Tongues of Serpents Page 0,72

dragonet, as yet mostly preoccupied with untangling itself, looked back at them wary and uncertain. Fumbling its long-clawed feet over one another and its tail, it tried to spread out its wings, and managed to flap and raise a little dust; but then it ceased the effort, and fell to gasping instead.

"Oh," Temeraire said sadly, to the hatchling, "you cannot fly?"

"I am sure I will manage it shortly," the hatchling said, in its small pale voice, "only I am so stiff; and hungry."

Rankin jerked his hand cuttingly. "It cannot live long in any case," he said.

"Then," Laurence said, "we will give the poor beast some food, and what comfort it can take, until the natural end should come; if that be quick or late, that does not relieve us of the obligations of humanity."

"And who do you propose should feed it?" Rankin said. "No aviator will do it and so bind himself, sacrificing his one chance; and I will be damned if I will allow you to impose a low convict upon us with a claim to call himself Captain - "

"I will feed it myself," Laurence said.

"What?" Temeraire said, his head swinging around sharply. Laurence paused, astonished, and Temeraire said, "You would - ?" and his voice was trembling, thrumming with distress and wrath, an edge of the resonance of the divine wind to it.

"Have done," Rankin said, impatiently. "You cannot feed it; unless it has no sense at all, it will not take food from your hands: it can see you are Temeraire's, and it knows he would kill it at once. Which," he added, "would save us the difficulty, I suppose."

Laurence threw him a disgusted look; Temeraire might perhaps dislike the gesture, but as for murdering a small and helpless hatchling, he did not in the least believe it. He said, "Temeraire - my dear, what is this absurdity; you cannot imagine I would propose any substitution, ever." That Temeraire was distressed, however, was certain; Laurence added, "My intentions are only the most practical: and I beg you to feed the hatchling yourself, if you should have any objection to my performing the office."

"Oh," Temeraire said, his ruff smoothing a little. "Oh, well; I do not mind that, but, Laurence - " He leaned his head over and in a low and confiding tone said, rather hesitantly, "Laurence, maybe you have not quite understood - it cannot fly."

Laurence was very much shocked - shocked, appalled; he scarcely knew what to say. Rankin said, "There; will this convince you to have done enacting us this thorough Cheltenham tragedy?"

Temeraire snorted at Rankin. "I am sure I do not see why you must speak if all you wish is to be unpleasant," he said, "and Laurence, if you should feel very strongly, of course I will give the hatchling some food. Only, it does seem a little strange."

"More than a little strange," Caesar said. "Why, what's it to do when you aren't about, and it is hungry? Anyway, we are still in this desert, and it has been scraps and string all week; there may be a bit of extra food about now, but it's a long way back to the cows. You might have a little sense, instead of wasting it."

"Perhaps it might come to be able to fly, after all," Temeraire said, "if it is only tired, from being shaken a great deal - although - then it might have stayed in the shell to rest - "

He trailed off, not very convincingly; and Laurence found himself abruptly unsure - adrift; what he had supposed a certain mooring had shifted, and was floating with him in an unknown current. If the hatchling should linger - deformed, helpless, without any means of sufficiency - rejected by the Corps, and its fellows also -

"Temeraire, you will oblige me greatly if you would give it something," Laurence said, nevertheless; there was no alternative which did not appall the worse: which was not full of barbarism and cruelty, and must be rejected out of hand.

He turned, and stopped: the hatchling was feasting slowly but with great determination in the gutted innards of the kangaroo, with a loop of belt around its neck for token harness, and Demane looked up and said, "I am naming him Kulingile."

"It means, 'all is well,'" Temeraire said to Caesar, "and I do not see what business you have complaining, when Demane was of my crew. I do not see why I must always be losing some