Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8)

Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire #8) Page 15

Chapter 15

“LA GRANDE ARMÉE, HE is calling it,” Tharkay had said, lying exhausted and thin against the cushions which propped him, in Laurence’s own camp-bed: they had carried him gently and carefully dragon-back, in a hammock of netting, back from the caves. “They have been mustering all winter; he will march into Russia in three months—in two—” He stopped, breathing hard, and asked, “What is the day?”

“It is the third of May,” Laurence said, quietly. The abuse had not marked Tharkay excessively: fortunately they had wished to preserve the appearance of a more honest confession, perhaps, when they had wrung one from him. But he had been lashed more than once, judging by the half-healed marks; there were burns upon his limbs as from a hot poker, and his hands were badly mangled.

“In a month,” Tharkay said. “He will march in June; that was our latest intelligence.”

“With near a million men?” Laurence said, low.

Tharkay nodded, minimally. “And some hundred dragons.”

It was indeed a message terrible enough to bring a man racing flat-out halfway around the world. The largest army ever heard of, and with it Napoleon meant to crush the last embers of resistance out of Europe: first Russia, and then he would turn all his attention to the Peninsula. Hammond was already rising, pale. “I must go speak with General Chu at once, and with Qin Mei: we must—these events must require our immediate return to the capital. Oh! We must return at once.” He left unceremoniously, and Tharkay closed his eyes.

Laurence sat silently with him in the growing dark of the tent, groping back through patchwork scenes of memory. He remembered the Goliath sinking more clearly now; he remembered the faces of the officers at his court-martial; he remembered the cold bleak desperation of the flight across the Channel, to take the plague-medicine to France.

“I hope you will forgive my mentioning it, Will,” Tharkay said, eventually, rousing Laurence from his reverie. “—I recognize there is a certain pot-calling quality to my doing so under the circumstances, but have you noticed that the top of your head appears likely to come off?”

Laurence put up a hand: he had taken off his hat. The scalp-wound had crusted over, and the bandages had come loose in the fighting; he had not had an opportunity to repair them, and the scabbing made a gory line of dried blood around half his skull. “It is only an inconvenience,” he answered. “Will you try and take a little wine?”

He eased Tharkay up, and gave him the glass; Tharkay held it awkwardly between his bruised and bloody hands, drank thirstily, and sank back again.

Temeraire peered in through the tent-opening, with one enormous platter-like eye. “I have seen to General Fela,” he said, with an enormous and glittering satisfaction which made unnecessary any questions about that gentleman’s fate, “—General Chu acknowledged I had every right to do it; but how is poor Tharkay?”

“Not yet expired,” Tharkay said, dryly, without opening his eyes again. “Though I would be glad of some rest; and that, I think, I cannot rely upon.”

“No,” Laurence said, quietly. “We will have to leave at once; and, pray God, bring some of these legions with us.”

“Be careful, there,” Iskierka called, a hiss of steam escaping her spikes, and Temeraire craned his head over a little further, just to be sure there was not good cause for her concern. The egg was supported in a nest of furs, within a well-tried net, and there were three dozen handlers directly beneath it, their fingertips lightly touching the surface, in case the net should break, but still anything might happen; one could not be too careful. Temeraire was glad when the maneuver was complete, and the egg transferred at last from his back to the waiting, ceremonial dais where it would await its hatching.

He nosed at the dais again, to be sure it was just the right temperature. With his head close, he could hear the low gurgle of water running through it, which the head of the Imperial household had explained to him brought the heat, from a cistern below. It was indeed very pleasantly warm without being excessively hot, and a gentle breeze played through the hall in which the egg now stood: the central hall of Prince Mianning’s palace, where they had first made their bows on arriving in China; but in attendance now there were only Mianning’s trusted retainers, as well as Mei and a handful of Imperial dragons, and Temeraire’s own mother, Qian.

Iskierka finished her own re-inspection of the dais, and drew her head back to snort with satisfaction. “That is well enough, I suppose,” she said. “I hope you will make a point to those fellows, Temeraire, that they will answer for it, if anything should go badly. You may be sure I will not listen to anyone telling me that I cannot squash this fellow, or that fellow, if anyone should hurt the egg; I will certainly come back and answer it.”

Temeraire had already expressed similar sentiments to the handlers, very delicately, a few dozen times; but he did agree, of course, that on this point he could not repeat himself too often. He had a final reminding word with Huang Li, the minister who would oversee the egg’s protection and nurturing; that gentleman took it very kindly, and assured Temeraire that everything would go well.

“We will send you dispatches every week,” Huang Li said, “with a report upon the egg’s progress, until it is hatched.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, with delight. “That would be of all things wonderful. But do you suppose those will reach me, in Britain?”

“The Emperor has commanded it,” Huang Li said, which was indeed heartening.

Iskierka nodded in satisfaction when Temeraire had translated this for her. “That is just as well,” she said. “I want to be quite sure they are taking proper care of my egg,” with a pointed stress on the possessive, and throwing a smugly superior look towards Mei before she pranced across the room to Granby’s side.

Temeraire went to Mei to make his own farewells; they were leaving in the morning. “I am sorry we did not manage an egg together,” he said, “but I am very glad to have seen you again, Mei. I hope you can forgive me,” he added, “for the opium; I promise we will put a stop to it somehow, even if the Government does not like to. Laurence and I will make them give over.”

Laurence and Mianning were speaking quietly together, near the dais. Laurence had been permitted to keep his sword, and a second one, a shorter blade, now sat upon his other hip; he wore a splendid set of new robes, in red satin, the gift of the Emperor himself. Temeraire rested his eyes upon him in tremendous satisfaction. If only he could persuade Laurence to wear them always, or at least on special occasions.

“I hope it will be so,” Mei said, “and yes, I do believe you, Xiang, that you did not know. In any case,” she added, “the crown prince means to send me there, in the company of the minister Ruan Yuan. We will soon begin to search the ships when they come in to Guangzhou, and burn the opium when we find it.”

Temeraire was well aware this new policy would not be received with equanimity by the British Government, and the East India Company, but with a guilty glance over his shoulder, he decided he did not wish to spoil the parting, and he would just forbear to mention it to anyone else, except perhaps to Laurence once they were already on their way. After all, if the East India Company wished to complain, they might stop the opium coming, themselves. If there were no opium upon the ships, there would be nothing to burn.

Mei leaned out and rubbed her head against his, affectionately. “And perhaps you will return and we can try again, when you have won this war of yours. This egg might not breed true Celestial, after all, although we must hope for the best.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff a little; he was quite sure the egg would hatch splendidly, regardless: one needed only look at its magnificently pearlescent shell and exquisitely proportional dimensions to see that it was something out of the ordinary. “I am sure that all will be well,” he said, dignified, “and the egg will make a most notable companion for the prince.”

“Oh! Yes, of course,” Mei said hastily. “Only, one does not wish to see the true Celestial line disappear; another line may equal, but not surpass it.”

Temeraire thawed; that he could accept. “If my honor and duty permit me, I would be very happy to return,” he said, with only a little loftiness.

He would be, too, he thought, and sighed a little, looking around the gorgeously appointed hall, the comfortably high rafters, as he went back to Laurence. “You must admit, Laurence,” he said, “that they do things very properly, here; no-one can complain of the hospitality, or the arrangements.”

“I do not deny it in the least, my dear,” Laurence said, resting a hand upon his flank. “And I will once again make you my promise we shall return, if fortune permits it; but you could not wish us to remain now, in these circumstances.”

“No, certainly not,” Temeraire said. “It is the outside of enough, for Napoleon to be beginning another war, and only just after he stole the Incan Empress, and caused so much trouble for us in Brazil.”

They had undertaken the return to Peking in a blazing rush, as swiftly as dragons could go; but even so the weeks seemed to Laurence to melt away and run through their fingers. By now, they were all dreadfully aware, Napoleon might already have crossed the Niemen; if the Russians had chosen to give battle, the fate of Europe might already have been decided.

The speed of the Jade Dragon couriers, within China, depended on their intricate system of relays; traveling so far as Moscow was no easy matter, and they labored without intelligence. They could only muster with all possible speed and go, hoping. Laurence had wondered how swiftly the assembled jalan could be brought back north from the mountains, but Chu had shaken his head in some bemusement even to be asked. “There is no sense bringing those soldiers all that way,” he said. “Those niru will go back to their usual stations; we will muster up fresh as we fly north. You Westerners seem to insist on thinking of dragons as though we were infantry. Telling ten thousand where to go is very difficult. Telling three hundred is not! Now, feeding them, that is another matter.”

Tharkay had not wholly recovered, but he had preferred to come with them than to remain behind for his convalescence. Laurence now stopped into his bedchamber in the palace, returning from the ceremony of handing over the egg. They had made use of the sickroom, which gave out upon the courtyard, to spread a great many maps upon the floor and consult upon the quickest route towards Russia’s borders.

Gong Su and General Chu had come three mornings ago to look these over, bringing with them a nondescript middle-weight dragon, one of the common blue sort, who was distinguished however by a silver headdress featuring two cabochon amethysts nearly the size of her own eyes, and who was introduced to them as Lung Shen Shi.

They looked over the maps, the dragons’ heads thrust through the open wall; withdrawing, Shen Shi had shaken her head doubtfully as though casting off water; the movement set the silver jingling. “I suppose we cannot rely on them to have any proper depots?” she asked Chu. “We must rely entirely on forage?”

“I am sure the Tsar will be pleased to put his resources at your disposal,” Hammond began.

“Herds of cattle, I suppose,” Chu said, with a snort. “We cannot rely upon them.”

She nodded her head. “In such circumstances as these, Honored General,” she said to Chu, “I regret most deeply that supply will be somewhat difficult to assure.”

Chu grunted. “How many dragons will this Napoleon have?”

“No more than a hundred?” Laurence said. “He can scarcely muster and supply a force larger than that which he brought across the Channel to England, so much nearer to home.”

“That is something, at any rate.” Chu said, not very enthusiastic. “Well, I hope he is not as clever as all of you seem to think.”

“I had not thought, sir, that you thought so highly of our Western tactics,” Laurence said, a little dryly, but wondering truly; he himself would not have given much for Napoleon’s chances in the air against the Chinese legions, so outnumbered and in hostile territory.

“I am not worried about the fighting,” Chu said, “when we have any. I am worried about time. I do not like to think what it will be if we have not defeated him before the harvest season. As the Emperor has commanded, however, so it must be.” He heaved himself up. “There is no time to lose, but I suppose you will not want to go until you have seen the egg safely conveyed,” he added to Temeraire. “We had better go the day after that, then. I will send on the word to the jalan-commanders, and we will rendezvous at Moscow.”

“And I myself must leave at the earliest possible moment,” Shen Shi said. “I ought to have been there six months ago, to assure proper supply.”

Gong Su nodded and turning to Hammond said, “Mr. Hammond, will it be convenient for you to leave at once?”

“Oh,” Hammond said, dismally. “I thought I—that is, I had expected, in the new circumstances of amity between our nations—surely I ought remain, as our standing ambassador—” He looked around as though for rescue. He had spoken with much enthusiasm of the opportunity of promoting the fragile new alliance, of cementing closer ties with Britain; and Laurence suspected he would be equally enthusiastic to be done with flying from one corner of the earth to another.

But Gong Su said gently and implacably, “The crown prince desires me to serve as the envoy of the court to His Imperial Majesty the Tsar, and relies upon you to provide the necessary introductions.”

“Perhaps a letter—” Hammond said, half-desperately: he had already written three of these, in French and English both, and sent them on ahead by courier to Moscow, to inform the Tsar of the approaching windfall of dragons.

But he could scarcely deny that a single envoy appearing, in the company of several unharnessed dragons and claiming to be from the Emperor of China, should find it difficult to gain the confidence of the Tsar; and Gong Su pointed out he himself had not the advantage of the French language, nor could he rely upon finding an English interlocutor at the Russian court. “No, yes, of course, your point is well taken, only—” Hammond said, until at last with an unhappy look he had gone away to gather what few things he could assemble before being swept away: amongst these Churki, who shook her head disapprovingly at the prospect of the war herself.

“Three thousand miles to cross before we even come to the battle?” she said. “I do not deny the Chinese managed things very nicely on this last journey: I do not know that I have ever seen a neater job of supply. But that was in their country, with all the arrangements and storehouses they have laid up. It is unwise to fly so deep into a strange country without making arrangements in advance. But,” she added, “in any case, Hammond, yes, it will be for the best if we go on ahead with this advance party. If I do not like the look of things, we will be closer to Britain, at least.”

Her pleasure at the prospect of returning to Britain had very little to do with having absorbed Hammond’s loyalties. He had in desperation, to prevent her trying to keep him back at her own mother’s estate in the Incan Empire, explained his unwillingness to be severed from contact with his family. This being large and numerous, and by Incan tradition Churki’s right to claim under her own protection, had changed her mind entirely; she spoke of them already in a possessive light at regular intervals, and had made Hammond teach her the names of all his nieces and nephews.

Hammond had given over trying to detach her, by now; he merely threw her a look of anxiety, and said to the rest of them as he made his hasty farewells, “Gentlemen, I trust I will see you in Moscow, not very long from now,” a little grimly, as if he hoped, rather than promised, to be there.

“Hammond,” Captain Harcourt said abruptly, “I beg your pardon, but I don’t think you will see all of us.” Laurence looked at her in surprise; he saw the other captains turn to look at her as well. “I have read over our orders, and they are clear enough: we are to get help to the Russians. But we have done that; I don’t think our formation will make a particle of difference with three hundred Chinese dragons there, and we will make a good deal of difference in the Peninsula.”

She turned to the other officers. “As soon as we have seen the egg safe delivered, gentlemen, I am taking the formation back to the Potentate, and we are going to make the best time we can for Portugal.”

She spoke with decision; she was senior, as Lily headed the formation, and the right was hers. In any case Laurence could not quarrel with her judgment. In company with the Chinese legions, the formation could only be incidental, accompanying a force already more powerful than anything they would face in the air. In the Peninsula, they would represent very likely a substantial alteration in the balance of power. He could see at a glance, in Berkley’s face and Sutton’s, the immediate agreement, the eagerness almost at once to be gone where they might do so much good, and rejoin their own ranks; Laurence himself was hard-pressed to regard their prospects without envy.

“You must go with them,” Laurence said to Demane, later that same evening, and found as he spoke that he knew Demane would not wish to go; that he knew, remembered, that Demane would not wish to be parted from Emily Roland. “I trust,” he added, when Demane drew a breath, “that you do not propose to offer me an argument against your departure that would be as ungentlemanly as it would be ill-advised, when she has refused your offer.”

Demane hesitated, and Laurence softened his tone a little. “No better chance is likely to offer itself to establish your career and see your rank confirmed properly: away from the Ministry and political concerns, on a battlefield, under Admiral Roland’s command and Wellington’s. Resolve to win their confidence, to behave as an officer and a gentleman, and you may hope to be treated as one: there are not so many heavy-weights on a scale as Kulingile that the Corps can easily let you go begging.

“And you could hardly hope for a better encomium in the eyes of the one whose good opinion you most desire,” Laurence added, “than Admiral Roland’s approval—nor should Excidium’s feelings towards Kulingile be of small concern to you.”

Demane was silenced by these last arguments more than the rest, Laurence was regretfully aware; but the point was won. Temeraire had then to be reconciled to being parted from Sipho, obstinately refusing to grant Demane’s greater claim to his brother’s company. “For after all,” Temeraire objected, “it is not as though Demane is going anywhere that he should need someone who can read Chinese, and whatever else has he for Sipho to do, but hang aboard Kulingile’s back, and perhaps be shot by some French soldier? I cannot like it in the least.”

“What he can do,” Laurence said, “if confirmed as a captain, is give Sipho his step to midwingman; and like as not to lieutenant. In any case, you must see that we cannot propose to separate them.”

“I do not see whyever not,” Temeraire said sulkily, though the two brothers had not spent a day apart from each other likely since the half-remembered occasion of their orphaning; Demane had been as much parent as sibling, since then. “I do not see why either of them must go,” Temeraire added. “Demane can be confirmed as a captain very well here. If Kulingile considers him a captain, I do not see why anyone else ought to quarrel: you and Granby and the others have not in the least argued.”

Laurence was well aware that his opinion on the matter should weigh with the Ministry not as much as a lofted feather; Granby himself was half-disgraced from their association and, unhappily, by Iskierka’s general recalcitrance. As for Captain Harcourt, she had said nothing, but Laurence was well aware she and the other captains of the formation regarded Demane doubtfully: still too much a boy, still too much given to distempered brawling, and of foreign birth and race. They had not witnessed Demane’s rescue of Kulingile as a misshapen hatchling when every other aviator would have seen the beast put to a quick death, nor the daily lengths to which the boy had gone to feed a ravenous young dragon in the midst of the Australian desert.

They had deferred to Laurence’s judgment, and to the practical consideration that they none of them had the right to speak. Kulingile was unassigned to any formation, and too large to naturally acknowledge himself or his captain subordinate to any other beast of their company, for all his easy-going temper. But Laurence could not pretend to himself that they would not have been delighted to see Kulingile shift his affections, for instance to one of their own junior officers.

“He deserves the chance to show what he can do,” Laurence said, “before the eyes of senior officers whose preferment can assure him the acquiesence of the Ministry. You cannot doubt that they, at least, would be full willing to quarrel with Kulingile’s choice.”

“Oh! I can believe anything of them, certainly,” Temeraire said, “but I do not see why we must pay them any mind: after all, we have resolved not to do so, haven’t we, when we think they are mistaken.”

Temeraire was only at long slow length convinced that perhaps such a half-vagabond and uncertain existence as their own should not be the only nor yet the ideal course for a young man only beginning on his career to follow. “And one,” Laurence added quietly, “who has not the advantages of family and name which both you and I possess, even if not in such measure as you might desire. Recollect he is an orphan, alone in the world, divided from the country of his birth and from his very tribe: even if he wished now to return, the port of Capetown is closed to our ships, and he is not of the Tswana; his own people have no dragons among them, and would scarcely welcome him and Kulingile back.”

All now was nearly in readiness for the moment of parting, come upon them so swiftly and, Laurence only hoped, not too late to bring them to the aid of the Russian armies. The egg was now safely in Mianning’s keeping; at dawn they would make their last farewells, the dragons of the formation taking wing for the harbor, Kulingile and Iskierka with them; and Temeraire and Arkady flying north with General Chu.

Laurence ducked into Tharkay’s chamber again. The maps had been rolled into their cases and the meager baggage packed; Tharkay was lying in the bed, his eyes closed, dressed but for his sword-belt and his boots as though he meant to sleep in his clothing before waking for the journey. “It will be just as well not to be fumbling to dress in the dark, with these hands of mine,” Tharkay said, dispassionately, working them gently open and shut as Laurence sat in the chair beside him: bruises still darkened the skin, and half the fingers were splinted.

Granby came into the room to join them and said, “You’re determined you won’t take ship with us?” while perching upon the end of the bed. “It won’t be an easy road. You’ll be flying cold, Laurence, I’m afraid: I dare say the Chinese would have a fit if you tried to put up a tent on Temeraire’s back. Have you got a new flying-coat, yet?”

“I have, thank you,” Laurence said. Mianning had made him free of his own purse, towards repairing his wardrobe, and Laurence had swallowed his half-remembered irritation and begged Gong Su for assistance in navigating the etiquette of commissioning a garment from one of the local tailors in such a way that would not oblige the poor tradesman to proffer the item as a gift.

The coat had been delivered with sufficient alacrity to mean that the fellow had however stayed up night and day working upon it. But Laurence was grateful for the speed, which should let him take the coat with him; and more so that the garment did not make a guy of him. The leather was a supple black and the sleeves darted cleverly at shoulder and elbow with padded dark blue silk: a little outré, perhaps, but when Laurence had discovered how the contrivance served to ease the sweep of a sword, he had no objections to make. There were a few more ornate embossed decorations than he might have liked upon the sleeves, but these were subtle and easily to be missed at a distance.

His memory had begun more steadily to come back to him—flashes of recollection and emotion, conversations and actions: still with blank spaces full of surprise between them, but he felt no longer that strange sense of division from himself. Even that, he now recognized, was not so great a distance from the state of his mind these last several years. He was divided from the man he had once been, and by a gulf he could no longer cross.

“I fear there is something of cowardice in it,” he admitted, meaning his loss of memory. “A retreat, and weak-minded at that, when I can no longer be what I was even if I wished; there is no pretense, no masquerade that could achieve it. I thought I had faced up to it; I had not thought to be so easily overcome.”

“I am of the opinion,” Tharkay said, “that you ought not assign to free will something more likely the consequence of a sharp blow to the skull.”

Granby snorted. “You are the only fellow I can think of, Laurence, whose notion of a weak-minded retreat would be to cast your own head ahoo and slog onwards confused beyond everything, and nearly kill yourself thrice over.”

He rose and gave Tharkay a bow in lieu of shaking hands: as he was short one, and Tharkay’s still in sorry condition. Together they left him to his rest, closing the courtyard door behind them as they stepped out. The dragons of the formation were engaged in postdinner ablutions—a final enjoyment of that pleasure which they would not so easily find after leaving the Imperial precincts, where enormous dragon’s-head spouts were placed at the eaves of the buildings through which torrents of pleasantly hot water might be pumped over the dragons’ backs.

“What an ungodly flood: we will be lucky if we are not all carried away,” Captain Little said, as he sprang up onto one of the stone benches to save his boots, after Nitidus had grown too enthusiastic in his pumping: a broad gushing stream developed, running down Immortalis’s back to the drain. “John, we will need Iskierka to toast their rumps before we get them back under harness, or we will all be flying wet,” he said, offering a hand to pull Granby up by his good arm; and then, after a moment’s hesitation, Laurence afterwards.

Laurence took it in an equally awkward spirit. The return of his memory had belatedly clarified all Little’s avoidance: of course Little knew, for Granby had surely told him, that Laurence had by misfortune and Iskierka’s indiscretion been brought into not only Granby’s guilty secret, but his own.

And not, as one might learn of such a thing aboard a ship—not by whispered ship’s gossip, and eavesdropping through her wooden walls, and one suspicious circumstance laid upon another like bricks to make a wall of certainty. Laurence could by that sort of testimony have denounced a score of men, in the Navy, and would nevertheless cheerfully and with a sense of perfect honesty have sworn, under oath, that he knew nothing of their predilections and personal habits, and denied any knowledge of a crime, even if Admiral D—had maintained an entire troop of particularly beautiful young men who could not reef a sail or pull upon a line, and Captain K—had so passionately greeted his first lieutenant of ten years, that man returning wounded from a boarding party, as to require all present to avert their eyes.

No: in this case, Granby had confessed it to him, outright, and thus made him complicit; and Iskierka had as plainly marked out Little’s guilt. Laurence could not argue to himself that he did not know, and that he had no duty to speak.

The man he had been eight years before, Laurence realized, would have acknowledged that duty; perhaps would even however reluctantly and unhappily have denounced them to a superior, and set in motion all the machinery of the courts-martial to destroy them. That man would have put duty above not merely personal sentiment and attachment, but above the natural sense of justice which revolted at the idea of exposing to ruin and misery any man for such a crime.

He would have not valued his own feelings, on such a matter, higher than the law and the discipline of the service. If he had kept silent, either from affection or a sense of having received a confidence, or a more practical consideration of the damage the loss of two skilled captains and their beasts would do to the service, he would have felt a painful and bitter guilt at doing so. And so aside from an ordinary mortification at having his intimate concerns so exposed to a man not his close friend, Little had indeed a cause to fear; and especially a partial and stumbling return of Laurence’s memory.

Laurence ruefully admitted to himself that he had been a great deal happier in this instance not to remember: it was wretchedly awkward to know that which he ought not know, and to know that Little and Granby should both know he knew it, while none of them might utter a word on the subject. But he felt no guilt; he was done with that subtle species of cowardice which hid behind the judgment of other men. He said to them, “I had better take my leave of you now, gentlemen; you will have a difficult time enough getting away, I think,” and offered Little his hand. “My most sincere regards, and good fortune, to you both,” he said, as close as he could come, he felt, to conveying a reassurance without being so plain as to embarrass them both. Granby he embraced, and added, more lightly, “And for Heaven’s sake, John, have a care for that other arm.”

“Trust me! Though I can’t very well complain,” Granby said. “I did say that I would have given an arm to have Iskierka a little more biddable, so if I have been taken at my word, that is not the fault of Fortune. So at least this time, you may indeed hope to be shot of me: I have Iskierka’s word she will go quietly to the Potentate, and no more haring off madly.”

“I am sorry for the pains she has put you to,” Laurence said, “and I will refrain from expressing the sentiment to her, but for my own part, I must be grateful to her: I cannot think what we should have done, these last two years, without you both. Godspeed!”

He took his leave of them and navigated from one stone bench to another, making his farewells to the other captains as he passed them and their beasts in the flooded courtyard, until at last he was across, and stepped through the house and out to the palace lanes, returning to Temeraire’s courtyard. “What is all that noise, over there?” Temeraire asked, raising his head from his book. The ground crewmen were bundling up their supplies, and the house servants were busily engaged in packing all Laurence’s things under Temeraire’s watchful eye, including the scarlet robes of silk and velvet. Laurence sighed inwardly to see them; he would gladly have left them behind by oversight.

“They are making something of a lake,” Laurence said. The stones of Temeraire’s court were still a little damp from his own bathing, and his hide still speckled with drops that had not run off him; Laurence took one of the large soft silken rags from their basket in the corner of the courtyard and dried a small pool which had accumulated in the crook of Temeraire’s foreleg. Temeraire nudged him with pleasure and thanks, and Laurence seated himself upon the arm.

They sat together a little while without a word required, in silent contentment, a peace that would vanish soon enough; and yet would still be there to be found again, Laurence thought. How nearly he had lost it, entirely, without even knowing what he lost.

“Laurence,” Temeraire said after a little while, “Napoleon will be quite outnumbered in the air, will he not?”

“So we hope,” Laurence said. “And he will not be able to bring his full infantry and cavalry to bear against us, either. He will have to leave detachments behind to hold his lines open. Numerically, we should have the advantage, and the advantage of fighting on Russian soil.”

“It does sound so very promising,” Temeraire said. “Surely we shall have him this time. And you need not make that noise, either, O’Dea,” he added. “We will have three hundred dragons with us: I am quite sure even Napoleon and Lien cannot have anything to say to them.”

O’Dea, sitting on a rock and sewing links of mail back onto Temeraire’s armor, had given a lugubrious snort. “Why, it’s true enough we’ve a great many dragons here; I suppose we can hope that most of them will still be with us when we’re there. We must hope for it, sure, seeing how Boney has sent the Russians scampering more than once before now. ’Tis a cold winter in that country, so I’ve heard: a cold winter to be out on the barren plain, haunted by wild beasts, without a fire to sit beside and all the French Army on our heels.”

“I do not think you ought to speak so discouragingly,” Temeraire said disapprovingly. “Why, Maximus and Lily and even Iskierka would not be going away if they thought there were any chance of our being beat: you see how sure they are we will win.”

O’Dea wagged his head. “Ah, indeed; ’tis a pity, all those fellows going away by ship, and like as not to the bottom of the ocean.”

Temeraire flattened his ruff, and maintained a dignified silence until O’Dea had gone back into the house, as the lanterns were dimmed; then he said to Laurence, “Laurence, what will we do, if Napoleon should defeat us?”

“Starve,” Laurence said, dryly.