Empire of Ivory Page 0,84

a question in his face; Laurence nodded to say they would give him the other, too. Demane came out, protests silenced by this species of bribery, and Laurence went away feeling that he had behaved himself like a desperate scrub; he hoped very much the boys did not have family to be made anxious for them, although he had rather gained the impression they were orphaned, and at the very least neglected.

"Too slow," Dorset said, very decidedly despite his stammer. "Too slow, by half. All the searching in the world - we will only help to stamp it out. It has been the target of systematic eradication; we cannot hope to find much nearby. Who knows how long, how many years, the herdsmen have been digging it up. We must go away, farther away, where it may yet grow in quantity - "

"Perfect speculation," Keynes snapped, "on which to recommend the pursuit of wild chances. How much distance will satisfy you? I dare say all the continent has been used for herding, at some time or another. To risk the formation, dragons scarcely risen from their sickbeds, and go deep into feral territory, on such a hope? The height of folly - "

The argument rose, grew warm, surged across the table; Dorset's stammer grew more violent so he was scarcely comprehensible, and Gaiters and Waley, Maximus's and Lily's surgeons, were ranged with Keynes against him; until at last Catherine had silenced all of them, standing up to make her demand with her hands planted on the cloth.

"I do not quarrel with your concern," she added, more quietly, "but we did not come here to find a cure only for ourselves. You have heard the latest dispatches; nine more dead since March, and by now more gone, when we could not spare any of them in the least." She looked at Keynes steadily. "Is there any hope?"

He was silent, displeased, and only with a surly lowering look allowed there to be some chance of a better harvest, farther away; she nodded and said, "Then we will endure the risk, and be glad that our own dragons are well enough to do so."

There was no question, yet, of sending Maximus, who had only lately begun to try at flying again: with a deal of flapping and kicking up dust, often ending only in an exhausted collapse; he could not quite manage the launching spring, which was necessary to get him aloft, although once in the air could remain for some time. Keynes shook his head and felt at his paunchy sides.

"The weight is coming back unevenly. You are doing your exercises?" he demanded; Maximus protested that he was. "Well, if we cannot get you in the air, we must find you room to walk," Keynes said, and so Maximus had been set to making a circuit of the town, back and forth several times daily: the only stretch of cleared ground large enough for him, as he could not go far up the mountain-slopes without pulling them down in small avalanches.

No-one was very happy with this solution: ridiculous to have a dragon the size of a frigate ambling about like a lap-dog on an airing, and Maximus complained of the hard ground, and the pebbles which introduced themselves into his talons. "I do not notice them at first," he said unhappily, while Berkley's runners struggled with hoof-picks and knives and tongs to pry them out from under the hard, callused hide around the base of the claws, "not until they are quite far down, and then I cannot easily say how very unpleasant it becomes."

"Why do you not swim, instead?" Temeraire said. "The water is very pleasant here, and perhaps you might catch a whale," which suggestion brightened Maximus remarkably, and infuriated the fishermen, particularly the owners of the larger boats; they came in a body to protest.

"I am damned sorry to put you out," Berkley said to them. "You may come with me, and tell him yourselves you do not like it."

Maximus continued his outings, in peace, and might be seen daily paddling about the harbor. Sadly the whales and dolphins and seals, too clever by half, stayed well-clear of him, much to his disappointment: he did not much like tunny or sharks, the latter of which occasionally beat themselves against his limbs in confused fits perhaps provoked by some traces of blood or flesh from his latest repast: on one occasion he brought back one of these to show, a