“And you could hardly hope for a better encomium in the eyes of the one whose good opinion you most desire,” Laurence added, “than Admiral Roland’s approval—nor should Excidium’s feelings towards Kulingile be of small concern to you.”
Demane was silenced by these last arguments more than the rest, Laurence was regretfully aware; but the point was won. Temeraire had then to be reconciled to being parted from Sipho, obstinately refusing to grant Demane’s greater claim to his brother’s company. “For after all,” Temeraire objected, “it is not as though Demane is going anywhere that he should need someone who can read Chinese, and whatever else has he for Sipho to do, but hang aboard Kulingile’s back, and perhaps be shot by some French soldier? I cannot like it in the least.”
“What he can do,” Laurence said, “if confirmed as a captain, is give Sipho his step to midwingman; and like as not to lieutenant. In any case, you must see that we cannot propose to separate them.”
“I do not see whyever not,” Temeraire said sulkily, though the two brothers had not spent a day apart from each other likely since the half-remembered occasion of their orphaning; Demane had been as much parent as sibling, since then. “I do not see why either of them must go,” Temeraire added. “Demane can be confirmed as a captain very well here. If Kulingile considers him a captain, I do not see why anyone else ought to quarrel: you and Granby and the others have not in the least argued.”
Laurence was well aware that his opinion on the matter should weigh with the Ministry not as much as a lofted feather; Granby himself was half-disgraced from their association and, unhappily, by Iskierka’s general recalcitrance. As for Captain Harcourt, she had said nothing, but Laurence was well aware she and the other captains of the formation regarded Demane doubtfully: still too much a boy, still too much given to distempered brawling, and of foreign birth and race. They had not witnessed Demane’s rescue of Kulingile as a misshapen hatchling when every other aviator would have seen the beast put to a quick death, nor the daily lengths to which the boy had gone to feed a ravenous young dragon in the midst of the Australian desert.
They had deferred to Laurence’s judgment, and to the practical consideration that they none of them had the right to speak. Kulingile was unassigned to any formation, and too large to naturally acknowledge himself or his captain subordinate to any other beast of their company, for all his easy-going temper. But Laurence could not pretend to himself that they would not have been delighted to see Kulingile shift his affections, for instance to one of their own junior officers.
“He deserves the chance to show what he can do,” Laurence said, “before the eyes of senior officers whose preferment can assure him the acquiesence of the Ministry. You cannot doubt that they, at least, would be full willing to quarrel with Kulingile’s choice.”
“Oh! I can believe anything of them, certainly,” Temeraire said, “but I do not see why we must pay them any mind: after all, we have resolved not to do so, haven’t we, when we think they are mistaken.”
Temeraire was only at long slow length convinced that perhaps such a half-vagabond and uncertain existence as their own should not be the only nor yet the ideal course for a young man only beginning on his career to follow. “And one,” Laurence added quietly, “who has not the advantages of family and name which both you and I possess, even if not in such measure as you might desire. Recollect he is an orphan, alone in the world, divided from the country of his birth and from his very tribe: even if he wished now to return, the port of Capetown is closed to our ships, and he is not of the Tswana; his own people have no dragons among them, and would scarcely welcome him and Kulingile back.”
All now was nearly in readiness for the moment of parting, come upon them so swiftly and, Laurence only hoped, not too late to bring them to the aid of the Russian armies. The egg was now safely in Mianning’s keeping; at dawn they would make their last farewells, the dragons of the formation taking wing for the harbor, Kulingile and Iskierka with them; and Temeraire and Arkady flying north with General Chu.
Laurence ducked into Tharkay’s chamber again. The maps had been rolled into their cases and the meager baggage packed; Tharkay was lying in the bed, his eyes closed, dressed but for his sword-belt and his boots as though he meant to sleep in his clothing before waking for the journey. “It will be just as well not to be fumbling to dress in the dark, with these hands of mine,” Tharkay said, dispassionately, working them gently open and shut as Laurence sat in the chair beside him: bruises still darkened the skin, and half the fingers were splinted.