guided her hand to Temeraire’s snout, and once she made the first tentative touch to the warm hide, she soon began petting the dragon with more confidence. ‘Why, the pleasure is mine,’ she said. ‘And how soft! I would never have thought it.’
Temeraire made a pleased low rumble at the compliment and the petting, and Laurence looked at the two of them with a great deal of his happiness restored; he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty. ‘Temeraire is a Chinese Imperial,’ he told his mother, with unconcealed pride. ‘One of the very rarest of all dragons: the only one in all of Europe.’
‘Truly? How splendid, my dear; I do recall having heard before that Chinese dragons are quite out of the common way,’ she said. But she still looked at him anxiously, and there was a silent question in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to answer it. ‘I count myself very fortunate, I promise you. Perhaps we will take you flying some day, when we have more time,’ he added. ‘It is quite extraordinary; there is nothing to compare to it.’
‘Oh, flying, indeed,’ she said, indignantly, yet she seemed satisfied on a deeper level. ‘When you know perfectly well I cannot even keep myself on a horse. What I should do on a dragon’s back, I am sure I do not know.’
‘You would be strapped on quite securely, just as I am,’ Laurence said. ‘Temeraire is not a horse, he would not try to have you off.’
Temeraire said earnestly, ‘Oh yes, and if you did fall off, I dare say I could catch you,’ which was perhaps not the most reassuring remark, but his desire to please was very obvious, and Lady Allendale smiled up at him anyway.
‘How very kind you are; I had no idea dragons were so well-mannered,’ she said. ‘You will take prodigious care of William, will you not? He has always given me twice as much anxiety as any of my other children, and he is forever getting himself into scrapes.’
Laurence was a little indignant to hear himself described so, and to have Temeraire say, ‘I promise you, I will never let him come to harm.’
‘I see I have delayed too long; shortly the two of you will have me wrapped in cotton batting and fed on gruel,’ he said, bending to kiss her cheek. ‘Mother, you may write to me care of the Corps at Loch Laggan covert, in Scotland; we will be training there. Temeraire, will you sit up? I will sling this bandbox again.’
‘Perhaps you could take out that book by Duncan?’ Temeraire asked, rearing up. ‘The Naval Trident? We never finished reading about the battle of the Glorious First, and you might read it to me as we go.’
‘Does he read to you?’ Lady Allendale asked Temeraire, amused.
‘Yes; you see, I cannot hold them myself, for they are too small, and also I cannot turn the pages very well,’ Temeraire said.
‘You are misunderstanding; she is only shocked to learn that I am ever to be persuaded to open a book; she was forever trying to make me sit to them when I was a boy,’ Laurence said, rummaging in one of his other boxes to find the volume. ‘You would be quite astonished at how much of a bluestocking I am become, Mother; he is quite insatiable. I am ready, Temeraire.’
She laughed and stepped back to the edge of the field as Temeraire put Laurence up, and stood watching them, shading her eyes with one hand, as they drove up into the air; a small figure, vanishing with every beat of the great wings, and then the gardens and the towers of the house rolled away behind the curve of a hill.
The sky over Loch Laggan was full of low-hanging clouds, pearl-grey, mirrored in the black water of the lake. Spring had not yet arrived; a crust of ice and snow lay over the shore, ripples of yellow sand from an autumn tide still preserved beneath. The crisp cold smell of pine and fresh-cut wood rose from the forest. A gravel road wound up from the northern shores of the lake to the complex of the covert, and Temeraire turned to follow it up the low mountain.
A quadrangle of several large wooden sheds stood together on a level clearing near the top, open in the front and rather like half a stable in appearance; men working outside on metal and leather; obviously the ground crews, responsible for the maintenance of the aviators’ equipment. None of them so much as glanced up at the dragon’s shadow crossing over their workplace, as Temeraire flew on to the headquarters.
The main building was a very medieval sort of fortification: four bare towers joined by thick stone walls, framing an enormous courtyard in the front and a squat, imposing hall that sank directly into the mountaintop and seemed to have grown out of it. The courtyard was almost entirely overrun. A young Regal Copper, twice Temeraire’s size, sprawled drowsing over the flagstones with a pair of brown-and-purple Winchesters even smaller than Volatilus sleeping right on his back. Three mid-sized Yellow Reapers were in a mingled heap on the opposite side of the courtyard, their white-striped sides rising and falling in rhythm.
As Laurence climbed down he discovered the reason for the dragons’ choice of resting place: the flagstones were warm, as if heated from below, and Temeraire murmured happily and stretched himself on the stones beside the Yellow Reapers as soon as Laurence had unloaded him.
A couple of servants had come out to meet him, and they took the baggage off his hands. He was directed to the back of the building, through narrow dark corridors, musty-smelling, until he came out into another open courtyard that emerged from the mountainside and ended with no railing, dropping off sheer into another ice-strewn valley. Five dragons were in the air, wheeling in graceful formation like a flock of birds; the point-leader was a Longwing, instantly recognizable by the black-and-white ripples bordering its orange-tipped wings, which faded to a dusky blue along their extraordinary length. A couple of Yellow Reapers held the mid-wing position s, and the ends were anchored by a pale greenish Grey Copper to the left, and a silver-grey dragon spotted with blue and black patches to the right; he could not immediately identify its breed.
Though their wings beat in wholly different time, their relative positions hardly changed, until the Longwing’s signal-midwingman waved a flag; then they switched off smoothly as dancers, reversing so the Longwing was flying last. At some other signal Laurence did not see, they all backwinged at once, performing a perfect loop and coming back into the original formation. He saw at once that the manoeuvre gave the Longwing the greatest sweep over the ground during the pass while retaining the protection of the rest of the wing around it; naturally it was the greatest offensive threat among the group.
‘Nitidus, you are still dropping low in the pass; try changing to a six-beat pattern on the loop.’ It was the deep resounding voice of a dragon, coming from above; Laurence turned and saw a golden-hued dragon with the Reaper markings in pale green and the edges of his wings deep orange, perched on an outcropping to the right of the courtyard: he bore no rider and no harness, save, if it could be called so, a broad golden neck-ring studded with rounds of pale green jade stone.
Laurence stared. Out in the valley, the wing repeated its looping pass. ‘Better,’ the dragon called, approvingly. Then he turned his head and looked down. ‘Captain Laurence?’ he said. ‘Admiral Powys said you would be arriving; you come in good time. I am Celeritas, training master here.’ He spread his wings for lift and leaped easily down into the courtyard.
Laurence bowed mechanically. Celeritas was a mid-weight dragon, perhaps a quarter of the size of a Regal Copper and already smaller than Temeraire’s present size. ‘Hm,’ he said, lowering his head to inspect Laurence closely; the deep green irises of his eyes seemed to turn and contract around the narrowed pupil. ‘Hm, well, you are a good deal older than most handlers; but that is often all to the good when we must hurry along a young dragon, as in Temeraire’s case I think we must.’
He lifted his head and called out into the valley again, ‘Lily, remember to keep your neck straight on the loop.’ He turned back to Laurence. ‘Now then. He