“Just so,” Tharkay said, in his dry way. “And now you and Captain Laurence are here at the convocation, to be seen in his company; I am sure Napoleon is delighted to be able to present such a portrait of amity to his assembled visitors. The arrangement must have recommended itself to him highly: enough to make it worth letting the Prussian dragons go, and lure you here.”

“So it is all due to you that we are here,” Iskierka said severely, as Temeraire sinkingly let his head drop to the ground. “—I might have known.”

“Surely no-one would suppose we are here of our own volition,” he tried.

“I do not expect Napoleon means to give you any opportunity of explaining the situation to his other guests,” Tharkay said, very loweringly.

Temeraire had anyway to be glad of the visit, because Tharkay could tell him that Laurence and Granby were housed sumptuously in the palace, treated with enormous respect and every attention to their comfort: a little gratifying, at least. Temeraire brought himself finally to ask, “And—is he well?”

Tharkay paused and said, “His health improves daily. His spirits are as well-supported as might be expected,” which was to say, Laurence was very distressed, and Temeraire did not need to trouble himself to find the cause: to be paraded about by Napoleon, so everyone should think he supported the Emperor’s designs—knowing that whatever these should be, they would certainly mean nothing good for England.

It was intolerable, Temeraire realized, with a kind of terrible blankness—the situation could not be tolerated. He did not need to ask whether Laurence should have preferred to be put in prison, or even hanged, sooner than be used in such a fashion; he knew the answer perfectly well. Indeed, Temeraire was quite certain that if left to himself long enough, Laurence would find a way to arrange something of the sort; it only fell to him to act, before that should become necessary.

“Will they let you come again?” he asked Tharkay, slowly, wondering how to speak: a party of some ten guards had come with him, and stood rudely all the while in ear-shot; Tharkay had said, “I believe these gentlemen would prefer greatly that we should converse in French,” when he had come: they were certainly going to report every word.

“I believe I will be permitted to come again next week,” Tharkay said.

“Very well,” Temeraire said. “Tharkay, will you pray tell Laurence that I beg his pardon, and tell him that I hope he knows how—how highly I value him, and that I should never wish to act in any fashion that would give him cause to doubt my respect and esteem.”

Tharkay paused, looking at him for some long moments, after this speech. “I will certainly assure him, if assurances are required,” he said. “I hope to see you next week, then; although I suppose we must not depend upon it, until the event.”

“Yes, of course,” Temeraire said, so he was tolerably certain Tharkay had understood, as far as it was possible for him to understand.

Then he had gone, escorted away back to the house; their own guards were eating their suppers, far enough away to be inattentive. Temeraire turned to Iskierka. “We cannot wait any longer,” he said. “We must rescue the egg.”

“I do not disagree; I have been saying so from the beginning,” Iskierka said, swallowing down a haunch of nicely roasted kid with an easy gulp. “I am glad that you are coming round at last. I would have gone and taken it already, but there are too many of those guards. And I could not see how I would go and get Granby, afterwards. Have you thought of something clever? You ought to, since this business is all your doing, anyway.”

“No,” Temeraire said, “I have thought of nothing clever, it is not clever at all; it is only dreadful. We cannot do it: we cannot take the egg without some noise, and they will lay hands on Laurence and Granby at once. There will be no getting at them.”

“What use is there in bleating ‘we cannot wait,’ then?” Iskierka demanded, with an irritated jetting of steam.

“That is what I mean,” Temeraire said. “We must take the egg, anyway.”

Iskierka hissed at him, bristling up. “And let them keep Granby?”

“Yes,” Temeraire said, almost choking: scarcely able to think of it. Laurence alone in Lien’s power, and surely the object of her malice. “Napoleon cannot execute them. Not when he is busily pretending Laurence is his good friend, and quite in amity with him; he cannot harm him at all. It would certainly look very strange to all the dragons here, if he did. So this is our only chance. We must go and take the egg, and—and we must leave Laurence and Granby behind.”

—

“Temeraire is certainly planning something,” Tharkay said, “but as to the details, I cannot speculate, except that he evidently supposed you might feel slighted.”

“That tells me nothing, unless he means to lose me another ten thousand pounds,” Laurence said grimly.

“Had we better try and stop them?” Granby said. “You know there is no use hoping that cooler minds will prevail, on their end. The madder the notion, the more sure it is to please Iskierka: I would not depend on her to restrain Temeraire from launching a headlong charge on Paris and trying to bring down the Tuileries.”

“I cannot see how you mean to do so,” Tharkay said, “unless by betraying their intentions to our gaolers, which will certainly preclude any future chance of escape. You can either trust them, or halt them forever.”

Placed upon these terms, Laurence found his own decision easy, if no more comfortable. “That trust I can hardly deny him. The egg is no longer in mortal peril, nor are we. I do not think Temeraire suffers in his present situation the same desperation that drove him to those earlier extremes, which brought us to this pass; he may certainly wish to escape, but I do not believe he would enter into some real folly, in pursuit of that aim, which would endanger the egg or our lives. I do not deny he might overestimate his chances, as judged rationally by a more skeptical eye. But I cannot remove his power of taking action, only because I have no means of approving his course.”

“Well, it would be an unhandsome turn to serve him, I don’t deny,” Granby said, “but what good can he possibly do while we sit here in the midst of Bonaparte’s armies? If I could think of anything at all worth the doing, I should be less concerned about his getting up to something. I will be the first to say it is a wrench, going from Spain to a French prison—however pleasant,” he added, with a reluctant justice almost demanded by their surroundings.