“Oh,” Temeraire said. “But—but I am very glad you are not hanged,” he added awkwardly, “and I dare say if you had helped, you should have been, so I cannot be sorry for that.” His ruff drooped against his neck.
They were all silent a moment; Forthing stared at the ground, and Ferris, his cheeks still hot, looked away from the pavilion. Sipho came trotting in with the large scroll of poetry, and paused to eye them all doubtfully.
“I do not want it,” Temeraire said. “Pray take it away. I must do something,” he added, and heaved himself to his feet. “I will go flying, over that burnt town—I will see if I cannot find some trace of the rebels—”
“Wait!” Forthing said. “There’s no call for you to go venture yourself like that, and not in this mood, if you please. Let me go and fetch the captain—”
“No,” Temeraire said, fiercely; he could not bear to speak with Laurence at the moment, not when so many dreadful things might possibly be said. Whatever Ferris might feel, whatever Laurence himself had felt, before he had lost his memory, too plainly he did not feel those same things any longer. Laurence did not remember anything, and would be happier not remembering. What if Laurence were to come back and indeed tell him they should part? “No. I am going straightaway.”
He walked out of the pavilion; Ferris caught with a desperate leap at his foreleg, and scrambling went up the side to get hold of the breastplate chain, which Laurence ordinarily used to latch himself upon Temeraire’s back. “I am coming with you,” Ferris said. “Sipho, will you go and—”
“Oh!” Temeraire said, and caught Sipho and Forthing and put them up onto his back as well. “You will all come with me, and not run tattling; I do not see any reason that anyone ought go and tell Laurence. If we do not find anything, there is no reason at all.”
“A flight won’t hurt him,” Ferris said to Forthing in an undertone.
“I can’t like it in the least,” Forthing said, hissing back. “Half this camp is ready to leap on us and tear us to pieces for the least excuse, and if we did find some rebels, they’d like to do the same. We oughtn’t let him go anywhere away, and without a word to anyone.”
“These fellows are hunting the rebels, aren’t they?” Ferris said. “If there were anything to be found at that town, they would have found it by now. We’ll go for a flight there and back, and then likely enough he’ll come down and let Sipho read to him awhile.”
“I don’t think they have been looking very hard,” Sipho said unexpectedly, in his still-high voice, “when they think we are guilty, and want us to be,” which gave Forthing and Ferris both pause; Sipho added, “I don’t mind going to have a look, either, and seeing some more of this country. But I don’t think Demane will like it if I go off without him for a long while,” in rather cheerful tones: he did not have a very great distaste for upsetting his brother, who was somewhat given to a smothering and anxious degree of affection.
“Well, I am going, and so are you,” Temeraire said, “so latch on your carabiners,” and he delayed only a moment longer before he threw himself aloft. Privately, his thoughts were urgently turning, even as he beat up and turning flew away from the encampment. Surely it was not himself, but Laurence who required distraction; Laurence ought above all things be distracted from thinking of his losses. Perhaps General Fela’s men had missed something, some sign—perhaps he would find some trace of the rebels. If only Temeraire returned in some victorious accomplishment, perhaps having smashed a rebel army or at least discovered one, Laurence could hardly reply to it with chiding, with a desire to part from him.
The destroyed village, when he reached it, no longer smoldered; the last of the fires had gone out. The opium had been taken away, and the streets cleared; now it was merely abandoned to time. There was no trace, so far as Temeraire could see, of rebels. There were no weapons scattered, and when he flew in widening circles around, the old worn road bore few signs of any traffic at all: the stones were overgrown with grass.
But Temeraire paid no mind to Ferris and Forthing already importuning him to go back to camp; he did not mean to swallow defeat so easily. “After all,” he said, “the rebels would not keep their opium in a village they did not come to, now and again; and if they have not come by road, I suppose they must have dragons as well.”
“If they have, all the more reason we ought go back to camp and not encounter them on our own,” Ferris said.