The Temeraire Series Books 1-3: Temeraire, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War

‘I am not afraid,’ Maximus said indignantly, and lunged forward, sending out a great wave that briefly swamped Levitas and washed over Temeraire. Levitas came up with a splutter, and Temeraire snorted and ducked his head into the water to splash at Maximus; in a moment the two were engaged in a royal battle that bid fair to make the lake look like the Atlantic in a full gale.

Levitas came fluttering out of the water, dripping cold water onto all of the waiting aviators. Hollin and the cadets set to wiping him down, and the little dragon said, ‘Oh, I do like swimming so; thank you for letting me come again.’

‘I do not see why you cannot come as often as you like,’ Laurence said, glancing at Berkley and Harcourt to see how they would take this; neither of them seemed to give it the slightest thought, or to think his interference officious.

Lily had at last gone in deep enough to be mostly submerged, or at least as much as her natural buoyancy would allow. She stayed well away from the splashing pair of younger dragons, and scrubbed at her own hide with the side of her head. She came out next, more interested in being washed than in the swimming, and rumbled in pleasure as she pointed out spots and had them carefully cleaned by Harcourt and the cadets.

Maximus and Temeraire finally had enough, and came out to be wiped down as well. Maximus required all the exertions of Berkley and his two grown midwingmen. Working on the delicate skin of Temeraire’s face while the cadets scrambled all over his back, Laurence could not hide a smile at Berkley’s grumbling over his dragon’s size.

He stepped back from his work a moment to simply enjoy the scene: Temeraire was speaking with the other dragons freely, his eyes bright and his head held proudly, with no more signs of self-doubt; and even if this strange, mixed company was not anything Laurence would once have sought out for himself, the easy camaraderie warmed him through. He was conscious of having proven himself and having helped Temeraire to do the same, and of the deep satisfaction of having found a true and worthy place, for the both of them.

The pleasure lasted until their return to the courtyard. Rankin was standing by the side of the courtyard, wearing evening dress and tapping the straps of his personal harness against the side of his leg in very obvious irritation, and Levitas gave a little alarmed hop as he landed. ‘What do you mean by flying off like this?’ Rankin said, not even waiting for Hollin and the cadets to climb down. ‘When you are not feeding, you are to be here and waiting, do you understand me? And you there, who told you that you could ride him?’

‘Levitas was kind enough to bear them to oblige me, Captain Rankin,’ Laurence said, stepping out of Temeraire’s hand and speaking sharply to draw the man’s attention away. ‘We have only been down at the lake, and a signal would have fetched us in a moment.’

‘I do not care to be running after signal-men to have my dragon available, Captain Laurence, and I will thank you to mind your own beast and leave mine to me,’ Rankin said, very coldly. ‘I suppose you are wet now?’ he added to Levitas.

‘No, no; I am sure I am mostly dry, I was not in for very long at all, I promise,’ Levitas said, hunching himself very small.

‘Let us hope so,’ Rankin said. ‘Bend down, hurry up about it. And you lot are to stay away from him from now on,’ he told the cadets as he climbed up in their place, nearly shouldering Hollin aside.

Laurence stood watching Levitas fly away with Rankin on his back; Berkley and Captain Harcourt were silent, as were the other dragons. Lily abruptly turned her head and made an angry spitting noise; only a few droplets fell, but they sizzled and smoked upon the stone, leaving deep black pockmarks.

‘Lily!’ Captain Harcourt said, but there was a quality of relief in her voice at the break in the silence. ‘Pray bring some harness oil, Peck,’ she said to one of her ground crewmen, climbing down; she poured it liberally over the acid droplets, until smoke ceased rising. ‘There, cover it with some sand, and tomorrow it should be safe to wash.’

Laurence was also glad for the small distraction; he did not immediately trust himself to speak. Temeraire nuzzled him gently, and the cadets looked at him in worry. ‘I oughtn’t ever have suggested it, sir,’ Hollin said. ‘I’m sure I beg your pardon, and Captain Rankin’s.’

‘Not in the least, Mr. Hollin,’ Laurence said; he could hear his own voice, cold and very stern, and he tried to mitigate the effect by adding, ‘you have done nothing wrong whatsoever.’

‘I don’t see any reason why we ought to stay away from Levitas,’ Roland said, low.

Laurence did not hesitate for a moment in his response; it was as strong and automatic as his own helpless anger against Rankin. ‘Your superior officer has given you orders to do so, Miss Roland; if that is not reason enough you are in the wrong service,’ he snapped. ‘Let me never hear you make another such remark. Take these linens back to the laundry at once, if you please. You will pardon me, gentlemen,’ he added to the others, ‘I will go for a walk before supper.’

Temeraire was too large to successfully creep after him, so the dragon resorted instead to flying past and waiting for him in the first small clearing along his path. Laurence had thought he wanted to be alone, but he found he was very glad to come into the dragon’s encircling forearms and lean upon his warm bulk, listening to the almost musical thrumming of his heart and the steady reverberation of his breathing. The anger slipped away, but it left misery in its place. He would have desperately liked to call Rankin out.

‘I do not know why Levitas endures it; even if he is small, he is still much bigger than Rankin,’ Temeraire said eventually.

‘Why do you endure it when I ask you to put on a harness, or perform some dangerous manoeuvre?’ Laurence said. ‘It is his duty, and it is his habit. From the shell he has been raised to obey, and has suffered such treatment. He likely does not contemplate any alternative.’

‘But he sees you, and the other captains; no one else is treated so,’ Temeraire said. He flexed his claws; they dug furrows in the ground. ‘I do not obey you because it is a habit and I cannot think for myself; I do it because I know you are worthy of being obeyed. You would never treat me unkindly, and you would not ask me to do something dangerous or unpleasant without cause.’

‘No, not without cause,’ Laurence said. ‘But we are in a hard service, my dear, and we must sometimes be willing to bear a great deal.’ He hesitated, then added gently, ‘I have been meaning to speak to you about it, Temeraire: you must promise me in future not to place my life above that of so many others. You must surely see that Victoriatus is far more necessary to the Corps than I could ever be, even if there were not his crew to consider also; you should never have contemplated risking their lives to save mine.’

Temeraire curled more closely around him. ‘No, Laurence, I cannot promise such a thing,’ he said. ‘I am sorry, but I will not lie to you: I could not have let you fall. You may value their lives above your own; I cannot do so, for to me you are worth far more than all of them. I will not obey you in such a case, and as for duty, I do not care for the notion a great deal, the more I see of it.’

Laurence was not sure how to answer this; he could not deny that he was touched by the degree to which Temeraire valued him, yet it was also alarming to have Temeraire express so plainly that he would follow orders or not as his own judgment decreed. Laurence trusted that judgment a great deal, but he felt again that he had made an inadequate effort to teach Temeraire the value of discipline and duty. ‘I wish I knew how to explain it to you properly,’ he said, a little despairingly. ‘Perhaps I will try and find you some books on the subject.’

‘I suppose,’ Temeraire said, for once dubious about reading something. ‘I do not think anything would persuade me to behave differently. In any case, I would much rather just avoid it ever happening again. It was very dreadful, and I was afraid I might not be able to catch you.’

Laurence could smile at this. ‘On that point at least we are agreed, and I will gladly promise you to do my best to avoid any repetition.’

Roland came running to fetch him the next morning; he had slept by Temeraire’s side again in the little tent. ‘Celeritas wants you, sir,’ she said, and went back to the castle by his side, once he had put his neckcloth back on and restored his coat. Temeraire gave him a sleepy murmur of farewell, barely opening one eye before going back to sleep. As they walked, she ventured, ‘Captain, are you still angry at me?’

‘What?’ he said, blankly; then he remembered, and said, ‘No, Roland; I am not angry with you. You do understand why you were wrong to speak so, I hope.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and he was able to ignore that it came out a little doubtfully. ‘I did not speak to Levitas; but I could not help seeing he does not look very well this morning.’

Laurence glanced at the Winchester as they walked through the courtyard; Levitas was curled in the back corner, far from the other dragons, and despite the early hour, he was not sleeping but staring dully at the ground. Laurence looked away; there was nothing to be done.

‘Run along, Roland,’ Celeritas said, when she had brought Laurence to him. ‘Captain, I am sorry to have called you so early; first, is Temeraire well enough to resume his training, do you think?’

‘I believe so, sir; he is healing very quickly, and yesterday he flew down to the lake and back with no difficulty,’ Laurence said.

‘Good, good.’ Celeritas fell silent, and then he sighed. ‘Captain, I am obliged to order you not to interfere with Levitas any further,’ he said.

Laurence felt hot colour come to his face. So Rankin had complained of him. And yet it was no more than he deserved; he would never have brooked such officious involvement in the running of his ship, or his management of Temeraire. The thing had been wrong, whatever justifications he had given himself, and anger was quickly subsumed in shame. ‘Sir, I apologize that you should have been put to the necessity of telling me so; I assure you it will not arise again.’

Celeritas snorted; having delivered his rebuke, he seemed at no great pains to reinforce it. ‘Give me no assurances; you would lower yourself in my eyes if you could mean them with real honesty,’ he said. ‘It is a great pity, and I am at fault as much as anyone. When I could not tolerate him myself, Aerial Command thought he might do as a courier, and set him to a Winchester; for his grandfather’s sake I could not bring myself to speak against it, though I knew better.’

Comforting as it was to have the reprimand softened, Laurence was curious to understand what Celeritas meant by not being able to tolerate him; surely Aerial Command would never have proposed a fellow like Rankin as a handler to a dragon as extraordinary as the training master. ‘Did you know his grandfather well?’ he asked, unable to resist making the tentative inquiry.

‘My first handler; his son also served with me,’ Celeritas said briefly, turning his head aside; his head drooped. He recovered after a moment and added, ‘Well, I had hopes for the boy, but at his mother’s insistence he was not raised here, and his family gave him strange notions; he ought never to have been an aviator, much less a captain. But now he is, and while Levitas obeys him, so he remains. I cannot allow you to interfere. You can imagine what it would mean if we allowed officers to meddle with each others’ beasts: lieutenants desperate to be captains could hardly resist the temptation to try and seduce away any dragon who was not blissfully happy, and we would have chaos.’

Laurence bowed his head. ‘I understand perfectly, sir.’

‘In any case, I will be giving you more pressing matters to attend to, for today we will begin your integration into Lily’s formation,’ Celeritas said. ‘Pray go and fetch Temeraire; the others will be here shortly.’

Walking back out, Laurence was thoughtful. He had known, of course, that the larger breeds would outlive their handlers, when they were not killed in battle together; he had not considered that this would leave the dragons alone and without a partner afterwards, nor how they or Aerial Command would manage the situation. Of course it was in Britain’s best interests to have the dragon continue in service, with a new handler, but he also could not help but think the dragon himself would be happier so, with duties to occupy his thoughts and keep him from the kind of sorrow that Celeritas obviously still felt.

Arriving once again at the clearing, Laurence looked at the sleeping Temeraire with concern. Of course there were many years before them, and the fortunes of war might easily make all such questions moot, but Temeraire’s future happiness was his responsibility, heavier by far to him than any estate could have been, and at some time soon he would have to consider what provisions he could make to ensure it. A well-chosen first lieutenant, perhaps, might step into his place, with Temeraire brought to the notion over the course of several years.

‘Temeraire,’ he called, stroking the dragon’s nose; Temeraire opened his eyes and made a small rumble.

‘I am awake; are we flying again today?’ he said, yawning enormously up at the sky and twitching his wings a little.

‘Yes, my dear,’ Laurence said. ‘Come, we must get you back into your harness; I am sure Mr. Hollin will have it ready for us.’

The formation ordinarily flew in a wedge-shaped block that resembled nothing more than a flock of migrating geese, with Lily at the head. The Yellow Reapers Messoria and Immortalis filled the key mid-wing positions, providing the protective bulk to keep Lily from close-quarters attack, while the ends were held by the smaller but more agile Dulcia, a Grey Copper, and a Pascal’s Blue called Nitidus. All were full-grown, and all but Lily had previous combat experience; they had been especially chosen for this critical formation to support the young and inexperienced Longwing, and their captains and crews were rightly proud of their skill.

Laurence had cause to be thankful for the endless labour and repetition of the last month and a half; if the manoeuvres they had practised for so long had not become by now second-nature for Temeraire and Maximus, they could never have kept up with the practised, effortless acrobatics of the others. The two larger dragons had been added into position so as to form a back row behind Lily, closing the formation into a triangle shape. In battle, their place would be to fend off any attempts to break up the formation, to defend it against attack from other heavy-combat class dragons, and to carry the great loads of bombs that their crews would drop below upon those targets that had already been weakened by Lily’s acid.

Laurence was very glad to see Temeraire admitted fully to the company of the other dragons of the formation; although none of the older dragons had the energy for much play outside their work. For the most part they lazed about during the scant idle hours, and only observed in tolerant amusement while Temeraire and Lily and Maximus talked and occasionally went aloft for a game of aerial tag. For his own part, Laurence also felt a great deal more welcome among the other aviators now, and discovered that he had without noticing it adjusted to the informality of their relations: the first time he found himself addressing Captain Harcourt as simply, ‘Harcourt,’ in a post-training discussion, he did not even realize he had done so until after the words were out of his mouth.

The captains and first lieutenants generally held such discussions of strategy and tactics at dinnertime, or during the late evenings after the dragons had all fallen asleep. Laurence’s opinion was rarely solicited in these conversations, but he did not take that greatly to heart: though he was quickly coming to grasp the principles of aerial warfare he still considered himself a newcomer to the art, and he could hardly take offence at the aviators doing the same. Save when he could contribute some information about Temeraire’s particular capabilities, he remained quiet and made no attempt to insinuate himself into the conversations, rather listening for the purpose of educating himself.

The conversation did turn, from time to time, to the more general subject of the war; out of the way as they were, their information was several weeks out of date, and speculation irresistible. Laurence joined them one evening to find Sutton saying, ‘The French fleet could be bloody well anywhere.’ Sutton was Messoria’s captain and the senior among them, a veteran of four wars, and somewhat given to both pessimism and colourful language. ‘Now they have slipped out of Toulon, for all we know the bastards are already on their way across the Channel; I wouldn’t be surprised to find the army of invasion on our doorstep tomorrow.’

Laurence could hardly let this pass. ‘You are mistaken, I assure you,’ he said, taking his seat. ‘Villeneuve and his fleet have slipped out of Toulon, yes, but he is not engaged in any grand operation, only in flight: Nelson has been in steady pursuit all along.’