place of Excidium or Mortiferus at the Channel, and even one of those two might be sufficient at Toulon.”
“I am sure he will do everything in his power to oblige you,” Laurence said, glancing over; the dragon in question was on his second cow. “And I may say that I will do the same. I know I am not the man you wished in this place, nor can I argue with the reasoning that would prefer an experienced aviator in so critical a role. But I hope that naval experience will not prove wholly useless in this arena.”
Portland sighed and looked down at the ground. “Oh, hell,” he said. It was an odd response to make, but Portland looked anxious, not angry, and after a moment he added, “There is just no getting around it; you are not an aviator. If it were simply a question of skill or knowledge, that would mean difficulties enough, but—” He stopped.
Laurence did not think, from the tone, that Portland meant to question his courage. The man had been more amiable this morning; so far, it seemed to Laurence that aviators simply took clannishness to an extreme, and once having admitted a fellow into their circle, their cold manners fell away. So he took no offense, and said, “Sir, I can hardly imagine where else you believe the difficulty might lie.”
“No, you cannot,” Portland said, uncommunicatively. “Well, and I am not going to borrow trouble; they may decide to send you somewhere else entirely, not to Loch Laggan. But I am running ahead of myself: the real point is that you and Temeraire must get to England for your training soonest; once you are there, Aerial Command can best decide how to deal with you.”
“But can he reach England from here, with no place to stop along the way?” Laurence asked, diverted by concern for Temeraire. “It must be more than a thousand miles; he has never flown further than from one end of the island to the other.”
“Closer to two thousand, and no; we would never risk him so,” Portland said. “There is a transport coming over from Nova Scotia; a couple of dragons joined our division from it three days ago, so we have its position pretty well fixed, and I think it is less than a hundred miles away. We will escort you to it; if Temeraire gets tired, Laetificat can support him for long enough to give him a breather.”
Laurence was relieved to hear the proposed plan, but the conversation made him aware how very unpleasant his circumstances would be until his ignorance was mended. If Portland had waved off his fears, Laurence would have had no way of judging the matter for himself. Even a hundred miles was a good distance; it would take them three hours or more in the air. But that at least he felt confident they could manage; they had flown the length of the island three times just the other day, while visiting Sir Edward, and Temeraire had not seemed tired in the least.
“When do you propose leaving?” he asked.
“The sooner, the better; the transport is headed away from us, after all,” Portland said. “Can you be ready in half an hour?”
Laurence stared. “I suppose I can, if I have most of my things sent back to the Reliant for transport,” he said dubiously.
“Why would you?” Portland said. “Laet can carry anything you have; we shan’t weigh Temeraire down.”
“No, I only mean that my things are not packed,” Laurence said. “I am used to waiting for the tide; I see I will have to be a little more beforehand with the world from now on.”
Portland still looked puzzled, and when he came into Laurence’s room twenty minutes later he stared openly at the sea-chest that Laurence had turned to this new purpose. There had hardly been time to fill half of it; Laurence paused in the act of putting in a couple of blankets to take up the empty space at the top. “Is something wrong?” he asked, looking down; the chest was not so large that he thought it would give Laetificat any difficulty.
“No wonder you needed the time; do you always pack so carefully?” Portland said. “Could you not just throw the rest of your things into a few bags? We can strap them on easily enough.”
Laurence swallowed his first response; he no longer needed to wonder why the aviators looked, to a man, rumpled in their dress; he had imagined it