was impossible to refuse, although he would have liked to, so when he had rung for his baggage, the four of them went out to the field together. Temeraire was sitting up on his haunches, watching the morning fog gradually burn away over the countryside; against the cold grey sky he loomed very large, even from a considerable distance.
Laurence stopped for a moment to pick up a bucket and rags from the stables, then led his suddenly reluctant party on with a certain relish at Woolvey and Miss Montagu’s dragging steps. His mother was not unalarmed herself, but she did not show it, save by holding Laurence’s arm a little more tightly, and stopping several paces back as he went to Temeraire’s side.
Temeraire looked at the strangers with interest as he lowered his head to be washed; his chops were gory with the remains of the deer, and he opened his jaws to let Laurence clean away the blood from the corners of his mouth. There were three or four sets of antlers upon the ground. ‘I tried to bathe in that pond, but it is too shallow, and the mud came into my nose,’ he told Laurence apologetically.
‘Oh, he talks!’ Miss Montagu exclaimed, clinging to Woolvey’s arm; the two of them had backed away at the sight of the rows of gleaming white teeth: Temeraire’s incisors were already larger than a man’s fist, and with a serrated edge.
Temeraire was taken aback at first; but then his pupils widened and he said, very gently, ‘Yes, I talk,’ and to Laurence, ‘Would she perhaps like to come up on my back, and see around?’
Laurence could not repress an unworthy flash of malice. ‘I am sure she would; pray come forward, Miss Montagu, I can see you are not one of those poor-spirited creatures who are afraid of dragons.’
‘No, no,’ she said palely, drawing back. ‘I have trespassed on Mr. Woolvey’s time enough, we must be going for our ride.’ Woolvey stammered a few equally transparent excuses as well, and they escaped at once together, stumbling in their haste to be away.
Temeraire blinked after them in mild surprise. ‘Oh, they were just afraid,’ he said. ‘I thought she was like Volly at first. I do not understand; it is not as though they were cows, and anyway I have just eaten.’
Laurence concealed his private sentiment of victory and drew his mother forward. ‘Do not be afraid at all, there is not the least cause,’ he said to her softly. ‘Temeraire, this is my mother, Lady Allendale.’
‘Oh, a mother, that is special, is it not?’ Temeraire said, lowering his head to look at her more closely. ‘I am honoured to meet you.’
Laurence guided her hand to Temeraire’s snout, and once she made the first tentative touch to the warm hide, she soon began petting the dragon with more confidence. ‘Why, the pleasure is mine,’ she said. ‘And how soft! I would never have thought it.’
Temeraire made a pleased low rumble at the compliment and the petting, and Laurence looked at the two of them with a great deal of his happiness restored; he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty. ‘Temeraire is a Chinese Imperial,’ he told his mother, with unconcealed pride. ‘One of the very rarest of all dragons: the only one in all of Europe.’
‘Truly? How splendid, my dear; I do recall having heard before that Chinese dragons are quite out of the common way,’ she said. But she still looked at him anxiously, and there was a silent question in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to answer it. ‘I count myself very fortunate, I promise you. Perhaps we will take you flying some day, when we have more time,’ he added. ‘It is quite extraordinary; there is nothing to compare to it.’
‘Oh, flying, indeed,’ she said, indignantly, yet she seemed satisfied on a deeper level. ‘When you know perfectly well I cannot even keep myself on a horse. What I should do on a dragon’s back, I am sure I do not know.’
‘You would be strapped on quite securely, just as I am,’ Laurence said. ‘Temeraire is not a horse, he would not try to have you off.’
Temeraire said earnestly, ‘Oh yes, and if you did fall off, I dare say I could catch you,’ which was perhaps not the most reassuring remark, but his desire to please was very obvious, and Lady Allendale smiled up at him anyway.
‘How very kind you are; I had no idea dragons were so well-mannered,’ she said. ‘You will take prodigious care of William, will you not? He has always given me twice as much anxiety as any of my other children, and he is forever getting himself into scrapes.’
Laurence was a little indignant to hear himself described so, and to have Temeraire say, ‘I promise you, I will never let him come to harm.’
‘I see I have delayed too long; shortly the two of you will have me wrapped in cotton batting and fed on gruel,’ he said, bending to kiss her cheek. ‘Mother, you may write to me care of the Corps at Loch Laggan covert, in Scotland; we will be training there. Temeraire, will you sit up? I will sling this bandbox again.’
‘Perhaps you could take out that book by Duncan?’ Temeraire asked, rearing up. ‘The Naval Trident? We never finished reading about the battle of the Glorious First, and you might read it to me as we go.’
‘Does he read to you?’ Lady Allendale asked Temeraire, amused.
‘Yes; you see, I cannot hold them myself, for they are too small, and also I cannot turn the pages very well,’ Temeraire said.
‘You are misunderstanding; she is only shocked to learn that I am ever to be persuaded to open a book; she was forever trying to make me sit to them when I was a boy,’ Laurence said, rummaging in one of his other boxes to find the volume. ‘You would be quite astonished at how much of a bluestocking I am become, Mother; he is quite insatiable. I am ready, Temeraire.’
She laughed and stepped back to the edge of the field as Temeraire put Laurence up, and stood watching them, shading her eyes with one hand, as they drove up into the air; a small figure, vanishing with every beat of the great wings, and then the gardens and the towers of the house rolled away behind the curve of a hill.
The sky over Loch Laggan was full of low-hanging clouds, pearl-grey, mirrored in the black water of the lake. Spring had not yet arrived; a crust of ice and snow lay over the shore, ripples of yellow sand from an autumn tide still preserved beneath. The crisp cold smell of pine and fresh-cut wood rose from the forest. A gravel road wound up from the northern shores of the lake to the complex of the covert, and Temeraire turned to follow it up the low mountain.
A quadrangle of several large wooden sheds stood together on a level clearing near the top, open in the front and rather like half a stable in appearance; men working outside on metal and leather; obviously the ground crews, responsible for the maintenance of the aviators’ equipment. None of them so much as glanced up at the dragon’s shadow crossing over their workplace, as Temeraire flew on to the headquarters.
The main building was a very medieval sort of fortification: four bare towers joined by thick stone walls, framing an enormous courtyard in the front and a squat, imposing hall that sank directly into the mountaintop and seemed to have grown out of it. The courtyard was almost entirely overrun. A young Regal Copper, twice Temeraire’s size, sprawled drowsing over the flagstones with a pair of brown-and-purple Winchesters even smaller than Volatilus sleeping right
