As the last unfurled flowers came to rest, the dragons all tapped their claws against the flagstones in a clicking noise, a kind of applause. Now a small table was brought for Laurence and great porcelain bowls painted in blue and white for the dragons, and a black, pungent tea poured for them all. To Laurence’s surprise the dragons drank with enjoyment, even going so far as to lick up the leaves in the bottom of their cups. He himself found the tea curious and over-strong in flavor: almost the aroma of smoked meat, though he drained his cup politely as well. Temeraire drank his own enthusiastically and very fast, and then sat back with a peculiar uncertain expression, as though trying to decide whether he had liked it or not.

“You have come a very long way,” Qian said, addressing Laurence; an unobtrusive servant had stepped forward to her side to translate. “I hope you are enjoying your visit with us, but surely you must miss your home?”

“An officer in the King’s service must be used to go where he is required, madam,” Laurence said, wondering if this was meant as a suggestion. “I have not spent more than a sixmonth at my own family’s home since I took ship the first time, and that was as a boy of twelve.”

“That is very young, to go so far away,” Qian said. “Your mother must have had great anxiety for you.”

“She had the acquaintance of Captain Mountjoy, with whom I served, and we knew his family well,” Laurence said, and seized the opening to add, “You yourself had no such advantage, I regret, on being parted from Temeraire; I would be glad to satisfy you on whatever points I might, if only in retrospect.”

She turned her head to the attending dragons. “Perhaps Mei and Shu will take Xiang to see the flowers more closely,” she said, using Temeraire’s Chinese name. The two Imperials inclined their heads and stood up expectantly waiting for Temeraire.

Temeraire looked a little worriedly at Laurence, and said, “They are very nice from here?”

Laurence felt rather anxious himself at the prospect of a solitary interview, with so little sense of what might please Qian, but he mustered a smile for Temeraire and said, “I will wait here with your mother; I am sure you will enjoy them.”

“Be sure not to bother Grandfather or Lien,” Qian added to the Imperial dragons, who nodded as they led Temeraire away.

The servants refilled his cup and Qian’s bowl from a fresh kettle, and she lapped at it in a more leisurely way. Presently she said, “I understand Temeraire has been serving in your army.”

There was unmistakably a note of censure in her voice, which did not need translation. “Among us, all those dragons who can, serve in defense of their home: that is no dishonor, but the fulfillment of our duty,” Laurence said. “I assure you we could not value him more highly. There are very few dragons among us: even the least are greatly prized, and Temeraire is of the highest order.”

She rumbled low and thoughtfully. “Why are there so few dragons, that you must ask your most valued to fight?”

“We are a small nation, nothing like your own,” Laurence said. “Only a handful of smaller wild breeds were native to the British Isles, when the Romans came and began to tame them. Since then, by cross-breeding our lines have multiplied, and thanks to careful tending of our cattle herds, we have been able to increase our numbers, but still we cannot support nearly so many as you here possess.”

She lowered her head and regarded him keenly. “And among the French, how are dragons treated?”

Instinctively Laurence was certain British treatment of dragons was superior and more generous than that of any other Western nation; but he was unhappily aware he would have considered it also superior to China’s, if he had not come and already seen plainly otherwise. A month before, he could easily have spoken with pride of how British dragons were cared for. Like all of them, Temeraire had been fed and housed on raw meat and in bare clearings, with constant training and little entertainment. Laurence thought he might as well brag of raising children in a pigsty to the Queen, as speak of such conditions to this elegant dragon in her flower-decked palace. If the French were no better, they were hardly worse; and he would have thought very little of anyone who covered the faults in his own service by blackening another’s.

“In ordinary course, the practices in France are much the same as ours, I believe,” he said at last. “I do not know what promises were made you, in Temeraire’s particular case, but I can tell you that Emperor Napoleon himself is a military man: even as we left England he was in the field, and any dragon who was his companion would hardly remain behind while he went to war.”

“You are yourself descended from kings, I understand,” Qian said unexpectedly, and turning her head spoke to one of the servants, who hurried forward with a long rice-paper scroll and unrolled it upon the table: with amazement, Laurence saw it was a copy, in a much finer hand and larger, of the familial chart which he had drawn so long ago at the New Year banquet. “This is correct?” she inquired, seeing him so startled.

It had never occurred to him that the information would come to her ears, nor that she would find it of interest. But he at once swallowed any reluctance: he would puff off his consequence to her day and night if it would win her approval. “My family is indeed an old one, and proud; you see I myself have gone into service in the Corps, and count it an honor,” he said, though guilt pricked at him; certainly no one in the circles of his birth would have called it as much.

Qian nodded, apparently satisfied, and sipped again at her tea while the servant carried the chart away again. Laurence cast about for something else to say. “If I may be so bold, I think I may with confidence say on behalf of my Government that we would gladly agree to whatever conditions the French accepted, on your first sending Temeraire’s egg to them.”

“Many considerations besides remain” was all she said in response to this overture, however.

Temeraire and the two Imperials were already coming back from their walk, Temeraire having evidently set a rather hurried pace; at the same time, the white dragon came walking past as she returned to her own quarters with Yongxing now by her side, speaking with her in a low voice, one hand affectionately resting upon her side. She walked slowly, so he could keep pace, and also the several attendants trailing reluctantly after burdened with large scrolls and several books: still the Imperials held well back and waited to let them pass before coming back into the pavilion.

“Qian, why is she that color?” Temeraire asked, peeking back out at Lien after she had gone by. “She looks so very strange.”

“Who can understand the workings of Heaven?” Qian said repressively. “Do not be disrespectful. Lien is a great scholar; she was chuang-yuan, many years ago, though she did not need to submit to the examinations at all, being a Celestial, and also she is your elder cousin. She was sired by Chu, who was hatched of Xian, as was I.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said, abashed. More timidly he asked, “Who was my sire?”

“Lung Qin Gao,” Qian said, and twitched her tail; she looked rather pleased by the recollection. “He is an Imperial dragon, and is at present in the south in Hangzhou: his companion is a prince of the third rank, and they are visiting the West Lake.”

Laurence was startled to learn Celestials could so breed true with Imperials: but on his tentative inquiry Qian confirmed as much. “That is how our line continues. We cannot breed among ourselves,” she said, and added, quite unconscious of how she was staggering him, “There are only myself and Lien now, who are female, and besides Grandfather and Chu, there are only Chuan and Ming and Zhi, and we are all cousins at most.”