in the least,’ Barham said hurriedly, even while he looked pure venom at Laurence. ‘His Majesty and his Government have nothing but the deepest affection for the Emperor; no insult would ever willingly be offered, I assure you. If we had only known of the extraordinary nature of the egg, of your objections, this situation would never have arisen—’
‘Now, however, you are well aware,’ Yongxing said, ‘and the insult remains: Lung Tien Xiang is still in harness, treated little better than a horse, expected to carry burdens and exposed to all the brutalities of war, and all this, with a mere captain as his companion. Better had his egg sunk to the bottom of the ocean!’
Appalled, Laurence was glad to see this callousness left Barham and Powys as staring and speechless as himself. Even among Yongxing’s own retinue, the translator flinched, shifting uneasily, and for once did not translate the prince’s words back into Chinese.
‘Sir, I assure you, since we learned of your objections, he has not been under harness at all, not a stitch of it,’ Barham said, recovering. ‘We have been at the greatest of pains to see to Temeraire’s – that is, to Lung Tien Xiang’s – comfort, and to make redress for any inadequacy in his treatment. He is no longer assigned to Captain Laurence, that I can assure you: they have not spoken these last two weeks.’
The reminder was a bitter one, and Laurence felt what little remained of his temper fraying away. ‘If either of you had any real concern for his comfort, you would consult his feelings, not your own desires,’ he said, his voice rising, a voice that had been trained to bellow orders through a gale. ‘You complain of having him under harness, and in the same breath ask me to trick him into chains, so you might drag him away against his will. I will not do it; I will never do it, and be damned to you all.’
Judging by his expression, Barham would have been glad to have Laurence himself dragged away in chains: eyes almost bulging, hands flat on the table, on the verge of rising; for the first time, Admiral Powys spoke, breaking in, and forestalled him. ‘Enough, Laurence, hold your tongue. Barham, nothing further can be served by keeping him. Out, Laurence; out at once: you are dismissed.’
The long habit of obedience held: Laurence flung himself out of the room. The intervention likely saved him from an arrest for insubordination, but he went with no sense of gratitude; a thousand things were pent up in his throat, and even as the door swung heavily shut behind him, he turned back. But the Marines stationed to either side were gazing at him with thoughtlessly rude interest, as if he were a curiosity exhibited for their entertainment. Under their open, inquisitive looks he mastered his temper a little, and turned away before he could betray himself more badly.
Barham’s words were swallowed by the heavy wood, but the inarticulate rumble of his still-raised voice followed Laurence down the corridor. He felt almost drunk with anger, his breath coming in short abrupt spurts and his vision obscured, not by tears, not at all by tears, except of rage. The antechamber of the Admiralty was full of sea-officers, clerks, political officials, even a green-coated aviator rushing through with dispatches. Laurence shouldered his way roughly to the doors, his shaking hands thrust deep into his coat pockets to conceal them from view.
He struck out into the crashing din of late afternoon London, Whitehall full of working men going home for their suppers, and the bawling of the hackney drivers and chairmen over all, crying, ‘Make a lane, there,’ through the crowds. His feelings were as disordered as his surroundings, and he was only navigating the street by instinct; he had to be called three times before he recognized his own name.
He turned only reluctantly: he had no desire to be forced to return a civil word or gesture from a former colleague. But with a measure of relief he saw it was Captain Roland, not an ignorant acquaintance. He was surprised to see her; very surprised, for her dragon, Excidium, was a formation-leader at the Dover covert. She could not easily have been spared from her duties, and in any case she could not come to the Admiralty openly, being a female officer, one of those whose existence was made necessary by the insistence of Longwings on female captains. The secret was but barely known outside the ranks of the aviators, and jealously kept against certain public disapproval; Laurence himself had found it difficult to accept the notion, at first, but he had now grown so used to the idea that now Roland looked very odd to him out of uniform: she had put on skirts and a heavy cloak by way of concealment, neither of which suited her.
‘I have been puffing after you for the last five minutes,’ she said, taking his arm as she reached him. ‘I was wandering about that great cavern of a building, waiting for you to come out, and then you went straight past me in such a ferocious hurry I could scarcely catch you. These clothes are a damned nuisance; I hope you appreciate the trouble I am taking for you, Laurence. But never mind,’ she said, her voice gentling. ‘I can see from your face that it did not go well: let us go and have some dinner, and you shall tell me everything.’
‘Thank you, Jane; I am glad to see you,’ he said, and let her turn him in the direction of her inn, though he did not think he could swallow. ‘How do you come to be here, though? Surely there is nothing wrong with Excidium?’
‘Nothing in the least, unless he has given himself indigestion,’ she said. ‘No; but Lily and Captain Harcourt are coming along splendidly, and so Lenton was able to assign them a double patrol and give me a few days of liberty. Excidium took it as excuse to eat three fat cows at once, the wretched greedy thing; he barely cracked an eyelid when I proposed my leaving him with Sanders – that is my new first lieutenant – and coming to bear you company. So I put together a street-going rig and came up with the courier. Oh hell: wait a minute, will you?’ She stopped and kicked vigorously, shaking her skirts loose: they were too long, and had caught on her heels.
He held her by the elbow so she did not topple over, and afterwards they continued on through the London streets at a slower pace. Roland’s mannish stride and her scarred face drew enough rude stares that Laurence began to glare at the passers-by who looked too long, though she herself paid them no mind; she noticed his behaviour, however, and said, ‘You are ferocious out of temper; do not frighten those poor girls. What did those fellows say to you at the Admiralty?’
‘You have heard, I suppose, that an embassy has come from China; they mean to take Temeraire back with them, and Government does not care to object. But evidently he will have none of it: tells them all to go hang themselves, though they have been at him for weeks now to go,’ Laurence said. As he spoke, a sharp sensation of pain, like a constriction just under his breastbone, made itself felt. He could picture quite clearly Temeraire kept nearly all alone in the old, worn-down London covert, scarcely used in the last hundred years, with neither Laurence nor his crew to keep him company, no one to read to him, and of his own kind, only a few small courier-beasts flying through on dispatch service.
‘Of course he will not go,’ Roland said. ‘I cannot believe they imagined they could persuade him to leave you. Surely they ought to know better; I have always heard the Chinese cried up as the very pinnacle of dragon-handlers.’
‘Their prince has made no secret he thinks very little of me; likely they expected Temeraire to share much the same opinion, and to be pleased to go back,’ Laurence said. ‘In any case, they grow tired of trying to persuade him; so that villain Barham ordered I should lie to him and say we were assigned to Gibraltar, all to get him aboard a transport and out to sea, too far for him to fly back to land, before he knew what they were about.’
‘Oh, infamous.’ Her hand tightened almost painfully on his arm. ‘Did Powys have nothing to say to it? I cannot believe he let them suggest such a thing to you; one cannot expect a naval officer to understand these things, but Powys should have explained matters to him.’
‘I dare say he can do nothing; he is only a serving officer, and Barham is appointed by the Ministry,’ Laurence said. ‘Powys at least saved me from putting my neck in
