It was not a long speech, nor very elegant, but it served the purpose: “hear, hear,” went around the table, every man drank, and Laurence sat again conscious of relief and having bound his officers in at least so much unity of purpose. The dessert was spread out over the table and the company might now circulate more freely, but those early knots of opposition had been broken up, and the captains did not move far from their dragons, who were murmuring raptures over their own pudding, flickering blue with a monstrous expenditure of brandy. Laurence counted it well-spent to the last shilling for the ecstasies it produced among them. A small group of musicians—intrepid and overpaid—had been set to play for the company, and now began their work. Laurence had been used to this form of entertainment after shipboard dinners, if more informally produced by the hands, and if the music served to dissuade low conversations, that, too, was just as well.

He had never before given a dinner with so much calculation, but there was a familiarity to the undertaking: just so his mother had on many an occasion organized her political dinners, more akin to a military campaign than a convivial gathering. He thought of her with brief pain, and looked down at the black riband on his arm tight against the green coat. He would have no opportunity to see her: there was no time to fly to Nottinghamshire, and she had no heart to come to town; she had written to tell him so, and to congratulate him on his flag. She had not said, Your father would be proud. Laurence could not have persuaded himself to believe her, if she had. But that pain stood for a moment at a remove from the practical necessities of the moment, and he found the bitterness lessened, also. He could never have his father’s pardon; but he had Jane’s, and was content as he had not expected ever again to be.

“Oh, and look,” Temeraire said, as the dragons finally emerged from the pavilion onto the crest of the hillside for some air, “there is the Spartiate, beating up the Channel. Let us salute her: I am sure if we roar all together, it will be as loud as a broadside, and it is only due her,” that ship being the one survivor of the wreck of Nelson’s fleet, after the battle of Shoeburyness.

The dragons were nothing loath, and even the most sour captain could hardly have made objection. The roar they made was a prodigious noise, once, twice, and then the third something else entirely. Laurence was braced, as was Granby; but all the other guests man and beast fell silent as Temeraire unleashed the full unthrottled roaring of the divine wind over all their united voices, and drowned them beneath that endless wave of noise. All was silent when he finished: the stones beneath their feet still trembling with resonance, and faint splashes coming from the surf below as gulls fell out of the sky dead into the sea.

The Spartiate—Laurence had sent a courier to her captain to warn him of the honor to be paid her—took a moment to recover, but then answered with all her guns, a distant rumbling at the distance but full of glowing fire and smoke. She was a fine and martial sight against the growing dark, enough to lift any heart with zeal.

After the ship had passed, Temeraire with sudden inspiration leaned over and whispered, “Laurence, ought we give everyone one of the lanterns, to take back to their coverts?” and the dragons, at least, were won. They carried away their paper baubles as jealously as gold, with many abjurations to their captains to be careful of the sides, and the hanging-cords, and not to let them fly off during the passage.

“Well, my dear,” Laurence said to Temeraire with some satisfaction, when the company had gone, “I think we may have won the field, so far as it could be won. What did you wish to speak to me about, earlier?”

THE FRESHLY MINTED DRAGON Rights Act 1813 received its first reading in Parliament unopposed, to the great dismay of the Government: evidently no-one had felt equal to raising objections to Perscitia’s face, or rather teeth. Laurence was well aware that the reception he met at the Admiralty, the next day, was restrained only by the almost unwelcome intelligence, arrived that very morning, of the Chinese having promised six hundred dragons to the allied forces.

He faced Yorke and his subordinate ministers with something almost like amusement, knowing those men wishing to violently castigate him for the one event and stifled by the other. Gong Su had been sent with the news by Crown Prince Mianning, and he had insisted on attending the conference, smilingly. He sat with a placid and benevolent expression that implied—very falsely—that he had only a vague understanding of the proceedings, and his presence forced the admirals to maintain the appearances of respect towards Laurence.

“It seems you have once more encountered difficulties with your King’s ministers,” Gong Su observed afterwards, as they walked together from Whitehall—that gentleman’s elaborate and impressive robes, and mandarin’s cap and button, as well as his long queue, drawing much fascinated attention from the Marines on duty and every other passerby in the courtyard.

“I am grateful, sir, that your lord seems to have overcome the objections of his own,” Laurence said.

Gong Su did not answer immediately. Only when they were ensconced in the privacy of a hackney carriage did he resume the conversation. “Matters in China have altered since your departure. It is my very great sorrow to inform you, Captain, that your dread imperial father is in failing health.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” Laurence said, although he understood at once how Mianning had carried his point against the conservative faction. Men who might stand against a crown prince many years from his throne would not risk the same opposition when he would very shortly be their emperor. “And sorry as well that he should have been robbed, since we last met: I believe their Lordships have already told you of the hatching of the egg.”

Gong Su inclined his head. “It is part of my instructions from His Imperial Highness to visit the hatchling and make observations on her character, whenever it should be convenient.”

Laurence still did not hold himself very knowledgeable in the court etiquette of China, but he had learned enough to know that this meant “without the loss of a moment.” He opened the window and spoke to the driver, who very unwilling had to be reminded thrice of his obligation under the hackney regulation, and promised a half-guinea before he would carry them even to the intersection of Portland and Weymouth, still a quarter-mile’s walk from the gates of the covert. To do the man justice, only so far would his horses go, either; they were already restive and stamping as Laurence and Gong Su disembarked, and shied at the shadow of a Winchester courier falling upon the cobblestones in passing. Fortunately Gong Su was accustomed to the isolation of British coverts, and the alarm the general populace took from dragons; Laurence did not have to make excuses, and a gaggle of braver chair-men were waiting by the corner, hoping for similarly abandoned passengers, who could be prevailed upon to pay twice the going rate to be carried the rest of the way.