Page 39 of League of Dragons (Temeraire)
But Laurence looked up at him, and Temeraire halted. There was color in Laurence’s face, and though he had spoken so seriously, he was despite that smiling a little, as though some inward happiness buoyed him against all the difficulties of his new position. Laurence had said before that he did not grieve the loss of rank and fortune, of his reputation. But of course, he had been trying to save Temeraire’s feelings. Temeraire could not bear to spoil this moment of vindication and triumph. And if he spoke, Laurence would at once report to the Admiralty, of course, as he would say was his duty; and undoubtedly they would find some way to blame him for it, and perhaps even take back the command, after all.
“Yes?” Laurence said.
“—ought you not have another set of golden bars for your coat?” Temeraire said faintly.
Laurence laughed—laughed, quite aloud!—and said, “I thank you for the reminder; indeed I must make shift to acquire them at once.”
“He must not learn of the Concord going around,” Temeraire said to Perscitia anxiously, when Laurence had gone with Granby to begin arrangements, for the golden bars and for the dinner. “At least, not until we have contrived some solution; only what am I to do?”
“LAURENCE,IHAVE BEENthinking,” Temeraire said. It seemed an opportune moment: Laurence was busily engaged in figuring in a very large ledger the various expenditures required to fit out Iskierka’s pavilion for the dinner. “I have been thinking, it might be suitable formeto host a dinner as well—for some of my old friends from the breeding grounds—veterans, and unharnessed fellows—and perhaps some ferals might stop in—”
Lacking a better idea, he had seized on Laurence’s strategy as his own: a dinner, as he already knew, worked splendidly to solve any number of difficulties, and perhaps it should serve in this case, too. He did not quite know how to explain to Laurencewhyhe wished to host a dinner, but as it proved, he did not need to: Laurence lifted his head instantly from his work.
“You answer the wish I had not yet made,” Laurence said. “We must try to bring on some more light-weights and middle-weights, and I would be glad to take as many of the ferals and unharnessed beasts with us to Europe as you can convince to take the King’s shilling. You may offer them the usual rate of pay for harnessed beasts; their Lordships have grudgingly allowed as much—do you think some of them will come?”
“I will certainly make every effort to persuade them,” Temeraire said, feeling relieved and also uncomfortably as though he were practicing deceit—although it did not really deserve the name; after all, he was not trying to hide anything from Laurence for hisownbenefit, but only for Laurence’s; that ought to have some mitigating quality, even if the English language did not seem to offer a more satisfying and accurate alternative to the word. In any case, he would do his best to persuade as many dragons to come along as ever he could: that would certainly be a splendid solution, if everyone should come along to the Continent and help fightagainstNapoleon instead.
“Will you need my assistance with the arrangements?” Laurence asked. “You would not expect over twenty dragons, I suppose?”
“Well, I do not precisely know,” Temeraire said, even more uncomfortably; just that morning, Perscitia had spoken very darkly ofhundreds of silly beasts ready to take Bonaparte aboard,“but I thought perhaps the feeding station outside Dover would not object to our making use of their provisions for the day, and let us have the liberty of preparing them—I will be very happy to welcome any dragon who likes to come and eat, even if they do not think they will choose to come along with us.”
This station had been established by degrees over the last few years, by a reluctant Government grudgingly recognizing that feral dragons meant to frequent the place, and had better be fed on the nation’s terms than allowed to feed themselves. It was not yetofficiallya breeding ground—the Ministry finding it hateful to contemplate declaring a breeding ground in any insufficiently benighted location, and the many wealthy landholders in the area maintaining a loud rear-guard protest against the encroachment—but as many dragons were choosing to make it their home, and some of them as nesting grounds for their eggs, which the Corps gladly collected, there was as a practical matter very little difference.
There was no definite border to the territory, but if there had been, Temeraire’s own pavilion would have stood near the center—the pavilion Laurence had built him, ages ago it seemed, before treason and invasion and transportation, and the loss of Laurence’s first fortune. “We can hold it there,” Temeraire said, thinking of the distance from Dover, and the isolation of the place; there would be few people about to report on the meeting, and perhaps Laurence would never need to know.
“Splendid,” Laurence said, and made the necessary arrangements, which was to say, he wrote Temeraire a draft on his bank.
“And perhaps you would be glad to stay here in Dover, and leave the rest to me,” Temeraire said, “as you must worry about yourowndinner; I should not like to add to your work.”
“If you think you can manage the feeding-station master,” Laurence said.
“Oh! There will be no difficulty there; it is good old Lloyd, who used to run the breeding ground at Pen Y Fan, and who managed our supply for us during the invasion—and Perscitia has a handy group of fellows now, who will do anything for her if they are only paid for it,” Temeraire said quickly. “No, we can manage perfectly, I am sure,” and Laurence yielded. But that was surely doing him a service, and could not really be called concealment, Temeraire felt almost sure, as he hastily flew away to meet with Perscitia.
Unfortunately, his poor pavilion had never been very grand, and was lately much neglected. It had been used as a shelter for the sick dragons during the plague, and since then as a resting-place by any dragon who happened to like being an easy hour’s flight from the coverts of London and Dover, at least for a night—which was a great many dragons: couriers, ferals sneaking around to get scraps off the Corps, unharnessed beasts who liked to get work in the quarries, or in the ports, or doing portage. None of them had taken the trouble to keep it at all nice. The corners of the chamber really could not bear too-close examination, and when Temeraire put his head in and sniffed too deeply, he jerked his head back out again with distaste.
“Well,” Perscitia said doubtfully. “Perhaps we might find another…?”
There were some others near-by, although none as large. After the invasion, some of the unharnessed dragons had used their share of the proceeds from the golden eagles they had captured to build themselves pavilions—more or less; three buildings and half a dozen unfinished structures clustered in a loose line. But of these, only Perscitia’s own was not equally a mess—but that was not saying much, as hers was very small, and made of plain red brick and grey shingles, lacking entirely in elegance or charm.
“It is easier to keep neat, if it is not so big that men cannot clean it out without an enormous amount of trouble or expense,” she said with a defensive note, as Temeraire eyed it from outside, “and also, I do not find the size at all a disadvantage: if it were any larger, and some heavy-weight took it into his head to say she was claiming it from me, I should have no recourse—unless I liked to try and take her to court, and just you watch how much remedy the law would give a dragon.”
That was all very practical, Temeraire supposed, but he did not see why the pavilion needed to be a shut-up box, with only the most meager openings for air and light, and not a hint of decoration. “It is very nice,” he said tactfully, “and so long as it suits you, I am sure no one else could find anything wanting,” although she might at least have dug a garden, and put some interesting rocks along the side.
But she was quite right about the expense of keeping a larger pavilion clean: Perscitia’s secretary said she could not arrange to have his cleaned properly for under fifty pounds—fifty pounds, when Perscitia’s men had already to be paid fifteen pounds for their cooking services! A perfectly outrageous sum, and Temeraire could not bring himself to spend it only oncleaning;only he did not see how else it was to be done. He tried bringing water in a large barrel, and simply sloshing it over the floor, but he knew very well what Laurence would have said of this sort of house-keeping, and it did not have much effect. His attempt at using a small tree to brush out the corners met with little better success, except he did manage to knock away a piece of the wall.
“We could ask Iskierka to burn it out,” Perscitia suggested, but this was impossible: Granby and Iskierka had already gone to Edinburgh to take charge of the second half of Laurence’s force, which should leave from there instead of Dover due to some byzantine mystery of supply.
“I will ask Ning,” he decided.
That, at least, could be managed, as she was still in London. The Admiralty had sent a courier to escort her to the training grounds at Kinloch Laggan, while they awaited an answer from China, but she had very politely said, “How excellent military training must be! I will certainly consider your kind invitation, when my time is not so occupied as at present. In the meantime, you may wish to consider sending some workmen to enlarge this pavilion, and perhaps arrange a higher quality of food.”
Temeraire waited until cover of night to fly back to the London covert—only out of consideration, to avoid distressing the populace and the horses, and not of course to conceal his presence—and roused Ning out of the pavilion. She listened to his request with a tilted head. “It seems peculiar to me that you should be so urgent to clean this pavilion when you are imminently departing for the Continent,” she said interrogatively.
“I mean to hold a dinner there,” Temeraire said, a little warily. “Laurence wishes me to persuade some of the unharnessed dragons to come and join us,” which was perfectly true.
“Will this dinner entail a great deal of difficulty and expense?”
“Yes,” Temeraire said, with a sigh.
