Page 40 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
“Do you expect many of these dragons to join you?” she inquired.
“It is just as well to make an attempt,” Temeraire said, and surely at least a few of his old friends would come, although he did not have thehighesthopes—it was not like the invasion, when everyone had been worried about the French dragons taking their territory, and there was no denying that the Government had behaved in a scurrilous fashion since then; few dragons would believe in pay tomorrow when their accounts were a year in arrears as it was.
“Hm,” Ning said thoughtfully, but she acquiesced without further argument. Temeraire carried her on his back to the pavilion, and once there, she spat out a single small ball of her white flame directly into a corner—very neatly, Temeraire had to admit—and the refuse scorched up instantly.
“That is a very interesting phenomenon,” Perscitia said, lowering her head to examine Ning closely, even trying to peer down Ning’s throat. Ning drew her head back and gave her a flat stare, which Perscitia quite ignored. “How is it accomplished?”
“Pray let us step outside until the air has cleared,” Ning said in a stiff and dignified fashion, turning away.
Temeraire flung water onto the overheated stones and fanned away the hissing cloud of steam that resulted. Fortunately, the stink went away with the smoke. The corner was a little blackened perhaps, but he was sure that no-one would notice that much, particularly at night.
Ning was quite willing to repeat the operation, too. “Thatisvery handy of you,” Temeraire said approvingly, when all the pavilions were clean, if somewhat smoky. “Now I had better fly you back,” but Ning demurred.
“I will stay for the dinner,” she announced, to his dismay.
“What have you to do at dinner?” he demanded.
“I am hungry,” she said, which was no explanation at all; the dinner was not until tomorrow, and meanwhile they would certainly feed her in London today, if she went back, but when Temeraire tried to point this out, she only yawned delicately, and said, “I beg your pardon, I am so very fatigued! I will rest now,” and then closed her eyes and pretended to go to sleep.
“There is nothing wrong with that,” Perscitia said. “She may as well stay: anyone who has heard of her will be impressed to have her on our side,” except Temeraire was not certain Ningwason their side, or of anything she would do for that matter: it was an uncomfortable feeling, being round her, when she might at any moment burst out into some new and alarming start.
Perscitia’s men—who it turned out were mostly women; Temeraire had mistaken them, because they all wore pantaloons beneath their skirts, and hiked these up to their waists while they worked—had already been engaged all that day in putting beef and mutton on roasting spits. There would be nothing really elegant about the meal, Temeraire mournfully recognized, but Perscitia had firmly rejected his every suggestion for more elaborate presentations. “We may have near a hundred dragons to feed,” she said, “and many of them have never even had anything cooked: that must be enough novelty. Otherwise we will have half of them turn their noses up at it, and not enough for the other half, who will complain we are slighting them. No, a simple roasting must do, and we will make mash with the drippings, for anyone who is still hungry after they get their share of the meat.”
She had been sending couriers everywhere, and dragons began to arrive early the next morning. They came hungry: Temeraire had a deal of work to do trying to keep them off the meat until dinner-time, particularly the Scottish ferals. A great number of those had come, including Ricarlee, who was rude enough to begin talking up Napoleon’s Concord to them all. “I ought to run him off,” Temeraire said, fuming. “He should hold hisowndinner, if he likes to promote Napoleon’s plans.”
“I would not advise it,” Ning remarked, from behind half-slitted drowsy eyes. “You ought to have quietly disposed of him before he came—” this sounded rather ominous, and Temeraire eyed her sidelong, “—but now it is too late: you will only give more credence and force to his arguments, if you establish him as worthy of being chased away. Allow him to speak, with a tolerant air, and do not permit anyone to see you think there is anything of sense in what he says.”
“So youdowant us to beat the French now?” Temeraire said, skeptical. “Or why are you offering advice?”
“You are very suspicious,” Ning said. “You are my progenitor; I am not ungrateful.” Temeraire did not swallow this, and stared at her until she flipped a dismissive point of her wing. “Are you proposing to destroy the French entirely? To annihilate every one of them?”
“Of course not,” Temeraire said, aghast. “We must only beat Napoleon properly, so he will stop having wars everywhere.”
“Very well,” Ning said. “So far we are agreed.”
Temeraire remained doubtful, but he could not stay to pry a better answer out of her: a Winchester and a couple of the Scots dragons were creeping up on the beautifully roasted mutton that Perscitia’s men had just finished turning.
He was more than a little exasperated by the time the dinner-hour at last arrived, and grew even more so when Ricarlee—who had the advantage of being smaller, and less nice in his manners—finished his own portion quickly and seized the floor to say, “Well, this is a handsome dinner indeed! I wouldn’t mind eating so more often than once in ten years, I will say,” and began again to rhapsodize about the Concord, and how it would ensure them an endless supply of delights.
More than one dragon made supportive noises, including, Temeraire was sorry to see, some of his old comrades from the invasion. Annoyed, Temeraire swallowed down his own side of beef more quickly than he liked—he privately could admit there was a great deal to say for the flavor of a nice piece of beef, properly spit-roasted, with only a little salt, and he would have preferred to savor it.
“That,” he said loudly, “is nonsense. I do not deny that the Concord talks a great deal of sense, where it proposes rules for governing among ourselves, but there is no use imagining that Napoleon can give us rights to cows and sheep that have been raised by men who do not owe him allegiance. You must all see that Napoleon cannot really give you any land in Britain, as it is not his. He only means to set us quarreling with the Government here because they are his enemies; he wants us to fight them forhisbenefit, and bear all the cost, while he gives us nothing.”
“There’s something to what you say,” Ricarlee said thoughtfully now, but before Temeraire could congratulate himself on swaying the Concord’s most fervent supporter, he went on, “I don’t see why we ought to do all the work, and Napoleon get the good of it all alone. We should make him pay us, in gold, if he wants us to fight.”
This dreadful suggestion attracted many murmurs of enthusiasm, to Temeraire’s horror, until he sat up as tall as he could and said loudly, “That is treasonous!” to interrupt them. “And it will only end in the most dreadful way you can imagine. WhenIcommitted treason—and not for any selfish reason, but only to share the cure—they took Laurence’s entire fortune away—ten thousand pounds, lost!” This silenced the audience, except for several faint hisses of dismay. Temeraire, relieved to have headed off the worst, added, “If you did get any gold from Napoleon, the men here will only confiscate it, when he has been beat, and he is sure to be beaten; Laurence and I are going to the Continent this coming week, to finish him off. And even if hedidwin, it would only be after the British had killed any number of you, and then you may be sure he would sail in and snatch it all for himself, and give all your territories to French dragons, instead.”
“Well, what else areyouproposing, then?” Ricarlee said. “You are brim-full of doom, indeed, and reasons why we oughtn’t listen to Napoleon, but I ha’nt heard any better notions from you, other than we shouldn’t say boo to a lieutenant of horse. It’s all very well for those who have wagons full of gold and admirals in their pockets to tell the rest of us we may put up with nine shillings threepence a day, which don’t add up to a sheep in a sennight if it is ever paid, which it isn’t.”
Temeraire flattened back his ruff. “It is true my situation at present is an enviable one,” he said coolly. “But my gold was won fairly on the field of battle, by doing my duty, and I do not think anyone can disagree I have acted in a most disinterested fashion where the welfare of my fellow dragons was at stake.”
He might have added that there was no wagon full of gold anymore. Ferris, back in Vilna, had arranged the sale of all the treasure they had been obliged to leave behind when going to the Alps. Through mysterious but—Laurence had assured him—reliable means, the value thereof had appeared in a bank account of his very own in Britain, and was now invested in the Funds and producing that very delightful thing, interest. But this was not a point on which he felt he ought to enlarge when talking with those who did not have so much as five pounds to their credit, and could not have gotten it out of a bank again, if they wished.
“Wagons of gold are not commonly foundsaveupon the field of battle, I find,” Ning put in unexpectedly, in a thoughtful voice, loud enough to carry.
Temeraire eyed her warily, but she made no further remark. “In any case,” he went on, “there is a considerable difference between my saying you oughtn’t simply swallow this plan Napoleon has held out to you, when anyone can see he has only made it up for his own ends, and my saying you must put up with our Government behaving in a scaly manner, which I do not say at all. Indeed,” sudden inspiration striking, “we should make ourownconcord—and it needn’t be one that is so unreasonable as to force a quarrel.”
“Yes, indeed!” Perscitia said, sitting up sharp. “We must propose a bill, to Parliament, with our requirements.”
