“Of course no-one has hurt your egg!” Efficatrice said. “No-one of us would hurt an egg, at all; there is no call to be rude.”

“There is every call,” Temeraire said, “when I think how you have snatched my poor egg from a safe place and carried it off halfway around the world, through the greatest dangers imaginable—barren deserts, winter cold, icy mountains—past armies and through battles—and not so much as a word to let me know that it was safe.”

Efficatrice flinched and looked conscious, which was at least a small grain of satisfaction. Feeling all the moral force of his position, Temeraire drew himself up. “So I do not trust any of you, and I hope you may go to your commanding officer and tell him so, and that if I am not given certain proofs of the good condition of the egg, I will assume that these cannot be given because my egg is not safe, and you have been lying about it.”

“And if you have been lying about it,” Iskierka put in, having roused enough from her napping to follow the conversation, with slitted eyes, “you may be quite sure you will all be sorry: if anything has happened to my egg I will burn everything between here and whatever house Napoleon is hiding in, and then I will set that on fire, too.”

—

The senior officer overseeing the camp was Admiral Thibaut: at only a few years Laurence’s senior, he was a young man for his rank and post. Napoleon would soon need a host of trained officers, when he had so many new beasts to man. But at present Laurence had other, more immediate concerns, and could only be grateful that Thibaut had been so willing to receive him: a single request passed through the guards on their mess had almost at once brought him to the admiral’s office.

“No, sir, I thank you,” Laurence said, refusing the amiable offer of a glass of brandy, “I have come to urgently beg you to permit me to acquaint you with the peculiar facts of Mr. Tharkay’s position, and then I hope I can rely upon your sense of justice not to prosecute so deadly a charge against a man who is in every way entitled to be treated as a honorable prisoner of war.” Admiral Thibaut indicating with a courteous bow that he might continue, Laurence marshaled his arguments and plunged forward.

“—I grant that Mr. Tharkay’s circumstances might have justly raised questions. He is a British officer: but he accepted his commission from His Majesty’s Aerial Corps under the demands of exigency, when your master launched his invasion of Britain: I trust you agree no gentleman could do otherwise, in those conditions, than make himself of use to his country in whatever manner was asked of him. His active service then was but brief and irregular. I do not deny that in this last campaign, he was for all intents a member of my crew, and served in Russia in that capacity; but he had lately taken his leave of us, and rejoined only a few scant weeks before to-day, under such circumstances as made it impossible to provide him with anything in the way of uniform or insignia, or indeed anything but the bare necessities of survival. For this, I can offer as proofs the appearance which I myself make before you, which I trust you will do me the courtesy to believe not the manner in which an officer of His Majesty would present himself under conditions allowing otherwise.

“Besides this, I must also express to you the evident—” Here Laurence caught himself back, not wishing to offend where he must court, “—rather, what seemed to me the evident truth that no man in my service could expect himself to be taken for anything other than a member of Temeraire’s crew, when captured in his company, regardless of his appearance.”

The admiral’s frown deepened as Laurence spoke, but it was an expression less angry than concerned; somehow disquieting. With a sense of urgency, Laurence added, despite a sense of delicacy which would otherwise have forbidden him to mention the point, “And if it should weigh with you, sir, I should mention that we took many of your own country-men prisoner in this last campaign, behind our lines, whose clothing at that time could not by any stretch of imagination have been made to resemble a uniform, and without calling them spies for it.”

Here he finished; after a moment the admiral said, “Captain Laurence, I beg you to believe that I have permitted you to speak at such length in the hopes, the greatest hopes, of finding myself persuaded of there having been a mistake of some kind. No Frenchman—no French aviator—who knows what you have done for our dragons, and the sacrifices which you have endured in consequence, could wish anything but to oblige you in any manner where it fell in his power and his duty. But I fear greatly that to pardon M. Tharkay does not fall within my own. I thought perhaps you might say we had mistaken the gentleman, that he was not M. Tharkay at all, or perhaps a different M. Tharkay—a relation?—but all you have said must indeed confirm the reverse.”

Laurence said slowly, “Sir, he is the only man of that name of my acquaintance.” It was the truth, and therefore the only thing he could say, despite a certain faint wheedling hint in the admiral’s words, to suggest that the man might almost have welcomed a lie.

The admiral nodded. “I am desolate, Captain, but your friend has not been taken up on the grounds of a mere lack of uniform, or even a suspicion of disguise: there is indeed a considerable price lately laid his head, for spying, and I am informed M. Fouché desires conversation with him at the earliest moment.”

Laurence could not answer; taken aback, and yet not enough so, to say with conviction that the accusation was mistaken. He had known that Tharkay often served as an agent of the East India Company; his movements had always been secretive, and he had rarely volunteered his motives. That he should have been acting on behalf of Whitehall instead was not so unusual; certainly there were few men better suited for ranging across the world, if he could have been persuaded to undertake the work.

The admiral was regarding him with regret—sincere regret—but without any hesitation, and indeed Laurence could not ask the man to betray his duty, which certainly would have been to execute a spy so notorious to his nation. Only one course remained: almost intolerable, and Laurence could only be surprised that his voice remained steady. “Sir, I wish I could tell you there had been a mistake: I cannot, with certainty, nor can I dispute your understanding of your duty. I can only ask you to postpone the sentence, if you will be so kind as to permit me the time to seek his pardon from—from one who has the right to give it.”

The admiral was quite willing; and gave him pen and ink, though Laurence could as cheerfully have drawn his own blood for the task. But the letter had to be willing.