“No, Volly, but we can fetch you a sheep,” Temeraire said indulgently. “Has he been hurt?” he asked James; the little dragon sounded queerly nasal.

Volly’s captain, Langford James, slid down. “Hello, Laurence, there you are. We have been looking for you up and down the coast,” he said, reaching out to take Laurence’s hand. “No need to fret, Temeraire; he has only caught this blasted cold going about Dover. Half the dragons are moaning and sniffling about: they are the greatest children imaginable. But he will be right as rain in a week or two.”

More rather than less alarmed by these reassurances, Temeraire edged a little distance away from Volly; he did not look particularly eager to experience his first illness. Laurence nodded; the letter he had had from Jane Roland had mentioned the sickness in passing. “I hope you have not strained him on our account, coming so far. Shall I send for my surgeon?” he offered.

“No, thank you; he has been doctored enough. It’ll be another week before he forgets the medicine he swallowed and forgives me for slipping it into his dinner,” James said, waving away the request. “Any road, we have not come so very far; we have been down here flying the southern route the last two weeks, and it is a damned sight warmer here than in jolly old England, you know. Volly’s hardly shy about letting me know if he don’t care to fly, either, so as long as he doesn’t speak up, I’ll keep him in the air.” He petted the little dragon, who bumped his nose against James’s hand, and then lowered his head directly to sleep.

“What news is there?” Laurence asked, shuffling through the post that James had handed over: his responsibility rather than Riley’s, as it had been brought by dragon-courier. “Has there been any change on the Continent? We heard news of Austerlitz at Cape Coast. Are we recalled? Ferris, see these to Lord Purbeck, and the rest among our crew,” he added, handing the other letters off: for himself he had a dispatch, and a couple of letters, though he politely tucked them into his jacket rather than looking at them at once.

“No to both, more’s the pity, but at least we can make the trip a little easier for you; we have taken the Dutch colony at Capetown,” James said. “Seized it last month, so you can break your journey there.”

The news leapt from one end of the deck to the other with speed fueled by the enthusiasm of men who had been long brooding over the grim news of Napoleon’s latest success, and the Allegiance was instantly afire with patriotic cheers; no further conversation was possible until some measure of calm had been restored. The post did some work to this effect, Purbeck and Ferris handing it out among the respective crews, and gradually the noise collected into smaller pockets, many of the other men deep into their letters.

Laurence sent for a table and chairs to be brought up to the dragondeck, inviting Riley and Hammond to join them and hear the news. James was happy to give them a more detailed account of the capture than was contained in the brief dispatch: he had been a courier from the age of fourteen, and had a turn for the dramatic; though in this case he had little material to work from. “I’m sorry it doesn’t make a better story; it was not really a fight, you know,” he said apologetically. “We had the Highlanders there, and the Dutch only some mercenaries; they ran away before we even reached the town. The governor had to surrender; the people are still a little uneasy, but General Baird is leaving local affairs to them, and they have not kicked up much of a fuss.”

“Well, it will certainly make resupply easier,” Riley said. “We need not stop in St. Helena, either; and that will be a savings of as much as two weeks. It is very welcome news indeed.”

“Will you stay for dinner?” Laurence asked James. “Or must you be going straightaway?”

Volly abruptly sneezed behind him, a loud and startling noise. “Ick,” the little dragon said, waking himself up out of his sleep, and rubbed his nose against his foreleg in distaste, trying to scrape the mucus from his snout.

“Oh, stop that, filthy wretch,” James said, getting up; he took a large white linen square from his harness bags and wiped Volly clean with the weary air of long practice. “I suppose we will stay the night,” he said after, contemplating Volly. “No need to press him, now that I have found you in time, and you can write any letters you like me to take on: we are homeward bound after we leave you.”

…so my poor Lily, like Excidium and Mortiferus, has been banished from her comfortable clearing to the Sand Pits, for when she sneezes, she cannot help but spit some of the acid, the muscles involved in this reflex (so the surgeons tell me) being the very same. They all three are very disgusted with their situation, as the sand cannot be got rid of from day to day, and they scratch themselves like Dogs trying to cast off fleas no matter how they bathe.

Maximus is in deep disgrace, for he began sneezing first, and all the other dragons like to have someone to blame for their Misery; however he bears it well, or as Berkley tells me to write, “Does not give a Tinker’s Dam for the lot of them and whines all the day, except when busy stuffing his gullet; has not hurt his appetite in the least.”

We all do very well otherwise, and all send their love; the dragons also, and bid you convey their greetings and affection to Temeraire. They indeed miss him badly, though I am sorry to have to tell you that we have lately discovered one ignoble cause for their pining, which is plain Greed. Evidently he had taught them how to pry open the Feeding Pen, and close it again after, so they were able to help themselves whenever they liked without anyone the wiser—their Guilty Secret discovered only after note was taken that the Herds were oddly diminished, and the dragons of our formation overfed, whereupon being questioned they confessed the Whole.

I must stop, for we have Patrol, and Volatilus goes south in the morning. All our prayers for your safe Journey and quick return.

Etc.,

Catherine Harcourt

“What is this I hear from Harcourt of your teaching the dragons to steal from the pen?” Laurence demanded, looking up from his letter; he was taking the hour before dinner to read his mail, and compose replies.

Temeraire started up with so very revealing an expression that his guilt could be in no doubt. “That is not true, I did not teach anyone to steal,” he said. “The herdsmen at Dover are very lazy, and do not always come in the morning, so we have to wait and wait at the pen, and the herds are meant for us, anyway; it cannot be called stealing.”

“I suppose I ought to have suspected something when you stopped complaining of them being always late,” Laurence said. “But how on earth did you manage it?”

“The gate is perfectly simple,” Temeraire said. “There is only a bar across the fence, which one can lift very easily, and then it swings open; Nitidus could do it best, for his forehands are the smallest. Though it is difficult to keep the animals inside the pen, and the first time I learned how to open it, they all ran away,” he added. “Maximus and I had to chase after them for hours and hours—it was not funny, at all,” he said, ruffled, sitting back on his haunches and contemplating Laurence with great indignation.

“I beg your pardon,” Laurence said, after he had regained his breath. “I truly beg your pardon, it was only the notion of you, and Maximus, and the sheep—oh dear,” Laurence said, and dissolved again, try as he might to contain himself: astonished stares from his crew, and Temeraire haughtily offended.

“Is there any other news in the letter?” Temeraire asked, coolly, when Laurence had finally done.