LITMIR.BIZ

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might invite the scorn rather than the sympathy of the Admiralty; that did not mean the Navy Board would not accept with the other hand any charges Bligh laid at Riley’s door.

      All the more so, Laurence knew, that they had been given fresh cause to regard Temeraire, and any personage even remotely associated with him, with suspicion: Temeraire had received a letter also, in the post carried by the Beatrice; from Perscitia, who had evidently somehow acquired a scribe.

      ‘We have finished the Pavilion already—’

      ‘Oh!’ Temeraire said sadly, ‘and I am not there to see it.’

      ‘—and begun on a second; we were puzzled where we should get the funds, as it is amazing how quickly Money goes. The Government tried to persuade us all to go back to the Breeding Grounds and leave off building: when we were almost quite finished, if you can imagine it. So the promised Supply has been very late and slow, and when they do send us any Cattle they are thin and not tasty, so we have had to buy Food of our own, and it is very dear at present; also Requiescat will eat like A Glutton, of course.

      ‘But we contrived: Majestatis suggested we should send Lloyd to Dover, to inquire after carting work, and we have worked out that men will pay a great deal just for us to carry things to London, and other Towns, as we can do it much more quickly than Horses; and I have worked out a very nice Method by which one can calculate the most efficient Way to go among all of them, taking on some goods and leaving off others; only it grows quite tiresome to calculate if one wishes to go to more than five or six Places.

      ‘There was a little noise about our coming and going — nobody much minded when it was just the Winchesters, or even the Reapers; but of course, Requiescat can carry so very much more — even if he is too lazy to go further than Dover to London and back — and Ballista and Majestatis and the other Heavyweights, and after all, it is not as though we do not fit into the Coverts, so we really saw no reason they should not go, too. But then the Government grew upset, when they might have given us proper Food to begin with, and we should never have needed to trouble ourselves! And they tried to make a Quarrel, and set some harnessed dragons in the Covert and told them to keep us out of it.

      ‘They were out of Scotland, I think; we did not know them, particularly, but Ballista said to them it was no sense squabbling over something so silly: for look, the Government had just put them in the Covert, because they did not want us in the Covert, even though they were just as big; and anyway there was plenty of Room, and we were only passing through. They all thought that was quite sensible, once she gave them a few of our Cows to be friendly; it seems Cows are very dear in the coverts, too, and nobody gets them very often anymore, even the harnessed beasts.’

      There was besides this communiqué a good deal of gossip about the relations among the dragons, which Laurence read to Temeraire only half-attending; between Perscitia’s lines he could easily read the frantic reports racing through Whitehall: unharnessed heavyweights descending as they wished into every great city of Britain, terrifying the populace and wrecking the business of ordinary carters to boot; and bribing their harnessed fellows with the greatest of ease, despite all the certain persuasions and efforts of those dragons’ captains.

      ‘That is a great pity about Gladius and Cantarella having a falling-out,’ Temeraire said, ‘for I was sure they would have made a splendid egg; also I do not like Queritoris very much, for he was always making a fuss about carrying soldiers, when we all had to do it; so very tiresome, for everyone, but complaining did not make it any better. Laurence, do you suppose we might carry things for people, here, and so be paid? Only, no,’ he interrupted his own thought, rather downcast, ‘for there is only this one town, and no other to carry things to; how I wish we were home!’

      Laurence had wished it too, but silently folded away the letter which killed his hopes of return aborning; it yet crackled in his coat pocket now, as he answered Riley, ‘I am sorry you should have had the unpleasantness of his threats; we will of course not ask you to interfere, Tom; nor, I hope, put you in any awkward position.’

      ‘Well, I hope I am not so much a scrub as to come here and ask you out of the side of my mouth to have a care, for my own sake,’ Riley said. ‘I am pretty well found in prize money, after all, and if I am set ashore, at least I can take my little fellow home, and not worry my life away wondering what absurd thing Catherine is doing with him.’ This, a little bitterly: he had not received a letter.

      ‘But this could easily grow to be a more serious matter than a mere quarrel,’ Laurence said soberly to Temeraire, after Riley had left, ‘if Bligh chooses to make it a charge of disobedience, and their Lordships pleased to have an excuse for a court-martial; I can easily imagine it.’

      ‘I can, too,’ Temeraire said, ‘and I am sure we oughtn’t let him hurt Riley, or Granby either; but we cannot let Rankin hurt the egg, either. Laurence, I have made Roland and Demane bring the egg out, just long enough so I might look at it, and I think it is going to hatch very soon; can we not take it away?’

      ‘Away?’ Laurence said; there was nowhere to go.

      ‘Oh, into the countryside,’ Temeraire said, ‘only until it has hatched, I mean; and then we can come back again, and it may choose among the officers if it likes. Or if you thought better,’ he added, ‘we might take one or two of the best of them, instead, so it might choose among them directly: but no one who would mean to try and use a hood, or a net.’

      It was a scheme which Laurence ought at once have rejected, but he surprised himself by thinking soberly that so blatant a manoeuvre would, at least, be a stroke bold enough to ensure blame could be set only to their own much-overdrawn account. Granby and Riley, left behind and unable to trace their whereabouts, could not so easily be complained-of as Granby and Riley standing idly by, in the face of some interference carried out immediately before them.

      It was scarcely calculated to win him approval from their Lordships; certainly none from Bligh, but there was, Laurence with a little dark humour acknowledged, something liberating in having nothing whatsoever of which he might be robbed by the law: not even hope. He looked at the egg, himself: he did not hold himself up as an expert, but the shell was certainly harder than it had been, aboard ship, and with that same brittle, slightly thinning quality which he remembered a little from Temeraire’s hatching, and Iskierka’s.

      ‘We could take no one else with us,’ Laurence said, ‘at least, not consenting; and there would be something curious in abducting an aviator to make him a captain: the fellow could not help but be doubted, afterwards.’

      ‘Well, to be perfectly honest I think it just as well not to take any of them,’ Temeraire said. ‘I do not think much of the lot: they were all quite unpleasant, on the ship, and they will think they have a right to the eggs, even though they had nothing to do with making them, and I have been taking care of them all this while. They have nothing to recommend them, any more than Rankin does: I don’t suppose the hatchling will want any of them.’

      ‘We are in too much disgrace, my dear, to expect to see any of them display to advantage,’ Laurence said, ‘but Lieutenant Forthing at least is held a good officer, Granby tells me, and fought with courage at the battle of Shoeburyness.’

      ‘Oh, he is the worst of them!’ Temeraire said, immediately censorious, though Laurence did not quite know what had provoked such a degree of heat, ‘and I don’t care if we are in disgrace; that is no excuse for behaving like a scrub. Besides,’ Temeraire added, ‘he is wretchedly untidy: strings coming out of his coat, and his trousers patched; even Rankin does not look ragged.’

      ‘Rankin,’ Laurence said, ‘is the third son of an earl, and can afford to be nice in his clothing; I am afraid Mr. Forthing was a foundling in the dockyards at Dover, and taken on for creeping into the coverts as a child to sleep next the dragons: he has no kin in the world.’

      ‘He might still brush his coat,’ Temeraire said, obstinately. ‘No: I should quite prefer no-one at all, to him; I am sure Arkady would be quite disgusted with me if I should allow it.’ He leaned over to look at the egg, and put out his thin forked tongue to touch the

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