League of Dragons (28 page)

In one thing at least, however, they were in perfect agreement: he did not at all trust the Government. They certainly would let dragons starve, if they could, and perhaps worse. He had seen
worse
in Russia, now, and could describe it; he shuddered again at the memory of the cruel hobbles.

“I see no reason why we shouldn't have more of us in Parliament anyway,” Temeraire said. “And for that matter, why we oughtn't go into some sort of business, too. I must tell you more of this John Wampanoag fellow, that I met in Japan.”

“You needn't,” Perscitia said, “I am corresponding with him.” Temeraire blinked in surprise. “I thought from what you said he must be well-known there, so I had one of my secretaries send a letter to Boston, marked very clearly to his name, and it did find him, for he was kind enough to write back. We have discussed arranging an overland trade route from Portsmouth to China, or perhaps just to India to begin with.”

“For my part, I cannot see that we need this Parliament, or to trouble ourselves about business, either,” put in a small beast, who Temeraire realized with a start had been listening all this while to their conversation.

He had been easily overlooked: he was sitting in the corner of the clearing beneath a windbreak of pine-trees, and was himself mottled dark green with a belly in purplish brown, just barely topping the line between light-weight and courier-weight. He was of no breed Temeraire recognized, although his accent was quite distinctly Scottish, and wore no harness. Smaller ferals had always slipped into the coverts to sneak some leavings when they could, and now the practice was grown more widespread: the porridge-pots made it easy to make them welcome, and once they were there, the aviators could even trade them meat for their labor.

“But it's a deal of work, carrying heavy things from one end of the earth to another,” the green feral continued, “with not even a sheep to be sure of at the end of the day; and you may keep your Parliament. A vote never filled anyone's belly that I heard of, nor this pay we are meant to be getting, which I have never seen. I like that map of Napoleon's, if you ask me.”

“What map is this?” Perscitia demanded, as Temeraire flattened his ruff in irritation: they certainly had
not
asked him.

“Napoleon has had the splendid notion of offering dragons territory which he has no right to offer, nor any power to give,” Temeraire said, “and trying to trick them into fighting for it, all to distract his enemies: I had not supposed,” he added coolly, “that any
British
dragon would be taken in by his chicanery: as though we had not learned before now that all he wants is to take all our territory for his own, and bring his own dragons over here.”

“He hasn't any quarrel with me and mine that I know of,” the feral said. “All right, he invaded, but that was to beat that mad old king the men have over here, and I didn't see any of his beasts setting eggs while they were here, did I? Meanwhile the men in this country go about taking
our
eggs when it suits them, and hunting up all the game, and coming after us with guns if we want a sheep to eat now and then. I'd just as soon take a chance on a fellow who has done right and proper by his own dragons. Two of my wing were in France lately for his big hullabaloo, and said their leavings at breakfast are better than what we get for dinner, and their pavilions make this,” he flicked his tail dismissively at the small pavilion, “look like a wet hole as you'd put a pig in, to keep for later.”

By the end of this speech, more than one of the other dragons sleeping inside the pavilion or around the fringes of the clearing had lifted their heads to listen. The Scottish feral—his name was Ricarlee—was informed well enough to sketch out Napoleon's map in the dirt for them all to examine, and Temeraire was sorry to see the interest it produced, particularly among the feral beasts. The Yellow Reapers crowded round the side of northern England which had been allotted to them and murmured thoughtfully in a way that made Temeraire uneasy, and not only the unharnessed ones, either.

“Outrageous,” Perscitia said loudly, and, “Mercenary,” and “A return to the Dark Ages, even if it worked, which it shan't,” but she was the only one to raise a protest.

Even little Minnow, who had stopped by the covert to say hello to Temeraire, only gave a shrug, even though she had done rather well for herself since the invasion. She and Moncey, and the rest of the Winchesters from their old company, had established a private courier-route. They carried packages and urgent messages and the occasional passenger, for anyone who could afford their rates, and the leather satchel which she wore over her neck and forelegs was beautifully trimmed in gold and pearls.

“You can't blame anyone, can you?” she said, nevertheless. “It is our territory, too, or else why did we all fight, in the invasion? Why oughtn't we have the right to take a sheep or cow—along sensible lines, that don't spoil the herds, or anything else stupid.”

“But the sheep and the cows are not simply
there,
by accident,” Temeraire said, glad to have worked through this very subject with Laurence on several occasions; he had found it quite baffling, himself. “The humans have arranged their being there, by raising them and looking after them, and growing grain to feed them. Naturally they are angry if a dragon swoops down and snatches one, without making any return for all their trouble.”

“Ah! Easy enough to say, it is all their work!” Ricarlee said. “And if those herds weren't there, and those great fields of grass the humans like to plant? Why, then there would be some wild goats or pigs, or a tasty venison, free for the taking. I have seen it myself a dozen times in the North: here comes a farmer, cutting down the trees and plowing under the earth, and soon enough the game have all gone away and there is nothing to eat
but
the sheep. Just because a man is small don't mean a hundred of 'em can't steal our territory if they work at it together, and I don't see why we ought to put up with it.”

And Temeraire was sorry to see the dragons all around the clearing nodding enthusiastic agreement.

“Laurence,” Temeraire said reluctantly, when Laurence returned to the covert in the morning, “I think, I am afraid, we may be going to have some small difficulty—some awkwardness—”

“Certainly we shall,” Laurence said. “Have you heard already, then? I was coming to tell you, but I cannot be surprised that the couriers have passed you the word. I am glad you recognize the magnitude of the challenge before us. The Admiralty have already named me a dozen of our captains, and half of them the most hidebound formation-flyers of the service; how we shall use them without Napoleon bowling us over as thoroughly as he did the Prussians in the year six, I have very little notion at present.”

“
Our
captains?” Temeraire said, puzzled, wondering what on earth this had to do with the ferals of Britain threatening to go over to Napoleon en masse.

“
De jure,
at least,” Laurence said. “But judging by their choices, the Admiralty mean to assign those men they think more likely to disobey me than otherwise.”

Temeraire hesitated, still at sea, and then Granby came into the clearing with his hat, beaming, and said, “Well, Admiral Laurence, may I congratulate you?” and shook Laurence's hand.

In half-appalled wonder Temeraire said, “Laurence, they have never made
you
admiral? Not that there is anyone better deserving the rank—!” he added hastily, only that the Admiralty should have done it was almost incredible. And yet it seemed they had—a very meager, very late sort of apology after all their misdeeds and unjust punishments, and nevertheless astonishing they should have made it at all.

“It has been done very unwilling,” Laurence said. “Likely at the Tsar's behest, and in hopes of more aid coming from China. But yes, it has been done, and I have my orders. We leave England in a week. John, I have a favor to solicit: I must give a dinner for the captains, and I hope you will ask Iskierka to permit me to make use of her pavilion for the occasion.”

“A dinner?” Granby said dubiously. “Laurence, have you heard who they have—I won't say saddled you with, but I do say it; I don't know what they can be thinking.”

“They are thinking to have men at my back who will counter my heretical spirits, and who will not hesitate to disobey my orders if they suppose me to be doing anything contrary to Britain's interests,” Laurence said. “They have chosen as well as they could, for that purpose. But I have no choice; I must take them, for all that. So we must begin with the fiction of ordinary relations, and hope to make it truth in time.

“But, Temeraire, I fear I must ask you to find some excuse to exert yourself, on the occasion, and if possible give their beasts cause to respect your abilities. I am sorry to make the request: offensive to those who must witness it, as implying they require any such display to maintain discipline, and painful to you to make, as implying the respect which ought to be due you cannot be taken for granted. But I think the urgency of the situation demands it.”

“Oh, I do not mind that at all,” Temeraire said, “but Laurence,” and he opened his mouth to explain that there was an entirely different source of difficulty and trouble—to tell Laurence that Napoleon's Concord had somehow reached Britain, and the ferals thought much of it, and several of them were even trying to forward the arrangement.

But Laurence looked up at him, and Temeraire halted. There was color in Laurence's face, and though he had spoken so seriously, he was despite that smiling a little, as though some inward happiness buoyed him against all the difficulties of his new position. Laurence had said before that he did not grieve the loss of rank and fortune, of his reputation. But of course, he had been trying to save Temeraire's feelings. Temeraire could not bear to spoil this moment of vindication and triumph. And if he spoke, Laurence would at once report to the Admiralty, of course, as he would say was his duty; and undoubtedly they would find some way to blame him for it, and perhaps even take back the command, after all.

“Yes?” Laurence said.

“—ought you not have another set of golden bars for your coat?” Temeraire said faintly.

Laurence laughed—laughed, quite aloud!—and said, “I thank you for the reminder; indeed I must make shift to acquire them at once.”

“He must not learn of the Concord going around,” Temeraire said to Perscitia anxiously, when Laurence had gone with Granby to begin arrangements, for the golden bars and for the dinner. “At least, not until we have contrived some solution; only what am I to do?”

“L
AURENCE,
I
HAVE BEEN
thinking,” Temeraire said. It seemed an opportune moment: Laurence was busily engaged in figuring in a very large ledger the various expenditures required to fit out Iskierka's pavilion for the dinner. “I have been thinking, it might be suitable for
me
to host a dinner as well—for some of my old friends from the breeding grounds—veterans, and unharnessed fellows—and perhaps some ferals might stop in—”

Lacking a better idea, he had seized on Laurence's strategy as his own: a dinner, as he already knew, worked splendidly to solve any number of difficulties, and perhaps it should serve in this case, too. He did not quite know how to explain to Laurence
why
he wished to host a dinner, but as it proved, he did not need to: Laurence lifted his head instantly from his work.

“You answer the wish I had not yet made,” Laurence said. “We must try to bring on some more light-weights and middle-weights, and I would be glad to take as many of the ferals and unharnessed beasts with us to Europe as you can convince to take the King's shilling. You may offer them the usual rate of pay for harnessed beasts; their Lordships have grudgingly allowed as much—do you think some of them will come?”

“I will certainly make every effort to persuade them,” Temeraire said, feeling relieved and also uncomfortably as though he were practicing deceit—although it did not really deserve the name; after all, he was not trying to hide anything from Laurence for his
own
benefit, but only for Laurence's; that ought to have some mitigating quality, even if the English language did not seem to offer a more satisfying and accurate alternative to the word. In any case, he would do his best to persuade as many dragons to come along as ever he could: that would certainly be a splendid solution, if everyone should come along to the Continent and help fight
against
Napoleon instead.

“Will you need my assistance with the arrangements?” Laurence asked. “You would not expect over twenty dragons, I suppose?”

“Well, I do not precisely know,” Temeraire said, even more uncomfortably; just that morning, Perscitia had spoken very darkly of
hundreds of silly beasts ready to take Bonaparte aboard,
“but I thought perhaps the feeding station outside Dover would not object to our making use of their provisions for the day, and let us have the liberty of preparing them—I will be very happy to welcome any dragon who likes to come and eat, even if they do not think they will choose to come along with us.”

This station had been established by degrees over the last few years, by a reluctant Government grudgingly recognizing that feral dragons meant to frequent the place, and had better be fed on the nation's terms than allowed to feed themselves. It was not yet
officially
a breeding ground—the Ministry finding it hateful to contemplate declaring a breeding ground in any insufficiently benighted location, and the many wealthy landholders in the area maintaining a loud rear-guard protest against the encroachment—but as many dragons were choosing to make it their home, and some of them as nesting grounds for their eggs, which the Corps gladly collected, there was as a practical matter very little difference.

There was no definite border to the territory, but if there had been, Temeraire's own pavilion would have stood near the center—the pavilion Laurence had built him, ages ago it seemed, before treason and invasion and transportation, and the loss of Laurence's first fortune. “We can hold it there,” Temeraire said, thinking of the distance from Dover, and the isolation of the place; there would be few people about to report on the meeting, and perhaps Laurence would never need to know.

“Splendid,” Laurence said, and made the necessary arrangements, which was to say, he wrote Temeraire a draft on his bank.

“And perhaps you would be glad to stay here in Dover, and leave the rest to me,” Temeraire said, “as you must worry about your
own
dinner; I should not like to add to your work.”

“If you think you can manage the feeding-station master,” Laurence said.

“Oh! There will be no difficulty there; it is good old Lloyd, who used to run the breeding ground at Pen Y Fan, and who managed our supply for us during the invasion—and Perscitia has a handy group of fellows now, who will do anything for her if they are only paid for it,” Temeraire said quickly. “No, we can manage perfectly, I am sure,” and Laurence yielded. But that was surely doing him a service, and could not really be called concealment, Temeraire felt almost sure, as he hastily flew away to meet with Perscitia.

Unfortunately, his poor pavilion had never been very grand, and was lately much neglected. It had been used as a shelter for the sick dragons during the plague, and since then as a resting-place by any dragon who happened to like being an easy hour's flight from the coverts of London and Dover, at least for a night—which was a great many dragons: couriers, ferals sneaking around to get scraps off the Corps, unharnessed beasts who liked to get work in the quarries, or in the ports, or doing portage. None of them had taken the trouble to keep it at all nice. The corners of the chamber really could not bear too-close examination, and when Temeraire put his head in and sniffed too deeply, he jerked his head back out again with distaste.

“Well,” Perscitia said doubtfully. “Perhaps we might find another…?”

There were some others near-by, although none as large. After the invasion, some of the unharnessed dragons had used their share of the proceeds from the golden eagles they had captured to build themselves pavilions—more or less; three buildings and half a dozen unfinished structures clustered in a loose line. But of these, only Perscitia's own was not equally a mess—but that was not saying much, as hers was very small, and made of plain red brick and grey shingles, lacking entirely in elegance or charm.

“It is easier to keep neat, if it is not so big that men cannot clean it out without an enormous amount of trouble or expense,” she said with a defensive note, as Temeraire eyed it from outside, “and also, I do not find the size at all a disadvantage: if it were any larger, and some heavy-weight took it into his head to say she was claiming it from me, I should have no recourse—unless I liked to try and take her to court, and just you watch how much remedy the law would give a dragon.”

That was all very practical, Temeraire supposed, but he did not see why the pavilion needed to be a shut-up box, with only the most meager openings for air and light, and not a hint of decoration. “It is very nice,” he said tactfully, “and so long as it suits you, I am sure no one else could find anything wanting,” although she might at least have dug a garden, and put some interesting rocks along the side.

But she was quite right about the expense of keeping a larger pavilion clean: Perscitia's secretary said she could not arrange to have his cleaned properly for under fifty pounds—fifty pounds, when Perscitia's men had already to be paid fifteen pounds for their cooking services! A perfectly outrageous sum, and Temeraire could not bring himself to spend it only on
cleaning;
only he did not see how else it was to be done. He tried bringing water in a large barrel, and simply sloshing it over the floor, but he knew very well what Laurence would have said of this sort of house-keeping, and it did not have much effect. His attempt at using a small tree to brush out the corners met with little better success, except he did manage to knock away a piece of the wall.

“We could ask Iskierka to burn it out,” Perscitia suggested, but this was impossible: Granby and Iskierka had already gone to Edinburgh to take charge of the second half of Laurence's force, which should leave from there instead of Dover due to some byzantine mystery of supply.

“I will ask Ning,” he decided.

That, at least, could be managed, as she was still in London. The Admiralty had sent a courier to escort her to the training grounds at Kinloch Laggan, while they awaited an answer from China, but she had very politely said, “How excellent military training must be! I will certainly consider your kind invitation, when my time is not so occupied as at present. In the meantime, you may wish to consider sending some workmen to enlarge this pavilion, and perhaps arrange a higher quality of food.”

Temeraire waited until cover of night to fly back to the London covert—only out of consideration, to avoid distressing the populace and the horses, and not of course to conceal his presence—and roused Ning out of the pavilion. She listened to his request with a tilted head. “It seems peculiar to me that you should be so urgent to clean this pavilion when you are imminently departing for the Continent,” she said interrogatively.

“I mean to hold a dinner there,” Temeraire said, a little warily. “Laurence wishes me to persuade some of the unharnessed dragons to come and join us,” which was perfectly true.

“Will this dinner entail a great deal of difficulty and expense?”

“Yes,” Temeraire said, with a sigh.

“Do you expect many of these dragons to join you?” she inquired.

“It is just as well to make an attempt,” Temeraire said, and surely at least a few of his old friends would come, although he did not have the
highest
hopes—it was not like the invasion, when everyone had been worried about the French dragons taking their territory, and there was no denying that the Government had behaved in a scurrilous fashion since then; few dragons would believe in pay tomorrow when their accounts were a year in arrears as it was.

“Hm,” Ning said thoughtfully, but she acquiesced without further argument. Temeraire carried her on his back to the pavilion, and once there, she spat out a single small ball of her white flame directly into a corner—very neatly, Temeraire had to admit—and the refuse scorched up instantly.

“That is a very interesting phenomenon,” Perscitia said, lowering her head to examine Ning closely, even trying to peer down Ning's throat. Ning drew her head back and gave her a flat stare, which Perscitia quite ignored. “How is it accomplished?”

“Pray let us step outside until the air has cleared,” Ning said in a stiff and dignified fashion, turning away.

Temeraire flung water onto the overheated stones and fanned away the hissing cloud of steam that resulted. Fortunately, the stink went away with the smoke. The corner was a little blackened perhaps, but he was sure that no-one would notice that much, particularly at night.

Ning was quite willing to repeat the operation, too. “That
is
very handy of you,” Temeraire said approvingly, when all the pavilions were clean, if somewhat smoky. “Now I had better fly you back,” but Ning demurred.

“I will stay for the dinner,” she announced, to his dismay.

“What have you to do at dinner?” he demanded.

“I am hungry,” she said, which was no explanation at all; the dinner was not until tomorrow, and meanwhile they would certainly feed her in London today, if she went back, but when Temeraire tried to point this out, she only yawned delicately, and said, “I beg your pardon, I am so very fatigued! I will rest now,” and then closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

“There is nothing wrong with that,” Perscitia said. “She may as well stay: anyone who has heard of her will be impressed to have her on our side,” except Temeraire was not certain Ning
was
on their side, or of anything she would do for that matter: it was an uncomfortable feeling, being round her, when she might at any moment burst out into some new and alarming start.

Perscitia's men—who it turned out were mostly women; Temeraire had mistaken them, because they all wore pantaloons beneath their skirts, and hiked these up to their waists while they worked—had already been engaged all that day in putting beef and mutton on roasting spits. There would be nothing really elegant about the meal, Temeraire mournfully recognized, but Perscitia had firmly rejected his every suggestion for more elaborate presentations. “We may have near a hundred dragons to feed,” she said, “and many of them have never even had anything cooked: that must be enough novelty. Otherwise we will have half of them turn their noses up at it, and not enough for the other half, who will complain we are slighting them. No, a simple roasting must do, and we will make mash with the drippings, for anyone who is still hungry after they get their share of the meat.”