beyond the borders of England.’
‘I do not—’ Laurence said, struggling, ‘I will not pretend that I do not consider it, for Temeraire's sake if not my own. But to fly would be to make myself truly a traitor.’
‘Laurence,’ Tharkay said, after a pause, ‘you are a traitor.’ It was a blow to hear him say so, in his cool blunt way. The lack of passion in his words only made them seem less accusation than statement of fact. ‘Allowing them to put you to death for it may be your form of apology, but it does not make you less guilty.’
Laurence did not know how to answer. Of course Tharkay was right. It was useless to cry that he loved his country, and had betrayed her only in extremis, as the lesser of two hideous evils. He had betrayed her, and the cause mattered not. So perhaps he now condemned Temeraire to lonely servitude, and himself to life-long imprisonment, for nothing. Perhaps all that could be lost, had been lost. And yet he could not answer.
They stood silently for a long time. At last, Tharkay shook his head and put his hand on Laurence's shoulder. ‘It is getting dark.’
‘Yes, I sent for him,’ Jane said flatly. ‘And you may leave off your coughing and your insinuations, if I wanted a man between my legs that badly, there is a camp full of handsome young fellows outside, and I dare say I could find one out to oblige me without going to such trouble.’
Having momentarily appalled her audience of generals and ministers into silence, she rode on, ‘If the French took him prisoner, they would have two Celestials; and even if the two are too close related to breed direct, they will crossbreed them—perhaps to Grand Chevaliers, if you like to imagine that—and breed the offspring back to fix the traits. In one generation they will have a breed of their own, and we nothing. We haven't a single egg out of Temeraire yet. Put Laurence in a gaol-wagon and bring him along under guard, if you insist, but if you have any sense you will make use of him, and the beast.’
The atmosphere in the tent was not a convivial one. Conversation circled endlessly around the disaster of the landing and Laurence had already gathered enough to realise that Jane had not been in command of the aerial defence, after all. Sanderson had been made admiral at Dover, over her head.
For what reason, Laurence scarcely needed to wonder. They had never liked making her commander, but having been forced to do it by necessity, they would likely have gone on rather than admit a mistake. Had they not wanted vengeance, had they not thought her complicit in Laurence's treason.
As for Sanderson, Laurence knew little about the man. He was handler to a Parnassian and commanded a large independent formation at Dover. They had served together, but not closely. Thoroughly experienced but no brilliant officer, Sanderson's attention was badly divided. Though his Artemisia had been dosed with the cure several times, she still fared poorly from the after-effects of the epidemic. It had nearly killed him too. He was not a year short of sixty, and had scarcely slept or eaten while his dragon ailed.
He now sat in a corner of the tent and dabbing an oozing cut over his eye with a folded bandage. He said nothing while the generals shouted at Jane instead. He looked grey and faded under the bright bloody streak across his forehead.
‘Splendid, so you would put a known traitor and his uncontrollable beast into the middle of our lines,’ one member of the Navy Board said. ‘You may as well rig up a telegraph and signal our plans to Bonaparte at once.’
‘Bonaparte can't damned well have an easier time of it than he has already, unless you run up a white flag,’ Jane snapped. ‘He has a hundred dragons more than he ought to, by any counting. You Admiralty gentlemen swear up and down that we would know he'd stripped Prussia and Italy to the bone, so I suppose he is pulling them out of the trees, and as we can't do the same, we must have every last beast we can scrounge. Six beasts too injured to fight in the next month, four of our newest ferals slunk off, and you want to let a Celestial moulder. It's pure idiocy.’
‘Why precisely are we listening to this haranguing fishwife?’ someone said.
‘To be more precise,’ Jane said, ‘you are not listening to me. But you had better start. Begging your pardon Sanderson, you are a damned fine formation-leader, but you weren't the man for this.’
‘No, not at all, Roland,’ Sanderson said, dully, and patted the cloth to his forehead again.
‘We are listening to her,’ another general from the back, said impatiently; he was a lean sharp-faced man with a decided aquiline nose, and wore the Order of the Bath, ‘because you could not scrape up a competent man for the job. We are not going to beat Bonaparte with yesterday's mess.’
‘Portland—’ another began.
‘Stop bleating the man's name like a talisman,’ the general returned. ‘If it is not Nelson with you, it is Portland. Gibraltar is as bad as Denmark, neither of them can be here in under a month. Until then, get out of her way.’
‘General Wellesley, you cannot seriously support the suggestion—’ another minister said, gesturing to Laurence.
‘I am capable of deciding to what I will support, without consultation. Thank you,’ Wellesley said. He looked Laurence up and down with a cold dismissive eye. ‘He's a sentimentalist, isn't he—surrendered himself? Damned romantic. What difference does it make? Hang him after.’
Jane took him to her tent. ‘No, you had better stay, Frette,’ she said, speaking to her aide-de-camp, who had risen from a camp-table as she ducked inside. ‘I will not make hay for any more rumours.’
She poured herself a glass of wine, and drank it with her back to Laurence. He could not quarrel with her decision, but he wished that they had been alone. He felt it impossible to speak as he wished before anyone else. Then she put down the glass and sat down behind her desk. ‘Tomorrow you will go by courier to Pen Y Fan,’ she said tiredly, without looking at him. ‘That is where they have been keeping Temeraire. Will you bring him back?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Laurence said.
‘They will very likely hang you after, unless you manage to do something heroic,’ Jane said.
‘If I wished to avoid justice, I might have stayed in France,’ Laurence said. ‘Jane—’
‘Admiral Roland, if you please,’ she said, sharply. After a moment's silence, she added, ‘I cannot blame you, Laurence. Christ knows it was ugly. But if I am to do any good here, I cannot be fighting their damned Lordships as well as Napoleon's dragons. Frette will take you to the officers' tent to eat, and then find you somewhere to sleep. You will go tomorrow, and when you come back you will be flying in formation, under Admiral Sanderson. That will be all.’
She gave a jerk of her head, and Frette held open the tent flap clearing his throat. Laurence could only bow, and withdraw slowly, wishing he had not seen her drop her forehead to her clenched fist, and the grimness around her mouth.
He felt a dreadful sense of awkwardness when entered the large mess tent in Frette's company. He saw none of his nearest acquaintance, and was glad to postpone that evil, but several remarks were made by little known captains. He pretended not to hear, the discomfort and downcast faces of those who would not snub him, but still did not choose to meet his eyes, was worse.
He had been braced for this, so was unprepared when his hand was seized, and aggressively pumped by a gentleman he had only seen perhaps twice before, across the officers' common room at Dover. Captain Hesterfield loudly said, ‘May I shake your hand, sir?’ too
