“No,” Tharkay said, permitting the change of subject. “My work was finished, some days before the French dragons came through. It was just as well to have an excuse to leave. It is a very damnable thing, Laurence, to be forever reminded that one is too much betwixt and between to belong to any settled place.” He drank deeply, and handed the flask on. In the dark, his face could not be seen, and his voice had kept light, but Laurence was sorry. He thought he knew what had sparked that rare flash of bitterness: Tharkay had gone to Istanbul to see Avraam Maden, whose daughter had married another man.

“How did you manage to hire a dragon, for your passage?” Laurence asked quietly.

“An hour’s ride east from the city, I found an isolated place and staked out a handsome cow, and waited; a couple of ferals landed at twilight. They were inclined to be suspicious, but they understood Durzagh well enough for me to make myself understood, and bribery did the rest. They flew me over the Black Sea, nearabouts to the outskirts of Odessa, and made my desire to be carried onward known to the dragons there with whom they could speak, and handed me over to them like a piece of peculiar baggage. In this fashion I arranged to have myself bundled along. I cannot call it a comfortable way to travel, but for speed it was remarkable.”

They exchanged the flask a few more times, choked down the rest of the meat, and eventually slept, curled almost as awkward as Temeraire over their own knees, pulled in tight to make small warm knots of their bodies. Laurence jerked awake at uncertain intervals from discomfort and shrieks of wind, in pitch darkness, only Tharkay’s presence at his side and the steady low hissing of Temeraire’s breath to orient him. The sky above turned, stars in their paces, and the night crept onward; he woke again with the first brightness creeping into the sky, and dozed fitfully until the dawn was fully advanced. No word had come.

They built their small fire, and Tharkay made the climb to the top of the crevasse to pack a pailful of snow to be melted. They brewed tea, and soaked their hard bread and dried meat until it became a little more edible. Temeraire stirred, and looked longingly up at the open sky, but did not propose risking even a short flight. The day crept even more slowly than the night, and when Bistorta dropped into the crevasse at dusk, Laurence was not more startled than he was glad. She had brought Temeraire a small sheep, but no news: no party of dragons had been seen coming into the mountain, nor even a single heavy-weight.

“But Tharkay did say they were visiting at the Sultan’s palace,” Temeraire argued with his own disappointment, “and I dare say meant to stay in Istanbul a little while, so we ought not have expected them yesterday: to-night, perhaps, or tomorrow.”

“Or the day after, if I misjudged their haste,” Tharkay said.

Laurence did not say, that it had taken Tharkay three days to find Temeraire, and more than a week to reach their present camp, where the search had consumed another; that the egg might already be gone into France, and beyond their reach.

“Well, perhaps it will be to-night,” Temeraire said, low, half to himself.

But there was no sighting that night or the following, and by the third Temeraire was in a fever of anxiety: the possibility that the egg was near acted upon him as a goad. Only the strongest persuasion kept him from struggling out of their bolt-hole and attempting his own search, and Laurence had no confidence that even this would restrain him when the next dawn came.

But in the late dark hours, the moon having set, he jerked awake as Temeraire moved, scrabbling against the ice walls: he looked up and saw the outline of a small dragon against the stars, peering in: Bistorta. “Laurence,” Temeraire was saying, urgently, “Laurence, quickly, at once.”

Temeraire put them up out of the crevasse, small showers of snow and ice drifting down as the ice walls shivered and groaned around him. He had barely put them down before he came scrabbling out himself, emerging like some unexpected monstrous beast from the depths of the earth. Great chunks of ice crashed away beneath him with a shattering noise as he heaved himself onto the slope, back legs clawing for purchase at the mouth of the crevasse. Then he shook himself, put out a taloned forehand, and caught Laurence and Tharkay up and put them on his back: barely a moment for them to clip their carabiners onto his abbreviated harness and he was launching aloft, his still-ragged wings churning furiously, and circling up into the air.

He could fly no quicker than his guide, for which Laurence was grateful, as otherwise he feared Temeraire would have pressed past his strength. Even keeping Bistorta’s pace, his whole body was laboring, his breath coming with some difficulty; they were neither of them, as Tharkay had said, having a healthy convalescence. Thin blades of mountain air drove through the gaps in Laurence’s own huddled-on wraps, the corners of his oilskins escaping often to flap noisily in the wind until he could catch them back around himself.

The mountains were shadows, black shapes jagged against the sky. Bistorta and Temeraire did not talk; they flew and flew southward, and after perhaps an hour’s travel Bistorta landed and made a small sharp whistling noise, piercing, and then stood with her head cocked, listening. No reply came; she came back aloft and said, “Further!”

After perhaps another ten minutes, she tried again; this time in the distance a similar whistle answered her, and she altered their course slightly. Another brief span, and the whistle was very close: then another of the small dragons was leaping up to meet them, chirping to Bistorta and to Temeraire: Laurence could not follow much of the conversation, but they wheeled after this newcomer and plunged into a valley between two of the tall sharp peaks. The new guide led them to a narrow ledge—narrow by Temeraire’s standards, at least; he had to stand on his hind legs almost embracing the cliff face to keep himself upon it. “They are coming,” he said to Laurence, his voice trembling with urgency. “A heavy-weight dragon, but not a Fleur-de-Nuit; they do not know what she is, he says.”

“Alone?” Laurence said, and looked at Tharkay, who shook his head doubtfully.

“What I heard in Istanbul was three dragons, traveling in company,” he said, “but rumor on the streets is often amplified; I would not rely upon it.”

“I must stop them,” Temeraire said, “but I must be sure not to hurt the egg—oh! If I should use the divine wind upon them, and the shell were to—” He could not finish, his voice breaking off into misery.