Which response, Temeraire felt, quite justified pursuing his notion of an alternative. “I suppose you would like to stay here, and marry the Sapa Inca, and be an Emperor?” he inquired of Forthing, experimentally.
“Catch me,” Forthing said, snorting.
Temeraire sighed; he would have been just as happy to leave Forthing behind, as not. But he had to admit it would not be a reasonable exchange. Indeed, he had been forced twice this week to check Forthing pretty sharply: he had gone far overboard, in his attempts to prepare for this absurd and unnecessary ceremony of presentation.
“The Empress has not thought anything wrong in Granby’s clothing so far,” Temeraire said, “and if his boots are worn-out, he has those sandals, so I am sure you need not go to such lengths and spend so much leather on making new ones.
“And neither do you,” he added reproachfully to Ferris: who had just returned from the market at the outskirts of the city, with two alpacas laden with beautifully woven green cloth: he evidently thought to use this to make new coats for all the aviators who should be participating in the ceremony. “Where have the funds come, for all of this? For we have had none, before now.”
“Oh—well—” Ferris said, evasively, “—there are those stones, which Maila gave Iskierka.”
“She has not traded them for your getting ordinary cloth,” Temeraire said, with increasing suspicion, and swung his head around to count the sailors where they lay in the courtyard drowsing: he was sorry to say it, but he did not entirely put it past either Forthing or even Ferris to have allowed one of the men to sneak away to another dragon, in exchange for more bribery; a practice which Temeraire did not mean to continue. Laurence disapproved, for one thing, and aside from that, while the sailors were not very good, and he did not consider them his crew, exactly, certainly he was responsible for them.
He saw now that it must be a very poor sort of dragon who would only concern himself with one person; of course Laurence outweighed in importance all the rest; and his officers and crew after, when he had got a ground crew again; but that did not need to be the limit. Temeraire saw no reason he might not undertake to look after more men than he could carry at one time, if Curicuillor and her offspring did as much; and indeed one might say that Temeraire’s own uncle was responsible for all China, in a way, as he was the Emperor’s dragon.
In any case, Laurence had been working on the crew’s discipline, and they were rather better, especially now that Handes was gone: they grumbled a little, but did their work, and when Ferris had put them to the new supply of fabric, they even proved able to turn out perfectly serviceable coats, after one remaining threadbare garment had been sacrificed to make pattern-pieces from. So Temeraire did not mean to let them be traded away, particularly in such a cause; and he kept a close and watchful eye on all of them.
“And one of them is missing,” he said wrathfully, the next morning, “Crickton, and where has he gone, I should like to know at once, pray,” and it transpired that Crickton had grown enamored of a serving-girl who lived in the estate of the governor of the eastern province.
“He hasn’t gone,” Ferris said to Laurence, hurriedly, when Temeraire had called him to account, “he is only visiting her, for a little while; I didn’t think there could be any harm in it.”
“Oh?” Laurence said, grimly.
“Well,” Ferris said, “it is hard on the fellows, when there are no ladies on the town, as it were; and I gather, sir, it is hard on the women hereabouts, also, for they cannot get married outside their own ayllu without a great deal of trouble, in negotiations—”
Crickton had evidently been trying several nights to sneak away, to visit the lady—on the basis of little more encouragement than smiles, from the doorway of the great hall where she lived—and had been caught in the act by Ferris. “And I represented to him, sir, that it could not be his duty to go away in such a manner; he proposed that he should only have a visit with her, and return; and the steward of the estate thought fit to send us a thank-you—”
“For his providing stud services,” Laurence said flatly, and Ferris looked at first abashed, and then shrugged wide.
“It is not as though we don’t ourselves, sir,” he said. “If one has a dragon, I mean.”
Laurence looked rather troubled, and later said to Temeraire, “My dear, I hope you do not wish for me to—that is to say, I cannot feel—barring marriage, I should not be prepared to—”