Empire of Ivory. Naomi Novik

       Chapter Two

      ‘Captain,’ Keynes said, ‘I am sorry, but any gormless imbecile can bandage up a bullet-wound, and a gormless imbecile is very likely to be assigned in my place. I cannot stay with the healthiest dragon in Britain when the quarantine-coverts are full of the sick.’

      ‘I perfectly understand, Mr. Keynes, and you need say no more,’ Laurence said. ‘Will you not fly with us as far as Dover?’

      ‘No; Victoriatus will not last the week; I will wait and attend the dissection with Dr. Harrow,’ Keynes said, with brutal practicality that made Laurence flinch. ‘I hope we may learn something about the characteristics of the disease. Some of the couriers are still flying; one will carry me onwards.’

      ‘Well,’ Laurence said, and shook the surgeon’s hand. ‘I hope we shall see you with us again soon.’

      ‘I hope you will not,’ Keynes said, in his usual acerbic manner. ‘If you do, I will otherwise be lacking for patients, which from the course of this disease, will mean they are all dead.’

      Laurence could hardly say his spirits were lowered; they had already been reduced so far as to make the doctors loss make little difference. But he was sorry. Dragon-surgeons were not by and large near so incompetent as the naval breed, and despite Keynes’ words Laurence did not fear his eventual successor, but to lose a good man, his courage and sense proven and his eccentricities known, was never pleasant; and Temeraire would not like it.

      ‘He is not hurt?’ Temeraire pressed. ‘He is not sick?’

      ‘No, Temeraire; but he is needed elsewhere,’ Laurence said. ‘He is a senior surgeon; I am sure you would not deny his attentions to your comrades suffering from this illness.’

      ‘Well, if Maximus or Lily should need him,’ Temeraire said, crabbily, and drew furrows in the ground. ‘Shall I see them again soon? I am sure they cannot be so very ill. Maximus is the biggest dragon I have ever seen, even though we have been to China; he is sure to recover quickly.’

      ‘No, my dear,’ Laurence said, uneasily, and broke the worst of the news. ‘The sick… none of them have recovered, and you must take the very greatest care not to go anywhere near the quarantine-grounds.’

      ‘But I do not understand,’ Temeraire said. ‘If they do not recover, then—’ He paused.

      Laurence only looked away. Temeraire had good excuse for not understanding at once. Dragons were hardy creatures, and many breeds lived a century and more; he might have justly expected to know Maximus and Lily for longer than a man’s lifetime, if the war did not take them from him.

      At last, sounding almost bewildered, Temeraire said, ‘But I have so much to tell them – I came for them, so they might learn that dragons may read and write, and have property, and do things other than fight.’

      ‘I will write a letter for you, which we can send to them with your greetings, and they will be happier to know you are well and safe from contagion than for your company,’ Laurence said. Temeraire did not answer; he was very still, and his head bowed deeply to his chest. ‘We will be nearby,’ Laurence went on, after a moment, ‘and you may write to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our work.’

      ‘Patrolling, I suppose,’ Temeraire said, with a very unusual note of bitterness, ‘and more stupid formation-work; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing.’

      Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate removal to Dover, where Temeraire’s expectations were likely to be answered in every particular.

      He was not encouraged by their arrival at Dover. They reported their presence directly after they had landed, but Laurence was left to cool his heels in the hall outside the new admiral’s office for thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar too, and Laurence rose to his feet abruptly as the door was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered, his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious glare before he left.

      ‘Come in, Laurence, come in,’ Jane called, and he entered the room. She stood with the admiral, an older man dressed rather astonishingly in a black frockcoat and knee breeches with buckled shoes.

      ‘You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think,’ Jane said. ‘Sir, this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire.’

      ‘Sir,’ Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons were in quarantine, putting the covert in the charge of a physician was the sort of thing that would make sense to landsmen. The notion had once been advanced to him by a family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a less-fortunate relation, to put forward a surgeon – not even a naval surgeon – for the command of a hospital ship.

      ‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance, Captain,’ Dr. Wapping said. ‘Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene.’

      ‘Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their place; good day to you. Would you credit it, Laurence,’ Jane said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, ‘the wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat scarcely enough to feed a bird, but they must send us diseased stock and scrawny too?

      ‘But this is not any way to welcome you home.’ She caught him by the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. ‘You are a damned sight. Whatever has happened to your coat? Will you have a glass of wine?’ She poured for them both without waiting his answer and he took the drink it in a sort of appalled blankness. ‘I have all your letters, so I have a tolerable notion what you have been doing; you must forgive me my silence, Laurence. I found it easier to write nothing than to leave out the only matter of any importance.’

      ‘No. That is, yes, of course,’ he said, and sat down with her at the fire. Her coat had been thrown over the arm of her chair, and now that he looked, he could see the admiral’s fourth bar on the shoulders; and the front, which was now magnificently frogged with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the better: she had lost a stone of weight at least, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with grey.

      ‘Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin,’ she said ruefully, and laughed away his apologies. ‘No, we are all of us decaying, Laurence, there is no denying it. You have seen poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of his bedroom in an apoplexy. For a week he could not speak without slurring his words. He came along a good ways afterwards, but he is still only a shade of himself.’

      ‘I am deeply sorry for it,’ Laurence said, ‘though I drink to your promotion,’ and by a Herculean effort he managed it without a stutter.

      ‘I thank you, dear fellow,’ she said. ‘I would be full of pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it were not one annoyance after another. We glide along tolerably well when left to our own devices, but I must consistently deal with those doltish creatures from the Admiralty. They are told, before they come, and told again, and still they will simper at me, and coo, as if I had not been a-dragonback before they were out of dresses; and then they simply stare when I dress them down for behaving like kiss-my-hand squires.’

      ‘I suppose they find it a difficult adjustment,’ Laurence said, with private sympathy. ‘I wonder the Admiralty should have—’ He paused, sensing that he was treading on obscure and dangerous ground. One could not very well quarrel with the pursuit, by whatever means necessary, of reconciling Longwings – perhaps Britain’s most deadly breed – to service with the corps. The beasts would accept only female handlers, and some must be offered