“That you should dare to speak of the service, in these circumstances, beggars all belief,” Poole spat back. “When we consider what your own behavior ought to have been even before now, and when you have heard an outright avowal of the intention to commit treason, by those whose willingness to do it can hardly be denied—by those who ought long since have been put past the power of repeating their crime—”

“What?” Temeraire said, in rousing wrath. “Am I to understand that you—that all of you—” he turned to Obituria and Fidelitas, “have come here, have taken up positions against me—in defense of this poisoning scheme? That you are here to help poison other dragons, and not even enemy dragons; to poison and murder the smallest, starving ferals, who have not a bowl of porridge to be sure of, who have no coverts, nor crew, nor any sort of treasure at all, who are not a quarter of your size—”

The dragons were all drawing back from him uneasily—the divine wind was a growing echo in his throat, and he felt not the least inclination to rein it back. “And you would let them all be made sick, and left to die—I suppose you think,” he stormed at Gaudenius, Obituria’s wing dragon and a Yellow Reaper, even as that beast shrank ashamedly back, “that they would not think of poisoning the Reapers in Yorkshire, the ones who do not care to be harnessed? And none of you should mind it if dragons like Ricarlee and his fellows, who after all have been good wing-mates all this while, should be tricked into eating poisoned sheep, and pushed into pens to be burnt up? To this, you mean to lend your assistance—”

“Oh! I don’t, at all!” Obituria burst out, aghast. “I don’t! How can you say such dreadful things? We are only here because our captains have asked us.”

“That is as much to say, that you have not troubled to find out what they are about,” Temeraire said. “I do not suppose any of you wondered, when they told you to take up a fighting-post over my clearing, what they meant by it?” He looked at Fidelitas, who could not meet his eyes, but dropped his head miserably.

“Do not listen to that treasonous, seditious beast another moment,” Poole called angrily. “Fidelitas, you know you have never been disobedient a moment before you met him—you must see how he is bent on leading all of you astray.”

“Astray, I suppose, from your wishes,” Temeraire said, swiveling his head down to Poole, “which have never consulted his, or those of dragons, at all.”

“And this is what your marvelous actions are to get us,” Granby snapped to Poole. “—a pitched fight, between our own dragons, in our own camp.”

“Better that, than seeing treason go by, unopposed!” Poole said. He stepped back from Granby and drew his sword. “I will gladly die—I will die by my own dragon’s teeth—” Fidelitas cried out in horror at this dreadful suggestion, but Poole only flung onwards, “before I will turn a blind unseeing eye to treason, before my face. When I am called to give testimony, I will not say, I knew nothing, bleating.”

“Why, damn you,” Granby said, reaching for his own sword, and all the officers were suddenly shouting at one another, and Challoner and the crew, staring, were running to Granby’s side, and they were all so closely packed in that Temeraire could not see a way to get a claw in among them, if needed—

“What is the meaning of this display?”

Laurence’s bellow had rarely been so welcome. Temeraire gasped in relief; Laurence was there, on the path—and then his gasp became horror, for with a swift springing turn, Poole was by Laurence’s side, and he had laid the edge of his sword at Laurence’s throat.

Temeraire froze, halted completely. One push of the blade, and Laurence—Laurence might die, might be killed, right before his eyes. Fidelitas made a low terrible noise, crouching—of course he knew that Poole would die, too, immediately afterwards. But that could count for nothing with Temeraire; what would anything matter, when Laurence was dead?

Laurence stood very calmly, and looked Poole in the face—Poole panting heavily, his jaw clenched. Temeraire felt he saw and tracked every droplet of sweat that trickled down into Poole’s collar, every slight—too slight—tremor of his arm. “Put up that sword, Captain,” Laurence said. “You are overset.” He looked at the other officers, paying not the least attention to the blade still at his neck. “Captain Granby, I am obliged to appoint you acting-admiral, of our forces—”

“Laurence!” Granby cried, taking a step.

“I have been required to assume the united command of the allied aerial forces,” Laurence continued, as though he had not been interrupted. “We have only a few days before Bonaparte will be on our heels, gentlemen. We are to use them to recruit or sway every feral we can find to our cause, and make whatever defense of them we can. I do not despair of our success. Winters,” he called—and after a moment, Winters timidly ran out to him, through the crowd of uncertain, stilled men.

Laurence reaching up pushed the blade by the flat away from his neck, easily. Poole watched his arm move as though he had no power to halt it, and then let it fall to his side. Laurence did not look at him, but took out an envelope from his coat and handed it to Winters. “Take that to Mr. Challoner, and have her set every man with a clear hand to copying it,” he said. “Gentlemen, if any of you have any man in your crew who has any Durzagh, from serving with Arkady and his Pamir ferals at the Channel, you will oblige me by sending them to me at once.”

He came down the path, through the men who cleared a way for him, and to Temeraire’s side. He put a hand on Temeraire’s foreleg. With a shudder of relief, as though he had seen a slow-match put out before it reached the cannon, Temeraire put his head down and nosed Laurence over carefully. Fidelitas was snatching Poole up, and flying away, but for the moment Temeraire gave that no attention; he only made certain Laurence was well, and after he had assured himself that there was no scratch, no drawn blood, he gave a great sigh and then asked, “Laurence, what is that?” meaning the mysterious document which Laurence had brought, which seemed so important.

“It is your bill,” Laurence said. “Yours and Perscitia’s. The Tsar and King Frederick have agreed to its terms.”

“YOU MUST ALSO CONSIDER,” Temeraire said earnestly, “the Frenchbreeding program, and what it should mean for all of you, on the Continent. You must recall they mean to hatch no less than four thousand eggs.”