Empire of Ivory. Naomi Novik

which was the required path to a political position, however moral and just it was, however necessary, or contrary to their immediate self-interest it was. Laurence bade him good-night without further disheartening advice; but as he closed the windows, which began to rattle gently from the sleeping dragon’s breath, the distance to the covert beyond the castle walls seemed to him less easily bridged than all the long miles which had brought them home from China.

      The Edinburgh streets were quiet in the morning, unnaturally so, and deserted but for the dragons sleeping in stretched ranks over the old grey cobbles. Temeraire’s great bulk was heaped awkwardly before the smoke-stained cathedral and his tail running down into an alleyway scarcely wide enough to hold it. The sky was clear, cold and very blue, only a scattering of terraced clouds ran out to sea, a faint suggestion of pink and orange lighting the stones.

      Tharkay was awake, the only soul stirring; he sat crouched against the cold in one of the narrow doorways; an elegant home, the heavy door stood open behind him. He had a cup of tea, steaming in the air. ‘May I offer you one?’ he inquired. ‘I am sure the owners would not begrudge us.’

      ‘No, thank you; I must go up and see about the dragons,’ Laurence said; he had been woken by a runner from the castle, summoning him to a meeting in the castle, at once. Another piece of discourtesy, when they had arrived so late; and to make matters worse, the boy had been unable to tell him if any provision had been made for the hungry dragons. What the ferals would say when they awoke, Laurence did not like to think.

      ‘You need not worry; I am sure they can fend for themselves,’ Tharkay said blandly, not a cheering prospect, and offered Laurence his own cup as consolation; Laurence sighed and drained it, grateful for the strong, hot brew.

      He was escorted from the castle gates to the admiral’s office by a young red-coated Marine, their path winding around to the headquarters building through the medieval stone courtyards, empty and free from hurry in the early morning dimness. The doors were opened, and he went in stiffly, straight-shouldered; his face had set into disapproving lines, cold and rigid. ‘Sir,’ he said, eyes fixed at a point upon the wall; and only then glanced down, and said, surprised, ‘Admiral Lenton?’

      ‘Laurence. Yes, sit; sit down.’ Lenton dismissed the guard, and the door closed upon them and the musty, book-lined room; the Admiral’s desk was nearly clear, but for a single small map, a handful of papers. Lenton sat for a moment silently. ‘It is damned good to see you,’ he said at last. ‘Very good to see you indeed. Very good.’

      Laurence was very much shocked at his appearance. In the year since their last meeting, Lenton seemed to have aged ten: hair gone entirely white, and a vague, rheumy look in his eyes; his jowls hung slack. ‘I hope I find you well, sir,’ Laurence said, deeply sorry, no longer wondering why Lenton had been transferred north to Edinburgh, a quieter post. He wondered what illness had ravaged him so, and who had been made commander at Dover in his place.

      ‘Oh…’ Lenton waved his hand, fell silent. ‘I suppose you have not been told anything,’ he said, after a moment. ‘No, that is right; we agreed we could not risk word getting out.’

      ‘No, sir,’ Laurence said, anger kindling afresh. ‘I have heard nothing, and been told nothing. Our allies asked me daily for word of the Corps, until they knew there was no more use in asking.’

      He had given his personal assurances to the Prussian commanders. He had sworn that the Aerial Corps would not fail them; that the promised company of dragons, which might have turned the tide against Napoleon in this last disastrous campaign, would still arrive at any moment. He and Temeraire had stayed and fought in their place when the dragons did not arrive, risking their own lives and those of his crew in an increasingly hopeless cause; but the dragons had never come.

      Lenton did not immediately answer, but sat nodding to himself, murmuring. ‘Yes, that is right, of course.’ He tapped a hand on the desk, looked at some papers without reading them, a portrait of distraction.

      Laurence added more sharply, ‘Sir, I can hardly believe you would have lent yourself to so treacherous a course, and one so terribly short-sighted; Napoleon’s victory was by no means assured, if the twenty promised dragons had been sent.’

      ‘What?’ Lenton looked up. ‘Oh, Laurence, there was no question of that. No, none at all. I am sorry for the secrecy, but as for not sending the dragons, that called for no decision. There were no dragons to send.’

      Victoriatus heaved his sides out and in, a gentle, measured pace. His nostrils were wide and red, a thick flaking crust edged their rims, and dried pink foam lingered about the corners of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but after every few breaths they would open a little, dull and unseeing with exhaustion; he gave a rasping, hollow cough that flecked the ground before him with blood; and subsided once again into the half-slumber that was all he could manage. His captain, Richard Clark, was lying on a cot beside him: unshaven, in filthy linen, an arm flung up to cover his eyes and the other hand resting on the dragon’s foreleg; he did not move, even when they approached.

      After a few moments, Lenton touched Laurence on the arm. ‘Come, enough; let’s away.’ He turned slowly aside, leaning heavily upon a cane, and took Laurence back up the green hill to the castle. The corridors, as they returned to his offices, seemed no longer peaceful but hushed, sunk in irreparable gloom.

      Laurence refused a glass of wine, too numb to think of refreshment. ‘It is a sort of consumption,’ Lenton said, looking out the windows that faced onto the covert yard; Victoriatus and twelve other great beasts lay screened from one another by the ancient windbreaks, piled branches and stones grown over with ivy.

      ‘How widespread?’ Laurence asked.

      ‘Everywhere,’ Lenton said. ‘Dover, Portsmouth, Middlesbrough. The breeding grounds in Wales and Halifax; Gibraltar; everywhere the couriers went on their rounds; everywhere.’ He turned away from the windows and took his chair again. ‘We were inexpressibly stupid; we thought it was only a cold, you see.’

      ‘But we had word of that before we had even rounded the Cape of Good Hope, on our journey east,’ Laurence said, appalled. ‘Has it lasted so long?’

      ‘In Halifax it started in September of the year five,’ Lenton said. ‘The surgeons think now it was the American dragon, that big Indian fellow: he was kept there, and then the first dragons to fall sick here were those who had shared the transport with him to Dover; then it began in Wales when he was sent to the breeding grounds there. He is perfectly hearty, not a cough or a sneeze; very nearly the only dragon left in England who is, except for a handful of hatchlings we have tucked away in Ireland.’

      ‘You know we have brought you another twenty,’ Laurence said, taking a brief refuge in making his report.

      ‘Yes, these fellows are from where, Turkestan?’ Lenton said: willing to follow. ‘Did I understand your letter correctly; they were brigands?’

      ‘I would rather say that they were jealous of their territory,’ Laurence said. ‘They are not very pretty, but there is no malice in them. Though what use twenty dragons can be, to cover all England—’ He stopped. ‘Lenton, surely something can be done? Must be done?’ he said.

      Lenton only shook his head briefly. ‘The usual remedies did some good, at the beginning,’ he said. ‘Quieted the coughing, and so forth. They could still fly, if they did not have much appetite; and colds are usually such trifling things with them. But it lingered on so long, and after a while the possets seemed to lose their effect. Some began to grow worse—’

      He stopped, and after a long moment he sighed and added with an effort, ‘Obversaria is dead.’

      ‘Good God!’ Laurence cried. ‘Sir, I am shocked to hear it – so deeply grieved.’ It was a dreadful loss: she had been flying with Lenton some forty years, the flag-dragon at Dover for the last ten, and though relatively young had produced four eggs already; she was perhaps the finest flyer in all England, with few to even compete with her for the title. ‘That was in, let me see, August,’ Lenton said, as if he had not heard. ‘After Inlacrimas, but before Minacitus.