been to China; he is sure to recover quickly."
"No, my dear," Laurence said uneasily, and broke the worst
of the news-"The sick have none of them recovered, and you
must take the very greatest care not to go anywhere near
the quarantine-grounds."
"But I do not understand," Temeraire said. "If they do not
recover, then-" He paused.
Laurence only looked away. Temeraire had good excuse for
not understanding at once. Dragons were hardy creatures,
and many breeds might live a century and more; he might
have justly expected to know Maximus and Lily for longer
than a man's lifetime, if the war had not taken them from
him.
At last, sounding almost bewildered, Temeraire said, "But I
have so much to tell them-I came for them. So they might
learn that dragons may read and write, and have property,
and do things other than fight."
"I will write a letter for you, which we can send to them
with your greetings, and they will be happier to know you
well and safe from contagion than for your company,"
Laurence said. Temeraire did not answer; he was very still,
and his head bowed deeply to his chest. "We will be nearby," Laurence went on, after a moment, "and you may write
to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our
work."
"Patrolling, I suppose," Temeraire said, with a very
unusual note of bitterness, "and more stupid formationwork; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing."
Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders
lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no
comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate
removal to Dover, where Temeraire's expectations were
likely to be answered in every particular.
He was not encouraged, on reporting to the headquarters at
Dover directly they had landed, by being left to cool his
heels in the hall outside the new admiral's office for
thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct
despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland,
shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar; and
Laurence rose to his feet abruptly, straightening as the
door was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came
rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered,
his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his
sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious
glare before he left.
"Come in, Laurence; come in," Jane called, and he went in;
she was standing with the admiral, an older man dressed
rather astonishingly in a black frock coat and kneebreeches with buckled shoes.
"You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think," Jane said. "Sir,
this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire."
"Sir," Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his
confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons
were in quarantine, to put the covert in the charge of a
physician was the sort of thing which might make sense to
landsmen, as with the notion advanced to him once, by a
family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a lessfortunate relation, to advance a surgeon-not even a naval
surgeon-to the command of a hospital ship.
"Captain, I am honored to make your acquaintance," Dr.
Wapping said. "Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your
pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene."
"Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack
of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their
place; good day to you. Would you credit, Laurence," Jane
said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, "that
those wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat
scarcely enough to feed a bird anymore, but they must send
us diseased stock and scrawny?
"But this is a way to welcome you home." She caught him by
the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. "You
are a damned sight; whatever has happened to your coat?
Will you have a glass of wine?" She poured for them both
without waiting his answer; he took it in a sort of
appalled blankness. "I have all your letters, so I have a
tolerable notion what you have been doing, and you must
forgive me my silence, Laurence; I found it easier to write
nothing than to leave out the only matter of any
importance."
"No; that is, yes, of course," he said, and sat down with
her at the fire. Her coat was thrown over the arm of her
chair; now that he looked, he saw the admiral's fourth bar
on the shoulders, and the front more magnificently frogged
with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the
better; she had lost a stone of weight at least, he
thought, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with
grey.
"Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin," she said ruefully,
and laughed away his apologies. "No, we are all of us
decaying, Laurence; there is no denying it. You have seen
poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three
weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of
his bedroom in an apoplexy; for a week he could not speak
without slurring. He came along a good ways afterwards, but
still he has been a shade of himself."
"I am sorry for it," Laurence said, "though I drink to your
promotion," and by herculean effort he managed it without a
stutter.
"I thank you, dear fellow," she said. "I would be et up
with pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it
were not one annoyance after another. We glide along
tolerably well when left to our own devices, but I must
deal with these idiotish creatures from the admiralty. They
are told, before they come, and told again, and still they
will simper at me, and coo, as if I had not been adragonback before they were out of dresses, and then they
stare if I dress them down for behaving like kiss-my-hand
squires."
"I suppose they find it a difficult adjustment," Laurence
said, with private sympathy. "I wonder the Admiralty should
have-" and belatedly he paused, feeling he was treading on
obscure and dangerous ground. One could not very well
quarrel with pursuing whatever means necessary to reconcile
Longwings, perhaps Britain's most deadly breed, to service,
and as the beasts would accept none but female handlers,
some must be offered them; Laurence was sorry for the
necessity that would thrust a gently born woman out of her
rightful society and into harm's way, but at least they
were raised up to it. And where necessary, they had
perforce to act as formation-leaders, transmitting the
maneuvers to their wings; but this was a far cry from flag
rank, not to say commanding the largest covert in Britain,
and perhaps the most critical.
"They certainly did not like to give it to me, but they had
precious little choice," Jane said. "Portland would not
come from Gibraltar; Laetificat is not up to the sea-voyage
anymore. So it was me or Sanderson, and he is making a cake
of himself over the business; goes off into corners and
weeps like a woman, as though that would help anything: a
veteran of nine fleet actions, if you would credit it."
Then she ran her hand through her disordered crop and
sighed. "Never mind, you are not to listen to me, Laurence;
I am impatient, and his Animosia does poorly."
"And Excidium?" Laurence ventured.
"Excidium is a tough old bird, and he knows how to husband
his strength: has the sense to eat, even though he has no
appetite. He will muddle along a good while yet, and you
know, he has close on a century of service; many his age
have already shot themselves of the whole business and
retired to the breeding grounds." She smiled; it was not
whole-hearted. "There; I have been brave. Let us to
pleasanter things: you have brought me twenty dragons, and
by God do I have a use for them. Let us go and see them."
"She is a handful and a half," Granby admitted lowly, as
they considered the coiled serpentine length of Iskierka's
body, faint threads of steam issuing from the many needlelike spikes upon her body, "and I haven't ridden herd on
her, sir, I am sorry."
Iskierka had already established herself to her own
satisfaction, if no one else's, by clawing out a deep pit
in the clearing next to Temeraire's where she had been
housed, then filling it with ash: this acquired from some
two dozen young trees which she had unceremoniously
uprooted and burnt up inside her pit. She had then added to
the powdery grey mixture a collection of boulders, which
she fired to a moderate glow before going to sleep,
comfortably, in her heated nest. The bonfire and its
lingering smolder were visible for some distance, even to
the farmhouses nearest the covert, and a few hours past her
arrival had already produced several complaints and a great
deal of alarm.
"Oh, you have done enough keeping her harnessed out in the
countryside, without a head of cattle to your name," Jane
said, giving the drowsing Iskierka's side a pat. "They may
bleat to me all they like, for a fire-breather, and you may
be sure the Navy will cheer your name when they hear we
have our own at last. Well done; well done indeed, and I am
happy to confirm you in your rank, Captain Granby. Should
you like to do the honors, Laurence?"
Most of Laurence's crew had already been employed in
Iskierka's clearing, in beating out the stray embers which
flew out of her pit and threatened to ignite all the covert
if left unchecked. Ash-dusty and tired as they all were,
they had none of them gone away, lingering consciously
without the need of any announcement, and now lined up on a
muttered word from young Lieutenant Ferris to watch
Laurence pin the second pair of gold bars upon Granby's
shoulders.
"Gentlemen," Jane said, when Laurence had done, and they
gave a cheek-flushed Granby three huzzahs, whole-hearted if
a little subdued, and Ferris and Riggs stepped over to
shake him by the hand.
"We will see about assigning you a crew, though it is early
days yet with her," Jane said, after the ceremony had
dispersed, and they proceeded on to make her acquainted
with the ferals. "I have no shortage of men now, more's the
pity. Feed her twice daily, see if we cannot make up for
any growth she may have been shorted, and whenever she is
awake I will start you on Longwing maneuvers. I don't know
if she can scorch herself, as they can with their own acid,
but we needn't find out by trial."
Granby nodded; he seemed not the least nonplussed at
answering to her. Neither did Tharkay, who had been
persuaded to stay on at least a little longer, as one of
the few of them with any influence upon the ferals at all.
He rather looked mostly amused, in his secretive way, once
past the inquiring glance which he had first cast at
Laurence: as Jane had insisted upon being taken to the
newcome dragons at once, there had been no chance for
Laurence to give Tharkay a private caution in advance of
their meeting. He did not reveal any surprise, however, but
only made her a polite bow, and performed the introductions
quite calmly.
Arkady and his band had made very little less confusion of
their own clearings than Iskierka, preferring to knock down
all the trees between and cluster together in a great heap.
The chill of the December air did not trouble them, used as
they were to the vastly colder regions of the Pamirs, but
they spoke disapprovingly of the dampness, and on
understanding that here before them was the senior officer
of the covert, at once demanded from her an accounting of
the promised cows, one apiece daily, by which they had been
lured into service.
"They make the position that if they do not happen to eat
the cows upon a given day, still they are owed the cattle,
which they may call in at a future time," Tharkay
explained, provoking Jane's deep laugh.
"Tell them they shall have as much as they like to eat on
any occasion, and if they are too suspicious for that to
satisfy them, we shall make them a tally: they may each of
them take one of these logs they have knocked about over to
the feeding pens, and mark it when they take a cow," Jane
said, more merry than offended at being met with such
negotiations. "Pray ask will they agree to a rate of
exchange, two hogs for a cow, or two sheep, should we bring
in some variety?"
The ferals put their heads together and muttered and hissed
and whistled amongst themselves, in a cacophony made
private only by the obscurity of their language, and
finally Arkady turned back and professed himself willing to
settle on the trade agreement, except that he insisted
goats should be three to a cow, they having some contempt
for that animal, more easily obtained in their former
homeland and likely there to be scrawny.
Jane bowed to him to seal the arrangement, and he bobbed
his head back, his expression deeply satisfied, and