Temeraire heaved an enormous gasp, his entire chest bellowing out, and said chokingly, “Ferris, will you pray have the gold plate brought out—Napoleon’s service? I do not suppose, Laurence,” he added, in a sudden burst of desperation, “that you object to my having offered it as a reward? If you think it an excessive gesture—”

“My God,” Laurence said, with feeling, “if you have bought us half a dozen Prussian dragons, you might have spent every last ounce of coin in your wagon, without my raising the least objection,” and Temeraire gave a shudder and put his head under his wing, as the plate was brought out and handed over to the two exultant ferals.

They fell almost at once to squabbling over the equal division of their spoils, which the presence of various serving-vessels of varied size made difficult. Temeraire flinched from the dispute. Laurence could not pretend to share his feelings, but nevertheless laid a hand upon his muzzle to try to comfort him. “My dear,” he said, “I am very sensible of the pain which this sacrifice must have given you; will you permit me to say that I rejoice in the character which you have displayed in enduring it? And to urge you to console yourself by observing the pleasure you have given our friends, entirely aside from the manifest benefits to our war effort.”

“I am very happy to have been of service, of course,” Temeraire said, monotonously, but Hammond emerged from the cacophony quite nearly incandescent with his own joy, and seized his hand and cried, “Laurence, Laurence, the beasts say there are another forty of them, spread across Prussia, the entire Prussian aerial corps: they have all run for it. I cannot conceive how they were persuaded.”

“Well, it’s plain enough, isn’t it?” the grey feral demanded, lifting her head. “If this Napoleon isn’t knocked down, they will never see their captains again, who might all as well be dead. There wasn’t any sense in their sitting about in the breeding grounds anyway, and they weren’t even being bred, for that matter.”

“What?” Temeraire said, lifting his head, at least briefly distracted from his unhappiness.

She shrugged. “I gather this Lien dragon doesn’t think much of the Prussian lines: she even had them kept apart on purpose, the males and females, so they shouldn’t have any eggs.”

“Why,” Temeraire said, “how insulting, and when they were so brave—even if they did insist on formation-flying, that was not their fault, really, and they did not know any better; Eroica, I am very sorry you should have endured such rudeness,” he added, but Eroica reared his head up away from Dyhern, his yellow eyes widening suddenly, and cried out, “Mein Gott!”

He lunged back onto his feet, with such force that tremors ran through the ground; Laurence had to put a hand on Temeraire’s leg to steady himself. “Eggs! Temeraire—forgive me! That I should not tell you at once! She is a fiend, a fiend—”

“Of course she is, but whatever are you talking about?” Temeraire said, pulling his head back on his neck, wary.

“The white dragon came to the breeding grounds not two weeks ago,” Eroica said. “Her insulting remarks—I will not repeat them all! But this we overheard her say,” and he turned his head one way and another, to the other Prussian dragons, who all nodded energetically, “that she considered it her duty to protect the lines of France no less than the lines of China: that she meant to prevent our breeding even as she meant also to see to a mongrel egg, which a traitor to her kind had produced, to seal a corrupt alliance between China and the most evil nation of the West—”

—

Temeraire oversaw the hasty packing with blank calm. “I see now, Laurence,” he said, “that you are quite right, that one must not be a slave to fortune: if I had kept all the gold plate, and never offered the reward, I should never have known that the egg was in danger, and Lien might have—” Here he faltered, with a shudder which wracked his entire frame; he did not wish to imagine what Lien might have done to the helpless, too-fragile egg. “But will you be well enough to travel?” he added instead, with dull anxiety.

“I will do,” Laurence said. “But Temeraire, you and I must go alone; we cannot take the crew with us on such a journey.”

“As you think best,” Temeraire said. The ground crewmen took the lid off the porridge-pit, and he put his head within to eat as much as he could, though he felt no sense of appetite.

Hammond and Forthing and Ferris had already been arguing with Laurence in low voices, telling him that it was madness to try to cross all Russia in the worst cold of winter, without escort; they redoubled their arguments now. Temeraire overheard, but made no answer. It would be very difficult, of course, but there was no alternative: to take the southern road would be a loss of three months’ time.

“Gentlemen,” Laurence said, without looking up from his writing-table, where he leaned heavily upon his elbow as he slowly scratched out a letter, “Temeraire will go: do you imagine there is any question of that? Therefore I am going. Mr. Forthing, I will give you a letter for Whitehall, but until you receive further orders, I hope you will be guided by Mr. Hammond’s advice. I imagine that there will be a great want of men to crew the Prussian dragons, and you cannot, I think, do better than to return the favor which Dyhern has done for us heretofore. Mr. Hammond, I would be very much obliged to you if you will ask safe-passage for us from the Tsar.”

“Good God!” Hammond cried, “as if he can give you any such thing, with five thousand mad and starving ferals scattered across his countryside. Captain, I beg you to try all your influence, all your energies—”

“Those,” Laurence said, cutting him off, “I must conserve for efforts more likely to succeed.”

Hammond gave over arguing, but a little while later, when Laurence had gone into the house to eat a little supper, he came to Temeraire and made a final attempt. “Temeraire,” he said, “I must say to you what Captain Laurence will not: this journey will be his death. He has scarcely risen from his sickbed; he is weak and ill. To attempt to cross a frozen wasteland in his condition, with insufficient food and shelter, will be a death sentence even in the absence of any other hazards which you might encounter. Will you insist upon taking him to so cruel a fate?”

“Oh!” Temeraire cried. “That you should speak to me so: why is he weak and ill, but that you put him in the way of this wretched duel, and did not let me know anything of what was happening? You may be sure I would not have permitted him to be shot by a worthless coward.”