“Only eight of them, altogether?” Hammond stared and sat down blankly: as well he might.

“I don’t see how they can possibly continue on like that forever,” Granby said. “Are they so mad to keep them only for the Emperors, that they’ll risk losing the whole line?”

“Evidently from time to time a pair of Imperials will give birth to a Celestial,” Laurence said, between bites; he was sitting down at last to his painfully late dinner, in his bedroom: seven o’clock and full darkness outside, and he had swelled himself near to bursting with tea in an effort to stave off hunger over the visit which had stretched to many hours. “That is how the oldest fellow there now was born; and he is sire to the lot of them, going back four or five generations.”

“I cannot make it out in the least,” Hammond said, paying no attention to the rest of the conversation. “Eight Celestials; why on earth would they ever have given him away? Surely, at least for breeding—I cannot, I cannot credit it; Bonaparte cannot have impressed them so, not secondhand and from a continent away. There must be something else, something which I have not grasped. Gentlemen, you will excuse me,” he added, distractedly, and rose and left them alone. Laurence finished his meal without much appetite and set down his chopsticks.

“She did not say no to our keeping him, at any rate,” Granby said into the silence, but dismally.

Laurence said, after a moment, more to quell his own inner voices, “I could not be so selfish to even try and deny him the pleasure of making the better acquaintance of his own kindred, or learning about his native land.”

“It is all stuff and nonsense in the end, Laurence,” Granby said, trying to comfort him. “A dragon won’t be parted from his captain for all the gems in Araby, and all the calves in Christendom, too, for that matter.”

Laurence rose and went to the window. Temeraire had curled up for the night upon the heated courtyard stones once again. The moon had risen, and he was very beautiful to look at in the silver light, with the blossom-heavy trees on either side hanging low above him and a dappled reflection in the pond, all his scales gleaming.

“That is true; a dragon will endure a great deal sooner than be parted from his captain. It does not follow that a decent man would ask it of him,” Laurence said, very low, and let the curtain fall.

Chapter 14

TEMERAIRE HIMSELF WAS quiet the day after their visit. Laurence went out to sit with him, and gazed at him with anxiety; but he did not know how to broach the subject of what distressed him, nor what to say. If Temeraire was grown discontented with his lot in England, and wished to stay, there was nothing to be done. Hammond would hardly argue, so long as he was able to complete his negotiations; he cared a good deal more for establishing a permanent embassy and winning some sort of treaty than for getting Temeraire home. Laurence was by no means inclined to force the issue early.

Qian had told Temeraire, on their departure, to make himself free of the palace, but the same invitation had not been extended to Laurence. Temeraire did not ask permission to go, but he looked wistfully into the distance, and paced the courtyard in circles, and refused Laurence’s offer to read together. At last growing sick of himself, Laurence said, “Would you wish to go and see Qian again? I am sure she would welcome your visit.”

“She did not ask you,” Temeraire said, but his wings fanned halfway out, irresolute.

“There can be no offense intended in a mother liking to see her offspring privately,” Laurence said, and this excuse was sufficient; Temeraire very nearly glowed with pleasure and set off at once. He returned only late that evening, jubilant and full of plans to return.

“They have started teaching me to write,” he said. “I have already learned twenty-five characters today; shall I show you?”

“By all means,” Laurence answered, and not only to humor him; grimly he set himself to studying the symbols Temeraire laid down, and copying them down as best he could with a quill instead of a brush while Temeraire pronounced them for his benefit, though he looked rather doubtful at Laurence’s attempts to reproduce the sounds. He did not make much progress, but the effort alone made Temeraire so very happy that he could not begrudge it, and concealed the intense strain which he had suffered under the entire seeming endless day.

Infuriatingly, however, Laurence had to contend not only with his own feelings, but with Hammond on the subject as well. “One visit, in your company, could serve as reassurance and give her the opportunity of making your acquaintance,” the diplomat said. “But this continued solitary visiting cannot be allowed. If he comes to prefer China and agrees of his own volition to stay, we will lose any hope of success: they will pack us off at once.”

“That is enough, sir,” Laurence said angrily. “I have no intention of insulting Temeraire by suggesting that his natural wish to become acquainted with his kind in any way represents a lack of fidelity.”

Hammond pressed the point, and the conversation grew heated; at last Laurence concluded by saying, “If I must make this plain, so be it: I do not consider myself as under your command. I have been given no instructions to that effect, and your attempt to assert an authority without official foundation is entirely improper.”

Their relations had already been tolerably cool; now they became frigid, and Hammond did not come to have dinner with Laurence and his officers that night. The next day, however, he came early into the pavilion, before Temeraire had left on his visit, accompanied by Prince Yongxing. “His Highness has been kind enough to come and see how we do; I am sure you will join me in welcoming him,” he said, with rather hard emphasis on the last words, and Laurence rather reluctantly rose to make his most formal leg.

“You are very kind, sir; as you see you find us very comfortable,” he said, with stiff politeness, and wary; he still did not trust Yongxing’s intentions in the least.

Yongxing inclined his head a very little, equally stiff and unsmiling, and then turned and beckoned to a young boy following him: no more than thirteen years of age, wearing wholly nondescript garments of the usual indigo-dyed cotton. Glancing up at him, the boy nodded and walked past Laurence, directly up to Temeraire, and made a formal greeting: he raised his hands up in front of himself, fingers wrapped over one another, and inclined his head, saying something in Chinese at the same time. Temeraire looked a little puzzled, and Hammond interjected hastily, “Tell him yes, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Oh,” said Temeraire, uncertainly, but said something to the boy, evidently affirmative. Laurence was startled to see the boy climb up onto Temeraire’s foreleg, and arrange himself there. Yongxing’s face was as always difficult to read, but there was a suggestion of satisfaction to his mouth; then he said, “We will go inside and take tea,” and turned away.

“Be sure not to let him fall,” Hammond added hastily to Temeraire, with an anxious look at the boy, who was sitting cross-legged, with great poise, and seemed as likely to fall off as a Buddha statue to climb off its pediment.

“Roland,” Laurence called; she and Dyer had been working their trigonometry in the back corner. “Pray see if he would like some refreshment.”

She nodded and went to talk to the boy in her broken Chinese while Laurence followed the other men across the courtyard and into the residence. Already the servants had hastily rearranged the furniture: a single draped chair for Yongxing, with a footstool, and armless chairs placed at right angles to it for Laurence and Hammond. They brought the tea with great ceremony and attention, and throughout the process Yongxing remained perfectly silent. Nor did he speak once the servants had at last withdrawn, but sipped at his tea, very slowly.