Empire of Ivory Page 0,8

sir," Laurence said, deeply sorry, no longer wondering why Lenton had been transferred north to Edinburgh, the quieter post; he wondered only what illness might have so ravaged him, and who had been made commander at Dover in his place.

"Oh..." Lenton waved his hand, fell silent. "I suppose you have not been told anything," he said, after a moment. "No, that is right; we agreed we could not risk word getting out."

"No, sir," Laurence said, anger kindling afresh. "I have heard nothing, and been told nothing; with our allies asking me daily for word of the Corps, until there was no more use in asking."

He had given his own personal assurances to the Prussian commanders; he had sworn that the Aerial Corps would not fail them, that the promised company of dragons, which might have turned the tide against Napoleon, in this last disastrous campaign, would arrive at any moment. He and Temeraire had stayed and fought in their place when the dragons did not arrive, risking their own lives and those of his crew in an increasingly hopeless cause; but the dragons had never come.

Lenton did not immediately answer, but sat nodding to himself, murmuring. "Yes, that is right, of course." He tapped a hand on the desk, looked at some papers without reading them, a portrait of distraction.

Laurence added more sharply, "Sir, I can hardly believe you would have lent yourself to so treacherous a course, and one so terribly shortsighted; Napoleon's victory was by no means assured, if the twenty promised dragons had been sent."

"What?" Lenton looked up. "Oh, Laurence, there was no question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called for no decision. There were no dragons to send."

Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust around the rims, and a dried pink foam lingered about the corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage. His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him: unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon's foreleg; he did not move, even when they approached.

After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm. "Come, enough; let's away." He turned slowly aside, leaning heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in irreparable gloom.

Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of refreshment. "It is a sort of consumption," Lenton said, looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard; Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and stones grown over with ivy.

"How widespread - ?" Laurence asked.

"Everywhere," Lenton said. "Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere." He turned away from the windows and took his chair again. "We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it was only a cold, you see."

"But we had word of that before we had even rounded the Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east," Laurence said, appalled. "Has it lasted so long?"

"In Halifax it started in September of the year five," Lenton said. "The surgeons think now it was the American dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland."

"You know we have brought you another twenty," Laurence said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

"Yes, these fellows from where, Turkestan?" Lenton said, willing to follow. "Did I understand your letter correctly; they were brigands?"

"I would rather say jealous of their territory," Laurence said. "They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in them; though