“Whatever am I to do with her?” Granby said, wearily taking a glass of wine with Laurence and Jane that evening, in the officers’ common room at the covert headquarters. “I suppose it is being dragged hither and yon in the shell, and all the fuss and excitement she has had; but that is no excuse forever. I must manage her somehow, and I am at a standstill. I would not be amazed to find the entire harbor set alight one morning, because she took it into her head that we would not have to sit about defending the city if it were all burnt up; I cannot even make her sit still long enough to get her under full harness.”

“Never mind; I will come by tomorrow, and see what I can do,” Jane said, pushing the bottle over to him again. “She is a little young for work, by all the authorities, but I think her energy had better be put to use than go in all this fretting. Have you chosen your lieutenants, Granby?”

“I will have Lithgow, for my first, if you’ve no objection, and Harper for a second, to act as captain of the riflemen also,” he said. “I don’t like to take too many men, when we don’t know what her growth will be like.”

“You do not like to turn them off later, you mean, when they like as not cannot get another post,” Jane said gently, “and I know it will be hard if it comes to that; but we cannot shortchange her, not with her so wild. Take Row also, as captain of the bellmen. He is old enough to retire if he must be turned off, and a good steady campaigner, who will not blink at her starts.”

Granby nodded a little, his head bowed, and the next morning Jane came to Iskierka’s clearing in great state, with all her medals and even her great plumed hat, which aviators scarcely wore, a gold-plated saber and pistols on her belt. Granby had assembled all his new crew, and they saluted her with a great noise of arms, Iskierka nearly coiling herself into knots with excitement, and the ferals and even Temeraire peering over the trees to watch with interest.

“Well, Iskierka: your captain tells me that you are ready for service,” Jane said, putting her hat under her arm to look sternly at the little Kazilik, “but what are these reports I hear of you, that you will not mind orders? We cannot send you into battle if you cannot follow orders.”

“Oh! it is not true!” Iskierka said. “I can follow orders as well as anyone, it is only no one will give me any good ones, and I am only told to sit, and not to fight, and to eat three times a day; I do not want any more stupid cows!” she added smolderingly; the ferals, hearing this translated for them by their own handful of officers, set up a low squabbling murmur of disbelief.

“It is not only the pleasant orders we must follow, but the tiresome ones as well,” Jane said, when the noise had died down. “Do you suppose Captain Granby likes to be forever sitting in this clearing, waiting for you to grow more settled? Perhaps he would rather go back to service with Temeraire, and have some fighting himself.”

Iskierka’s eyes went platter-wide, and she hissed from all her spikes like a furnace; in an instant she had thrown a pair of jealous coils around Granby, which bid fair to boil him like a lobster in steam. “He would not! You would not, at all, would you?” she appealed to him. “I will fight just as well as Temeraire, I promise; and I will even obey the stupidest orders; at least, if I may have some pleasant ones also,” she qualified hastily.

“I am sure she will mind better in future, sir,” Granby managed himself, coughing, his hair already plastered down soaking against his forehead and neck. “Pray don’t fret; I would never leave you, only I am getting wet,” he added plaintively, to her.

“Hm,” Jane said, with an air of frowning consideration. “Since Granby speaks for you, I suppose we will give you your chance,” she said, at last, “and here you may have your first orders, Captain, if she will let you come for them and, to be sure, stand still for her harness.”

Iskierka immediately let him loose and stretched herself out for the ground crew, only craning her neck a little to see the red-sealed and yellow-tasseled packet, a formality often dispensed with in the Corps, which directed them in very ornate and important language to do nothing more than run a quick hour’s patrol down to Guernsey and back. “And you may take her by that old heap of rubble left at Castle Cornet, where the gunpowder blew up the tower, and tell her it is a French outpost, so she may flame it from aloft,” Jane added to Granby, in an undertone not meant for Iskierka’s ears.

Iskierka’s harness was indeed a great deal of trouble to arrange, as the spines were placed quite randomly, and the frequent issuing of steam made her hide slick: an improvised collection of short straps and many buckles, wretchedly easy to tangle, and she could not entirely be blamed for growing tired of the process. But the promise of coming action and the observing crowd made her more patient; at length she was properly rigged out, and Granby with relief said, “There, it is quite secure; now try and see if you can shake any of it loose, dear one.”

She writhed and beat her wings quite satisfactorily, twisting herself this way and that to inspect the harness. “You are supposed to say, All lies well, if you are comfortable,” Temeraire whispered loudly to her, after she had been engaged in this sport for several minutes.

“Oh, I see,” she said, and settling again announced, “All lies well; now we shall go.”

In this way she was at least a little reformed; no one would have called her temper obliging, certainly, and she invariably stretched her patrols farther afield than Granby would have them, in hopes of meeting some enemy more challenging than an abandoned old fortification, or a couple of birds. “But at least she will take a little training, and eats properly, which I call a victory, for now,” Granby said. “And after all, as much a fright she gives us, she’ll give the Frogs a worse; Laurence, do you know, we talked to the fellows at Castle Cornet, and they set up a bit of sail for her: she can set it alight from eighty yards. Twice the range of a Flamme-de-Gloire, and she can go at it for five minutes straight; I don’t understand how she gets her breath while she is at it.”

They had indeed some trouble in keeping her out of direct combat, for meanwhile the French were continuing their harassment and scouting of the coast, with ever-increasing aggression. Jane used the sick dragons more heavily for patrol, to spare Temeraire and the ferals: they, instead, sat most of the day waiting on the cliffs for one warning flare or another to go up, or listening with pricked ears for the report of a signal-gun, before they dashed frantically to meet another incursion. In the space of two weeks, Temeraire skirmished four times more with small groups, and once Arkady and a few of his band, sent experimentally on patrol by themselves while Temeraire snatched a few more hours of sleep, just barely turned back a Pou-de-Ciel who had daringly tried to slip past the shore batteries at Dover, less than a mile from a clear view of the quarantine-grounds.

The ferals came back from their narrow but solitary victory delighted with themselves, and Jane with quick cleverness took the occasion to present Arkady ceremonially with a long length of chain: almost worthless, being made only of brass, with a large dinner-platter inscribed with his name for a medal, but polished to a fine golden shine and rendering Arkady for once speechless with amazement as it was fastened about his neck. For only a moment: then he burst forth in floods of caroling joy, and insisted on having every single one of his fellows inspect his prize; nor did Temeraire escape this fate. He indeed grew a little bristling, and withdrew in dignity to his own clearing to polish his breastplate more vigorously than usual.

“You cannot compare the two,” Laurence said cautiously, “it is only a trinket, to make him complacent, and encourage them in their efforts.”