“Yes?” Laurence said.

“—ought you not have another set of golden bars for your coat?” Temeraire said faintly.

Laurence laughed—laughed, quite aloud!—and said, “I thank you for the reminder; indeed I must make shift to acquire them at once.”

“He must not learn of the Concord going around,” Temeraire said to Perscitia anxiously, when Laurence had gone with Granby to begin arrangements, for the golden bars and for the dinner. “At least, not until we have contrived some solution; only what am I to do?”

“LAURENCE, I HAVE BEEN thinking,” Temeraire said. It seemed an opportune moment: Laurence was busily engaged in figuring in a very large ledger the various expenditures required to fit out Iskierka’s pavilion for the dinner. “I have been thinking, it might be suitable for me to host a dinner as well—for some of my old friends from the breeding grounds—veterans, and unharnessed fellows—and perhaps some ferals might stop in—”

Lacking a better idea, he had seized on Laurence’s strategy as his own: a dinner, as he already knew, worked splendidly to solve any number of difficulties, and perhaps it should serve in this case, too. He did not quite know how to explain to Laurence why he wished to host a dinner, but as it proved, he did not need to: Laurence lifted his head instantly from his work.

“You answer the wish I had not yet made,” Laurence said. “We must try to bring on some more light-weights and middle-weights, and I would be glad to take as many of the ferals and unharnessed beasts with us to Europe as you can convince to take the King’s shilling. You may offer them the usual rate of pay for harnessed beasts; their Lordships have grudgingly allowed as much—do you think some of them will come?”

“I will certainly make every effort to persuade them,” Temeraire said, feeling relieved and also uncomfortably as though he were practicing deceit—although it did not really deserve the name; after all, he was not trying to hide anything from Laurence for his own benefit, but only for Laurence’s; that ought to have some mitigating quality, even if the English language did not seem to offer a more satisfying and accurate alternative to the word. In any case, he would do his best to persuade as many dragons to come along as ever he could: that would certainly be a splendid solution, if everyone should come along to the Continent and help fight against Napoleon instead.

“Will you need my assistance with the arrangements?” Laurence asked. “You would not expect over twenty dragons, I suppose?”

“Well, I do not precisely know,” Temeraire said, even more uncomfortably; just that morning, Perscitia had spoken very darkly of hundreds of silly beasts ready to take Bonaparte aboard, “but I thought perhaps the feeding station outside Dover would not object to our making use of their provisions for the day, and let us have the liberty of preparing them—I will be very happy to welcome any dragon who likes to come and eat, even if they do not think they will choose to come along with us.”

This station had been established by degrees over the last few years, by a reluctant Government grudgingly recognizing that feral dragons meant to frequent the place, and had better be fed on the nation’s terms than allowed to feed themselves. It was not yet officially a breeding ground—the Ministry finding it hateful to contemplate declaring a breeding ground in any insufficiently benighted location, and the many wealthy landholders in the area maintaining a loud rear-guard protest against the encroachment—but as many dragons were choosing to make it their home, and some of them as nesting grounds for their eggs, which the Corps gladly collected, there was as a practical matter very little difference.

There was no definite border to the territory, but if there had been, Temeraire’s own pavilion would have stood near the center—the pavilion Laurence had built him, ages ago it seemed, before treason and invasion and transportation, and the loss of Laurence’s first fortune. “We can hold it there,” Temeraire said, thinking of the distance from Dover, and the isolation of the place; there would be few people about to report on the meeting, and perhaps Laurence would never need to know.

“Splendid,” Laurence said, and made the necessary arrangements, which was to say, he wrote Temeraire a draft on his bank.

“And perhaps you would be glad to stay here in Dover, and leave the rest to me,” Temeraire said, “as you must worry about your own dinner; I should not like to add to your work.”

“If you think you can manage the feeding-station master,” Laurence said.

“Oh! There will be no difficulty there; it is good old Lloyd, who used to run the breeding ground at Pen Y Fan, and who managed our supply for us during the invasion—and Perscitia has a handy group of fellows now, who will do anything for her if they are only paid for it,” Temeraire said quickly. “No, we can manage perfectly, I am sure,” and Laurence yielded. But that was surely doing him a service, and could not really be called concealment, Temeraire felt almost sure, as he hastily flew away to meet with Perscitia.

Unfortunately, his poor pavilion had never been very grand, and was lately much neglected. It had been used as a shelter for the sick dragons during the plague, and since then as a resting-place by any dragon who happened to like being an easy hour’s flight from the coverts of London and Dover, at least for a night—which was a great many dragons: couriers, ferals sneaking around to get scraps off the Corps, unharnessed beasts who liked to get work in the quarries, or in the ports, or doing portage. None of them had taken the trouble to keep it at all nice. The corners of the chamber really could not bear too-close examination, and when Temeraire put his head in and sniffed too deeply, he jerked his head back out again with distaste.

“Well,” Perscitia said doubtfully. “Perhaps we might find another…?”

There were some others near-by, although none as large. After the invasion, some of the unharnessed dragons had used their share of the proceeds from the golden eagles they had captured to build themselves pavilions—more or less; three buildings and half a dozen unfinished structures clustered in a loose line. But of these, only Perscitia’s own was not equally a mess—but that was not saying much, as hers was very small, and made of plain red brick and grey shingles, lacking entirely in elegance or charm.

“It is easier to keep neat, if it is not so big that men cannot clean it out without an enormous amount of trouble or expense,” she said with a defensive note, as Temeraire eyed it from outside, “and also, I do not find the size at all a disadvantage: if it were any larger, and some heavy-weight took it into his head to say she was claiming it from me, I should have no recourse—unless I liked to try and take her to court, and just you watch how much remedy the law would give a dragon.”