our parole to remain, unless the French should give us leave to go," Laurence said with enough finality, he hoped, to forestall any untenable suggestion: Hammond was a remarkable man in many respects, and Laurence had cause to be grateful for his gifts, but on occasion one might not be sure of him.
"Yes, of course," Hammond said, and sank back into his chair with a face like a sail with the wind spilling out of it, all gloom; in a moment he burst out, "They must have sent spies through Brazil - it is the only explanation; but how they should have persuaded the Inca - " and subsided; a moment later he was repeating, "I cannot conceive how they should have persuaded the Inca to open relations - "
De Guignes certainly did not mean to volunteer any information; however smiling his courtesies, it was plain he disliked extremely having encountered them, and meant so far as he could to isolate them from the life of the ship and in particular from his Inca passengers, if there were any: Laurence had so far seen none, saving the feathered dragon upon the deck. Captain Thibaux was more really welcoming, but as he could count on the captain's share of the head-price for three heavy-weight dragons and their officers, as well as for nearly three hundred sailors, he had greater compensation for his pain.
"No, Mr. Hammond, I have met none of the Inca aboard," Mrs. Pemberton said, when she was permitted to visit them, "although I have been made very welcome: Mme. Recamier has kindly lent me this dress, as I came away without baggage."
"Recamier?" Hammond said, puzzled. "Not of the salon, in Paris?"
"I believe she lives in Paris," Mrs. Pemberton said, confirming, "and several of her companions also."
"But," Hammond said, and fell into muttering confusion; Laurence could not deny he was as perplexed to find De Guignes carrying along half-a-dozen Frenchwomen of noble birth on a mission to a dangerous and isolate nation.
"I don't see why he must be so unfriendly," Kulingile said, meaning Piccolo, who was presently taking his turn to sleep, with his head buried beneath his wing so he would not see Kulingile flying overhead. It had proven necessary to the maintenance of harmony to have only one of the two of them on the deck at any time, once Piccolo had determined that Kulingile was indeed the larger. "It is not as though I were doing it on purpose."
"That scarcely makes a difference; it is not as though you would choose to be smaller if you could," Temeraire said. In all honesty he did not himself see why Kulingile needed to be quite so large, and still growing, when he had started out so small and from a stunted egg; it was a little difficult to adjust one's thinking.
But to be fair, Kulingile was not at all inclined to make a fuss: even though there was not enough to eat, he did not try to demand more than a proportional share, or filch some of the catch for himself the way Piccolo would if one did not make sure he was watched.
"I am not a prisoner of war," Piccolo had said over-loudly, when Iskierka had caught him at it the other day. "My captain did not surrender himself; this is our ship."
"It is all very well to make remarks of that sort," Temeraire had said coldly, "if you were prepared to defend them, but you know very well we cannot be having it out in the middle of the ocean. You may be sure there is not another transport about if we should lose this one, and if there were, there would be even less food to go around."
Temeraire did not like to remember those last desperate hours of the flight, drawing in a mist of salt with every too-short breath, his whole body growing steadily more heavy around him; it felt too like defeat. But there was no denying that he could not have flown much farther, with all the will in the world to do so. Nor could have Iskierka and Kulingile, of course; so it was not at all a weakness of his own, but nevertheless he had been forced to acknowledge what must indeed be a practical limitation upon almost any dragon.
He would have liked to question Lung Shen Li about her technique - perhaps there was some trick to a long flight - but after all, she did not have the divine