Chapter Text
It was quite unfair, in Temeraire’s opinion. Quite unthinkably unfair. If he had been his proper shape and size, he never would have allowed for this to happen, never!
It had been a rainy day, quite cold and miserable, and Temeraire had hardly been the only dragon who sought shelter from the rain in human form. Since they might as well have been keeping themselves busy, the captains had fetched the maps, and Laurence was pointing out countries with his finger.
It was quite surprising, when laid out. Britain was ever so small, and the distance towards France barely seemed anything at all. China, by comparison, was very large indeed.
Temeraire had asked Laurence to point out China in particular. It was a place where his egg had been laid, of course, which begat natural curiosity. But recently there had been rumors of a visiting delegation from China, and that had only stirred his interest afresh.
He very much regretted that interest now.
Because he had been sitting there, looking at the maps and squinting at the tidy rows of characters that were names, and thinking how much more useful he would have found it if only he could read them, when a handful of officers he did not recognise came in and asked to speak with Laurence.
Temeraire had barely looked up. He’d been preoccupied with the maps, and the writing. There were patterns in the shapes of the letters, and he thought perhaps he could begin to match them to specific sounds, and once he accomplished that, then he could—
“What do you mean, in dispute?” Laurence’s voice, rising, quite interrupted Temeraire’s thoughts.
“It is nothing to worry about,” the man who appeared in charge of the visitors was saying. “But you are needed in London to sort it out, hopefully in short order.”
“Hopefully, yes,” Laurence said, reproachful.
“What is this?” Temeraire asked, coming to his side. “We are needed in London? Is there to be a battle?”
“Who is this?” the admiral said, looking down at him.
Laurence introduced them—the admiral’s name was Lord Barham, and he seemed quite nonplussed when Temeraire offered his hand, and did not take it. “Ah, you’re the beast we’re looking for, then. No, no battle, but your assistance is required nonetheless.”
This quite intrigued Temeraire, even as the lack of fighting prospects disappointed him. Laurence’s expression, however, was pinched. “It seems the Chinese delegation wishes to see you,” he explained. “Apparently they take some offense that you never arrived in France, as they had intended.”
“Well that is quite foolish, seeing as you won my egg quite justly in battle. If they had cared so much where I was going, they should have ensured the ship was better equipped.”
“Quite.”
“Be that as it may… Politics, as you understand,” said the admiral, although Temeraire did not.
Apparently time was of the essence, and they were expected to leave immediately; never mind that Temeraire would still be human shaped for some hours, nor that neither of them had had supper yet. Laurence barely had time to source a spare flying coat for Temeraire before they were led outside to the Winchester Celeri to be carried to London.
While Temeraire had started the trip in quite high spirits, they fell steadily as Celeri flew. Without having to choose his own course or mind the beat of his own wings, there was very little to occupy a dragon’s mind, and Temeraire’s instead turned towards worry. Why should these visiting men from China care so much about him? Why was it so urgent that they were needed in London so quickly? Did they intend to take him to France?
If so, they had another thing coming. Temeraire would not go.
They flew over London, a view Temeraire might have appreciated better had his heart not been so heavy nor the sky not so grey.
The covert was a fine stone building, nowhere near as large as the one in Dover, but handsome and stately nonetheless. Celeri landed gracefully. Laurence slid easily to the floor off of her back, and then helped Temeraire down after him, when he found himself struggling a little with the height.
“We made good time, gentleman, good time,” the admiral said. “Captain, this way, if you please.” When Temeraire moved to follow, he said, “Oh, no, you may stay here, if you please.”
“I do not please,” Temeraire said. It was still raining in the courtyard and he wanted to hear more about the delegation from China.
The admiral said, “You need to stay out here. You will be changing back soon.”
That was not true at all—Temeraire had taken more blood from Laurence mid-trip to ensure he had not transformed while aboard Celeri’s back, which would have been quite troublesome indeed—and said as much. But the admiral was quite firm, and ordered Temeraire to remain in the courtyard.
Quite unthinkingly, Temeraire had reached out and grabbed Laurence’s hand.
“Temeraire,” Laurence had said, looking back towards him, and squeezing.
“Laurence,” Temeraire had said, quite plaintive, clutching tighter. “I want to come.”
“I know, my dear,” Laurence had said. “But orders are orders, and we must follow them. Let me go to my meeting; I doubt they will keep me away long. A day, perhaps.” He had pulled away his hand.
Something in the admiral’s expression suggested the opposite, and Temeraire was seized with the urge to fly away. But of course he could not, grounded in his weak and flightless human shape, and so he had no choice but to abide by the order.
But Laurence had been wrong. He had been gone for a day, and then two, and then three, coming on now to two weeks. They would not tell him how long it would be until Temeraire would see Laurence again, nor where even in the city he was, and so, even though Temeraire now had his wings back, they were wholly useless.
Yes. If Temeraire were his proper size, he never would have allowed this to happen.
The realization they meant to part Laurence from Temeraire had been a blow—a terrible blow. He had hoped—no, he had been certain—that all such designs had been put aside after the failure of Lieutenant Dayes. He had come in only the few months of Temeraire’s training to understand the tie between captain and dragon as unbreakable, near sanctified. A dragon was not a ship, which might be taken. A dragon could not be lost in any way save the most final—and that, perhaps shared.
He had dreamed, just three nights prior, of the French captain at Dover who had forfeited all chances of survival to spare his beast the slow death Lily’s acid promised. He had woken only to the phantom sensation of Temeraire’s fingers slipping out of his hand.
Before the last sweetness of Laurence’s blood had faded from Temeraire’s mouth, he had undressed. He had taken off the green aviator’s flying cloak he had been lent, removed his blouse and his trousers and his undergarments, and found himself standing quite naked in the rain.
He had timed it as close as he dared, not wanting to risk transforming and tearing up the garments, not after they had been so generously gifted to him. But he had been acutely aware of his nakedness in the courtyard, aware of it as he never was as a proper dragon.
It had been cold. Cold and wet and miserable. No wonder humans went around dressed all the time; they had no tolerance for cool weather in the least.
He had been sensible of the dreary rain still falling, and had not wanted to risk the clothing becoming damp and ruined. Temeraire had considered finding someone to take the clothing and bring them back to Laurence, but all the doorways out of the courtyard had been locked, and he did not want to bring too much attention upon himself by knocking, not when he was so unclothed. So instead he had looked and found a chest used to store miscellaneous tools and additional harnesses, and had only just closed the lid when the transformation had come upon him.
No one had come to fetch the clothes or even asked about them. This had quite affronted him at the time, but now Temeraire was glad for it.
A plan was beginning to form.
On the fourth day of their parting Laurence had mustered all his will and resolved to visit an acquaintance from the navy, known to be in his London home while his ship underwent repairs. But he had halted a dozen feet from that man’s door, sick with the knowledge that while he might offer genuine sympathy to the plight of finding oneself unexpectedly ashore, he would receive none of the same for his own predicament.
Laurence turned away and walked without marking his heading for some time, until he abruptly found his progress halted by the river. He watched the boats traveling up and down, noting which were working-vessels and which few conveyed passengers for pleasure. He felt strangely removed from both, and wished very dearly to feel the harsh wind in his face which aboard ship must mean a gale, but on dragonback evidenced only strong, healthy flight.
The courtyard was open to the sky, and so Temeraire could have flown away at any time.
But he could not, of course. He had no idea where he would go. And even if he tried to leave, they would send dragons after him. The beasts which flew in and out of the London covert—courier beasts, mostly, but a few middle- and heavy-weights, including the longwing Excidium—seemed like friendly fellows and had been quite happy to converse with Temeraire and sate his boredom, but Temeraire was under no illusions that they would follow their captains’ orders to retrieve him if necessary.
So as ludicrous, as wild as the idea was, perhaps he should walk out instead.
He would not be recognised in human form as he would be as a dragon, gorgeous and eye-taking with his brilliant black scales and magnificent ruff. He would merely be another human, dressed like a human, with an aviator’s green coat.
He could walk out of the courtyard—they had not bothered locking the doors now that he could not use them, surely—and then out of the covert entirely. He would be on the streets. And then he could merely walk up to people, shop-keepers perhaps, and inquire as to where Captain William Laurence was staying.
He pictured the expression on Laurence’s face, when he opened his hotel door to find Temeraire standing there. “How clever of you!” Laurence would say. “I never once doubted you would find me.” And then the pair of them would fly off, back to Dover or perhaps Laurence’s family estate, and if the Chinese delegation or the Admiralty wished to speak with them, they would only be permitted to speak to the pair of them together.
Yes, yes. It was a magnificent plan. He could go early in the morning, slipping out while the covert was quiet. All he would need was—
—some blood.
Laurence was not here. Laurence not being here was the entire issue at hand. And Laurence was the one who fed him blood.
He was not, of course, the only source of blood, merely the best. Any other human, presumably, would suit well enough. But Temeraire was in rather short supply of humans. He had not been allowed to bring any of his crew with him, and so far he only had the occasional visit from a passing captain, and Jervis, who, limping on a peg-leg, brought him some livestock every morning and evening.
Temeraire did not particularly fancy the idea of drinking Jervis’s blood. He was rather dull and that dullness would no doubt be reflected in the flavour.
Only, unless Jervis were to get injured somehow and conveniently bleed where Temeraire could lap at it, even that would be out of reach. He could ask Jervis to let, but of course he would want to know why Temeraire wanted the blood, and refuse if Temeraire could not give a satisfactory answer. So there was still no way to get at it, unless—
—unless Temeraire were to spill the blood himself.
Temeraire imagined lunging at Jervis. He imagined tearing at his flesh. Imagined the blood rushing into his mouth, fresh and hot.
Jervis would be so small, so defenseless. Even if Temeraire were careful, ever so careful, not to seriously wound, even a single one of his claws was as large as a person’s head and could ever so easily pierce the man straight through.
Jervis may be dull. That did not mean that Temeraire wished to kill him.
The wonderful idea dissolved in moments. Temeraire lay on the stone ground, hid his face beneath his tail, and did not sleep.
Yongxing’s countenance was as ice, but on the inside, his rage was a blazing flame.
He had braced and prepared himself for the worst. Yet, after nearly a fortnight of appeals, to finally be accepted into an audience of Lung Tien Xiang, and to be met with this—
A graceless building of plain, unornamented grey stone. Despite being the only building in this settlement which passed for a city built at a scale appropriate for dragons, the courtyard hardly had the space with which Lung Tien Xiang could stretch his wings. There was no pavilion for him to shelter under, not even a canopy to keep the elements at bay. The ground was slick with mud, the muck caking his talons, his belly, his tail.
Nonetheless, the Celestial dragon’s noble bearing was not diminished. As their delegation entered, all others prostrating themselves before him, Yongxing himself bowing as deep as propriety allowed, Lung Tien Xiang reared up to survey them. His voice rang out, beautiful and musical, even in the Barbarian tongue of the Englishmen.
“Lung Tien Xiang,” Yongxing said. “Most noble Celestial, we are most thankful for your gracious reception of us into your company.”
“Well, I hardly had any choice in the matter,” Lung Tien Xiang answered, in clear Mandarin. He had thankfully retained memory of his mother tongue from the shell, then, though evidently his manners had not survived the early separation.
Yongxing’s lips did not thin. “Our greatest apologies for intruding,” he said, head still bowed. “I am Prince Yongxing, son of Emperor Renzong of Qing, companion to your most esteemed cousin Lung Tien Lien. I have traveled a vast distance across the ocean to speak with you, as countrymen and kinsmen both.”
“My cousin?” Lung Tien Xiang’s frills expanded in evident curiosity. Could he even recall anything of his noble lineage? Evidently these barbarians would not have educated him. “On that count, I suppose, I am quite happy to meet you.” His tail lashed. “Or I would have been, if you had not made such a muddle of it.”
The response required a careful balancing act. Yongxing wished to express his deepest regrets for the genuinely poor ceremony of the reception, while at the same time placing the blame where it was due—on the British government’s poor decorum and obstinance—while also not being so overt in the allocation of blame as to cause offense.
Not the British themselves; all but a handful of diplomats could even speak a few words of Mandarin. His concern was for Lung Tien Xiang himself. Young dragons felt natural pride and loyalty for their nations, and for all this backwards nation of slavers and rug peddlers had not earned it, this was all that Lung Tien Xiang had known since hatching.
“Yes, evidently, the Admiralty has made something of a bugger of it,” Lung Tien Xiang said, conceding the point so easily that it raised Yongxing’s hopes of a swift resolution to this great miscarriage of duty. “I do not see why I had to wait so many days, in this dull courtyard, alone.”
“Indeed. You deserve a far finer quarters, as a child of heaven,” Yongxing agreed. “You can be most assured that you will receive it when you are restored to your rightful home in China.”
“In China?” He bent his head in low, fixing Yongxing with a penetrating blue gaze. “I have heard nothing about going to China.”
Truly the British bureaucrats had not told Lung Tien Xiang anything. That could be to Yongxing’s advantage, however; it would allow him to control this narrative. “My apologies for any such miscommunication, gracious one. It was never the intent of our Emperor, in his wisdom, for you to be sent to the British Isles. The ship which carried your egg had been on course for the nation of France, where you were to be received as the companion to Emperor Bonaparte.”
“Bonaparte!” Lung Tien Xiang bared his fangs, expression ferocious enough to make a less composed man wince. “I have no interest in serving with Napoleon, not when he is a warmonger, invading others’ territory for no good reason.’
Privately Yongxing thought Bonapate had many quite strong reasons for his expansionist campaigns throughout Europe. He did not say as much; the squabbling of the minor barbarian kingdoms of this continent were none of China’s concern. But the mention of France had elicited the response Yongxing had hoped for. “Of course, the poor stewardship of France has shown their nation is not fit for your companionship.”
“I should say so!” Lung Tien Xiang’s tail lashed angrily. “Napoleon as my captain! I would never.”
Inwardly, Prince Yongxing smiled. “Such prudence is wise; I admire your discretion, especially in such a youth.” The Celestial preened. “Of course, in China, you will have your choice of companion, and be able to select someone suitable for your grace and intellect.”
Lung Tien Xiang’s expression turned dubious. “Is a companion like a captain?”
Nothing like it at all. “A captain is a commander, a slaver,” Yonxing said. “A companion would be equal, a foundation of mutual partnership and devoted allyship.”
“Ahhh.” A great rumble of understanding resonated through the stones, up into the crowd’s bones. “In that case, I already have a companion, and you need not worry. I have no desire to select another one.’
Ah. So the worst had come to bear, after all. This would require delicacy.
To Laurence the sweltering office was all the more horrible for the way it mirrored his temper; he seethed with an unaccustomed frustration, curiously removed from all natural sympathy with his own countrymen and superior officers at the recalcitrance of Prince Yongxing’s party. Not only had he been kept apart from Temeraire for two weeks, but when he had applied to Barham hours before for permission to include Temeraire in his human form in this meeting, which was in any case more than half about his preferences, the response had been a sort of scoffing disdain and a lip curled in disgust.
“If you think I will allow that damned witchery before a foreign agent you are a greater fool than Powys. No, I know you are asking so you can try to secure him against reason and duty, or,—” he added, working himself into a rage. “Even sneak away once you had him. I won’t have it.”
That insult Laurence swallowed only for the knowledge that he, too, could easily be ousted from the day’s meeting, and lose the chance to plead his case.
But it seemed there had never been a chance at all. Instead he was ordered—outright ordered—to abandon Temeraire, an insult he could no longer force himself to abide.
“I will be hanged first.”
At first Temeraire appreciated the visits from the Chinese delegation as interesting intrusions into the monotony of isolation, but he soon realized he would prefer boredom to this.
Yongxing and the rest of his party would come. They would act very polite and friendly but it would only be because they wanted him to go with them. They would say the British government were very unfair and very unkind because they wished to order him around and tell him what to do, which would not even have been wholly incorrect, though Temeraire would have been reluctant to admit as much, but certainly did not wish to when Prince Yongxing, it seemed, wanted to do the exact same thing. And when he pointed this out to Yongxing, the man said that it was not the same at all, because he only wanted to bring Temeraire home to China, except of course China was not Temeraire’s home, Britain was. And then Yongxing would say that he only thought that because the British had kidnapped him in the shell, which was not true at all, as Laurence had won him in a fair battle against an enemy ship, which Temeraire thought was very fetching indeed.
It was usually at this juncture at the conversation where they would try to convince him that he should take a different companion, someone of finer than Laurence, or of a better education, or who did not preoccupy himself with such a lowly occupation as a soldier.
Temeraire disdained all of these things, and made it quite obvious. So today the Chinese delegation and Yongxing and Barham tried a different tact:
“He has taken another dragon,” Barham said. “He knew how to do his duty, and so obliged.”
But Temeraire had nearly been tricked this way before, by Dayes. “What is this dragon’s name?” he demanded. “What breed?”
“Well,” Barham floundered, “A—a reaper, I believe—”
“You do not know! And you do not know because you are lying.”
“There is no lie,” Yongxing interjected. “Your so-called captain shows not a fraction of the loyalty you show him, and is evidently not deserving of your—”
Temeraire roared.
It was not a conscious thing, not a deliberate one, like it had been at Dover. He had simply known he could not bear to listen to them any longer.
The force of it was prodigious, and Temeraire revelled in the feeling of it, the sheer weight and rush of it, the way walls crumbled and trees fell away under his mighty roar. He had felt so pathetic, so useless, for these past weeks, and now he had proven to himself and to the world that he was anything but.
And he was rewarded almost instantly, as he had scarcely even begun to reprimand Barham for his lies, when the most beautiful sound in the world came: “Temeraire! Temeraire, I am well, I am here!”
Within two great bounds Temeraire was at Laurence’s side, curled around him, shielding him from all those who would take him away. His small face was warm against Temeraire’s nose. “Laurence,” he murmured. “Laurence, do not leave me again.”
But it was not a promise Laurence could keep.
So he flew away. Up, up, away, with Laurence safe in his claws, where no one could take him and arrest him and hang him.
In spite of all of this, he knew it was not polite to snatch, and apologized to Laurence. Laurence did not mind, but nonetheless encouraged them to return. But there was no sense in that, none at all. They would only take Laurence away again, and leave him with the tedious Chinese prince, and there was a battle to be fought!
So it was Temeraire who insisted they fight. It was Temeraire who brought Laurence into battle unprepared and armed only with a dress sword. It was Temeraire who brought them within boarding distance of the Flamme-de-Gloire.
It was Temeraire’s fault that Laurence was injured so.
Laurence had taken not just a single injury, but two, a blow to a head and a viciously crushed leg. So Laurence was in no state to run or to fight when Barham came after them with soldiers to arrest him. And even though he was not arrested, not immediately, he was taken away on a stretcher. And it all happened so quickly that Temeraire did not have the chance to take any blood and follow after him.
He could not sleep all night, nor eat, even though they implored him with a very handsome cow. How could he, when he did not know if Laurence was even still alive and breathing?
But in the early hours of the morning Emily came. She brought a note from Laurence—an awful note, which made very little sense, saying that he was leaving. But Emily—sweet, smart Emily— had also brought a vial of Laurence’s blood, and so together they set off to find him before he could go anywhere.
But he had not left, or been arrested, or hung. He was asleep in bed. Temeraire took a seat beside him, and he did not even stir as Temeraire took Laurence’s hand and held it until the transformation ran out.
When he finally woke for good the afternoon after the battle, Laurence had imposed on Jane Roland so much as to require her support achieving the courtyard. She had held nearly all his weight the entire way, but even so he was shaking with pain and fatigue by the time he reached Temeraire, who had demanded his blood on sight.
Laurence had an odd sense of deja vu—of Temeraire having been present and transformed, perhaps while he slept—but he put it aside for the moment in the face of the dragon’s worry. He could not help but appreciate the easing of the pain, not quite as effective as Laudanum but much more immediate, as well as the plain comfort of resting his head in Temeraire’s lap as the dragon held him tightly and glared at anyone who came too near. The glare lost much of its true effect in being confined to a boyish human face, but it was still enough of a force that nobody tried to talk to them, despite the truly odd picture they must have made, sitting in the courtyard so. Laurence was uncomfortably aware how improper it must look, but even so he was much too tired to force himself to move away.
It was this, however, which brought to mind their upcoming voyage, and Laurence spoke at length on what they could expect from the trip.
“Well it sounds very long and very cramped.” Temeraire said when Laurence finished explaining the few places they would likely put into port before Canton. “But at least I can fly from time to time, or become human if I need to stretch out.”
Laurence, alarmed even through his pleasant haze, was forced to intervene in that line of thought. “No—no, you must know you cannot.”
Temeraire jolted back. “I cannot fly?”
“You cannot become human, except if it is a case of greatest extremity.”
“But whyever should I not?” Temeraire asked, confused. “It caused no damage to the Reliant.”
“My dear, it is illegal for those outside the corps to know of your ability to transform.”
Temeraire frowned. “But why?”
“It is—you must understand, if it were known, the public would panic.”
“Why?” Temeraire repeated. “I understand why people are scared of me when I am so much larger than them, even though it is very silly.” From the tone of his voice, he still did not quite understand that, but could at least follow the logic. “But people are never scared of me when I am human. Would they not prefer to know, so they can see us when we are their size?”
Laurence paused, attempting to marshall his thoughts. That there would be widespread panic if the public knew dragons could walk among them in disguise was self-evident, but he found the reasoning near-impossible to articulate. “It is a matter of—of knowledge. Imagine if we did not have uniforms to distinguish soldiers from civilians, or if women and men wore the same clothes. It would no longer be possible to tell who one was talking to.”
“But you can wear civilian clothes, I have seen you do it.” Temeraire pointed out, which Laurence could not truly consider unreasonable. “And I do not understand why it is so important to always know when someone is a woman, anyway; you are all equally small.”
This was a somewhat ridiculous comment, coming from Temeraire’s human mouth. Even now that he was leaving boyhood and beginning to take on the ageless look common to the human forms of all but the oldest and youngest dragons he still stood some six inches shorter than Laurence.
But he had allowed himself to become distracted. “It is not that they must always know every detail, it is that if they knew, they would worry that anyone they spoke to could be secretly a dragon, and be afraid.”
Temeraire opened his mouth to no doubt argue that point, as well, but Laurence was saved by Granby coming over. “There you are. Lenton looked for you in your room.”
“I’ll attend him at once,” Laurence said, attempting to stand, and was arrested no less by the pain in his leg than by Temeraire’s fingers clutching at his coat.
“You will not go away without me again!” he said. “They will only lock the doors and hide you from me.”
“Temeraire—” Laurence began, but Granby had already spoken.
“Well it’s only Lenton, but I don’t see why you can’t go with him.”
Laurence stared, imagining a host of reasons why he could not bring Temeraire to a meeting with the admiral, but the tightening of Temeraire’s grip decided him. “Very well. Lieutenant, if you could give me a hand?”
Laurence was sorry, ultimately, to lose the trance’s occasional relief when they were installed on the Allegiance. While he had endured injuries of equal severity to his now half-healed leg without such medicine before, something about knowing that there was (at least theoretically) another option made forgoing it frustrating. Worse, he was compelled to hide the pain and frustration both from Temeraire, so far as he was capable. The dragon had only with great difficulty been reconciled to hiding his abilities, and Laurence held no illusion the acquiescence would last under even as little inducement as seeing he was in pain.
Granby was only intermittently aware for a long while after the shot. He had not felt it hit, precisely, except that he was one moment fighting boarders on a deck far more stable than any dragon’s back and the next the world had gone dark and soundless except the beat of his own heart, and the same deck was sticky beneath his face.
He did not know if the fighting had ended shortly after or if one of the others had managed to get him off the deck; the next thing he knew was the ship’s surgeon’s face, and then pain, and then laudanum, and then nothing.
When next he was awake it was with the disorientation of not knowing how long he slept. It might have been an hour or a hundred years. But Roland and Dyer were beside him, watching, and when he opened his eyes the former said, “Get the captain.”
He was aware of minutes passing and not much else until between one blink and the next it was Laurence and two of the ground-crew leaning over him instead of Roland, and Laurence was having a quiet argument with the ship’s surgeon. Granby tried to ask what had happened and only succeeded in groaning, and then crying out sharply as even that small shift in his breathing sent the omnipresent pain spiking across his chest and up his neck.
He woke again, without having realized he was asleep, to find himself being brought out on the deck, Laurence’s voice calling orders somewhere above his head. It was a bizarre notion, queerly reversed; had the captain been injured, Granby might have ordered him brought before Temeraire as soon as he could be safely moved, but he could not think of a reason for Laurence to have him brought up.
But evidently the reasons were much the same; Temeraire leaned over him and said, “Oh, you are hurt,” with real distress.
Granby was a great deal more alert now, with the sun on his face and the sea breeze carrying him clear air. “I’ll live, I expect,” he rasped, less certain of it than he meant to sound. The muscles in his chest had seized again, and it was impossible to continue without paying a worse price.
Temeraire flexed his claws, clearly restraining himself from tearing up the deck. Granby realized with a start that he, too, was bandaged, sailcloth having been carefully tied about his chest.
Before he could ask, Temeraire had leaned forward and flicked his tongue out, mere inches from the bandages on Granby’s own chest. “You will not get better if you are hurting so; let me take some of your blood.” His tone was insistent, and entirely ignorant of how Granby jolted in disbelief, spikes of pain like talons raking across the whole of his body.
Laurence’s startled protest was expected, but its content was not. “My dear, you are hurt yourself—and the sailors could not help but see.”
“You said—in extremity, which this certainly ought to be, and besides with everyone else here they can hardly notice if I am missing.”
Laurence frowned, but did not forbid it as quickly as Granby expected; he did not say anything at all, in fact, until Keynes added. “It might be good for him. It’s the flying-muscles he damaged. He’d do well to keep the weight of his wings from pulling on them for a while.”
To Granby’s amazement. Laurence offered no more protest. He said only, “Pray, let us hide it as much as we can.”
His uneven footsteps were audible long after he left Granby’s sight, and his brief conversation with Berkley, but Granby could no more attend to the details than he could fly. The amazement had not gone out of him. As a mid on Flutiare he had seen the first Lieutenant’s blood taken; the surgeon had been about to take the man’s leg off at the knee, and there had been no laudenum remaining in the supplies. And he at been Flutiare’s first six years, and uncommon close with the captain besides. Granby did not think he had ever heard tell of a dragon asking to ease a lieutenant’s pain, leastaways not after less than a year.
Granby had known Temeraire to be odd in his gregariousness; he had nearly dropped a rifle on his foot the first time the dragon had quite earnestly thanked him for fixing a twisted harness-buckle, not two days into his trial rotation. It was not as if Laurence had not been there to speak with—in fact, Temeraire had turned from his conversation with his captain to do so. At the time, it had only fueled Granby’s resentment at a navy man stumbling upon such a fine dragon, so obviously personable and deserving of every consideration.
The resentment had faded; the sense of something extraordinary had not. But even so, he could not have expected this.
“Maximus will try to shield you from view, my dear,” Laurence said, returning slowly and favoring his leg. “But pray, make it as brief as you can. The formation will be leaving before dinner.” Belatedly, he stopped and looked at Granby. “If you have no objection, John?”
“No,” Granby managed. “No, sir, no objection.”
Keynes helped remove the bandages, judging the ship’s surgeon’s work with a critical eye. “‘Ware his stitches,” he told Temeraire. “It’ll be no good if they tear.”
Temeraire acknowledged this with only a twitch, and Granby had the sudden sense of being his sole focus. As the great head came down a heavy stillness came over him, and he felt his breath slowing and the tension going out of his limbs. He was quite sure he couldn’t have moved even if he had wished.
The wound had for the most part ceased to bleed, but the bandages being peeled away had caused a some to well up near the center, and this Temeraire carefully pressed his tongue to—not lapping as John had seen him do when Laurence let for him, just lifting the droplets away from the stitches without disturbing the wound.
Temeraire drew back, his throat working, though there could not have been anything to swallow in such a small amount. His form went smoky and indistinct, and even as Laurence stepped forward with clothing and human-sized bandages the paralysis in John’s limbs lifted suddenly and near-completely. His fingers clutched weakly at the deck beneath him to stop himself floating away.
John took a deep, shuddering breath. The ever-present pain had been like a courier sitting on his chest, and only with it flying and gone did he realize how little air he had. It wasn’t perfect—the pain hovered nearby, and still shot across his chest when he gasped more air in, but he’d take it over the wait and risk of laudanum any day.
Laurence was coming back over, and when John tilted his head a little—carefully, carefully—he could see Temeraire slowly buttoning his horrible yellow coat over a bare chest wrapped in bandages. It was really quite fortunate that aviator uniforms were green, John thought. The navy and army’s colors were long set by the time anyone thought to standardize the corps, and with red and blue gone they could have all just as easily ended up in yellow. “Alright there, John?” Laurence asked. His face blurred as he leaned close and Granby struggled to re-focus his eyes on his captain. Even Laurence would look bad in yellow. The green suited him, and John liked to imagine the navy’s blues brought out his eyes, but yellow just wouldn’t do.
“Lord, that hits like a cart,” John managed, realizing he had been asked a question, possibly quite some time ago, going by Laurence’s expression.
Laurence frowned and looked over at Temeraire. “I’ve never been affected to that extent.”
“Well of course not,” Temeraire said, matter-of-fact. He was holding his arms very carefully, but he still sounded cheerful even around the way he was wincing. “You have not been hurt so. I thought, if it was stronger, more of the pain would go away.” He too blinked down at John. He had Laurence’s eyes. “Did it work?”
“Aye.” There was another thing he ought to say. “—thank you.”
That won him a smile.
“We’d best get you back below,” Laurence said. “Let you sleep while you can.”
“Mmmmm,” John agreed. Now that sleep was mentioned he thought there could be nothing better.
His awareness of the trip down was no better than it had been on the way up, but at least now it was because he was letting his eyelids slide shut whenever they wished. The ship’s surgeon turned near red with rage when he was brought in and the poor ground crewmen had to endure a sharp admonishment about giving his patients too much laudanum, but Granby was already dozing.
He woke once more some time later; his head was still light, but it felt less like it might float off his shoulders. The sliver of clarity at the price of the pain hovering somewhat closer, and he knew the balance would continue to tip in favor of that angry, heavy courier just waiting to flatten him again.
He was wholly focused on keeping his breathing deep and even for several minutes, so Laurence’s voice took him entirely by surprise. “The formation has departed on the William of Orange.”
When Granby focused on him in the dim light, his face was troubled, turning his normally rather pleasing features forbidding. “Yes, sir?” he ventured. He was not on-duty and likely wouldn’t be for some time. He hadn’t the foggiest why the captain would sit by his bedside to tell him that.
Laurence glanced around at the other injured men and then said, stiffly. “I regret that they were not here longer to—ease some of your burden.”
Granby stared at him. “Sir,” he scarcely knew what to say. “I am damned grateful for what Tem—what they did for me already.” He stifled the rest of what he wanted to say for the knowledge of other ears around them. “It was an uncommon kindness.”
Laurence shook his head, but rejecting what, John did not know. He reached somewhere out of John’s line of sight and then a cool cloth was being laid over his forehead. He hadn’t even realized how stifling it was. “The surgeon thinks you’re likely to be feverish for quite some time.”
John didn’t doubt it. He watched the flex of Laurence’s arm as it withdrew, following the line up to shoulder and then over to the throat. Laurence’s neckcloth was tied just a hair looser than he customarily wore it, just a hair easier to imagine removing—
Damn the trance. Granby wished fervently for a moment that he was serving on a Longwing or a Xenica, or at least that the captain he did have was less easy on the eyes. “Evans will do well for you,” he said.
“Evans broke his leg badly not long after you were shot, as I understand. He’s gone back to England with the formation.”
Which left Ferris. A good sort, but he hadn’t the experience to be acting as first lieutenant.
Laurence read the thought on his face and said firmly, “We will manage.” He stood, wincing as he put his weight on his leg. “I am keeping you from sleep when you most need it. Pray rest. I will send Dyer later to fetch anything you need.”
Granby swallowed his protests. He did want to slip back into sleep before the trance fully wore off. “Yes, captain.”
The reception of an invitation from the Chinese delegation for New Year’s festivities would have been met with at least some trepidation regardless, but Laurence’s misgivings only grew when Temeraire translated the scroll which had been hand-delivered to him. “Oh, it says we are both to come! Is that not lovely, Laurence?”
“Yes, no, it is definitely addressed to you both,” Hammond agreed, once he had read it over himself. He pointed out the characters, and Laurence’s limited knowledge of the Chinese language was nonetheless strong enough to recognise that Temeraire’s name had been placed before his own.
“There’s no way around it,” Hammond said, after he had read it. “Absolutely none at all. It would be beyond the pale, quite beyond the pale, if one of you were to attend without the other.”
“But it’s being held in the delegation’s quarters!” exclaimed Riley.
“Yes, well,” said Hammond, and he had nothing else to say.
“Perhaps we could hold it above deck?” Granby suggested. But there was no way to manage it. It would be ridiculous to cart all the necessary furniture onto the deck, not to mention to bring the many courses the Chinese cooks were planning, and that of course was assuming the weather would not take a turn and make such a meal wholly impossible.
Hammond said, “I do not know what the issue is, gentlemen. The dragon can shift, and at the cost of a few drops of blood, I see no reason he should not be able to attend.”
But Hammond knew very well why Temeraire could not attend. Even if Laurence were able to successfully past the beast off as just another Chinaman—which while ordinarily possible, would be implausible in this case, as Laurence would only allow him to sit on the British side of the table and wear British clothes—there would not be an entire formation of dragons to hide Temeraire’s absence. The ship’s sailors would notice the dragon was gone, and they would ask questions.
“Then let them ask questions!” said Hammond, with finality. “The Chinese have given us an unprecedented overture in our relations, and I will not let the success of this mission be jeopardized for the sake of some sailors’ superstitions.”
So Temeraire would attend the supper in human form.
Yongxing had sent Lien’s own second blood-attendant to the dragon-deck to let for Lung Tien Xiang an hour before the celebration was to begin, with a set of appropriate robes and a note explaining his regret that he could not let himself due to his obligation to his own companion, but the man had come back unblooded and with the robes untouched. Lung Tien Xiang had thanked him for the offer, but had rejected him in favor of blood from that barbarian captain.
So he had been forewarned, but still he could not have been prepared for the sight of the noble Celestial reduced to wearing the barbarians’ uniform, with the captain’s pale eyes shining from his face, ruining what should have been a close match to any member of the imperial family.
The rage came upon him swiftly, a fire catching in fine paper, and it took effort to keep his wish to see the Englishman dead behind his teeth. Lung Tien Xiang could not be forced to relinquish him, only shown that there was a better companion awaiting him in his rightful place, and blood which would not debase him so.
He was at least able to seat Lung Tien Xiang nearer to himself than the captain, though on closer inspection he was able to see that they had dressed him as one of a lower rank—a midwingman, by the signs Yongxing had learned through unwilling exposure. The audacity of not only placing a Celestial in their own hierarchy but so low upon it was difficult to bear, and he wished Lien was present, so that he might have a confidant he could share his horror with.
He gave the first toast abruptly, but the Englishmen were not smart enough to notice any insult in it, so instead he turned his focus to speaking to Lung Tien Xiang as soon as it was appropriate. It was more difficult than it should have been; the Celestial was dividing his attention between a story the aerial captain was telling about some event from before he had been raised so far above his station and using the chopsticks, which he was doing with the clumsiness of a very young child, as badly as the Englishmen.
Yongxing would have been angry at yet another sign of the dragon’s mistreatment, except that in this, unlike every other aspect, Lung Tien Xiang clearly felt his neglected skill keenly. He was looking at Yongxing’s own deft hands with clear embarrassment, and the anger turned to a sort of sorrow, that his brother had allowed this folly.
The captain was still talking of starving in a boat and eating fish from the water like an animal—Yongxing listened a moment with distaste and then asked Lung Tien Xiang if he had any further thoughts on the poem he had most recently recited to him. The dragon’s insights were regrettably somewhat pedestrian still, but his manners had returned over the weeks of their morning conversations, and so the conversation was pleasant, and Yongxing could for a moment imagine a meal some day in the future, with Lien and Lung Tien Xiang, and young Miankai as his companion, and all things returned to their places, this english poison expunged.
But by then the fish-story had concluded, and the topic beyond the pleasant bubble had turned to sons. The impertinent ambassador was explaining yet another barbarian custom, that fathers among them could only provide for their firstborn.
“I suppose your father is a soldier, like you?” Yongxing said to the captain with distaste. The man could not have even been particularly successful in that, if his son was making his own way, entire. He had no wish to excessively embarrass Lung Tien Xiang, but airing the captain’s common origins could only serve as better contrast when Miankai was offered as companion in his place.
But he was unpleasantly surprised when the captain replied in the negative; he claimed his father as a lord of a large estate, related to an older royal house.
Worse, Lung Tien Xiang turned all his attention to the captain’s lineage when it was put down on paper at the unfortunate urging of Liu Bao.
“Oh, Laurence,” he said, watching not the clumsy letters being put down but the lines being drawn from one person of importance to another, “why have you never told me this, before? It is quite wonderful to know you have such a grand family.”
The captain was already flushed from the heat and the drink, but his embarrassment—at the lapse?—was clear on his face when he said, “It has never been of very great consequence to me, my dear.”
Yongxing watched Sun Kai collect the scroll and thought grimly that it would not be so blithely considered by the other factions at court as it evidently was by the self-professed soldier who had cheated his way into a Celestial’s affections.
Of course, Temeraire’s transformation for the feast could not be kept from the hands. The aviators had done their best to put about rumors that he would be gone flying during the event, but of course they could not be anywhere but the open deck when the transformation had happened, and for all Riley’s attempts to help with concealment there were men on deck and in the rigging who could not be sent away, and no convenient Regal Copper to shield it from view. The transformation back in the night was less conspicuous, with most of the men drunk and the rest exhausted and with the night dark, but even so by morning a tale had gone around the ship, about how one of the able seamen high in the rigging had witnessed the aviators offering the dragon the skin of one of their own as clothing and his bones to eat, and that had made him human for the night.
This at least was outlandish enough to not be believed by all. Overhearing it, Laurence set all the aviators to an impromptu inspection of their harnesses, lined up on the dragon-deck, so the sailors could see none were unaccounted for.
But that only quelled one branch of the rumors—they soon turned to the sacrifice being one of the sailors, and when none were found missing, to one of the Chinese party, who the sailors did not have a fully accurate accounting of to declare undiminished. This too was not wholly believed, but Laurence was sorry to see it linger even among the less superstitious of the sailors, bolstered by the fact that Temeraire had been mysteriously absent.
It was an additional stress atop Temeraire’s catching Volly’s cold, wholly unwelcome, and the atmosphere of the entire ship was steeped in it within two days. The sailors eyed not only Temeraire but every aviator with suspicion and fear, rapidly turning to hate, and Laurence began to worry they would erupt into violence before they reached Cape Town.
Riley spoke to him privately, anxiously. “I have told Purbeck and Franks and Beckett the truth, of course.” Though he sounded apologetic. “They’ve supported the story he went flying among the mids, but there is not much the hands will believe in it. I have already stopped Simmons’s grog for drunkenness on lookout duty.” Simmons being the man who had supposedly witnessed the sacrifice.
“You have done right,” Laurence assured him. “It would be plain mad to hide it from the Lieutenants, under the circumstances.” He did not say that he doubted there was any help for the situation, save the distraction of a battle or arrival at Cape Town.
The aviators one and all sensed the danger, and by the third day of rising tension Granby was keeping them close and setting the runners to scrambling about keeping Temeraire clean through his sickness whenever they could, showing both that the children were not afraid and keeping them from the sailors’ reach.
Seeing it, Laurence had an idea, and went to Riley for the loan of a few of his youngest midshipmen, half of whom approached the dragon-deck with the mortal terror of men being led to the gallows, only going when Riley came up on the deck and watched them sternly. But the terror became a wholly different kind of fear when Temeraire announced, loudly, that captain Riley had asked him to check their mathematics work for the day. They went away a great deal less afraid and more disgruntled at having been corrected so many times by such a conscientious schoolmaster.
In a stroke of luck, Simmons had got ahold of another man’s grog that night and, drunk and jealous of the waning of the attention which he had been getting for his story, insisted one of the children had been sacrificed. Claiming so when several dozen people had witnessed the entire production destroyed his credibility with the other hands, and the rumors died to a still-concerning but tolerable simmer until The Allegiance reached the cape.
As they neared the Cape of Good Hope, the distinction between the aviators and The Allegiance’s regular sailing crew was marked even more so by the onset of mosquitos. The heat of the beasts seemed to repel the insects. As such, while most of the sailors were beset by days upon days of irritating bites, the aviators were hardly troubled at all.
Even so, the mosquitos found a way to trouble them. Or rather, Emily Roland did, on the mosquitos’ behalf.
“It happened some ten years back, in Gibraltar,” Roland intoned, the evening after what the younger officers had already taken to calling the horrible mushroom day. “This dragon was flying patrol, in harness with full crew. There were a great many mosquitos, and even though they could not bite her, for she had such a thick hide, it was annoying that they’d fly into her face. So she snapped, snapped, snapped at them…
“And then, POP! She transformed into a girl mid-air. And so she went falling, and all of her crew too, and they were smashed upon the rocks of the coast.”
This tale was met with a great deal of wincing and shocked expressions from the younger crew members, and more subdued head shaking on behalf of the older men. Laurence, for his part, thought it unlikely that the insects flew anywhere as near as high as a dragon might, nor that they could contain enough of mens’ blood, undiluted, to initiate the change.
Their training had also informed him quite clearly that an intent was needed, on the part of the dragon. It was this intent which produced the trance, and with it the conditions of transformation. He could not easily imagine any dragon would even accidentally or idly wish to transform while snapping at mosquitos.
But then, he could not be sure. So when for the next few flights around the harbour, to exercise his wings as he recovered from his cold, Temeraire quite refused to speak and risk swallowing any mosquitos, Laurence did not press him.
Temeraire had thought he had witnessed storms.
He had watched dark clouds roll over the Scottish highlands. He had flown patrols in even the wettest and most miserable of weather. Indeed, his first ever proper flight had been in a storm, and while it had been not half-terrifying, it had been exhilarating too, and wonderful to have the wind and rain all around, and Laurence upon his back, and a very grand thing to rescue that poor sailor.
Those, he now discovered, had not been storms.
This was a storm.
Day ceased to have meaning. The world was cast into darkness, great black roiling clouds, only occasionally pierced by lightning. The ship heaved, going up, up, up, then crashing down again, like a dragon diving after its prey, but with no control, none at all. Between the waves those dives cast up and the driving rain, any distinction between ocean, deck, and sky dissolving entire. Temeraire could scarcely recall what it meant to be dry.
And almost worse than the typhoon was the chains.
They were cold and heavy and dragging. They made every movement, from the tiniest twitch of a wing to a lash of the tail, into a labour. They held him fast to the deck, so that he could not stand, let alone take flight.
Temeraire did understand the sense in them, he did. Certainly he did not want to throw the ship off balance unintentionally, and most certainly he did not want to get dragged deep, deep into the churning water—
—but—
—but—
They crested another towering wave, and then dove, dove. Temeraire’s stomach lurched, and his wings spread out automatically, or tried to. But the storm chains bit into his flesh, holding them pinned, and he was helpless, helpless, as choking salt filled his eyes and his mouth.
He bellowed, a low miserable sound, immediately lost by the wind.
“STEADY, MEN!” someone called, and Temeraire could not tell who.
Temeraire tried to stay steady. It was not as if he had much choice, regardless. Surely the storm would pass soon.
But it did not. Far from abating, it seemed to only increase in intensity. Temeraire huddled, his claws digging into the wood of the deck, shivering violently yet only dimly aware of it. His eyes were pressed closed, the only protection against the onslaught of stinging salt. He did not sleep, could not possibly have slept, not properly, but nonetheless dreams to weave in and out of the reality that surrounded him. He dreamt he heard Maximus’s booming voice in the roll of thunder. He dreamt each bolt of lightning was accompanied by the acrid scent of black powder smoke. He dreamt there was another dragon on the deck, the Dakota beast, chained down besides him.
He dreamt he was drowning.
“TEMERAIRE!” someone called, and it was Laurence. “TEMERAIRE!” His small hand was on his forepaw, shoving him.
He roused. “Laurence!”
Laurence shouted something else, but the wind snatched almost all of the meaning away. “DANGEROUS”, Temeraire caught, and “WAIT”.
“Wait for what?” Temeraire cried back.
“YOUR WAIT,” Laurence shouted back. “STORM—STRONG—HEAVY—!” It was useless, Laurence’s voice was too thin and too hoarse, the wind stealing it away, and Temeraire’s mind felt too slow and sluggish to understand besides.
Then Laurence took out his knife and sliced the back of his arm.
Temeraire almost missed it, his eyes were so heavy, and the water washed away the blood so quickly. Even the scent was nearly lost. But something of it he still caught, sweet and heady and unmistakable, and Temeraire understood.
His muscles clenched, his body straining for the blood on instinct. Temeraire held himself back, hesitant. They had discussed having him be human for the storm’s duration, and had dismissed it. Too much danger if they timed it wrong, if Temeraire turned back part way through, and added such unexpected weight to the deck at the wrong time, and then they would be unable to chain him in the thick of the storm, and he could have fallen off, and—
“MY DEAR!” Laurence cried, practically thrusting his bleeding arm into Temeraire’s jaws, and as always, Temeraire decided to place his trust in his captain. He drank.
The blood was ever so sweet after the days and days of salt, and Temeraire had to stop himself from suckling greedily. The transformation came on swiftly, like a sigh, like a great weight lifted—
—and then an ever greater weight slammed into him.
Temeraire did not know what happened, could not tell. He simply knew that he could not move. He was pinned, wholly and completely. He flailed, trying to break free of whatever had grabbed him, trying to claw and bite at his unseen opponent, but he was met with nothing but cold metal. He tried to breathe, but could not, his chest pressed heavily to the desk.
Something grabbed him. Even as his chest burned, Temeraire kicked.
“Stop struggling!” Granby cried, and grabbed his arm again. “We are trying to get you free.”
With effort, Temeraire stilled himself. Someone grabbed his other hand, and with great struggling heaves, pulled him free of the storm chains which had pinned his small human body down.
Laurence was there, at his side, warm and sturdy. He led him below deck, helping Temeraire down the ladder with his numb feet and fingers. “Stay down here,” Laurence ordered him. “It is not safe for you on deck.” And then he turned back up the ladder.
“No, wait!” Temeraire grabbed at his sodden coat.
“Pray, I must go. They need all able hands on deck,” Laurence said, briefly reaching out to squeeze Temeraire’s shoulders.
Temeraire wanted to follow along, to be an able hand. To be a full member of the crew, to not just lie there like a useless lump of cargo, or worse, a liability. He did not want Laurence to face the storm’s wrath without him.
But he was cold and hungry and weak and unimaginably exhausted. And so he allowed Digby to lead him to Laurence’s quarters, and take the dry biscuits he was offered. Once finished, Temeraire fell into the cot, and naked except for the blanket wrapped around him, he fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
One would have thought things would calm after the storm, but it did not, not nearly as much as one would like.
After the storm cleared, Temeraire had hardly been returned from his human shape for more than five minutes before he leapt away from the deck, bearing neither crew nor harness. Granby caught Laurence’s arm raise and then fall, as if reaching out, an abortive gesture, his expression distressed.
The beast returned after only a matter of hours, of course—where else was he to go? But while Temeraire’s frustration had subsided, it had not entirely abated, and his displeasure made the ship hands skittish.
No doubt that was caused, in part, by the rumours of sacrifice and skin-stealing that had started afresh since the dragon’s most recent transformation. There was nothing to be done there but let them run their course. Granby knew well enough that trying to stomp them out would only have them retreat underground, more tenacious than ever, like weeds.
Just when it felt as though everything might be settling again, that blasted sea serpent attacked.
The ship lost men in the assault, and took a fair amount of damage aside. That was concerning of course, but Granby’s primary responsibility was not for the ship. It was for Temeraire. And while normally any dragon ought to be in high spirits after such a victory, instead his dark mood had returned with a vengeance.
If it was apparent to the first lieutenant, then it was apparent to the captain, of course. Laurence spoke to Temeraire, trying to understand what was wrong and soothe Temeraire’s worries. Granby overheard more of that conversation, more than he ought had, but it was very hard to stop one eavesdropping on a twenty-ton beast.
The conversation helped, some. But not as much as it should.
“Mind if I sit with you?” Granby asked Temeraire, a couple evenings later, when Laurence was occupied with his correspondence and his logbooks.
“Oh! Not at all,” Temeraire said, gesturing with his snout towards the chairs left around for such visits, most commonly used by the Chinese delegation. Granby took it somewhat awkwardly, well aware this could easily be seen as overstepping.
Not with the casual conversation. Temeraire was a right chatty beast, happy to discuss anything from battle strategy to weather with his crew. This Granby started with, asking after the book Temeraire had been reading lately, though Granby knew not a whit about poetry, and Chinese poetry less so. But once they had eased in on this topic, Granby took a deep breath and asked, “What’s this I hear about you wanting to leave the service?”
“I do not want to leave the service, not at all!”
“Well, that is good to hear,” Granby said, leaning back in his chair. “You’re a young fellow yet; I think you’d find the breeding grounds dull.”
“I suspect I would, yes. But you see, that is exactly the problem, that my only two choices are to fight in the corps, or go to the breeding grounds. Or a third, if I were to rely on Laurence to provide me with land and capital, which not all captains have.”
The thing was, Granby speculated, staring down at the wooden deck, Temeraire wasn’t wrong.
Granby remembered what it had been like, when he had been first sent off to the covert. The way his mother has clutched him tight for one final hug, how his older siblings had not quite been able to meet his eye, how Pa had told him to be brave. It was not just selling off their youngest son which had ashamed them, but selling him off to what feared might be his death.
But no great doom had awaited him at the covert. It had all been very normal. He’d been assigned a dormitory with the other young recruits, fitted for uniforms and harnesses, and had his days split between classroom work and dragon keeping.
The beasts had scared him very much at first, though he’d tried not to show it. Their lumbering masses and their huge teeth; who would not be scared? But he learned well enough they meant no harm. Most of them barely even noticed the children, beyond what was necessary to avoid idly squashing them. That was not so different from any of the human officers, really.
People died in the aerial corps, there was no doubt. But that was mostly for the same reasons people died in any form of military service; battle. The young ground crew were kept well away from any of that, and so for those childhood years Granby had ended up much safer than any of his brothers who had remained in the mines.
No. Dragons were not the monsters that most made them out to be. They could be boisterous, temperamental, and clingy things, yes, but also brave, loyal, and caring. There was a reason so many men hoped to one day earn their eggs, and it was not just for the station and salary a captainship would provide.
So as Temeraire explained his disagreements, in a low, rumbling voice, Granby couldn’t disagree. “It’s foolish, how most crow on about you lot,” Granby said. “And I think most folks could learn to see reason, if they had some opportunity.” He shrugged. “But most won’t get such a chance, and that’s the truth of it.”
“But why not?” Temeraire asked, tail lashing.
“It’s just the way of it. Some men are born lords, some are born farmers… And some, I suppose, are not born as men at all.” Granby gestured up at Temeraire.
“Well, that does not seem fair in the least,” Temeraire pronounced.
“No. No, it ain’t. But it is what it is.”
And with any other dragon, that probably would have been where Granby left it. Perhaps it was where he should have left it. This was dangerously close to interference, was what is was.
But Temeraire had taken his blood, hadn’t he? That had to count for something. So Granby pressed on. “I fear,” he said, “that this Yongxing fellow is trying to inspire your discontent. I pray, do not put too much stock in his words. I think he will tell you anything, even that China hangs the stars in the sky, to sway you to his cause.”
Temeraire said, “I do not trust him in the least, not after the poor way he conducted himself back in London, and certainly not after the murder attempts on poor Laurence.” This last bit he thankfully reduced to a hiss.
“But,” he continued, just when Granby was starting to feel relieved. “He is not the only one of the Chinese who knows dragon poetry, or who bows to me because they respect me and not because they are afraid. So he cannot be lying about China and how things are for dragons there, because they would not all be that way, otherwise.”
Granby opened his mouth to point out that Yongxing’s party could just be particularly accustomed to dragons, as aviators were, but it seemed to just be arguing for argument’s sake, and in any case Temeraire wasn’t done.
“And in England dragons cannot be poets or scholars, only fight when we are told, and we are not supposed to try to talk to the enemies so we can choose to not fight, like how no one wanted me to talk to that sea serpent. So it is less fair in England than in China.”
Granby could not fully quell his own worry. “I know, but…” He shook his head. “Laurence loves you as much as any captain can, I think. Do not throw that away on behalf of some fairy tale.”
Temeraire raised his neck very high in the air, his ruff unfurled, looking very regal. “China is not a fairy tale, I do not think, though it sounds very fine. I like their poetry and their food, and I would like to see it, and meet the Emperor. But I would also like to keep Laurence as my captain, and I see no reason I cannot do both.”