us, they could not have stayed to take advantage of it; not upon such small dragons, and not if they wished to get themselves home before they collapsed.’
He had given his men leave to sleep a little on the way back, his own eyes closing once or twice during the flight, too; but that was nothing to seeing Temeraire almost grey with fatigue, and his wings tucked limply against his back.
‘No; they are probing our defences, more aggressively and sooner than I had expected,’ Jane said. ‘I am afraid they have grown suspicious. They chased you into Scotland with neither hide nor wing of another dragon to challenge them. The French are not fool enough to overlook the implications of that, however badly it ended for them. If one of their beasts reach the countryside and flies over the quarantine coverts, the game will be up: they will know they have license to invade.’
‘How have you kept them from growing suspicious this long?’ Laurence said. ‘Surely they must have noted the absence of patrols?’
‘We have managed to disguise the situation so far, by sending the sick on short rounds during clear days when they can be seen from a good distance,’ Jane said. ‘Many of them can still fly, and even fight for a little while, although none of them can stand a long journey. They tire too easily, and they feel the cold more than they should; they complain of aching bones, and the brisk winter has only made matters worse.’
‘If they lie upon the ground, I am not surprised they do not feel well,’ Temeraire said, lifting his head. ‘Of course they feel the cold; I feel it myself on this hard and frozen ground, and I am not at all sick.’
‘Dear fellow,’ Jane said, ‘I would make it summer again if I could; but there is nowhere else for them to sleep.’
‘They must have pavilions,’ Temeraire said.’
‘Pavilions?’ Jane asked.
Laurence went into his small sea-chest and brought out the thick packet which had come with them all the way from China, wrapped many times over with oilcloth and twine. The outer layers were stained almost black, the inner still pale. He unravelled them until he came to the thin fine rice paper inside, illustrating the plans for the dragon-pavilion, then handed the sheets to her.
‘Just see if the Admiralty will pay for such a thing,’ Jane said dryly, but she looked the designs over with a thoughtful more than a critical eye. ‘It is a clever arrangement, and I dare say it would make them a damned sight more comfortable than lying on damp ground. I hear those at Loch Laggan fare better; where they have the heat from the baths underground, and the Longwings quartered in sandpits hold up longer, though they do not like such confinement in the least.’
‘I am sure that if they only had the pavilions and some more appetizing food to eat, they would soon get well. I did not like to eat at all when I had my cold, until the Chinese cooked for me,’ Temeraire said.
‘I second that,’ Laurence agreed. ‘He scarcely ate at all before their intervention. Keynes was of the opinion that the strength of spices compensated, to some part, for his inability to smell or taste with the tongue.’
‘Well, I can certainly find a few guineas here and there for that; and manage to arrange a trial. We have not spent half of what we ordinarily would have on powder,’ Jane said. ‘It will not last for very long, not if we are to feed two hundred dragons spiced meals, and the problem of where I am to find cooks enough to manage it remains, but if we see some improvement from it, we may have some better luck persuading their Lordships to carry the project forward.
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