Temeraire. Naomi Novik

to make, but Portland looked anxious, not angry, and after a moment he added, ‘There is just no getting around it; you are not an aviator. If it were simply a question of skill or knowledge, that would mean difficulties enough, but—’ He stopped.

      Laurence did not think, from the tone, that Portland meant to question his courage. The man had been more amiable this morning; so far, it seemed to Laurence that aviators simply took clannishness to an extreme, and once having admitted a fellow into their circle, their cold manners fell away. So he took no offence, and said, ‘Sir, I can hardly imagine where else you believe the difficulty might lie.’

      ‘No, you cannot,’ Portland said, uncommunicatively. ‘Well, and I am not going to borrow trouble; they may decide to send you somewhere else entirely, not to Loch Laggan. But I am running ahead of myself: the real point is that you and Temeraire must get to England for your training soonest; once you are there, Aerial Command can best decide how to deal with you.’

      ‘But can he reach England from here, with no place to stop along the way?’ Laurence asked, diverted by concern for Temeraire. ‘It must be more than a thousand miles; he has never flown further than from one end of the island to the other.’

      ‘Closer to two thousand, and no; we would never risk him so,’ Portland said. ‘There is a transport coming over from Nova Scotia; a couple of dragons joined our division from it three days ago, so we have its position pretty well fixed, and I think it is less than a hundred miles away. We will escort you to it; if Temeraire gets tired, Laetificat can support him for long enough to give him a breather.’

      Laurence was relieved to hear the proposed plan, but the conversation made him aware how very unpleasant his circumstances would be until his ignorance was mended. If Portland had waved off his fears, Laurence would have had no way of judging the matter for himself. Even a hundred miles was a good distance; it would take them three hours or more in the air. But that at least he felt confident they could manage; they had flown the length of the island three times just the other day, while visiting Sir Edward, and Temeraire had not seemed tired in the least.

      ‘When do you propose leaving?’ he asked.

      ‘The sooner the better; the transport is headed away from us, after all,’ Portland said. ‘Can you be ready in half an hour?’

      Laurence stared. ‘I suppose I can, if I have most of my things sent back to the Reliant for transport,’ he said dubiously.

      ‘Why would you?’ Portland said. ‘Laet can carry anything you have; we shan’t weigh Temeraire down.’

      ‘No, I only mean that my things are not packed,’ Laurence said. ‘I am used to waiting for the tide; I see I will have to be a little more beforehand with the world from now on.’

      Portland still looked puzzled, and when he came into Laurence’s room twenty minutes later he stared openly at the sea chest that Laurence had turned to this new purpose. There had hardly been time to fill half of it; Laurence paused in the act of putting in a couple of blankets to take up the empty space at the top. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, looking down; the chest was not so large that he thought it would give Laetificat any difficulty.

      ‘No wonder you needed the time; do you always pack so carefully?’ Portland said. ‘Could you not just throw the rest of your things into a few bags? We can strap them on easily enough.’

      Laurence swallowed his first response; he no longer needed to wonder why the aviators looked, to a man, rumpled in their dress; he had imagined it due to some advanced technique of flying. ‘No, thank you; Fernao will take my other things to the Reliant, and I can manage perfectly well with what I have here,’ he said, putting the blankets in; he strapped them down and made all fast, then locked the chest. ‘There; I am at your service now.’

      Portland called in a couple of his midwingmen to carry the chest; Laurence followed them outside, and was witness, for the first time, to the operation of a full aerial crew. Temeraire and he both watched with interest from the side as Laetificat stood patiently under the swarming ensigns, who ran up and down her sides as easily as they hung below her belly or climbed upon her back. The boys were raising up two canvas enclosures, one above and one below; these were like small, lopsided tents, framed with many thin and flexible strips of metal. The front panels which formed the bulk of the tent were long and sloped, evidently to present as little resistance to the wind as possible, and the sides and back were made of netting.

      The ensigns all looked to be below the age of twelve; the midwingmen ranged more widely, just as aboard a ship, and now four older ones came staggering with the weight of a heavy leather-wrapped chain they dragged in front of Laetificat. The dragon lifted it herself and laid it over her withers, just in front of the tent, and the ensigns hurried to secure it to the rest of the harness with many straps and smaller chains.

      Using this strap, they then slung a sort of hammock made of chain links beneath Laetificat’s belly. Laurence saw his own chest tossed inside along with a collection of other bags and parcels; he winced at the haphazard way in which the baggage was stowed, and was doubly grateful that he had been careful in his packing: he was confident they might turn his chest completely about a dozen times without casting his things into disarray.

      A large pad of leather and wool, perhaps the thickness of a man’s arm, was laid on top of all, then the hammock’s edges were drawn up and hooked to the harness as widely as possible, spreading the weight of the contents and pressing them close to the dragon’s belly. Laurence felt a sense of dissatisfaction with the proceedings; he privately thought he would have to find a better arrangement for Temeraire, when the time came.

      However, the process had one significant advantage over naval preparations: from beginning to end it took fifteen minutes, and then they were looking at a dragon in full light-duty rig. Laetificat reared up on her legs, shook out her wings, and beat them a half dozen times; the wind was strong enough to nearly stagger Laurence, but the assembled baggage did not shift noticeably.

      ‘All lies well,’ Laetificat said, dropping back down to all fours; the ground shook with the impact.

      ‘Lookouts aboard,’ Portland said; four ensigns climbed on and took up positions at the shoulders and hips, above and below, hooking themselves onto the harness. ‘Topmen and bellmen.’ Now two groups of eight midwingmen climbed up, one going into the tent above, the other below: Laurence was startled to perceive how large the enclosures really were; they seemed small only by virtue of comparison to Laetificat’s immense size.

      The crews were followed in turn by the twelve riflemen, who had been checking and arming their guns while the others rigged out the gear. Laurence noticed Lieutenant Dayes leading them, and frowned; he had forgotten about the fellow in the rush. Dayes had offered no apology; now most likely they would not see one another for a long time. Although perhaps it was for the best; Laurence was not sure that he could have accepted the apology, after hearing Temeraire’s story, and as it was impossible to call the fellow out, the situation would have been uncomfortable to say the least.