one of the senior commanders of the Corps, and might well have a say in what postings Temeraire received. ‘But my sea chest was awkward for him to bear, and these seemed the best replacement I could manage on short notice.’
‘They may do,’ Bowden said, straightening up. ‘I hope you have as easy a time putting aside the rest of your naval thinking as your sea chest, Laurence; you must be an aviator now.’
‘I am an aviator, sir, and willingly so,’ Laurence said. ‘But I cannot pretend that I intend to put aside the habits and mode of thinking formed over a lifetime; whether I intended it or no, I doubt it would even be possible.’
Bowden fortunately took this without anger, but he shook his head. ‘No, it would not. And so I told— well. I have come to make something clear: you will oblige me by refraining from discussing, with those not in the Corps, any aspects of your training. His Majesty sees fit to give us our heads to achieve the best performance of our duty; we do not care to entertain the opinions of outsiders. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly,’ Laurence said grimly; the peculiar command bore out all his worst suspicions. But if none of them would come out and make themselves plain, he could hardly make an objection; it was infuriating. ‘Sir,’ he said, making up his mind to try again to draw out the truth, ‘if you would be so good as to tell me what makes the covert in Scotland more suitable than this for my training, I would be grateful to know what to expect.’
‘You have been ordered to go there; that makes it the only suitable place,’ Bowden said sharply. Yet then he seemed to relent, for he added, in a less harsh tone, ‘Laggan’s training master is especially adept at bringing inexperienced handlers along quickly.’
‘Inexperienced?’ Laurence said, blankly. ‘I thought an aviator had to come into the service at the age of seven; surely you do not mean that there are boys already handling dragons at that age.’
‘No, of course not,’ Bowden said. ‘But you are not the first handler to come from outside the ranks, or without as much training as we might care for. Occasionally a hatchling will have a fit of distemper and we must take anyone we can get it to accept.’ He gave a sudden snorting laugh. ‘Dragons are strange creatures, and there is no understanding them; some of them even take a liking to naval officers.’ He slapped Temeraire’s side, and left as abruptly as he had come; without a word of parting, but in apparently better humour, and leaving Laurence hardly less perplexed than before.
The flight to Nottinghamshire took several hours, and afforded him more leisure than he liked to consider what awaited him in Scotland. He did not like to imagine what Bowen and Powys and Portland all expected him to disapprove so heartily, and he still less liked to try and imagine what he should do if he found the situation unbearable.
He had only once had a truly unhappy experience in his naval service: as a freshly made lieutenant of seventeen he had been assigned to the Shorewise, under Captain Barstowe, an older man and a relic of an older Navy, where officers had not been required to be gentlemen as well. Barstowe was the illegitimate son of a merchant of only moderate wealth and a woman of only moderate character; he had gone to sea as a boy in his father’s ships and been pressed into the Navy as a foremast hand. He had displayed great courage in battle and a keen head for mathematics, which had won him promotion first to master’s mate, then to lieutenant, and even by a stroke of luck to post-rank, but he had never lost any of the coarseness of his background.
But what was worse, Barstowe had been conscious of his own lack of social graces, and resentful of those who, in his mind, made him feel that lack. It was not an unmerited resentment: there were many officers who looked askance and murmured at him; but he had seen in Laurence’s easy and pleasing manners a deliberate insult, and he had been merciless in punishing Laurence for them. Barstowe’s death of pneumonia three months into the voyage had possibly saved Laurence’s own life, and at the least had freed him from an endless daze of standing double or triple watches, a diet of ship’s biscuit and water, and the perils of leading a gun-crew composed of the worst and most unhandy men aboard.
Laurence still had an instinctive horror when he thought of the experience; he was not in the least prepared to be ruled over by another such man, and in Bowden’s ominous words about the Corps taking anyone a hatchling would accept, he read a hint that his trainer or perhaps his fellow trainees would be of such a stamp. And while Laurence was not a boy of seventeen anymore, nor in so powerless a position, he now had Temeraire to consider, and their shared duty.
His hands tightened on the reins involuntarily, and Temeraire looked around. ‘Are you well, Laurence?’ he asked. ‘You have been so quiet.’
‘Forgive me, I have only been woolgathering,’ Laurence said, patting Temeraire’s neck. ‘It is nothing. Are you tiring at all? Should you like to stop and rest a while?’
‘No, I am not tired, but you are not telling the truth: I can hear you are unhappy,’ Temeraire said anxiously. ‘Is it not good that we are going to begin training? Or are you missing your ship?’
‘I find I am become transparent before you,’ Laurence said ruefully. ‘I am not missing my ship at all, no, but I will admit I am a little concerned about our training. Powys and Bowden were very odd about the whole thing, and I am not sure what sort of reception we will meet in Scotland, or how we shall like it.’
‘If we do not care for it, surely we can just go away again?’ Temeraire said.
‘It is not so easy; we are not at liberty, you know,’ Laurence said. ‘I am a King’s officer, and you are a King’s dragon; we cannot do as we please.’
‘I have never met the King; I am not his property, like a sheep,’ Temeraire said. ‘If I belong to anyone, it is you, and you to me. I am not going to stay in Scotland if you are unhappy there.’
‘Oh dear,’ Laurence said; this was not the first time Temeraire had showed a distressing tendency to independent thought, and it seemed to only be increasing as he grew older and started to spend more of his time awake. Laurence was not himself particularly interested in political philosophy, and he found it sadly puzzling to have to work out explanations for what to him seemed natural and obvious. ‘It is not ownership, exactly; but we owe him our loyalty. Besides,’ he added, ‘we would have a hard time of it keeping you fed, were the Crown not paying for your board.’
‘Cows are very nice, but I do not mind eating fish,’ Temeraire said. ‘Perhaps we could get a large ship, like the transport, and go back to sea.’
Laurence laughed at the image. ‘Shall I turn pirate king and go raiding in the West Indies, and fill a covert with gold from Spanish merchant ships for you?’ He stroked Temeraire’s neck.
‘That sounds exciting,’ Temeraire said, his imagination clearly caught. ‘Can we not?’
‘No, we are born too late; there are no real pirates anymore,’ Laurence said. ‘The Spanish burned the last pirate band out of Tortuga last century; now there are only a few independent ships or dragon crews, at most, and those always in danger of being brought down. And you would not truly like it, fighting only for greed; it is not the same as doing one’s duty for King and country, knowing that you are protecting England.’
‘Does it need protecting?’ Temeraire asked, looking down. ‘It seems all quiet, as far as I can see.’
‘Yes, because it is our business and the Navy’s to keep it so,’ Laurence said. ‘If we did not do our work, the French could come across the Channel; they are there, not very far to the east, and Bonaparte has an army of a hundred thousand men waiting to come across
