It was very difficult to have been promised so much—and for their progenitors to have paid so much—and received so little. With every fresh difficulty, one felt as though one had been robbed, despite all the technical protests which the developers’ lawyers and insurers made, and the laws—quite unreasonable in Temeraire’s opinion—which shielded them from liability, under this supposed excuse that it was impossible to imagine every potential challenge which a colony might face. The surveyors might have tried to cut down one tree, or dig at least one small hole; they might have been a little curious what permitted the trees to grow so large, instead of merely taking a great many falsely attractive holographs.
He prided himself on how well they had risen to their challenges, but six years of effort had only been sufficient to make them halfway secure and not comfortable, and everyone’s tempers were grown short. Their elephant and bison herds were not properly established despite all their best attempts, so they had to keep eating out of rationed protein vats, which left everyone hungry and disconsolate; they had not had sufficient time to establish proper schooling practices, and several dragons had even failed to learn to read before they had grown too old, from the necessity of pursuing mere subsistence. Temeraire had to write letters for them, often, to help them conceal the painfully embarrassing lack of skill. Even now they still did not have enough pavilions for everyone to sleep inside at night, which meant there were a dozen outstanding quarrels of precedence demanding his attention.
The only thing worse than having been saddled with this world would be to have it snatched out from under them after so much labor and effort: and all because of the trinium that was the source of their difficulties in the first place. Temeraire would not stand for it; none of them would stand for it, they were all in perfect agreement on that, if on virtually nothing else. However unsatisfactory this world, it was still theirs; Temeraire did not mean to see it torn quite apart, all so that a war about which he cared very little should be forwarded. But he did not in the least know what to do with this Navy fellow, and if it was not all just made-up nonsense about the Bonapartists, he was not sure what he should do if they did come.
“I suppose I cannot only leave you here,” Temeraire said, feeling disgruntled: they were a good hour’s flight from the capital, and the Green River was between there and here, which this tiny creature could scarcely have crossed on his own.
“I would be grateful if you did not,” Captain Laurence said dryly. “I hope you will forgive my saying that stuffing your ears makes a poor kind of answer, however much you may dislike my intelligence.”
Temeraire flattened his ruff, but consoled himself with the thought that it was sensible to bring the officer in and hear him out, not because there would be any sense to his proposals, but to know what those proposals were: it was surely the best way to be prepared for whatever the Navy might do. “Very well,” he said ungraciously. “You had better climb up, then, and try not to fall off, for I dare say I would be hard-pressed to catch you if you should happen to do so.”
Laurence could not say that he inwardly met the prospect of climbing aboard this monstrous creature with any great equanimity: and how he was to hold on, during flight, was an ominous puzzle. But he dug his survival kit from the cradle and slung it onto his back, and then hesitatingly looked up the enormous column of the foreleg: muscles larger than his body, tendons and sinew sheathed in the tiny overlapping scales of gleaming black horn, under the netting that supported the dragon’s wing-bracework. Laurence took a cautious grip of one jutting spur and pulled himself up, searching for footholds as though he were creeping over a ship’s hull in dry dock.
The bracework netting broadened as he climbed, attaching at last to a massive gleaming band molded to the dragon’s shoulders, glittering with electronics and the thickness of Laurence’s wrist; when he had managed at last to drag himself up along it onto Temeraire’s back, he drew out a length of cord and tied himself onto it, as securely as he could. He took a grim hold as Temeraire said perfunctorily, “Are you ready?” and without waiting for an answer launched himself aloft.