“I suppose this is a judgment on me, for saying I should be grateful for any excuse not to go to dinner,” Granby said, grimly, dousing himself thoroughly. “Let’s hurry: I am damned if I am going to die trying to rescue the crown prince of France.”

They went up another flight. In their rooms they had now and again heard a noise of childish wails and nursemaids singing, coming from above; now they ran down the halls, opening every door, until they found a room strewn with toys: the curtains ablaze and the silken carpet beginning to catch, and the loud determined cries of a distressed child coming from behind another door.

While Tharkay and Granby took the bottom edge of the carpet and dragged it away from the flames, folding it double and stamping upon it, Laurence ran to the inner door and threw it wide to find the bedchamber thick with smoke: one of the nursemaids lying on the floor by the window screaming, on the sooty wreck of a blanket that been used to smother her, her hair blackened and her blistered hands covering her face, while another huddled against the back wall with the crying child in her arms. The third was standing before them, beating at the flames catching around them with a wetted rag.

Laurence hurdled a line of flames and caught her by the arm. “Get out of the room!” he said, and the young woman cried out and pointed: he turned to find a single monstrous smoke-reddened eye peering in anxiously through the shattered glass and flames, calling.

Laurence dredged up a few words of Quechua: “This way!” he shouted out to the dragon, motioning to the next room. He turning caught the second nursemaid, with the child in her arms, and wrapping the wet sheet around her dragged her through the flames, the child between their bodies. Granby had pulled down the curtains with his hook-hand, arm wrapped in his sodden cloak, and now the dragon was tearing out the burning window-frame, emitting howls of pain as it did.

All at once wood and brick gave way, crumbling open a wide gap in the wall. The Incan dragon put its foreleg through the hole, and they got the nursemaids and the child carefully into its talons. Laurence and Tharkay dashed back into the burning bedroom—the other woman had fallen silent, and she lay heavy and limp in their arms as they carried her out, her skin red and scorched. As they heaved her into the dragon’s claw, a roaring from outside, and the sound of beating wings: through smoke Laurence glimpsed Lien, her white belly lit brilliant orange by the flames, hovering before the house. She was calling something out; the Incan dragon called back, “Wait, wait!” urgently, and snatching its precious burden drew its talons out of the opening.

“Maintenant!” Laurence heard Lien call, and from above a sudden deluge of dirt and water came pouring down the sides of the house, splattering enormous gouts through the gap in the wall. Laurence put his head out, afterwards, for a quick look up: fires still burned inside the house, licking out of the windows, but at least the outside had been smothered.

He turned as the door behind him flung open: Napoleon, with a party of Guardsmen crowding behind him, Aurigny among them—the Emperor also resplendent in a magnificent coat of red wool, now badly marred with soot. He stared at Laurence wildly, with the momentary bafflement of one trying to make sense of an unexpected meeting, and then leaping forward seized Laurence by the arms. “My son?” he demanded.

“Safely away,” Laurence said, pointing out at Lien, and the Incan dragon that had gone to join her.

One of the guards sprang to the opening—unwary, as Lien called out, “Encore!” and a second torrent came down the walls and carried him out of the window-hole and away, his feet slipping in the mud already present. The wave subsided; out of the hesitating body of guards Aurigny leapt forward, and cupping hands around his mouth bellowed, “L’Empereur est ici!”

Two others followed him, all calling together, and Lien’s head swung around as though pulled on a string; she had heard. She dived through the smoke, and the Guardsmen pushed him forward in a knot as Lien reached in for him. “The Empress!” Napoleon said, resisting.

“Safely out by now, Sire!” Aurigny was shouting as the men thrust him into the urgent talons.

Laurence started: Tharkay had his arm and Granby’s, and was drawing them back. “There is a room with no smoke coming out, three windows down the hall,” he said, low. They covered their mouths and ran through the haze of the hallway to the third door, and kicking their way in found a bare room halfway through cleaning, the curtains stripped and in a heap on the floor. One of the window-frames was burning, but the other, though blackened, had not caught. They unhooked the window and pushed it wide. Down the side of the building, Lien was lifting away with Napoleon, and two middle-weight dragons were crowding in to the window to rescue the Guards.

There were many ledges running along the outside walls, some as wide as a man’s foot, and the building was not pitching back and forth, which made the climb down light work for a sailor, much less an aviator. In ten minutes, they dropped down onto the lawns, not too wretchedly singed and bruised, and as he rolled to his feet Laurence heard a voice over the pandemonium, calling, “Laurence! Laurence!”

There was nothing to do but hope the confusion would save them: Laurence shouted, “Here! Temeraire, over here!” and Temeraire came down beside him with a gasp of relief.

“Oh Laurence!” he said, snatching him up at once. “I flew round and round and I could not see you in the least. I will wring her neck, see if I do not!”

“Don’t tell me Iskierka has done all this!” Granby said, already tumbling into Temeraire’s other claw with Tharkay.

“No!” Temeraire said. “It is not Iskierka’s fault, except it is, for she would have an egg with the divine wind and fire both, and just look where that has landed us!”

—

“Free, and with your captains,” the dragonet said, which silenced Temeraire and Iskierka, in the midst of their heartily upbraiding her. She lifted a claw and licked her talons neatly—bloodstained, as though having fired the palace, she had taken a moment to go get herself something to eat. Recalling the voracious appetite of new-hatched dragons, Laurence supposed this was indeed the case, as she would otherwise have been complaining extremely. He stared down at the deceptively small creature in some dismay. She seemed entirely untroubled by the enormous chaos she had wreaked: in the distance behind them, clouds of smoke still blotted out half the night sky, and the palace was still limned in the reddish glow of embers.