in astonishment if the training master thought he meant to shirk his duties. “Indeed, I had not imagined otherwise, and I am well aware of the need for urgency in his training. If my absence would cause any difficulty, I beg you to have no hesitation in refusing the request.”
Whatever the source of his initial disapproval, Celeritas was mollified by this statement. “As it happens, the ground crewmen will need a day to fit Temeraire out with his new gear, and it will be ready by then,” he said, in less stern tones. “I suppose we can spare you, as long as Temeraire is not finicky about being harnessed without you there, and you may as well have a final excursion.”
Temeraire assured Laurence he did not mind, so the plan was settled, and Laurence spent part of the next few evenings making measurements of his neck, and of Maximus’s, thinking the Regal Copper’s current size might be a good approximation for what Temeraire could reach in future. He pretended to Temeraire that these were for the harness; he looked forward to giving the present as a surprise, and seeing it take away some of the quiet distress that lingered, casting a pall over the dragon’s usually high spirits.
Rankin looked with amusement at his sketches of possible designs. The two of them had already formed the settled habit of playing chess together in the evenings, and sitting together at dinner. Laurence so far had little conversation with the other aviators; he regretted it, but could see little point in trying to push himself forward when he was comfortable enough as he was, and in the absence of any sort of invitation. It seemed clear to him that Rankin was as outside the common life of the aviators as he was, perhaps set aside by the elegance of his manners, and if they were both outcast for the same reason, they might at least have the pleasure of each other’s society for compensation.
He and Berkley met at breakfast and training every day, and he continued to find the other captain an astute airman and aerial tactician; but at dinner or in company Berkley was silent. Laurence was not sure either that he wished to draw the man into intimacy, or that a gesture in that direction would be welcome, so he contented himself with being civil, and discussing technical matters; so far they had known each other only a few days, and there would be time enough to take a better measure of the man’s real character.
He had steeled himself to react properly on meeting Captain Harcourt again, but she seemed shy of his company; he saw her almost only at a distance, though Temeraire was soon to be flying in company with her dragon, Lily. One morning however she was at table when he arrived for breakfast, and in an attempt to make natural conversation, he asked how her dragon came to be called Lily, thinking it might be a nickname like Volly’s. She flushed to her roots again and said very stiffly, “I liked the name; pray how did you come to name Temeraire?”
“To be perfectly honest, I did not have any idea of the proper way of naming a dragon, nor any way of finding out at the time,” Laurence said, feeling he had made a misstep; no one had remarked on Temeraire’s unusual name before, and only now that she had brought him to task for it did he guess that perhaps he had raised a sore point with her. “I called him after a ship: the first Téméraire was captured from the French, and the one presently in service is a ninety-eight-gun three-decker, one of our finest line-of-battle ships.”
When he had made this confession, she seemed to grow more easy, and said with more candor, “Oh; as you have said as much, I do not mind admitting that it was nearly the same with me. Lily was not properly expected to hatch for another five years at the earliest, and I had no notion of a name. When her egg hardened, they woke me in the middle of the night at Edinburgh covert and flung me on a Winchester, and I barely managed to reach the baths before she broke the shell. I simply gaped when she invited me to give her a name, and I could not think of anything else.”
“It is a charming name, and perfectly suits her, Catherine,” Rankin said, joining them at the