he asked.
While Perscitia began listing off names, Reedly, a mongrel half-Winchester, courier-weight with yellow streaks, piped up from the corner, ‘You ought to speak to Majestatis.’
Perscitia bristled at once. ‘I see no reason why he ought do any such thing. Majestatis is a very common sort of dragon; and he is not on the council, anyway.’
‘He made sure I got a share of the food, when we were all sick, and things were short,’ Minnow said, on the other side. She was a muddy-coloured feral with touches of Grey Copper and Sharpspitter and even a little Garde-de-Lyon, which had given her vivid orange eyes and blue spots to set off her otherwise drab colouring.
A low murmur of general agreement went around. A crowd had gradually accumulated in Temeraire's cave to offer their advice and remarks. A good many of the smaller dragons had interested themselves in Temeraire's case: those he had sheltered and their acquaintances, and the not-insignificant number, who had some injury, real or imagined, to lay at Requiescat's door. ‘And he is not on the council only because he does not care to be; he is a Parnassian.’ she said to Temeraire.
‘If he were a Flamme de Gloire, it would hardly signify,’ Perscitia said coldly, ‘as he does nothing but sleep all the time.’
Moncey nudged Temeraire with his head and murmured, ‘Corrected her once, six years ago.’
‘It was only an error of arithmetic!’ Perscitia said heatedly. ‘I should have found it out myself in a moment, I was only preoccupied by the much more important question—’
‘Where does he live?’ Temeraire asked, interrupting. He felt that anyone who had no time for politics must be rather sensible.
Majestatis was indeed sleeping when Temeraire came to see him; his cave was out of the way, and not very large. But Temeraire noticed that there was a carefully placed heap of stones, along the back, which blocked one's view into the interior. If he widened his pupils as far as they would go, he thought he could make out a darker space behind them, as if there were a passageway going back deeper into the mountainside.
He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite. But at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking, Temeraire coughed, then coughed again a little more emphatically. Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, ‘So you are not leaving, I suppose?’
‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, ‘I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately. I will go at once.’
‘Well, you might as well stay now,’ Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself awake. ‘I don't bother to wake up if it isn't important enough to wait for, that's all.’
‘I suppose that is sensible, if you like to sleep better than to have a conversation,’ Temeraire said, dubiously.
‘You'll like it better in a few years yourself,’ Majestatis said.
‘I do not expect so,’ Temeraire said. ‘At least, the Analects say it is not proper for a dragon to sleep more than fourteen hours of the day, so I shan't, unless,’ he added, desolately, ‘I am still shut up in here, where there is nothing worth doing.’
‘If you think so, what are you doing here, instead of in the coverts?’ Majestatis said. He listened to the explanation with the casual sympathy of one listening to a storyteller, and passed no judgment, other than to nod equably and say, ‘A bad lot for you, poor worm.’
‘Why have you come here?’ Temeraire ventured. ‘You are not very old, yourself; do you really like to sleep so much? You might have a captain, and be in battles.’
Majestatis shrugged with one wing-tip, flared and folded down again. ‘Had one, mislaid him.’
‘Mislaid?’ Temeraire said.
‘Well,’ Majestatis said, ‘I left him in a water-trough, but I don't suppose he is still sitting there.’
He was not inclined to be very enthusiastic, even when Temeraire had explained,. He only sighed and said, ‘You are young, to be making such a fuss out of it.’
‘If I am,’ Temeraire retorted, ‘at least I am not complacent, and ready to let this sort of bullying go on, when I can do something about it; and I do not mean to be satisfied,’ he added, with a pointed look at the back of Majestatis's cave, ‘to arrange matters better only for myself.’
Majestatis's eyes narrowed, but he did not stir otherwise. ‘It seems to me you are as likely to make it worse for everyone at least. There's no wrangling now, and no one is getting hurt.’
‘No one is very comfortable, either,’ Temeraire said. ‘We all might have nicer places, but no one will work to improve theirs; they will not if they know it may be taken away from them, at any time, because they have made it nice. Once a cave is yours, it ought to be yours, like property.’
The council looked a little dubious at this argument, when Temeraire repeated it to them the next afternoon. Early that morning, the rain had been broken by a strong westerly wind sweeping the clouds scudding before it. They had gathered in a great clearing among the mountains, full of pleasant broad smooth-topped rocks, warmed by the sun. Majestatis had come after all, and Gentius, although the old dragon was mostly asleep after the effort of making the flight. He was curled up on the blackest rock, murmuring occasionally to himself. Requiescat sprawled inelegantly across half the length of the clearing, making himself look very large. Temeraire disdained the attempt and kept himself neatly coiled, with his ruff spread proudly, although he privately wished he might have had his talon-sheaths, and a headdress such as he had seen in the markets along the old silk caravan roads; he was sure that could not fail to impress.
Ballista, a big Chequered Nettle, thumped her barbed tail on the ground several times to silence the muttering that had arisen among the council, in the middle of Temeraire's remarks. ‘And if we agree that everyone may keep their own cave, when they have got it,’ Temeraire went on, valiantly, in the face of so much scepticism, ‘I would be very happy to share the trick of arranging them better. You all may have nicer caves, if you only take a little trouble to make them so.’
‘Very nice I am sure if you are a yearling’ one peevish older Parnassian said, ‘to be fussing with rocks and twigs.’
There were several snorts of agreement; and Temeraire bristled. ‘If you do not care to, and you are happy with your cave as it is, then you need not. But neither should you be able to take someone else's cave, when they have done all the work. I am certainly not going to be robbed as if I were a lump. I will smash the cave up myself and make it unpleasant before I hand it over meekly.’
‘Now, now.’ Ballista said. ‘There is no call to go yelling about smashing things or making threats; that is quite enough of that. Now we'll hear Requiescat.’
‘Hum, quarrelsome, isn't he,’ Requiescat said. ‘Well, you all know me chums and I don't mean to make a brag of myself, but I expect no one would say I couldn't take any cave I liked if I wanted to. I am not a squabbler, and don't like to hurt anybody; a young fellow like this is excitable enough to bite off a bigger fight than he can swallow—’
‘Oh!’ Temeraire said indignantly. ‘You may not claim any such thing, unless you should like to prove it. I have beaten dragons nearly as big as you.’
Requiescat swung his big head around. ‘Isn't it true you're
