This at least caused her to raise her head. “No, it is Captain Harcourt,” she said; her face was pale, and her spray of freckles stood out prominently against it, but she was clearly determined to defend her rights; she gave Rankin a strangely defiant look as she spoke.
Laurence had used the address automatically; he had not meant to offend, but evidently he had. “I beg your pardon, Captain,” he said at once, bowing his head in apology. It was indeed difficult to address her so, however, and the title felt strange and awkward on his tongue; he was afraid he sounded unnaturally stiff. “I meant no disrespect.” And now he recognized the dragon’s name as well; it had struck him as unusual yesterday, but with so much else to consider, that one detail had slipped his mind. “I believe you have the Longwing?” he said politely.
“Yes, that is my Lily,” she said, an involuntary warmth coming into her voice as she spoke her dragon’s name.
“Perhaps you were not aware, Captain Laurence, that Longwings will not take male handlers; it is some odd quirk of theirs, for which we must be grateful, else we would be deprived of such charming company,” Rankin said, inclining his head to the girl. There was an ironic quality to his voice that made Laurence frown; the girl was very obviously not at ease, and Rankin did not seem to be making her more so. She had dropped her head again, and was staring at her plate with her lips pale and pressed together into an unhappy line.
“It is very brave of you to undertake such a duty, M—Captain Harcourt; a glass—that is to say, to your health,” Laurence said, amending at the last moment and making the toast a sip; he did not think it appropriate to force a slip of a girl to drink an entire glass of wine.
“It is no more than anyone else does,” she said, muttering; then belatedly she took her own glass and raised it in return. “I mean: and to yours.”
Silently he repeated her title and name to himself; it would be very rude of him to make the mistake again, having been corrected once, but it was so strange he did not entirely trust himself yet. He took care to look at her face and not elsewhere. With her hair pulled back so tightly she did look boyish, which was some help, along with the clothes that had allowed him to mistake her initially; he supposed that was why she went about in male dress, appalling and illegal though it was.
He would have liked to talk to her, although it would have been difficult not to ask questions, but he could not be steadily talking over Rankin. He was left to wonder at it in the privacy of his own thoughts; to think that every Longwing in service was captained by a woman was shocking. Glancing at her slight frame, he wondered how she supported the work; he himself felt battered and tired after the day’s flying, and though perhaps a proper harness would reduce the strain, he still found it hard to believe a woman could manage it day after day. It was cruel to ask it of her, but of course Longwings could not be spared. They were perhaps the most deadly English dragons, to be compared only with Regal Coppers, and without them the aerial defenses of England would be hideously vulnerable.
With this object of curiosity to occupy his thoughts, and Rankin’s civil conversation as well, his first dinner passed more pleasantly than he had to some extent expected, and he rose from the table encouraged, even though Captain Harcourt and Berkley had been silent and uncommunicative throughout. As they stood, Rankin turned to him and said, “If you are not otherwise engaged, may I invite you to join me in the officers’ club for some chess? I rarely have the chance of a game, and I confess that since you mentioned that you play, I have been eager to seize upon the opportunity.”
“I thank you for the invitation; it would give me great pleasure as well,” Laurence said. “For the moment I must beg to be excused, however; I must see to Temeraire, and then I have promised to read to him.”
“Read to him?” Rankin said, with an expression of amusement that did not hide his surprise at the idea. “Your dedication is admirable, and all that is natural in a new handler. However, allow me if I may to assure you that for the most part dragons are quite capable of managing on their own. I know several of our fellow captains are in the habit of spending all their free time with their beasts, and I would not wish you based on their example to think it a necessity, or a duty to which you must sacrifice the pleasure of human company.”
“I thank you kindly for your concern, but I assure you it is misplaced in my case,” Laurence said. “For my own part, I could desire no better society than Temeraire’s, and it is as much for my own sake as for his that we are engaged. But I would be very happy to join you later this evening, unless you keep early hours.”
“I am very happy to hear it, on both counts,” Rankin said. “As for my hours, not at all; I am not in training, of course, only here on courier duty, so I need not keep to a student’s schedule. I am ashamed to admit that on most days I am not to be found downstairs until shortly before noon, but on the other hand that grants me the pleasure of expecting to see you this evening.”
With this they parted, and Laurence set out to find Temeraire. He was amused to find three of the cadets lurking just outside the dining hall door: the sandy-haired boy and two others, each clutching a fistful of clean white rags. “Oh, sir,” the boy said, jumping up as he saw Laurence coming out. “Would you need any more linens, for Temeraire?” he asked eagerly. “We thought you might, so we brought some, when we saw him eating.”
“Here now, Roland, what d’you think you’re about, there?” Tolly, carrying a load of dishes from the dining hall, stopped on seeing the cadets accost Laurence. “You know better’n to pester a captain.”
“I’m not, am I?” the boy said, looking hopefully at Laurence. “I only thought, perhaps we could help a little. He is very big, after all, and Morgan and Dyer and I all have our carabiners; we can lock on without any trouble at all,” he said earnestly, displaying an odd harness that Laurence had not even noticed before: it was a thick leather belt laced tightly around his waist, with an attached pair of straps ending in what looked at first glance like a large chain link made of steel. On closer examination, Laurence saw that this had a piece which could be folded in, and thus open the link to be hooked on to something else.
Straightening, Laurence said, “As Temeraire does not yet have a proper harness, I do not think you can lock on to the straps with these. However,” he added, hiding a smile at their downcast looks, “come along, and we shall see what can be done. Thank you, Tolly,” he said, nodding to the servant. “I can manage them.”
Tolly was not bothering to hide his grin at this exchange. “Right you are,” he said, carrying on with his duties.
“Roland, is it?” Laurence asked the boy, as he walked on to the courtyard with the three children trotting to keep up.
“Yes, sir, Cadet Emily Roland, at your service.” Turning to her companions, and thus remaining blithely unconscious of Laurence’s startled expression, she added, “And these are Andrew Morgan and Peter Dyer; we are all in our third year here.”
“Yes, indeed, we would all like to help,” Morgan said, and Dyer, smaller than the other two and with round eyes, only nodded.
“Very good,” Laurence managed, looking surreptitiously down at the girl. Her hair was cut bowl-fashion, just like the two boys’, and she had a sturdy, stocky build; her voice was scarcely pitched higher than theirs: his mistake had not been unnatural. Now that he gave a moment’s thought to the matter, it made perfect sense; the Corps would naturally train up a few girls, in anticipation of needing them as Longwings hatched, and likely Captain Harcourt was herself the product of such training. But he could not help wondering what sort of parent would hand over a girl of tender years to the rigor of the service.