They gathered themselves around and thrust it open, Granby and Tharkay jumping through at once, into a chamber almost scorching-hot and lit with a hellish orange-red glow. A squat many-legged furnace nearly filled the room together with a great boiling-cauldron of shining copper, pipes snaking away and vanishing into the walls, a heap of wood lying beside it to feed the roaring maw, and next to it a brazier of freshly laid coals was just beginning to catch and blaze, little open flames licking up to heat a hanging bowl of stones. Two black slaves naked to the waist stood staring; one held a long-handled ladle full of water, which he had been pouring over the hot stones, and the other an iron poker with which he was stirring the coals.

Granby caught the first and with Martin’s help wrestled him to the ground, muffling his sounds; but the second whipped his red-hot poker around and jabbed at Tharkay frantically, opening his mouth to yell; Tharkay gave a queer choked grunt and caught the man’s arm, pushing away the poker, and Laurence sprang to clap his hand over the shout; Digby clubbed him.

“Are you all right?” Laurence asked sharply; Tharkay had smothered the little flame which had caught in his trousers with the tails of his coat, but he was putting no weight on his right leg, and leaning with drawn face against the wall; there was a smell of blackened and roasting flesh.

Tharkay said nothing, jaw locked shut, but waved off concern, pointing; a small barred door of ironwork lattice stood behind the furnace, red rust weeping down the bars, and within the slightly cooler chamber behind, in great nests of silken cloth, lay a dozen dragon eggs. The gate was hot to the touch, but Fellowes took out a few wide pieces of leather, and so shielding their hands, Laurence and Granby lifted aside the bar and swung open the door.

Granby ducked inside and went to the eggs, lifting aside the silk and touching the shells with loving care. “Oh, here’s our beauty,” he said reverently, uncovering one of a dusty reddish hue, speckled lightly with green. “That’s our Kazilik all right; and eight weeks at most by the feel of it, we are none too soon.” He covered it up again, and with great care he and Laurence lifted it off its perch, silken swaddling and all, and carried it out into the furnace-room where Fellowes and Digby began to lash it into the leather straps.

“Only look at them,” Granby said, turning back to survey the rest of the eggs, stroking their shells lightly with the tips of his fingers. “What the Corps would give for the lot. But these are the ones we were promised; an Alaman, that’s one of their light-combat fellows, this one,” he indicated the smallest of the eggs, a pale lemon-yellow half the size of a man’s chest, “and the Akhal-Teke is a middle-weight,” a cream-colored egg spotted with red and orange, nearly twice the size.

They all worked now to get the straps on, putting them over the silk coverings, buckling them tight with hands slipping on the leather; they were all of them pouring sweat, great dark stains coming through the backs of their coats. They had closed the door again to work in concealment, and despite the narrow windows, the room was nearly an oven to bake them in alive.

Abruptly voices came in through the vents: they halted with their hands still on the straps, and then a louder voice came through more clearly, a call in a woman’s voice. “More steam,” Tharkay translated, whispering, and Martin snatched up the ladle and poured some water from the standing basin up and onto the stones; but the clouds of steam did not all go through the vents, and made the room almost impossible to see.

“We must make a dash for it: down the stairs and out the nearest archway, and make for any open air you see,” Laurence said quietly, looking to be sure they had all heard.

“I’m no hand in a fight; I’ll take the Kazilik,” Fellowes said, leaving the rest of his leather in a heap on the floor. “Strap it to my back; and Mr. Dunne can help steady me.”

“Very good,” Laurence said, and told Martin and Digby off to the Akhal-Teke and the smaller Alaman; he and Granby drew their swords, and Tharkay, who had bound up his leg with some of the leather scraps, took out his knife: there would be no relying on their guns, after they had been soaking a quarter-of-an-hour together in the thick and humid atmosphere.

“Keep all together,” he said, and threw all the rest of the water in one great heave onto the hot stones and the coals themselves, and kicked open the door.

The great white billows of hissing steam carried them down the stairs and out into the baths; they were halfway to the archway before the air cleared enough to make anything out at all. Then the trailing steam blew away and Laurence found himself staring at an exquisitely beautiful woman, perfectly naked and holding an ewer full of water; her complexion was the exact color of milky tea, and her hair in long shining-wet ebony ropes was her only cover; she stared at him with extraordinarily large sea-green eyes, rimmed in brown, at first in confusion; and then she gave a piercing shriek, rousing all the other women too: more than a dozen of them, equally beautiful though of wholly different style, and all of their voices ringing out in wild and musical alarm.

“Oh, Christ,” Laurence said; deeply ashamed, he caught her by the shoulders, firmly set her out of the way, and dashed on to the archway, his men following after him. More of the guards were running into the room from the far sides, and two came nearly running directly into Laurence’s and Granby’s faces.

They were taken aback too much to swing at once, and Laurence was able to knock the sword out of his opposite’s hand and kick it away skittering over the floor. Together Laurence and Granby shoved them backwards and out into the hall, all of them half-slipping on the slick floors, and they burst out into the hallway and ran for the stairs, the two guards, knocked down, calling to their fellows.

Laurence and Granby ducked under Tharkay’s arms and helped him go limping up the stairs; the others were burdened with the eggs; yet all of them still went at great speed, the pursuit boiling up furiously behind them, and the women’s screams attracting still more attention. Running footsteps approaching from ahead warned them their original route had been cut off; instead Tharkay said sharply, “Go eastward, that way,” and they turned down another hallway to flee.

A draught of cold air, desperately welcome, came into their faces as they ran; and they emerged from a small marble cloister into an open-air quadrangle, all the windows blazing around them; Granby at once dropped to one knee and fired up his signal-flares: one and the next refused to go, too wet to fire, and cursing he flung the inert cylinders to the ground, but the third, which had been tucked more deeply into his shirt, at last went off, and the blue glittering trail went smoking up into the black sky.

Then they had to put down the eggs and turn and fight: the first guards were upon them, shouting, more spilling out of the building. One small grace, that for fear of damaging the eggs the Turkish guards had not resorted to their own guns, and were cautious in pressing too closely, trusting to their weight of numbers to overcome the invaders with only a little patience. Laurence struggled to hold off one of the guards, deflecting one blow and then another to either side; he was counting the moments in wingbeats, but he had scarcely reached half his expected total before Temeraire, roaring, swept down over the court, the great wind of his passage nearly flattening them all.

The guards scrambled back, crying out. There was not room for Temeraire to land without crushing the buildings, perhaps bringing them down, but Celestials could hover; his wings beating mightily, Temeraire kept almost directly above them. The thunder of his wings sent loosened bits of brick and stone crumbling down into the courtyard, and the many windows around the court were shattering in sharp explosive bursts, littering the ground with razor shards.