“He says he would flog him,” Temeraire said, still angry, “and I am telling him he mayn’t at all: it is not Granby’s fault,” he added to the captain, “when your guest all but asks her to show away, and anyway she was perfectly careful.” Not that Iskierka needed to be breathing fire all over the place, and ordinarily Temeraire would have been all too pleased to issue her a reproof himself, but he did not mean to yield any ground on this point.
Iskierka hissed in a dozen voices at once, from throat and spikes together; and woke Kulingile: he cracked a sleepy eye and rolled it upwards to peer at her as she jounced on his shoulders in fury, and asked, “Is there anything to eat?”
It was maddening to hear the rising uproar on deck, some two feet directly overhead, while powerless to have anything to do with it. “I suppose we may call it a blessing if this ship isn’t sunk, when we are done,” Granby said from the hanging cot where he lay, without opening his eyes; his face was drawn and deeply lined with pain.
Captain Thibaux had been everything gracious—had brought his surgeon to see to Granby’s arm, and his servant to give them an excellent dinner, though their hunger would have made it easy to do justice to one far inferior. But there was still a guard upon the door, four men well-armed and with a look of sturdy competence, and Laurence had no illusions as to their orders: the soldiers looked anxiously at one another, and above, as the noise of quarreling dragons grew all the louder.
That noise soon subsided, however, and shortly thereafter a tapping came on the cabin door.
“Captain Laurence, I regret we are fated always to be meeting in the most uncomfortable circumstances,” M. De Guignes said. “Do you permit?” He poured: an excellent Madeira. “When this endless war is over, I insist that you shall visit me, and I may give you better hospitality, if God wills we should both be spared.”
“You are very kind, sir; it would give me great pleasure,” Laurence said, taking the glass with more politeness than enthusiasm; at present he could hope only that he would not be spending the interval in a French prison, with very little reason to encourage that hope. “I am afraid you might find Temeraire less convenient to host.”
De Guignes smiled. “He should pose no more difficulties than my Genevieve,” he said, touching with pride a small decoration upon his sleeve: the Legion de l’Aile, a singular honor lately created by Napoleon which came accompanied by a dragon egg and an endowment for the beast’s future maintenance, together. Laurence heard this explanation in some astonishment, and later, when De Guignes had gone again, Granby coughed out a laugh from his cot and said, “Lord, trust Bonaparte to bring having a dragon into fashion: I suppose every one of his new aristos will want one, now.”
“Mme. Lien has condescended to offer her advice on the most profitable of crosses to attempt,” De Guignes now added. “Genevieve has now five tongues to her credit, and the last acquired after she was already out of the shell.”
It had not before occurred to Laurence that Lien might improve the French breeding lines through such a mechanism: the Admiralty had rather congratulated themselves that Lien, being female, could only produce a handful of offspring for Napoleon’s benefit. Laurence himself had strongly doubted she could be induced to do even so much, given her pride in her own lineage and disdain for Western breeds. Certainly the Chinese were acknowledged supreme in dragon-breeding techniques, but Laurence had imagined that these must be the province of some band of expert gentlemen very like those who served in the role in Britain and in France. But that was absurd, he belatedly realized: who better to direct the breeding of dragons than the dragons themselves, and if Lien had made any study of the matter, her knowledge would benefit the breeders of France far more than any individual contribution she might have made.
“The captain grants you should have the liberty of the quarterdeck from two to four bells of the afternoon watch, one of you at a time,” De Guignes said, “and you will of course wish to see to the comfort of your men; I am desolate to inform you they must remain in the ship’s gaol, in consequence of their numbers, but every effort will be made—”
“I understand entirely, and your assurances must satisfy me,” Laurence said, interrupting: he did not much object if the rescued sailors were kept in chains and sustained on weeviled biscuit and bilgewater. “If I might solicit some better housing for our officers and crew, I would be grateful: I will stand surety for their parole, if they are willing to give it.”
De Guignes bowed acquiescence.
He had managed to quiet the earlier uproar among the dragons—“Nothing to concern you, gentlemen,” he said, “only the least of misunderstandings, owing to Captain Thibaux’s unfamiliarity with the nature of dragons: he is new to his command, you see. But all has now been made clear: although I cannot greatly envy you, Captain Granby,” he added in a touch of raillery, which Granby’s set mouth did not appreciate.