“I am still hungry,” Kulingile piped from behind them.

Laurence sighed. “Demane, he must be patient.”

“Yes, sir,” Demane said, but when the bell was rung for the half-hour, Kulingile asked with great anxiety, “Now may I have something?” and again before the next bell sounded. At last Laurence permitted Demane to swing down and fetch him a little of the salted meat, but this did not stifle the pleas for long, and they possessed an edge of real misery which made them very difficult to endure. Kulingile did not whine, but only grew more desperate, and when he fell silent, Demane said suddenly, “No! You cannot chew that—” and Laurence turned to see Kulingile had begun to gnaw upon the harness.

“I did not mean to; only it is hard to be quiet when it aches so,” Kulingile said, small and miserable, leaving off and trying to hunch himself tighter around his belly.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, with equal and warring parts pity and exasperation, “if you should see any game, we must stop, I think.” Happily the kangaroos proved to yet be active in the relative cool of the morning, but Temeraire did not quite so easily catch them as before: he made several attempts, while Caesar took two one after the other, and plainly did not mean to share his bounty.

There was a quiet indignation in the makeshift camp, when Rankin did not order Caesar to do so; Caesar remarked, “I am sure I would be happy to share with anyone who could not catch their own, if they did their part; but as for throwing good food after bad, no, thank you.”

“Oh!” Temeraire said, coughing, “I should like to know why he has deserved to be fed, ever, in that case; and I certainly would not like any of his catch: they look very skinny and tasteless to me. If I wished a kangaroo of that sort, I am sure I might have taken two myself.”

“I would not mind one like that,” Kulingile said indistinctly, swallowing.

“What are you feeding him?” Laurence said, looking over.

“Snake,” Demane said, despairingly, “and also two rats, but I could not find any more.”

Temeraire gathered himself and leapt aloft once again, going after the small herd of kangaroos which were yet fleeing, and this time he did not try to snatch one or another as they hopped: instead he flung himself down among them and returned with eight: more than their appetite could require, and the herd likely smashed beyond recovery by so brutal a culling; he was plainly embarrassed by the clumsiness of the maneuver, and looked away when Caesar sniffed.

“Pray eat as much as you can now,” Laurence said, “and when we have reached water, Gong Su can stew the rest for us to carry: it will save us similar pains should we have enough to feed him tomorrow.”

Kulingile dispatched an entire kangaroo alone, by no means the smallest of the catch; Temeraire could scarcely manage as much, despite all his exertions, before the pain of his throat once again overcame his appetite. They loaded the remaining carcasses, cleaned a little, into a sack to hang below the belly-netting.

“Only,” Temeraire said, a little low, “it is quite unaccountable why I should be so tired when we have not been flying very long; it feels as though I cannot properly get my breath, and if I should try and breathe deeply, it aches.” He stretched his wings, and rolled them through their range of movement, a few times, and refused Laurence’s suggestion they should rest a little longer. “No; we have already lost too much time,” he said, “pray let everyone come back aboard.”

Temeraire flew now with the sun climbing over his shoulder and his neck, so that he felt uncomfortably warm upon the one half, and lopsided; a grinding flight which seemed very long. “I suppose it is not mid-day yet,” he said eventually—he did not ask for himself, really; only Laurence had urged a break from the heat of the day, for all their sakes. But it was only eleven.

He put his head down and flew doggedly onward, thinking of nothing but the next wingbeat, until Laurence said, “I think we will stop a little while here, my dear, if you will agree,” and Temeraire raised his head to see the shining blue-white stretch of water, rolling out before them and stretching northward, covering all the ground.

The lake’s shore was peculiarly crusted, seen from aloft: blue and shallow water, and very white sand, which when they had landed proved instead to be salt: a thin crust over the earth, and the lake full of fish; too small to be worth catching for dragons, Temeraire noted with regret, but the men made a hearty meal of them, and it was pleasant to dip into the deepest part, some distance away, and come out wet.

There were not very many trees or shrubs, although fresh grasses grew in abundance; but despite the lack of shade, Temeraire found it a great refreshment to sit upon the half-green shore and look away from the red sand and rock everywhere; and there were no bushes to hide lurking bunyips. It only lacked, to make the respite complete, Tharkay’s returning in a little while with a tiny scrap of blue silk he had uncovered, half-buried, near some rocks a distance down the shore.

“It has been here some time,” Tharkay said, spreading out the ragged strip to show them: one corner exposed to the sun had gone quite white, where the rest which had been buried was yet a dark blue when it had been brushed free of sand. “There is no reason to expect their latest visit was recent, but we are on some track which they have used.”

“And which should lead us back to their home,” Temeraire said, jubilantly, “and there we may wait for them to come out of the desert with the egg, or perhaps if there is someone there, they will tell us which way to go to find them.”

So he might rest easy in his conscience: he flew out for another swim and drank deeply, gratefully, from the cool water; he did not mind at all that it had a faint little taste of salt, and it was pleasant running down his throat.

He was sorry to leave again; the lake seemed a true oasis at last, the first they had found in so very long. When they had built the cairn of stones, for Iskierka to follow back, and Laurence had tucked a note for Granby beneath it, Temeraire looked over the gleaming expanse with a little sigh.

But Caesar said, half under his breath, “We might stay a little longer,” so Temeraire might even feel virtuous in saying sternly, “No; the egg is still somewhere ahead, and we must keep going,” and he flung himself aloft over the silver water with a leap.

They made good time, after the rest, and Temeraire thought that his breathing was not quite so embarrassingly noisy as before; certainly he could get his breath a little easier, and if he did cough a little, it was nothing so unpleasant as before, he told himself, and managed not to be overcome.

Tharkay counseled against crossing the lake directly: instead they skirted its limits, ragged and imperfect, with long spurs of land protruding deep into the lake, miles wide, which they crossed, landing briefly to scrape together a few more cairns. Long hours and not a sight of the smugglers, or their trail; at least there was game, and Temeraire took more than one kangaroo from the air, neatly, to his satisfaction.

They landed for the night at another stand of trees and shrubs around a watering-hole of fresher water, a little distance onward from the lake, although the ground was still pale with salt. Temeraire put down the kangaroos to be cleaned properly: Gong Su meant to salt down a great quantity of the meat, to sustain them through the desert. The men began to rake together a heap of the salt under his direction; meanwhile Temeraire set upon the vegetation with a will, happy to clear away the bunyips’ concealment.

He had an additional cause to be satisfied with this labor, too, for many little rodents fled from the wreckage, and also some birds, and Kulingile sat by as he worked and snatched them up as they tried to dash.