Laurence was not sure how to answer this; he could not deny that he was touched by the degree to which Temeraire valued him, yet it was also alarming to have the dragon express so plainly that he would follow orders or not as his own judgment decreed. Laurence trusted that judgment a great deal, but he felt again that he had made an inadequate effort to teach Temeraire the value of discipline and duty. “I wish I knew how to explain it to you properly,” he said, a little despairingly. “Perhaps I will try and find you some books on the subject.”
“I suppose,” Temeraire said, for once dubious about reading something. “I do not think anything would persuade me to behave differently. In any case, I would much rather just avoid it ever happening again. It was very dreadful, and I was afraid I might not be able to catch you.”
Laurence could smile at this. “On that point at least we are agreed, and I will gladly promise you to do my best to avoid any repetition.”
Roland came running to fetch him the next morning; he had slept by Temeraire’s side again in the little tent. “Celeritas wants you, sir,” she said, and went back to the castle by his side, once he had put his neckcloth back on and restored his coat. Temeraire gave him a sleepy murmur of farewell, barely opening one eye before going back to sleep. As they walked, she ventured, “Captain, are you still angry at me?”
“What?” he said, blankly; then he remembered, and said, “No, Roland; I am not angry with you. You do understand why you were wrong to speak so, I hope.”
“Yes,” she said, and he was able to ignore that it came out a little doubtfully. “I did not speak to Levitas; but I could not help seeing he does not look very well this morning.”
Laurence glanced at the Winchester as they walked through the courtyard; Levitas was curled in the back corner, far from the other dragons, and despite the early hour, he was not sleeping but staring dully at the ground. Laurence looked away; there was nothing to be done.
“Run along, Roland,” Celeritas said, when she had brought Laurence to him. “Captain, I am sorry to have called you so early; first, is Temeraire well enough to resume his training, do you think?”
“I believe so, sir; he is healing very quickly, and yesterday he flew down to the lake and back with no difficulty,” Laurence said.
“Good, good.” Celeritas fell silent, and then he sighed. “Captain, I am obliged to order you not to interfere with Levitas any further,” he said.
Laurence felt hot color come to his face. So Rankin had complained of him. And yet it was no more than he deserved; he would never have brooked such officious involvement in the running of his ship, or his management of Temeraire. The thing had been wrong, whatever justifications he had given himself, and anger was quickly subsumed in shame. “Sir, I apologize that you should have been put to the necessity of telling me so; I assure you it will not arise again.”
Celeritas snorted; having delivered his rebuke, he seemed at no great pains to reinforce it. “Give me no assurances; you would lower yourself in my eyes if you could mean them with real honesty,” he said. “It is a great pity, and I am at fault as much as anyone. When I could not tolerate him myself, Aerial Command thought he might do as a courier, and set him to a Winchester; for his grandfather’s sake I could not bring myself to speak against it, though I knew better.”
Comforting as it was to have the reprimand softened, Laurence was curious to understand what Celeritas meant by not being able to tolerate him; surely Aerial Command would never have proposed a fellow like Rankin as a handler to a dragon as extraordinary as the training master. “Did you know his grandfather well?” he asked, unable to resist making the tentative inquiry.
“My first handler; his son also served with me,” Celeritas said briefly, turning his head aside; his head drooped. He recovered after a moment and added, “Well, I had hopes for the boy, but at his mother’s insistence he was not raised here, and his family gave him strange notions; he ought never have been an aviator, much less a captain. But now he is, and while Levitas obeys him, so he remains. I cannot allow you to interfere. You can imagine what it would mean if we allowed officers to meddle with one another’s beasts: lieutenants desperate to be captains could hardly resist the temptation to seduce away any dragon who was not blissfully happy, and we would have chaos.”
Laurence bowed his head. “I understand perfectly, sir.”
“In any case, I will be giving you more pressing matters to attend to, for today we will begin your integration into Lily’s formation,” Celeritas said. “Pray go and fetch Temeraire; the others will be here shortly.”
Walking back out, Laurence was thoughtful. He had known, of course, that the larger breeds would outlive their handlers, when they were not killed in battle together; he had not considered that this would leave the dragons alone and without a partner afterwards, nor how they or Aerial Command would manage the situation. Of course it was in Britain’s best interests to have the dragon continue in service, with a new handler, but he also could not help but think the dragon himself would be happier so, with duties to occupy his thoughts and keep him from the kind of sorrow that Celeritas obviously still felt.
Arriving once again at the clearing, Laurence looked at the sleeping Temeraire with concern. Of course there were many years before them, and the fortunes of war might easily make all such questions moot, but Temeraire’s future happiness was his responsibility, heavier by far to him than any estate could have been, and some time soon he would have to consider what provisions he could make to ensure it. A well-chosen first lieutenant, perhaps, might step into his place, with Temeraire brought to the notion over the course of several years.
“Temeraire,” he called, stroking the dragon’s nose; Temeraire opened his eyes and made a small rumble.
“I am awake; are we flying again today?” he said, yawning enormously up at the sky and twitching his wings a little.
“Yes, my dear,” Laurence said. “Come, we must get you back into your harness; I am sure Mr. Hollin will have it ready for us.”
The formation ordinarily flew in a wedge-shaped block that resembled nothing more than a flock of migrating geese, with Lily at the head. The Yellow Reapers Messoria and Immortalis filled the key flanking positions, providing the protective bulk to keep Lily from close-quarters attack, while the ends were held by the smaller but more agile Dulcia, a Grey Copper, and a Pascal’s Blue called Nitidus. All were full-grown, and all but Lily had previous combat experience; they had been especially chosen for this critical formation to support the young and inexperienced Longwing, and their captains and crews were rightly proud of their skill.
Laurence had cause to be thankful for the endless labor and repetition of the last month and a half; if the maneuvers they had practiced for so long had not become by now second nature for Temeraire and Maximus, they could never have kept up with the practiced, effortless acrobatics of the others. The two larger dragons had been added into position so as to form a back row behind Lily, closing the formation into a triangle shape. In battle, their place would be to fend off any attempts to break up the formation, to defend it against attack from other heavy-combat-class dragons, and to carry the great loads of bombs that their crews would drop below upon those targets that had already been weakened by Lily’s acid.
Laurence was very glad to see Temeraire admitted fully to the company of the other dragons of the formation, although none of the older dragons had the energy for much play outside their work. For the most part they lazed about during the scant idle hours, and only observed in tolerant amusement while Temeraire and Lily and Maximus talked and occasionally went aloft for a game of aerial tag. For his own part, Laurence also felt a great deal more welcome among the other aviators now, and discovered that he had without noticing it adjusted to the informality of their relations: the first time he found himself addressing Captain Harcourt as simply “Harcourt,” in a post-training discussion, he did not even realize he had done so until after the words were out of his mouth.