Free Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik Page A

teeth into
    a less threatening shape. Laurence was heartened that some
    other few of the party, still dressed more or less, had
    gathered on the stoop to see her.

    She cocked her head at the question and said something
    inquiringly in the dragon-tongue, quite incomprehensible to
    them all, then sat up on her hind legs to call out a
    piercing answer to some cry which only she had heard.

    Temeraire's more resonant voice became audible to them all,
    answering, and he came down into the wide lawn behind her:
    the lamps gleaming on his obsidian-glossy scales in their
    thousands, and his shivering wings kicking up a spray of
    dust and small pebbles, which rattled against the walls
    like small-shot. He curved down his head from its great
    serpentine height, well clear of the roof of the house.
    "Hurry, Laurence, pray," he said. "A courier came and
    dropped a message to tell us there is a Fleur-de-Nuit
    bothering the ships off Boulogne. I have sent Arkady and
    the others to chase him away, but I do not trust them to
    mind without me there."

    "No indeed," Laurence said, and turned only to shake
    Captain Ferris's hand; but there was no sign of him, or of
    any living soul but Ferris and Gherni: the doors had been
    shut up tight, and the windows all were close-shuttered
    before they lifted away.

    "Well, we are in for it, make no mistake," Jane said,
    having taken his report in Temeraire's clearing: the first
    skirmish off Weymouth and the nuisance of chasing away the
    Fleur-de-Nuit, and besides those another alarm which had
    roused them, after a few more hours of snatched sleep; and
    quite unnecessarily, for they arrived only in time, at the
    edge of dawn, to catch sight of a single French courier
    vanishing off over the horizon, chased by the orange gouts
    of cannon-fire from the fearsome shore battery which had
    lately been established at Plymouth.

    "These were none of them real attacks," Laurence said.
    "Even that skirmish, though they provoked it. If they had
    worsted us, they could not have stayed to take any
    advantage of it, not such small dragons; not if they wished
    to get themselves home again before they were forced to
    collapse on shore."

    He had given his men leave to snatch some sleep on the way
    back, and his own eyes had closed once or twice during the
    flight, but that was nothing to seeing Temeraire almost
    grey with fatigue, his wings tucked limply against his
    back.

    "No; they are probing our defenses, and more aggressively
    than I had looked for," Jane said. "I am afraid they have
    grown suspicious. They chased you into Scotland without
    hide nor wing of another dragon to be seen: the French are
    not fools to overlook something like that, however badly it
    ended for them. If any one of those beasts gets into the
    countryside and flies over the quarantine-coverts, the game
    will be up: they will know they have free rein."

    "How have you kept them from growing suspicious before?"
    Laurence said. "Surely they must have noted the absence of
    our patrols."

    "We have managed to disguise the situation, so far, by
    sending out the sick for short patrols, on clear days when
    they can be seen for a good distance," Jane said. "A good
    many of them can still fly, and even fight for a while,
    although none of them can stand up to a long journey: they
    tire too easily, and they feel the cold more than they
    should; they complain of their bones aching, and the winter
    has only made matters worse."

    "Oh! If they are laying upon the ground, I am not surprised
    they do not feel well," Temeraire said, rousing, and
    lifting up his head. "Of course they feel the cold; I feel
    it myself, when the ground is so hard and frozen, and I am
    not sick at all."

    "Dear fellow," Jane said, "I would make it summer again if
    I could; but there is nowhere else for them to sleep."

    "They must have pavilions," Temeraire said.

    "Pavilions?" Jane said, and Laurence went into his small
    sea-chest and brought out to her the thick packet which