“Perhaps my throat is a little sore,” Temeraire said judiciously. Laurence was sitting, his head bent nearly to his knees, scarcely able to support the weight of hope resting so unexpectedly upon his shoulders, while Keynes and Dorset clambered over Temeraire like monkeys: they had listened to his lungs with a great paper cone placed against the chest, to which they put their ears, and stuck their heads in his jaws to examine his tongue, which remained a healthy and unspotted red.

“We must cup him, I think,” Keynes said at last, turning to his medical satchel.

“But I am perfectly well,” Temeraire objected, sidling away from the approach of the wicked curved blade of the catling. “It does not seem to me that one ought to be forced to take medicine when one is not sick; anyone would think you had no other work to do,” he said, aggrieved, and the operation was only achieved by persuading him of the noble service which it should be, to the sick dragons.

It yet required a dozen attempts: he kept withdrawing his leg at the last moment, until Laurence convinced him not to look, but to keep his eyes turned in quite the opposite direction until the ready basin held by Dorset was filled, and Keynes said, “There,” and clapped the cautery, waiting ready in the fire, to the nick at once.

They would have carried the steaming bowlful of dark blood away without another word, if Laurence had not chased after them to demand their verdict: “No, of course he is not sick, and does not mean to be, so far as I can tell,” Keynes said. “I will say no more at present; we have work to do,” and went away, leaving Laurence almost ill himself with reaction; he felt a man who had stepped out of the shadow of the gallows, two weeks of anxious dread giving way quite suddenly to this almost shattering relief. It was very difficult not to yield to the force of his emotions, with Temeraire saying, “It is not very nice to be cut open, and I do not see what good it will do at all,” nosing experimentally at the tiny seared-shut wound, and then nudging him in alarum. “Laurence? Laurence, pray do not worry; it does not hurt so much, and look, it has already stopped bleeding.”

Jane was writing papers before Keynes had half made her his report, her face lit with energy and purpose, the grey shroud of sorrow and weariness fully visible only now with its removal.

“Let us not have any rioting, if you please,” Keynes said almost angrily. His hands were still gory with blood crusted under the fingernails; he had come straight from his work, in making comparisons of the samples of blood beneath his microscope. “There is no justification for it. It may very well be merely a difference in physiognomy, or an individual trait. I have said only there is the merest possibility, worthy of a trial—worthy of a small trial, with no expectations—” His protests were useless: she did not pause for a moment. He looked as though he would have liked to snatch away her pen.

“Nonsense; a little riot is just what we need,” Jane said, without even looking up, “and you will write the most damned encouraging report ever seen, if you please; you will give no excuses to the Admiralty.”

“I am not speaking to the Admiralty at present,” Keynes said, “and I do not care to give unfounded hopes. In all likelihood, he has never had the disease—it is some natural resistance, unique to his breed; and the cold which he suffered last year merely coincidence.”

The hope was indeed a very tenuous one. Temeraire had been ill en route to China, briefly, the sickness settling itself out of hand after little more than a week in Capetown, and so dismissed at the time and afterwards as a mere trifling cold. Only his present resistance to the disease had given Keynes the suspicion that the illnesses might perhaps have been one and the same. But even if he were not mistaken, there might be no cure; if there were a cure, it might not be easily found; if it were found, still it might not be brought back in time to save many of the sick.

“And it is by no means the least likely possibility,” Keynes added peevishly, “that there may be no curative agent whatsoever; many a consumptive has found a temporary relief in warmer climes.”

“Whether the climate or the waters or the food, I do not care two pins; if I must ship every dragon in England to Africa by boat to take the cure, you may be sure I will do it,” Jane said. “I am almost as glad to find some cause to lift our spirits again as for the chance of a cure, and you will do nothing to depress them again,” Little hope riches enough to those who until lately had none, and worth pursuing with every means at hand. “Laurence, you and Temeraire must go, though I hate to give you up again,” she added, handing him his orders, hastily written and scarcely legible, “but we must rely on him to remember best whatever might have suited his taste, and be the foundation of the cure. The ferals come along as well as could be hoped, thank Heavens, and with this latest spy captured, perhaps we will be lucky, and Bonaparte will not be in such a hurry to send good dragons after bad.

“And I am sending along all your formation,” she continued. “They are in urgent need, having been among the first to take sick; if you bring them back well, which God willing, you can hold the Channel while we treat the others.”

“Then I may see Maximus and Lily again, now,” Temeraire said jubilantly, and would not wait, but insisted that they go at once: they had scarcely set down outside the barren clearing where Maximus slept, before Berkley came striding out to them and seizing Laurence by the arms nearly shook him, saying ferociously, “For God’s sake, say it is true, and not some damned fairy-tale,” and he turned aside and covered his face when Laurence gave his assent.

Laurence pretended not to see. “Temeraire, I believe your harness is loose, there over the left flank, will you look at it?” he said firmly, when Temeraire would have kept peering at Berkley’s bowed shoulders.

“But Mr. Fellowes was working on it only last week,” Temeraire said, diverted, nosing over it experimentally. He delicately took up a bit of the harness between his teeth and tugged on it. “No, it lies perfectly well; it does not feel the least bit loose at all.”

“Here, let’s have a look at you,” Berkley interrupted brusquely, having mastered himself. “A good twelve feet more since you sailed away to China, no? And you look well, Laurence; I expected to see you ragged as a tinker.”

“You would certainly have found me so, when we had first returned,” Laurence answered, gripping his hand. He could not return any compliment; Berkley had put off some six stone of weight, at first glance, and it did not suit him; his jowls hung loose from his cheeks.

Maximus looked still more dreadfully altered, the great scaly red-and-gold hide sagging in folds around the base of the neck, and forward of his chest with the massive fretwork of his spine and shoulders holding it up like tent-poles, and what Laurence supposed to be the air-sacs swollen and bulging from his wasted sides. His eyes were slitted nearly shut, and a thin raspy noise of breathing issued from his cracked-open jaws, a trail of drool puddling beneath them; the nostrils were caked over with dried flaking effluvia.

“He will wake up in a bit, and be glad to see you both,” Berkley said gruffly, “but I don’t like to wake him when he can get any rest. The blasted cold will not let him sleep properly, and he don’t eat a quarter of what he should.”

Temeraire, having followed them into the clearing, made no sound, but crouched himself down, his neck curved back upon itself like a wary snake, and sat there utterly still, his wide unblinking gaze fixed on Maximus, who slept on, rasping, rasping. Laurence and Berkley conversed in low voices, discussing the sea-voyage. “Less than three months to the Cape,” Laurence said, “to judge by our last voyage; and we had some fighting off the Channel to see us off, which did not speed matters.”