“Well, keep it in mind,” MacArthur said. “There is no need to make any hasty decisions; only you might think it over, whether it would suit you.”

He asked after Laurence, then, and hearing he was at dinner touched his hat and went away, not without promising another pair of cattle, “With a yearling beef for the littler fellow,” he said, meaning Caesar, “and that way you don’t need to squabble it with this—Kulingheelay, did you say?” as though Temeraire would have squabbled anyway, in some undignified manner. “Give your captain my regards,” he concluded, and so departed, leaving Demane to say to Roland in an undertone, “It would suit me better than scraping to Rankin.”

“As though you would, anyway,” Roland said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be an ass; he probably wants to see if you can be persuaded to fetch and carry for him, or something like, at a bargain price.”

“Do you suppose he might like something carried at not a bargain price, if he could not get better?” Temeraire inquired; though Roland abjured the idea scornfully, as beneath the dignity of an aviator to consider, Demane was of very like mind when Temeraire said to him privately, afterwards, “But if he or some other person were prepared to pay in cows, no one could object, I find, to doing him some service.”

There would be time yet to consider; at present, the question and MacArthur’s visit both were driven quite from his mind, for the wind had shifted: not very strong, but enough to rattle the spars a little, and in the ideal quarter. There was a consultation going forward on the deck of the ship, which Temeraire could see in the fading light: the young officers on duty peering up and calling questions to the crow’s nest. They were a little while at it and resolved not too soon: below in the street, the doors to the inn opened, where the men had gone to dine, just as the ship fired away a blue light and the small blue pennant rose up on the mast to summon all her officers aboard.

Laurence came up the hill slowly and rested his hand on Temeraire’s side as the ship’s launch rowed back out, the guests from dinner crawling up the side one after another; the men were already at the two massive capstans, marching around, as the sails billowed out in sheets of rolling white.

“Good-bye!” Iskierka called from the dragondeck, her voice carrying over the water. “Good-bye! I will tell Granby to write you whenever anything interesting should happen.”

Temeraire sighed a little, and put his head down upon his forelegs as the Allegiance began her slow and stately progress: the evanescing light orange-pink and steam wreathing her foremast from Iskierka’s spikes, spilling up the belled sails and trailing away; shouts, calls, the bell rung at the quarter-hour came distantly. The ship was moving towards night, away, and the curve of the land gradually concealed the hull so that one saw only the sails gliding; a little longer, and then only the lantern-gleam high up, if Temeraire sat upon his haunches and stretched his neck. Then even that faded to just the gleam of the stars coming out, and between one blink and another, Temeraire lost the track, and she was gone. The Allegiance was gone: the first he had ever sat upon the shore and watched her leave.

The harbor looked strangely empty and smaller with her out of it, as though one could not quite imagine that any ship so large had been in that place, and all the other ships which had looked so small beside her now seemed ordinary in size and respectable. “There is no reason she should not come back someday,” Temeraire said to Laurence, “of course; after all, a ship may go anywhere it likes, and she was sent here once. They might like to send some other dragons. And oh! it would be so very tedious to be sailing another eight months, as Iskierka is likely to do—if she is not sent to Brazil, that is,” he finished rather despondently. He was sure Iskierka would be sent to Brazil, it would be just the sort of thing which happened to Iskierka; it did not seem very fair that anyone so careless should have acquired heaps of treasure, and all the ship’s stores of cattle to herself, and also have a great deal more fighting, and everything pleasant.

But he was determined not to be dismal: he would not be a weight upon Laurence, who had also been left behind to manage with Rankin, and this new governor; Temeraire had been forced sadly to reconsider his feelings towards Macquarie. Laurence certainly thought better of him than of Bligh, and Temeraire would not quarrel on that point, but it seemed Macquarie was rather given to consulting Rankin, and not Laurence, and Laurence had not been invited to several of the conferences to further discuss the plan of attack.

Instead Rankin would return to the covert after these were held, and present the plan to the aviators in a very officious manner; and if Laurence had a point to make, or some question, Rankin would address him very pointedly as Mr. Laurence, and the others as Lieutenant, such as Lieutenant Blincoln; he only ever addressed the midwingmen so, as Mr. Peabody, or Mr. Dawes, so it was all the ever more sharp.

“That scarcely concerns me,” Laurence said, when Temeraire had expressed his very great irritation. “He might as easily refuse to share with me any intelligence from the conferences at all, and try and put another man aboard with us to govern the course of events during the battle; he would be within his rights.”

“As though I should allow any such thing,” Temeraire said, “and I am sure he knows it; he might fight the battle without me, then, and I expect without Kulingile, too.”

Kulingile cracked open an eye at his name and asked drowsily, “Is it time to eat again yet?”

“No, but I imagine you have not long to wait; I passed a butchering on my way,” Tharkay said, coming up the hill.

He shook Laurence’s hand; to Temeraire’s dismay, he had come to also take his leave. “The master of the Miniver informs me he means to make port at Bombay,” Tharkay said, “and I know the road from there to Istanbul.” He smiled a little, twistedly. “Much of my intelligence may be a little old by the time I have got there, but I have promised to deliver it.”

Temeraire did not see why Tharkay should have to go so far, only to deliver news; and particularly when he did not seem as though he wished to go, very much. “But if you must, you might come back,” Temeraire said, “and if you see Bezaid and Sherazde, pray tell them that their egg hatched quite safely; I have often thought that I ought to send them word. It is not their fault, of course, that Iskierka is so very irritating.”

“I think we must expect to regret you a longer time,” Laurence said. “—there can be very little to call you back to this part of the world anytime soon.”

Tharkay paused, then said, “We spoke some time ago of endeavors which might call you away from it, however. I would have opportunity to make inquiries, if you have decided.”

Laurence did not answer immediately; then he said, “No; thank you, Tenzing. I cannot see my way to it. I am very grateful—”

Tharkay waved this away. “Then I will hope some other occupation finds you; you do not seem likely to me to lie idle.” He drew out a handsomely embossed card from a case in his pocket. “My direction is likely to be, as always, uncertain; but you may write me care of my lawyers: if they cannot find me, they will hold the letters until I have called for them.” He gave Laurence the card; they clasped hands once more and agreed on dinner, the following day, before Tharkay went down the slope away.

“I certainly hope that he is right,” Temeraire said, with a little sigh; privateering did seem to him a splendid occupation, and it was a great pity Laurence felt it was not quite the thing. It did not seem to him that anything of interest should ever happen here, nor fair that everyone but himself and Laurence should go.