Laurence struck him full across the face, with such force as to knock him onto the stone floor of the cell; his chair rocked and fell over with a clatter. Choiseul coughed and blotted blood from his lip, and the guard opened the door and looked inside. “Everything all right, sir?” he asked, looking straight at Laurence; he paid not the slightest mind to Choiseul’s injury.

“Yes, you may go,” Laurence said flatly, wiping blood from his hand onto his handkerchief as the door closed once again. He would ordinarily have been ashamed to strike a prisoner, but in this moment he felt not the slightest qualm; his heart was still beating very quickly.

Choiseul slowly set his chair back upright and sat down once more. More quietly, he said, “I am sorry. I could not bring myself to it, in the end, and I thought instead—” He stopped, seeing the color rise again in Laurence’s face.

The very notion that for all these months such malice had been lurking so close to Temeraire, averted only by some momentary quirk of conscience on Choiseul’s part, was enough to make his blood run cold. With loathing, he said, “And so instead you tried to seduce a girl barely past her schoolroom years and abduct her.”

Choiseul said nothing; indeed, Laurence could hardly imagine what defense he could have offered. After a moment’s pause, Laurence added, “You can have no further pretensions to honor: tell me what Bonaparte plans, and perhaps Lenton will have Praecursoris sent to the breeding grounds in Newfoundland, if indeed your motive is for his life, and not your own miserable hide.”

Choiseul paled, but said, “I know very little, but what I know I will tell you, if he gives his word to do as much.”

“No,” Laurence said. “You may speak and hope for a mercy you do not deserve if you choose; I will not bargain with you.”

Choiseul bowed his head, and when he spoke he was broken, so faint Laurence had to strain to hear him. “I do not know what he intends, precisely, but he desired me to urge the weakening of the covert here most particularly, to have as many sent south to the Mediterranean as could be arranged.”

Laurence felt sick with dismay; this goal at least had been brilliantly accomplished. “Does he have some means for his fleet to escape Cadiz?” he demanded. “Does he suppose he can bring them here without facing Nelson?”

“Do you imagine Bonaparte confided in me?” Choiseul said, not lifting his head. “To him also I was a traitor; I was told the tasks I was to accomplish, nothing more.”

Laurence satisfied himself with a few more questions that Choiseul truly knew nothing else; he left the room feeling both soiled and alarmed, and went at once to Lenton.

The news cast a heavy pall upon the whole covert. The captains had not broadcast the details, but even the lowliest cadet or crewman could tell that a shadow lay upon them. Choiseul had timed his attempt well: the dispatch-rider would not reach them again for six days, and from there two weeks or more would be required to see any portion of the forces from the Mediterranean restored to the Channel. Militia forces and several Army detachments had already been sent for; they would arrive within a few days, to begin emplacing additional artillery along the coastline.

Laurence, with additional cause for anxiety, had spoken to Granby and Hollin to raise their caution on Temeraire’s behalf. If Bonaparte were jealous enough of having so personal a prize taken away, he might well send another agent, this one more willing to slay the dragon he could no longer claim. “You must promise me to be careful,” he told Temeraire as well. “Eat nothing unless one of us is by, and has approved it; and if anyone whom I have not presented to you seeks to approach you, do not under any circumstances permit it, even if you must fly to another clearing.”

“I will have a care, Laurence, I promise,” said Temeraire. “I do not understand, though, why the French Emperor should want to have me killed; how could that improve his circumstances? He would do better to ask them for another egg.”

“My dear, the Chinese would hardly condescend to give him a second where the first went so badly astray while in the keeping of his own men,” he said. “I am still puzzled at their having given him even one, indeed; he must have some prodigiously gifted diplomat at their court. And I suppose his pride may be hurt, to think that a lowly British captain stands in the place which he had meant to occupy himself.”

Temeraire snorted with disdain. “I am sure I would never have liked him in the least, even if I had hatched in France,” he said. “He sounds a very unpleasant person.”

“Oh, I cannot truly say. One hears a great deal of his pride, but there is no denying that he is a very great man, even if he is a tyrant,” Laurence said reluctantly; he would have been a great deal happier to be able to convince himself that Bonaparte was a fool.

Lenton gave orders that patrols now were to be flown only by half the formation at a time, the rest kept back at the covert for intensive combat training. Under cover of night, several additional dragons were secretly flown down from the coverts at Edinburgh and Inverness, including Victoriatus, the Parnassian whom they had rescued what now seemed a long time ago. His captain, Richard Clark, made a nice point of coming to greet Laurence and Temeraire. “I hope you can forgive me for not paying you my respects and my gratitude sooner,” he said. “I confess at Laggan I had very little thought for anything but his recovery, and we were shipped out again without warning, as I believe were you.”

Laurence shook his hand heartily. “Pray do not give it a thought,” he said. “I hope he is wholly recovered?”

“Entirely, thank Heaven, and none too soon, either,” Clark said grimly. “I understand the assault is expected at any moment.”

And yet the days stretched out, painfully long with anticipation, and no attack came. Three more Winchesters were brought down for additional scouting, but one and all they returned from their dangerous forays to the French shores to report heavy patrols at all hours along the enemy’s coastline; there was no chance of penetrating far enough inland to acquire more information.

Levitas was among them, but the company was large enough that Laurence was not obliged to see much of Rankin, for which he was grateful. He tried not to see the signs of that neglect which he could do no more to cure; he felt he could not visit the little dragon further without provoking a quarrel which might be disastrous to the temper of the whole covert. However, he compromised with his conscience so far as to say nothing when he saw Hollin coming to Temeraire’s clearing very early the next morning with a bucket full of dirty cleaning rags and a guilty expression.

A great coldness settled over the camp as night came on Sunday, the first week of waiting gone: Volatilus had not arrived as expected. The weather had been clear, certainly no cause for delay; it stayed so for two further days, and then a third; still he did not come. Laurence tried not to look to the skies, and ignored his men doing the same, until that night he found Emily crying quietly outside the clearing, having crept away from the barracks for a little privacy.

She was very ashamed to be caught at it, and pretended there was only some dust in her eyes. Laurence took her to his rooms and had some cocoa brought; he told her, “I was two years older than you are now when I first went to sea, and I blubbered at night for a week.” She looked so very skeptical at this account that a laugh was drawn from him. “No, I am not inventing this for your benefit,” he said. “When you are a captain, and find one of your own cadets in similar circumstances, I imagine you will tell them what I have just told you.”

“I am not really afraid,” she said, weariness and cocoa having combined to make her drowsy and unguarded. “I know Excidium will never let anything happen to Mother, and he is the finest dragon in all Europe.” She woke up at having made this slip, and added anxiously, “Temeraire is very nearly as good, of course.”