Empire of Ivory Page 0,13

corner, not talking; an older captain snoring with his head tipped against the side of his armchair, a bottle of brandy empty by his elbow. Laurence took his dinner alone in his rooms, near the fire; the air was chill, from the rooms to either side being vacant.

He opened the door at a faint tapping, expecting perhaps Jane, or one of his men with some word from Temeraire, and was startled to find instead Tharkay. "Pray come in," Laurence said, and belatedly added, "I hope you will forgive my state." The room was yet disordered, and he had borrowed a dressing-gown from a colleague's neglected wardrobe; it was considerably too large around the waist, and badly crumpled.

"I am come to say good-bye," Tharkay said, and shook his head, when Laurence had made an awkward inquiry. "No, I have nothing to complain of; but I am not of your company. I do not care to stay only to be a translator; it is a rôle which must soon pall."

"I would be happy to speak to Admiral Roland - perhaps a commission - " Laurence said, trailing away; he did not know what might be done, or how such matters were arranged in the Corps, except to imagine them a good deal less formally prescribed than in the Army, or the Navy, but he did not wish to promise what might be wholly infeasible.

"I have already spoken to her," Tharkay said, "and have been given one, if not the sort you mean; I will go back to Turkestan and bring back more ferals, if any can be persuaded into your service on similar terms."

Laurence would have been a good deal happier to have the ferals already in their service remotely manageable; a quality they were not more likely to gain, after Tharkay's departure. But he could not object; it was hard to imagine Tharkay's pride should allow him to remain as a supernumerary, even if restlessness alone did not drive him on. "I will pray for your safe return," Laurence said, and offered him instead a glass of port, and supper.

"What an odd fellow you have found us, Laurence," Jane said in her offices, the next morning. "I ought to give him his weight in gold, if the Admiralty would not squawk: twenty dragons talked out of the trees, like Merlin; or was it Saint Patrick? Anyway, I am sorry to rob you of the help, and pray don't think me ungrateful, if you are in your rights to complain; it is enough of a miracle you should have brought us Iskierka and one egg whole, considering the way Bonaparte has been romping about the Continent, much less our amiable band of brigands. But I cannot spare the chance of more, however mean and scrawny they might be; not with matters as they stand."

The map of Europe was laid out topmost on her table, great clots of markers, representing dragons, spread from the western borders of Prussia's former territory all the way to the footsteps of Russia. "From Jena to Warsaw in three weeks," she said, as one of her runners poured out wine for them. "I would not have given a bad ha'penny for the news, if you had not brought it yourself, Laurence; and if we hadn't had it from the Navy, too, I would have sent you to a physician."

Laurence nodded. "And I have a great deal to tell you of Bonaparte's aerial tactics, which are wholly changed from what they were. Formations are of no use against him; at Jena, the Prussians were routed, wholly routed. We must at once begin devising counters to his new methods."

But she was already shaking her head. "Do you know, Laurence, I have less than forty dragons fit to fly? and unless he is a lunatic, he will not come across with less than a hundred. He shan't need any fine tactics to do for us. For our part, there is no one to learn any new."

The scope of the disaster silenced him: forty dragons, to try and patrol all the coastline of the Channel, and give cover to the ships of the blockade.

"What we want at present is time," Jane continued. "There are a dozen hatchlings in Ireland, preserved from the disease, and twice as many eggs due to hatch in the next six months: we bred a good many of them, early on. If our friend Bonaparte will only be good enough to give us a year, things will look