Granby choked heavily upon his own dinner, coughing, and had to be rescued with a steady thumping upon his back, and several glasses of wine.
Iskierka was in no better mood even after their meal had ended with a marvelous shaved ice, flavored with a syrup of plums and studded with the same, imparting delightful tiny bursts of flavor upon the tongue when one happened across them in a swallow. However, she did not hesitate to eat all her share and then some.
“That is something like, I will admit,” Maximus said, licking out his enormous silver bowl, “but I don’t suppose you could ask them for us, Temeraire, what they have done with the rest of those cows? I haven’t any objection to those cow’s heads, very tasty, but I would be glad of a side of beef, or perhaps two,” he added, with a slantwise look at Kulingile—who had at last stopped getting longer, but had only just yesterday sprouted the beginnings of a pair of horns, much to everyone’s bafflement: neither the Chequered Nettle nor the Parnassian, his progenitors, possessed any similar adornments.
“I wouldn’t mind one, either, if they are just lying about somewhere,” Kulingile said, raising his own head; and stifling his own remonstrations, Temeraire addressed the servants and conveyed the request. It was met with some confusion and a great deal of delay; when the beef was at last delivered two hours later, it was presented in the form of a false cow, the meat having been roasted, stuffed with grains and dried fruit, tied up with string, put into a wrapping of dough, and propped up on legs made of sticks; the head was a separate lump of meat, adorned with horns made of bread. Maximus sighed but ate it anyway, particularly after Kulingile had devoured his own share in a few bites.
As the servants began to bring out the bowls for tea, one came to Temeraire’s side and murmured that a visitor had come and sought admittance. “Oh!” Temeraire cried. “Lung Qin Mei! Pray ask her to join us at once: how delighted I shall be to see her again,” and he looked himself over anxiously. If only there were time to send Roland for his talon-sheaths, and if only they had a little black enamel paint—
Mei landed gracefully in the courtyard, though they were crowded and there was little space—but then, she did everything gracefully. Temeraire straightened himself up to meet her, abruptly conscious that he was now more cut-about than when last she had seen him; there was that very nasty scar upon his breast, where the barbed ball had taken him, before the sinking of the Valérie, and he had not filled back out from the long dismay of the sea-voyage and Laurence’s disappearance. He had not had much appetite, of late, and it was difficult to be always competing shipboard with Maximus and Kulingile; one felt a little awkward taking anything more than one urgently needed, with the two of them casting mournful looks at their own share.
Iskierka said rudely, “I do not see why she is come; who wants her, anyway?” when Temeraire presented Mei to the company, but naturally Temeraire did not translate this remark. Iskierka drew herself up and raked Mei with a cold eye. “So that is an Imperial? Skinny, if you ask me; I dare say she could not go eye-to-eye with a Copacati. I don’t see she has any scars at all.”
“Mei,” Temeraire said coldly, “is a great scholar, and took highest honors in the Imperial examinations.”
“Oh!” Iskierka said, dismissive, “say nothing more! She does not fight at all; I see. I hope you have a splendid time talking over books together while you are making this egg of yours: I hope it don’t leave you any more out of frame than you already are. Granby, I should like a flight before bed: pray let us go aloft, and then we shall go have a look in at my egg,” she added, “and I take your point entirely; we shouldn’t want to leave it in this country, where they don’t value courage as they ought.”
Temeraire was ruffled to indignation by this speech, and would surely have made a particularly sharp rejoinder if Iskierka had not gone away directly. The others were more polite to Mei, and looked with respectful interest on her jewels—this evening a collar-like delicate netting of pearls and silver wire, brilliant in the lamp-light against her dark blue scales. Although Temeraire writhed a little inwardly to see Maximus look up from the indelicate gnawing of a leg bone between two teeth and greet her with a mere joggle of the head, scarcely even a nod, saying jocularly, “How d’ye do,” before going back to rattling the bone around in his mouth in what seemed to Temeraire a particularly noisy way.