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as the great head swung wearily back and Excidium said, in a harsh and rasping voice, "What have you done? You ought not have come here," while the sand-cloud settled to show him one among a half-a-dozen Longwings, Lily raising her head out of her shielding wing beside him, all of them huddled close in the sand-pit that was their place of quarantine.
Chapter 5
THEY HAD NO companion in their isolated quarantine-meadow but little Sauvignon, the French courier-beast, who had not even the solace of her captain's presence. He, poor child, had been marched away in irons against her good behavior, while she made piteous cries under the restraint of Temeraire's reluctant but irresistible hold upon her back, his great claw nearly pinning her to the ground entirely.
She huddled upon herself after he was gone, and was only gradually persuaded by Temeraire to eat a little, and then to talk. "Voici un joli cochon," Temeraire said, nudging over one of the spit-roasted hogs which Gong Su had prepared for him, lacquered in dark orange sauce. "Votre capitaine's'inquietera's'il apprend que vous ne mangez pas, vraiment."
She took a few bites, shortly proceeding to greater enthusiasm once Temeraire had explained to her that the recipe was a la Chinois: her naïve remark that she was eating "comme la Reine Blanche" and a little more conversation confirmed to Laurence that Lung Tien Lien, their bitter enemy, was now securely established in Paris, and deep in Napoleon's councils. The little courier, full of hero-worship for the other Celestial, was not to be led into exposing any secret plans, if she knew of any, but Laurence needed no revelations to tell him that Lien's voice was sure to be loud for invasion, if Napoleon required any additional persuasion, and that she would strive to keep his attention firmly fixed upon Britain and no other part of the world.
"She says Napoleon is having the streets widened, so Lien may walk through all the city," Temeraire said, disgruntled, "and he has already built her a pavilion beside his palace. It does not seem fair that we have such difficulties here, when she has everything her own way."
Laurence answered only dully; he cared very little anymore for such larger affairs, when he was to watch Temeraire die as Victoriatus had died, reduced to that hideous bloody wreckage; a devastation far more complete than any Lien might have engineered from the deepest wells of malice. "You were with them only a few moments; let us hope," Jane had said, but no more than that, and in her lack of encouragement Laurence saw Temeraire's death-warrant signed and sealed. All the sand-pit was surely thick with the contagion; the Longwings had been penned up there for the better part of a year, the effluvia buried in the sand along with their poisonous acid.
He understood, belatedly, why he had seen none of his former colleagues, why Berkley and Harcourt had not answered his letters. Granby came to visit him, once: they could neither of them manage more than half-a-dozen words, painfully stilted; Granby consciously avoiding the subject of his own healthy Iskierka, and Laurence not wishing in the least to speak of Temeraire's chances, especially not where Temeraire himself might hear, and learn to share his own despair. At present Temeraire had no concern for himself, secure in the confidence of his own strength, a comfort which Laurence had no desire to take from him before the inevitable course of the disease should manage the job.
"Je ne me sens pas bien," Sauvignon said, on the morning of the fourth day, waking herself and them with a violent burst of sneezing; she was taken away to join the other sick beasts, leaving them to wait alone for the first herald of disease.
Jane had come to see him daily, with encouraging words as long as he wished to hear them, and brandy for when he could no longer; but she reluctantly said, coming to see him on the unhappy day, "I am damned sorry to speak of this so bluntly, Laurence, but you must forgive me. Would Temeraire have begun to think of breeding yet, do you know?"
"Breeding," Laurence said bitterly, and looked away; it was natural, of course, that they should wish to preserve the bloodline of the rarest of all breeds, acquired with such difficulty, and now also in the possession of their enemy; yet to him it could be only a desire to replace what should be irreplaceable.
"I know," she said gently,