“I don’t see that it would answer if Yarmouth were guilty,” Granby said, when Laurence, scrubbed and in shirtsleeves and breeches, had finished making his report of the dinner. “However would he have transported such a mass of gold? He should have needed to take ship, unless he was mad enough to move it away by caravan.”

“He would have been noticed,” Tharkay agreed quietly. “By Maden’s account the gold needed some hundred chests; and there have been no reports from the caravanserai or the dockyards, of any movement near so large: I spent the morning yesterday in making inquiries. Indeed he would have been hard-pressed to find any transport; half the drovers have been ferrying in supplies for the harbor fortifications, and the other half have been keeping out of the city because of the dragons.”

“Could he perhaps have hired a dragon, then?” Laurence asked. “We saw those dragon-traders in the East; do they ever come so far?”

“I have never seen them this side of the Pamirs,” Tharkay said. “In the West men will not have them in the cities, so they could get no profit in any case, and as they are thought nothing other than ferals, they would likely be seized upon and thrust into breeding-grounds, if they came.”

“It don’t signify; he couldn’t move gold by dragon, not if he wanted it back again,” Granby said. “I don’t believe you could give a dragon great heaps of gold and jewels to carry about for days and then ask him to hand it all back.”

They had remained in the garden to hold their low-voiced discussion, and Temeraire now observed, in faintly wistful tones, “It does sound like a very great deal of gold,” not disputing Granby’s remark in the least. “Perhaps he has put it away somewhere in the city?”

“He would have to be part dragon himself, to be satisfied with hoarding so vast a sum, where he could not show his face again to make use of it,” Laurence said. “No; he would not have gone to such lengths, if he had no way of taking away the money.”

“But you have all finished saying that the gold cannot have been taken away,” Temeraire said reasonably. “So it must still be here.”

They were silent, and Laurence finally said, “Then what can be the alternative but at least the connivance of the ministers, if not their active involvement? And such an insult, Britain would have to answer; even if they wish an end to our alliance, would they deliberately provoke a war, which surely would cost them a greater sum than this, and in blood as well as gold?”

“They have been damned busy to see to it we should go away thinking it all Yarmouth’s fault,” Granby pointed out. “We haven’t evidence to go to war over.”

Tharkay abruptly stood up from the ground, brushing away dust; they had brought out rugs to recline upon, in the Turkish fashion, there being nothing like chairs in the kiosque. Laurence looked over his shoulder and he and Granby scrambled also to their feet: a woman was standing at the far end of their grove, in the shade of the cypresses. She was perhaps the same they had seen before, on the palace grounds; though in the heavy veil there was scarcely any telling one from another.

“You should not be here,” Tharkay said, low, when she had come quickly towards them. “Where is your maid?”

“She is waiting for me at the stairs; she will cough if anyone is coming,” the woman answered, cool and steady, her dark eyes never leaving his face.

“Your servant, Miss Maden,” Laurence said, awkwardly; he did not know what to do. With all the sympathy in the world he could not in honor endorse a clandestine meeting or worse yet an elopement, and then besides he was in her father’s debt; but if they asked him for assistance, he wondered how he could refuse. He fell back on formalities, saying, “May I present Temeraire, and my first lieutenant, John Granby?”

Granby with a start made her a not-very-polished leg. “Honored, Miss Maden,” he said, pronouncing her name in a querying tone, and glanced puzzled at Laurence; Temeraire peered down at her with more open inquisitiveness after making his own greeting.

“I will not ask again,” Tharkay said to her low.

“Let us not speak of what cannot be,” she said, drawing her hand out of the deep pocket of her coat; but not to reach out to him, as Laurence first thought. Instead she held it out flat towards them, saying, “I was able to get inside the treasury, for a moment; though most have been melted down, I am afraid,” and upon her palm rested unmistakable a single golden sovereign, stamped with the visage of the King.

“You cannot trust these Oriental tyrants,” Granby said with pessimism, “and after all, we are as good as calling him a thief and a murderer besides. Like as not he will have your head off.”

Temeraire was considerably more sanguine, as he had been permitted to go along, and therefore considered all physical dangers rendered negligible by his presence. “I will like to see the Sultan,” he said. “Perhaps he may have some interesting jewels, and then we may at last go home again. Although it is a shame that Arkady and the others are not here to see him.”

Laurence, not sharing this last sentiment at all, was himself hopeful for a good outcome; Mustafa had regarded the gold coin grimly, and had listened without even an attempt at counterfeiting surprise to Laurence’s cold avowal that it had come to his hand from the treasury.

“No, sir; I will not name you my source,” Laurence had said, “but if you like, I will go with you to the treasury now, directly; I rather believe we will find more, if you doubt the provenance of this one.”

This proposal Mustafa had refused; and though he had made no admission of guilt, no explanations, he had said abruptly, “I must speak with the Grand Vezir,” and gone away again; and in the evening a summons had come: at last they were called to an audience with the Sultan.

“I do not mean to put him to the blush,” Laurence added now. “Poor Yarmouth deserves better, God knows, and Arbuthnot himself; but when we have got the eggs back to Britain will be soon enough for the Government to decide how they choose to make them answer for it, and I know damned well what they would say to my taking action in that matter.” Indeed, he suspected dismally there would be a great deal said of his actions even in the matter of the eggs. “In any case, I hope we will learn this is indeed some machination of his ministers, of which the Sultan himself knows nothing.”

The two Kazilik dragons Bezaid and Sherazde had returned to escort them once again to the meeting with proper ceremony, even though the three of them were scarcely in the air for a moment, only flying over the palace and landing in the great open lawn of the First Court, outside the front gates of the palace. Absurd though it seemed to Laurence to be ushered with such ceremony into a palace where he had slept three nights already, they were set in a row with the Kaziliks before and after, and marched in stately array through the flung-wide bronze gates and into the courtyard standing just before the gorgeously ornamented portico of the Gate of Felicity: in perfect orderly rows along the pathway stood the ranks of the vezirs, their white turbans brilliant in the sunshine, and farther back along the walls the nervous snorting horses of the cavalry in attendance pranced as they walked by.

The Sultan’s throne, wide and gold and blazing all over with polished green gemstones, stood upon a gorgeous rug woven of many-colored wool and elaborately patterned with flowers and ornaments; his dress still more magnificent, a robe of marmalade-orange and yellow satin bordered in black over a tunic of blue and yellow silk, with the diamond-encrusted hilt of his dagger showing above his sash; and an aigrette of diamonds around a great square emerald held a tall spray of stiff feathers affixed to the head of his high white turban. Though the courtyard was large and crowded, there was scarcely any noise; the ranked officials did not speak or whisper amongst themselves, or even fidget.