The grey dragon, Arkady, was rather the worse for wear; his eyes were drifting half-shut and groggy, and his breath came noisily: the weight of stone had pressed still more of the breath out of him. Laurence watched him with concern, seeing Temeraire’s fate looming ahead if he was not quickly freed, and only with an effort held himself back from urging Kulingile to work faster. Demane had as much right to fear for his brother, and the dragons were not yet in truly dire straits.
“Laurence,” Temeraire said, hoarsely, breaking the silence suddenly. “Laurence, I must beg your pardon.”
“There is no cause, as far as I know,” Laurence said. “I hope you know I do not hold you responsible for my own actions—where I have allowed myself to be persuaded, the decision must in the end have been my own. And where apologies between us may have been merited, in the past, and there made, I hope you do not imagine me so unreasonable as to expect you to repeat them.”
“Oh! That is very easy to say,” Temeraire said, unhappily, “when you do not know the half of it. You do not know—” He heaved a breath, which rolled a cascade of pebbles from his back. “Laurence, it is not only the treason; it is not only your rank: I lost you all your fortune,” he said. “I lost you—ten thousand pounds. A court took it away from you, because you could not answer the charge.”
Laurence waited, but this seemed the sum total of Temeraire’s great confession. “I hope you do not think me so wretchedly mercenary as to weigh that in any wise with the rest,” he said, more than half outraged.
“I suppose you have forgotten that, as well,” Temeraire said. “But ten thousand pounds is an enormous sum! Why, Gentius said to me it should be worth a dozen eagles, like we took from Napoleon.”
“I am perfectly aware of the size of the sum; and as it might be ten times the greater and still not buy me a thimbleful of honor, I must beg leave to continue to disdain it by comparison,” Laurence said. “I suppose I have been in the way of twice that sum, in prize-money, if I had chosen to ask for a prize-cruise or to chase shipping, instead of harrying the enemy’s forces if ever I could.”
“But that is all the worse,” Temeraire said, with a heaving gasp. “For you got it just so, honorably, and it was all your own. You had won it, by yourself, before ever I was hatched; it was not our fortune, at all; it was yours. I had not the shadow of a right to do such a dreadful thing, and after you had built me a pavilion as well. I did offer you my talon-sheaths,” Temeraire added wretchedly, his voice sinking low, “but oh—you would not take them; as though I could not even repair the injury.”
Laurence struggled to make sense of it. He had seen Temeraire gloating over the prized sheaths, to Laurence’s mind a singularly absurd piece of adornment which made any sort of eating ten times the more awkward and battle impossible; and he thought Temeraire would have seen his wings clipped off his back before surrendering them. “I suppose if you imagine it a kind of theft,” he said slowly, “I can better comprehend your misery; but if I have been plundered by a court, either it was unjustly, which cannot be your fault, or for some act of my own. In any case,” he added, with as much energy as he could, “I do assure you I do not regard it; I am not made in the least wretched by that loss.”
Temeraire was silent, and then said low, “Very well. Not by that, perhaps; but certainly by—” He halted, and then said even more softly, “Surely you would be happier, if you had—if you had never found my egg; if you had not harnessed me at all.”
Laurence hardly knew how to answer; it seemed to him true as well. Temeraire dragged in a breath and added with a strange rasp like the hum of bee-wings beneath it, “If you would prefer—I will stay in China, alone; if you would like. You may go wherever you like. Or, or you may stay here, where no-one would call you a traitor, and I—I will—”
He halted, evidently fumbling for some alternative, but Laurence said, “No.” It came easily to his mouth, as easily as anything: that itself would have to be answer enough. “I would not make the exchange,” he said, “even now; what I have done, what I have chosen, I would not unmake, even if I could.”