There was nothing to beautify the arrangements, no fountains or even a pleasant courtyard; the pavilion had only been erected in the midst of the old clearings where they once had slept on bare dirt, and the paths among the trees were too narrow for anyone but a human to walk. The stones were not properly heated, either: there were several braziers going for warmth, but in all, the establishment did not stand up well to comparison with their recent prison.

“But it is entirely unreliable,” Perscitia said. “Now Napoleon has decided to be fond of dragons, because he has learned to make us particularly useful in fighting his wars, and for that matter, quelling any of his enemies in France itself—but what of the tyrant who will come after him? What if the next emperor should decide that he does not like dragons? I would rather have the protection of law, and tradition, and know that whatever we have gained cannot be as easily taken away again. Temeraire, we must give real thought to the future. One day they will cast a cannon that can take a Regal out of the sky with one shot fired, and then where will we be?”

“Nonsense,” Temeraire said uneasily. “I have been shot two dozen times myself, and there has been nothing so terrible about it. Of course a cannonball would be very unpleasant, but unless one goes too close to the ground, or flies into their path, they are not so difficult to avoid.”

“There were no guns at all, five hundred years ago,” Perscitia said. “I have been assured of it, by my secretaries.”

“That is quite false,” Temeraire said, glad to be able to contradict her. “They were invented during the Song dynasty, a thousand years ago: I have read of them in China.”

“But even so they were invented—they did not always exist,” Perscitia said, turning his information around to serve her own argument, which seemed to Temeraire unfair. “And Chinese guns are not as good as ours are now, and therefore guns have improved, and they will go on improving. What do you suppose will happen when they do not need us to make war anymore, and we are only very inconvenient and eat a great deal, and frighten most of them? They were quite willing to let a great many of us starve, when we were too sick to fly and hunt for ourselves, and they couldn’t get eggs out of us anymore.

“No, it is no good our relying on any one king or emperor, and it is no good letting them only use us for battle. Oh! I am very glad you are come back, Temeraire. Even though I have been elected, there are still any number of dragons who will not listen to me at all, only because I am not large and do not like to fight all the time,” she added peevishly. “But they will certainly mind you, and I am sure you can understand, if you only make a little push to do so.”

Temeraire was not at all sure he wanted to understand. Perscitia did like to take alarm at things unnecessarily. It was surely nonsense to talk of shooting down heavy-weights as though they were geese—but Perscitia was clever, and he felt uncomfortably she might not be entirely mistaken about the march of progress.

In one thing at least, however, they were in perfect agreement: he did not at all trust the Government. They certainly would let dragons starve, if they could, and perhaps worse. He had seen worse in Russia, now, and could describe it; he shuddered again at the memory of the cruel hobbles.

“I see no reason why we shouldn’t have more of us in Parliament anyway,” Temeraire said. “And for that matter, why we oughtn’t go into some sort of business, too. I must tell you more of this John Wampanoag fellow, that I met in Japan.”

“You needn’t,” Perscitia said, “I am corresponding with him.” Temeraire blinked in surprise. “I thought from what you said he must be well-known there, so I had one of my secretaries send a letter to Boston, marked very clearly to his name, and it did find him, for he was kind enough to write back. We have discussed arranging an overland trade route from Portsmouth to China, or perhaps just to India to begin with.”

“For my part, I cannot see that we need this Parliament, or to trouble ourselves about business, either,” put in a small beast, who Temeraire realized with a start had been listening all this while to their conversation.

He had been easily overlooked: he was sitting in the corner of the clearing beneath a windbreak of pine-trees, and was himself mottled dark green with a belly in purplish brown, just barely topping the line between light-weight and courier-weight. He was of no breed Temeraire recognized, although his accent was quite distinctly Scottish, and wore no harness. Smaller ferals had always slipped into the coverts to sneak some leavings when they could, and now the practice was grown more widespread: the porridge-pots made it easy to make them welcome, and once they were there, the aviators could even trade them meat for their labor.

“But it’s a deal of work, carrying heavy things from one end of the earth to another,” the green feral continued, “with not even a sheep to be sure of at the end of the day; and you may keep your Parliament. A vote never filled anyone’s belly that I heard of, nor this pay we are meant to be getting, which I have never seen. I like that map of Napoleon’s, if you ask me.”

“What map is this?” Perscitia demanded, as Temeraire flattened his ruff in irritation: they certainly had not asked him.

“Napoleon has had the splendid notion of offering dragons territory which he has no right to offer, nor any power to give,” Temeraire said, “and trying to trick them into fighting for it, all to distract his enemies: I had not supposed,” he added coolly, “that any British dragon would be taken in by his chicanery: as though we had not learned before now that all he wants is to take all our territory for his own, and bring his own dragons over here.”

“He hasn’t any quarrel with me and mine that I know of,” the feral said. “All right, he invaded, but that was to beat that mad old king the men have over here, and I didn’t see any of his beasts setting eggs while they were here, did I? Meanwhile the men in this country go about taking our eggs when it suits them, and hunting up all the game, and coming after us with guns if we want a sheep to eat now and then. I’d just as soon take a chance on a fellow who has done right and proper by his own dragons. Two of my wing were in France lately for his big hullabaloo, and said their leavings at breakfast are better than what we get for dinner, and their pavilions make this,” he flicked his tail dismissively at the small pavilion, “look like a wet hole as you’d put a pig in, to keep for later.”