getting his wind back, the training master had Laurence practice moving about the harness both on Temeraire’s back and upon rings hung over the cliff wall, to increase his skill at a task that other aviators had been doing from their earliest years in the service. It was not too unlike moving about the tops in a gale, if one imagined a ship moving at a pace of thirty miles in an hour and turning completely sideways or upside down at any moment; his hands slipped free constantly during the first week, and without the paired carabiners he would have plummeted to his death a dozen times over.
And as soon as they were released from the day’s flight training, they were handed straight over to an old captain, Joulson, for drilling in aerial signaling. The flag and flare signals for communicating general instructions were much the same as in the Navy, and the most basic gave Laurence no difficulty; but the need to coordinate quickly between dragons in mid-air made the usual technique of spelling out more unusual messages impractical. As a result, there was a vastly longer list of signals, some requiring as many as six flags, and all of these had to be beaten into their heads, for a captain could not rely solely upon his signal-officer. A signal seen and acted upon even a moment more quickly might make all the difference in the world, so both captain and dragon must know them all; the signal-officer was merely a safeguard, and his duty more to send signals for Laurence and call his attention to new signals in battle than to be the sole source of translation.
To Laurence’s embarrassment, Temeraire proved quicker to learn the signals than himself; even Joulson was more than a little taken aback at the dragon’s proficiency. “And he is old to be learning them, besides,” he told Laurence. “Usually we start them on the flags the very day after hatching. I did not like to say so before, not to be discouraging, but I expected him to have a good deal of trouble. If a dragonet is a bit slow and does not learn all the signals by the end of their fifth or sixth week, he struggles with the last ones sadly; but here Temeraire is already older than that, and learning them as though he were fresh from the egg.”
But though Temeraire had no exceptional difficulty, the effort of memorization and repetition was still as tiring as their more physical duties. Five weeks of rigorous work passed this way, without even a break on Sundays; they progressed together with Maximus and Berkley through the increasingly complex maneuvers that had to be learned before they could join the formation, and all the time the dragons were growing enormously. By the end of this period, Maximus had almost reached his full adult size, and Temeraire was scarcely one man’s height less in the shoulder, though much leaner, and his growth was now mostly in bulk and in his wings rather than his height.
He was beautifully proportionate throughout: his tail was long and very graceful; his wings fit elegantly against his body and looked precisely the right size when fanned out. His colors had intensified, the black hide turning hard and glossy save for the soft nose, and the blue and pale grey markings on the edges of his wings spreading and becoming opalescent. To Laurence’s partial eye, he was the handsomest dragon in the entire covert, even without the great shining pearl blazoned upon his chest.
The constant occupation, along with the rapid growth, had at least temporarily eased Temeraire’s unhappiness. He was now larger than any of the other dragons but Maximus; even Lily was shorter than he was, though her wingspan was still greater. Though Temeraire did not push himself forward and was not given precedence by the feeders, Laurence saw on the occasions when he observed that most of the other dragons did unconsciously give way to him at feeding times, and if Temeraire did not come to be friendly with any of them, he seemed too busy to pay it mind, much as Laurence himself with the other aviators.
For the most part, they were company for each other; they were rarely apart except while eating or sleeping, and Laurence honestly felt little need of other society. Indeed, he was glad enough for the excuse, which enabled him to avoid Rankin’s company almost entirely. By answering with reserve on all occasions