the open air; and it was Granby.
"Oh, Lord," Granby said: Laurence turned and saw half the tent crumpled in on a heaving mass beneath. Those sober enough to have avoided the fighting were carrying out the lanterns from the other side, and others dousing the collapsed canvas with water; some smoke trickled out from beneath.
"You'll do a damned sight more good to come out of the way; here," Granby said, when Laurence would have gone to help, and drew him along one of the camp paths, narrow and stumbling-dark, towards the dragon-clearings.
They walked in silence over the uneven ground. Laurence tried to slow his short, clenched breathing, without success. He felt inexpressibly naïve. He had not even thought to fear such a possibility, until he heard it in the mouth of a drunkard. But when they did hang him - knowing it would lose them Temeraire's use - what might not those same men do, who had meant to infect all the world's dragons with consumption and condemn them to an agonized death. Of course they would gladly see Temeraire dead, rather than of use to anyone they were disposed to see as an enemy - France or China or any other nation. They would not scruple at any sort of treachery necessary to achieve his destruction; to them Temeraire was only an inconvenient animal.
"I suppose," Granby said, abruptly, out of the dark, "that he insisted on it: your carrying the stuff to France, I mean."
"He did," Laurence said, after a moment, but he did not mean to hide behind Temeraire's wings. "I am ashamed to say, he was forced to, at first; I am ashamed of it. I would not have you believe I was taken against my will."
"No," Granby said, "no, I only meant, you shouldn't have thought of it at all, on your own."
The observation felt true, and uncomfortably so, though Laurence supposed Granby had meant it as consolation. A sudden sharp stab of feeling caught his breath: loneliness and something more, an inarticulate next cousin to homesickness. He wanted very badly to see Temeraire. Laurence had slept his last night beneath the sheltering wing nearly three months ago, in the northern mountains, treason already committed and a few hours snatched before they made the fatal flight across the Channel. Since then there had been only a succession of prisons, more or less brutal, for them both: and what had these months been for Temeraire, alone and friendless and unhappy, in the breeding grounds full of feral beasts and veterans, with likely no order or discipline to keep them from fighting.
They fell into silence again, passing the clearings one by one, the millhouse rumble of sleeping dragons to either side, their own dinners finished and their crews toiling on the harnesses with only a few lanterns, the faint clanking of the smiths' hammers tapping away and the acrid smoky stink of harness oil. They had a long walk out in the dark, after the last clearing, climbing a steep slope upwards to the crown of a hill, prominently placed overlooking all the camp, where Iskierka lay sleeping in a thick spiny coil, steam issuing with every breath, and the feral dragons scattered around her.
She cracked an eye open as they came in and inquired drowsily, "Is it a battle yet?"
"No, love, back to sleep," Granby said, and she sighed and shut her eye; but she had drawn the notice of the men: they looked up, and then they looked from Laurence to Granby, and then they looked back down again, saying nothing.
"Perhaps I had best not stay," Laurence said. He knew some of the faces: men from his own crew, some of his former officers; he was glad they had found places here.
"Stuff," Granby said. "I am not so damned craven, and anyway," he added, more despondently, when he had led Laurence into his own tent, pitched in the comfortable current of heat which Iskierka gave steadily off, "I cannot be much farther in the soup than I am already, after yesterday. She's spoilt, there is no other word for it. Wouldn't keep in formation, wouldn't obey signals - took the ferals with her - " He shrugged, and taking up his own private bottle from the floor poured them each a glass, which he drank with an unaccustomed enthusiasm.
"It's not so bad, on patrol," Granby said, wiping his mouth after. "She doesn't need any coaxing to look out the enemy, and she'll take directions to make