Crucible of Gold. Naomi Novik

her tone. “Only if there were room enough for a dragon,” Laurence said, and excused himself to step outside and take the air: in the dark, with the lights of the house shining and the garden full of palm-trees and fruit bats obscured, he might have been at exactly that sort of manor, which he might indeed have imagined for himself, six years and a lifetime ago. He had given the future scarcely a thought since then, occupied excessively by an unexpected present; he was surprised to find he would now gladly prefer his isolate valley, with all its toil and inconveniences.

      But the valley had been left behind: the cattle sold, or loaded aboard the Allegiance to feed the dragons; the pavilion roofless under the stars with its pillars sentinel over the half-grown sheaves of wheat. No caretaker could be found for so lonely a place; if ever they returned, there would be vines twining the pillars, and weeds and saplings thick in the fields they had so laboriously cleared.

      If ever they returned. He turned and went back into the house.

      The governor’s mansion stood opposite the promontory housing the covert, around the bay, so the aviators and the soldiers had a sobering course of night air on the way back to their quarters. Some of the younger officers found the lights of the dockside taverns along the way a stronger lure than the quiet of their barracks, however, and eeled away in twos and threes; until Laurence was very nearly walking alone but for Granby. Rankin was on ahead, with Lieutenant Blincoln and Lieutenant Drewmore, and without need for discussion Laurence and Granby slowed their steps and turned off onto a more circuitous route, to stretch out the walk.

      “No-one can say it wasn’t a handsome way to see us off,” Granby said, “although MacArthur might have been less festive about it: I am sure he would have wrung my hand with just as much pleasure if I had told him I was going to the devil; not to say we aren’t.”

      “I think we must have a little more faith in Mr. Hammond than that,” Laurence said.

      “I’ve more in the Tswana,” Granby said. “I can’t imagine what he supposes we are going to say that will turn them up sweet, and they have some damned dangerous beasts: fire-breathers, and four heavy-weight breeds that we know of, and we know precious little. I would just as soon try farther north, and see if the colonials would hire out some of their beasts for fighting, if they have so many they are using them for freight these days.”

      He spoke with a vague disgruntlement shared, Laurence knew, by every aviator who had learned that the Americans had begun to raise dragons in so much earnest that they were bidding fair to rival British numbers, with a scant fraction of the number of men looking to fly them: it was deeply dissatisfying to those who had spent their lives in service, hoping for a rare chance to one day captain their own dragon.

      “But much smaller creatures,” Laurence said, “and without military training; there can be no comparison. You may be certain Napoleon will have shipped the most deadly of the Tswana, and as many of them as he could cram aboard his transports.”

      “Well, I will hope the three of us may make them take enough notice to bother listening, instead of just having at us straight off,” Granby said, but pessimistically.

      “I know Hammond is claiming there will be reinforcements sent to meet us from Halifax, or the Channel, but I will rely on that when they land before us yelling for cattle, and not an instant before.

      “Anyway, I oughtn’t complain about the Foreign Office’s latest notion, when I am damned grateful for the consequences: it was enough to drive a fellow wild thinking of you and Temeraire thrown away in this wretched little port with that fellow Rankin yapping at your heels, and a crowd of useless layabouts besides. I don’t blame you for chucking the lot of them and going into the wilds. Whatever are they about, now?” They had come at last in sight of the covert gates, and there was a commotion up on the hillside.

      They found something of an uproar, overseen by four interested dragons whose heads loomed above the knot of men; Demane at the heart of it, Laurence rather despairingly saw, and an officer of the New South Wales Corps on his knees in the dirt before him with a bloody lip and wild-eyed alarm at Kulingile peering down.

      “—outrage,” Rankin was saying in great heat, “—will have his commander here in the morning, demanding an explanation—”

      “I don’t care!” Demane said. “And the only one who has been outrageous is him; I know you don’t care a jot, so he is here and will stay here, until Captain Laurence comes back; and if he wants to get up and leave before then, he may try, and I will have Kulingile hold him upside-down over the cliff.”

      “But Roland, I am sure if Demane is angry with him, he has done something to deserve it,” Temeraire was saying meanwhile to Emily Roland, with what Laurence could only call misplaced loyalty, “so there is no reason not to wait for Laurence to come back: he will certainly know whatever is the best thing to do. But perhaps you had better not hold that fellow over the cliff,” he added to Kulingile, the first thing of sense in the conversation, “for you might very easily drop him, if he squirmed. If he should try and run away, you can just pin him down instead: only being careful not to squash him.”

      “You are all a pack of damned fools,” Roland said, as furious as Laurence had ever heard her, “and if he weren’t a coward, he would run, and none of you should do anything; there ain’t any reason the captain ought hear anything about it.”

      Iskierka said, “Well, I would like to hear about it, as I am not asleep anymore; is there some fighting?”

      “Oh, lord,” Granby said, under his breath.

      “I am here; what the devil is going on?” Laurence said grimly. “Demane, we spoke this afternoon, I thought, on the subject of brawling.”

      “I haven’t!” Demane said; then realizing the bloody mess of his captive’s face gave him every appearance of a lie, added, “Roland did that; only she would have let him off—”

      “Because I didn’t care to make a stupid great fuss of knocking down some drunken looby is no reason for you to put your oar into it; what bloody right do you suppose you have, pushing into my affairs?” Roland said. “Sir, pray don’t give him any mind—”

      “How was I to know, anyway?” the soldier blurted, from the ground, “—with her hanging about in trousers; I thought it was a get-up, for a joke.”

      “If it was, that wouldn’t mean I wanted any of your grabbing, anyway,” Roland said contemptuously, “and if you didn’t know that, you ought have asked, first, if you mean to complain of me.”

      Rankin snorted. “Ah; I might have known it would be something on the order of this sordid mess. You may relieve yourself of your prisoner, Demane: no-one expects that the women of the Corps protect their virtue as if they were gentlewomen, and I can only imagine the ridicule with which any suit for breach should meet in such a case; or did you expect to be permitted to hang him for jealousy?”

      “That is enough, sir; more than enough,” Laurence said to Rankin, sharply. “And you: your name, sir, and your commander’s,” he said to the soldier, who a little belligerently gave it as Lieutenant Paster. “He will hear from me in the morning; I trust he will share my opinion of a man who cannot show decent respect either to a woman, or to a fellow officer.”

      Lieutenant Paster did not stay to argue, when Laurence had waved him off, but escaped down the hill at speed; Demane scowled, and the crowd began to disperse with the focus of interest lost.

      “Sir, I don’t need a fuss made,” Roland said, coming up to him. “There wasn’t anything to the matter—”

      “If you please,” Laurence said, forestalling her with a hand, and turning to lead her back to his tent, Demane following and trying to speak to her; Roland kept a determined shoulder to his face and ignored him coldly, while he protested that he had only done as he ought—

      “That is more than I can say,” Laurence said sharply, sitting at his desk. “Your first concern, Demane, ought have been for the reputation and satisfaction of the lady in question, neither of which can have