One by one the men slowly began to drift away from the festivities and seek their hammocks. Riley came climbing up from the quarterdeck, taking the steps one at a time with both feet, very weary and scarlet in the face; Laurence invited him to sit, and out of consideration did not offer a glass of wine. “You cannot call it anything but a rousing success; any political hostess would consider it a triumph to put on such a dinner,” Laurence said. “But I confess I would have been happier with half so many dishes, and the servants might have been much less solicitous without leaving me hungry.”
“Oh—yes, indeed,” Riley said; distracted, and now that Laurence looked at him more closely, plainly unhappy, discomfited.
“What has occurred? Is something amiss?” Laurence looked at once at the rigging, the masts; but all looked well, and in any case every sense and intuition together told him that the ship was running well: or as well as she ever did, being in the end a great lumbering hulk.
“Laurence, I very much dislike being a tale-bearer, but I cannot conceal this,” Riley said. “That ensign, or I suppose cadet, of yours; Roland. He—that is, Roland was asleep in the Chinese cabin, and as I was leaving, the servants asked me, with their translator, where he slept, so they might carry him there.” Laurence was already dreading the conclusion, and not very surprised when Riley added, “But the fellow said ‘she,’ instead; I was on the point of correcting him when I looked—well, not to drag it out; Roland is a girl. I have not the least notion how she has concealed it so long.”
“Oh bloody Hell,” Laurence said, too tired and irritable from the excess of food and drink to mind his language. “You have not said anything about this, have you, Tom? To anyone else?” Riley nodded, warily, and Laurence said, “I must beg you to keep it quiet; the plain fact of the matter is, Longwings will not go into harness under a male captain. And some other breeds also, but those are of less material significance; Longwings are the kind we cannot do without, and so some girls must be trained up for them.”
Riley said, uncertainly, half-smiling, “Are you—? But this is absurd; was not the leader of your formation here on this very ship, with his Longwing?” he protested, seeing that Laurence was not speaking in jest.
“Do you mean Lily?” Temeraire asked, cocking his head. “Her captain is Catherine Harcourt; she is not a man.”
“It is quite true; I assure you,” Laurence said, while Riley stared at him and Temeraire in turn.
“But Laurence, the very notion,” Riley said, grown now appalled as he began to believe them. “Every feeling must cry out against such an abuse. Why, if we are to send women to war, should we not take them to sea, also? We could double our numbers, and what matter if the deck of every ship become a brothel, and children left motherless and crying on shore?”
“Come, the one does not follow on the other in the slightest,” Laurence said, impatient with this exaggeration; he did not like the necessity himself, but he was not at all willing to be given such romantical arguments against it. “I do not at all say it could or ought to answer in the general case; but where the willing sacrifice of a few may mean the safety and happiness of the rest, I cannot think it so bad. Those women officers whom I have met are not impressed into service, nor forced to the work even by the ordinary necessities that require men to seek employment, and I assure you no one in the service would dream of offering any insult.”
This explanation did not reconcile Riley at all, but he abandoned his general protest for the specific. “And so you truly mean to keep this girl in service?” he said, in tones increasingly plaintive rather than shocked. “And have her going about in male dress in this fashion; can it be allowed?”
“There is formal dispensation from the sumptuary laws for female officers of the Corps while engaged upon their duties, authorized by the Crown,” Laurence said. “I am sorry that you should be put to any distress over the matter, Tom; I had hoped to avoid the issue entirely, but I suppose it was too much to ask for, seven months aboard ship. I promise you,” he added, “I was as shocked as you might wish when I first learned of the practice; but since I have served with several, and they are indeed not at all like ordinary females. They are raised to the life, you know, and under such circumstances habit may trump even birth.”
For his part, Temeraire had been following this exchange with cocked head and increasing confusion; now he said, “I do not understand in the least, why ought it make any difference at all? Lily is female, and she can fight just as well as I can, or almost,” he amended, with a touch of superiority.
Riley, still dissatisfied even after Laurence’s reassurance, looked after this remark very much as though he had been asked to justify the tide, or the phase of the moon; Laurence was by long experience better prepared for Temeraire’s radical notions, and said, “Women are generally smaller and weaker than men, Temeraire, less able to endure the privations of service.”
“I have never noticed that Captain Harcourt is much smaller than any of the rest of you,” Temeraire said; well he might not, speaking from a height of some thirty feet and a weight topping eighteen tons. “Besides, I am smaller than Maximus, and Messoria is smaller than me; but that does not mean we cannot still fight.”
“It is different for dragons than for people,” Laurence said. “Among other things, women must bear children, and care for them through childhood, where your kind lay eggs and hatch ready to look to your own needs.”
Temeraire blinked at this intelligence. “You do not hatch out of eggs?” he asked, in deep fascination. “How then—”
“I beg your pardon, I think I see Purbeck looking for me,” Riley said, very hastily, and escaped at a speed remarkable, Laurence thought somewhat resentfully, in a man who had lately consumed nearly a quarter of his own weight again in food.
“I cannot really undertake to explain the process to you; I have no children of my own,” Laurence said. “In any case, it is late; and if you wish to make a long flight tomorrow, you had better rest well tonight.”
“That is true, and I am sleepy,” Temeraire said, yawning and letting his long forked tongue unroll, tasting the air. “I think it will keep clear; we will have good weather for the flight.” He settled himself. “Good night, Laurence; you will come early?”
“Directly after breakfast, I am entirely at your disposal,” Laurence promised. He stayed stroking Temeraire gently until the dragon drifted into sleep; his hide was still very warm to the touch, likely from the last lingering heat of the galley, its ovens finally given some rest after the long preparations. At last, Temeraire’s eyes closing to the thinnest of slits, Laurence got himself back onto his feet and climbed down to the quarterdeck.
The men had mostly cleared away or were napping on deck, save those surly few set as lookouts and muttering of their unhappy lot in the rigging, and the night air was pleasantly cool. Laurence walked a ways aft to stretch his legs before going below; the midshipman standing watch, young Tripp, was yawning almost as wide as Temeraire; he closed his mouth with a snap and jerked to embarrassed attention when Laurence passed.
“A pleasant evening, Mr. Tripp,” Laurence said, concealing his amusement; the boy was coming along well, from what Riley had said, and bore little resemblance anymore to the idle, spoiled creature who had been foisted upon them by his family. His wrists showed bare for several inches past the ends of his sleeves, and the back of his coat had split so many times that in the end it had been necessary to expand it by the insertion of a panel of blue-dyed sailcloth, not quite the same shade as the rest, so he had an odd stripe running down the middle. Also his hair had grown curly, and bleached to almost yellow by the sun; his own mother would likely not recognize him.