we are not supposed to fight unless the nation is in danger, because China has a good deal more dragons than here and we are too valuable to lose. So we only fight in emergencies, when ordinary fighting dragons are not up to the task.’
‘Oh, China,’ Requiescat said dismissively. 'Anyway chums, there you have it plain as day. I say I am tops, and ought to have the best cave; he says it isn't so, and he won't hand it over. Ordinarily, there'd be no ways to work this out ‘cept with a tussle, and then someone gets hurt and everyone is upset. This is just the sort of thing the council was made up for, and I expect it ought to be pretty clear to all of you which of us is right, without it coming to claws.’
‘I do not say I am tops,’ Temeraire said, ‘although I think it likely. I say that the cave is mine, and that it is unjust for you to take it. That is what the council ought to be for. Justice, not squashing everyone down, just to keep things comfortable for the biggest dragons.’
The council, being composed of the biggest dragons, did not look very enthusiastic. Ballista said, ‘All right, we have heard everyone out. Now look, Teymuhreer,’ she pronounced it quite wrongly, ‘we don't want a lot of fuss and bother—’
‘I do not see why not,’ Temeraire said. ‘What else have we to do?’
Several of the smaller dragons tittered, rustling their wings together. She cleared her throat warningly at them and continued, ‘We don't want a lot of fighting, anyhow. Why don't you just go on and show us a bit of flying, so we know what you can do; then we can settle this.’
‘But that is not at all the point!’ Temeraire said. ‘It ought not make a difference if I were as small as Moncey—’ he looked, but Moncey was not among the little dragons observing, so he amended, ‘or if I were as small as Minnow there. No one was using it, no one wanted the cave before I had it.’
Requiescat gave a flip of his wings. ‘It was not the nicest, before,’ he said, in reasonable tones.
Temeraire snorted angrily. ‘Yes, yes; go on, then; unless you don't like us to see,’ Ballista said impatiently. That was too much to bear. He threw himself aloft, spiralling high and fast as he could, tightening into a spring, and then dived directly into formation manoeuvres, that was what would please them, he thought bitterly. He finished the training pass and backwinged directly, flying the pattern backwards, and then hovered in mid-air before descending sharply. He was showing off, of course, but they had demanded he do so. Landing, he announced, ‘I will show you the divine wind now, but you had better clear away from that rock wall, as I expect a lot of it will come down.’
There was a good deal of grumbling as the big dragons shifted themselves, with dragging tails and annoyed looks. Temeraire ignored them and breathed in deeply several times, stretching his chest wide, as he meant to do as much damage as he could. He noticed in dismay, that the crag was not loose, nor made of the same nice soft white limestone in the caves, which crumbled so conveniently. He scraped a claw down the rockface and merely left white scratches on the hard grey rock.
‘Well?’ Ballista said. ‘We are all waiting.’
There was no helping it. Temeraire backed away from the cliff and drew a preparatory breath. Then there was a hurried rush of wings above and Moncey dropped into the clearing beside him, panting, and said, ‘Call it off; it's all off,’ urgently, to Ballista.
‘Hey, what's this, now?’ Requiescat said, frowning.
‘Quiet, you fat lump,’ Moncey said, narrowing a good many eyes; he was not much bigger than the Regal Copper's head. ‘I'm fresh from Brecon. The Frogs have come over the Channel.’
A great confused babble arose all around, even Gentius roused with a low hiss, and while everyone spoke at once, Moncey turned to Temeraire and said, ‘Listen, your Laurence, word is in they locked him up on a ship called the Goliath—’
‘The Goliath!’ Temeraire said. ‘I know that ship. Laurence has spoken of it to me before. That is very good—That is splendid. I know just where it is, it is on blockade, and I am sure anyone at Dover can tell me exactly where—’
‘Dear fellow, there's no good way to say this,’ Moncey said. ‘The Frogs sank her this morning, coming across. She is at the bottom of the ocean, and not a man got off her before she went down.’
Temeraire did not say anything. A terrible sensation was rising, climbing up his throat. He turned away to let it come. The roar burst out like the roll of thunder overhead, silencing every word around him, and the wall of stone cracked open before him like a pane of mirrored glass.
They pulled the ship's boats into Dover harbour well past eleven o'clock at night, sweating underneath their wet clothing, hands blistered on the oars. They climbed out shivering onto the docks. Captain Puget was handed up in a litter, almost senseless with blood-loss, and Lieutenant Frye, nineteen, was the only one left to oversee. The rest of the senior officers were dead. Frye looked at Laurence with great uncertainty, then glanced around. The men offered him nothing, they were beaten with rowing and defeat. At last, Laurence quietly offered, ‘The port admiral,’ prompting him. Frye coloured and said to a gangly young midshipman, clearing his throat, ‘Mr. Meed, you had better take the prisoner to the port admiral, and let him decide what is to be done.’
With two Marines for guards, Laurence followed Meed through the dockside streets to the port admiral's office where they found nearly more confusion than had been on the deck of the Goliath in her last moments. After the double broadside had un-masted her, smoke had spread everywhere, fire crawling steadily down through the ship towards the powder magazine, as cannon ran wildly back and forth on her decks.
Here the hallways were suffocating with unchecked speculation. ‘Five hundred thousand men landed,’ one man said in the hallway, a ridiculous number, inflated by panic. ‘Already in London,’ said another, ‘and two millions in shipping seized,’ the very last of these being the only plausible suggestion. If Bonaparte had captured one or two of the ports on the Thames estuary and taken the merchantmen there, he might indeed have reached something like that number. He would have seized an enormous collection of prizes to fuel the invasion, like coal heaped into a burning stove.
‘I do not give a damn if you take him out and lynch him, only get him out of my sight,’ the port admiral said furiously, when Meed finally managed to work his way through the press and ask him for orders. There was a vast roar outside the windows like the wind rising in a storm, even though the night was clear. More petitioners were shoving frantically past them. Laurence had to catch Meed by the arm and hold him up as they fought their way out. The boy could scarcely have been fourteen and was a little underfed.
Set adrift, Meed looked helpless. Laurence wondered if he would have to find his own prison, but then one young lieutenant pushed through towards them, flung him a look of flat contempt, and said, ‘That is the traitor, is it? This way. You dogs take a damned proper hold of him, before he sneaks away in this press.’
He took up an old truncheon in the hallway, and swinging it to clear the way, took them out into the street. Meed trotted after him gratefully. The lieutenant brought them to a run-down sponging house two streets away, with bars upon the windows and a mastiff tied in the barren yard. It howled unhappily, adding to the clamour of the half-rioting crowd. A beating upon the door brought out the master of the house. He whined objections, which the lieutenant overruled one after another, but at last conceded.
