LITMIR.BIZ

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because Laurence must have confided in his first lieutenant. ‘And it must present a curious appearance to the court,’ the prosecutor had said, sneering, while Ferris sat drawn and pale and wretched and did not look at Laurence, ‘that he did not raise the alarm for an hour after the accused and his beast were known to be missing, and did not at once open the letter which was left behind—’

      Chenery too had been named, and only because he had also been in London covert at the time. Berkley and Little and Sutton, were all brought in to give evidence, and if Harcourt and Jane had not been mentioned, it was only because the Admiralty did not know how to do so without embarrassing themselves more than their targets. ‘I did not know a damned thing about the business, and I am sure nor did anyone else. Anyone who knows Laurence will tell you he would not have breathed a word of it to anyone,’ Chenery had said defiantly. ‘But I do say that sending over the sick beast was a blackguardly thing for the Admiralty to have done, and if you want to hang me for saying so, you are welcome.’

      They had not hanged Chenery, thank God, for lack of evidence and for need of his dragon, but Ferris, a lieutenant with no such protection, had been broken out of the service. Every effort Laurence had made to insist that the guilt was his alone had been ignored. A fine officer had been lost to the service, his career and his life spoilt. Laurence had met his mother and his brothers. They were an old family and proud. But Ferris had been away from home from the age of seven, so they did not have that intimate knowledge, which should make them confident of his innocence, and replace the affectionate support from his fellow-officers now denied to him. To witness his misery and know himself culpable hurt Laurence worse than his own conviction had done.

      That had never been in any doubt. There had been no defence to make, and no comfort but the arid certainty that he had done as he ought. That he could have done nothing else. It offered scarce comfort, but saved him from the pain of regret. He could not regret what he had done, he could not have let ten thousand dragons, most of them wholly uninvolved in the war, be murdered for his nation's advantage. When he had said as much, and freely confessed that he had disobeyed his orders, assaulted a Marine, stolen the cure, and given aid and comfort to the enemy, there was nothing else to say. The only charge he contested, was that he had stolen Temeraire, too. ‘He is neither the King's possession nor a dumb beast. His choice was his own and it was freely made,’ Laurence had said, but he had been ignored, of course. He had scarcely been taken from the room before he was brought back in again to hear his sentence of death pronounced.

      And then it had been quietly postponed. He had been hurried under guard, from the chamber and into a stifling, black-draped carriage. After a long rattling journey ending at Sheerness, he had been put aboard the Lucinda and then transferred to Goliath. He had been confined to the brig, an oubliette meant only to keep him breathing. It was a living death, worse than the hanging he was promised in future.

      But that was not his choice to make. He had made one choice, and sacrificed all the others. His life was no longer his own, even if the court chose to leave it to him a little while longer. To flee now would be no more honourable than to have fled straight to China, or to have accepted Napoleon's solicitations. He could not go. He had no other way of believing himself loyal, he could make no other reparation. He might look at the door, but he could not open it.

      A brief glaze of rain washed the window and thinned the smoke outside. He went to stand by the glass, though he could not see anything but a grey dimness. The sun, if it had come up, stayed hidden.

      The doorknob rattled and the door opened. Laurence turned and stared at the man on the other side. His lean, travel-leathered face and oriental features were familiar but unexpected. ‘I hope I find you in good health,’ Tharkay said. ‘Will you come with me? I believe there is still a danger of fire.’

      The guards had vanished. The house was entirely deserted, but for a couple of men who had wandered in drunk off the street and were sleeping in the front hall. Laurence stepped over their legs and out into the morning. A thin pallid haze of smoke and false dawn lay over the docks, drifting out to sea. Glass, broken slate and charred wood littered the street, with other unspeakable trash. Sweepers lugubriously pushed their brooms down the middle of the lane, doing little to help.

      Tharkay led Laurence down a side alley where the dead body of a horse, stripped of saddle and bridle, blocked the way. A young kestrel with long trailing jesses was perched on its side, occasionally tearing at the flesh and uttering satisfied cries. Tharkay held out his hand and whistled, and the kestrel came back to him, to be hooded and secured upon his shoulder.

      ‘I am three weeks back from the Pamirs,’ Tharkay said. ‘I brought another dozen feral beasts for your ranks. In good time, it seems. Roland sent me to bring you in.’

      ‘But how came you here?’ Laurence said, while they picked their way onward through the unfashionable back streets. The town already looked as though it had been sacked. Windows and doors still intact, were shut tight, some boarded, giving the house-fronts an unfriendly air. ‘How did you know I was in the town—’

      ‘The town was not the difficulty. The wreckers off the coast knew which way the Goliath's boats had gone,’ Tharkay said. ‘I was here before you were, I imagine. Finding out where you had been stowed was more difficult. I foolishly went to the trouble of obtaining these, first,’ showing Laurence a folded packet of papers, ‘from the port admiral, in the assumption he would know the whereabouts of the prisoner he was assigning to me. But he left me in the hall for over two hours, and quarrelled with me for another. Only when I had his signature did he at last confess to having not the slightest knowledge where you might be.’

      They came to a clearing, a courier-covert, where little Gherni waited for them fidgeting anxiously. She hissed at Tharkay urgently. He answered her in the same tangled dragon-language, which Laurence could not understand, and then clambered up her scanty rigging to her back, pointing out the couple of hand-holds Laurence should use to get himself aboard.

      ‘We may have some difficulty on our journey,’ Tharkay said. ‘Almost all of Bonaparte's men are stationed on the coast, but his dragons are going deep inland. Fifty thousand men, I believe,’ he answered, when Laurence asked how they faced, ‘and as many as two hundred beasts, if one cares to believe the figure. The Corps has fallen back with the rest of the army, to Rainham. I imagine to await Bonaparte's pleasure, as for why they are being so courteous, you would have to ask the generals.’

      ‘I thank you for coming,’ Laurence said. Tharkay had risked a great deal, with half of Bonaparte's army between him and the coast. ‘You have taken service, then?’ he asked, looking at Tharkay's coat. He wore gold bars: a captain's rank. In the army it was not uncommon for a man to be commissioned only when he was needed, but it was a rare phenomenon in the Corps, where the type of dragon dictated rank. But with Tharkay was one of the few who could speak with the feral dragons of the Pamirs it was no surprise the Corps had wanted him. It was more of one that he had accepted a commission.

      ‘For now.’ Tharkay shrugged.

      ‘No one could accuse you of making a self-interested choice,’ Laurence said grimly, with the smell of the burning city in his nostrils.

      ‘One of its advantages,’ Tharkay said. ‘Any fool could throw in his lot with a victor.’

      Laurence did not ask why he had been sent. Fifty thousand men landed was answer enough. Temeraire must be wanted, and Laurence the only, however undesirable, means to obtain his services. It was a pragmatic and temporary choice, nothing to give him hope of forgiveness either personal or legal. Tharkay volunteered no more, Gherni was already springing aloft, and the wind blew all possible words away.

      The sky held the peculiar crispness of late autumn, blue, clear and cloudless, beautiful flying weather. They had scarcely been half an hour aloft when Gherni suddenly plunged beneath them, and trembling went to ground in a wooded clearing of pines. Laurence had seen nothing, but he and Tharkay pushed forward to the edge of the woods and peered out from the shade. Two shapes leapt from the ground, and approached. The two big grey-and-brown dragons, glided with lazy assurance, and well they might. Grand Chevaliers were the largest of the French heavyweights, and only a little smaller than Regal Coppers. Each had what

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