Victory of Eagles. Naomi Novik

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      NAOMI NOVIK

       Victory of Eagles

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2008

      Copyright © Naomi Novik 2008

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2014

      Cover illustrations © Dominic Harman

      Naomi Novik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007256761

       Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007318612

       Version: 2019-02-26

      For Dr. Sonia Novik

      who gave this book a home

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Part I

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Part II

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Part III

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

PART I

       Chapter One

      The breeding grounds were called Pen Y Fan, after the hard, jagged slash of mountain rising like an axe-blade at their heart, rimed with ice along its edge and rising barren over the moorland. It was a cold, wet Welsh autumn already, coming on towards winter, and the other dragons were sleepy and remote, uninterested in anything but meals. A few hundred of them were scattered throughout the grounds, mostly established in caves or on rocky ledges, wherever they could fit themselves. No comfort or even order was provided for them, except for the feedings, and the mowed-bare strip of ground around the borders, where torches were lit at night to mark the lines past which they might not go. The town-lights glimmered in the distance, cheerful and forbidden.

      Temeraire had hunted out and cleared a large cavern on his arrival, to sleep in; but it would be damp, no matter what he did in the way of lining it with grass, or flapping his wings to move the air, which in any case did not suit his notions of dignity. Much better to endure every unpleasantness with stoic patience, although that was not very satisfying when no-one would appreciate the effort. The other dragons certainly did not.

      He was quite sure he and Laurence had done as they ought, in taking the cure to France, and no one sensible could disagree; but just in case, Temeraire had steeled himself to meet with either disapproval or contempt, and he had worked out several very fine arguments in his defence. Most importantly, of course, it had been a cowardly,