seemed rude, Laurence interrupted with praise and patted Levitas. It was little enough, and he felt miserable to see the little dragon huddled silently in a corner of the courtyard after Rankin had gone inside. But Aerial Command had given Levitas to Rankin; Laurence had no authority to correct the man, who was senior to him.

Temeraire’s new harness was neatly assembled upon a couple of benches by the side of the courtyard, the broad neck-brace marked with his name in silver rivets. Temeraire himself was sitting outside again, looking over the quiet lake valley that was gradually fading into shadow as the late-afternoon sun sank in the west, his eyes thoughtful and a little sad. Laurence went to his side at once, carrying the heavy packages.

Temeraire’s joy in the pendant was so great as to rescue Laurence’s mood as well as his own. The silver metal looked dazzling against his black hide, and once it was on he tilted the piece up with a forehand to look at the great pearl in enormous satisfaction, his pupils widening tremendously so he could better examine it. “And I do so like pearls, Laurence,” he said, nuzzling at him gratefully. “It is very beautiful; but was it not dreadfully expensive?”

“It is worth every penny to see you looking so handsome,” Laurence said, meaning that it was worth every penny to see him so happy. “The prize-money for the Amitié has come in, so I am well in pocket, my dear. Indeed, it is quite your due, you know, for the better part of it comes from the bounty for our having taken your egg from the French.”

“Well, that was none of my doing, although I am very glad it happened,” Temeraire said. “I am sure I could not have liked any French captain half so much as you. Oh, Laurence, I am so very happy, and none of the others have anything nearly so nice.” He cuddled himself around Laurence with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Laurence climbed into the crook of one foreleg and sat there petting him and enjoying his continued quiet gloating over the pendant. Of course, if the French ship had not been so delayed and then captured, some French aviator would have had Temeraire by now; Laurence had previously given little thought to what might have been. Likely the man was somewhere cursing his luck; the French certainly would have learned that the egg had been captured by now, even if they did not know that it had hatched an Imperial, or that Temeraire had been successfully harnessed.

He looked up at his preening dragon and felt the rest of his sorrow and anxiety leave him; whatever else happened, he could hardly complain of the turn fate had served him, in comparison with that poor fellow. “I have brought you some books as well,” he said. “Shall I begin on Newton for you? I have found a translation of his book on the principles of mathematics, although I will warn you at once that I am wholly unlikely to be able to make sense of what I read for you; I am no great hand at mathematics beyond what my tutors got into my head for sailing.”

“Please do,” Temeraire said, looking away from his new treasure for a moment. “I am sure we will be able to puzzle it out together, whatever it is.”

Chapter 7

LAURENCE ROSE EARLY the next morning and breakfasted alone, to have a little time before the training would begin. He had examined the new harness carefully last night, looking over each neat stitch and testing all the solid rings; Temeraire had also assured him that the new gear was very comfortable, and that the crewmen had been attentive to his wishes. He felt some gesture was due, and so having made some calculations in his head, he now walked out to the workshops.

Hollin was already up and working in his stall, and he stepped out at once on catching sight of Laurence. “Morning to you, sir; I hope there is nothing wrong with the harness?” the young man asked.

“No; on the contrary, I commend you and your colleagues highly,” Laurence said. “It looks splendid, and Temeraire tells me he is very happy in it; thank you. Kindly tell the others for me that I will be having an additional half-crown for each man disbursed with their pay.”

“Why, that is very kind of you, sir,” Hollin said, looking pleased but not terribly surprised; Laurence was very glad to see his reaction. An extra ration of rum or grog was of course not a desirable reward to men who could buy liquor easily from the village below, and soldiers and aviators were paid better than sailors, so he had puzzled over an appropriate amount: he wanted to reward their diligence, but he did not want to seem as though he were trying to purchase the men’s loyalty.

“I also wish to commend you personally,” Laurence added, more relaxed now. “Levitas’s harness looks in much better order, and he seems more comfortable. I am obliged to you: I know it was not your duty.”

“Oh! Nothing to it,” Hollin said, smiling broadly now. “The little fellow was made so happy, I was right glad to have done it. I’ll give him a look over now and again to make sure he’s staying in good order. Seems to me he’s a little lonely,” he added.

Laurence would never go so far as to criticize another officer to a crewman; he contented himself with saying merely, “I think he was certainly grateful for the attention, and if you should have the time, I would be glad of it.”

It was the last moment that he had time to spare concern for Levitas, or anything beyond the tasks immediately before him. Celeritas had satisfied himself that he understood Temeraire’s flying capabilities, and now that Temeraire had his fine new harness, their training began in earnest. From the beginning, Laurence was staggering straight to bed after supper, and having to be woken by the servants at the first light of morning; he could barely muster any sort of conversation at the dinner table, and he spent every free moment either dozing with Temeraire in the sun or soaking in the heat of the baths.

Celeritas was merciless and tireless both. There were countless repetitions of this wheeling turn, or that pattern of swoops and dives; then flying short bombing runs at top speed, during which the bellmen hurled practice bombs down at targets on the valley floor. Long hours of gunnery-practice, until Temeraire could hear a full volley of eight rifles go off behind his ears without so much as blinking; crew maneuvers and drills until he no longer twitched when he was clambered upon or his harness shifted; and to close every day’s work, another long stretch of endurance training, sending him around and around until he had nearly doubled the amount of time he could spend aloft at his quickest pace.

Even while Temeraire was sprawled panting in the training courtyard and getting his wind back, the training master had Laurence practice moving about the harness both on Temeraire’s back and upon rings hung over the cliff wall, to increase his skill at a task that other aviators had been doing from their earliest years in the service. It was not too unlike moving about the tops in a gale, if one imagined a ship moving at a pace of thirty miles in an hour and turning completely sideways or upside down at any moment; his hands slipped free constantly during the first week, and without the paired carabiners he would have plummeted to his death a dozen times over.

And as soon as they were released from the day’s flight training, they were handed straight over to an old captain, Joulson, for drilling in aerial signaling. The flag and flare signals for communicating general instructions were much the same as in the Navy, and the most basic gave Laurence no difficulty; but the need to coordinate quickly between dragons in mid-air made the usual technique of spelling out more unusual messages impractical. As a result, there was a vastly longer list of signals, some requiring as many as six flags, and all of these had to be beaten into their heads, for a captain could not rely solely upon his signal-officer. A signal seen and acted upon even a moment more quickly might make all the difference in the world, so both captain and dragon must know them all; the signal-officer was merely a safeguard, and his duty more to send signals for Laurence and call his attention to new signals in battle than to be the sole source of translation.

To Laurence’s embarrassment, Temeraire proved quicker to learn the signals than himself; even Joulson was more than a little taken aback at the dragon’s proficiency. “And he is old to be learning them, besides,” he told Laurence. “Usually we start them on the flags the very day after hatching. I did not like to say so before, not to be discouraging, but I expected him to have a good deal of trouble. If a dragonet is a bit slow and does not learn all the signals by the end of their fifth or sixth week, he struggles with the last ones sadly; but here Temeraire is already older than that, and learning them as though he were fresh from the egg.”

But though Temeraire had no exceptional difficulty, the effort of memorization and repetition was still as tiring as their more physical duties. Five weeks of rigorous work passed this way, without even a break on Sundays; they progressed together with Maximus and Berkley through the increasingly complex maneuvers that had to be learned before they could join the formation, and all the time the dragons were growing enormously. By the end of this period, Maximus had almost reached his full adult size, and Temeraire was scarcely one man’s height less in the shoulder, though much leaner, and his growth was now mostly in bulk and in his wings rather than his height.

He was beautifully proportionate throughout: his tail was long and very graceful; his wings fit elegantly against his body and looked precisely the right size when fanned out. His colors had intensified, the black hide turning hard and glossy save for the soft nose, and the blue and pale grey markings on the edges of his wings spreading and becoming opalescent. To Laurence’s partial eye, he was the handsomest dragon in the entire covert, even without the great shining pearl blazoned upon his chest.

The constant occupation, along with the rapid growth, had at least temporarily eased Temeraire’s unhappiness. He was now larger than any of the other dragons but Maximus; even Lily was shorter than he was, though her wingspan was still greater. Though Temeraire did not push himself forward and was not given precedence by the feeders, Laurence saw on the occasions when he observed that most of the other dragons did unconsciously give way to him at feeding times, and if Temeraire did not come to be friendly with any of them, he seemed too busy to pay it mind, much as Laurence himself with the other aviators.

For the most part, they were company for each other; they were rarely apart except while eating or sleeping, and Laurence honestly felt little need of other society. Indeed, he was glad enough for the excuse, which enabled him to avoid Rankin’s company almost entirely. By answering with reserve on all occasions when he was not able to do so, he felt he had at least halted the progress of their acquaintance, if not partly undone it. His and Temeraire’s acquaintance with Maximus and Berkley progressed, at least, which kept them from being wholly isolated from their fellows, though Temeraire continued to prefer sleeping outside on the grounds, rather than in the courtyard with the other dragons.

They had already been assigned Temeraire’s ground crew: besides Hollin as the head, Pratt and Bell, armorer and leatherworker respectively, formed the core, along with the gunner Calloway. Many dragons had no more, but as Temeraire continued to grow, the masters were somewhat grudgingly granted assistants: first one and then a second for each, until Temeraire’s complement was only a few men short of Maximus’s. The harness-master’s name was Fellowes; he was a silent but dependable man, with some ten years of experience in his line, and more to the point skillful at coaxing additional men out of the Corps; he managed to get Laurence eight harness-men. They were badly wanted, as Laurence persisted in having Temeraire out of the gear whenever possible; he needed the full harness put on and off far more often than most dragons.

Save for these hands, the rest of Temeraire’s crew would be composed entirely of officers, gentlemen born; and even the hands were the equivalent of warrant officers or their mates. It was strange to Laurence, used to commanding ten raw landsmen to every able seaman. There was none of the bosun’s brutal discipline here; such men could not be struck or started, and the worst punishment was to turn a man off. Laurence could not deny he liked it better, though he felt unhappily disloyal at admitting of any fault in the Navy, even to himself.

Nor was there any fault to be found in the caliber of his officers, as he had imagined; at least, not more than in his prior experience. Half of his riflemen were completely raw midwingmen who had barely yet learned which end of a gun to hold; however, they seemed willing enough, and were improving quickly: Collins was overeager but had a good eye, and if Donnell and Dunne still had some difficulty in finding the target, they were at least quick in reloading. Their lieutenant, Riggs, was somewhat unfortunate: hasty-tempered and excitable, given to bellowing at small mistakes; he was himself a fine shot, and knew his work, but Laurence would have preferred a steadier man to guide the others. But he did not have free choice of men; Riggs had seniority and had served with distinction, so at least merited his position, which made him superior to several officers with whom Laurence had been forced to serve in the Navy.

The permanent aerial crew, the topmen and bellmen responsible for managing Temeraire’s equipage during flight, and the senior officers and lookouts, were not yet settled. Most of the currently unassigned junior officers at the covert would first be given a chance to take positions upon Temeraire during the course of his training before final assignment was made; Celeritas had explained that this was a common technique used to ensure that the aviators practiced handling as many types of dragon as possible, as the techniques varied greatly depending on the breed. Martin had done well in his stint, and Laurence had hopes that he might be able to get the young midwingman a permanent berth; several other promising young men had also recommended themselves to him.

The only matter of real concern to him was the question of his first lieutenant. He had been disappointed in the first three candidates assigned him: all were adequate, but none of them struck him as gifted, and he was particular for Temeraire’s sake, even if he would not have been for his own. More unpleasantly, Granby had just been assigned in his turn, and though the lieutenant was executing his duties in perfect order, he was always addressing Laurence as “sir” and pointedly making his obedience at every turn; it was an obvious contrast with the behavior of the other officers, and made them all uneasy. Laurence could not help but think with regret of Tom Riley.

That aside, he was satisfied, though increasingly eager to be done with maneuver drills; fortunately Celeritas had pronounced Temeraire and Maximus almost ready to join the formation. There were only the last complex maneuvers to be mastered, those flown entirely upside down; the two dragons were in the midst of practicing these in a clear morning when Temeraire remarked to Laurence, “That is Volly over there, coming towards us,” and Laurence lifted his head to see a small grey speck winging its way rapidly to the covert.

Volly sailed directly into the valley and landed in the training courtyard, a violation of the covert rules when a practice was in session, and Captain James leapt off his dragon’s back to talk to Celeritas. Interested, Temeraire righted himself and stopped in mid-air to watch, tumbling about all the crew except Laurence, who was by now used to the maneuver; Maximus kept going a little longer until he noticed that he was alone, then turned and flew back despite Berkley’s roared protests.

“What do you suppose it is?” Maximus asked in his rumbling voice; unable to hover himself, he was obliged to fly in circles.

“Listen, you great lummox; if it is any of your affair you will be told,” Berkley said. “Will you get back to maneuvers?”

“I do not know; perhaps we could ask Volly,” Temeraire said. “And there is no sense in our doing maneuvers anymore; we already know all of these,” he added. He sounded so mulish that Laurence was startled; he leaned forward, frowning, but before he could speak, Celeritas called them in, urgently.

“There has been an air battle in the North Sea, off Aberdeen,” he said with no preliminaries, when they had scarcely landed. “Several dragons of the covert outside Edinburgh responded to distress signals from the city; though they drove off the French attack, Victoriatus was wounded. He is very weak and having difficulty staying in the air: the two of you are large enough to help support him and bring him in more quickly. Volatilus and Captain James will lead you; go at once.”

Volly took the lead and flew off at a tearing speed, showing them his heels easily: he kept only just within the limits of their sight. Maximus could not keep up even with Temeraire, however, so with flag-signals and some hasty shouting back and forth through the speaking-trumpets, Berkley and Laurence agreed that Temeraire would go on ahead, and his crew would send up regular flares to mark the direction for Maximus.

The arrangements made, Temeraire pulled away very rapidly; going, Laurence thought, a little too fast. The distance was not very great as the dragon flew; Aberdeen was some 120 miles distant, and the other dragons would be coming towards them, closing the distance from the other side. Still, they would need to be able to fly the same distance again to bring Victoriatus in, and even though they would be flying over land, not ocean, they could not land and rest with the wounded dragon leaning upon them: there would be no getting him off the ground again. Some moderation of speed would be necessary.

Laurence glanced down at the chronometer strapped down to Temeraire’s harness, waited for the minute hand to shift, then counted wingbeats. Twenty-five knots: too high. “Gently, if you please, Temeraire,” he called. “We have a good deal of work ahead of us.”

“I am not tired at all,” Temeraire said, but he slowed regardless; Laurence made his new speed as fifteen knots: a good pace, and one that Temeraire could sustain almost indefinitely.

“Pass the word for Mr. Granby,” Laurence said; shortly, the lieutenant clambered forward to Laurence’s position at the base of Temeraire’s neck, swapping carabiners quickly to move himself along. “What is your estimate of the best rate the injured dragon can be maintaining?” Laurence asked him.

For once, Granby did not respond with cold formality, but thoughtfully; all the aviators had immediately become very grave on the moment of hearing of the injured dragon. “Victoriatus is a Parnassian,” he said. “A large mid-weight: heavier than a Reaper. They don’t have heavy-combat dragons at Edinburgh, so the others supporting him must be mid-weights; they cannot be making more than twelve miles per hour.”

Laurence paused to convert between knots and miles, then nodded; Temeraire was going almost twice as quickly, then. Taking into account Volly’s speed in bringing the message, they had perhaps three hours before they would need to start looking for the other party. “Very good. We may as well use the time; have the topmen and bellmen exchange places for practice, and then I think we will try some gunnery.”

He felt quite calm and settled himself, but he could feel Temeraire’s excitement transmitting itself through a faint twitching along the back of his neck; of course this was Temeraire’s first action, of any sort, and Laurence stroked the twitching ridge soothingly. He swapped around his carabiners and turned to observe the maneuvers he had ordered. In sequence, a topman climbed down to the belly-rigging at the same time as a bellman climbed up to the back on the other side, the two weights balancing each other. As the man who had just climbed up locked himself into place, he tugged on the signal-strap, colored in alternating sections of black and white, and pulled it ahead a section; in a moment it advanced again, indicating that the man below had locked himself in as well. All went smoothly: Temeraire was presently carrying three topmen and three bellmen, and the exchange took less than five minutes all told.

“Mr. Allen,” Laurence said sharply, calling one of the lookouts to order: an older cadet, soon to be made ensign, neglecting his duty to watch the other men at their work. “Can you tell me what is in the upper north-west? No, do not turn round and look; you must be able to answer that question the moment it is asked. I will speak with your instructor; mind your work now.”

The riflemen took up their positions, and Laurence nodded to Granby to give the order; the topmen began throwing out the flat ceramic disks used for targeting, and the riflemen took turns attempting to shoot them out of the air as they flew past. Laurence watched and frowned. “Mr. Granby, Mr. Riggs, I make twelve targets out of twenty; you concur? Gentlemen, I hope I need not say that this will not do against French sharpshooters. Let us begin again, at a slower rate: precision first, speed second, Mr. Collins, so pray do not be so hasty.”

He kept them at it for a full hour, then had the hands go through the complicated harness adjustments for storm flying; afterwards he himself went down below and observed the men stationed below while they reverted to fair-weather rigging. They did not have the tents aboard, so he could not have them practice going to quarters and breaking down full gear, but they did well enough at the rigging changes, and he thought they would have done well even with the additional equipment.

Temeraire occasionally glanced around to watch throughout these maneuvers, his eyes bright; but for the most part he was intent on his flying, rising and falling in the air to catch the best currents, driving himself forward with great steady beats, each thrust fully carried through. Laurence laid his hand upon the long, ropy muscles of Temeraire’s neck, feeling them move smoothly as though oiled beneath the skin, and was not tempted to distract him with conversation; there was no need. He knew without speaking that Temeraire shared his satisfaction at putting their joint training to real purpose at last. Laurence had not wholly realized his own sense of quiet frustration to have been in some sense demoted from a serving officer to a schoolboy, until he now found himself again engaged in active duty.

The three hours were nearly up by the chronometer, and it was time to begin preparing to give support to the injured dragon; Maximus was perhaps half an hour behind them, and Temeraire would have to carry Victoriatus alone until the Regal Copper caught up. “Mr. Granby,” Laurence said, as he latched himself back in to his normal position at the base of the neck, “let us clear the back; all the men below, save for the signal-ensign and the forward lookouts.”

“Very good, sir,” Granby said, nodding, and turned at once to arrange it. Laurence watched him work with mingled satisfaction and irritation. For the first time in the past week, Granby had been going about his duties without that air of stiff resentment, and Laurence could easily perceive the effects: the speed of nearly every operation improved; myriad small defects in harness placement and crew positioning, previously invisible to his own inexperienced eye, now corrected; the atmosphere among the men more relaxed. All the many ways in which an excellent first lieutenant could improve the life of a crew, and Granby was now proven capable of them all, but that only made his earlier attitude more regrettable.

Volatilus turned and came flying back towards them only shortly after they had cleared the top; James pulled him about and cupped his hands around his mouth to call to Laurence. “I’ve sighted them, two points to the north and twelve degrees down; you’ll need to drop to come up under them, for I don’t think he can get any more elevation.” He signaled the numbers with hand gestures as he spoke.

“Very good,” Laurence called back, through his speaking-trumpet, and had the signal-ensign wave a confirmation with flags; Temeraire was large enough now that Volly could not get so close as to make verbal communication certain.

Temeraire stooped into a dive at his quick signal, and very soon Laurence saw a speck on the horizon rapidly enlarge into the group of dragons. Victoriatus was instantly identifiable; he was larger by half than either of the two Yellow Reapers struggling to keep him aloft. Though the injuries were already under thick bandages applied by his crew, blood had seeped through showing the slashing marks where the dragon had evidently taken blows from the enemy beasts. The Parnassian’s own claws were unusually large, and stained with blood as well; his jaws also. The smaller dragons below looked crowded, and there was no one aboard the injured dragon but his captain and perhaps half a dozen men.

“Signal the two supporters: prepare to stand aside,” Laurence said; the young signal-ensign waved the colored flags in rapid sequence, and a prompt acknowledgment came back. Temeraire had already flown around the group and positioned himself properly: he was just below and to the back of the second supporting dragon.

“Temeraire, are you quite ready?” Laurence called. They had practiced this maneuver in training, but it would be unusually difficult to carry out here: the injured dragon was barely beating his wings, and his eyes were half-shut with pain and exhaustion; the two supporters were clearly worn out themselves. They would have to drop out of the way smoothly, and Temeraire dart in very quickly, to avoid having Victoriatus collapse into a deadly plummet that would be impossible to arrest.

“Yes; please let us hurry, they look so very tired,” Temeraire said, glancing back. His muscles were tightly gathered, they had matched the others’ pace, and nothing more could be gained by waiting.

“Signal: exchange positions on lead dragon’s mark,” Laurence said. The flags waved; the acknowledgment came. Then on both sides of the foremost of the two supporting dragons, the red flags went out, and then were swapped for the green.

The rear dragon dropped and peeled aside swiftly as Temeraire lunged. But the forward dragon went a little too slowly, his wings stuttering, and Victoriatus began to tilt forward as the Reaper tried to descend away and make room. “Dive, damn you, dive!” Laurence roared at the top of his lungs; the smaller dragon’s lashing tail was dangerously near Temeraire’s head, and they could not move into place.

The Reaper gave up the maneuver and simply folded his wings; he dropped out of the way like a stone. “Temeraire, you must get him up a little so you can come forward,” Laurence shouted again, crouched low against the neck; Victoriatus’s hindquarters had settled over Temeraire’s shoulders instead of further back, and the great belly was less than three feet overhead, barely kept up by the injured dragon’s waning strength.

Temeraire showed with a bob of his head that he had heard and understood; he beat up rapidly at an angle, pushing the slumping Parnassian back up higher through sheer strength, then snapped his wings closed. A brief, sickening drop: then his wings fanned out again. With a single great thrust, Temeraire had himself properly positioned, and Victoriatus came heavily down upon them again.

Laurence had a moment of relief; then Temeraire cried out in pain. He turned and saw in horror that in his confusion and agony, Victoriatus was scrabbling at Temeraire, and the great claws had raked Temeraire’s shoulder and side. Above, muffled, he heard the other captain shouting; Victoriatus stopped, but Temeraire was already bleeding, and straps of the harness were hanging loose and flapping in the wind.

They were losing elevation rapidly; Temeraire was struggling to keep flying under the other dragon’s weight. Laurence fought with his carabiners, yelling at the signal-ensign to let the men below know. The boy scrambled partway down the neck-strap, waving the white-and-red flag wildly; in a moment Laurence gratefully saw Granby climbing up with two other men to bandage the wounds, reaching the gashes more quickly than he could. He stroked Temeraire, called reassurance to him in a voice that struggled not to break; Temeraire did not spare the effort to turn and reply, but bravely kept beating his wings, though his head was drooping with the strain.

“Not deep,” Granby shouted, from where they worked to pad the gashes, and Laurence could breathe and think clearly again. The harness was shifting upon Temeraire’s back; aside from a great deal of lesser rigging, the main shoulder-strap had been nearly cut through, saved only by the wires that ran through it. But the leather was parting, and as soon as it went the wires would break under the strain of all the men and gear currently riding below.

“All of you; take off your harnesses and pass them to me,” Laurence said to the signal-ensign and the lookouts; the three boys were the only ones left above, besides him. “Take a good grip on the main harness and get your arms or legs tucked beneath.” The leather of the personal harnesses was thick, solidly stitched, well-oiled; the carabiners were solid steel: not quite as strong as the main harness, but nearly so.

He slung the three harnesses over his arm and clambered along the back-strap to the broader part of the shoulders. Granby and the two midwingmen were still working on the injuries to Temeraire’s side; they spared him a puzzled look, and Laurence realized they could not see the nearly severed shoulder-band: it was hidden from their view by Temeraire’s foreleg. There was no time to call them forward to help in any case; the band was rapidly beginning to give way.

He could not come at it normally; if he tried to put his weight on any of the rings along the shoulder-band, it would certainly break at once. Working as quickly as he could under the roaring pressure of the wind, he hooked two of the harnesses together by their carabiners, then looped them around the back-strap. “Temeraire, stay as level as you can,” he shouted; then, clinging to the ends of the harnesses, he unlocked his own carabiners and climbed carefully out onto the shoulder, held by nothing more secure than his grip on the leather.

Granby was shouting something at him; the wind was tearing it away, and he could not make out the words. Laurence tried to keep his eyes fixed on the straps; the ground below was the beautiful, fresh green of early spring, strangely calm and pastoral: they were low enough that he could see white dots of sheep. He was in arm’s reach now; with a hand that shook slightly, he latched the first carabiner of the third loose harness onto the ring just above the cut, and the second onto the ring just below. He pulled on the straps, throwing his weight against them as much as he dared; his arms ached and trembled as if with high fever. Inch by inch, he drew the small harness tighter, until at last the portion between the carabiners was the same size as the cut portion of the band and was taking much of its weight: the leather stopped fraying away.

He looked up; Granby was slowly climbing towards him, snapping onto rings as he came. Now that the harness was in place, the strain was not an immediate danger, so Laurence did not wave him off, but only shouted, “Call up Mr. Fellowes,” the harness-master, and pointed to the spot. Granby’s eyes widened as he came over the foreleg and saw the broken strap.

As Granby turned to signal below for help, bright sunlight abruptly fell full on his face; Victoriatus was shuddering above them, wings convulsing, and the Parnassian’s chest came heavily down on Temeraire’s back. Temeraire staggered in mid-air, one shoulder dipping under the blow, and Laurence was sliding along the linked harness straps, wet palms giving him no purchase. The green world was spinning beneath him, and his hands were already tired and slick with sweat; his grip was failing.

“Laurence, hold on!” Temeraire called, head turned to look back at him; his muscles and wing-joints were shifting as he prepared to snatch Laurence out of the air.

“You must not let him fall,” Laurence shouted, horrified; Temeraire could not try to catch him except by tipping Victoriatus off his back, and sending the Parnassian to his death. “Temeraire, you must not!”

“Laurence!” Temeraire cried again, his claws flexing; his eyes were wide and distressed, and his head waved back and forth in denial. Laurence could see he did not mean to obey. He struggled to keep hold of the leather straps, to try and climb up; if he fell, it was not only his own life which would be forfeit, but the injured dragon and all his crew still aboard.

Granby was there suddenly, seizing Laurence’s harness in both his hands. “Lock onto me,” he shouted. Laurence saw at once what he meant. With one hand still clinging to the linked harnesses, he locked his loose carabiners onto the rings of Granby’s harness, then transferred his grip to Granby’s chest-straps. Then the midwingmen reached them; all at once there were many strong hands grabbing at them, drawing Laurence and Granby back up together to the main harness, and they held Laurence in place while he locked his carabiners back onto the proper rings.

He could scarcely breathe yet, but he seized his speaking-trumpet and called urgently, “All is well.” His voice was hardly audible; he pulled in a deep breath and tried again, more clearly this time: “I am fine, Temeraire; only keep flying.” The tense muscles beneath them unwound slowly, and Temeraire beat up again, regaining a little of the elevation they had lost. The whole process had lasted perhaps fifteen minutes; he was shaking as if he had been on deck throughout a three-day gale, and his heart was thundering in his breast.

Granby and the midwingmen looked scarcely more composed. “Well done, gentlemen,” Laurence said to them, as soon as he trusted his voice to remain steady. “Let us give Mr. Fellowes room to work. Mr. Granby, be so good as to send someone up to Victoriatus’s captain and see what assistance we can provide; we must take what precautions we can to keep him from further starts.”

They gaped at him a moment; Granby was the first to recover his wits, and began issuing orders. By the time Laurence had made his way, very cautiously, back to his post at the base of Temeraire’s neck, the midwingmen were wrapping Victoriatus’s claws with bandages to prevent him from scratching Temeraire again, and Maximus was coming into sight in the distance, hurrying to their assistance.

The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful, if the effort involved in supporting a nearly unconscious dragon through the air were ever to be considered ordinary. As soon as they landed Victoriatus safely in the courtyard, the surgeons came hurrying to see to both him and Temeraire; to Laurence’s great relief, the cuts indeed proved quite shallow. They were cleaned and inspected, pronounced minor, and a loose pad placed over them to keep the torn hide from being irritated; then Temeraire was set loose and Laurence told to let him sleep and eat as much as he liked for a week.

It was not the most pleasant way to win a few days of liberty, but the respite was infinitely welcome. Laurence immediately walked Temeraire to an open clearing near the covert, not wanting to strain him by another leap aloft. Though the clearing was upon the mountain, it was relatively level, and covered in soft green grass; it faced south, and the sun came into it nearly the entire day. There the two of them slept together from that afternoon until late in the next, Laurence stretched out upon Temeraire’s warm back, until hunger woke them both.

“I feel much better; I am sure I can hunt quite normally,” Temeraire said; Laurence would not hear of it. He walked back up to the workshops and roused the ground crew instead. Very shortly they had driven a small group of cattle up from the pens and slaughtered them; Temeraire devoured every last scrap and fell directly back to sleep.

Laurence a little diffidently asked Hollin to arrange for the servants to bring him some food; it was enough like asking the man for personal service to make Laurence uncomfortable, but he was reluctant to leave Temeraire. Hollin took no offense; but when he returned, Lieutenant Granby was with him, along with Riggs and a couple of the other lieutenants.

“You should go and have something hot to eat, and a bath, and then sleep in your own bed,” Granby said quietly, having waved the others off a little distance. “You are all over blood, and it is not warm enough yet for you to sleep outside without risk to your health. I and the other officers will take it in turns to stay with him; we will fetch you at once if he wakes, or if any change should occur.”

Laurence blinked and looked down at himself; he had not even noticed that his clothes were spattered and streaked with the near-black of dragon blood. He ran a hand over his unshaven face; he was clearly presenting a rather horrible picture to the world. He looked up at Temeraire; the dragon was completely unaware of his surroundings, sides rising and falling with a low, steady rumble. “I dare say you are right,” he said. “Very well; and thank you,” he added.

Granby nodded; and with a last look up at the sleeping Temeraire, Laurence took himself back to the castle. Now that it had been brought to mind, the sensation of dirt and sweat was unpleasant upon his skin; he had gotten soft, with the luxury of daily bathing at hand. He stopped by his room only long enough to exchange his stained clothes for fresh, and went straight to the baths.

It was shortly after dinner, and many of the officers had a habit of bathing at this hour; after Laurence had taken a quick plunge into the pool, he found the sweat-room very crowded. But as he came in, several fellows made room for him; he gladly took the opened place, and returned the nods of greeting around the room before he laid himself down. He was so tired that it only occurred to him after his eyes were closed in the blissful heat that the attention had been unusual, and marked; he almost sat up again with surprise.

“Well flown; very well flown, Captain,” Celeritas told him that evening, approvingly, when he belatedly came to report. “No, you need not apologize for being tardy. Lieutenant Granby has given me a preliminary account, and with Captain Berkley’s report I know well enough what happened. We prefer a captain be more concerned for his dragon than for our bureaucracy. I trust Temeraire is doing well?”

“Thank you, sir, yes,” Laurence said gratefully. “The surgeons have told me there is no cause for alarm, and he says he is quite comfortable. Have you any duties for me during his recovery?”

“Nothing other than to keep him occupied, which you may find enough of a challenge,” Celeritas said, with the snort that passed for a chuckle with him. “Well, that is not quite true; I do have one task for you. Once Temeraire is recovered, you and Maximus will be joining Lily’s formation straightaway. We have had nothing but bad news from the war, and the latest is worse: Villeneuve and his fleet have slipped out of Toulon under cover of an aerial raid against Nelson’s fleet; we have lost track of them. Under the circumstances, and given this lost week, we cannot wait any longer. Therefore it is time to assign your flight crew, and I would like your requests. Consider the men who have served with you these last weeks, and we will discuss the matter tomorrow.”

Laurence walked slowly back out to the clearing after this, deep in thought. He had begged a tent from the ground crews and brought along a blanket; he thought he would be quite comfortable once he had pitched it by Temeraire’s side, and he liked the idea better than spending the whole night away. He found Temeraire still sleeping peacefully, the flesh around the bandaged area only ordinarily warm to the touch.

Having satisfied himself on this point, Laurence said, “A word with you, Mr. Granby,” and led the lieutenant some short distance away. “Celeritas has asked me to name my officers,” he said, looking steadily at Granby; the young man flushed and looked down. Laurence continued, “I will not put you in the position of refusing a post; I do not know what that means in the Corps, but I know in the Navy it would be a serious mark against you. If you would have the least objection, speak frankly; that will be an end to the matter.”

“Sir,” Granby began, then shut his mouth abruptly, looking mortified: he had used the term so often in veiled insolence. He started over again. “Captain, I am well aware I have done little enough to deserve such consideration; I can only say that if you are willing to overlook what my past behavior has been, I would be very glad of the opportunity.” This speech was a little stilted in his mouth, as if he had tried to rehearse it.

Laurence nodded, satisfied. His decision had been a near thing; if it had not been for Temeraire’s sake, he was not sure he could have borne to thus expose himself to a man who had behaved disrespectfully towards him, despite Granby’s recent heroics. But Granby was so clearly the best of the lot that Laurence had decided to take the risk. He was well-pleased with the reply; it was fair enough and respectful even if awkwardly delivered. “Very good,” he said simply.

They had just begun walking back when Granby suddenly said, “Oh, damn it; I may not be able to word it properly, but I cannot just leave things at that: I have to tell you how very sorry I am. I know I have been playing the scrub.”

Laurence was surprised by his frankness, but not displeased, and he could never have refused an apology offered with so much sincerity and feeling as was obvious in Granby’s tone. “I am very happy to accept your apology,” he said, quietly but with real warmth. “For my part, all is forgotten, I assure you, and I hope that henceforth we may be better comrades than we have been.”

They stopped and shook hands; Granby looked both relieved and happy, and when Laurence tentatively inquired for his recommendations for other officers, he answered with great enthusiasm, as they made their way back towards Temeraire’s side.

Chapter 8

EVEN BEFORE THE pad of bandages had come off, Temeraire began to make plaintive noises about wanting to be bathed again; by the end of the week, the cuts were scabbed over and healing, and the surgeons gave grudging approval. Having rounded up what he already thought of as his cadets, Laurence came out to the courtyard to take the waiting Temeraire down, and found him talking with the female Longwing whose formation they would be joining.

“Does it hurt when you spray?” Temeraire was asking inquisitively. Laurence could see that Temeraire was inspecting the pitted bone spurs on either side of her jaw, evidently where the acid was ejected.

“No, I do not feel it in the least,” Lily answered. “The spray will only come out if I am pointing my head down, so I do not splash myself, either; although of course you all must be careful to avoid it when we are in formation.”

The enormous wings were folded against her back, looking brown with the translucent folds of blue and orange overlapping each other; only the black-and-white edges stood out against her sides. Her eyes were slit-pupiled, like Temeraire’s, but orange-yellow, and the exposed bone spurs showing on either side of her jaw gave her a very savage appearance. But she stood with perfect patience while her ground crew scrambled over her, polishing and cleaning every scrap of harness with great attention; Captain Harcourt was walking back and forth around her and inspecting the work.

Lily looked down at Laurence as he came to Temeraire’s side; her alarming eyes gave her stare a baleful quality, although she was only curious. “Are you Temeraire’s captain? Catherine, shall we not go to the lake with them? I am not sure I want to go in the water, but I would like to see.”

“Go to the lake?” Captain Harcourt was drawn from her inspection of the harness by the suggestion, and she stared at Laurence in open astonishment.

“Yes; I am taking Temeraire to bathe,” Laurence said firmly. “Mr. Hollin, let us have the light harness, if you please, and see if we cannot rig it to keep the straps well away from these cuts.”

Hollin was working on cleaning Levitas’s harness; the little dragon had just come back from eating. “You’ll be going along?” he asked Levitas. “If so, sir, maybe there’s no need to put any gear on Temeraire?” he added to Laurence.

“Oh, I would like to,” Levitas said, looking at Laurence hopefully, as if for permission.

“Thank you, Levitas,” Laurence said, by way of answer. “That will be an excellent solution; gentlemen, Levitas will take you down again this time,” he told the cadets; he had long since given up trying to alter his address on Roland’s behalf; as she seemed perfectly able to count herself included regardless, it was easier to treat her just as the others. “Temeraire, shall I ride with them, or will you carry me?”

“I will carry you, of course,” Temeraire said.

Laurence nodded. “Mr. Hollin, are you otherwise occupied? Your assistance would be helpful, and Levitas can certainly manage you if Temeraire carries me.”

“Why, I would be happy, sir, but I haven’t a harness,” Hollin said, eyeing Levitas with interest. “I have never been up before; I mean, not outside the ground-crew rigging, that is. I suppose I can cobble something together out of a spare, though, if you give me a moment.”

While Hollin was working on rigging himself out, Maximus descended into the courtyard, shaking the ground as he landed. “Are you ready?” he asked Temeraire, looking pleased; Berkley was on his back, along with a couple of midwingmen.

“He has been moaning about it so long I have given in,” Berkley said, in answer to Laurence’s amused and questioning look. “Damned foolish idea if you ask me, dragons swimming; great nonsense.” He thumped Maximus’s shoulder affectionately, belying his words.

“We are coming also,” Lily said; she and Captain Harcourt had held a quiet discussion while the rest of the party assembled, and now she lifted Captain Harcourt aboard onto her harness. Temeraire picked Laurence up carefully; despite the great talons Laurence had not the least concern. He was perfectly comfortable in the enclosure of the curving fingers; he could sit in the palm and be as protected as in a metal cage.

Once down by the shore, only Temeraire went directly into the deep water and began to swim. Maximus came tentatively into the shallows, but went no further than he could stand, and Lily stood on the shore watching, nosing at the water but not going in. Levitas, as was his habit, first wavered on the shore, and then dashed out all at once, splashing and flapping wildly with his eyes tightly shut until he got out to the deeper water and began to paddle around enthusiastically.

“Do we need to go in with them?” one of Berkley’s midwingmen asked, with a certain tone of alarm.

“No, do not even contemplate it,” Laurence said. “This lake is runoff from the mountain snows, and we would turn blue in a moment. But the swim will take away the worst of the dirt and blood from their feeding, and the rest will be much easier to clean once they have soaked a little.”

“Hm,” Lily said, listening to this, and very slowly crept out into the water.

“Are you quite sure it is not too cold for you, dearest?” Harcourt called after her. “I have never heard of a dragon catching an ague; I suppose it is out of the question?” she said to Laurence and Berkley.

“No, cold just wakes ’em up, unless it is freezing weather; that they don’t care for,” Berkley said, then raised his voice to bellow, “Maximus, you great coward, go in if you mean to; I am not going to stand here all day.”

“I am not afraid,” Maximus said indignantly, and lunged forward, sending out a great wave that briefly swamped Levitas and washed over Temeraire. Levitas came up with a splutter, and Temeraire snorted and ducked his head into the water to splash at Maximus; in a moment the two were engaged in a royal battle that bid fair to make the lake look like the Atlantic in a full gale.

Levitas came fluttering out of the lake, dripping cold water onto all of the waiting aviators. Hollin and the cadets set to wiping him down, and the little dragon said, “Oh, I do like swimming so; thank you for letting me come again.”

“I do not see why you cannot come as often as you like,” Laurence said, glancing at Berkley and Harcourt to see how they would take this; neither of them seemed to give it the slightest thought, or to think his interference officious.

Lily had at last gone in deep enough to be mostly submerged, or at least as much as her natural buoyancy would allow. She stayed well away from the splashing pair of younger dragons, and scrubbed at her own hide with the side of her head. She came out next, more interested in being washed than in the swimming, and rumbled in pleasure as she pointed out spots and had them carefully cleaned by Harcourt and the cadets.

Maximus and Temeraire finally had enough, and came out to be wiped down as well. Maximus required all the exertions of Berkley and his two grown midwingmen. Working on the delicate skin of Temeraire’s face while the cadets scrambled all over his back, Laurence could not hide a smile at Berkley’s grumbling over his dragon’s size.

He stepped back from his work a moment to simply enjoy the scene: Temeraire was speaking with the other dragons freely, his eyes bright and his head held proudly, with no more signs of self-doubt; and even if this strange, mixed company was not anything Laurence would once have sought out for himself, the easy camaraderie warmed him through. He was conscious of having proven himself and having helped Temeraire to do the same, and of the deep satisfaction of having found a true and worthy place, for the both of them.

The pleasure lasted until their return to the courtyard. Rankin was standing by the side of the courtyard, wearing evening dress and tapping the straps of his personal harness against the side of his leg in very obvious irritation, and Levitas gave a little alarmed hop as he landed. “What do you mean by flying off like this?” Rankin said, not even waiting for Hollin and the cadets to climb down. “When you are not feeding, you are to be here and waiting, do you understand me? And you there, who told you that you could ride him?”

“Levitas was kind enough to bear them to oblige me, Captain Rankin,” Laurence said, stepping out of Temeraire’s hand and speaking sharply to draw the man’s attention away. “We have only been down at the lake, and a signal would have fetched us in a moment.”

“I do not care to be running after signal-men to have my dragon available, Captain Laurence, and I will thank you to mind your own beast and leave mine to me,” Rankin said, very coldly. “I suppose you are wet now?” he added to Levitas.

“No, no; I am sure I am mostly dry, I was not in for very long at all, I promise,” Levitas said, hunching himself very small.

“Let us hope so,” Rankin said. “Bend down, hurry up about it. And you lot are to stay away from him from now on,” he told the cadets as he climbed up in their place, nearly shouldering Hollin aside.

Laurence stood watching Levitas fly away with Rankin on his back; Berkley and Captain Harcourt were silent, as were the other dragons. Lily abruptly turned her head and made an angry spitting noise; only a few droplets fell, but they sizzled and smoked upon the stone, leaving deep black pockmarks.

“Lily!” Captain Harcourt said, but there was a quality of relief in her voice at the break in the silence. “Pray bring some harness oil, Peck,” she said to one of her ground crewmen, climbing down; she poured it liberally over the acid droplets, until smoke ceased rising. “There, cover it with some sand, and tomorrow it should be safe to wash.”

Laurence was also glad for the small distraction; he did not immediately trust himself to speak. Temeraire nuzzled him gently, and the cadets looked at him in worry. “I oughtn’t ever have suggested it, sir,” Hollin said. “I’m sure I beg your pardon, and Captain Rankin’s.”

“Not in the least, Mr. Hollin,” Laurence said; he could hear his own voice, cold and very stern, and he tried to mitigate the effect by adding, “You have done nothing wrong whatsoever.”

“I don’t see any reason why we ought to stay away from Levitas,” Roland said, low.

Laurence did not hesitate for a moment in his response; it was as strong and automatic as his own helpless anger against Rankin. “Your superior officer has given you orders to do so, Miss Roland; if that is not reason enough you are in the wrong service,” he snapped. “Let me never hear you make another such remark. Take these linens back to the laundry at once, if you please. You will pardon me, gentlemen,” he added to the others, “I will go for a walk before supper.”

Temeraire was too large to successfully creep after him, so the dragon resorted instead to flying past and waiting for him in the first small clearing along his path. Laurence had thought he wanted to be alone, but he found he was very glad to come into the dragon’s encircling forearms and lean upon his warm bulk, listening to the almost musical thrumming of his heart and the steady reverberation of his breathing. The anger slipped away, but it left misery in its place. He would have desperately liked to call Rankin out.

“I do not know why Levitas endures it; even if he is small, he is still much bigger than Rankin,” Temeraire said eventually.

“Why do you endure it when I ask you to put on a harness, or perform some dangerous maneuver?” Laurence said. “It is his duty, and it is his habit. From the shell he has been raised to obey, and has suffered such treatment. He likely does not contemplate any alternative.”

“But he sees you, and the other captains; no one else is treated so,” Temeraire said. He flexed his claws; they dug furrows in the ground. “I do not obey you because it is a habit and I cannot think for myself; I do it because I know you are worthy of being obeyed. You would never treat me unkindly, and you would not ask me to do something dangerous or unpleasant without cause.”

“No, not without cause,” Laurence said. “But we are in a hard service, my dear, and we must sometimes be willing to bear a great deal.” He hesitated, then added gently, “I have been meaning to speak to you about it, Temeraire: you must promise me in future not to place my life above that of so many others. You must surely see that Victoriatus is far more necessary to the Corps than I could ever be, even if there were not his crew to consider also; you should never have contemplated risking their lives to save mine.”

Temeraire curled more closely around him. “No, Laurence, I cannot promise such a thing,” he said. “I am sorry, but I will not lie to you: I could not have let you fall. You may value their lives above your own; I cannot do so, for to me you are worth far more than all of them. I will not obey you in such a case, and as for duty, I do not care for the notion a great deal, the more I see of it.”

Laurence was not sure how to answer this; he could not deny that he was touched by the degree to which Temeraire valued him, yet it was also alarming to have the dragon express so plainly that he would follow orders or not as his own judgment decreed. Laurence trusted that judgment a great deal, but he felt again that he had made an inadequate effort to teach Temeraire the value of discipline and duty. “I wish I knew how to explain it to you properly,” he said, a little despairingly. “Perhaps I will try and find you some books on the subject.”

“I suppose,” Temeraire said, for once dubious about reading something. “I do not think anything would persuade me to behave differently. In any case, I would much rather just avoid it ever happening again. It was very dreadful, and I was afraid I might not be able to catch you.”

Laurence could smile at this. “On that point at least we are agreed, and I will gladly promise you to do my best to avoid any repetition.”

Roland came running to fetch him the next morning; he had slept by Temeraire’s side again in the little tent. “Celeritas wants you, sir,” she said, and went back to the castle by his side, once he had put his neckcloth back on and restored his coat. Temeraire gave him a sleepy murmur of farewell, barely opening one eye before going back to sleep. As they walked, she ventured, “Captain, are you still angry at me?”

“What?” he said, blankly; then he remembered, and said, “No, Roland; I am not angry with you. You do understand why you were wrong to speak so, I hope.”

“Yes,” she said, and he was able to ignore that it came out a little doubtfully. “I did not speak to Levitas; but I could not help seeing he does not look very well this morning.”

Laurence glanced at the Winchester as they walked through the courtyard; Levitas was curled in the back corner, far from the other dragons, and despite the early hour, he was not sleeping but staring dully at the ground. Laurence looked away; there was nothing to be done.

“Run along, Roland,” Celeritas said, when she had brought Laurence to him. “Captain, I am sorry to have called you so early; first, is Temeraire well enough to resume his training, do you think?”

“I believe so, sir; he is healing very quickly, and yesterday he flew down to the lake and back with no difficulty,” Laurence said.

“Good, good.” Celeritas fell silent, and then he sighed. “Captain, I am obliged to order you not to interfere with Levitas any further,” he said.

Laurence felt hot color come to his face. So Rankin had complained of him. And yet it was no more than he deserved; he would never have brooked such officious involvement in the running of his ship, or his management of Temeraire. The thing had been wrong, whatever justifications he had given himself, and anger was quickly subsumed in shame. “Sir, I apologize that you should have been put to the necessity of telling me so; I assure you it will not arise again.”

Celeritas snorted; having delivered his rebuke, he seemed at no great pains to reinforce it. “Give me no assurances; you would lower yourself in my eyes if you could mean them with real honesty,” he said. “It is a great pity, and I am at fault as much as anyone. When I could not tolerate him myself, Aerial Command thought he might do as a courier, and set him to a Winchester; for his grandfather’s sake I could not bring myself to speak against it, though I knew better.”

Comforting as it was to have the reprimand softened, Laurence was curious to understand what Celeritas meant by not being able to tolerate him; surely Aerial Command would never have proposed a fellow like Rankin as a handler to a dragon as extraordinary as the training master. “Did you know his grandfather well?” he asked, unable to resist making the tentative inquiry.

“My first handler; his son also served with me,” Celeritas said briefly, turning his head aside; his head drooped. He recovered after a moment and added, “Well, I had hopes for the boy, but at his mother’s insistence he was not raised here, and his family gave him strange notions; he ought never have been an aviator, much less a captain. But now he is, and while Levitas obeys him, so he remains. I cannot allow you to interfere. You can imagine what it would mean if we allowed officers to meddle with one another’s beasts: lieutenants desperate to be captains could hardly resist the temptation to seduce away any dragon who was not blissfully happy, and we would have chaos.”

Laurence bowed his head. “I understand perfectly, sir.”

“In any case, I will be giving you more pressing matters to attend to, for today we will begin your integration into Lily’s formation,” Celeritas said. “Pray go and fetch Temeraire; the others will be here shortly.”

Walking back out, Laurence was thoughtful. He had known, of course, that the larger breeds would outlive their handlers, when they were not killed in battle together; he had not considered that this would leave the dragons alone and without a partner afterwards, nor how they or Aerial Command would manage the situation. Of course it was in Britain’s best interests to have the dragon continue in service, with a new handler, but he also could not help but think the dragon himself would be happier so, with duties to occupy his thoughts and keep him from the kind of sorrow that Celeritas obviously still felt.

Arriving once again at the clearing, Laurence looked at the sleeping Temeraire with concern. Of course there were many years before them, and the fortunes of war might easily make all such questions moot, but Temeraire’s future happiness was his responsibility, heavier by far to him than any estate could have been, and some time soon he would have to consider what provisions he could make to ensure it. A well-chosen first lieutenant, perhaps, might step into his place, with Temeraire brought to the notion over the course of several years.

“Temeraire,” he called, stroking the dragon’s nose; Temeraire opened his eyes and made a small rumble.

“I am awake; are we flying again today?” he said, yawning enormously up at the sky and twitching his wings a little.

“Yes, my dear,” Laurence said. “Come, we must get you back into your harness; I am sure Mr. Hollin will have it ready for us.”

The formation ordinarily flew in a wedge-shaped block that resembled nothing more than a flock of migrating geese, with Lily at the head. The Yellow Reapers Messoria and Immortalis filled the key flanking positions, providing the protective bulk to keep Lily from close-quarters attack, while the ends were held by the smaller but more agile Dulcia, a Grey Copper, and a Pascal’s Blue called Nitidus. All were full-grown, and all but Lily had previous combat experience; they had been especially chosen for this critical formation to support the young and inexperienced Longwing, and their captains and crews were rightly proud of their skill.

Laurence had cause to be thankful for the endless labor and repetition of the last month and a half; if the maneuvers they had practiced for so long had not become by now second nature for Temeraire and Maximus, they could never have kept up with the practiced, effortless acrobatics of the others. The two larger dragons had been added into position so as to form a back row behind Lily, closing the formation into a triangle shape. In battle, their place would be to fend off any attempts to break up the formation, to defend it against attack from other heavy-combat-class dragons, and to carry the great loads of bombs that their crews would drop below upon those targets that had already been weakened by Lily’s acid.

Laurence was very glad to see Temeraire admitted fully to the company of the other dragons of the formation, although none of the older dragons had the energy for much play outside their work. For the most part they lazed about during the scant idle hours, and only observed in tolerant amusement while Temeraire and Lily and Maximus talked and occasionally went aloft for a game of aerial tag. For his own part, Laurence also felt a great deal more welcome among the other aviators now, and discovered that he had without noticing it adjusted to the informality of their relations: the first time he found himself addressing Captain Harcourt as simply “Harcourt,” in a post-training discussion, he did not even realize he had done so until after the words were out of his mouth.

The captains and first lieutenants generally held such discussions of strategy and tactics at dinnertime, or during the late evenings after the dragons had all fallen asleep. Laurence’s opinion was rarely solicited in these conversations, but he did not take that greatly to heart: though he was quickly coming to grasp the principles of aerial warfare, he still considered himself a newcomer to the art, and he could hardly take offense at the aviators doing the same. Save when he could contribute some information about Temeraire’s particular capabilities, he remained quiet and made no attempt to insinuate himself into the conversations, rather listening for the purpose of educating himself.

The conversation did turn, from time to time, to the more general subject of the war; out of the way as they were, their information was several weeks out of date, and speculation irresistible. Laurence joined them one evening to find Sutton saying, “The French fleet could be bloody well anywhere.” Sutton was Messoria’s captain and the senior among them, a veteran of four wars, and somewhat given to both pessimism and colorful language. “Now they have slipped out of Toulon, for all we know the bastards are already on their way across the Channel; I wouldn’t be surprised to find the army of invasion on our doorstep tomorrow.”

Laurence could hardly let this pass. “You are mistaken, I assure you,” he said, taking his seat. “Villeneuve and his fleet have slipped out of Toulon, yes, but he is not engaged in any grand operation, only in flight: Nelson has been in steady pursuit all along.”

“Why, have you heard something, Laurence?” Chenery, Dulcia’s captain, asked, looking up from the desultory game of vingt-et-un that he and Little, Immortalis’s captain, were playing.

“I have had some letters, yes; one from Captain Riley, of the Reliant,” Laurence said. “He is with Nelson’s fleet: they have chased Villeneuve across the Atlantic, and he writes that Lord Nelson has hopes of catching the French in the West Indies.”

“Oh, and here we are without any idea of what is going on!” Chenery said. “For Heaven’s sake, fetch it here and read it to us; you are not very good to be keeping this all to yourself while we are all in the dark.”

He spoke with too much eagerness for Laurence to take offense; as the sentiments were repeated by the other captains, he sent a servant to his room to bring him the scant handful of letters he had received from former colleagues who knew his new direction. He was obliged to omit several passages commiserating with him on his change in situation, but he managed to elide them gracefully enough, and the others listened with great hunger to his bits and pieces of news.

“So Villeneuve has seventeen ships, to Nelson’s twelve?” Sutton said. “I don’t think much of the blighter for running, then. What if he turns about? Racing across the Atlantic like this, Nelson cannot have any aerial force; no transport could keep up the pace, and we do not have any dragons stationed in the West Indies.”

“I dare say the fleet could take him with fewer ships still,” Laurence said, with spirit. “You are to remember the Nile, sir, and before that the battle of Cape St. Vincent: we have often been at some numerical disadvantage and still carried the day; and Lord Nelson himself has never lost a fleet action.” With some difficulty, he restrained himself and stopped here; he did not wish to seem an enthusiast.

The others smiled, but not in any patronizing manner, and Little said in his quiet way, “We must hope he can bring them to account, then. The sad fact of the matter is, while the French fleet remains in any way intact, we are in deadly danger. The Navy cannot always be catching them, and Napoleon only need hold the Channel for two days, perhaps three, to ferry his army across.”

This was a lowering thought, and they all felt its weight. Berkley at last broke the resulting silence with a grunt and took up his glass to drain it. “You can all sit about glooming; I am for bed,” he said. “We have enough to do without borrowing trouble.”

“And I must be up early,” Harcourt said, sitting up. “Celeritas wants Lily to practice spraying upon targets in the morning, before maneuvers.”

“Yes, we all ought to get to sleep,” Sutton said. “We can hardly do better than to get this formation into order, in any case; if any chance of flattening Bonaparte’s fleet offers, you may be sure that one of the Longwing formations will be wanted, either ours or one of the two at Dover.”

The party broke up, and Laurence climbed to his tower room thoughtfully. A Longwing could spit with tremendous accuracy; in their first day of training Laurence had seen Lily destroy targets with a single quick spurt from nearly four hundred feet in the air, and no cannon from the ground could ever fire so far straight up. Pepper guns might hamper her, but her only real danger would come from aloft: she would be the target of every enemy dragon in the air, and the formation as a whole was designed to protect her. The group would be a formidable presence upon any battlefield, Laurence could easily see; he would not have liked to be beneath them in a ship, and the prospect of doing so much good for England gave him fresh interest for the work.

Unfortunately, as the weeks wore on, he saw plainly that Temeraire found it harder going to keep up his own interest. The first requirement of formation flying was precision, and holding one’s position relative to the others. Now that Temeraire was flying with the group, he was limited by the others, and with speed and maneuverability so far beyond the general, he soon began to feel the constraint. One afternoon, Laurence overheard him asking, “Do you ever do more interesting flying?” to Messoria; she was an experienced older dragon of thirty years, with a great many battle-scars to render her an object of admiration.

She snorted indulgently at him. “Interesting is not very good; it is hard to remember interesting in the middle of a battle,” she said. “You will get used to it, never fear.”

Temeraire sighed and went back to work without anything more like a complaint; but though he never failed to answer a request or to put forth an effort, he was not enthusiastic, and Laurence could not help worrying. He did his best to console Temeraire and provide him with other subjects to engage his interest; they continued their practice of reading together, and Temeraire listened with great interest to every mathematical or scientific article that Laurence could find. He followed them all without difficulty, and Laurence found himself in the strange position of having Temeraire explain to him the material which he was reading aloud.

Even more usefully, perhaps a week after they had resumed training a parcel arrived for them in the mail from Sir Edward Howe. It was addressed somewhat whimsically to Temeraire, who was delighted to receive a piece of mail of his very own; Laurence unwrapped it for him and found within a fine volume of dragon stories from the Orient, translated by Sir Edward himself, and just published.

Temeraire dictated a very graceful note of thanks, to which Laurence added his own, and the Oriental tales became the set conclusion to their days: whatever other reading they did, they would finish with one of the stories. Even after they had read them all, Temeraire was perfectly happy to begin over again, or occasionally request a particular favorite, such as the story of the Yellow Emperor of China, the first Celestial dragon, on whose advice the Han dynasty had been founded; or the Japanese dragon Raiden, who had driven the armada of Kublai Khan away from the island nation. He particularly liked the last because of the parallel with Britain, menaced by Napoleon’s Grande Armée across the Channel.

He listened also with a wistful air to the story of Xiao Sheng, the emperor’s minister, who swallowed a pearl from a dragon’s treasury and became a dragon himself; Laurence did not understand his attitude, until Temeraire said, “I do not suppose that is real? There is no way that people can become dragons, or the reverse?”

“No, I am afraid not,” Laurence said slowly; the notion that Temeraire might have liked to make a change was distressing to him, suggesting as it did a very deep unhappiness.

But Temeraire only sighed and said, “Oh, well; I thought as much. It would have been nice, though, to be able to read and write for myself when I liked, and also then you could fly alongside me.”

Laurence laughed, reassured. “I am sorry indeed we cannot have such a pleasure; but even if it were possible, it does not sound a very comfortable process from the story, nor one which could be reversed.”

“No, and I would not like to give up flying at all, not even for reading,” Temeraire said. “Besides, it is very pleasant to have you read to me; may we have another one? Perhaps the story about the dragon who made it rain, during the drought, by carrying water from the ocean?”

The stories were obviously myths, but Sir Edward’s translation included a great many annotations, describing the realistic basis for the legends according to the best modern knowledge. Laurence suspected even these might be exaggerated slightly; Sir Edward was very clearly enthusiastic towards Oriental dragons. But they served their purpose admirably: the fantastic stories made Temeraire only more determined to prove his similar merit, and gave him better heart for the training.

The book also proved useful for another reason, for only a little while after its arrival, Temeraire’s appearance diverged yet again from the other dragons, as he began to sprout thin tendrils round his jaws, and a ruff of delicate webbing stretched between flexible horns around his face, almost like a frill. It gave him a dramatic, serious look, not at all unbecoming, but there was no denying he looked very different from the others, and if it had not been for the lovely frontispiece of Sir Edward’s book, an engraving of the Yellow Emperor which showed that great dragon in possession of the same sort of ruff, Temeraire would certainly have been unhappy at being yet again marked apart from his fellows.

He was still anxious at the change in his looks, and shortly after the ruff had come in, Laurence found him studying his reflection in the surface of the lake, turning his head this way and that and rolling his eyes back in his head to see himself and the ruff from different angles.

“Come now, you are like to make everyone think you are a vain creature,” Laurence said, reaching up to pet the waving tendrils. “Truly, they look very well; pray give them no thought.”

Temeraire made a small, startled noise, and leaned in towards the stroking. “That feels strange,” he said.

“Am I hurting you? Are they so tender?” Laurence stopped at once, anxious. Though he had not said as much to Temeraire, he had noticed from reading the stories that the Chinese dragons, at least the Imperials and Celestials, did not seem to do a great deal of fighting, except in moments of the greatest crisis for their nations. They seemed more famed for beauty and wisdom, and if the Chinese bred for such qualities first, it would not be impossible that the tendrils might be of a sensitivity which could make them a point of vulnerability in battle.

Temeraire nudged him a little and said, “No, they do not hurt at all. Pray do it again?” When Laurence very carefully resumed the stroking, Temeraire made an odd purring sort of sound, and abruptly shivered all over. “I think I quite like it,” he added, his eyes growing unfocused and heavy-lidded.

Laurence snatched his hand away. “Oh, Lord,” he said, glancing around in deep embarrassment; thankfully no other dragons or aviators were about at the moment. “I had better speak to Celeritas at once; I think you are coming into season for the first time. I ought to have realized, when they sprouted; it must mean you have reached your full growth.”

Temeraire blinked. “Oh, very well; but must you stop?” he asked plaintively.

“It is excellent news,” Celeritas said, when Laurence had conveyed this intelligence. “We cannot breed him yet, for he cannot be spared for so long, but I am very pleased regardless: I am always anxious when sending an immature dragon into battle. And I will send word to the breeders; they will think of the best potential crosses to make. The addition of Imperial blood to our lines can only be of the greatest benefit.”

“Is there anything—some means of relief—” Laurence stopped, not quite sure how to word the question in a way which would not seem outrageous.

“We will have to see, but I think you need not worry,” Celeritas said dryly. “We are not like horses or dogs; we can control ourselves at least as well as you humans.”

Laurence was relieved; he had feared that Temeraire might find it difficult now to be in close company with Lily or Messoria, or the other female dragons, though he rather thought Dulcia was too small to be a partner of interest to him. But he expressed no interest of that sort in them; Laurence ventured to ask him, once or twice, in a hinting way, and Temeraire seemed mostly baffled at the notion.

Nevertheless there were some changes, which became perceptible by degrees. Laurence first noticed that Temeraire was more often awake in the mornings without having to be roused; his appetites changed also, and he ate less frequently, though in greater quantities, and might voluntarily go so long as two days without eating at all.

Laurence was somewhat concerned that Temeraire was starving himself to avoid the unpleasantness of not being given precedence, or the sideways looks of the other dragons at his new appearance. However, his fears were relieved in dramatic fashion, scarcely a month after the ruff had developed. He had just landed Temeraire at the feeding grounds and stood off from the mass of assembled dragons to observe, when Lily and Maximus were called onto the grounds. But on this occasion, another dragon was called down with them: a newcomer of a breed Laurence had never before seen, its wings patterned like marble, veins of orange and yellow and brown shot through a nearly translucent ivory, and very large, but not bigger than Temeraire.

The other dragons of the covert gave way and watched them go down, but Temeraire unexpectedly made a low rumbling noise, not quite a growl, from deep in his throat; very like a croaking bullfrog if a frog of some twelve tons might be imagined, and he leapt down after them uninvited.

Laurence could not see the faces of the herders, so far below, but they milled about the fences as if taken aback; it was quite clear however that none of them liked to try and shoo Temeraire away, not surprising considering that he was already up to his chops in the gore of his first cow. Lily and Maximus made no objection, the strange dragon of course did not even notice it as a change, and after a moment the herders released half a dozen more beasts into the grounds, that all four dragons might eat their fill.

“He is of a splendid conformity; he is yours, is he not?” Laurence turned to find himself addressed by a stranger, wearing thick woolen trousers and a plain civilian’s coat, both marked with dragon-scale impressions: he was certainly an aviator and an officer besides, his carriage and voice gentleman-like, but he spoke with a heavy French accent, and Laurence was puzzled momentarily by his presence.

The Frenchman was not alone; Sutton was keeping him company, and now he stepped forward to make the introductions: the Frenchman’s name was Choiseul.

“I have come from Austria only last night, with Praecursoris,” Choiseul said, gesturing at the marbled dragon below, who was daintily taking another sheep, neatly avoiding the blood spurting from Maximus’s third victim.

“He has some good news for us, though he makes a long face over it,” Sutton said. “Austria is mobilizing; she is coming into the war with Bonaparte again, and I dare say he will have to turn his attention to the Rhine instead of the Channel, soon enough.”

Choiseul said, “I hope I do not discourage your hopes in any way; I would be desolate to give you unnecessary concern. But I cannot say that I have great confidence in their chances. I do not wish to sound ungrateful; the Austrian corps was generous enough to grant myself and Praecursoris asylum during the Revolution, and I am most deeply in their debt. But the archdukes are fools, and they will not listen to the few generals of competence they have. Archduke Ferdinand to fight the genius of Marengo and Egypt! It is an absurdity.”

“I cannot say that Marengo was so brilliantly run as all that,” Sutton said. “If the Austrians had only brought up their second aerial division from Verona in time, we would have had a very different ending; it was as much luck as anything.”

Laurence did not feel himself sufficiently in command of land tactics to offer his own comment, but this seemed perilously close to bravado; in any case, he had a healthy respect for luck, and Bonaparte seemed to attract a greater share than most generals.

For his part, Choiseul smiled briefly and did not contradict, saying only, “Perhaps my fears are excessive; still, they have brought us here, for our position in a defeated Austria would be untenable. There are many men in my former service who are very savage against me for having taken so valuable a dragon as Praecursoris away,” he explained, in answer to Laurence’s look of inquiry. “Friends warned me that Bonaparte means to demand our surrender as part of any terms that might be made, and to place us under a charge of treason. So again we have had to flee, and now we cast ourselves upon your generosity.”

He spoke with an easy, pleasant manner, but there were deep lines around his eyes, and they were unhappy; Laurence looked at him with sympathy. He had known French officers of his sort before, naval men who had fled France after the Revolution, eating their hearts out on England’s shores; their position was a sad and bitter one: worse, he felt, than the merely dispossessed noblemen who had fled to save their lives, for they felt all the pain of sitting idle while their nation was at war, and every victory celebrated in England was a wrenching loss for their own service.

“Oh yes, it is uncommon generous of us, taking in a Chanson-de-Guerre like this,” Sutton said, with heavy but well-meant raillery. “After all, we have so very many heavyweights we can hardly squeeze in another, particularly so fine and well-trained a veteran.”

Choiseul bowed slightly in acknowledgment and looked down at his dragon with affection. “I gladly accept the compliment for Praecursoris, but you have already many fine beasts here; that Regal Copper looks prodigious, and I see from his horns he is not yet at his full growth. And your dragon, Captain Laurence, surely he is some new breed? I have not seen his like.”

“No, nor are you likely to again,” Sutton said, “unless you go halfway round the world.”

“He is an Imperial, sir, a Chinese breed,” Laurence said, torn between not wishing to show off and an undeniable pleasure in doing just so. Choiseul’s astonished reaction, though decently restrained, was highly satisfying, but then Laurence was obliged to explain the circumstances of Temeraire’s acquisition, and he could not help but feel somewhat awkward when relating the triumphant capture of a French ship and a French egg to a Frenchman.

But Choiseul was clearly used to the situation and heard the story with at least the appearance of complaisance, though he offered no remark. Though Sutton was inclined to dwell on the French loss a little smugly, Laurence hurried on to ask what Choiseul would be doing in the covert.

“I understand there is a formation in training, and that Praecursoris and I are to join in the maneuvers: some notion I believe of our serving as a relief, when circumstances allow,” Choiseul said. “Celeritas hopes also that Praecursoris may be of some assistance in the training of your heaviest beasts for formation flying: we have always flown in formation, for close on fourteen years now.”

A thundering rush of wings interrupted their conversation as the other dragons were called to the hunting grounds, the first four having finished their meal, and Temeraire and Praecursoris both made an attempt to land at the same convenient outcropping nearby: Laurence was startled to see Temeraire bare his teeth and flare his ruff at the older dragon. “I beg you to excuse me,” he said hastily, and hurried to find another place, calling Temeraire, and with relief saw him wheel away and follow.

“I would have come to you,” Temeraire said, a little reproachfully, casting a narrowed eye at Praecursoris, who was now occupying the contested perch and speaking quietly with Choiseul.

“They are guests here; it is only courteous to give way,” Laurence said. “I had no notion that you were so fierce in matters of precedence, my dear.”

Temeraire furrowed the ground before him with his claws. “He is not any bigger than I am,” he said. “And he is not a Longwing, so he does not spit poison, and there are no fire-breathing dragons in Britain; I do not see why he is any better than I am.”

“He is not one jot better, not at all,” Laurence said, stroking the tensed foreleg. “Precedence is merely a matter of formality, and you are perfectly within your rights to eat with the others. Pray do not be quarrelsome, however; they have fled the Continent, to be away from Bonaparte.”

“Oh?” Temeraire’s ruff smoothed out gradually against his neck, and he looked at the strange dragon with more interest. “But they are speaking French; if they are French, why are they afraid of Bonaparte?”

“They are royalists, loyal to the Bourbon kings,” Laurence said. “I dare say they left after the Jacobins put the King to death; it was very dreadful in France for a while, I am afraid, and though Bonaparte is at least not chopping people’s heads off anymore, he is scarcely much better in their eyes; I assure you they despise him worse than we do.”

“Well, I am sorry if I was rude,” Temeraire murmured, and straightened up to address Praecursoris. “Veuillez m’excuser, si je vous ai dérangé,” he said, to Laurence’s astonishment.

Praecursoris turned around. “Mais non, pas du tout,” he answered mildly, and inclined his head. “Permettez que je vous présente Choiseul, mon capitaine,” he added.

“Et voici Laurence, le mien,” Temeraire said. “Laurence, pray bow,” he added, in an undertone, when Laurence only stood staring.

Laurence at once made his leg; he of course could not interrupt the formal exchange, but he was bursting with curiosity, and as soon as they were winging their way down to the lake for Temeraire’s bath, he demanded, “But how on earth do you come to speak French?”

Temeraire turned his head about. “What do you mean? Is it very unusual to speak French? It was not at all difficult.”

“Well, it is prodigious strange; so far as I know you have never heard a word of it: certainly not from me, for I am lucky if I can say my bonjours without embarrassing myself,” Laurence said.

“I am not surprised that he can speak French,” Celeritas said, when Laurence asked him later that afternoon, at the training grounds, “but only that you should not have heard him do so before; do you mean to say Temeraire did not speak French when he first cracked the shell? He spoke English directly?”

“Why, yes,” Laurence said. “I confess we were surprised, but only to hear him speak at all so soon. Is it unusual?”

“That he spoke, no; we learn language through the shell,” Celeritas said. “And as he was aboard a French vessel in the months before his hatching, I am not surprised at all that he should know that tongue. I am far more surprised that he was able to speak English after only a week aboard. Fluently?”

“From the first moment,” Laurence said, pleased at this fresh evidence of Temeraire’s unique gifts. “You have been forever surprising me, my dear,” he added, patting Temeraire’s neck, making him preen with satisfaction.

But Temeraire continued somewhat more prickly, particularly where Praecursoris was concerned: no open animosity, nor any particular hostility, but he was clearly anxious to show himself an equal to the older dragon, particularly once Celeritas began to include the Chanson-de-Guerre in their maneuvers.

Praecursoris was not, Laurence was secretly glad to see, as fluid or graceful in the air as Temeraire; but his experience and that of his captain counted for a great deal, and they knew and had mastered many of the formation maneuvers already. Temeraire grew very intent on his work; Laurence sometimes came out from dinner and found his dragon flying alone over the lake, practicing the maneuvers he had once found so boring, and on more than one occasion he even asked to sacrifice part of their reading time to additional work. He would have worked himself to exhaustion daily if Laurence had not restrained him.

At last Laurence went to Celeritas to ask his advice, hoping to learn some way of easing Temeraire’s intensity, or perhaps persuading Celeritas to separate the two dragons. But the training master listened to his objections and said calmly, “Captain Laurence, you are thinking of your dragon’s happiness. That is as it should be, but I must think first of his training, and the needs of the Corps. Do you argue he is not progressing quickly, and to great levels of skill, since Praecursoris arrived?”

Laurence could only stare; the idea that Celeritas had deliberately promoted the rivalry to encourage Temeraire was first startling, then almost offensive. “Sir, Temeraire has always been willing, has always put forth his best efforts,” he began angrily, and only stopped when Celeritas snorted to interrupt him.

“Pull up, Captain,” he said, with a rough amusement. “I am not insulting him. The truth is, he is a little too intelligent to be an ideal formation fighter. If the situation were different, we would make him a formation leader or an independent, and he would do very well. But as matters stand, given his weight, we must have him in formation, and that means he must learn rote maneuvers. They are simply not enough to hold his attention. It is not a very common complaint, but I have seen it before, and the signs are unmistakable.”

Laurence unhappily could offer no argument; there was perfect truth in Celeritas’s remarks. Seeing that Laurence had fallen silent, the training master continued, “This rivalry adds enough spice to overcome a natural boredom which would shortly progress to frustration. Encourage him, praise him, keep him confident in your affection, and he will not suffer from a bit of squabbling with another male; it is very natural, at his age, and better he should set himself against Praecursoris than Maximus; Praecursoris is old enough not to take it seriously.”

Laurence could not be so sanguine; Celeritas did not see how Temeraire fretted. Yet neither could Laurence deny that his remarks were motivated from a selfish perspective: he disliked seeing Temeraire driving himself so hard. But of course he needed to be driven hard; they all did.

Here in the placid green north, it was too easy to forget that Britain was in great danger. Villeneuve and the French navy were still on the loose; according to dispatches, Nelson had chased them all the way to the West Indies only to be eluded again, and now was desperately seeking them in the Atlantic. Villeneuve’s intention was certainly to meet with the fleet out of Brest and then attempt to seize the straits of Dover; Bonaparte had a vast number of transports cramming every port along the French coast, waiting only for such a break in the Channel defenses to ferry over the massive army of invasion.

Laurence had served on blockade-duty for many long months, and he knew well how difficult it was to maintain discipline through the endless, unvarying days with no enemy in sight. The distractions of more company, a wider landscape, books, games: these things made the duty of training more pleasant by far, but he now recognized that in their own way they were as insidious as monotony.

So he only bowed, and said, “I understand your design, sir; thank you for the explanation.” But he returned to Temeraire still determined to curb the almost obsessive practicing, and if possible to find an alternative means of engaging the dragon’s interest in the maneuvers.

These were the circumstances which first gave him the notion of explaining formation tactics to Temeraire. He did so more for Temeraire’s sake than his own, hoping to give the dragon some more intellectual interest in the maneuvers. But Temeraire followed the subject with ease, and shortly the lessons became real discussion, as valuable to Laurence as to Temeraire, and more than compensating for his lack of participation in the debates which the captains held among themselves.

Together they embarked on designing a series of their own maneuvers, taking advantage of Temeraire’s unusual flying capabilities, which could be fitted into the slower and more methodical pace of the formation. Celeritas himself had spoken of designing such maneuvers, but the pressing need for the formation had forced him to put aside the plan for the immediate future.

Laurence salvaged an old flight-table from the attics, recruited Hollin’s help to repair its broken leg, and set it up in Temeraire’s clearing under his dragon’s interested eyes. It was a sort of vast diorama set upon a table, with a latticework on top; Laurence did not have a set of the proper scale figures of dragons to hang from it, but he substituted whittled and colored bits of wood, and by tying these with bits of thread from the lattice, they were able to display three-dimensional positions for each other’s consideration.

Temeraire from the beginning displayed an intuitive grasp of aerial movement. He could instantly declare whether a maneuver was feasible or not, and describe the movements necessary to bring it about if so; the initial inspiration for a new maneuver was most often his. Laurence in turn could better assess the relative military strengths of various positions, and suggest such modifications as would improve the force which might be brought to bear.

Their discussions were lively and vocal, and attracted the attention of the rest of his crew; Granby tentatively asked to observe, and when Laurence gave leave, was shortly followed by the second lieutenant, Evans, and many of the midwingmen. Their years of training and experience gave them a foundation of knowledge which both Laurence and Temeraire lacked, and their suggestions further refined the design.

“Sir, the others have asked me to propose to you that perhaps we might try some of the new maneuvers,” Granby said to him, some few weeks into the project. “We would be more than happy to sacrifice our evenings to the work; it would be infamous not to have a chance of showing what he can do.”

Laurence was deeply moved, not merely by their enthusiasm, but by seeing that Granby and the crew felt the same desire to see Temeraire acknowledged and approved. He was very glad indeed to find the others as proud of and for Temeraire as he himself was. “If we have enough hands present tomorrow evening, perhaps we may,” Laurence said.

Every officer from his three runners on up was present ten minutes early. Laurence looked over them a little bemused as he and Temeraire descended from their daily trip to the lake; he only now realized, with all of them lined up and waiting, that his aerial crew wore their full uniforms, even now in this impromptu session. The other crews were often to be seen without coats or neckcloths, particularly in the recent heat; he could not help but take this as a compliment to his own habit.

Mr. Hollin and the ground crew were also ready and waiting; even though Temeraire was inclined to fidget in his excitement, they swiftly had him in his combat-duty harness, and the aerial crew came swarming aboard.

“All aboard and latched on, sir,” Granby said, taking up his own launch position on Temeraire’s right shoulder.

“Very well. Temeraire, we will begin with the standard clear-weather patrol pattern twice, then shift to the modified version on my signal,” Laurence said.

Temeraire nodded, his eyes bright, and launched himself into the air. It was the simplest of their new maneuvers, and Temeraire had little difficulty following it; the greater problem, Laurence saw at once, as Temeraire pulled out of the last corkscrewing turn and back into his standard position, would be in accustoming the crew. The riflemen had missed at least half their targets, and Temeraire’s sides were stained where the lightly weighted sacks full of ash that stood for bombs in practice had hit him instead of falling below.

“Well, Mr. Granby, we have some work ahead of us before we can make a creditable showing of it,” Laurence said, and Granby nodded ruefully.

“Indeed, sir; perhaps if he flew a little slower at first?” Granby said.

“I think perhaps we must adjust our thinking as well,” Laurence said, studying the pattern of ash marks. “We cannot be hurling bombs during these quick turns he makes, there is no way we can be sure of missing him. So we cannot work steadily: we must wait and release the equivalent of a full broadside in the moments when he is level. We will be at greater risk of missing a target entirely, but that risk can be borne; the other cannot.”

Temeraire flew in an easy circuit while the topmen and bellmen hastily adjusted their bombing gear; this time, when they attempted the maneuver again, Laurence saw the sacks falling away, and there were no fresh marks to be seen on Temeraire’s sides. The riflemen, also waiting for the level parts of the run, improved their record as well, and after half a dozen repetitions, Laurence was well-satisfied with the results.

“When we can deliver our full allotment of bombs and achieve perhaps an eighty percent success rate in our gunnery, on this and the other four new maneuvers, I will consider our work worth bringing to Celeritas’s attention,” Laurence said, when they had all dismounted and the ground crew were stripping Temeraire and polishing the dust and grime off his hide. “And I think it eminently achievable: I commend all of you, gentlemen, on a most creditable performance.”

Laurence had previously been sparing with his praise, not wishing to seem as though he was courting the crew’s affections, but now he felt he could scarcely be overly enthusiastic, and he was pleased to see the heartfelt response of his officers to the approval. They were uniformly eager to continue, and after another four weeks of practice, Laurence was indeed beginning to think them ready to perform for a wider audience when the decision was taken from his hands.

“That was an interesting variation you were flying last evening, Captain,” Celeritas said to him at the end of the morning session, as the dragons of the formation landed and the crews disembarked. “Let us see you fly it tomorrow in formation.” With that he nodded and dismissed them, and Laurence was left to call together his crew and Temeraire for a hasty final practice.

Temeraire was inclined to be anxious, late that evening, after the others had gone back inside and he and Laurence were sitting quietly together in the dark, too tired to do more than rest in each other’s company.

“Come, do not let yourself fret,” Laurence said. “You will do very well tomorrow; you have mastered all of the maneuvers from beginning to end. We have been holding back only to give the crew better mastery.”

“I am not very worried about the flying, but what if Celeritas does not approve of the maneuvers?” Temeraire said. “We would have wasted all our time to no purpose.”

“If he thought the maneuvers wholly unwise, he would never have solicited us,” Laurence said. “And in any case our time has not been wasted in the least; the crew have all learned their work a good deal better for having to give more attention and thought to their tasks, and even if Celeritas disapproved entirely I would still count all these evenings of ours profitably spent.”

He at last soothed Temeraire to sleep and himself dozed off by the dragon’s side; though it was early September, the summer’s warmth was lingering, and he took no chill. Despite all his reassurances to Temeraire, Laurence himself was up and alert by first light, and he could not wholly repress a degree of anxiety in his own breast. Most of his crew were at the breakfast table as early as he was, so he made a point of speaking with several of them, and eating heartily; he would rather have not taken anything but coffee.

When he came out into the training courtyard he found Temeraire there already in his gear and looking over the valley; his tail was lashing the air uneasily. Celeritas was not yet there; fifteen minutes passed before any of the other dragons of the formation arrived, and by then Laurence had taken Temeraire and his crew out to fly a few circuits of the area. The younger ensigns and midwingmen were particularly inclined to be shrill, and he had the hands go through exchanging places to settle their nerves.

Dulcia landed, and Maximus after her; the full formation was now assembled, and Laurence brought Temeraire back in to the courtyard. Celeritas had still not yet arrived. Lily was yawning widely; Praecursoris was quietly speaking with Nitidus, the Pascal’s Blue, who also spoke French, his egg having been purchased from a French hatchery many years before the start of the war, when relations had been amicable enough to permit such exchanges. Temeraire still looked at Praecursoris with a brooding eye, but for once Laurence did not mind, if it would provide some distraction.

A bright flurry of wings caught his eye; looking up, he saw Celeritas coming in to land, and beyond him the rapidly dwindling forms of several Winchesters and Greylings, going away in various directions. Lower in the sky, two Yellow Reapers were heading south in company with Victoriatus, though the wounded Parnassian’s convalescence was not properly over. All the dragons came alert, sitting up; the captains’ voices died away; the crews fell into a heavy and expectant silence, all before Celeritas even reached the ground.

“Villeneuve and his fleet have been caught,” Celeritas said, raising his voice to be heard over the noise. “They have been penned up in the port of Cadiz, with the Spanish navy also.” Even as he spoke, the servants were running out of the hall, carrying hastily packed bags and boxes; even the maids and cooks had been pressed into duty. Without being ordered, Temeraire rose to all four legs, just as did the other dragons; the ground crews were already unrolling the belly-netting and climbing up to rig the tents.

“Mortiferus has been sent to Cadiz; Lily’s formation must go to the Channel at once to take the place of his wing. Captain Harcourt,” Celeritas said, turning to her, “Excidium remains at the Channel, and he has eighty years’ experience; you and Lily must train with him in every free moment you have. I am giving Captain Sutton command of the formation for the moment; this is no reflection upon your work, but with this abbreviation of your training, we must have more experience in the role.”

It was more usual for the captain of the lead dragon of a formation to be the commander, largely because that dragon had to lead off every maneuver, but she nodded without any sign of offense. “Yes, certainly,” she said; her voice came out a little high, and Laurence glanced at her with quick sympathy: Lily had hatched unexpectedly early, and Harcourt had become a captain barely out of her own training; this might well be her first action, or very nearly so.

Celeritas gave her an approving nod. “Captain Sutton, you will naturally consult with Captain Harcourt as far as possible.”

“Of course,” Sutton said, bowing to Harcourt from his position aboard Messoria’s back.

The baggage was already pulled down tight, and Celeritas took a moment to inspect each of the harnesses in turn. “Very good: try your loads. Maximus, begin.”

One by one, the dragons all rose to their hind legs, wind tearing across the courtyard as they beat their wings and tried to shake the rigging loose; one by one they dropped and reported, “All lies well.”

“Ground crews aboard,” Celeritas said, and Laurence watched while Hollin and his men hurried into the belly-rigging and strapped themselves in for the long flight. The signal came up from below, indicating they were ready, and he nodded to his signal-ensign, Turner, who raised the green flag. Maximus’s and Praecursoris’s crews raised their flags only a moment later; the smaller dragons were already waiting.

Celeritas sat back onto his haunches, surveying them all. “Fly well,” he said simply.

There was nothing more, no other ceremony or preparation; Captain Sutton’s signal-ensign raised the flag for formation go aloft, and Temeraire sprang into the air with the others, falling into position beside Maximus. The wind was in the north-west, almost directly behind them, and as they rose through the cloud cover, far to the east Laurence could see the faint glimmer of sunlight on water.