Perhaps through this distraction, or only from fatigue, they turned at some point wrongly; or so Laurence supposed, when after an hour they had not yet found again their former camp or the river. The sound of running water could be heard, but the canyons brought distant echoes near, now and again, and even from high aloft they could only see impenetrable green, and the alternating pattern of flat clifftops rising and the tree-choked valleys between.

It was very hot. Abruptly and without warning, Caesar set down, tiring all at once. He fit himself into a little shade at the edge of a clearing and curled small, for once without any noise or complaint; he only shut his eyes and lay breathing heavily. Rankin dismounted and stood by his head frowning while Dorset, the surgeon, climbed down from Temeraire’s back to make his inspections. Dorset looked into Caesar’s mouth and nostrils, then pushed his spectacles up into place again as he rose. “There is as yet no serious condition, in my judgment, but he is overheated; and has not had enough water: at this stage of his growth he does not yet possess those reserves which should make him able to bear more privation.”

“Well, we haven’t any water here, so there is no use his lying down now,” Iskierka said, callously, nudging at Caesar’s flank with her nose; he did not stir, except to flick the long narrow end of his tail. “I am thirsty, too; and not getting less so while we sit here.”

Rankin snapped, “Captain Granby, you will restrain your beast, if you please. I will not take Caesar flying about wildly in this heat again; we will have to wait until after dark.”

“Except my beast, if you like, has it aright: we haven’t water here, and we aren’t going to find some more easily in the dark,” Granby said. “Precious soon he will need that more than rest. Could we get him up on Temeraire’s back?”

Temeraire put back his ruff, but reluctantly said to Laurence, “Oh; I suppose I can carry him, if I must; but I think we had much better let everyone down, and go and find water first. Once we know where it is, we may come back and fetch them all, when it is cooler and not so unpleasant to be loaded down.”

Laurence shook his head. “I had rather not part company,” he said, “when we have already seen we can so easily mistake our way; we have grown too complacent, in thinking that we need only go aloft to find our path again. I feel as though we have turned around three times in the last quarter-of-an-hour, for all the sun has not shifted.”

“It seems to me,” Iskierka said, “that the trouble is all these trees, everywhere; I might burn off some of them, and then we could see where the river is, perhaps.”

“After four days of a firestorm, we would not very much care, however,” Rankin said cuttingly.

The trees were not of a sort which would be easily amenable to burning, either, nor to being knocked down: these were not small scrubby creatures, despite their queerly peeling trunks, but old giants, prime timber; Laurence had seen half-a-dozen which could have made the Allegiance a new mainmast. Even Temeraire’s strength could not have quickly uprooted one, and a single tree falling would scarcely have made any notable diminishment in the cover.

They determined at last to wait a little while: the sun was climbing to its zenith, white-hot and hammering directly down upon them. The day grew yet more still; the faint breath of wind brought no relief, only a dry, papery feeling to one’s skin, lips cracking and white.

They unloaded the dragons and Rankin, turning to the convicts, ordered them to break off young tree-branches, and rip up some of the undergrowth, to lay over Caesar’s hide to deepen the shade and give a little vegetal coolness from what water remained within the limbs. The men only resentfully obliged him, then with more attention treated Jonas Green in the same manner: he had been lowered to lie in the darkest shade, and Dorset was dosing him with a small cup of water.

The rest of the convicts returned to their own torpor beneath the trees. Rankin paced for a short time, as if considering whether to try and stir them back to work; but the heat presently defeated him, and he went to sit against one of the tall eucalypts, across from his dragon, his eyes closed. Green moaned occasionally, and stirred; he was yet sweating copiously, and when he roused he could not speak, but only mumbled a few words thickly and crumpled back to sleep.

Temeraire sighed a little, without much noise: he and Iskierka were awkwardly situated in the smallish clearing, having wound themselves into place among the towering spires of the oldest trees, and he could not be wholly shaded from the intensity of the sun; nor could he spread out his wings as he was often wont to do when excessively hot. He did what he could to shade his head, his neck nearly doubled back upon itself, curling partly around a tree, and then he, too, closed his eyes. Sitting not against him but near-by, Laurence also slept; or something like sleep, not half so restful: a sensation not of peace but of drifting, unmoored, the world turning away from beneath them and the sun piercing the leaf cover now and again to stab.

At length it fell beyond the other rim of the gorge, and they had a little more shade: but the lassitude was not easily shaken off, and instead deepened for a little while, so when Laurence had at last roused himself, with an effort, the day was wearing away and late: it was past six, he thought, at the very least, and perhaps later. There was a smell of roasting meat, which had brought him out of that well of uneasy sleep: Demane had half-a-dozen wombats on skewers, over a small, neat fire, and had already given a small cup of the blood to his brother to drink.

“I am not hungry,” Temeraire said, opening his eyes, “but I would not in the least mind a drink of water: pray let us go find the river now; and then I do not suppose I would mind a bite of wombat, even though they are not really worth eating.”

“Then get your own,” Demane said, rather indignantly. “They are very worth eating, to me. Finish that,” he added, to Sipho, who was showing no marked enthusiasm for his treat.

“It is hot, and it tastes very ill,” Sipho said, but quelled by a look accepted his unhappy fate and tipped back the rest of the cup; several of the convicts, also woken by the smell of the cooking meat, watched with more envy than sympathy; every man’s mouth was dry as sand.

“Might send the boy to fetch some more,” Telly said, eyeing Demane, who glared in offense and turned his back.

“We had better make a go of finding the stream again, I suppose,” Granby said, “—we won’t have more light than we do now.”

They already had little, and that quickly diminishing. Though fortunately they had not unloaded wholly, but only shifted the baggage so Temeraire might lie down, it must all be resecured, particularly the eggs; and then Caesar had to be persuaded to climb up onto Temeraire’s back.

“I do not see why I must ride on him; it is very hot and unpleasant,” Caesar grumbled; he had roused enough with the coolness to be difficult. “I think I had much better stay here, and you may go and fetch some water and bring it back; and then I will feel like flying again.”

“It will be a good deal more hot and unpleasant for me,” Temeraire said, “so you may cease caterwauling: it will be no treat to carry you, and I think it is a great pity you should have been allowed to be such a glutton that you are grown fat with no good purpose; I am sure that is why you have tired so quickly.”

This was unjust, coming from a beast who himself had grown to perhaps five times his hatching weight in the space of a week, and Caesar was inclined to resent it; but Iskierka’s temper was at once shorter and more violent. Having reached its ends, she did not bother with recrimination, and only jetted a thin stream of flame directly at Caesar’s hindquarters; which as a form of persuasion worked to admirable effect, as he scrambled forward promptly.