time spent finding them, others would have run.
"Laurence," Temeraire said frowning, when they put down for water a few hours later, "there is something wrong: we are short two men."
So Temeraire had noticed two missing, out of nearly two hundred, when he had never before been so particular about passengers; there had of course been his favorites, among his crew, but until very lately he had rather disdained the sailors than valued them.
"Well, I do not much mind," Temeraire said, when Laurence had persuaded him that they could not return and hunt for the deserters, "as they are not properly my crew, and I suppose we should have to give them up anyway when we come back to Britain." He made this a question, and looked at Laurence; when Laurence had affirmed it, he sighed. "Do you think, Laurence, we shall receive a full crew again, when we have got back? It would be nice to be properly scrubbed, as a regular matter; and to have my harness better arranged, and looked-after."
He was reconciled to the loss further when he considered that Curicuillor had provided them with an abundance of supply, and even made him a present of a pair of silver hoops, which Laurence with difficulty dissuaded him from having pierced through his wing-edges. "They would likely catch, in battle," Laurence said.
"I am sure I could avoid that," Temeraire said, "but it is quite true that only one pair would not be very impressive. When we should take a prize next, perhaps we may get a few dozen, and then it will be something like."
"Something like a Covent Garden dancer," Laurence said to Granby, with a sigh.
"You shan't complain to me," Granby said, with some justice.
The spring was cold and delicious, and they flew the rest of that day over a rolling grassland peopled with roving herds of wild vicuna and a handful of villages: Churki led them on, and the patrol-dragons made no attempt to check them. She had the same orange-and-violet plumage as her mother, and if not quite as large, still more than a respectable match for any Regal Copper: a beast of some twenty years' age, she had informed Hammond. "I was with the army, until last year," she said, with her gaze fixed on him in what could only be called an unsettling way, "and I won many honors: then I came home to learn good management from my mother before she goes to the other world. I am ready for an ayllu of my own, now. Very soon I shall begin my establishment."
She paused and then added, "Do I understand correctly that you are not properly of Temeraire's ayllu, yourself? And not Iskierka or Kulingile's, either?"
"I must be flattered," Hammond said to Laurence, "but I hope it may not be considered neglect of any possible service to our country that I do not pursue the offer; I doubt very much she would be willing to come back with me, if I did."
"I might put it to her," Temeraire offered. "Curicuillor was very impressed that we should have so many people in Britain, so perhaps Churki would consider it after all."
"Oh, ah," Hammond said, in some alarm: he had still a faintly green cast from the day's flying, and no desire whatsoever to belong to a dragon.
The next day at morning, Churki suggested he should accompany her, flying; and when he feebly demurred she nosed at a tall stand of green-leaved shrub and said, "Brew those leaves fresh, instead of those strange dried ones you carry with you, and you will feel better; or take a handful and chew them."
"I trust she would know if it would poison me," Hammond said doubtfully, and carried a sample to Gong Su for his opinion; Gong Su nibbled and spat and shrugged.
"It is always safer to boil, first," he said, and when brewed the tea had a peculiar but not unpleasant flavor; by the end of the day Hammond had drunk seven cups, and would certainly have been dead if it had possessed even the most mildly toxic character.
"It is quite miraculous," he said that night. "Do you know, Captain, I have not been ill even once all the day: I feel myself as I have not since we left New South Wales, and I have been shipboard or dragon-back every day. I feel wonderfully clear-headed, indeed; I am willing to declare that it outstrips tea in flavor and in healthful effect, both."
Their flight the next day