“No, never,” the Papillon said. “I have three gold chains and a ruby there, and they are always just as I have left them; the guards will even polish them for me, if I ask them.”

Everyone was very wide awake now, at “three gold chains and a ruby.” “I have earned them,” the Papillon said, seeing he had his audience, “by helping to build some roads, and for some fighting: and I have been promoted to captain for it, see,” and showed off a handsome badge pinned to his harness: a round disk of some shining metal. “So can anyone, who likes to serve the Emperor,” he added, significantly.

Temeraire laid back his ruff. “Certainly, if they do not mind helping someone who goes about stealing other people’s territory, when he already has plenty of his own, and kills heaps of men and dragons to do it,” he said coldly. “Anyway, we are getting pay, too; and I have been made colonel.”

“I congratulate you!” the Papillon said. “How much have you been paid so far?” When Temeraire had made an awkward, sputtering explanation, the Papillon went on, “Well, I am sure the Emperor would pay you right away, and give you even higher rank, then.”

There was a low thoughtful murmur going around. Temeraire put his head sidelong to nudge Roland, who was grudgingly doing lessons with Demane and Sipho—less of her own volition than at Sipho’s insistence: he was beginning to outstrip her as well as his older brother, as Roland had never been very interested in studying. “You had better go and tell Laurence, that the French dragon is making all sorts of promises, which I am sure are lies, if only we would agree to serve Napoleon; and pray let him come and put a stop to it,” he finished plaintively; he did not know how to answer the French dragon, who after all was offering just what he himself had asked for; except he did not want it from Napoleon, who had invaded England and made so much trouble for everyone, and who let Lien do as she liked.

“Oh, I will go at once,” Roland said, with relief, and left; Demane said, “I will go too,” and went after her.

“But who is going to check my work,” Sipho called after them unhappily.

LAURENCE HAD NOT GONE farther than the great hall of the citadel: many officers were standing in scattered clumps, talking in low voices that the great vaulted ceiling blended with echoes into hollow unintelligible murmur, and he hesitated in the entryway a moment: few faces he knew, and fewer he chose to impose himself upon; then he saw Riley, in a corner of the room.

Riley wore a look half-dazed with exhaustion, and he said wholly tactlessly, “Hello, Laurence, I thought you were in prison,” in a tone more puzzled than condemnatory. “I have a son,” he added.

“Give you joy,” Laurence said, and shook his hand, ignoring the rest of the remark: Riley gave it full willingly to be shaken, and gave no sign he noticed the omission. “Is Catherine well?”

“I haven’t the faintest notion,” Riley said. “The lot of them took off like a shot for the coast three days ago, and she insisted she could not be spared, if you will credit it: thank God we had already found a wet-nurse from the village, or I dare say she would have gone anyway, and let the child starve. Do you know, they must be fed every two hours?”

He did not know why the dragons had gone or where; what little attention he had to spare from the new child was devoted to the Allegiance: he had left her in dry-dock in Plymouth, recovering from their voyage to Africa, and with Bonaparte and his army now between him and the port, he fretted about her fate. “I am sure the Navy will keep him out of Plymouth,” he said, “I am sure of it; but if he should somehow get a hold on the whole south, then—”

“Sir,” Emily said, and Laurence looked down; she was panting at his elbow, and Demane beside her. “Sir, Temeraire sent me—very well, us—to tell you: that French dragon in the courtyard is preaching sedition, and trying to bribe everyone to go over to the Emperor, with pavilions and jewels and such: he can speak English.”

“Where is the envoy?” Laurence asked Riley. “Do you know who they have sent?”

“Talleyrand,” Riley said.

The conference was under way upstairs, in the little-used library chamber; Wellesley had gone to join the discussion, directly on their arrival, and he was, Laurence thought, the best hope of finding a senior officer who would appreciate the threat. But the room was barred off by guards and aides, among them ten Frenchmen in uniform like cavalry officers but altered for flying with long coats made of leather and heavy gloves in their belts. Laurence did not know how he might get word inside, until he caught sight of Rowley and called to him.

Rowley’s personal disdain had not subsided, but he had just seen a month shortened to two weeks, on dragon-back, and though unsmiling he heard Laurence out, and said shortly, “Very well; come with me,” and took him into the room by the side door.

Talleyrand had not come alone: he sat along one side of a long table, laid on for the occasion, with a Marshal sitting beside him: Murat, Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. An odd pair: Talleyrand’s long aristocratic face under his thinning fair hair almost washed out and pale next to Murat, who had thick curly hair and bright blue eyes in a face ruddy with weather and work, above a powerful frame: in his person every inch the soldier. Murat’s clothing was of almost absurd splendor, seen close up: a coat of black leather with gold embroidery and gold buttons, over snowy stock and shirt, with gloves of black leather and gold on the table beside him; Talleyrand’s of an elegance more quiet and correct.

Opposite them sat half-a-dozen ministers, in nothing like the same state, all of them marked with the long and hasty retreat from London, and the discomfort they must have felt at being, effectively, in a military camp: Perceval, the Prime Minister, looked especially drawn and unhappy. His Ministry was a shaky and doubtful matter to begin with, a collection of lesser evils and men he had cajoled into their posts: his predecessor Lord Portland’s government had collapsed under the weight of the disaster in Africa, and the old man had refused to try and build another. Canning, the last Foreign Secretary, had tried for the post himself and, failing, had both refused to join the new Ministry himself, and blocked the Secretary of War Lord Castlereagh’s joining it: leaving Perceval to make do with Lord Bathurst and Lord Liverpool; good men, but now more than any other time he needed the most gifted there might be, and though Lord Bathurst had been sympathetic to the cause of abolition, Laurence could not but acknowledge he was not the man anyone would choose to have sitting across from Talleyrand at the negotiating table.

Lord Mulgrave, the First Lord of the Admiralty, had preserved his post; Dalrymple sat with him, an old fat soldier, and neither of them looking a match for the Marshal. The weight of power and energy and composure was all on one side of the table: all the refinement and sophistication of the Ancien Régime married to the brutal strength of the Empire. Wellesley only, sitting at the other end beside Lord Liverpool, did not look half-defeated; and he instead was in a glittering temper: his jaw set coldly.

Rowley bent to whisper in his ear; Wellesley looked at Laurence and then leaned forward and interrupted the conversation going on in French to say, “What the devil is this? You come here under cover of a flag of truce, and meanwhile your dragon is in the courtyard trying to bribe our beasts with trinkets?”

Murat exclaimed at the accusation, and said, “I am sure there has been some misunderstanding. Liberté has much enthusiasm, but he would never mean to so offend—”

“I am sure General Wellesley does not mean any insult.” Lord Eldon jumped in with apologies. “Surely Your Highness”—Bonaparte was fond of making his family princes—“must be familiar with the frank address of soldiers—”