smoke ceased rising. ‘There, cover it with some sand, and tomorrow it should be safe to wash.’
Laurence was also glad for the small distraction; he did not immediately trust himself to speak. Temeraire nuzzled him gently, and the cadets looked at him in worry. ‘I oughtn’t ever have suggested it, sir,’ Hollin said. ‘I’m sure I beg your pardon, and Captain Rankin’s.’
‘Not in the least, Mr. Hollin,’ Laurence said; he could hear his own voice, cold and very stern, and he tried to mitigate the effect by adding, ‘you have done nothing wrong whatsoever.’
‘I don’t see any reason why we ought to stay away from Levitas,’ Roland said, low.
Laurence did not hesitate for a moment in his response; it was as strong and automatic as his own helpless anger against Rankin. ‘Your superior officer has given you orders to do so, Miss Roland; if that is not reason enough you are in the wrong service,’ he snapped. ‘Let me never hear you make another such remark. Take these linens back to the laundry at once, if you please. You will pardon me, gentlemen,’ he added to the others, ‘I will go for a walk before supper.’
Temeraire was too large to successfully creep after him, so the dragon resorted instead to flying past and waiting for him in the first small clearing along his path. Laurence had thought he wanted to be alone, but he found he was very glad to come into the dragon’s encircling forearms and lean upon his warm bulk, listening to the almost musical thrumming of his heart and the steady reverberation of his breathing. The anger slipped away, but it left misery in its place. He would have desperately liked to call Rankin out.
‘I do not know why Levitas endures it; even if he is small, he is still much bigger than Rankin,’ Temeraire said eventually.
‘Why do you endure it when I ask you to put on a harness, or perform some dangerous manoeuvre?’ Laurence said. ‘It is his duty, and it is his habit. From the shell he has been raised to obey, and has suffered such treatment. He likely does not contemplate any alternative.’
‘But he sees you, and the other captains; no one else is treated so,’ Temeraire said. He flexed his claws; they dug furrows in the ground. ‘I do not obey you because it is a habit and I cannot think for myself; I do it because I know you are worthy of being obeyed. You would never treat me unkindly, and you would not ask me to do something dangerous or unpleasant without cause.’
‘No, not without cause,’ Laurence said. ‘But we are in a hard service, my dear, and we must sometimes be willing to bear a great deal.’ He hesitated, then added gently, ‘I have been meaning to speak to you about it, Temeraire: you must promise me in future not to place my life above that of so many others. You must surely see that Victoriatus is far more necessary to the Corps than I could ever be, even if there were not his crew to consider also; you should never have contemplated risking their lives to save mine.’
Temeraire curled more closely around him. ‘No, Laurence, I cannot promise such a thing,’ he said. ‘I am sorry, but I will not lie to you: I could not have let you fall. You may value their lives above your own; I cannot do so, for to me you are worth far more than all of them. I will not obey you in such a case, and as for duty, I do not care for the notion a great deal, the more I see of it.’
Laurence was not sure how to answer this; he could not deny that he was touched by the degree to which Temeraire valued him, yet it was also alarming to have Temeraire express so plainly that he would follow orders or not as his own judgment decreed. Laurence trusted that judgment a great deal, but he felt again that he had made an inadequate effort to teach Temeraire the value of discipline and duty. ‘I wish I knew how to explain it to you properly,’ he said, a little despairingly. ‘Perhaps I will try and find you some books on the subject.’
‘I suppose,’ Temeraire said, for once dubious about reading something. ‘I do not think anything would persuade me to behave differently. In any case, I would much rather just avoid it ever happening again. It was very dreadful, and I was afraid I might not be able to catch you.’
Laurence could smile at this. ‘On that point at least we are agreed, and I will gladly promise you to do my best to avoid any repetition.’
Roland came running to fetch him the next morning; he had slept by Temeraire’s side again in the little tent. ‘Celeritas wants you, sir,’ she said, and went back to the castle by his side, once he had put his neckcloth back on and restored his coat. Temeraire gave him a sleepy murmur of farewell, barely opening one eye before going back to sleep. As they walked, she ventured, ‘Captain, are you still angry at me?’
‘What?’ he said, blankly; then he remembered, and said, ‘No, Roland; I am not angry with you. You do understand why you were wrong to speak so, I hope.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and he was able to ignore that it came out a little doubtfully. ‘I did not speak to Levitas; but I could not help seeing he does not look very well this morning.’
Laurence glanced at the Winchester as they walked through the courtyard; Levitas was curled in the back corner, far from the other dragons, and despite the early hour, he was not sleeping but staring dully at the ground. Laurence looked away; there was nothing to be done.
‘Run along, Roland,’ Celeritas said, when she had brought Laurence to him. ‘Captain, I am sorry to have called you so early; first, is Temeraire well enough to resume his training, do you think?’
‘I believe so, sir; he is healing very quickly, and yesterday he flew down to the lake and back with no difficulty,’ Laurence said.
‘Good, good.’ Celeritas fell silent, and then he sighed. ‘Captain, I am obliged to order you not to interfere with Levitas any further,’ he said.
Laurence felt hot colour come to his face. So Rankin had complained of him. And yet it was no more than he deserved; he would never have brooked such officious involvement in the running of his ship, or his management of Temeraire. The thing had been wrong, whatever justifications he had given himself, and anger was quickly subsumed in shame. ‘Sir, I apologize that you should have been put to the necessity of telling me so; I assure you it will not arise again.’
Celeritas snorted; having delivered his rebuke, he seemed at no great pains to reinforce it. ‘Give me no assurances; you would lower yourself in my eyes if you could mean them with real honesty,’ he said. ‘It is a great pity, and I am at fault as much as anyone. When I could not tolerate him myself, Aerial Command thought he might do as a courier, and set him to a Winchester; for his grandfather’s sake I could not bring myself to speak against it, though I knew better.’
Comforting as it was to have the reprimand softened, Laurence was curious to understand what Celeritas meant by not being able to tolerate him; surely Aerial Command would never have proposed a fellow like Rankin as a handler to a dragon as extraordinary as the training master. ‘Did you know his grandfather well?’ he asked, unable to resist making the tentative inquiry.
‘My first handler; his son also served with me,’ Celeritas said briefly, turning his head aside; his head drooped. He recovered after a moment and added, ‘Well, I had hopes for the boy, but at his mother’s insistence he was not raised here, and his family gave him strange notions; he ought never to have been an aviator, much less a captain. But now he is, and while Levitas obeys him, so he remains. I cannot allow you to interfere. You can imagine what it would mean if we allowed officers to meddle with each others’ beasts: lieutenants desperate to be captains could hardly resist the temptation to try and seduce away any dragon who was not blissfully happy, and we would have chaos.’
Laurence bowed his head. ‘I understand perfectly,
