Victory of Eagles. Naomi Novik

why do you not take a better place?’ Temeraire said, exasperated. ‘There are several very nice ones directly over there, in the cliff face; you would be much more comfortable there, I am sure.’

      ‘One does not like to be quarrelsome’ Perscitia said being evasive and entirely false: she liked very well to be quarrelsome, and Temeraire did not understand what that had to do with taking an empty cave, either, but at least it diverted the subject.

      The only event of note was that it rained for a week without stopping, with a steady driving wind that came in to all the cave-mouths and permeated the ground, and made everyone perfectly miserable. Temeraire was very glad of his antechamber, where he could shake off the water and dry before retreating to the comfort of his larger chamber. Several of the smallest dragons, courier-weights living in the hollows by the river, were flooded out of their homes entirely. Feeling sorry for their muddy and bedraggled state, Temeraire invited them to stop in his cavern, while the rain continued, so long as they first washed off the mud. They were, at least, loud with appreciation for his arrangements.

      A few days later, when he was once again solitary and brooding over Laurence, a shadow crossed over the mouth of his cave. It was the big Regal Copper, Requiescat; he ducked in through the antechamber and came into Temeraire's main chamber, uninvited. He gazed around the room with an impressed air, and nodding said, ‘It is just as nice as they said.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Temeraire said, thawed a little by the compliment. He did not feel much like company, but remembered he must be polite. ‘Will you sit down? I am sorry I cannot offer you tea.’

      ‘Tea?’ Requiescat said absently. He was busy poking his nose into the corners of the cave, even putting his tongue out to smell them, as if he were at home; Temeraire's ruff began to bristle.

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, stiffly, ‘I am afraid you have found me unprepared for guests,’ which he thought was a clever way of hinting that Requiescat might go away again.

      But the Regal Copper did not take the hint; or at any rate he did not choose to go. but instead settled himself comfortably along the back of the cave and said, ‘Well, old fellow, I am afraid we will have to swap.’

      ‘Swap?’ Temeraire said, puzzled, until he divined that Requiescat meant caves. ‘I do not want your cave,’ adding hastily, ‘I am sure that it is very nice, but I have just got this one arranged to suit me.’

      ‘This one is much bigger now,’ Requiescat explained, ‘and it is much nicer in the wet. Mine,’ he added regretfully, ‘has been full of puddles all week; wet clear through to the back.’

      ‘Then I can hardly see why I would change,’ Temeraire said, still more baffled, and then he sat up, outraged and astonished, and let his ruff spread fully. ‘Why, you are a damned scrub,’ he said. ‘How dare you come here, and behave like a visitor, when all the time it is a challenge? I have never seen anything so devious in my life; it is the sort of thing Lien would do,’ he added, cuttingly. ‘You may get out at once. If you want my cave you may try to take it. I will meet you anytime you like: now, or at dawn tomorrow.’

      ‘Now, now, let us not get excited,’ Requiescat said soothingly. ‘I can see you are a young fellow, right enough. A challenge, really! It is nothing of the sort; I am the most peaceable fellow in the world, and I do not want to fight anyone. I am sorry if I was ham-handed about it. It is not that I want to take your cave, you see—’ Temeraire did not see, in the least, ‘—it is a question of appearances. Here you are a month, with the nicest cave, and you nowhere near the biggest either.’ Requiescat preened his own side, a little. He certainly outweighed any dragon Temeraire had seen, except Maximus and Laetificat. ‘We have our own little ways here, of arranging things to keep everyone comfortable. No one wants any fighting to cut up our peace, not when there is no need. It would be a nasty-tempered sort of fellow who would get to fighting over one cave versus another, both of them large and handsome; but distinctions must be preserved.’

      ‘Stuff,’ Temeraire said. ‘It sounds to me like you have become so lazy, having all your meals given to you and nothing to do, that you do not even want to put yourself to the trouble of properly bullying other people. Or maybe,’ he added, having made up his mind to be really insulting, ‘you are just a coward, and thought I was the same. Well, I am not, and I am not going to give you my cave, either, no matter what you do.’

      Requiescat did not rise to the remarks, but only shook his head dolefully. ‘There, I am not a clever chap, so I have made a mull of explaining, and now your back is put up. I suppose we will have to get the council together, or you will never believe me. It is a bother, but it is your right, after all.’ He heaved himself back to his feet and added, infuriatingly, ‘You may keep the place until then; it will take me a day or so to get word to everyone,’ before he padded out again, leaving Temeraire quivering with rage.

      ‘His cave is the nicest,’ Perscitia said anxiously, later, ‘at least, we have certainly always thought so. I am sure you would like it, and maybe you could make it even more pleasant than this? Why don't you go and see it before quarrelling?’

      ‘I do not care if it is Ali Baba's cave, and full of gold and lamps,’ Temeraire said, not even trying to master his temper. It felt better to be angry than miserable, and he was glad of having something else to think about instead of that which he could do nothing to repair. ‘It is a question of principle. I am not going to be bullied, as though I were not up to fighting him. If I made the other cave nice, he would only try and take it back, I am sure. Or some other dragon would try and push me out. Who are this council?’

      ‘It is all the biggest dragons,’ Perscitia said, ‘and a Longwing, although Gentius does not bother to come out much anymore.’

      ‘All of them his friends, I suppose,’ Temeraire said.

      ‘Oh no; no one much likes Requiescat.’ Moncey said, perched on the lip of Temeraire's cave. ‘He eats so much, and will never take less, even if it's short commons all around. But he is the biggest, and there should not be fighting, so the general rule is that caves go by who is strongest if there is any quarrel. No one is allowed to take a place out of his class, or others will get jealous and squabble.’

      ‘You see, it is just as I told you: all unfairness,’ Perscitia said bitterly, ‘as if the only quality of any importance were one's weight, or how good one is at scratching and biting and kicking up a fuss; never any consideration for really remarkable qualities.’

      ‘I grant it has some practical sense as a way to choose caves,’ Temeraire said, ‘but it is nonsense that after I have taken one— One that he might have had at any time before I came, and did not want —he should be able to snatch it from me after I have gone to so much trouble to make it nice. And he is not stronger than me, either, if he does weigh more. I should like to know if he has sunk a frigate, alone, with a Fleur-de-Nuit on his back? And as for distinction, my ancestors were scholars in China while his were starving in pits.’

      ‘Be that as it may, he knows all the council, and you don't,’ Moncey said, practically. ‘You are hardly going to fight a dozen heavyweights at once, and beg pardon, but no one looking at you would say, “right-o, there is a match for old Requiescat.” Not that you are little, but you are a bit skinny-looking.’

      ‘I am not. Am I?’ Temeraire said, craning his head anxiously to look back at himself. He did not have spines along his back the way Maximus or Requiescat did, but was rather sleek; perhaps a bit long for his weight, by British standards. ‘But anyway, he is not a fire-breather, or an acidspitter.’

      ‘Are you?’ Moncey inquired.

      ‘No,’ Temeraire said, ‘but I have the divine wind. Laurence says that is even better.’ However, it belatedly occurred to him that perhaps Laurence might have been speaking partially; certainly Moncey and Perscitia looked blank, and it was difficult to explain just how it operated. ‘I roar, in a particular sort of way—I have to breathe quite deeply, and there is a clenching feeling, along the throat, and then—and then it makes things break—trees, and so on,’ Temeraire finished in an ashamed mutter,