Empire of Ivory Page 0,131

cut straps before then."

"I must surely give the greater weight," he said, "to those who have given so much in our service; and Temeraire already counts them as his own crew."

"Yes; but the carpers will say you ought to take them as personal servants, or at best ground crew," she said. "But damn them all; you shall have the boys, and if anyone complains of their birth, you may always declare them princes in their native country, without any fear of being proven false. Anyway," she added, "I will put them on the books, quietly, and we will hope they slip past. Will you let me give you a third? Temeraire's complement allows for it."

He assented, of course; and she nodded. "Good: I will send you Admiral Gordon's youngest grandson, and that will make him your best advocate, instead of your loudest critic: no one has as much time for writing letters and making noise as a retired admiral, I assure you."

Sipho was very willing to be pleased, when informed of their elevation; Demane said a little suspiciously, "We take messages? And ride the dragon?"

"And other errands," Laurence said, and was then puzzled how to explain errands, until Temeraire said, "Those are small boring things, which no one very much likes to do," which did not reduce the suspicion.

"When will I have time to hunt?" the boy demanded.

"I do not suppose you will," Laurence said, taken aback, and only after a little more exchange gathered the boy did not realize that they would be fed and clothed: at Laurence's expense, of course, as they had no family sponsoring them; cadets drew no pay. "You cannot think we would let you starve; what have you been eating so far?"

"Rats," Demane said succinctly, explaining belatedly to Laurence's satisfaction the unusual lack of those delights more civilly referred to as millers, which had been much lamented among the midshipmen whose traditional prey they were, "but now we are on land again, I took two of those small things last night," and gestured to make long ears.

"Not from the grounds of Dover Castle?" Laurence said; certainly there would not have been many of them nearer-by, with the smell of so many dragons about. "You must not, again; you will be taken up for poaching."

He was not perfectly sure Demane was convinced, but at last Laurence declared a private victory and detailed the two of them to Roland and Dyer's supervision, to be led through their tasks a while.

It was a short flight only to the quarantine-grounds, and the pavilion established to good effect in a sheltered valley, sacrificing prospect for a windbreak. It was not empty: two rather thin and exhausted Yellow Reapers were sleeping inside, still coughing occasionally, and a limp little Greyling: not Volly, but Celoxia, and her captain Meeks. "On the Gibraltar route, I think," Meeks said, to their inquiry, "if he has not been broken-down again," rather bitterly. "I don't mean to carp at you, Laurence; God knows you have done all you might, and more. But they seem to think at the Admiralty that it is like putting the wheel back on a cart, and they want us flying all the old routes again at once. Halifax and back, by way of Greenland and a transport, anchored in the middle of the north fifties, with ice-water coming over the bow with every wave; of course she is coughing again." He stroked the little dragon's muzzle; she sneezed plaintively.

The floor was very comfortably warm, at least, and if the wood-fire was a little smoky, worming up through the square stone slabs of the floor, the open plan blew the fumes away. It was a simple, practical building, not at all elegant or ornate, and Temeraire might have slept in it, but it could not have been called spacious, on his scale. He regarded it with brooding disappointment, and was not disposed to linger; the crew did not even have the opportunity to dismount before he wished to be off again, putting the pavilion at his back, and flying with rather a drooping ruff.

Laurence tried to console him by remarking on the sick dragons yet sheltering there, even in the summer's heat. "Jane tells me that they would pile them in ten at a time," he said, "during the winter, so wet and cold; and the surgeons are quite certain it saved a dozen lives."

Temeraire only muttered, "Well, I am glad it has been useful," ungraciously; such distant triumphs, achieved out