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Chapter Text

“There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer,
acquire peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them.

A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat.
Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men.
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”

― Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (1838)

Ferris shouts “No!” when the shot connects, when Forthing’s head snaps back in a spray of blood and the man goes falling back in his straps to slump with a sickening thud against the harness. No one hears him, not even Temeraire—the cry catches instead in the cold wind and is dragged away to nothing, just one more awful sound of horror among far too many others in the midst of the din of battle. Ferris turns back to the oncoming boarders, heart pounding, ears aching with the combined pressure of their ascent and the fierce cold, looking to where Dyhern is about to be overset. The rest of his face is numb. He does not look back as he jumps out of his straps and onto the attacking Frenchman. He is quite sure Forthing is dead, until the fight is over; when they finally land, he at last dares to look, with his heart in his throat—and there is no body after all.

“You are staring,” Forthing says without looking around, as he sets the captured enemies’ weapons into a rough pile. He sounds muffled, strange, but that is hardly surprising, under the circumstances.

“You have a hole in your face, Lieutenant,” Ferris says, flatly. For once he is glad of the icy cold air; no one could notice him flushing red for any other reason in this godforsaken weather.

The big man turns at last, his bearded cheek a ruin of flesh where the bullet went in, his coat black-red with blood from shoulder to sleeve on that side. At least the ragged garment had been in better shape to burn than to be worn in the first place, Ferris thinks, and then thinks poorly of himself for thinking it.

“Noticed that, did you?” Forthing says, a tightness in his voice that cannot quite be accounted for by the gaping wound in his cheek. He has to be in agony, but he would likely rather fall down dead than admit it, and indeed may soon do so. “Lucky me. God forbid you take so much as a scratch…” Forthing takes a step forward, trying to step around Ferris, and sways alarmingly. Ferris grabs him and slings the cleaner arm over his shoulders for support. The weight is not as much as he might have expected, but then none of them have eaten especially well, lately.

“Let me get you to a surgeon,” Ferris says, low.

“Bah, Russian doctors.” Forthing spits onto the ground, leaving a bright red splatter across the snow. “Blow that—get off me.” He struggles a little, but not very well, and Ferris half coaxes, half carries him across the camp to the medical tent. He wonders vaguely if anyone will think anything of it, but of course he would do the same for any of the crew, no matter their established mutual distaste, or even any other soldier; it does not signify.

At least, so he tells himself.

They give Forthing a glass of vodka that smells like it could lift the blood out of his coat. Ferris thinks they might have to hold him and pour it into him, but instead Forthing takes the glass and downs it, barely even groaning at the pain it must surely cause him as the alcohol burns the raw open wound; it hurts Ferris just to watch. Shards of broken teeth are floating in the glass when it comes away.

Shock, the doctor tells him, or at least that is what Ferris thinks he says, and waves Ferris away while the patient promptly falls unconscious on a dirty pallet next to a man missing half a leg. Ferris pauses only long enough to bring up his stomach into a puddle of slush, then goes back to Temeraire. He takes up the duties that would ordinarily have been Forthing’s, and Captain Laurence does not protest, nor seem to even notice that Forthing is missing until the man slumps back into camp the next day, still in his bloodstained coat, with half his face swathed in grubby bandages.

“I would like to offer you first lieutenant on Iskierka,” Admiral Granby tells him, over a pile of paperwork that looks likely to swamp his desk any day now.

“Thank you, sir,” Ferris says, but it is only rote politeness; he draws himself up to deliver the words that are far more difficult to say aloud. His aching ribs protest.

Granby shakes his head before he can manage it. “You won’t take it, then? It is not a favour, you realise; I do need someone, and I would rather it be someone I have the measure of. We could use you. No one will object.”

No one will object. Perhaps not to the specific appointment, Ferris thinks, although even that seems unlikely; certainly people will object to his official reinstatement, loudly and violently, and it will not go away, ever, pardon or no pardon. If he had thought that briefly taking command of a Prussian middleweight crew for a few weeks would make the Aerial Corps feel kindlier towards him, those hopes had been decidedly dashed in the days since their return to England. He is currently sporting a few cracked ribs to that effect, not to mention the beginnings of a black eye that would have made him giddy with pride as a boy of twelve, but now is merely humiliating, and the persistent throbbing pain is hardly much incentive to fight his way back into the ranks of the same men who would have blacked the other one, if they’d had time.

Granby sees the bruise, of course. He can hardly fail to see it, but Ferris knows he has to offer what he can, regardless. “I know Admiral Laurence asked you to make it right with me,” he says, lifting his chin. Painful and inexpressibly awkward as it is to say, he would rather have it out in the open. He is quite done with talking around the issue, at least with people who know the whole and have no reason to be circumspect, and especially not with this man in particular, who knows more than anyone what it means to refuse the offer. “I think I should rather make it right for myself, if it’s all the same.”

He bites back the word ‘sir’, this time; if he is no longer a serving officer, nor whatever he has been since, in an unofficial but nonetheless subservient role, he ought no longer to speak as though he were.

Granby sighs, but does not object. He is wearing a spotless coat, clearly new, with embroidered sleeves and so heavy with gold buttons that it might only barely be considered military issue. The hook he wears in place of his missing hand is made of good, no doubt expensive steel and bound to his arm with leather. Opposite him, in plain black, Ferris feels decidedly drab. He knows Granby would likely prefer to exchange their dress, with the exception no doubt of the sigils of rank upon his shoulders; that thought does little to ease his own discomfort. It matters not a lick that his father was a Lord and Granby’s was a coal-merchant; there is little to no regard for hierarchy of birth in the Corps, and Iskierka is far more authoritative than anything so insubstantial as a title, anyway. “I understand,” Granby says. “Well, I am sorry to lose you. Will you go home, then?”

No, he will not go home. It had been bad enough in the months between being struck the service and making the decision to flee for New South Wales; even his mother had barely looked at him, and he does not like to imagine her reaction on finding out that he had had the chance to undo some of it, and refused. “I will find something,” he says instead. “Dragons all over the country need human staff, now, instead of the other way around.”

“True enough.” Granby stands and offers his good hand. Ferris takes it. The resulting squeeze almost makes him recant everything, makes him think how easy it would be to say no, no I didn’t mean it, but he swallows it all. He picks his hat up off the seat instead and turns to leave. Then, he hesitates.

“You should consider Forthing,” he says, looking back.

“Forthing?” Granby frowns.

“He is a good officer, and a brave one,” Ferris goes on, with some effort. “And an excellent shot. He… would be a credit to you.”

Granby still looks uncertain, if not puzzled. “Well, I could ask him, although for all I know he has another post by now. Besides, I thought the two of you hated each other?”

“And I thought you paid more attention than that, Admiral,” Ferris says, hotly, and regrets it immediately when Granby’s eyebrows dart up into his hair.

“Bloody hell, Henry,” he breathes aloud, glancing briefly towards the door. They stare at each other for some time, while heat rises in Ferris’ face, making the black eye ache even more as the blood flow around it increases.

“Forthing is reliable,” Ferris tells him at last, when he has caught his breath: “You might need a little reliability, sometimes, with all due respect to Iskierka. And more vitally, he has never committed treason.”

Granby looks at him, and says, without hesitation, “Neither have you.”

The intense feeling drains almost instantly out of his chest, leaving him hollow. Ferris swallows and looks away. He wishes a bunyip tunnel would open up directly beneath him, gaping red maw and all.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Granby says eventually, with resignation. “At worst he would make a decent second, I suppose. But Ferris? That is a favour. In return, promise me you will not fall entirely off the face of the earth.”

“You are trying to get me killed,” Forthing says, two days later, when he walks right into Ferris’ hotel room without so much as knocking. He leaves the door wide open behind him. “Second Lieutenant on that fire-breathing monster? A man is as likely to have his gunpowder soaked through on the regular as he is to have his hair scorched all the way off; thank you very much.”

It has been more than six weeks since they last saw one another at the landing site in Dover, but it seems as though they are to pretend it was only yesterday. Ferris is only half-dressed for riding; his shirt barely tucked into his leather breeches. He has picked up some new clothes; everything he brought with him from Prussia is practically in tatters. At least he is currently in funds, after Laurence has sent him backpay out of his personal accounts and he has received a cheque from the Prussians for his short commission, but since he has no certain prospect of being paid again, soon, he is being more careful than usual while putting the things away; they might have to last him a long time.

“You said no?” He hesitates over his bag without looking up, wondering if he ought not be furious at the intrusion; he wonders if he had somehow half expected it. “It might not be first officer, but on a flag dragon—”

“You said no first,” Forthing points out. “Don’t think I don’t know it, and he offered you first officer. Are you an utter simpleton?”

Ferris turns to glare at him and Forthing’s expression changes; Ferris realises too late his mistake and turns away again. Forthing takes a step towards him, reaches out to grip Ferris’ chin firmly between his finger and thumb and turns Ferris’ face to the side for a better look at his eye. The purple mark is beginning to spread over the crease of Ferris’ freckled nose like a wine stain on a milk-coloured tablecloth.

“Do I need to murder someone?” Forthing asks, without much change in his tone or expression. “I could do it quietly.”

“That’s not funny,” Ferris mutters, his cheeks burning again, and tugs his face away.

Forthing hesitates only a moment before going back to pull the door back onto the latch. “I know you ain’t no coward,” he says, more coolly, as though starting the conversation afresh might get him a different answer. “And I thought the Corps were what you wanted.”

“I won’t take a position offered out of pity,” Ferris says, irritation rising. He has always been relatively even-tempered, but there is something about this man that makes it difficult to think sensibly, or even clearly. They have spent the majority of their acquaintance either ignoring or bickering with each other, and some habits are difficult to break. “Call me a fool, will you,” he goes on, gathering himself. “And what about you, prime idiot?”

Forthing’s thick eyebrows crease over his eyes. “Watch your tongue,” he growls.

Ferris ignores him. There are few people left in the world with whom he can speak so plainly; he does not intend to be deterred, since Forthing is apparently intent on foolishness himself. “I used whatever influence I had left to see you well-situated,” he says, despairingly; will the man not at least try to do something to his own advantage, for once—

“I don’t need your damned influence!” Forthing shouts over his thoughts, driving them away and leaving very little in their wake but consternation.

In the ensuing silence, Ferris looks at Forthing properly, for the first time since he has come into the room. Having come from his meeting with the Admiral, he is better dressed and better groomed than usual; his shirt is clean and new, his coat might be second hand but it is spotless, and there are lieutenant’s bars shining still on his shoulders. Even his shoes and stockings are only a little spattered, no doubt from the walk between the covert and the town; Forthing wouldn’t think to take a carriage, of course. Even Temeraire could not really complain of him at the moment, but there is little the man can do about the mess of scar tissue that cuts through his beard and across his cheek, tugging the corner of his mouth down into a semi-permanent sneer. Not that he is trying to smile now. Instead, his eyes glint darkly with anger. It makes him look older than he really is. It makes him look dangerous.

It makes Ferris want to fall to his knees.

“I apologise,” Ferris says, at last, when the tension feels rife to choke him at any second if he does not say something. “You are right, of course; my interference is the last thing anyone would like.” His throat catches; he tries to swallow and comes up against a lump, there; will God not allow him to get through one conversation without sounding as though he has lost his wits entirely?

“Henry,” Forthing says, more calmly, although furious blotches still stand visible on his skin under the line of his beard. “Where are you going?”

Ferris looks at the half-packed bag, as the pile of plain but well-made civilian clothes. He has not worn a British uniform in five years, but it still seems wrong not to have it, somehow. “I don’t know,” he says, at last, and it comes out small and quiet from his lips.

“Will you banish yourself?” Forthing steps toward him, the floorboards creaking under his feet. “They won’t thank you.”

“They won’t thank me for staying, either,” Ferris points out, clearing his throat. “They don’t want me. Not the Corps, not my family. Temeraire don’t need me anymore, if he ever did. The world is changing, anyway; there will soon be dragons everywhere from the quarries to the damn House of Commons, so there will be work to go with them; I will not throw myself on the mercy of the Corps as though they had not tried to hang me for a scapegoat—”

Forthing’s hand closes around his elbow, and he realises he is looking at his luggage through blurred eyes. “Don’t—” he says, trying to shake away, but the attempt does nothing but make Forthing grip him even harder. Ferris’ heart starts racing again. How long since they were in a room, alone, together? Months—not since the pell-mell journey aboard Eroica from the Russian battlefields to the new ones where they had met Temeraire again in Prussia.

“Look at me,” Forthing says, in a tone that makes it sound like an order. Ferris looks, before he can remind himself that he does not have to follow orders from him or anyone, too late; Forthing drags him in with both hands, and he forgets what he was thinking entirely.

Not again, he had told himself before now; it was one thing on a ship, or a tent so far into the Chinese interior that they might as well be on the moon, or a Russian wasteland—there is something far too real about this little room on the second floor on the outskirts of Edinburgh, with the window cracked open enough that he can hear children playing and the proprietors of market stalls calling out from a nearby street. Not again.

But God, if it were his last day on earth he would want nothing else.

Forthing kisses him as though it is a challenge. It is a challenge, it always is, no matter who initiates it. I dare you, it says, in a voice like the proverbial devil. Ferris wishes he were not so aware of himself: the taste of the salt of his own tears, the pounding of his heart against his poor aching ribs, the way his body reacts with a truly unreasonable kind of enthusiasm to Forthing’s mouth, Forthing’s hands…

One of those hands squeezes Ferris’ side; Ferris lets out an ugly, pained sound that has nothing to do with the kiss. “No,” he protests, when Forthing pulls back, “don’t stop—”

Forthing promptly pulls his shirt loose and up above his ribcage before Ferris can stop him. “Buggering hell,” he says, hotly. “What the—who did this?”

Ferris shakes his head, breathlessly; he doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t want to talk about anything, but Forthing holds him away when he tries to move back in. “It was dark,” he says, reluctantly. “It was back in Dover, they came at me in the street, after dinner—”

“More than one? Fucking cowards.” There is no pity in his voice, at least; Ferris is glad. Forthing hates pity; for himself, or for others; neither is he impulsive enough to really do anything, but Ferris is still not going to say the names of those he thinks he might have recognised, just in case, because Forthing is the sort to hold a grudge until a really good opportunity presents itself.

“It don’t hurt,” Ferris says.

“Liar,” Forthing growls.

Ferris thinks of a dozen things he could say in response to that, and discards them all. Instead he takes a breath, and lets it all out at once with the intensity of a fire-breather as he takes on his most cultivated tone, the sort that is usually enough to tip Forthing over the edge of pique: “Lieutenant, if you have come here only to argue with me, I would prefer not, and if you want to avail yourself of me instead, you would oblige me greatly by leaving off your mollycoddling and finishing what you have started.”

Forthing’s mouth twitches; combined irritation and arousal. “You only had to ask,” he says. He starts shrugging off his coat, roughly; Ferris winces.

“Wait. Turn around.”

Forthing does, slow and suspicious, but Ferris only takes the coat by the shoulders and draws it off with considerably more reverence than he knows the man himself would have shown. He takes the time to hang it next to his own things in the armoire.

“Ferris, what the fuck are you doing?”

“It’s a nice coat,” Ferris says. “It don’t deserve to be thrown on the floor.”

Forthing rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, your Lordship.”

Ferris’ cheeks burn. “Don’t call me that.”

Forthing’s smile is lopsided. “Try and stop me.”

Later, Forthing lies with his head on Ferris’ chest, his fingers splayed out and his calloused thumb rubbing back and forth over Ferris’ hip bone, just below the place where the skin is mottled purple and black, fading in places to blue and green as though he were growing particularly sensitive dragon scales. Forthing is always softer, after, easier to talk to; not that there has ever been much time or inclination for conversation, in the past. But they have some time now. At least Ferris does; he has all the time in the world.

“Have you heard from any of the other fellows?” Ferris asks. It is an easy presumption; if he were first lieutenant on a retiring dragon, he would have made sure the rest of the crew were well taken care of before seeking his own interviews, and he is quite sure Forthing would have followed up.

“Cavendish was reassigned at Dover,” Forthing tells him, his beard brushing against Ferris’ chest as his lips move. His speech is still a little distorted, and likely will be, the rest of his life. “Granby took Allen. They asked Baggy if he’d like to go back to the navy; he’s a sensible lad, so he said no thank you kindly, and I expect they will send him to Loch Laggan for flag training: he might make midwingman in a year or two. Gerry will go with him—he can climb as well as any of those sprogs, but I told him it takes more than a handful of near-death experiences aloft or on the ground to make a real officer. Roland will go to Excidium, I dare say; I don’t think she’d thank me for interfering there.”

Ferris snorts agreement. “The ground crew?”

Forthing grimaces with distaste. “Some of ‘em already clean vanished—the ones who might’ve seen the wrong end of a noose over the Allegiance. Likely we’ll never hear of ‘em again. The old convicts are waiting on their pardon papers; might be months before the courts get through ‘em all. But they might be taken on properly in the meantime; they have our letters of recommendation— mine and Laurence’s, for whatever either of us are worth to the magistrates.”

Ferris takes a careful breath; he does not actually care that much about O’Dea and the other former convicts, but it is the gentlest way he can think to come at the question he really wants the answer to. “And you?” he asks. Forthing’s thumb goes still. “What are you going to do?”

“Asking me now, are you?” Forthing turns his head a little to look up at him. “You have no other plans to interfere on my account?”

Ferris meets his eyes. “I did apologise, didn’t I?” he says.

“Under the man who once called me a competent clod behind my back, no less; and you would have liked me to thank you nicely after, I expect—”

“All right, all right,” Ferris mutters. He does not know if that rumour concerning Granby is actually true, and he doesn’t like to think it of a man he still considers a friend, but he had forgotten about it; he ought to have taken it into consideration. “Consider me suitably chastened,” he goes on. “What is it you won’t tell me?”

Forthing is quiet, then, which is all Ferris really needs to understand, at last.

“Oh,” he says, breathless with realisation. “I see.” And then, because he does not mean to be churlish, “Congratulations.”

“It is a lightweight,” Forthing says, after a moment. “A cross; one of the ones the French gave us in the concord. I have been at Loch Laggan this last month, doing little more than talking non-stop to the egg. I shall be right in the soup if the thing hatches with no English.”

“Unless it also speaks Chinese.” Ferris dares to joke, wondering if the hot, squirming sensation in his stomach is some new unknown kind of jealousy. He wants to be genuinely pleased, and perhaps some part of him is, but there is also another part, much deeper down, that complains that it is all wrong. “Or Russian.”

Forthing snorts. “Then I could either ask it for rice or vodka, and little else; a very fine pair we would make.”

“But…” Ferris hesitates, not really wanting to reignite the argument, only he does not understand. It does make some sense of Forthing getting to Edinburgh so soon, having not come nearly so far as Ferris had imagined, but it does not explain why he is there at all. “Why go to see Granby, if you were already assigned? Your handwriting is not so atrocious that it might be worth leaving the egg only to avoid writing a simple letter—”

Forthing rolls over onto him, jostling Ferris’ bruised ribs and making him grunt in pain; Forthing does not apologise, but then, Ferris probably deserves it, both for the unlooked-for insult and for what the nasty creature inside him is thinking. It ought to be the other way around.

“Why do you think, you simpleton?” Forthing demands, his face only inches away. “I came to ask for you. And you can imagine how foolish I looked, then, when I had to be told that you had only two days ago quit the service, and offered me up in your place like some kind of sacrificial lamb—”

“I quit nothing,” Ferris reminds him, if only to hold back the warring emotions that are threatening to overcome him. “I had no official position and have not for five years, there was nothing to quit—but I beg your pardon, you asked—?”

“For you, yes, and kindly don’t make me say it again. For what it’s worth, I know you have taken it on yourself not to be interested, but Granby said you could still be restored, with seniority, but I would have to convince you myself, if you had not already left the city, or the country entirely—Lord, if I’d have known it would be such a bother I would not have come at all.”

“You want me on your crew?” Ferris squints at him, more confused than ever.

Forthing’s forehead drops onto Ferris’ chest, dramatically, he makes a low, frustrated noise that sounds like a cow in heat.

“What?”

“Never mind. Aye, my crew. They offered twelve men to start, including ground crew. It won’t be anything like it ever was on Temeraire. A handful of riflemen, a signal ensign and some harnessmen; you would be the only other senior officer.”

“But why me?” Ferris cannot help himself. “You don’t even like me.”

Forthing opens his mouth, but seems to decide against whatever he had been about to say, letting his breath out in a short, scoffing noise instead. “Well, I ain’t exactly spoiled for choice,” he says then, “given how many hundred eggs Boney had to give us up; but that’s by the by.”

Ferris covers his eyes with one hand. He has already made his mind up to leave; to go where, he may not know, but he has vague, daydream-like ideas of travelling the world, making good on his extensive experience to become a solitary agent rather like Tharkay, or perhaps go into business in the Americas, where the market will be better than it is in Europe for years, if not decades. They might not be very sensible ideas, but it is one thing to hold such thoughts lightly in the face of all his own pessimism, and another to have them interrupted by another, much less sensible one.

“Sodding hell, Ned,” he breathes, and lets his hand fall away. He still does not see why Forthing would go to the trouble, unless…

“It is not…” he does not know how to put it without being outrageously vulgar. It is the way between them to bicker, taunt, and even to come to physical blows on occasion, but there must be some limits. “I hope you aren’t suggesting that you want me because…” he gestures vaguely between them. “Well…”

Forthing grunts. “Ferris, kindly do not insult me; even if I am so ugly now as to deter any other legitimate offers, I will have a Captain’s salary, not to mention the two years backpay they owe me; I can afford the better kind of brothel, if I get so desperate.”

Ferris winces, but at least he has not yet been slapped in the face. “Then what is it?” he demands.

Forthing rolls onto his back. It is a while before he answers. “It will be different now,” he says, apparently with some difficulty; Ferris is glad they are lying side by side and no longer need to try and avoid eye contact. “Now that there are dragons in parliament, and in construction, in communications, and practically in the streets of London already, there ain’t no excuse for aviators to hide away, anymore. Especially not in peace time, and God knows how long that’s going to last.”

“Anyone would think you wanted another war,” Ferris mutters.

“I might not refuse one, given the choice,” Forthing replies ruefully. “The point is, after I am made captain, there will be invitations… formal dinners, and banquets, balls, and so on. And I… I have no experience with such things.”

Ferris thinks he understands. It is not a much better prospect than his first guess, after all.

“It sounds to me like you want a butler, or a dancing master, not an officer,” he says, coolly.

“I have no room for a dancing master, or I might hire one, if it would not make me look a total lunatic,” Forthing mutters. “Will you make me say it? I need someone who knows… someone to show me how things are done, in society.”

“Someone to pick your coat up off the floor, you mean?”

Forthing huffs frustration. “Do shut up, Henry. What I damn well mean is that I need a man who can give me advice on more than just aerial strategy. And not only that—” he hesitates, and Ferris senses that they are reaching the heart of the matter, at last— “I intend to bring my own boy on as a runner, since he’ll inherit the dragon, eventually. There are only so many things I can teach him about life beyond the Corps; I’ve barely been outside of a covert, in England, since I was younger than he is now. I would much rather not shame him, or myself, out of ignorance—not to mention the dragonet, who I imagine would prefer a captain of manners, coming from France. If you don’t like it you may tell me to go to the devil, but if you say the Corps don’t need you, I do need you, and I am certainly not asking out of pity. You know me better than that, I think.”

“I do.” Ferris sighs. Two offers in as many days. He ought to be on his knees in thankful supplication for the Lord’s mercy. Certainly it is where his mother would expect him to be. She would expect him to take it, just as she would have expected him to take the other, but she would never understand why it would be mad to do either thing.

If he does this, for one, there will be no chance for promotion, as there might have been once. Even if he manages to avoid a second court-martial, he will stay in the same position until he dies, unless he lives long enough to retire. He doubts there will be any more grand adventures for some time, if at all, not that he is in any particular hurry to be in mortal danger again any time soon; somehow that prospect is a lot less exciting now at twenty and seven than it had been when he was first made lieutenant, at sixteen. Back then, people had talked about him like a prodigy. Back then, half the Corps had not despised him.

And then there is Forthing, who might not actually despise him, although sometimes it is hard to tell. There have been moments over the course of their acquaintance, so fleeting that Ferris sometimes wonders if he did not dream them, where the man could almost have been called affectionate, and occasionally even draconically possessive, since they started finding whatever comfort or relief could be found in each other’s arms on a continent half a world away and now years ago. But they still fight more often than anything else. Ferris resents Forthing for taking that place that was rightfully his, and Forthing resents him for existing, or so it has always seemed. Not least for the accident of his birth, for which advantages Forthing now seems determined to make his own by association. The very thought of it is ridiculous, not to mention infuriating. And Ferris has already decided to leave, anyway, so he will refuse. He must refuse.

“Well?” When Ferris dares look, Forthing is watching him expectantly, his broad, bare shoulders tensed.

“I have two things to say,” Ferris begins, and takes a sharp breath. “One, do not ever let me hear you describe yourself as ugly again, particularly not in company; that manner of humility does not become you at all, and is not good manners besides. And two, as a captain, you absolutely cannot take yourself off to a house of whoredom, no matter how good a reputation it has, or your degree of desperation, you unlettered savage.”

Forthing’s brow furrows briefly, then at last he laughs, rumbling, rich like mulled wine. “I take it that means you accept my offer,” he says, putting a heavy hand on Ferris’ chest and sending a fresh wave of heat down to his inner thighs.

“Aye, Captain,” Ferris says, and runs his thumb over Forthing’s mouth. “Now must we leave right away, or might we have an hour?”

Chapter Text

Try to let it slide, but you're testing all my limits
Real nice guy, don't mistake it for a weakness
You talking recklessly, having your fun
The thing about the quiet ones / You'll feel the consequences when they come

― Dark Winter, Kevin Olusola (2025)

“Where is my captain?” Guinevere demands, just as Ferris comes skidding over the ice so unsteadily that he almost trips into the pavilion; there are so many dragons piled inside that the thing is giving off heat for several feet around and making the ground exceedingly slippery and dangerous to walk upon.

“He will be back soon, Vivi,” answers a high, clear voice. A small figure in a heavy coat and thick gloves, a shock of red hair sticking out from under a thick winter hat, is tucked up against her side. “Don’t worry.”

“I am not worried,” the dragon says, and then straightaway calls out: “Is that you, Henry? Have you seen Edward, was he not with you? He has usually come to say goodnight, by now.”

“He has gone to see the Admiralty, remember?” Ferris says, slightly out of breath as he steps with relief onto the first wooden step. “With the other captains; they are going to see what can be done about this godforsaken weather.”

“You cannot change the weather, just like that,” Guinevere says, and then cocks her head to one side. “Can you?”

“No, but the government could hurry up the funding for more pavilions, and some cows that aren’t skin and bone,” Ferris mutters in a low voice, aware that there are people and dragons around who may well be listening. “He asked me to make sure you were comfortable, if he was late returning; are you warm enough? I could beg some more hot broth off the kitchens.”

“I would not mind some broth,” sighs the blue-grey heavyweight upon whose hind leg Guinevere is partially lying; they are all piled either nose to tail or on top of one another, for as much warmth and shelter as the relatively small space might provide. Caeruleus is twice Guinevere’s size, although not as heavy as he by rights ought to be, and Ferris can see the poor thing’s spine through the scales of his hindquarters. “The pavilion does not help very much, when the cold is so bad. I would not mind a whole cow, neither.”

The redheaded boy gets up and brushes snow off his knees as he comes to speak quietly to Ferris. “Maybe you better not, sir,” he says, sensibly. “They will all want some, and then there will be a riot.”

Ferris knows he is right, but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch the dragons suffer. The winter has thus far been abominable, made worse by the poor harvest and disease among the country’s livestock that has made the dragon population of Britain—larger than it has ever been—almost impossible to feed, and certainly impossible to feed well, and it is not much better across wider Europe. The general atmosphere of helplessness is nearing the point where it had been during the dragon plague, and Ferris feels it constantly; he cannot imagine what it must be like for their captains. He knows only a little what it is like for Captain Forthing, who has not slept properly in weeks.

“If it continues like this, half the Corps will desert and flee to Spain,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I hear Spain is nice,” says the boy, lightly.

Ferris looks at him. The young ensign, whose given name is Peter but goes among his fellow officers as Fox, cannot help but remind Ferris of the boy’s father. They do not look much alike—fortunately, Forthing always says—but there is something about the dancing eyes, and the glib manner of speech, that cannot possibly have been learned or affected. His hair is flaming red, his nose long and pointed, and all his clothes are an inch and a half too small, now that he outgrows anything new almost as soon as it is given to him. “Go to bed, Forthing,” Ferris says.

“I don’t mind staying with her.”

“I know you don’t, but she’s a big girl, and you are a growing boy who has been sitting out here in the cold all afternoon; eat something, and then go to bed, if you please.”

Recognising his tone as the order it is, Fox nods his head, and goes scurrying away across the ice towards the officer’s mess.

“And don’t—fall—” Ferris calls after him, rolling his eyes towards the sky. That’s the last thing he needs, for the boy to break an arm or a leg on his watch. The older Forthing will skin him.

He goes up to Guinevere’s side and takes off his glove to run a careful, practiced hand over her scales. At least she is dry and not up to her haunches in frozen mud, he thinks, which is where she would have been only a few years before and where a lot of dragons are now, all over the country. The cold is bone-chilling, but it is not nearly so bad here in the London covert as it is in the north; back home, in Edinburgh, they are scraping ice off the poor beasts’ wings in the mornings. “I will find you something hot, tomorrow,” he promises.

Guinevere’s yellow eyes fix on him. She can see him perfectly well, he knows, despite the only light being the dim crescent moon overhead, and that covered with thick winter clouds. It is harder for him to make out any of her details in turn, although sometimes he feels as though he knows her every scale better than his own skin.

At her full growth, although a little gangly still with youth and thinner than she ought to be, she has the silhouette of a Chasseur-Vocifere, perhaps a little larger, but with entirely different colouring: her wings are violet, spotted along the edge with burnt orange, her head and chest tinged cobalt blue against the dark indigo of her legs and underbelly. The breeding records the Corps had received from the French to accompany the eggs handed over in accordance with the peace treaty were somewhat scant, and perhaps purposefully muddled, so that no one is really sure of her exact ancestry, but her eyesight is uncommonly good in all but the very darkest conditions, so that the experts suspect a Fleur-de-Nuit somewhere down the line. Even better, perhaps, she does not have the same difficulty which those beasts have, to do with limited vision during the day—not that there has been much sun over the last two years to test her against.

She has never put on the length that was initially expected before her hatching, so her crew has never expanded beyond the original twelve: beside Forthing and Ferris, they have two bellmen, four topmen, young Fox, lately made signal ensign, two harnessmen, and their new runner and lookout, ten year old Browne; that is all she can reasonably carry. They share a surgeon with two other dragons in the formation, although there has been talk lately of their being reassigned; a dragon who can move at night as easily as a Fleur-de-Nuit, even if considerably smaller, would be wasted on the wing of a formation, according to their commanders. Ferris is inclined to agree, although he knows the type of work they are likely to be put to, and it is not the sort that leads to heroic retellings in the newspapers.

“Tell Edward he is not to spend any more money on me,” Guinevere says now, watching him intently. “If I am very hungry I will use my personal funds to buy some proper food, and not his.”

“I will make the argument, but I would not hold out much hope he listens to me,” Ferris says, patting her side fondly. She is not his own dragon, of course, but she is likely to be the closest thing he will ever have. He was present at her hatching, and at every stage of her training, and he has had a hand in training all her men. It is a closer relationship than he ever had even with Temeraire, or at any of his former postings, and although he is glad for it in general, it makes the current privations all the harder to bear. Since the Dragon Rights Act, all dragons in the Corps are entitled to their board and a wage above it, but since there is so little food to go around, the captains and their dragons are already digging into their wages to provide porridge, let alone good meat, which lately is simply not to be had for any money. Ferris has offered whatever he can spare, and been refused, although he has made it his business to do the negotiations whenever possible; he can always tell Forthing he spent less than he really has, and cover the shortfall himself.

“Are you sure he ought not be back by now?” Guinevere asks, her bright eyes shining in the dark as she looks out into the trees at the edge of the clearing, as though hoping her captain might just appear out of them at any minute. “Ferris, will you go and look for him? I know he is quite capable, but it is so very late, and the Times keeps on about such terrible crime in London: what if he should have been robbed?”

Ferris reflects that he ought to tell Midwingman Shepherd to stop reading the worst extracts from the damn newspaper aloud where Vivi can hear, although she is not wrong. The famine is not limited only to the dragons, and poorer men with far fewer resources than the aviators are having an even harder time feeding their children, so it can be more than a man’s life is worth to go out after dark in the city, these days. But Forthing had gone out in a group of other armed men, and Ferris thinks any such outcome highly unlikely; still, it is late, and the Admiralty offices would have closed hours ago, so perhaps the concern is not entirely ill-founded.

“Very well, I will go,” he promises, wondering privately if draconic anxiety might actually be catching. “I will bring him back safe; do try and get some sleep.”

Enquiries lead him away from the Admiralty offices and into a familiar street; there is a taproom here which he had once frequented, in that bleak, half-forgotten year between the French occupation and his decision to exile himself to New South Wales. It is a little better than the worst kind of public house this area of London has to offer, but neither is it particularly reputable; he had gone there himself to avoid the company of his peers, so it is a little disconcerting to be following Forthing there now. Even more unnerving: if he has been here before at this time of night it has always been noticeably raucous even from the outside, but he cannot help but notice, on his approach, that although the lamps are lit and a steady murmur of voices emanates from within, the atmosphere is distinctly funereal.

He might have been displeased at the indignity of having to track down his errant captain, but when he goes inside to see a dozen men in green coats sitting dejectedly around a table, Forthing among them, it is difficult to be really irritated. It is at least warm in the room, a giant fire roaring at one end. After the miserable harvest, there is no shortage of firewood. He rubs his hands together, glad of at least a short relief from the bitterly cold air outside. “I take it your proposal was not well-recieved,” he says, low, when he has come all the way up to Forthing’s side.

“Ferris, what the devil?” Forthing mutters, grimacing as he looks around. There is an empty tankard by his hand and another only half-full. Forthing looks only slightly more dreadful than he had that afternoon; the anxiety for Guinevere’s health has made him considerably thinner and paler than he had been a year ago.

“Vivi was fretting,” Ferris explains. “But I will not interrupt, if you prefer to stay; I will tell her you will come by in the morning.”

“Lord, is it that late?” Forthing looks around for a clock, but the publican has rather cunningly not placed one within sight.

“After midnight,” Ferris tells him, and Forthing groans into his cup.

“It is my fault, Ferris.” A captain with long dark hair tied back in an unruly French style is sitting opposite Forthing: their formation commander, Captain Barber. “I could not yet face going back to the covert and telling Caeruleus and the others that we managed nothing at all.”

“If anything we may have made it worse.” Captain Young, a woman in her mid forties who has been flying with her Xenica for over two decades, leans dejectedly forward from her seat at the far end of the table. “You would think we had gone in with flaming torches and pitchforks, the way they implied we were only getting in the way of all their efforts. But all they seem to be worried about is keeping the post routes open.”

Another older captain snorts. “Well, they will slow down soon enough, and maybe the delays will pain the government enough that they give us a grant or two.”

“Ruthless penny-pinchers,” Captain Mullin growls. “It is as well to say there have been no deaths—a man can live on gruel alone for a year or two: it don’t follow that he ought to, or will be anything like the same, afterwards.”

“I hope there is a war tomorrow,” someone puts in, over-loud. Ferris looks to see a younger Captain, Tom Slater, barely into his twenties and full of righteous indignation; he is one of the men who came with them from Edinburgh to join the petition. “Then they will see—it will serve them damn right,to have all the dragons too weak to see off a single incursion from the continent.”

Ferris, with the benefit of full sobriety, can sense a shift in the air of the bar behind him; shoulders turning towards them, chairs on the edge of being pushed back.

“Keep it down, Richard,” Young tells Slater in an undertone.

“They are fed better at Dover,” one of the other captains sighs, almost as loudly. “They won’t endanger the beasts guarding the channel, but the further north, the worse it is. A disgrace.”

“Gentlemen, might I suggest you continue this conversation in the officers’ mess?” Ferris suggests, as firmly as he dares. Forthing looks up at him, surprised, and only then does he seem to notice the heavy atmosphere in the room.

“Ferris has the right of it; I think we have stayed too long,” he says, and gets to his feet, his chair scraping audibly on the floor. He stumbles a little; Ferris resists the temptation to take him by the arm. “We have concerned our dragons unnecessarily.”

“I doubt my poor Gratia is concerned," Slater bemoans. “All she does is sleep; she has not the energy for anything else.”

“I’ve heard enough.” A muffled voice from somewhere further behind the bar interrupts; Ferris tenses. “Bloody complaining, on and on about their beasts when they’re the ones eating us out of hearth and home!”

“Ah, don’t start a fight now,” a woman’s voice protests, desperately, but before long a burly man in a ragged hat comes pushing through the crowd. “Want another war, do ‘ye?” he demands. “Oh aye, that’d suit you lot right enough, extra pay! While the rest of us are starving at home, all our worldly goods commissioned for the damn war effort, curse you.”

“Those animals eat more in a day each than a man can eat in a year!” another voice shouts, and a murmur of agreement goes around.

“It does seem as though we might have outstayed our welcome,” Captain Young observes, dryly, and drains the rest of her cup before letting it thunk down onto the table. “Let us be off, fellows.”

Slater is slower off the mark, and too hotheaded; how his Gratia has ever grown to be such a sweet-tempered creature is impossible to guess. “You were not complaining of us when we were driving the French out of the streets,” he argues, half standing from his chair. His speech slurs a little with drink. “A little gratitude would hardly go amiss—”

“Gratitude? When you were the ones who let them in, in the first place? They took over my master’s house, drank all the good wine in the cellar and destroyed the rest, what us poor servants might usually avail ourselves of: oh, thank you very much!”

Mullin is trying in vain to keep Slater’s mouth shut, but the boy is not the only one of the captains whose face is reddening with temper.

“I hope the beasts all starve!” shouts another voice from the crowd. “There might be grain enough to make bread for the rest of us, then!” More voices from all around begin to jeer and call out, increasingly provocative:

“I heard the government’s great plan is to import rice—rice! I think I would rather starve than eat like a Chinaman.”

“Feed it to the dragons instead!”

“Or we could just eat the dragons—plenty of meat there, eh?

“Can you eat ‘em? What do they taste like?”

“Better than the soles of your shoes, which is what we’ll all be eating before long!”

Forthing’s hand goes to his belt; Ferris catches him by the wrist just in time. His own ire is up, but he at least has the sense not to want to go to war with his own countrymen over a quarrel fueled by liquor. Forthing glares at him, but Ferris thinks he is not so far gone as to argue with him at this moment; he settles ever so slightly instead under Ferris’ hand.

The captains get up at last and make to leave, Mullin hissing a warning in Slater’s ear, but the general feeling in the bar is only worsening, and their way out is blocked by a dozen or more angry faces before they can get so far as the door. “Least you can do is buy us a round!” one of them insists, a man with a crooked jaw and flat nose who looks like he’s been in more than a few brawls. “Or how about some porridge for my wife and babes, who ain’t eaten more than a mouthful a day in the last week?”

“Perhaps then your hard-earned coin ought not be spent on drink, sir,” Captain Barber snaps, while trying to push his way through. There is an angry exclamation from the crowd, and they jostle against each other to bar his way, jeering, more coming up from behind to surround them.

Ferris thinks: twelve captains, and me the only one here to keep them all from getting bricks to the face. Wonderful. It is Captain Laurence all over again, only a dozen-fold.

At least his first responsibility is clear; he puts himself squarely in front of Forthing, who grips him by the back of the shoulder.

He does not see who throws the first bottle, but it misses Barber’s head by inches and catches Young in the shoulder before shattering on the edge of a table nearby. A shout goes up, loud and drunken and enraged. Then the shoving begins, all of them crushed together, trying to push their way through with heads bent to keep from catching a stray missile. Ferris puts his hand over the back of Forthing’s head for whatever extra protection it might give, but before they can move very far, something hard and heavy collides with his elbow, sending a wave of sparkling pain all the way up his arm. A gasp catches in his throat, but he does not let go his hold.

“Call yourself Englishmen!” Slater cries from somewhere ahead of them, devoid of all reason or sense of self-preservation. “Gibbering fools, if you had any sense you would—”

One of the others pulls him down, but not before something hits him just behind the ear and draws blood. Forthing swears, startled, and he is suddenly being dragged out of Ferris’ hands; Ferris turns just in time to see him whip around on the man tugging at his coat and knock him down. Another man takes his place and Forthing ducks the first blow. Ferris’ hand goes of its own accord to his sword belt, but there is no room to draw: instead he surges forward into the melée and tackles the man in the stomach with his shoulder blade before he can strike again. The man makes a vomitous noise, bent double, and Ferris stumbles forward only to come up against another patron who aims a punch directly at his face. He dodges it, and deals instead a rather satisfying uppercut to the man’s chin. There are fists coming from everywhere, cups and crockery being thrown about, amidst a roaring drunken din.

Ferris shoves his way back towards Forthing, reaching him only just in time to drag him out of the way of an ogre of a man wielding what looks horrifyingly like a fire poker. “Are you mad, man?” Ferris exclaims. The ogre only glares and aims his next blow at Ferris’ side. Ferris steps inside the swing and turns, grabs the man’s wrist and twists it back on itself, eliciting a pained yowl as the poker lands with a thud on the floor. Thank you, Tharkay, Ferris thinks, as the man twists onto his knees, gasping in pain at the pressure on his wrist. Ferris lets go his hold and hopes they can escape before the huge man realises exactly what has just happened.

“Move,” he says to Forthing, tugging him down so that he can use half his own upper body as a shield over him. Another bottle smashes somewhere overhead, raining down thick shards of glass onto the back of Ferris’ neck.

Together they manage to bull through almost to the exit, but then someone swings a chair onto Ferris’ exposed back. Pain explodes at the base of his spine and all the air is smashed from his lungs as wood splinters cascade around him. His legs buckle, and suddenly Forthing is holding his weight.

“Go,” Ferris cries, trying to shove his captain in the shoulder to urge him on; the others are about to reach the door. He cannot keep his feet—he is falling to one knee on the beerstained floorboards, and in a moment he will be crushed. “Go, get out of here,” he grunts, gasping for breath, the pain already radiating.

But Forthing does not run. The idiot. “Bugger this,” he growls instead, and stands over Ferris, drawing a pistol from his belt. He fires it into the ceiling, setting off a cloud of dust. The din evaporates almost at once, a wave of silence emanating from the stunned crowd. Ferris tries to look up at him but cannot; it is hard enough only to force air in and out of his lungs. “We are leaving now,” Forthing announces, in a voice like thunder. “Anyone with an objection or complaint as to the conduct of myself or my fellow officers tonight may take it to the Admiralty. Now let us pass.”

There is a moment’s tense silence, and then, incredibly, the crowd parts for them. A few protests go up, but they are hushed or shouted down by their fellows. Ferris can still not catch a breath, cannot get up off his knees, but then Forthing grabs his arm and hauls him almost bodily through the door. The ice cold air hits Ferris’ lungs like a cannonball, and suddenly he can breathe again. Forthing helps him stumble away from the place and into the main street; after a quick look over their shoulders, both Captain Young and Captain Barber hurry back to help.

“You look very pale,” Young says to Ferris, when they have moved as a group far enough away that it might be safe to stop and reassess the situation, and turns to Forthing. “Do you think he needs a surgeon?” she asks him

“No,” Ferris tries, although it comes out as a bit of a wheeze, and Forthing is still taking too much of his weight. “I will be right in a moment.”

“He always looks a little sun-starved,” Forthing says. “Just the shock of the blow, I expect.”

“Slater will need a surgeon,” Mullin calls back. Two of the captains are keeping the young man from falling flat on his face; he has blood seeping from a gash on his head and is moaning faintly. “Someone go and hail a coach.”

“Good luck,” Young mutters. “Middle of the damn night, an’ all, and him covered in blood. But if they find one you should go with them, Ferris.”

Ferris wants to refuse, but he also cannot really bear the thought of walking the several miles it will take to get back to the covert in the bitterly cold darkness when he can barely stand upright.

“What a disastrous business,” Young adds, shaking her head. “If I had any officers I am sure they would have my guts for garters over this, but that is one of the many advantages of flying under one’s own auspices. Well done, Forthing, by the by; I hope it don’t put you in the soup.”

Forthing lets out a grunt which says he does not really care either way.

By some miracle a coach is found; Mullin lifts Slater in, still groaning, and Forthing gives Ferris his arm to help him up. He is vaguely aware of Mullin speaking to the driver, but the pain in his back has most of his attention; it spreads gradually to his shoulders and neck as he sits slumped in the corner opposite Slater, and no amount of shifting positions will ease it.

The coach jolts forward; he does his best to hold himself still, his fingers digging into the edge of his seat. Every bump in the road sends fresh pain up and down his spine. Forthing sits beside him, grimly quiet, while Slater grumbles drunkenly into his own lap, bent double with Mullin holding a sodden handkerchief to the man’s head. There is no conversation, and by the time the carriage begins to slow, Ferris cannot be sure how much time has passed; the pain has settled into a kind of dull throb, and he is starting to dread the idea of getting up at all.

“Henry,” Forthing prompts him, and Ferris swallows a groan of protest. He drags himself to his feet, which mercifully take his weight, and lets Forthing help him down the steps.

“To the surgeon, Tom,” Mullin says to his charge. “And you better hope Gratia is asleep and don’t hear about this until you’re fit to be seen. Ferris?”

“Let him see to Slater,” Ferris says, with some effort, although the comparatively fresh air of the covert is making him feel a little better already. “I will see Mr Tharrow in the morning, if I must.”

He half expects Forthing to argue with him, but he does not, only walks with him back to the barracks. But when Ferris turns to go down the hall to the guest room in the senior officer’s corridor he has been assigned, Forthing catches him by the wrist. Ferris glances up, too quick; a jolt of pain lances down his neck and elicits a pained wince. “My room,” Forthing says, firmly. “Someone has to keep a watch on you, in this state.”

Ferris looks down the corridor; it is too late even for the rowdiest of midwingmen to be wandering the halls. “You should go to Guinevere," he says, low.

“I’ll send Peter to tell her we are back; Vivi will understand. Come along.”

Weariness hangs off Ferris’ aching shoulders like a leaden cloak. Too tired to resist, he allows Forthing to lead him to the captains’ quarter, and into a room a foot or two wider than his own. He has not yet seen the room; they ordinarily do not make a habit of visiting one another outside of their own covert. Any other time he would have been pleased to see that Forthing has hung up his clothes, but as it is he can only stand blearily in the one place, wondering what he is supposed to do now.

Forthing peels off Ferris’ coat and puts it aside just as carefully as his own things, ignoring the shards of brown glass that fall to the floor when he shakes it out. “Lay down,” he says to Ferris, in that same soft but authoritative voice. “I will be back soon.”

Ferris sits on the bed, falls back until his head hits the pillow, and allows himself a groan at last as the door closes behind Forthing. He feels wretched, in a way that makes him want to sleep for a week, and his body is one large ache. Unfortunately it is not much warmer here than it is outside, and before long the chill under his sweat soaked shirt begins to become more of a discomfort than the pain. He sits up just long enough to pull off his boots and crawl under the quilt.

He must have fallen at least partially asleep, because he rouses again at some point to extra blankets being piled atop of him, and then a sudden cold touch under the hem of his shirt, making him flinch. “Sorry,” Forthing whispers, taking back his ice-cold hands and repositioning them somewhere less offensive. “It’s worse than a Siberian winter out there.”

“Hyperbole,” Ferris murmurs back, without opening his eyes. He is vaguely aware in his semi-conscious state that Forthing is acting quite unlike himself, but he does not have the wherewithal to puzzle it out at the moment. Instead he shifts closer, offering his body heat. Forthing seems to hesitate, but the narrow bed after all has not space enough for the two of them to lie separately; he shuffles his position so that his arm is across Ferris’ waist and his head is cushioning Ferris’ chin. His hair is unaccountably soft, Ferris thinks, and it is the thought on which he finally allows himself to sleep. It is a nice one.

Although his head is much clearer in the morning, Ferris groans audibly in his attempts to get out of bed. It is a mistake.

Forthing drags him to see the covert doctor, not to Mr Tharrow the formation surgeon, whom he argues cannot be trusted to treat anyone not covered in scales. Ferris reluctantly strips off his shirt and lies face-down on a treatment table covered in a blanket against the chill. Forthing, who has stayed in the room for some reason, makes an appalled noise when the shirt comes off, which lets Ferris know that his back must look about as good as it feels.

“You were hit with a chair, you say?” Dr Toller asks, in a faintly Germanic accent, his fingers probing into places that make Ferris want to yell; he bites the inside of his cheek to hold the sound in.

“It was a heavy chair,” Forthing mutters from behind him. He sounds annoyed, as though any of this is Ferris’ fault. On the other hand, Forthing holds a poor opinion of most doctors, and will not stay in a sick room a minute longer than he has to; Ferris is about to tell him to leave, if he is so uncomfortable, but then Dr Toller starts prodding even deeper and Ferris is forced to clench his teeth together to keep from biting his own tongue in two.

“Well, there is some very bad bruising, but I imagine you will live—does this hurt?” He pushes something at the base of Ferris’ spine. The noise Ferris makes is not quite a scream, but it might come close. “Possible tailbone fracture,” Toller muses, without sympathy. “Not much to do about that, I’m afraid; it will heal itself in six or eight weeks.”

“Weeks?” Ferris exclaims, with difficulty, and then: “We are due to fly back to Edinburgh today.”

“I would not recommend a long flight; you might find it more comfortable to stand than sit, for a while,” the man says, sounding amused. “But you can fly, if you must. Aviators,” he mutters to himself, while Ferris puts all his layers back on. It seems even colder today.

He would like to say something to Forthing about his foolishness last night, but his captain appears deep in thought and once again does not initiate conversation. Together they go back to the pavilion, where there is a little more activity but a sober atmosphere: Captain Barber must have already broken the news to Caeruleus, and word has spread. Guinevere looks up and makes a joyous noise on seeing Forthing, who goes to rub his gloved hand over her nose and make her his assurances. Ferris stands back to let them have a little privacy, and watches as Forthing exchanges a few words with Barber before returning to Vivi’s side. There is someone else there, he notices: their own crew have been set at liberty during their stay until their planned departure time this afternoon, but Fox is already sitting in his customary place under the edge of Vivi’s wing, despite being woken long after midnight to take his father’s message. After a brief consultation with Forthing, he comes over to Ferris.

“The captain said you got injured,” the boy says, frowning up at him. “You don’t look injured.”

“Thank you,” Ferris says, and does not dignify the unspoken question with an answer. “Please tell me you were not out here all night.”

Fox grins. “I ain’t that mad, sir. I went back to bed, I swear, only the boy in the bunk by me farts in his sleep, and the one next to him yammers nonsense; no man could get his proper rest and most of us were out before dawn. How’s a man supposed to sleep in those conditions?”

“A man can and he will,” Ferris says, dryly. “You will find there are a lot of distractions, when you are on campaign; you will have to sleep in belly rigging, on the cold ground, during storms, in the middle of the day, and sometimes even while under fire. In a few years, you might be wishing all you had to contend with was the nocturnal wind of your fellow officers.”

“And sleep-talking, don’t forget the sleep-talking,” Fox points out, immune to this reproach. “Anyway, there ain’t much chance of us going on campaign any time soon, is there?”

Ferris would like to say there is not, but it feels like false hope when trouble is already stirring in the west. The new King of Portugal, clearly still bitter after he and his family had been forced to flee first Lisbon in fear of Napoleon, and then eventually Rio, in fear of the rapidly increasing influence of the Tswana amidst their colony, is reportedly starting to make imperial designs on the British colonies in the North American Station. Admiral Granby has already been sent to Halifax, mostly to allow for Iskierka to flame around and present a show of strength enough to dissuade João from sending his navy, otherwise Granby himself certainly would have been at last night’s conference.

“Not the sort of thing one should concern themselves with, unless they are the commanding officer,” Ferris says instead to the young ensign. “If you are awake and fed, make yourself useful by rounding up Evans and Shore and seeing to Vivi’s harness before we leave.”

Fox looks uncharacteristically confused by this. “But the Captain says we’re not leaving yet.”

Ferris blinks at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“He says we’re to stay a few more days, and Captain Barber just approved it. Didn’t he tell you?”

No, Ferris thinks, with a sinking sensation he does not quite know how to name. Somehow he doubts Forthing holds out any hope of being able to make any further entreaties to the Admiralty, which would be the only reasonable excuse for taking so long away from their official post. “Very well,” he says, doing his best to keep his expression neutral. “Run along to the mess then, and find something for the captain to eat—we have not yet had a chance, and I doubt he will leave Vivi’s side now until lunch time.”

“Yes sir.” Fox nods, still giving him a strange look. “I’ll fetch something for you, as well.”

Forthing is still reassuring Guinevere when Ferris finally approaches; the dragon’s head comes up and fixes him with her sharp eyes as he comes up the steps of the pavilion. “Are you well, Henry?” she asks. “Edward says you were knocked about, last night; I am sorry to have sent you, after all.”

“Do not be, it is not in the least your fault,” Ferris says, without looking at Forthing. It is unusual for a dragon to refer to one of her lieutenants by his Christian name, even if she chooses to do so for her captain, which no one would think strange; Ferris has endured some stares and muttered comments from officers of other crews on the subject before now, but not so many that he is tempted to correct her. He would much rather have it this way than for her not to speak to him at all, which is the traditional mode now going out of favour among the youngest dragons.

“No, it is Edward’s,” she says, making Forthing cough a protest. “Well, you ought not to have been in town in the middle of the night, and especially not in a drinking-house, where people are always getting stabbed,” she tells him, a logic with which Ferris can hardly disagree.

“Damn Shepherd and his blasted newspaper,” Forthing mutters, stamping his feet a little against the cold. “It was not really dangerous, love, it was only poor fortune and one drunken loudmouth that got us inconvenienced for a moment.”

“I think you ought to pay more attention to the newspaper,” Guinevere says, chiding, although she nuzzles at him anxiously as though looking for any injuries he might be hiding from her. “Otherwise how do you expect to know what is happening that is at all important?”

“I get the most important news on the courier circuit, which is much less political,” Forthing argues. Ferris can’t really dispute that either, especially when the Times has been less than sympathetic as to the plight of dragons during the famine, although they do now publish a regular draconic column, to which Temeraire is a regular contributor. The last installment had been particularly scathing, and the younger aviators in Edinburgh covert had much enjoyed reading bits of it aloud in dramatic voices.

“Sir,” Ferris puts in, formally, before the debate can go on any further, “might I have a private word?”

Forthing looks around at him, meeting his eyes perhaps for the first time that day. His brow is ever so slightly furrowed, for all Ferris can tell he is doing his best to appear unbothered for Vivi’s sake. “Of course,” he says, after a noticeable hesitation, and leads Ferris away from the pavilion to the edge of the clearing. “Well?” he demands, when they are out of earshot of the dragons and their officers. “I would like to take Vivi up soon, before she freezes to the floor in there.” There is frost clinging to his beard and eyebrows.

“But we are staying?” Ferris asks, raising an accusatory eyebrow.

“Slater cannot fly for at least a week or two,” Forthing says, almost too quickly. “I volunteered us to stay here until he is ready, then we will accompany him on the flight back to Edinburgh. It will at least give poor Gentia some comfort.”

“I see.” Ferris lets out a heavy breath that comes out misty and white on the air in front of him. “Of course we could go and then come back. Or someone else might wait. Or no one need wait at all, and someone stationed here might fly up with Slater and then come back. Or Slater might wait a little longer—”

“What is your point, Lieutenant?" Forthing growls. “I did not know you hated London so much. Or are you just in the mood to argue with me today?”

“My point is that there is no need to hold the whole crew back on my account,” Ferris sighs. “I have flown before with worse injuries than this—”

“Out of necessity—”

“—and even if I could not, you might as well go back without me, and I will join you later—”

“I do not recall saying that this had anything to do with you.”

“Damn and blast it Ned, stop playing the damn fool.” Ferris can sense his irritation making his cheeks pink; the cold air stings against his skin where it is drawn to the heat. “We both know what this is about. Last night… you ought not have done that.”

“Which part?” Forthing asks, his tone shifting somewhere between innocence and annoyance. “I can think of several things I ought to have done differently last night, but I hardly think any of them warrant a lecture from you.”

“One of them does,” Ferris replies, hotly, and then thinking that he might have pushed his luck a little far already when it comes to addressing his superior officer in public, adds, “Sir. The part where you refused to leave the bar without me. The part where you put my life ahead of your own. I know you know better.”

Because Forthing does know. It is not like Laurence, who at least had the excuse of not being raised to the life of an aviator and always had a stubborn streak of nobility besides, but protect your captain above all else was one of the first things they had learned in their cadet training, and it had been drilled into their heads over and over on a near-daily basis for the next several years.

At last, Forthing has the grace to look at least a little abashed. “It weren’t what I meant to do,” he says, flatly. “There weren’t enough time to stop and weigh the options.”

“You could have just gone through the damn door when I told you to,” Ferris replies, keeping his voice low.

“And you would have been trampled.”

“That is precisely my point—”

“Did you want to be trampled?” Forthing asks, cocking his head to one side in a near-perfect imitation of his son when he is trying to be clever. Ferris snorts irritation, like a horse. It is too cold and his entire torso is too much one enormous ache for this conversation. Forthing nods. “I thought so.”

“If you had been killed,” Ferris says, through gritted teeth. “Fox would have had to take over for you. At thirteen, on a fighting dragon. And I would have been the one to have to tell him—to tell Vivi you had died in a stupid brawl—” He stops, surprising even himself by the sudden emotion that has risen up in his throat, so strong that it almost quells the anger entirely. “Did you even think about that, for one moment?”

Forthing had until now been looking almost arrogant, as though he thought he had won something, but now his expression shifts into something more serious, his scar tugging the edge of his mouth down as he looks intently into Ferris’ eyes. “I think about it all the time,” he says, very low. “It may happen, you know, either in a filthy taproom here or a year from now in Nova Scotia. And I know if it does, you will be there to guide them. They trust you, Henry, and I trust you to take care of them.” He puts a hand on Ferris’ shoulder, and looks, for a moment, as though he might say something else. Then, as though keeping eye contact becomes too much, he lets go his hand, turns his head, and begins to walk away.

Ferris feels like he has been struck in the face—no, he wishes he had been struck, since that would be better explanation in his mind for the sudden ache behind his eyes, the way he is all of a sudden unbalanced in a way that has nothing to do with the pain in his back. Something hot and uncomfortable rises in his throat, like grief for a loss felt but not yet experienced. “Ned…” he calls, so overcome he almost chokes on the word.

Hearing him, Forthing pauses only for a moment to glance back over his shoulder. “They would be just as devastated to lose you, you know,” he says, before walking back towards the pavilion, his boots leaving perfect footprints in the snow, and all Ferris can do is stare blindly after him.

Chapter Text

“Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”

“I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.”

― Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)

A week later finds Ferris bathing in his room. The water, heated on the blissfully roaring fire, is already lukewarm by the time he gets in; he can’t help but think about how much he misses the baths at Loch Laggan, although he would settle for sleeping in his own bed in the Edinburgh covert. Captain Slater is still not fit to fly, and since Forthing has committed them, they cannot return until he is.

It is difficult to remain angry with Slater when one sees him, head bandaged, attempting and failing to walk more than six steps in a straight line. And poor Gentia. Ferris feels also for the dragon’s officers, who are now having to do their best to console and distract her, without knowing for sure the man will fully recover. A bad business indeed. At least no one seems to be rushing to condemn the lot of them for fools for being there in the first place.

He allows himself a moment’s soaking. The tepid water is soothing to his shoulders, although he has to balance on his shins to keep his backside from touching the bottom of the tub, which is sure to hurt more than he can currently bear; he grits his teeth against the effort and scrubs himself as quickly as possible, promising himself fresh clothes when he gets out.

There is nowhere else to be, at the moment, without any more official orders, so he has not much to do but eat, sleep and drill Fox and Browne in French, mathematics and penmanship; some Lieutenants might not have bothered with even that much, but nine years observing Laurence insist on some modicum of continuing education for his young officers must have rubbed off at least a little.

He does have a letter, from Laurence himself and Temeraire both, that needs a reply: dated nearly two weeks ago. Ferris had written to them from Edinburgh, in the hope of some advanced news of relief from Parliament, but even they had to admit that any such relief is unlikely for the foreseeable future. He can tell that Laurence has transcribed for Temeraire verbatim, without editing for language or manner, and it had at least made him smile a little to read, “I would very much like an Election, since it must be a rousing Experience, and also because we would have a Chance to get Liverpool out. Perscitia finds it unlikely, by the Numbers, but sometimes I think that if I must sit and listen to him say ‘oh the poor humble Farmer’ once again, when he has no intention of doing anything to help the Same, or come out in defence of the Portuguese King only because he thinks we ought not have helped the Tswana take back all their Slaves, I will lose all Patience, and I dare say even Liverpool will be running after his Wig after I have let out the Divine Wind only a little on the House of Lords.”

Laurence had added a postscript, more sombrely, “...that if some relief I could offer, I promise that I would make; I can say only that Temeraire has written most eloquently to Emperor Mianning with the polite suggestion that they accelerate their promised grain shipments, which Hammond I think can scarcely do without seeming desperate, which of course we are, for all the government would not like to appear as much. This I am sorry to say is only worsening the calamity we face. But I will say to you as I have said before, and also to Admiral Granby, that if Capt. Forthing, or any other man or dragon cannot keep skin and bone together on rations alone, they have an open invitation to Strathvagan, and we will endeavour to provide.”

This message Ferris has not passed on; he does not think Forthing would take the implication at all well. Laurence of course has only good intentions, and he can sense both Temeraire and Tharkay’s influence and approval behind the invitation, but Forthing would see it as an indictment on his inability to feed Guinevere himself.

He is just thinking on what he should say in his now overdue reply, and whether to mention the captains’ conference with the Admiralty which had ended so disastrously, when his bath is interrupted by Forthing himself, who somehow has still not developed the art of knocking.

“Have you heard about this?” he demands, holding up an unfolded sheet of paper as though it might spontaneously combust.

Various answers present themselves, all of which quite impolite and the nicest of which Ferris has to discount as too below the belt for so early in the morning. “Close the door, will you?” he says instead, bracing himself to climb out of the bath.

“Afraid you might give someone an eyeful?” Forthing knocks the door shut impatiently with his foot.

“There are some female officers in this corridor,” Ferris mutters, fighting back a grimace as he gets out, dripping, and wraps himself hurriedly in a towel before he can catch a chill. “They might not appreciate the view as much as you do.”

Point, he thinks, after risking a glance back to Forthing’s face. Still, goading him is somehow less enjoyable than it had been before their row, which Ferris still isn’t sure how to reconcile within himself. He has so far settled for just acting as though it had not happened, and Forthing hads not brought it up again. “What is it?” he asks, rubbing himself down as quickly as possible and shrugging back into the shirt he had slept in.

“An invitation,” Forthing says. Ferris frowns, wondering for a brief, mad moment if Forthing had somehow gotten hold of the very letter he had just been thinking about, but then he goes on. “They issued one to every captain in the covert.”

Ferris holds out his hand, and Forthing passes him the card. It is a good one, professionally printed, with gold embossing.

Civic Charity Ball

The recipient Captain and his or her Dragon are humbly invited to attend at the pleasure of

Sir Edward Howe, F.R.S. & Perscitia, MP

At The Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich, London

On Saturday evening, December 12, 1815, at 9 o’clock.

Dragons will be dined in the adjoining fields

Funds raised will be collected towards food and supply for the winged officers of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps

"I needn’t go, do I?" Forthing says. He rocks onto the toes of his boots and back again, in case Ferris could not have interpreted his anxiety from the way he has abandoned proper speech and all good manners. “It ain’t addressed to me.”

“No,” Ferris admits, turning the card over in his fingers. There’s a draconic silhouette stamped on the other side, but no other information. Winged officers, he thinks, is a particularly nice turn of phrase. “It is a general invitation. Likely they need some uniforms, some gold bars to make a show; we did a similar thing during the consumption.”

“Good.” Forthing’s shoulders come down from about his ears. His heels make contact with the floor. “Never mind, then.”

“You will go, though.”

Forthing’s head comes up like a shot, grey-brown hair falling loosely over his eyes. “Beg pardon?”

“You are going to the ball.”

“I ain’t.”

“‘I am not’,” Ferris corrects him.

Colour rises in Forthing’s cheeks. “Sodding hell Henry, I didn’t ask for an etiquette lesson—”

“No, but I will give you one anyway. What else have I been training you for, the last two years?” He holds up the card. “This is your chance to do more than just practice. High society. A room full of people with real influence, which you will one day sorely need.”

Forthing shakes his head, slowly, dismissive. “I ain— I am not ready for that.”

“I say you are.” Sensing that he might only be making matters worse, Ferris makes himself take a breath, and tries to soften his voice. “Not that I make the best judge, mind, but I am the one you chose, if you recall. Make some conversation, dance for a few turns—”

Behind his beard, Forthing actually looks paler at the suggestion. “Dance?” he says, grimacing.

Ferris laughs. It does not improve Forthing’s expression. “For God’s sake, Ned, I’ve seen you fight off Frenchmen a thousand feet in the air after a ball to the face, but the very idea of dancing with a pretty socialite makes you look like you’re being dragged into the depths of hell by the balls.”

“Fuck off.” Forthing pinches the bridge of his nose and sits down hard on the edge of the bed.

“Guinevere will like it,” Ferris says finally, one last bit of incentive. “You know she’s never seen much society, or really met any other dragons outside of Edinburgh, or Loch Laggan.”

“For good reason,” Forthing grunts. “Granby don’t want her making waves ‘til we’ve had the chance to test her sight in the field.”

“You aren’t flying a midnight gauntlet. It’s a ball. She’ll love it. Just tell her not to enter any spontaneous aerial acrobatic races; or if she does, she better try and lose gracefully.”

He doesn’t know why he cares so much, only that he has spent considerable time before and after Guinevere’s hatching drilling Forthing in proper societal manners, as best he could. His own are not really that much better than the average officer, given he had left home at the age of seven and returned only for infrequent visits, but he thinks he has done a decent job of getting Forthing up to an acceptable level, even if the man clearly does not concern himself enough to maintain his lessons in private. It seems a shame to let all that time and effort go to waste, especially when it is for a good cause—the best cause, where either of them are concerned.

“We will have to go over the cotillion,” Ferris says, mostly to himself, as Forthing is still coming to terms with his fate. “I doubt they will expect you to waltz, but perhaps we practice that just in case.” They do not need to worry about the latest steps, he thinks; Sir Edward at least knows enough about aviators not to shine a light on their cultural nescience.

“Dragons will be dined,” Forthing quotes aloud, interrupting Ferris’ internal machinations. “How can they afford to feast a few dozen dragons? Howe don’t have money, does he?”

“Not more than the average academic, although he might be doing better now that being interested in dragons is all the rage,” Ferris agrees. “They must have a donor, probably anonymous; but that’s all the more reason to go, isn’t it? It’ll be better than poor Vivi’s eaten since Loch Laggan.”

Forthing sighs heavily. Ferris realises he probably should have opened with an appeal to his dragon’s stomach, although then his success would not be nearly so satisfying as it is now. “Very well,” his captain says, at last. “For Vivi.”

“Good.” Ferris slaps his hands together triumphantly. “Well, we have two weeks. At least a few lessons in table manners will be something to do around here until you go.”

“Me?” Forthing looks up at him and raises an eyebrow. “You think you’re sending me off to eat off silver plates and prance around in dress uniform without you?”

“I am not a captain,” Ferris points out.

“Ah, but I can bring a guest, no?” Forthing points at the card in Ferris’ hand. “To a general invitation?”

“Well.” Ferris hesitates. “No—I mean, yes, I suppose no one would remark on it…” Such an event is highly unseasonable, he reasons to himself. His family are sure to be in Weymouth for the winter. Would they travel so far? His mother might, he thinks. Any opportunity to exhibit her patriotism and support for the Corps, even now… and they are sure to have been invited. His mother would be offended if she were not invited. “I would prefer not,” he says at last.

“I see that, but why?” Forthing presses.

There is nothing for it: Ferris takes a breath and confesses his fears in the briefest of terms.

“Well, it sounds as though it is not a sure thing,” Forthing says, dismissively. “Besides, you have just upbraided me for playing the coward, only because I do not like to make a spectacle of myself in front of people who need no excuse to make a mockery of me; you need not be ashamed of anything. You have been pardoned and reinstated.”

“My brothers would disagree with you, I think,” Ferris says.

“If they hate you so much as you think, they shan’t talk to you. Avoid them; it ain’t as though you need to have it out over the hors d'oeuvres,” Forthing insists. “And if they do like to make a scene, I expect they will think better of it. With Vivi there, I mean,” he adds, when Ferris makes a doubtful face.

“Christ.” Ferris rubs one hand along the back of his neck, ruffling his loose, damp hair. “I shan’t get out of this, shall I?”

“I doubt it.” Forthing grins triumphantly and reclines back on the bed, lounging with all the self-satisfied poise of a well-fed hatchling. His boots drip brown slush onto the quilt.

Ferris gathers himself, with an effort. Probably they will not come, and he has a stomachache for no reason at all. “We have two weeks to get you ready for this,” he says, reaching for his trousers. “You won’t have that look on your face when I’m finished with you. Blast, and I don’t have a thing to wear, either.”

“Oh, mother, whatever shall we do?”

“And get your sodding feet off my bed.”

Ferris refuses to spend half a day at an expensive tailor, and the one used locally by the Corps would be unlikely to deliver in time for the ball. He borrows shoes from another officer which fit well-enough, and a coat from another, and makes do for the rest out of what he has; he would rather attract as little attention as possible in any case. Forthing has his dress uniform, which thankfully had been brought for the conference, although Ferris has to talk him out of taking his pistols, this time— “Not at a ball, Ned, for God’s sake! No, not even one!”—and just as they are about to leave they find a spot on one of the buckled shoes Forthing hates so much that refuses to be blacked, and he starts asking plaintively if he cannot just wear boots.

“No, you may not,” Ferris says, through gritted teeth, and goes to see if any of the other fellows in the corridor has anything better for getting the spot out; by the time the shoe is fixed to his satisfaction, they are sure to be late. Forthing is anxious and short-tempered by the time they are in the air, no matter how much Ferris assures him that their timing is, if anything, fashionable. Guinevere, who has been talking of nothing else since she was told they were going, flies a ridiculous pace on what is a relatively short flight to Woolwich Garrison, sending ice cold air streaming past their faces so that Ferris keeps having to wipe tears from his eyes.

At least there is no trouble finding their landing site; the field is lit with a few hundred torches in a rough square, which blinds their approach from above worse than it might have been without them. Ferris can just about make out a few dozen shifting dragon bodies of various size, but would have been hard pressed to give Vivi any direction on where to come down; indeed, two other latecomers are flying over the field to turn and try again, unable to identify a safe landing on the first pass. Vivi, her night eyes having no such difficulty, makes a heart-stopping dive into what resembles for a moment pure blackness; she pulls up again in the circle of light and rests neatly between several other, larger beasts. Ferris sees straight away that they have not landed on grass, or mud, but a large, temporary wooden platform similar to an enormous pontoon.

“Oh!” Guinevere exclaims when her feet touch the boards, and gives a little startled hop.

“What is it?” Forthing demands, standing in his straps and leaning over her shoulder to try and see. “Did something hurt you?”

“No, no!” She turns around in a circle with enthusiasm, trying out different positions until she finds a place to stretch out among the other guests. “It is hot, like the stones at Loch Laggan.”

“Nice, isn’t it?” says the nearest dragon, a Yellow Reaper who looks well into his middle years. “I know we are supposed to be hot blooded creatures, but I do feel as though I have not been properly warm in months.”

“It is very nice,” she says, and dips her head in respect for the older dragon. “Pray, do you know how it is done?”

The dragon shakes back his head, looking around. “I am afraid not, you know, but I expect that fellow there will be able to explain it to you.”

Ferris, whose suspicions have been aroused already, looks in the direction the dragon is indicating by the curve of its neck, and sees a pair of furled wings so darkly coloured they might have been impossible to make out but for the scattering of pearlescent blue along the edges. The dragon is facing away from them, in the dark, but Ferris would have recognised him in the midst of a dust storm.

“Temeraire!” he calls out, before he can stop himself, and waves with one arm while unclipping with the other and sliding down Guinevere’s foreleg to the ground. The great head turns to meet them, and the biggest dragon of the assembled company takes careful but eager steps through the crowd towards them.

“Ferris!” Temeraire exclaims, joyfully. “Oh, and Captain Forthing,” he adds, seeing the other man leap down from Vivi’s other side. “How very good to see you! But I did not expect you, at all—I thought you were stationed in Edinburgh.” His tone is ever so slightly apologetic; the fighting dragons tend to consider the Edinburgh covert the least interesting post available, especially in peacetime, and look jealously on those who are assigned Dover or Plymouth, where even an unlikely action might be looked for. Iskierka had complained constantly of it, before Granby’s reassignment to Halifax.

“We are, but the circumstances are hardly worth explaining,” Ferris says. He looks to Forthing, who has done nothing yet but incline his head politely in Temeraire’s direction, “Make introductions,” Ferris reminds him in an undertone, sighing inwardly; Vivi might overhear, but he can only hope Temeraire will not. Forthing had made a poor first impression on Temeraire, which had lasted very nearly all the next four years, and Ferris can only hope for the best of a new opportunity. He is glad, all of a sudden, that they had spent the extra time on boot black, as Temeraire is just the sort of fellow to notice that sort of thing.

“Oh.” Forthing reddens, a little, but rallies, straightening his back, “Temeraire, may I introduce Guinevere? Guinevere, this is Temeraire... whom you have heard of.”

“Hello,” Vivi says, with shy, polite enthusiasm, her back talons scraping shallow lines in the relatively soft wood of the platform. “It is an honour to meet you, sir; I very much enjoyed your column, this Wednesday last.”

“Oh, thank you.” Temeraire preens immediately, shifting from his haunches to his forelegs to speak closer to her level. “And a pleasure to meet you, of course, Ferris has written me of you, so I know a little. Is it your first time in London?”

Forthing shoots Ferris a look. Ferris pretends not to notice.

“Yes, it is,” Guinevere replies, “but I have not much been outside of the covert since we came, and it is very nice to see something else more exciting—not that the covert is not perfectly nice,” she adds belatedly, ever the conciliator.

“Well, it is certainly not the nicest,” Temeraire says, gruffly. “Only a few pavilions, and not even heated; I expect you are not all very comfortable at present.”

“It is not as bad as it is in Scotland,” she chirrups. “But there is even less food, and I do not like to be a strain on those who live there.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” Temeraire says, “we are trying to—but you must be hungry now! I will let you eat—there is an appetiser of soup, very spicy and heartening, you must have some, and I will be very glad of some more conversation when you have eaten.”

“Ooh,” she says, her unusually large pupils very wide as she looks over to where giant bowls are being filled in two rows. When Ferris breathes in, he can smell it; tangy, peppery and delicious—it sends him right back to the dockside market in Peking where he, Martin and young Allen had once eaten so many noodles that Allen hadn’t been able to keep them all down and had spent the afternoon trying to hide his puce-coloured face from the others. The soup here is thick with noodles as well, although there is a suspiciously greenish tint to them. “They are not gone bad, they are made from potatoes and green vegetables,” Temeraire says, seeing him looking and in a tone that suggests he has already been asked, multiple times. “It is very clever, and you do not even need any flour.”

Guinevere looks longingly at the soup, and then back at Forthing, who makes a face at her. “You don’t need my permission, girl,” he says, gruffly, patting her foreleg with a gloved hand. “Eat as much as they’ll give you, you hear?”

“Oh, I will.” She noses gratefully at him. “And you must go inside and get warm. Henry, will you make sure he eats something?”

“Get away with you,” Forthing mutters. “I have no need of a nursemaid not two years of age.”

“I will make sure,” Ferris says, rather enjoying the way it makes Forthing glare at him. It takes his mind off the ache in his back, anyway, which has been aggravated by even that short flight. “Is the admiral here?” he asks Temeraire.

“Of course,” the dragon says. “You must go and speak with him, and then, if you would like to come out again later, we might talk some more?”

“Thank you, I will,” Ferris says, grateful for any excuse he might later need to leave the affair early.

Forthing is quiet and stone-faced as they walk through the gatehouse. Ferris wonders if he might not be put out that Temeraire’s invitation had not been extended to him, as well, not that he would ever have expected it, but as they enter the quadrangle Ferris senses him take a steadying breath, and realises he is only apprehensive.

The building is relatively new and very large, having been extended over the last several decades until it now houses three thousand men and over a thousand horses. A lance-corporal, given the dubious honour of directing the guests, leads them through the maze to the reception hall, where from within the sound of music and conversation is emanating. Despite the bitter cold outside, Ferris’ hands are already warm, even after he removes his gloves and outer coat to hand to the footman who emerges.

“Here,” Ferris says, turning Forthing towards him and inspecting his uniform with a critical eye. They are both a little rumpled from the breakneck flight, and even Forthing’s freshly-cut hair requires a little smoothing. The footman disappears and the lance-corporal goes in search of other stragglers, so that for a brief moment they are alone, just outside the door.

“For God’s sake,” Forthing mutters, but allows Ferris to straighten his neckcloth and adjust the medals on his breast so that they lie perfectly flat. Ferris has come undecorated; his own medals are with the rest of his dress uniform, in Scotland, though he would have liked to at least show the one given him for flying as acting Captain with Grauvogel in Dresden, since it is the only one he has earned, in his brief capacity as a Prussian serving officer, since the battle of Jena. As he stands back to take a proper look at his handiwork, Forthing’s expression changes, for a brief moment, into something like fond exasperation, the sort of look he will give Guinevere when she gets particularly excited over nothing very much. “Well?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Very fine,” Ferris says, ignoring the way his own heart has started beating at battle pace. “Any lady would be lucky to dance with you.”

“Get over,” Forthing mutters, as they go together into the room.

Whoever has dressed the reception room for the ball has done remarkable work; it is hard to imagine the space in the way it must otherwise be used. The walls are largely hidden behind long drapes of crimson and gold, revealing only areas of carved scrollwork, and the floors have been polished to a gleam. Dozens of candles burn in sconces and chandeliers, and the tables which line the edges of the room in a square are set beautifully with glass and silver service that catches the candlelight and reflects it back. Ferris remembers his mother saying once that lighting is the whole of the thing—the candles artfully soften every sharp edge, flatter every face. It smells mostly of flowers and beeswax, although the dancing already taking place in the centre of the room is already lending a certain musk of physical enthusiasm to the general aroma.

“I know you cannot be this uncomfortable around women,” Ferris sighs, leading the way around the tables. “You were married once, and you cannot say you were entirely uninterested in Miss Merkelyte.” A footman appears as if from nowhere and offers them champagne glasses; Ferris takes two and passes one to his captain.

“Gabija did not have the power to make me look a troglodyte, and neither did my Annie, god rest her soul,” Forthing replies, after he has drained half the glass at once. “You don’t get a chance in a place like this to make a good second impression, that is all.”

“Then you shall make a good first one,” Ferris assures him. “These things are all about good connections.”

“I thought they were about showing off your money.”

Ferris shrugs. “There is very little difference.”

They have found a place to stand where the crowd can move easily around them; most people are standing since there is not enough seating room at the tables for everyone, which is of course intentional. It is a good turn out, given the season and the weather, and the unusual cause; he has to wonder how on earth it has been managed. A woman passes by with greying hair and a reticule in hand, and his heart catches for a moment in his throat; but a second look is enough to reassure him that it is not the dowager Lady Seymour. Many of the assembled men are in uniform, either red or green with only a scattered few blue coats visible; Ferris can make out old Admiral Powys sitting at one of the tables, despite having been retired now for years.

“We should look for Laurence,” he says. He half expects Forthing to protest, but perhaps the prospect of exchanging brief pleasantries with their former captain is less daunting than stepping on the dance floor after all. “And Sir Edward, to thank him for the invitation.”

They do not find Sir Edward in the crush, but they run into half a dozen aviators whom one or both of them recognise. Although a couple of them give Ferris sharp looks, and do not stay for a conversation beyond a short greeting, most of them are warm and friendly, perhaps a little loosened already by drink and ready to be thankful for a real opportunity to do something to improve conditions for their dragons. They are all ranked captain and above; Ferris is a little conscious of being the lowest ranked aerial officer present, but at least it is largely sympathetic company; he lets himself relax, just a little.

“There,” Forthing says at last, nodding towards a small knot of people amongst which Laurence’s yellow hair—shot through a little with grey, it must be said—is clearly visible.

“I will go by myself, if you like,” Ferris offers, and is met with a hot glare to which he can only submit.

Laurence, at least, appears pleased to see both of them, and ends his own conversation as soon as is reasonably polite in order to engage them instead. “Captain,” he says, brightly, and shakes Forthing’s hand with enthusiasm. He looks well, despite the silver eking its way across his temples, and is wearing his Admiral’s bars. He smiles widely as he greets Ferris in turn. Forthing explains, a little gruffly, why they are still in London—the popular story, leaving out the part about a chair almost breaking Ferris’ back—and Laurence nods. He, like many of the aviators they have spoken to, has heard about the failed conference. “I would like to say you would have more luck petitioning the government direct,” he says, “but that is all Admiral Roland has been doing for a six-month without getting very far at all; I am afraid private money may be the only solution for now.”

“No one likes to ask for charity,” Ferris agrees. “But if the options are a little loss of pride or a mass starvation…”

“Even charitable resources are stretched thin,” Forthing grunts. “The country might have better resources, but they are starving here in the city—the people, I mean.” The others turn to look at him, and he seems to only then realise that he has spoken aloud; he has finished two glasses of champagne already. “Only, if I had to choose between feeding my son and a dragon I had never met, I know what I would choose,” he adds, flustered. “So it is not as though I do not see their point of view, and how the government sees it; the martial branches cannot be their only concern. Only I think they don’t understand how poorly the dragons are doing in the north, no matter how we try to explain. It is not just the famine, but this blasted cold; the ground is frozen everywhere and only one captain in ten has the funds to build a pavilion, or anything like.”

Laurence nods, slowly. Fearing he might repeat the offer to host them, Ferris cuts in. “Well, perhaps after tonight we might be able to afford some more communal ones,” he says. “And all going terribly we might well be on the Portuguese border this time next year, and it will be warmer.”

He expects Laurence to smile, or even to laugh at this suggestion, but if anything his expression turns a little grim. “Perhaps you ought not to tempt fate,” he says, sipping solemnly from his own glass.

“Really?” Forthing frowns. “Have you heard from Admiral Granby? Does he think it likely? ”

“Not that they will send you to Portugal; but João is not withdrawing in the least, I am afraid,” Laurence says. “His official excuse is that they need a source of timber to replace their Brazilian hardwood, now that the Tswana are getting in the way of their trade, and that they have a claim on Labrador, being discovered and named for their explorer—there are some fishing villages there that still speak Portuguese, I believe— but he has no answer for why their ships are landing men much further south, and outside of the ports. By all accounts the Marquis of Aguiar is the one seeking retribution for their losses in Brazilia, but his king is hardly making an argument against it.”

Ferris realises he is clenching his jaw; he forces himself to loosen it a little. “They have very little aerial support, surely?”

‘They took heavy losses to Napoleon, but so did they receive a not-insignificant percentage of the French eggs confiscated by the concord—and still they argued they ought to have more,” Laurence explains. “I imagine some of them must have hatched and grown to full size since, as they have here; still, it is a risk—they need what numbers they have to protect their own borders, especially if they intend to force us to retaliate.”

“Will the Admiralty blame you?” Ferris dares ask. “If it comes to war?”

Laurence’s mouth twitches briefly. “I have no doubt that they will try,” he says. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence, until a tray of canapés comes by and breaks the tension. Forthing, with the manner of one who will take whatever food is offered when it is available, does not even examine the small morsels before putting them in his mouth.

“I don’t suppose this entire affair is your doing after all?” Ferris asks Laurence, in an attempt to change the topic of conversation. The idea had occurred to him the moment he had seen Temeraire; on the other hand, he does not pretend to know Laurence’s finances, but that he might be able to fund such an extravagant affair on his own strains credulity. It has also occurred to Ferris that Tharkay might have a hand in the event; it would be just the sort of thing he would do, not to put his name to it.

“You flatter me, but no; although you can be sure Temeraire was quite indignant that he did not think of it first. Perscitia was kind enough to involve him in the planning, however.”

“The heated platform?” Ferris guesses.

“Yes, and he had our cooks consult with the caterers: draconic catering is a difficult business at the moment, as you can no doubt imagine, but he has been working on some innovations in his spare time that use more of whatever is currently available.”

Forthing nods, warming considerably to this subject. “I must thank you both; Guinevere was very happy to eat as much as she likes, for once; you know what they are like at that age.”

“I certainly do, and not at all,” Laurence says, and looks around. “Our actual hosts are here, as it happens; we met several months ago for the first time, but I think you will find them very agreeable to the cause.” He raises a hand to catch the eye of a senior army officer standing nearby, who nods acknowledgement before breaking off his current conversation and coming over to join them.

The man is wearing a British field marshall’s uniform, thick with braid and decoration; the medals include an Order of the Garter, as well as many unfamiliar ones besides, many of them on Russian ribbons. What is surprising is his youth; he cannot be more than twenty and five, younger even than Ferris himself, dark-haired and handsome of face, with bright, interested eyes under thick brows. “Your Highness, might I introduce Captain Forthing and Lieutenant Ferris, of the Aerial Corps?” Laurence says. “They are both former officers of mine, very accomplished and courageous men.”

“Ah, Maryaloslavets!” the man exclaims, seeing one of Forthing’s medals and tapping his own, matching one before offering him a hand. The connection is difficult to make sense of, under the circumstances. The medal had eventually been issued to Laurence and his serving officers in recognition of the arduous battle they had fought just outside of Moscow, but Ferris would have been hard pressed himself to remember the name of the place. More curiously, he is quite sure no British army regiments had been there, or even Temeraire’s motley crew would have heard about it. But when the officer continues on, his voice has a distinctly Germanic accent, not British at all. “A most trying battle,” he says, “and I have never been so blind with mud in my life—I would have much preferred to be in the air, I think, except that I have no head for heights. Leopold,” he adds, belatedly, and Ferris at last realises to whom they are speaking. Poor Forthing puzzles it out at the same time, too late, he bows rather awkwardly over the man’s hand, as though he were a lady and not, in fact, the future Prince Consort.

Fortunately the Prince is either conscious of his own inconsistency or is so new to his rank that he does not expect anything more; Ferris makes his own leg and shakes the man’s hand when it is offered. “Welcome, welcome,” Leopold beams at them, and claps Forthing on the shoulder. “Tell me Captain, were you one of those who petitioned the Admiralty for a better lot for your beasts?”

“I was,” Forthing says. The look he gives Ferris is somewhat panicked, but Ferris can hardly advise him aloud even if he knew what advice to give. “I came with the Edinburgh contingent.”

“We heard about it in Whitehall,” Leopold says, shaking his head. “A terrible thing, to have to go hat in hand to the very people who ought to be looking to the safety of its men; that is the government’s responsibility, after all, and if some of those men happen to be dragons, that is no one’s fault but those who chose to raise them over the last several hundred years for such a purpose, no?”

“Sir, I do agree,” Forthing says, nodding uneasily. “And it is not as though we do not understand that people all over the country are feeling the effects…”

“Oh, this damned unending winter,” Leopold clucks his tongue. “I tell you it is not very much better in Saxe-Coburg, but at least we do not have the cattle sickness. Not yet, any road; I dread that it spreads so far. I have ordered several thousand head to be driven up to the channel, but at the rate that cows move I am afraid it will be several months for them to arrive.”

“We are grateful all the same,” Laurence assures him, diplomatically. “Even if it only helps to replenish some of the breeding stock we have lost.”

“And hopefully before beef becomes more valuable than gold, ja?” Leopold is still holding Forthing companionably by the shoulder as though they are old friends, and it is all Ferris can do to hold back a grin to see Forthing try to act as though this were an everyday occurrence. “In the meantime we will gather some funds for pork and lamb; I am told the dragons do not object? And if we cannot have wheat then we will go to the table with France for some of the maize they are importing by the tonne, and if a little money is all that is needed to make it happen, then you shall have it, by God.”

“Very kind,” Forthing chokes out.

Leopold beams and slaps him on the back. “Well, enough politics; it is a ball, after all. Will you dance? The room is full of women with diamonds dripping from their pockets; tell them a daring war story or two to make them sympathetic, will you?”

Forthing pales, despite the champagne tinging his cheeks. Ferris sees his opportunity to get a word in edgewise: “The Captain is a little shy of the dance floor, Your Highness,” he explains. “He has been in service for all his life and finds himself more suited to a battlefield than a ballroom.”

“Oh, well we cannot have that,” Leopold says easily, while Forthing shoots Ferris a dirty look. “We must find a way to warm you up to it—my wife is around here somewhere.” He cranes his neck across the nearest group of people and beckons. “Charlotte, will you come here?”

The lady who approaches them is younger by several years than her husband, rosy-cheeked and with an ample bosom barely contained by the gown she wears which, while no doubt in the height of fashion, is certainly the sort of thing causing the social commentators to complain about increasing impropriety in the papers. She is not especially beautiful, and Ferris might not have looked twice at her unless they were introduced; she wears no insignia or indication of her position, only some purple flowers woven intricately into her golden hair, and she smiles almost boyishly at them as she takes her husband’s arm. Ferris bows low—holding back a grimace at the pain in his back as he does so—and is pleased to see Forthing out of the corner of his eye making a much better show of himself, this time.

“Lieutenant Henry Ferris, your Highness,” he says, and has to nudge Forthing to give his name properly.

“Isn’t it a splendid evening,” she says, excitedly. “I was just peeking at the dragons through the windows; there are so many of them, and so close!” She looks right at Ferris. “Are you enjoying my party, Lieutenant?"

“Darling, a little discretion,” Leopold says fondly. “We are supposed to be anonymous.”

“Oh, pooh to anonymity,” she says, waving her free hand dismissively in the air. “I am married now and may do as I like. Besides, Henry won’t tell my father, will you Henry?”

Ferris swallows. “A thousand Incan warriors couldn’t drag it out of me, Your Highness,” he says, and she laughs.

“Will you take Captain Forthing for a turn, my love?” Leopold asks, eyes twinkling.

“Of course,” she says, a picture of delight. “It would be my pleasure.” She whisks Forthing away almost before he can offer her his arm, and moments later they are on the floor, the other dancers parting briefly to make room for them within their formation as they join in the current reel.

“It is a good thing she threw over a real prince for me, or I might think she married me only to escape isolation,” Leopold says, lightly. “I fear my purse will run out long before her enthusiasm for civic enterprise. Ah, please excuse me, I see one of my guests—”

Laurence gives Ferris a look after Leopold has departed that can only be described as curiously amused. “Will he thank you for doing that?” he asks, nodding subtly in Forthing’s direction.

Ferris at last allows the grin that has been threatening to emerge for the last five minutes or more to take over his face. “No,” he admits, “but I enjoyed it.”

Laurence’s mouth turns up in return, a little wearily, perhaps. Ferris can only imagine what it must be like being thrust into politics along with one’s dragon, even if it were not such a turbulent atmosphere; it must be exhausting. “I hope I find you happy,” Laurence says, gently hinting. “Despite the current circumstances, I mean.”

He is really asking if Ferris regrets going back to the Corps, but Laurence would hardly say so outright. Ferris has almost forgotten how infuriatingly polite the man is; he and Forthing might have their own difficulties, but at least they rarely have the need to disguise what they mean to say by means of obfuscating language. At least, on all but one, perhaps the most essential subject.

“I do very well, sir,” Ferris says, and means it; he is struck by the realisation that he does not have to lie, despite the near-constant throbbing pain in his lower back, the difficulties they are sure to face when they return to Edinburgh at last, the looming threat of another war and, not least of all, the strange new pressure in the air between him and Forthing that seemed to have resulted from their last argument. Of course Laurence does not know, even if Granby has guessed, the way Ferris’ relationship to his new captain differs significantly from his old, but Ferris could not have blamed him for a little incredulity either way. “It is not the same, of course, as a heavyweight,” he says, struggling to put his feelings into words without betraying himself. “It is a small crew, but that is all to the better, when… that is, there is no… there is a higher sense of comradeship, I suppose,” he finishes, with difficulty, hoping that Laurence will understand. It would be very hard to serve again on a crew of hundreds, in any capacity, knowing that any one of them might despise him for having been called a traitor; such a position would make him at least marginally ineffective as an officer, unless perhaps he were the captain, and that is unlikely now to ever be the case. It is difficult to explain why that does not aggrieve him, anymore, in the way that it once might have.

He looks out across the floor at the dancers, who have finished the previous reel and started a new one. Princess Charlotte is still dancing with Forthing, although she would have had the chance to change partners if she liked; as Ferris watches, she laughs at something Forthing has said while he turns around her to the other side. He cuts a truly fine figure, the very antithesis of the man Ferris had first met, all those years ago in the Sydney covert, bedraggled, unwashed and inattentive to his own prospects. The scar on his face attracts a few startled looks from those around him, but when they observe the way the Princess dances with him as though he were any nobleman, their repulsion turns instead to respect, or even jealousy: for a lowly captain granted the honour of holding her dainty fingers in the palm of his thickly-calloused hand.

Watching, Ferris realises with a dizzying sensation that he has been overzealous in his insistence on their dance lessons. Forthing does not, as he might have feared, trip, or stumble, or mistake the steps. He is an aviator: he can hold his feet in a gale while travelling at speed, miles above the surface of the earth; a perfectly flat and unmoving surface naturally presents no obstacle. He moves with the grace of a man who has trained for the air from the age of six, younger even than most cadets, with the muscle memory of a former rifleman, the ease of a man younger than he looks and helped along a little by two and a half glasses of champagne, with perfect form and just the right attitude of deference to the nobility of his partner, and for a moment Ferris simply cannot draw another breath. He finds himself wishing, for a brief, impossible moment, that he could stride out onto the floor himself and offer his own hand—but not to the Princess.

The foundling boy has truly become something remarkable.

Ferris wonders if he is the only one who sees it.

Supper is served at midnight. Ferris has not danced himself, pleading injury, although he is forced to claim some sort of training accident before he is asked to regale the assembled company with the actual, far less honourable tale. Forthing, on the other hand, has become almost the most desired partner of the evening, thanks to Princess Charlotte’s favour. Conscious of the absurd breed of envy that watching Forthing take up hand after hand has wrought in him, Ferris turns his eyes away instead and charges himself with engaging as many wealthy gentlemen and ladies as he can in conversation in the hopes of soliciting larger donations to their cause. Laurence is especially helpful in this, knowing as he does many of them and able to make the appropriate introductions: Ferris is especially pleased to at last meet Sir Edward Howe, who seems perfectly content to be used as a figurehead. “I am no politician at all,” he says, over a glass of Chateau Latour, “but I cannot deny my dear friend Perscitia, nor, of course, Temeraire,” he adds, “I can only hope the Prince Regent will not have my head.” He makes a wry face, as though this possibility were only a mere inconvenience.

Ferris has forgotten, or at least let slip to the very back of his mind, to worry that he might encounter anyone who knows him from outside of the Corps, until he is seated gingerly on an uncomfortable chair with a plate of roast chicken in front of him, and someone behind his right shoulder says, as though in surprise: “Oh, I do beg your pardon, Lady Seymour…”

The chicken catches in his throat and he almost chokes; he turns his head aside to cough away the discomfort only to look back up into the eyes of—not his mother, as expected, but his eldest brother.

“Albert.” He struggles to rise from his chair, his back screaming at him in protest.

“Henry.” Lord Seymour is tall and lean and grim-faced, his auburn hair thinning a little already at the crown of his head. He does not look at all pleased to see his wayward little brother.

Ferris has never really known a father; he remembers only vaguely a quiet, pale but kind-eyed man who had refused to let the doctors cut out the ugly growth bulging from his abdomen and had slipped away in the night not long after his third oldest son had left home for the Corps. Albert, almost ten years Ferris’ senior, had been the master of the house from then on, and the closest thing Ferris had to a societal role model, even if not necessarily a familial one. Ferris had always been closer with Richard, who was nearer to him in age and more outgoing, more adventurous—he, Ferris has often thought, might have made the better aviator. They have also two sisters, long since married and moved out of the house, but Ferris cannot even picture their faces, anymore.

“Will you take my seat?” Ferris asks, breathlessly, “I prefer to stand in any case.”

“No, I thank you,” Albert says, and Ferris realises belatedly that he is his brother is not alone; the current Lady Seymour is standing behind him, wearing a gown not quite as daringly cut as most he had seen that night. Albert, Ferris thought, even as he stood there feeling like a beetle pinned to a board, would not approve of the latest style, since it would put on show certain areas of his wife which he no doubt felt entitled to keep only for himself.

“Lady Seymour,” he says, and bows; to his surprise she smiles faintly at him.

“Good evening, Henry. Are you well?”

Ferris is aware he is sweating; he must look ridiculous. “Yes—that is, I am a little battered, but it is nothing, only it has given me an aversion to chairs, would you like it?”

She looks to the chair, and then back to him, and then to her husband. “Thank you,” she says at last, when there are no objections from either quarter, and takes his seat.

“We thought you were in Edinburgh.” Albert’s hands are locked behind his back, his elegant black evening coat studded with silver buttons.

“I am—I mean, I was, of course—” Ferris swallows and dares a quick glance over his brother’s shoulder. “Is mother…?”

“No, she did not accompany us. It is a long journey, in the dead of winter, and she is no longer a young woman.” Albert’s tone is cold, accusatory; Ferris flinches.

“But I think she would like you to come to her, Henry, if you had time to visit,” Lady Seymour says, giving her husband the sort of look which is readable only between husbands and wives.

“Is she unwell?” Ferris asks, his heart sinking like a stone.

“Not unwell… exactly.” She sits side-saddle on the chair with her hands clasped in her lap, ignoring Ferris’ half-eaten plate. “But she has the tendency to forget things, occasionally, and she will sometimes ask for you as though you were still at home.”

“Eleanor,” Albert warns, but Ferris hardly hears him.

The last time he had been at Heytham Abbey, his mother had hardly been able to bring herself to speak to him, doing so in only the barest terms and when absolutely necessary. It had been Albert who had told him in no uncertain terms that he had disgraced the family. They had not insisted that he leave, since he had nowhere else to go and they had been somewhat distracted at the time by the need to protect their land against French raiding parties. But in the end, once his aid with that protection was no longer required, Ferris had not been able to bear the silent censure from them all, and had banished himself anyway, first to London, and then to New South Wales. Eleanor had been unapologetically cold to him at the time, and had used his misfortune as further reasoning why she ought not send her own third son, the optimistically named Alexander, to Loch Laggan at the age of seven. As far as Ferris knows, she had got her way in the end; Alexander would be nine or ten by now, and Ferris had not seen him during Guinevere’s training, nor seen his name on any of the lists.

He found it difficult to imagine his mother, who had always been a most all-encompassing presence in his life, as anything less than the way he remembered: effusive, opinionated and shrewd, not unkind but conscious at all times of the opinions of the world; it was just those qualities that had made it so difficult for her to accept what she believed he had done, no matter how hard he tried to explain. The idea that she might somehow forget it all was impossible. It was one thing to be forgiven out of either understanding or the healing benefits of time; quite another to stroll back into his childhood home as though the door had not been slammed behind him as he left, and pretend it had not happened.

“I… I can ask for a day or two of leave, while we are here,” Ferris says. It would be easier to visit Weymouth from London at least, than from Edinburgh, and perhaps Vivi could take him, if she were not otherwise needed…

“There is no need,” Lord Seymour interrupts them, looking sternly at his wife. “The fits are hardly predictable; I would much rather not agitate her unnecessarily.”

Eleanor sighs. “But Albert—”

“No, let us not—I must insist, the doctor said to avoid any upset.” He shakes his head, and when Ferris meets his eyes, his expression does not change. Ferris feels twelve years old again, under that steely gaze.

“I understand,” he says, shrinking. He wants to be somewhere, anywhere else, but he can not just turn and walk away; he does not know what to do.

“By God Ferris, if you are not going to have any shame in abandoning me for hours, you might as well have saved a place for me.”

Oh, Christ. If he would have liked to disappear before, Ferris would now welcome a well-timed portal into hell.

“Lord and Lady Seymour, Captain Forthing,” he says. “Captain Forthing, my brother, Lord Seymour, and his wife Eleanor.” He stumbles over the introduction, disoriented, very conscious of the way Forthing is leaning over his shoulder.

“Captain Forthing.” Albert nods acknowledgement. His manner is not in the least welcoming.

“My Lord.” Forthing bows. “I do apologise for interrupting, it must be quite some time since you have all seen each other.”

Ferris would quite like to close his eyes but cannot; he dares not look away from what feels like an oncoming, deadly collision. He looks at Forthing instead, trying to indicate with nothing but his eyes that they should quit this particular field as soon as can possibly be managed; Forthing, predictably, does not give him the chance.

“Captain Forthing,” Eleanor says, with some genuine interest and not a little jealousy, Ferris thinks: “You are quite the belle tonight, it appears. It is almost all anyone can talk about. Tell me, how did you come to be so well acquainted with their royal highnesses?”

Forthing is either not aware, or simply able to ignore the veiled breed of insult behind those words, the suggestion that someone who otherwise appears to have no family or other suitable connection must be beneath royal attention. “I have only met the Princess for the first time to-night, My Lady,” he explains, “but Ferris and I fought alongside Prince Leopold during the war, didn’t we, Henry? In Russia,” he goes on, apparently perfectly content to continue this line of preposterous overstatement. “Their highnesses are most interested in assuring the continued vitality of the Corps, and there has been much to discuss.”

Ferris is struck dumb; his brother and sister-in-law are looking at him quite differently, all of a sudden, and it is all he can do not to protest in the most uncertain terms and drag Forthing away, with drunkenness for his excuse. Forthing’s gaze, however, is steady, his tone genial, with only the very slightest edge in his voice that suggests he might well be making a point. The effects of the champagne have long since dwindled.

“We were fellow lieutenants back then, of course,” Forthing continues, in the face of their stares and Ferris’ desperate look, “although not officially, since the Admiralty had still not still not gone to the trouble of correcting their egregious error: naturally, once we had driven Bonaparte out of Moscow and chased him all the way back across the continent, they were falling over themselves to issue him a pardon, or look like fools.”

“But not a captaincy,” Albert says, pointedly, and for the first time Ferris feels his own shame flicker like a burgeoning flame given air, into something that might be anger. As though his brother has ever had to earn a promotion in his life: everything he has is thanks to the opportunity of birth and nothing more. He has never been aloft, never used a weapon against another a man, or seen a man die under fire, or even stepped foot outside of the country that has created the system which allows him to look down on those disadvantaged for the crime of not being born to a Lord, or even just not being born first.

“All to my advantage, I assure you,” Forthing says, the edge of his crooked mouth twisting upward. Ferris is used to this effect by now, but he can see Eleanor shrink back from it, disturbed. “Admiral Granby wanted him for his first officer; it was the fight of my life to have your brother for my crew, sir, and I undertook it gladly, for I would have no other. Now we fly together on my Guinevere, as I am sure you know, and I would not exchange him for anyone. Henry is a credit to you, and I hope you will never pay any mind to any blackhearted son of a knave who might ever tell you otherwise.”

“Captain,” Ferris chokes out, unable to take it anymore.

When Forthing finally turns to look back at him, there is a wild, exultant look in his eyes. “Quite right, Ferris, thank you.” To Lord Seymour he says, “I had intended to make sure Guinevere is quite settled long before now, but I have been so caught up... I hope you will excuse me, My Lord. A great pleasure to meet you at last. Ferris? Are you coming?”

It is ice cold outside compared to the heat of the ballroom, but Ferris can hardly feel it. “You…” he gasps, when he can finally gather the wherewithal to take breath long enough to speak, “...are an uncivilised, bold-faced liar, a… a provincial mountebank—”

Forthing stifles the rest of the insult with his mouth, which in a way is fortunate, because Ferris had been struggling to find another word which might be truly able to convey the depth of feeling he had intended.

He has quite lost his sense of where they are; they had found their way back to the gatehouse but not made it so far as the dragons’ banqueting field before Ferris had dragged Forthing by the sleeve behind a conveniently shadowed column. “On the contrary,” Forthing growls against Ferris’ lips, which sends a hot rush of blood straight to his groin, “I think I finally understand what you people call civility. It is like a game, where no one will tell you the rules for fear of breaking them, and yet they break them themselves in so many malicious little ways. Would it not be so much simpler to just hit each other?”

“Brute,” says Ferris, breathless once again but for an entirely different reason.

“What if I am? Surely that is all the way better than to be a lily-handed peacock, with as much usefulness as… as…”

“Don’t stop.” Forthing’s coat is getting rumpled, but Ferris no longer cares.

Forthing’s teeth scrape the underside of his jaw. “If I had known you would like me insulting your brother so much, I would have done it sooner.”

“I don’t like it,” Ferris lies, and shudders. “But you do it… very well.”

Forthing grunts into his neck, a sound which might have been a muffled laugh. Ferris thinks he would be quite happy to let this go on, despite the cold, despite the possibility of any man or dragon catching sight of them through the dark, regardless of any risk, if only he could hear that sound again every day for the rest of his life.

“You should go back in,” he says instead, with a great effort, and pulls away. His back is one large ache, and it has taken him this long to really notice. “I will see to Vivi, and I did promise Temeraire I would come out to see him.”

“Go back there?” Forthing makes a disgusted face. “I was going to suggest we leave, instead. And continue this,” he adds, pointedly, with a hand going to cup Ferris’ head behind the ear. “In private.”

“Christ.” Ferris heaves a breath. “Ned, you have to go back. Eleanor is right, you know, they are all talking about you. We cannot simply disappear, people will notice—besides, you are doing more than anyone could have expected to advance the cause. This event may well pay for a new pavilion in London and Edinburgh, and you will have a path of introduction to almost anyone of note you could imagine. The Prince Regent himself, if you like, although likely not if you repeat that ridiculous story about fighting arm in arm with Leopold to anyone else.”

“I did not say arm in arm,” Forthing protests. “I did not lie at all, in fact, for all your name-calling, I would never lie to a Lord, and I would swear to it all in court, so there.”

Once again the air feels as though it has been struck from Ferris’ lungs. He manages a strangled sort of laugh, as though he does not remember that all to which Forthing simply cannot be referring. “Then let us hope you do not have to,” he says. He hesitates, only one moment more, before forcing himself to step away. “Go make a name for yourself, Captain,” he says. “In a year or two, Leopold will be calling for your flag.”

Forthing snorts. “I think I would rather die honourably in battle,” he says, pulling back his shoulders as though preparing to do just that.

Ferris grins at him. “Well,” he says, stepping away into the darkness. “Look at it this way: in a few years, you will be able to say that once you danced with the Queen of England.”

Chapter Text

“I cannot make speeches, Emma… If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me.”

– Emma, Jane Austen (1815)

“I know this will sound a tad bloody self-interested, coming from me, but I do wish Laurence were here.” Granby groans stiffly as he sinks into a camp chair. “He would have a much better idea of how to deal with these stiff-jawed navy fellows.”

It is a pleasant night, and most of the captains in the Long Lake covert have chosen to spend the evening outside with their dragons. The crew has lit a fire for comfort and cooking in Guinevere’s clearing, and both she and Iskierka are making excellent eating of a brace of seals before it is time for Vivi to begin her solitary night-time patrol.

“Don’t sell yourself short, sir,” Ferris says, handing Granby a soup bowl. “No one can say you aren’t doing what you can with what you have.”

The soup is good; the covert might not have more than a few dozen dragons, after the disastrous effects of the plague which had had its beginnings here in Nova Scotia, and most of those beasts remaining are only courier weight, but the staff are as friendly, helpful and conversational as any Ferris has encountered in the world, and the food is for the most part excellent, although he is always careful not to ask too many questions about the provenance of the ingredients.

“Yes, it is just a shame that what we have is four thousand miles of coastline and an entire ocean to patrol, not to mention the inland routes, no matter what that bastard Cochrane says,” Granby mutters. “Admiral Broke I think sees it now, after I have spent the better part of a year hammering it into their heads, but that blue-eyed bastard wouldn’t recognise a Tuga marine until he was right up his arse.” He sighs and takes a deep swallow of the soup straight from the bowl, since he does not have hands enough to hold it with one and use a spoon with another. “You did not hear that, ensign,” he adds, speaking across the fire to Fox, who is doing busy-work nearby precisely so that he might be able to overhear something he probably ought not.

“No sir.” Fox grins.

“I do not see why the Portuguese cannot just build their own city, somewhere else,” Iskierka huffs, after crunching down the last of the seal fins, which are reportedly the best part. “It is not as though there were not plenty of room on this continent. Most of it seems to be just miles and miles of forest with nothing in-between. And if they do like to take this city, they might go about it more quickly, so we may have some fighting.”

“From your mouth to the devil’s ears,” Granby mutters.

“They are afraid of you, I expect,” Guinevere says, diplomatically, and Iskierka visibly preens. “And our navy, and we do have the more defensible position.”

“I would feel a great deal better about our position if we had some idea of their numbers,” says Granby. “But for that we need to know where they are, and for that I think the combined aerial forces of Europe would be hard pressed to say for sure.”

“Any more luck negotiating with the natives?” Forthing asks. He is eating informally in shirt and suspenders, his feet up on a sawn-off tree stump. He is in better health now, Ferris finds, that he does not worry day and night about Guinevere, and he is both eating and sleeping better as a result. He also has more seniority, now that they are no longer under the command of a formation leader, and Ferris finds that it suits him as well.

The situation in Britain is less dire, for dragons, now that it is summer, and somehow they had got through that dreadful year-long winter without losing a beast who was not already very old or considerably weakened by the dragon-sickness. But the famine continues everywhere, abated only by regular shipments of rice and other food from China. The cattle herds are only just now beginning to recover, and the price of beef is still breathtakingly prohibitive.

No one on the crew had been upset to be sent out of the country: Ferris thinks the government would send all the dragons here, for some relief, if they were not so concerned that King João might turn his attention northward to a weakened and unguarded nation.

“No.” Granby shakes his head. He has been trying to recruit some of the local ferals, or at least those who seem to have some association with the native Mi'kmaq people, to the cause of patrolling the interior in search of the Portuguese incursion, but his overtures so far have not been sufficiently persuasive. “You can hardly blame them,” he says now, sounding dispirated, “after those Naskapi fellows came off so much worse after aligning themselves with Bonaparte, and coming all the way to Europe only to be shot up and sent back without anything to show for it. Some of ‘em never made it back at all, since there aren’t any fleet of transports waiting around to take them, and have had to make a go of it in the alps. So it don’t much matter what we offer them here, even for a little patrolling, they are perfectly content with their lot and only getting increasingly frustrated by our interference.”

“Temeraire would talk ‘em of out of the trees, if he were here,” Forthing says. “No offense meant, sir.”

“No, you are perfectly right, and don’t think I haven’t thought it a dozen times. To my point, I dream on in vain.”

“Oh, we do not need Temeraire at all.” Yellowish smoke curls out of Iskierka’s nostrils when she snorts aloud. “He would only make a great mess of things by being political, or else just complain about all the patrolling.”

“Like you have been doing, every day since we got here, you mean?” Granby raises his eyebrows at her.

“Well.” She stretches out in her place, undeterred by this perfectly reasonable criticism. “It is boring, flying around all day without seeing anything interesting, or finding even a single battle. Isn’t it?” she asks Guinevere, who at perhaps a fourth of her size barely stands as high as Iskierka’s shoulder. “I suppose it is even more boring, at night.”

Vivi, whose nature is such that she has never complained about anything in her life, but would also never want to argue with the flag dragon, shifts uncomfortably. “Well… I have never been in a battle,” she says. “So I do not know what they are like, or if I would especially like to find one.”

“You will,” Iskierka promises. “A battle is the most splendid of all things, especially if you can win a prize. That is like a ship, or sometimes another dragon, if you can get them boarded, but that is not nearly as good.”

“No one is going to take any prizes,” Granby sighs, with the air of someone who has repeated himself ad nauseum on the subject. “The Portuguese have not actually made war with us as yet, and I certainly do not have the authority to start one—the orders are to find where the army is, if it is here at all, and let the navy decide how best to proceed.”

“I thought once you were the admiral we would be the ones giving the orders,” Iskierka grumbles. Ferris hides a smile behind his bowl.

“Vice Admiral Cochrane outranks me dear, as you well know—more’s the pity. It is not like it is in Europe, you know; the presence of the Corps here is little more than a stop on the courier circuit, and the only reason we are here is in case the Tugas decide to ship their aerial companies over, which I think they would scarcely do, but what do I know?” Granby makes a frustrated gesture with his hooked arm. “As far as Cochrane is concerned, I am a peasant who has climbed far above my allotted station.”

“It is quite dark now, Edward,” Vivi chirps, turning her head to nudge Forthing’s chair a little. “Ought we not start our patrol?”

“That girl of yours is sweet as milk,” Granby says to Ferris. He has followed him into his room, where Ferris is strapping on his harness. “Not that I would ever exchange Iskierka, of course,” he adds.

“Of course.”

“But Forthing is a lucky bastard. The best night flyer we’ve ever had and amiable to a fault? Is it not almost unfair to have that much good fortune at once?”

“One might argue that he deserves some,” Ferris says, carefully, tightening his straps. “After his parents abandoned him to a foundling house, and then being shipwrecked, marooned, trapped under a rockslide, shot in the mouth…”

“Well, all right, but we were all shipwrecked and marooned, that don’t count.” Granby has to sit on the edge of the cot, or make the tiny room uncomfortably crowded. The Corps barracks are rustic in the North American station; the offer has been extended for Granby and Forthing to stay at the dockyards where they are just now building Admiralty House, but it has been politely refused. Granby instead has two captain’s rooms with the wall partially knocked down to make one large, not that he uses it very much. The barracks are only made of wood, which at least made taking out the wall easier, but it does not have the feel of permanent military accommodation, and particularly not with Iskierka anywhere nearby.

“Henry,” Granby says now, in a strange tone that makes Ferris look up from checking his buckles. It might seem strange to the other officers, that the Admiral chooses to spend time in the company of another man’s first lieutenant, but Ferris does not comment on it; he is pleased to know that the difference in rank has not really changed things between them, at least. Sometimes it is just like they are fellow crewmates again, before he had had to give up the hope of further advancement. And it has the added advantage of making Forthing a little jealous, which Ferris really does not mind at all.

“Sir?”

“Henry,” Granby says again, as though with some effort, “I hope you will not think me interfering…”

Ferris sighs. “That may depend on whether or not you intend to interfere.” Harness secured, he leans back against the wall. He has half expected this since they had arrived in Halifax two weeks ago. He has caught Granby looking at him, at him and Forthing, when they are looking over maps, when they are eating, when they occasionally play cards together as a group. Most captains might not include their lieutenants in strategy discussions or even casual social conversations with their senior commanding officer, but Ferris knows that if he were not there, it would only be awkward. Left alone, Forthing and Granby are painfully polite to one another, but Ferris being there allows for levity, for an occasional joke, for complaint. For Granby to call the chief commander a bastard. For either of them to speak openly in their informal languages, which are much closer to each other than either of them are to Ferris’ own, without fear of judgement. For as long as it helps to keep the peace, Ferris is perfectly happy to be the grease between the wheels. He is not doing anything differently. But still. He sees Granby looking.

“With Forthing. Is it…” Granby grimaces, teetering on the edge of the words he might perhaps prefer to use, but finds indelicate to speak aloud, even to a friend.

“Just come out and say it John,” Ferris sighs. “Yes, we are fucking.”

Granby makes a face. “Oh, for God’s sake, I know that. A blind, drunken fiddler could see that. At least one who knows what to look for.”

Ferris feels pinkness rise in his face. “Well,” he says, now wishing he had not said anything—after all, he had all but confessed the whole, that long-ago day in Granby’s office, or he would not have admitted it now. “What, then?”

Granby fixes him with a look. “Is it more than that?” he asks, right out. “Is it… that is, is there anyone else? That young rifleman you have, Archer? He has a look like he’d cut straps for you, sometimes.”

“John!” It is Ferris’ turn to fold up his face. “Do not be ridiculous, the boy is seventeen years old if he’s a day—and he certainly does not look at me in any kind of way—”

“Oh, he does, but the fact that you have not noticed rather supports my point, I think.”

“I don’t believe you have actually made a point yet—”

“Do you love him? Forthing, I mean, not Archer.”

Ferris stares. “What?”

Granby actually looks pitying, which is almost worse than censure might have been. “I only ask because if you do not… I am afraid it will not… that it may not end well, whatever it is. He may well decide that it is better to have nothing at all, than to know you will not return his feelings.”

“His—?” Ferris cannot credit what he is hearing. His stomach drops. “Has he—he has not—said anything to you…?”

“Henry, you cannot tell me you do not know. Have you not seen the way he looks at you?”

It is not especially warm in the room, but heat is flaring all the way up Ferris’ neck, lighting up his freckles. “It is not—not like that,” he says, holding up his hands as though in self-defence. “Not for him. It is not like you and—” he catches himself, since he had not meant to inadvertently reveal what he knows, what Granby no doubt already knows that he knows, but Granby only looks back at him without reaction, so he barrels on, “—he was married. He has a son. He would have married a Russian peasant woman, if Captain Dyhern hadn’t made her a better offer.”

“I heard about that.” Granby’s lips twitch. “I don’t actually think he would have done it, by the by. Remember when I almost married an Incan Empress?”

Ferris swallows. “You did not want to,” he protests. He feels suddenly desperate for fresh air. “It is hardly the same.”

“You think Forthing would still marry her now?” Granby asks, one eyebrow raised, his good elbow resting on his knee. “Or anyone else? Would you stay, if he did?”

Ferris has no answer. He wants to say yes, of course he would stay. He is not in the crew only because of Forthing—at least, not anymore. The crew is his, as much as it is Forthing’s. He would stay for them, and for Fox, and most especially for Guinevere; if nothing else he would stay because he has no other options. But then he imagines what it would be like, to fly back into port each day only for Forthing to go and spend the night with a woman—probably redheaded, if Fox can be any guide—and come back in the morning, smiling, contented, smelling like her. Would Forthing still want Ferris in his bed, then? If he loved someone else? Forthing is not dishonourable, so Ferris thinks not. Could Ferris bear it, either way? He thinks about the way his ribs had seemed to shrink inward in his chest when he had watched Forthing dance with Princess Charlotte, and they had been barely touching. He already knows he could not live that way, every day of his life.

Granby says nothing, only watches him think, until Ferris realises how long he has been standing there. “I have… patrol,” he says, hoarsely, reaching for his flying hood.

Granby nods and gets up from the cot. “Come and see me, after,” he says, and his tone carefully does not acknowledge the way Ferris’ head is now spinning on its axis. “If you should like to talk about it further.”

He does not, in fact, speak to Granby about Forthing again, and does his best to avoid being alone with either man if at all possible, if only to avoid such a conversation. It is hard enough to continue as though they had not spoken at all, especially when he apparently can no longer look at Forthing without an expression on his face so distressed that Forthing has to ask him more than once if he might have eaten some bad seal meat.

Granby has it wrong, Ferris thinks. Granby hardly knows Forthing at all, for all they have been through literal fires and storms and crossed multiple continents together; he has never tried to get to know him on any kind of deeper level. Of course Ferris had not either, at the time, but he likes to think he has a better idea of the man now than Granby does. It bothers him some that Granby had not actually denied speaking to Forthing on the subject, but on the other hand he cannot imagine Forthing ever doing such a thing, even if what Granby says is true, so he does his best to put it out of his mind, and tries not to notice when young Archer, the rifleman, trips over a box of loose bullets after Ferris has just walked past.

They patrol the coastline for four more weeks, occasionally following any river that might be wide enough to admit anything the size of a frigate, in the hopes of seeing signs of a landing party, and find nothing. Granby is perhaps too occupied with the fruitlessness of their search, and trying to argue with the Vice Admiral to let them send their scouting parties further inland, to chase Ferris down again for the purposes of continuing their conversation.

In the fifth week, the weather takes a poor turn. Iskierka takes a bad tack into a gust and is almost thrown by the strong storm winds into the side of a cliff, after which Granby calls off the scouting. “But,” Iskierka argues, while the surgeons look over her wings for swollen joints, “if we stop, that is when they are sure to appear somewhere,” and Ferris cannot help but feel that she might be right. Fortunately or not, it is not his place to argue.

Granby stamps back into the covert from Halifax the second night of the storm, having been carried despite Iskierka’s objections by one of the smaller courier beasts, and throws his gloves down on the table in the common room where Forthing, Ferris and some of the other officers are sitting, reading, playing cards and generally staying dry. “Well, I have had dinner with the Marquis of Aguiar,” he says, with colour in his cheeks. “He just happens to be in port on business—not staying, of course, merely passing through—and Cochrane had the dastardly idea to host him in case he might let something slip after a glass or two—well, not only did he not let anything slip other than a cheekful of spittle at every opportunity, but I believe the bastard knew exactly what it is I am here for, and did not hesitate to let me know it. The man was mocking me, I tell you. ‘Such terrible weather we are having, sinhor’,” he says in imitation, affecting what might to a desperate ear be called a Portuguese accent. “‘It must be just terrible for flying; tell me, have you been able to see much of the countryside about here? I hear it is something to behold’.” He falls heavily into a chair that one of the midwingmen has hurriedly exited for him. “They are here,” he says, with the air of a man about to lose his mind. “They are bloody well here, and we are looking in the wrong god-damned place.”

“What did Cochrane say?” Captain Whittaker asks, his cards forgotten.

“Not very much,” Granby says, in little more than a growl. “I have every hope of his having an apoplexy before morning, but the Marquis was very careful not to say anything that could actually be answered, no matter how much wine he drank; that old man might as well be made of stone.”

“I beg your pardon, Admiral, I meant: did he give us permission to expand the patrols?”

Temeriare’s former ensign Allen, now one of Iskierka’s officers, hands Granby a shot of whiskey; he downs it in one and slams the glass down so hard on the table in front of him that it cracks. “Yes,” he says. “We start scouting the inland routes tomorrow.”

Forthing stands up, letting his cards fall out of his hand. “Better yet,” he says. “We can start tonight.”

Two weeks later, Guinevere is flying along the road west from Fredericton in almost pitch darkness. The clouds are thick, blocking out the moon and stars, and the wind has picked up again, after a few days of more forgiving air, and even Ferris is having to grip onto the harness with both hands to keep from being pitched off whenever they have to adjust to the updraft. It is a lot harder when you cannot see where you are going, but this crew has trained in the dark almost from its conception, and until now there have been no real difficulties.

He calls back to Fox, stationed at the base of Vivi’s tail, and waits until he hears back an affirmative: “All’s well, sir!” The others follow, the topmen, Shepherd, Archer, Inman and Goom, and the bellmen, both in fact women who had been chosen for their excellent night eyes: Cressida Carter and Jane Devereux. That is all of them, nine people and one dragon dragging their way through what seemed like an unrelenting black gale.

They have left both the harnessmen and little Browne behind at the covert. Browne had not been pleased to be left behind, but they do not need a lookout when all they are doing is looking out, and the boy is so small and light that Forthing is understandably concerned about losing him in the howling dark without anyone noticing. They have already gone further than planned, and likely now will not make it back until well into the following day even if they do not stop to rest, but there had been some signs of heavy use along the road that had given them reason to hope. Now, Ferris thought, they are straining the limits of what might be possible.

He climbs across Vivi’s shoulder to Forthing’s position, a dangerous risk in these conditions even with carabiners, but he does not want to have to shout his concerns aloud where the rest of the men will hear. “We must be nearing the border by now, sir,” he says, when he is close enough to speak with some discretion.

“If we have not flown right over it,” Forthing replies, in grudging agreement. Ferris can barely make out so much as his outline in the dark, but from what he can see, the man’s shoulders look stiff, his face grim. “No one is ever sure where the damn thing is, by all accounts.” He clicks his teeth and rubs furiously at his eyes; the strain of trying to see some kind of sign amid a rolling sea of nothing is telling on all of them. “You don’t suppose there is any chance they would risk camping on the other side?”

Ferris knows there is none. It has been discussed, just as every other possibility has. From what they have been told, the people of the neighbouring state of Massachusetts would react poorly to any incursion, particularly the contingent on the eastern side who have been trying to push through a secession for the last ten years. Britain has, for now, a tolerably amicable relationship with the government of the United States, but the Massachusians are no great friends of Tecumseh or supporters of his presidency, and have been proving increasingly isolationist of late. The area is also much more densely populated than the wilds over the border in New Brunswick; surely it would be even harder for the Marquis to conceal his troops there.

“Vivi,” Forthing calls, leaning forward; she is not nearly so large that they would normally carry a speaking-trumpet, although it might have come in useful on this particular occasion. “I am sorry love, we must have come too far. Will you find somewhere sheltered where you can come down for a spell?”

“Oh,” Vivi says, both disappointed and, Ferris thinks, a little relieved; she has been doing hard flying now for hours while also trying to scan every inch of ground with her night eyes, since she is now the only one left at all capable of seeing anything beyond a few feet. “Very well. Where—”

“Sir! Captain Forthing sir! I think I see something!”

Both Forthing and Ferris look back, incredulously, although of course there is nothing to look at, only a woman’s disembodied voice straining through the buffeting wind to try and reach them.

“What is it, Mr Carter?” Forthing shouts back to the belly netting.

“A light! Up ahead, just—well, I am not sure of our direction anymore—”

“Oh, I see! I see it!” Vivi catches a gust and climbs almost a hundred feet higher in a second, sending Ferris skidding back until he can grab onto one of his own lines for stability. “It is a house, I think, a big one.”

“Damn. It is probably a town,” Forthing grunts. “We have certainly gone too far; do not get any closer.”

“But what if it should be the Portuguese?” Vivi says, plaintively, banking away a little but not actually reversing course. “And we have come all this way, only to turn back again, and miss them?”

“She makes a good argument,” Ferris says, low, and hears Forthing’s grunt of frustration.

“They will not see me, Edward,” Vivi promises. “It is so very dark, and they do not have night fliers.”

“The Portuguese might have,” Forthing points out, “since they also had a share of the French eggs, and a bigger one, besides.” He sighs. “Ferris? What do you think?”

“Could be worth the risk, sir,” Ferris says. “If it’s just local people, they shan’t see us, and if they do see us, it probably is the Portuguese, and the effort of making it away shan’t be wasted.” He does not say that the most likely scenario is a waste of all the last two days of scouting in this direction; at least they will know, either way.

Forthing clears his throat. “Very well then. Quiet on board as we approach. Vivi, go only as near as you need to see what they are about, and then turn back West right away. Come down once we are well clear of the border, so you can rest, and then tomorrow we shall fly back to Long Lake.”

Vivi’s wings flutter in acknowledgement, and she readjusts her course. Ferris calls back the order for silence on board, and adjusts his carabiners again so that he can grip the harness over Guinevere’s right shoulder and watch as the light grows in size, and their approach gradually reveals what it is that they have found.

It is, as expected, a town.

But it is also an army.

“God above,” Ferris whispers to himself.

The lights are coming from the windows of a house which might better be called a small fortress, with great walls, a stable, and numerous outhouses. Around them and between the smaller brick residences along the town’s main road, for what appears to be at least a mile, are hundreds of tents, some large enough to fit a hundred men or more. Vivi lets herself be carried along on the wind, drifting closer, and just as they are reaching the limits of what Ferris would consider a sensible distance, the clouds part, and a little moonlight shines through. It is enough to illuminate, at only a slightly further distance from the house, the unmistakable hillock-like curves of sleeping dragons.

And there are dozens of them.

Ferris can hear Forthing cursing, despite his own orders about staying quiet.

There are not many people awake and moving yet, although they surely cannot be long now from sunrise. Some of those early risers, only just barely visible, are wearing military gear in the Portuguese style, but most of them are not. The house is flying a flag from one of its parapets, the colour leeched away by the dark, but narrow stripes and a circle made of stars can just be made out as it flaps violently to and fro in the wind.

“The fucking Americans,” Forthing exclaims, in a strangled voice. “So much for being unwelcome to outsiders—”

Suddenly, something falls on them from above. Guinevere shrieks and beats her wings desperately, trying to scramble away from the thick, sharp claws that are raking cruelly down her back. Ferris hears a scream, and something—someone—falls away, their safety lines sliced through, a dark shadow screaming and twisting as they tumble a mile or more to the ground below.

“Guns!” Ferris roars, half a second before the rifles start firing, loud and uneven. He draws his sword and starts hacking at the nearest talon, in the sensitive place between the joints; the dragon attacking them roars in fury and adjusts its grip, forcing Ferris to dive aside or be ripped to shreds himself by those claws. The beast is only bigger than Guinevere by perhaps a tonne; not even middleweight, but the claws are long, and sharp, and the thing is clearly bred for night flying. Overhead there are men shouting—“desce, desce!” and then answering shots being fired from above; Ferris hears cries of pain, but it is too damn dark and chaotic still to see who if any of their own men are hurt or killed.

“Edward!” Vivi is calling out, panicked, even as she tries to roll out of the way, to rip the claws that are raking her back and threatening to tear up her wings. “Edward!”

Forthing calls back to her, the words blown away by the gale before Ferris can make them out.

Protect the captain.

Ferris drags himself up, detangles his lines with a sharp flick of his hand, and climbs once more back up to Forthing’s position. His boots slip against Guinevere’s scales; they are slick with blood.

Vivi is trying to dive, but the larger beast has its grip on her still, and Ferris can hear approaching wing beats: more dragons. The alarm has been raised, and he has the vaguest sense of commotion on the ground below them, shouting, signal torches being lit. Cannons, he thinks, with a sudden lurch of real horror. After what they have seen, they will not be allowed to simply fly away. The Marquis’ army will surely stop at nothing to bring them down.

Forthing is aiming a pistol; just as Ferris reaches him he fires, and a leaping boarder is knocked back and over the side by the shot before the man can even land. “I have it!” Forthing shouts at Ferris, pulling out his other pistol from his belt. “Get this thing off her!”

Ferris hesitates only half a second, but Forthing has the right of it, this time. Standing in front of their best shot as a human shield will only keep Forthing alive until they are all either brought down by the approaching dragons, or blasted out of the air from below. Instead, he draws his own pistol and hands it over. Forthing reaches for it, meeting Ferris’ eyes with a tormented look. Ferris knows that whatever part of him is not just in fear of Guinevere’s life, is desperately worried instead about Fox. They had both seen the body fall. There is no time to make sure who it was.

“Go,” Forthing says, hoarsely, and brandishing one pistol in each hand steps back as far as he dares, preparing to knock back anyone else who tries to come at him from the air.

Ferris goes for the bombs.

They have not brought nearly as much ammunition as they could have, since no one had anticipated anything more than a light skirmish with the local ferals; travelling light had been considered a higher priority than being armed to the teeth, but at least they have not come entirely empty handed. He is moving so fast that he almost crashes into Devereaux, who has come up the side out of the belly-netting so that she can see what is going on. Her face is ghost white. “Stand ready,” Ferris calls to her, waving her back to her post. “We are going to roll; wait for a clear shot and aim for the head.”

“But how are we going to roll?” she asks, her hands trembling with hesitation over her carabiners. “Sir—”

“Just do it, Midwingman. Bombs for’ard!”

As she scurries back down the netting, he gathers both Shepherd and Archer and takes a spare rifle for himself. He has to shout his orders to be heard above the din; they have seconds, perhaps, before the approaching dragons make contact, and they are done. “The wing!” He points, indicating the exact area he wants them to hit. “Ready! Fire!”

It is practically impossible, in the midst of a gale, with Guinevere lurching to and fro under their feet, dodging shots from the enemy dragon’s crew, and with only a sliver of moonlight to see by, but three years of nightly drills are at last shown to have been worth the time and more: three shots hit home, just above the dragon’s wing-joint, and the beast roars in protest, listing to one side. Archer stumbles and is slow in reloading, but Ferris and Shepherd both have a new cartridge loaded in seconds, and two more shots ring out, this time with deadly accuracy. The wing bone shatters.

The enemy dragon lets out a sound of agony and pulls away, not releasing its grip, but in an attempt to escape the dreadful pain it hauls both itself and Guinevere backwards, rolling itself onto its back and giving them, for a split second, the higher ground.

The bombs fall, and burst with a flash and a thunderous noise against the dragon’s head. Its men cry out, too late; the claws detach, the beast hurls itself away, and Vivi is free at last. At Forthing’s distant, desperate urging, she gathers her tattered wings and, streaming blood, dives out of the sky and towards the miles and miles of forested wilderness below.

Midwingman Goom is lost, having been torn away from the harness in the first seconds of the dragon’s attack. Inman is also dead; they cut his body out of his straps, lie him down in the far corner of the cave, and cover his face with a handkerchief. Carter has somehow been hit by a stray bullet despite not having moved from the belly netting throughout the attack, but she is remarkably unbothered by it. “No, it is enough, sir,” she says to Ferris when he tries to press an extra bandage on her; she has rolled the leg of her trousers up the thigh to bind up her lower leg, and a spot of red is already starting to soak through. “It is not bad, I swear; let Vivi have it.”

There are not enough bandages. They have a single medical kit designed for a dragon, enough to patch up a bullet hole or a deep scratch until they could get to a surgeon to stitch them up. It is not nearly enough. Poor Guinevere is stretched out along the wall of the cave, panting, with blood leaking from a dozen wounds. They have packed the worst ones as well as they can, and the blood is sluggish, not spurting, so the wounds might not be fatal. At least, not immediately. In a covert, with better supplies, they might have patched her up and had her back in the air after a week or two of rest, but everything they have, they have already used.

They have come down in a thickly forested area perhaps two or three miles from the enemy camp. Only the thick clouds, the oncoming storm, and Vivi’s camouflage colouring had saved them long enough to get out of sight of their pursuers, but now they are trapped, in a shallow cave lined with animal bones and surrounded by gigantic trees and impossibly thick ground cover. The sun has come up, and Ferris can still hear wings beating overhead as the search party continues. They might not be found for weeks, with nothing to give them away, but they certainly would not be able to fly out, even if their dragon were in any state, and it is clear that she is not.

Forthing is sitting by her head, her chin leaning against his knees, speaking softly to her. Fox kneels beside his father, thankfully uninjured, but with silent tears tracking swollen lines down his cheeks as he strokes the dragon’s soft nose for what little comfort he can give.

Shepherd, Archer and Devereaux have made an effort to disguise the cave entrance with brush, and build up behind it a pile of all their remaining weapons, making them quick to hand, for what good that will do if the entire combined forces of the Portuguese and the local Massachusetts contingent come down on them. They look up at Ferris as he approaches with resigned, hopeless expressions. Archer is the youngest of them, after Fox. It is hard to believe he is a full year older than Ferris had been when he had been given his first third lieutenant’s position on the channel. It is a side effect of peace; less combat means less opportunity to prove oneself, fewer chances for field promotion, and the boys are taking their exams later than they had been, thirteen years ago. And yet, they all look almost absurdly young. Shepherd and Devereaux, Ferris cannot help noticing, are sitting very closely together.

“Good work, all of you,” Ferris says, knowing that it means very little in their current circumstances. “You are all a credit to your training.”

Devereaux, who had both left her post and tried to argue with him when he gave her orders, opens her mouth to protest, but he shakes his head at her. It had made little difference, in the end.

“Don’t suppose there’s any way out of this, is there, Mr Ferris?” Archer asks, doing his best to sound like he is not terrified. “Won’t the admiral miss us, if we are not back by tomorrow night?”

“They don’t know where we are, or how far we came,” says Shepherd, very low, staring out of a gap in the brush into the forest beyond. “It will take them weeks to find us, if ever… and that lot will have laid siege to Halifax by then.”

Ferris wishes he could tell the rifleman he is wrong, but the same thoughts have already occurred to him. “I would like all of you to rest and eat,” he says, glancing over at Carter to include her as well. “Take shifts watching the entrance. You can report to me,” he says, looking over his shoulder at Forthing. “Let the captain be, for now.”

“I don’t think I could eat, sir.”

“It is not up for debate, Mr Archer, it is an order. Devereaux, keep an eye on Cressida, will you? Tear up anything we have to use for dressings, as needed.”

He takes a biscuit for himself, putting it in his mouth and forcing himself to swallow, washing it down with a little water. Then he gathers himself, and goes to Forthing, because the longer he waits, the more difficult this part is going to be.

“Not now, Ferris,” the captain says, when Ferris puts a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Captain. I must speak with you.”

Forthing whirls on him, glaring. “Can you not see—”

“I do see. And I am sorry. But it cannot wait.”

“It’s all right, Pa,” Fox says, only a little tremble in his voice. “I’ll stay with her.”

Forthing looks desperately for a moment between Ferris, his son, and his dragon, but then his expression contorts, and he gets unsteadily to his feet. He is wearing only a waistcoat over his shirt; he has taken off his coat to give Vivi something a little softer to lie her head upon.

Ferris leads him out of the cave, through the small gap they have left in the brush cover, and far enough away from the entrance that they might not be heard by the others. He already knows Forthing will not like what he has to say, and he thinks it best the morale of the crew is not further damaged by listening to a row between their superior officers.

“Make it quick,” Forthing grunts. In the light, his trousers are covered in dragon blood, and there is a faint acidic odour in the air around him, all too familiar.

“Captain.” Ferris formally draws back his shoulders. “Under the circumstances I think you will agree it is of the utmost importance that we are able to get a message back to Long Lake and to Halifax. They need to know that we are here, and need rescue, and even more importantly, that the Portuguese are in league with the Americans.”

Ferris sighs heavily. “Yes, I know that, Ferris. It cannot be done. We are grounded. She cannot…” his voice catches, and he takes a shuddering breath.

“I know, sir. That is why we have to find another way. I propose we send someone with the message. On foot, or preferably on horseback—the Portuguese had stables; we could get in while they are distracted with looking for us, and steal a horse.”

Forthing stares at him as though he has lost his mind. Ferris cannot help thinking that this is perhaps why Laurence had never thought of Forthing as a particularly good lieutenant, even though he had never done anything that deserved censure. You couldn’t fault the man for sense, courage, loyalty, or martial skill, but there is a certain tendency to think only in parallel lines. Laurence likes people who can think laterally, who can see the unusual solutions. It was just Forthing’s poor luck that he could never see around the corners, but that is what he has Ferris for.

“On a horse?” Forthing demands, incredulous. “All the way to Halifax? It will take weeks! You will be lost, or eaten by bears—I assume you are nominating yourself for this insanity—”

“I am, sir,” Ferris says, thinking he might as well be in for a penny as well as a pound. “And I don’t propose going overland to Halifax, only so far as Saint John. I think I could manage that, from here; I will go south-east until I find the road, or failing that, the coast, and follow it the rest of the way. I’ve studied the maps; it will probably take three or four days—less, if it’s a good horse—and they will have a courier there, or at least a ship, to take the message the rest of the way. Four days in all to Halifax, and perhaps two days to get back, in company. With a day for contingencies, you only need to hold out here for a week.”

“Oh, very nice.” Forthing throws up his hands. “I see you have worked it all out perfectly. Nothing can go wrong.”

“A dozen things could and probably will go wrong,” Ferris counters, keeping his tone level. “But what choice do we have? What about Guinevere?”

Forthing’s mouth twists; he goes to turn away in denial, but Ferris catches him by his arm and holds him back. “She will die out here, Ned,” he says, hating the pain he knows he is causing but seeing no other path that will not cause still more. “No, listen to me—if it is not the Portuguese, or the wounds she has already taken, we cannot feed her, even with hunting. She will starve, slowly, and you will have to put a bullet in her head before long.” Forthing tries to shove him off, violently, a look of horror on his face; Ferris holds on, his fingers wrapped tightly in Forthing’s sleeve. “Then when she is gone, the rest of us will have to try and walk back, through enemy territory, in a land we do not know, terrain we do not understand. Some of us might make it. But Cressida cannot walk. Do we leave her behind? What if someone else gets hurt in the attempt? What if it is Peter? Would you leave him behind to die out here?”

Forthing’s face is red behind his beard, his eyes glinting and hard. He takes Ferris’ collar in his fist and shakes him. “Fuck you.” His hand is shaking. “How dare you say—fuck you, Henry.”

Ferris does not fight. He lets Forthing push him. He is momentarily afraid that he will have to duck an actual punch, but then, almost as quickly as it started, it is over. Forthing’s fury evaporates, his face crumples. Ferris takes his weight, to keep him from falling, and then his captain is sobbing into his shoulder. “I am sorry, Ned,” Ferris says, trying his best not to choke on the words. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”

Forthing’s face is buried in Ferris’ coat, the sound of his weeping muffled and hoarse and ugly. Ferris holds him, fighting back his own tears. He cannot break, himself. Not yet. He strokes his hand slowly between Forthing’s shoulderblades, for what little comfort it might give, and soaks in Forthing’s grief as though he might somehow absorb some of it, and leave him with less.

When it is over, Forthing lifts his head, red-eyed and exhausted. The lines across his forehead are so deep that they might as well have been cut into the skin. “I should go,” he says, very low. “I’m the captain.”

“You have to stay with her.” Ferris squeezes his shoulders. “Anyway, you have never even been on a horse. It has to be me.”

“No.”

The ferocity with which Forthing snaps the word surprises him, even now. He lets out a hard breath. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to die either, damn you.” Forthing glares at him again, blinking away wetness that falls into his beard.

“Who else would you send? Who else could you trust with this?”

Forthing has no answer. “What if they see you?” he asks instead, his voice hoarse. “If they catch you?”

In fairness, Ferris has no answer to that, either. “I will just have to make sure they don’t catch me,” he says.

“Christ, Henry…” Forthing shakes his head, and looks up for a moment to the sky as though it might yield any more sensible, less suicidal options. But there are none, and they both know it.

“Captain?” Ferris asks, with his heart in his stomach. “Do I have your leave?”

When Forthing looks back at him, it is a look Ferris has never seen before, or perhaps he has only seen it in a passing glance, or in the moments before sleep, or just after waking, or perhaps he sees it now only because he is still thinking about what Granby had said to him, all those weeks ago. Suddenly he is more afraid than he has been since the enemy beast fell on them out of nowhere in the dark. “Don’t—” he says, wanting to pull away, but Forthing holds him by the shoulder and does not let him go.

“No, you listen to me this time, for once.” Forthing takes a shuddering breath, then two. “If you do this, then I need you to remember—to know—”

“Ned, please—”

“Listen. I… I need you to understand… that just because your family… because they turned their backs on you, it does not mean you are disposable. It does not mean you are not valuable. That you are not… loved.”

Oh, God. Ferris does not want to hear this, not now, when he is about to throw himself on the proverbial sword. “I do know that,” he says, his heart racing.

“Do you?” Forthing’s eyes are desperate. “I somehow doubt it.”

For a moment they just stand there, under the canopy, dappled sunlight breaking through the thick cover of leaves and making dancing coloured patterns on Forthing’s bloodstained sleeves. Forthing seems to be waiting for Ferris to say something, anything else, but he cannot. He is afraid that if he does, he will lose the fortitude to leave the camp. To leave him.

“So go,” Forthing says, finally, looking wretched and broken, and looks away. “Take whatever you need. Just know that if you die out there, I shall never forgive you.”

Ferris reaches out before he knows exactly what he is doing. He only knows that he does not want to leave things like this. “Ned,” he says. “Please. I… I promise. If we both live through this, we will have this conversation. Just not now… not with all this…”

“I wish I could go with you,” is all Forthing says.

Ferris reaches up with one hand to wipe the tear tracks away from Forthing’s rough cheek with his thumb. “You need to stay with your dragon, Captain,” he says, low. “She is your responsibility. And you are mine.”

Chapter Text

“Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.”

― Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (1838)

In the end, stealing the horse is the easiest part.

He rubs dirt into his distinctive hair, and leaves the most obvious pieces of his uniform behind, so that from a distance he might be mistaken for a local. Then he goes on foot from the cave to the camp, alone. Forthing would have liked him to take one of the others: Shepherd perhaps, the oldest and most competent of their remaining officers after Carter, whom Ferris would have preferred, if she were not injured. But they both know he will have a better chance of going unnoticed without company. Forthing had not argued with him, only given him a desolate, resigned look, and pressed Ferris’ own reloaded pistol back into his hand.

He waits for night, despite his heightened sense of urgency; he is sure to be accosted if he is so bold as to walk into the enemy camp in broad daylight. He uses the time instead to do his own scouting: climbing trees and using Forthing’s glass to observe the men moving around the streets outside the main house, where the officers are most likely quartered. He finds a place where people are seemingly ducking into the forest to more conveniently relieve themselves, which will serve as an entry point, and more importantly his exit: a nondescript path that leads out of the camp, not too close to the road but not so distant that it will become impassable before he travels too far. Or so he can only hope.

When the first fires are lit, he pulls Fox’s brimmed flying cap down over his eyes and walks right into the heart of the Portuguese army.

He has been grappling all this time between the need for an excellent horse, the best of which will surely be stabled in the building behind the wall of the house, or an easier target from among the cavalry, less likely to be guarded or to be immediately missed. He has not yet come to a decision. Laurence or Tharkay would go for the house, he thinks, wryly. Forthing would tell him not to be a fool.

He listens to his inner Forthing, in the end; it is not worth being found out and chased down before he has even started his mission. He finds the nearest stand of cavalry horses to his exit point, predictably staked out on the other side of the camp from the dragon clearings, and starts needlessly moving things about to look busy, all while considering the options on display. He is no great judge of horseflesh, by any means, but at least he can ride; he and Richard had often galloped about the estate as boys, and he had spent more than one enlightening afternoon helping the grooms in the stables—thinking himself quite the little rebel until he had found out later that his mother had privately approved the experience.

A pair of soldiers pass behind him, laughing, and it takes a great effort of will to continue moving casually as though his heart has not jumped right into his throat. If someone tries to speak to him, the game is up.

Not enough time to be particular, he thinks. He makes his way toward the horse at the end of the line, a chestnut gelding with white socks on its hind legs. It is some American breed, broad-chested, with a short, elegant head and a yellow-brown mane. “Hullo, you fine fellow,” Ferris whispers, reaching out to stroke the warm flank. The horse snorts unhappily, smelling blood, or dragon, or possibly both, despite Ferris’ previous attempts to scrub his remaining clothes with dirt. He murmurs words of comfort, approaching carefully from the side to avoid being kicked or bitten. “There, now.” Under his soothing hand, the horse settles, and begins sniffing at him in search of food. He gives it the apple he has taken from a barrel on his way through the camp. “Would you like an adventure?” he asks.

Minutes later, he is riding through a foreign forest on a stolen horse wearing a stolen saddle, and by some miracle he is not actually running for his life. He even allows himself to feel pleased, victorious, even. Surely from here, it is only a matter of good navigation.

The difficulties begin to present themselves after perhaps the first hour, when the path starts to dwindle away to little more than a rude animal track, and the gelding has to pick its way through thick underbrush, between narrow trees packed tightly together, and over giant protruding roots. Ferris resists the temptation to push the horse to greater speed, knowing that if it injures itself he has risked his life thus far for nothing. He talks aloud to the horse instead, to keep himself from dwelling too hard on the magnitude of what he is up against. “You are very good,” he says, patting the smooth brown neck. “I expect you are used to this sort of thing. Aviators don’t walk or run much, you see. I think some people can get a little spoiled by always flying about, don’t you? I am Lieutenant Ferris of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps, by the by, but you may call me Henry. What should I call you?” He chuckles wryly to himself as he ducks a low branch. “Well, I am never likely to have a dragon of my own, so you might as well have the name I have saved for one. Would you like to hear it? It is Atlas.” He pretends to listen for a reply, clinging to the reins for the moment while the horse hops a tree trunk that has fallen over the path. “I know it is not in the usual vein, but I read a lot of Greek myths as a child. Besides, those classical names are falling out of style, now. Would you rather have Heracles? No? Atlas it is, then.”

He looks up, encouraged by the light of the moon coming through the trees. “At least there are fewer clouds tonight. The storm might be over, which means easier going for us. Of course it also makes us easier to find, so I will keep watch, but let me know if you smell any dragons coming, will you? Now let us see…”

He has taken the compass that is usually strapped to Guinevere’s harness, although he has to squint now to read it. He calculates they are going south, which is all to the good, but resolves to adjust eastward as soon as possible. He considers also, what to do if he finds a road before they reach the border with New Brunswick, wherever that is. Riding in the open seems an almost foolish risk, considering the Portuguese are still flying grids all over the forest in search of Guinevere and the crew, but plodding along like this it will take him forever to reach the port. He has promised Forthing no more than a week, but he is already starting to doubt his estimation; it may not be possible without putting the entire undertaking at considerable risk.

By morning, however, he is starting to think that he would give up one of his limbs for a road, no matter how wide or how exposed. They are moving too slowly. Twice, he has heard what he believes to be an aerial patrol, and has had to stop to ensure that their movement is not visible from aloft. He had used the time to get a better feel for their direction, and let Atlas rest, but he is painfully conscious of their snail’s pace. At one point they have to detour around a small lake, and he can feel his patience fraying like an old, rotting length of rope. He tries to sleep a little, but all he sees when his eyes close is Vivi on the ground, bleeding and in pain, and Forthing’s pale, unhappy face at that last moment before they parted. It does not make for a proper rest.

He is forced to abandon the track altogether when it begins to bend westward; he is afraid of going too far south, being cut off by the St Croix river and having to track back up along the coast. Instead he coaxes Atlas into the forest proper, looking for the most passable areas while checking the compass to make sure they keep at least a semblance of the right direction. “My Kingdom for a road,” he mutters aloud, when it begins to creep toward noon. He eats and drinks a little from his supplies while he rides.

For a while the area seems to open up a little, and Atlas is able to go from a trot to a light canter, but it does not last long, and soon they are back to the same plodding pace. He can feel the horse tiring. “Just a bit further,” he says, knowing he is being foolish; he is too used to communication with more sentient creatures. “A little further, and then we can rest a while.”

When they find a narrow stream, he dismounts and lets Atlas drink, while he tries not to give in to despair. He has thoroughly underestimated the terrain; it is too dense, the trees too low and impassable, and even with the compass he is afraid he has gotten them hopelessly lost. Once again he tries to sleep, covering his face with his arm against the sunlight, and once again sees only the kinds of images that chase sleep away.

Since he has no other ideas, no other options but to continue on the original course, he mounts up again just as dusk begins to fall and continues on. Atlas is strong and uncomplaining, stopping only now and again to navigate a broad stream or narrow passage between trees, but at one particularly gnarly point Ferris is forced to dismount and guide him by the reins. “Now I am the one helping you,” he says, shaking his head. “Forthing was right after all, I am a simpleton. You must promise not to say anything to him about this.”

They ride until the canopy grows so thick and the night so dark that there is not enough light for Atlas to see where to put his hooves, then they rest again. There has still been no sign of any road.

They have been riding an hour or so on the second morning, having travelled perhaps a fifth of the way Ferris had hoped to cover by now, when the horse begins to shy and shake his head, occasionally making low harrumphing sounds. “What is it, Atlas?” Ferris asks, reaching down to pat him for reassurance. He scans the underbrush for snakes or rats, but it is only thick piles of vegetation and fallen leaves, as usual. This bit of forest seems the same to him as every other place they have passed. “I don’t suppose it is something I can eat,” he ponders aloud, looking around and fingering the butt of the pistol in his belt. “It is no joke, doing all this on biscuit and dried—”

Before he can finish the thought, there is an ear-splitting sound like something out of the depths of hell. A bellowing, animal cry, a great braying death-wail; followed swiftly by a triumphant roaring noise, far more familiar but no less horrifying. Atlas rears in terror and bolts. Ferris is thrown from the saddle; he remembers only just in time not to grab for the reins like he would cling to the lines in the air; that would only lead to him being thrown and trampled. His left shoulder hits an exposed rock with a horrible crunch, and the impact blasts all the air from his lungs. Gasping, groaning, he rolls over onto his back. “Atlas!” he tries to call, but it is too late, even if the horse would have listened to him; he is gone, and Ferris can hear him crashing through the trees back in the direction they have come.

He lies there for a minute, gasping for air. The pain in his shoulder is throbbing and intense; he grits his teeth together and groans out with every exhalation as he tries not to panic. Now he is alone in the middle of the godforsaken forest, with no idea where he is, injured, with no transport—oh, and as if it could not be worse, the horse has taken the compass and Ferris’ water flask with him.

After a minute or two at the most, he lurches himself to a sitting position and then, with difficulty, to his feet, leaning over his knees for a moment and coughing until his lungs expand a little easier. His arm dangles, loose and near-useless. He knows he is lucky not to have broken a leg, or his skull; he is aware that people can die falling from horseback, even if it seems a stupidly short distance from the ground. But he does not feel especially lucky. He makes a quick inventory: he has his sword belt, and his pistol, and a little dried meat stuffed into his pockets, the clothes on his back, and that is all. Being eaten by a bear at this point might almost be preferable to what seems the more likely outcome.

There is no more noise now; rather a distinct silence, as though even the birds in the trees had been frightened away by that dreadful sound. What was it?

Something dying, he thinks. Something else, hunting. Something big—bigger than a bear. He had heard it roar.

Which means there might be a different sort of chance.

Of course, he can hide, and hope that whatever it is simply goes away. But that leaves him no better off than he is at the moment. Could he start walking? He tests his arm, experimentally, trying to stretch the joint, and his vision turns momentarily black; he clings to the nearest tree for a minute and resolves not to do any further experimentation of that nature. Well, he thinks, if he stays here, he will die anyway. So he will try the truly inadvisable option instead.

He picks his way carefully through the trees in the direction from whence he had heard the sound. Every step is a minor agony to his shoulder joint, especially when he is unsure how far he has to go; he has enough experience of creatures hunting in the wilderness to know a sound like that might have travelled a long way. He has to stop to catch his breath three times, to the point where he begins to fear that the hunter will have finished its meal and left by the time he finds its killing site. But then he begins to hear crunching noises amid the unnatural stillness, and the unmistakable sounds of a carcass being torn apart.

He slows, and tries to soften his footsteps, putting each foot carefully in front of the other to balance his weight. He begins to catch glimpses of movement between the trees ahead, and then, as he creeps even further forward, the flashes coalesce into the shape of a beast much larger than a horse, its scaled hide coloured in dappled browns and greens so that its exact outline is camouflaged almost perfectly by the landscape surrounding it.

Oh, beautiful, he thinks, in the moment before remembering that any sensible person would by now be running at all speed in the opposite direction. The dragon is not wearing harness, as becomes clear when Ferris stops behind the wide trunk of a nearby tree to observe, so it is unlikely to be aligned with the Portuguese. Neither is it a British dragon, but he had not really expected that as a possibility; one could generously call it at least the second best scenario.

The dragon has killed a moose and is taking its time consuming it, pulling off the limbs one by one to swallow them down in delicate bites. It is only the size of an average Winchester, maybe even a little smaller, but Ferris is all too aware that it could still disembowel him with next to no effort on its part. Aside from its size it does not have the look of any of the local beasts he has seen so far, but that does not say very much; he has only seen the dragons that associate with the native people, and not any of the true ferals who tend to steer well clear of any areas occupied by the British, after they have been chased off with cannon and pepper guns for the last two hundred years.

There is only one thing for it. He takes a deep breath, and lets out a low whistle, alerting the dragon of his approach before he steps out from behind the tree. Seeing him, the dragon snarls and rears back, wings snapping wide as though it means to take off.

“No!” Ferris calls, holding up his hands. “Please, wait. It is just me.” He gestures behind himself with his good arm and waves, as though dismissing all the empty forest therein. “No one else.” He takes a careful step into the clearing, moving sideways to present less of a threat, painstakingly crossing his feet one over the other. The dragon hisses and starts, seeing something; Ferris looks down and realises the sun is glinting off his pistol.

“No, no,” he says, keeping the other arm raised while he takes the butt in one hand and tosses the weapon aside—but not so far that he might not leap for it, if necessary, and at least he still has his sword. “See? No guns.”

The dragon—a female, he can see now—no longer appears as though she might bolt, but she crouches jealously over the moose carcass, growling, with sharp spines standing erect all down her neck and rattling together to make both a visual and audible warning.

“No,” Ferris says again, shaking his head. “No, it is all yours. I won’t take it. I—I don’t suppose you speak English, do you? That would be a piece of luck.”

When the dragon only glares back at him in response, he resorts to pantomime. “Henry,” he says, patting his own chest. “Henry.” He points to her. “You? Your name?”

She growls, her claws digging into the dirt beside her prize. She is getting ready to fight.

“Damn,” Ferris whispers to himself, his heart pounding, and then, throwing all caution to the winds, falls back on his best Durzagh. “Rk’jiak! Rk’jiak!”

Friend.

He does not expect it to work; after all, it seems impossible that a language spoken by a tribe of feral dragons practically on the other side of the globe might be understood by any other beast, let alone this particular one, but the talons do retract a little, and she cocks her head to one side.

“Yes?” Ferris’ heart is still in his throat, but he cannot help but be encouraged by the fact that he is not dead. “Friend. Rk’jiak. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.” He knows the word for attack, too, but that is distinctly unuseful at the present time. “Henry,” he says again, repeating the tapping gesture. “Henry. And you?”

She lowers her head, sniffing at him. He allows the inspection, noting with some nervousness the rows of razor-sharp teeth, each of which is longer than a man’s hand. When she sits back, her wings folded, she appears notably less alarmed. “Munkwon,” she says, or something like it, in a smooth, resonant voice.

“Mun-ka-wan?” Ferris tries, his tongue stumbling a little over the exact intonation.

The dragon snorts, apparently amused, and has him repeat it several times until he has it to her satisfaction. Then, to his surprise, she nudges one of the moose legs toward him with her foreclaws. Considering a few minutes ago she had been ready to tear him apart to protect her kill, he is rather touched.

“No, I thank you,” he says, shaking his head. He is quite hungry, but not yet to the point where he is ready to consider raw moose-flesh; besides, he is about to ask her for something much more valuable, and does not want to begin the negotiations while already in her debt. Instead, he sits on a nearby flat rock, grimacing as the movement jostles his shoulder.

While she eats with one eye on him, he uses a stick to sketch out his best approximation of the coastline in the dirt, glad now that he had spent so much time going over the maps with Forthing while planning their flying routes. He makes it big enough for her to see, then places a small stone for a marker where Saint John ought to be. “Here,” he says, pointing to it with the stick. “Do you know this place? Where?” He points in several different directions and makes a shrugging motion to show he does not know the answer. “That way?” He points to what he thinks is south-east.

She considers his map for a moment. Then she hisses at the stone representing the port, and turns her head. A bad place, she appears to be saying. I don’t go there.

Ferris taps his chest again and points with determination at the stone. “Me, I need to go there,” he reiterates.

Munkwon snorts at him. Very well, if you insist. She stretches her neck to indicate a direction a little further eastward than he had guessed. “Thank you,” Ferris says. He bites his lip for a moment, considering. He does not know how to ask how far, and even if she could answer him she would only know the answer in terms of flight time.

“Would you take me?” he asks instead. He makes more gestures he hopes will make sense of his request, pointing to her, then himself, then the stone, with accompanying one-handed flapping motions. He thinks she understands right away this time, but the immediate answer is a clear negative: she snorts, shakes her head and claws a furrow right through his map, knocking the stone aside.

“Wait,” he says quickly, fearing that she will fly off at any minute in disgust. “I will pay you. Look.” He points to her, then the bloody remains of the moose, then grabs the stick again and makes another very rudimentary drawing on a fresh patch of blood-spattered earth. “Look—a cow. For you,” he says, motioning back to her.

She considers this offer for a moment, coming closer for a better inspection of his sketch. He hopes she can tell what it is; he is not a good artist, and his cow looks a little more like a long-legged pig.

He has no particular confidence that this will work. Arkady and his followers had been pleased to be bribed with anything better than their usual measly mountain fare, but this dragon has just brought down prey which must weigh about half a tonne; she is hardly starving. He is banking on little more than novelty of flavour to persuade her. He knows that other ferals have been known to steal cows from the inland farmlands. Hopefully the fattier, professionally-raised meat is considered better fare than anything her forest has to provide; certainly it will cost a fortune enough.

She mutters a few words aloud; it is not Durzagh, exactly, although some of the sounds are similar. He does not understand a word of it, but by her tone, and the way her tail switches anxiously along the ground, she is still doubtful.

“Please,” he says, wishing there was an easier way to make the urgency of his task better understood. He doubts she would care anything about getting a warning to Halifax, but she is clearly more empathetic than Arkady’s lot, who would have as soon shared a meal out of altruism than piss on it or set it on fire. If he can make her understand, about Guinevere, about the crew….

Painstakingly, he sketches out nine human figures, one small, and then a dragon, with outstretched wings to make it obvious. This at least he can do easily; all the boys had doodled dragons in their workbooks during cadet training, even if he had never progressed beyond the basic shapes. He points at himself and jabs the drawing with the stick, to show that he is one of the figures. While she watches intently, he crosses out two of the figures with hard lines, cutting off their heads. Then, feeling a little ill doing it even in pantomime, Ferris stabs the sketch of Guinevere in several places. Munkwon flinches back, appalled.

“Hurt,” he says, pointing, and puts a hand to his heart. “They need help. Please.” He stabs the drawing of himself in the shoulder, then demonstrates to her with a barely-exaggerated facial expression that he can hardly lift his arm. “I cannot do it by myself.” He points to the ruined map, and then the cow again. “Please, Munkwon. Please help me.”

Being in the air again is like being able to breathe after being trapped for hours in quicksand. It is also terrifying, because he has no harness, no rope, nothing whatsoever to tie himself on.

He had expected Munkwon to carry him in her talons—a prospect he had hardly relished given what he had seen them do to the poor moose—but instead she had crouched down and allowed him to climb up to her back. Not wanting to appear ungrateful for her hard-won favour, he had obliged, and now he clings one-handed to some of the thin bone-like spines protruding from the base of her neck, his fingers gradually going numb and thighs cramping with the effort of gripping to her back with his knees, and hopes to God that nothing happens which requires her to turn quickly, or, even worse, roll over in the air.

The forest below them is an ocean of green. By the light of day, it is painfully clear that he has overestimated the distance; it would indeed have taken weeks to get through on foot, or even on horseback. He does his best to count his blessings, at least; he is far over the border by now, and at Munkwon’s current speed he will be in Saint John by nightfall, which puts him back in line with his original estimate. He will be back in Long Lake by tomorrow and rescuing Forthing and the others by the following day. To distract himself from the miles of empty air between him and the ground, he pictures Forthing’s face when he, Ferris, arrives exactly as scheduled and with only a bum shoulder to complain of.

You have done it! he imagines Forthing saying, overjoyed, and then, for a private thrill, pictures himself kissing Forthing right there and then, with all the assembled company watching. Some of them even applaud. It is a good daydream.

It will not go like that, of course. There will be no cheering. Forthing will be concerned with Guinevere, and it will be work to get her in the air. Iskierka has too many steam-spitting spines to carry another dragon at all conveniently; they will have to use middleweights, and it may take more than one to manage the initial launch with Vivi aboard. Forthing will go with her, leaving Ferris and the rest of the crew with someone else to spare the additional weight. Likely they will not have the chance to really talk to one another until later, when they have got Vivi and the others to safety, and after they have had the chance to eat, and to rest: Ferris knows he is already running on a dangerous lack of sleep, having barely closed his eyes for a few minutes at a time for the last three days, and Forthing is sure to be the same. But eventually, when the time is right, they will speak again.

He tries to imagine how that talk will go. He has promised Forthing… what, exactly, he is not sure. A conversation the likes of which Granby had been hinting at. An acknowledgement of shared feelings. Just the sort of thing neither of them are especially good at.

It does not mean you are not valuable, Forthing had said. That you are not loved.

He tries to imagine what he will say, and comes up pathetically short. He has never had such a conversation with anyone. He has never said such words out loud, nor had he ever imagined he might have the opportunity. A few ill-advised experiments in his youth had cemented the fact for him that he has little to no affinity for women, although more than one has made him an offer in his time, and he has gained a bit of a reputation for prudishness by not taking them up, which has been all very well. He had until now resigned himself to a life made rich by adventure and commitment to duty, if not by any deep affection for another person—it is not an emotion he had ever expected to truly feel.

He certainly had not imagined feeling it for Edward Forthing: not when they had first met, wary and unfriendly at the covert in Sydney, nor over the next year, their acquaintance one made up of deliberate avoidance, overly polite attempts at collaboration, quarrelsome bickering and occasional heated arguments out of their captain’s hearing. Even after the rockslide, after things had shifted between them, after he had first found himself entangled in the arms of the man had thought he disliked, it was hardly what he would call affectionate. It had been physical, only, a way to release some of the tension brought on by pain and privation and, in at least in Ferris’ case, the undercurrent of shame that had accompanied him throughout that time, not for the meagre hour or two he had delayed Laurence’s confession, or even for the consequences he had immediately faced, but for the pitiful, in-between life he had resigned himself to live, afterwards.

When Laurence had officially retired and broken up the crew, Ferris had thought it was over between them. After all, what else did they have in common, aside from Temeraire? What benefit to staying in each other’s company? Ferris had resigned himself to never seeing the man again. And then Forthing, the man who had once made it clear just how much he would like to be rid of him, had made it his business instead to drag Ferris back in.

And there had been no more shame, after that.

Ferris realises just now, as cold air whips through his ragged shirt and past his unprotected face, that the excuses Forthing had made for taking him on as his first officer had been more than a little threadbare. Neither had Ferris made much effort to question them. He would not have admitted to it at the time, of course, but perhaps even back then he had known he could not simply walk away. But the idea that Forthing might have felt the same is hard to countenance.

He will ask, he decides, with a rush of determination that makes his already pounding heart skip a beat. He will ask Forthing if it is true—assure his captain that he will not leave the crew, no matter the answer, and then ask him if Granby is right. And then, if the answer is yes, he will say the words.

He is tired, so very tired, but he dares not succumb; he has slept dragonback many times, but never on such a small beast and never without a safety line. If he slips into sleep he is sure to fall, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that Munkwon would go after him. He catches himself on the edge of dozing several times, and has to jerk himself back awake, slapping at his own face to keep exhaustion at bay. He recites flag codes to himself, sings a couple of sea shanties aloud, and even, in desperation, attempts some algebra. This last technique proves to be a mistake, as it tends to have rather the opposite effect of what he intended; he tries playing out an imagining of the Odyssey in his head, instead.

When Munkwon at last calls out to him, he looks up and blinks in surprise to see that the forest below has turned to flat, square fields, and the blasted road is there, running almost parallel to them. Munkwon stays high aloft among the clouds, with the evening sun at their backs, giving him an excellent view of the river to the north and the ocean to the south, and between them a vaguely geometric smudge that has to be the port of Saint John. He lets out a whoop of triumph, and pats the dragon’s neck enthusiastically to show his gratitude. “Yes, Munkwon!” he calls. “Excellent flying! You are a queen among dragons.”

But Munkwon is clearly less than satisfied even with this show of exhilaration. She banks a little, so that she is no longer flying a direct path towards the town, clearly hesitant to go any closer than this. Ferris is about to protest, but perhaps she is right to be concerned: after all, she does not resemble any of the couriers who come regularly in and out of the port, and even if he were to fashion a dirty-white flag out of his shirt, there is every chance the navy will mark any unfamiliar dragon approaching as a threat before they can see him wave it. A fine thing it would be, to come this far only to be blasted out of the air by his own side.

“All right,” he says, giving her hide a stroke of reassurance. “You do not have to go so close. Perhaps one of those farms, a little nearer?” He leans out from her back as much as he dares, and points. She snorts, noncommittal. “Come now,” he sighs. From all the way out here it might take half a day to walk, and he still needs to gain as much time as he can. The Portuguese know they are being scouted out, even if they do not believe Guinevere could have escaped; it will not be long before they begin their march on Halifax from the west. “Do you want your cow or not? I cannot pull it out of the air. Cow,” he repeats, pointing again. She has learned at least that word from their negotiations, and also his name, although she pronounces it only with difficulty and without the H or the R, so that it sounds like En-a-by.

The reminder of the forthcoming payment seems to persuade her, at least a little. She banks again, adjusting her course and approaching from a different angle, her head moving side to side a little as she scans the ground ahead for dangers.

Or cows, Ferris thinks wryly. He has considered during the flight how he is going to make good on his promise in that regard. He had hoped to ask a favour of the naval commander at the port, but failing that, perhaps he can beg one of the local farmers to take a note of promise until he can make good on it. The last year’s famine has drained his purse of everything he had put aside after the war, and he has only his salary to rely on from month to month, but between he and Forthing they ought to manage it, even if the Admiralty decide to be politic about rewarding a native beast for services already rendered. Granby at least, will not object, Ferris is sure.

Munkwon calls out to him again, questioningly, as if to say, Here? When he looks where she is headed, he can just make out a few brown dots grazing amid a patchwork quilt of fields, and a long, single-story house nearby. It is still further away than he would have liked, but Munkwon’s tone of voice, and the anxious flip of her wings as she dips a little further below the clouds, indicate that she is losing confidence in the whole venture.

“Very well,” he says. He gives her two firm pats along her side: yes. “They are very hospitable in this country, for the most part; perhaps the farmer will lend me another horse, if he is not already offended by my cheek in begging for one of his herd.”

The sun is in its last hour now, setting the edge of the sky aflame as they descend through cool evening air towards the farm. It is quite near the road, Ferris notes, thinking ahead: all he has to do is follow it the rest of the way to the town. Then he will find whoever is the highest ranked naval officer there—although at this hour they may well be having dinner, and will not like to be disturbed by some ragged nobody; he will likely have to be forceful to the point of rudeness. His experience travelling the world with Laurence has prepared him for that, at least, he thinks, remembering the way the captain had tried to convince the Russian commanders of the existence of the Chinese jilan again and again while they chased the French about the countryside. He determines that he will be listened to, no matter how mistrustful or dismissive his audience. Quite aside from the danger of the impending invasion, Guinevere’s life may depend on it. He tries not to imagine what will happen to Forthing, if he cannot save her.

They come down in a grass field perhaps two away from the one where the cows are currently grazing; Munkwon seems to know, whether by instinct or experience, not to land too close to them. Grunting with the cramping pain emanating from his legs and forearms, and the unpleasant grinding sensation in his shoulder, Ferris scrambles ungracefully down from her back. “Thank you, Munkwon,” he says, trying to convey his meaning through his voice alone. She lowers her head, and he strokes her muzzle in the way he knows Vivi likes. She vibrates a little under his hand in appreciation. “You have saved lives today, although I expect you might never really know it. Now, do you stay here in this field, and I will go and see about—”

Several things happen then, in such quick succession that Ferris does not understand exactly what they mean until later. There is a sharp crack, both loud and somehow distant, and Munkwon rears up, roaring. Ferris wheels, trying to find the source of the sound; in the same moment, Munkwon launches her hind legs off the ground, her wings snap out and she is in the air. There is another loud cracking sound, and something hits Ferris with incredible force in his left side, the combined impact of the blow and the dragon’s launch knocking him back several feet, where he falls hard to the ground. For the second time that day, he is left staring up at the sky, this time to watch Munkwon fly away as fast as her wings can carry her. “Wait…” he calls, breathlessly, but she is already too far away to hear him. He tries to sit up, and fails; something is wrong. He puts a hand to the place where he was struck. It comes away wet and dark.

“Ah, look what ya done, old man!” he hears, a woman’s voice in a thick accent so incomprehensible that it takes him a moment to realise it is English at all. “That there’s a white man!”

“The devil he be, what’s he after flyin’ on yon green bastard then, eh?”

There are footsteps coming toward him. With an effort, Ferris lifts his head to see two figures, a young pale woman in plain skirts, and an older thick-set man with a bushy beard and layered, practical clothes. The man is carrying a rifle over his arm.

“Please,” Ferris croaks, as they come close enough that he can call out, “I am… Lieutenant Ferris… I need… I must get to the port commander…”

The man curses as he approaches, looking discomforted. “Ah’m sorry, son, I t’ought you were an Indian. They been stealin’ cattle. It were too dark to see—”

“Am I shot?” Ferris asks, confused. He has never been shot before. He had thought it would hurt more than this. He just feels weak and disoriented. And very thirsty, all of a sudden.

“Aye, son, aye. Lie still now, Mary’ll see t’ye.”

The girl is tearing strips of cloth from her skirts. With no ceremony she goes to her knees by Ferris and begins packing the scraps tight against his side. That does hurt; he gasps out an exclamation. “Get the cart, Pa,” the girl snaps up at the man. “He needs a doctor.”

“No,” Ferris mutters, his vision blurring strangely. “No, no time for that, I need… the port commander… I have… I have a message…”

The farmer vanishes, leaving Ferris with the woman who continues to tug him about in her efforts to wrap the wound. She lifts him up on one side and then the other, taking off his sword belt and tossing it aside, pulling apart his shirt so that she can better wrap the impromptu bandages around his waist. She is stronger than she looks.

“Is it bad?” he dares to ask.

“Y’ain’t dead,” she says, flatly, her pale face set in a stiff expression

“Did it go through?”

“No. Still in you, somm’er.”

That is bad, Ferris thinks. He can feel his hands shaking. He is so tired. Surely it cannot hurt to close his eyes, just for a moment? He thinks she says something else, then, but he is already too far away to hear.

The ground is vibrating underneath him. “Thar, see,” the girl’s voice says. “Tol’ ye he ain’t dead.”

He is in an open cart, surrounded by straw, and it is quite dark but for the stars overhead. He can hear hooves and the sound of wheels turning over dirt. “The port?” he asks, unable to hold back a groan. His body is one large ache.

“Nearly thar, son,” the farmer says, from somewhere overhead. “I knows a good doctor.”

“No.” Ferris manages to lift himself a little on his one good arm. The girl Mary is beside him, holding what looks like a ball of rags. He can’t see her father, who must be driving the horses. “Take me to the navy,” he says, hoarsely. “The… the port admiral, or whoever is…”

“Y’need a doctor,” the girl says, as though he has lost his mind.

“There will be a surgeon there,” he says, his mind clearer than it has been since the moment of impact. The hole in his side does not even hurt, it is his shoulder that feels like it is being continually wrenched out of his socket, and he cannot move well enough to find a more comfortable position. He looks Mary in the eyes. “Please,” he says. “We cannot delay. The Portuguese will attack any day now.”

The girl and the farmer exchange words, most of which go by so far and in such a foreign dialect that he does not catch them all, but they seem to have agreed to listen to him, at least for now. They are understandably concerned that he will bleed to death in their cart, and they will be brought on charges of killing a serving officer, but he assures them he has no intention of dying just yet. He asks for water, and the girl squeezes a damp cloth into his mouth; it tastes of dirt, but it is better than nothing.

He is not sensate enough to notice when they pass into the city proper, but gradually sounds and smells of night-life begin to drift across his senses, and yellow lights from nearby buildings pass by overhead. Mary snaps back at a man who calls out to her lasciviously. “Hurry, Pa,” she tells the farmer. “Go down docks way.”

“Help me up,” Ferris asks her. Reluctantly, she helps drag him into a sitting position against a straw bale.

Two red-coated marines are guarding the entrance to the shipyard. When the farmer explains they have an injured officer with them, they look around the side of the cart, curiously cautious.

“An officer… of the navy?” one of them asks, suspiciously.

“An aviator,” Ferris grunts. “I need to speak to your commander, whoever is senior.”

The marines look doubtful. By their coats he knows he outranks both of them, but Ferris is also painfully aware that he has come in a hay cart, covered in blood and dirt, with a three-day beard and no coat, no bars, nor any other indicator of rank; he does not even have his sword, anymore. The irony that the raggedness of his appearance is going to get in the way of rescuing Edward bloody Forthing is not lost on him.

He clenches his teeth together. He is not going to be stopped now, and delayed still further, by a pair of boys who look as though they have barely begun to shave. “I have seen the damn Portuguese army,” he announces, his voice coming out hoarse and uneven, since he has to labour still to draw a full breath. “I know where they are, and I need to speak to your commander, now.”

“Captain Elliot is in command of the port,” one of the men says, looking uneasily to the other. “But Admiral Stoke arrived in harbour just this morning, if you prefer.”

“I know Stoke,” Ferris says, with a stab of relief. Admiral Stoke is the man Granby has professed to be the more reliable of the two senior officers of the station; he commands the ship HMS Shannon, and has been coordinating their scouting efforts at sea. Ferris has sat at the dinner table with him twice—several seats down, but at least they have been introduced; he will not have to convince the man that he is a British officer, and not merely a spy who has chosen to appear in the most implausible manner imaginable. “Tell him it is Ferris, of Guinevere.”

“He needs a doctor,” the girl insists. “I done what I can, but…”

“I will go for Admiral Stoke.” One of the marines vanishes into the night. The other leads the cart into the yard, where they are met by more officers, and soon an urgent call goes out which is answered by no less than two naval surgeons, with assistants. Together they get Ferris out of the cart and onto a stool in a room that looks like it is usually used for torturing enemies for information; he desperately keeps his eyes fixed away from the unhappy stains that cover the floor. They take off his shirt and begin peeling off the bloody wrappings, while an assistant gives Ferris a mug of something; it smells like brandy but tastes like boot polish, and only makes his throat even dryer.

“Bloody lucky,” one of the surgeons grunts. He has the look of an old fashioned barber-surgeon, built like a blacksmith, the sort of man who can slice off a man’s leg with only a few efficient cuts. “The ball must have fetched up against a rib.”

“I am having all sorts of luck, today,” Ferris mutters, clenching his fists on his knees to hide the shaking. His trousers are bloody to the knees.

“It had better come out,” the other man says, in a manner more reminiscent of Mr Keynes, and snaps at his assistant to bring vinegar and tongs. “It will only take a moment.”

“Will it put me out?” Ferris demands, pushing away a second mug when one of the assistants tries to push it against his mouth.

“Well—the extraction, no, if you are not womanish, but it will need cautery—”

“Then no,” Ferris grunts. “Not now. Just patch it properly, and I will do. I would be grateful if you could do anything for this damn shoulder, however.” The pain radiating down his arm has become quite unmanageable, and the process of extracting him from the cart had made him fear he might faint dead away before he has the chance to speak to Stoke.

The first man looks critically at him, takes hold of his forearm and inspects the unnatural way the bone is sitting beneath the skin. “Luxated,” he says, and without warning performs a sharp tugging manoeuvre that makes Ferris’ vision blur with the pain of it. He cries out, but knows without having to be told that the joint is at last back in its proper place. “It will still pain you,” the man warns. “Could be weeks; if the shot don’t kill you first; are you sure you won’t have it out now?”

Ferris is too occupied with gasping for air to answer, and then a scrap of leather is handed to him to bite upon while a cup of burning vinegar is poured over the wound in his side. It must be simply a continuation of his good luck that Admiral Stoke comes into the room, accompanied by an entourage of other officers, just as this process is being concluded.

Sir Philip Stoke is not a stupid or incautious man; he takes from Ferris all the details he can remember of the position of the Portuguese and their allies, and seems to at least take them seriously. One of his companions, possibly the aforementioned Captain Elliot, protests that they have a reliable treaty with the Americans, that surely they would not invalidate it so soon after its signing, but Stoke appears unmoved by this argument.

“I have met President Tecumseh," he says grimly, “and I have no doubt he would not countenance starting a war on his northern borders at present, but that does mean there are not some discontents. I will write to him, and I expect he will send his own troops to support us; in the meantime, we must get the word to Halifax. Captain Harding?”

A grey-haired man in aviator green comes forward; Ferris with relief recognises him as one of the older men who flies the regular courier circuit. “Ready on your word, sir,” Harding says.

“Very good. I will write a note to Admiral Cochrane, and then you must be in the air without delay.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Admiral.” Ferris has very little voice left after his explanation, but he makes himself heard amid the sudden blur of activity around him. The surgeons are packing the wound with a lint compress and wrapping it up again with proper bandages. “I must go as well, if Captain Harding will carry me.”

Stoke looks doubtfully at him. “Surely you ought stay here,” he says, not unkindly. “You are falling down wounded, man.”

“Sir, my crew are grounded in the forest nearby the camp.” He knows Stoke heard him the first time he said it, but the man has the fate of the entire North American Station to consider, and is unlikely to share Ferris’ level of personal concern. “Our dragon is badly hurt. I must go to meet Admiral Granby at the Long Lake covert; he has to know where they are, how to find them…”

“Sapientia can manage him, sir,” Harding interrupts.

“It will not slow you down?” Stoke demands.

“No, sir, not over so short a flight as that.”

Ferris closes his eyes. He has learned very little about Harding, but now he knows that he is a good man as well as an excellent liar.

“Very well.” Stoke turns to his aides, who are bringing him pen and paper. “Then you had better be ready to go when I am done, Mr Ferris, or you will be left behind.”

What follows are the most agonising hours of Ferris’ life. Any other time he might have marvelled at and revelled in their speed; Guinevere is the swiftest dragon he has ever been assigned to, and Munkwon had seemed almost effortlessly quick, but nothing can beat a well-trained Winchester in its prime, even while not carrying orders of paramount importance. This time however, Ferris has no appreciation for anything other than his borrowed harness, which holds him fast to both Sapientia’s back and Harding as well, for the man had not even asked before ensuring he was linked to Ferris by two sets of carabiners. Ferris puts one arm around the man’s waist, and cannot keep his head from drooping forward onto the broad, green-coated shoulder in front of him. He does not sleep, as much as he might have liked to: they have given him fresh clothes, but it had been too painful to get them all the way on, and the cold night air stabs at him through the openings and keeps any real rest at bay.

He drifts in and out of sense instead, alternating between half-realised fever dreams and the cold, excruciating reality as his body protests this mistreatment in every way imaginable. He feels the pain in his side now, sharp, stabbing, as though he can feel the metal shifting about beneath the skin. In a brief moment of lucidity he dares a look; blood is already spotting through the borrowed shirt. He determines not to look again.

He does not know for sure how long they are in the air, but the sun is just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon once more when Harding pats his leg and says “We are here.”

The lake stretches out beneath them, indigo blue and dotted with small islands. Sapientia dives for the covert, a patchwork of cleared spaces between trees, doll-like dragon forms curled up and dozing in each one. Ferris looks for Iskierka and does not see her; his stomach lurches. What if Granby is not here? If he has gone looking for Guinevere, for Forthing? It seems the sort of thing he would do, not to send someone who can more easily be spared…

Sapientia comes down near the barracks, where some early risers look up on their unexpected arrival. Ferris tugs at his carabiners with numb fingers until Harding reaches back to help him. When he drags his legs together and slides down the dragon’s side as he has done a thousand times, his legs buckle entirely beneath him and leave him in a heap on the ground, which jars his bad shoulder so painfully that he almost succumbs on the spot. “Mr Ferris!” someone calls, and helping hands come to drag him to his feet. It is Allen, and Ferris has never been so pleased in his life to see him.

“Granby,” he gasps, his breath coming alarmingly in short audible wheezes. “I need the admiral.”

“But where have you been?” Allen asks, while someone behind him begins to shout the alarm. “We have been going mad looking for you; and where are the others? Oh, Lord, you are bleeding.”

“The admiral,” Ferris insists, clinging to the younger man’s shoulder with his good arm; he cannot hold all his own weight. “Is he here?”

“I must go on to Halifax,” Captain Harding calls down from his seat. “I will return with Admiral Cochrane’s orders.” Sapientia rears on her hind legs and takes off, without waiting for the rapidly assembling crowd to clear the area. A couple of the less practiced runners are blown backwards by rapid wing-strokes, and she is gone.

“Admiral Granby is coming,” Allen says, when Ferris would have asked a third time, “will you—you should lie down—”

“No,” Ferris insists, clenching his jaw against the pain. “Just keep me up, will you?”

Granby arrives at speed, followed by a man in a brown coat who Ferris vaguely recognises as the camp doctor. The man tries to insist on inspecting him right away, but Ferris shakes him off. “Admiral,” he says instead, desperately, “I must tell you—we have found the army, but Captain Forthing—”

“Give him some space, Olsen,” Granby snaps, making the doctor back off. “Someone find him a chair. Go ahead, Henry, tell me all of it.”

Ferris starts blurting out his explanation even before Allan helps him sit, afraid once again that he will actually be overcome before he can finish. Granby listens with his brow deeply furrowed, and once Ferris has got out the whole, he begins giving his orders, sparking a flurry of activity throughout the clearing and beyond. “I don’t expect Cochrane will like it, but I do not intend to wait for his approval,” he says grimly, between telling everyone to get ready their full harness and any armour they have, and shrugging on his own straps with help from one of his runners. Another one has been sent to bring his fighting hook. “Let him worry about the element of surprise: he wanted us to find the army and we have found it: I will be damned if we leave that poor creature or our men out there to starve to death. Mr Allen, make sure we have at least two surgeons, will you? We may have to move her quickly.”

Ferris wants to go with them, but Granby will not hear of it.

“Ferris, the fact you are still speaking defies belief,” he says shortly. “Even if we had time to wait until you were seen to, after another day on dragonback, a possible scrap with the enemy, and then the journey back, you will either bleed to death or collapse of exhaustion; no. We will go, chase off any Tuga beasts they have in the air, and bring Guinevere back. We have enough ten-tonne beasts to carry her in shifts, and you will only be adding to our weight. You will stay here and be treated, those are your orders.”

“But how will you find them?” Ferris asks, desperately, his head swimming as he tries and fails to rise from the chair they have put him in. “They are hiding, and you do not know where they came down—”

“Could you point to it on a map?”

“Not accurately!”

“Then do it inaccurately, and we will make sure that Forthing will come out for Iskierka; she will scarcely need any encouragement to make a noise.” Granby gives him a look which, while uncharacteristically stern, is not uncaring. “And once you have done that, let Mr Olson deal with that wound before it putrifies, will you? I shall be highly vexed with you if I come back to find you dead, and I expect Captain Forthing would have some very colourful words to say on the subject, as well.”

The doctor and his helpers take Ferris inside while he is still mumbling protests, and lay him on the surgeon’s table. Helpless to do anything else, he takes the brandy this time, when it is offered.

He hears the call to go aloft, through the walls: Iskierka’s high, excited voice. Then a great rush of wing beats, first surrounding him, then overhead. Something cold and sharp is plunged into his side, digging; he hears a scream, but it sounds far away and separate from himself, and then another glass is pressed again to his lips, the burning taste of the alcohol mixed with something bitter. Another great burst of pain goes through his shoulder as hands drag him down. He struggles against them, sensing the heat, hearing the sizzle of the iron, only just sensible enough to know what is about to happen, and then his entire world narrows to the agony of metal burning into his side, and the smell of roasting, bubbling flesh. There is no last thought, no last hope, only pain, and then he is grateful not to know anything more.

Chapter Text

You think I'm insincere—I have a guarded heart.
You think the things you want, but just don't rush the greatest part.

— Don't Say Another Word, Next Thing You Know (2017)

Someone is touching his face. There is a bitter, acrid smell, or possibly it is only a lingering taste in his mouth, but either way, unpleasant. His face feels hot, but his hands are cold, and he does not know where he is. And he has never been so damn thirsty in his life.

“Henry?”

His eyelids are heavy; it seems like the work of an hour or more to force them open, but when he does he can see, floating disembodied above him, a bearded face. “Ned?” he whispers, disbelieving.

“Aye.” The rough-padded fingers that had rested on his cheek move to push back his hair from his forehead. “I am here.”

“Guinevere?” Ferris gasps, suddenly panicked without knowing fully why, struggling to bring his elbows back enough to lever himself up. His limbs do not answer properly, particularly the left side, so that all he can do is flail weakly about until Forthing leans across him and pins down his arms.

“Hush,” he says, in Ferris’ ear. “She is here. She will be well, the surgeon said; she has had half a roasted moose to herself—bless that demon Iskierka, I will never say a word against her the rest of my days—and she is sleeping now. Likely for several days, like you ought to be. God, your hands are freezing.”

Muddled memories begin to surface. If Forthing is here, Ferris tries to think, then he must have been asleep for some time already. And yet he is still so very tired: he feels dazed, disconnected from his body, except for the unending thirst. “I… I need…” he tries, fighting through dryness in his throat like it is full of sand.

“It is all right,” Forthing says. “There will not be a battle; the Marquis has lost his opportunity for surprise. Cochrane is in a rage that we ruined his chance at ambush for him, but that is not for you to be concerned with. You saved the port. They will be doing nothing but trying to reverse course, now, since they know that if they would like to give us a fight, we can choose our own damn battlefield.”

“No.” Ferris has no idea what Forthing is talking about, and he has the strong sensation that he has forgotten something. “I need…”

“What is it?” Forthing leans closer, to better hear him. “What do you need?”

Ferris is not entirely sure now what he had meant to say, but another thought occurs to him then and fills the space. “I need… to borrow money for a cow,” he wheezes.

Forthing makes a strange noise; Ferris feels soft, overgrown hair brush against his cheek, and then a familiar weight as Forthing rests his head on his chest. “Jesus Christ, Henry,” Forthing says, his voice strained and muffled. “I thought you were fucking dead.”

“I am… all strange,” Ferris says, and that does not sound at all right, either.

“They had to give you laudanum," Forthing tells him. He sounds so close, but somehow far away at the same time, and when Ferris tries to lift a hand to touch the touselled head, to make sure Forthing is really there, his hand will not answer. “And Lord knows what else they mixed it with. You kept trying to get out of bed; you don’t remember?”

“I thought that was a dream,” Ferris says, letting his eyes fall closed again. “Are you a dream?”

“Oh God.” Forthing lets out a breath, long and shuddering.

“Water?” Ferris croaks.

The warm weight of Forthing’s body recedes, and Ferris feels his hands released as the arm holding them down is lifted. A sound escapes him, a pathetic, wordless protest, but then something cool and wet is pressed to his lips, and another large, capable hand takes his arms one by one and tucks them beneath the relative warmth of the quilt that covers him. He sucks eagerly on the cloth, bringing the moisture into his mouth.

“You have a fever,” Forthing’s voice says. “You have to rest, or them doctors will come up with some excuse to keep you here; you know what they are like.” He takes the cloth away; there is a faint splashing noise.

“Fox?” Ferris asks, opening his eyes again. Forthing’s face seems more distorted than usual.

“A little hungry, after a week on hard rations and tree bark, but it can only give him a little grit; starving every so often is good field training in an officer. Enough, now. Go back to sleep.” The cloth returns, this time folded and pressed to his forehead.

“....Cressida?”

“Midwingman Carver might have a limp, but she’s alive, which is all anyone can ask for after this, really. Now close your eyes before I have to knock you out myself.”

Obediently, Ferris closes his eyes. The cloth strokes across his brow. He thinks about sleeping, but he cannot quite remember how it is to be managed; he still feels as though his mind is occupying a space entirely different to his body, disorienting and not a little disconcerting. And there is something else he has forgotten, he realises, something he has meant to do. He has delivered the message, or Forthing would not be here. So it must be something else.

Oh, yes. Something very important.

“Ned?” he murmurs.

“Oh, Lord above.” Forthing sighs. “Yes, Henry?”

“I do love you, you know.”

The cloth pauses, just a moment, and then resumes again, dripping a little, a single drop tickling as it rolls down the side of Ferris’ face and into the week’s worth of scruff growing there. “Good,” says Forthing’s voice, very low, and at that, Ferris feels one with his body again. He can sleep now, perhaps.

“Come back to me, now,” he hears, in those last distant moments before he drifts away. “Come back to me, and tell me again.”

“I bet it’s a terrific scar,” Fox says, with a wistful sort of sigh. “Girls like scars, you know.”

“Do they.” Ferris winces, raising his left arm as high as it will go and then lowering it again, slowly. It is perhaps a little easier than it had been yesterday, but not nearly so painless as he would like.

“Well, that’s what Devereaux says, and she ought to know. Can I see it?”

“No.”

“Why not? People will see it when you bathe, anyway.”

Ferris sighs heavily. “Mr Forthing, do you not have any work to do?” he asks, returning to the arduous task of making his bed. Since he has been mostly trapped within it for the last four weeks, he cannot help but relish the chore a little more than usual, even if he is still frustratingly slow in the doing of it.

“Not really.” The boy is sprawled out in the only chair, legs too long for his torso, flame-red hair sticking up in all directions just like his father’s does. “Ain’t no patrols to run no more.”

“There are no patrols to run any more,” Ferris corrects him, with a long-suffering tone. “If you have no schoolwork, which I can hardly credit, you might at least be packing. The transport will be here this time next week.”

“We finished packing days ago,” Fox shrugs. “Besides, I was working, I was helping Mr Shore oil the body harnesses, but the Captain gave me leave.”

Did he, indeed, Ferris muses. “Well, since you are here, you may as well help me with this.” He takes his freshly laundered coat off the rack with his good arm and holds it out.

“Yes sir!” the boy exclaims, eagerly, and hops with boyish agility out of the chair. Ferris is touched by the enthusiasm, but it does not much help to dull the discomfort of forcing his left arm through the sleeve. Still, he cannot leave it any longer. In a week Guinevere and her crew will be sailing back to England, and he has no intention of being left behind, or—as seems more likely—forcing Forthing to come up with another questionable excuse to delay their departure.

“Oh, you look much better!” Guinevere exclaims, on seeing him come into her clearing with Fox right on his heels. She is wearing her most basic harness, only a strap over each shoulder and around the belly, with no netting. “Edward, does he not look better?”

“Well, he could hardly look worse,” is Forthing’s derisive reply.

“That is not very nice,” she says, nudging him disapprovingly in the back with her snout. “And after he saved all of us: do not be so rude.”

Forthing stares at her, astonished.

Ferris smiles. “Never mind him, lovely,” he says, patting her side. Her hide is marked with several permanent lines of her own; healed now, but a sobering reminder of her ordeal nevertheless. “How are you feeling?”

“I am perfectly well, I promise,” she says. “I have been eating everything they tell me, even when I am not very hungry, and going on short flights, although I am sure I could go further, if there were a need to?” She sounds faintly hopeful, but Forthing, coming back to himself, shakes his head.

“There is no such need, love. You must not strain yourself when we will only be at sea in a week: you may as well use all that time to rest properly.”

“But I am rested,” she protests, with uncharacteristic notes of grievance in her voice. “Might we go flying now? You said we might, if we waited for Henry.”

Ferris looks up, surprised. Forthing makes a low tss noise between his teeth, and Vivi sighs down into a coiled pile of impatience, her tail switching a little.

“I do need your help with something, as it happens,” Forthing says to Ferris, coming close enough that they might speak a little more privately, although Fox is still bouncing on the balls of his feet behind Ferris’ shoulder. “You are fit to fly, yes?”

“Reporting for duty, sir,” Ferris replies, fighting back the temptation to ask why whatever it is could not have been done by someone else, at any time during the last month of his convalescence. They have buried Inman without him. The body of Midwingman Goom will likely never be found, but Forthing has written a letter to his family and not even asked Ferris to review it, something he could easily have done without even getting out of bed. He has barely seen Forthing at all, in fact; not that he begrudges the man time spent with his injured dragon, only it seems incongruous that there should now be something so urgent it cannot be put off, and that he, Ferris, must be the one to do it.

“Come aboard then,” Forthing says, with no further explanation, and catches his son by the collar as he is about to run past. “Not you, Mr Forthing; you may go back to helping Mr Shore, if you please. Oh—but fetch me the basket that is in my room, first.” Fox makes a disgruntled face, but slouches off in the direction of the cabins, without complaint.

Ferris would have grit his teeth and made the short climb up to Vivi’s shoulder, but she holds out a taloned foreclaw instead to give him a boost, so that he is able to step onto her back with only a little jarring. He thanks her, and clips onto the harness, wondering why no one else is joining him. Forthing eventually reappears, with the aforementioned basket, which he secures behind himself before taking his usual place. “We will be back before dinner,” Forthing calls down to Mr Shepherd. “If we are not, you may send a search party, but not before.”

“Aye sir,” Shepherd salutes, and then Guinevere is in the air.

“Where are we going?” Ferris asks.

“Only to the other side of the lake,” Forthing replies, while Vivi practically skips through the air away from the covert, enjoying her own renewed strength. “There is something I want to show you. Take the shortest course, my dear,” he calls out, and Vivi’s reply comes back, affirmative, if a little reluctant.

Ferris is none the wiser, especially when they are only flying perhaps fifteen minutes before Guinevere begins her descent, unasked; clearly she at least has been pre-informed of their destination. Ferris leans over the side, curiously; there is nothing out of place that he can see, except—no, there is, a burgundy, square-shaped interruption in the otherwise natural landscape. Something placed, on a flat, sheltered outcropping, not washed up or blown there by chance.

They land, and Guinevere crouches to let them down a little easier. Ferris goes foot over foot instead of sliding, grunting a little at the jolt when his feet hit the ground. Forthing is right after him, the basket slung under his arm.

“It is a blanket,” Ferris says, still nonplussed. The morning sun is streaming through the trees overhead, making speckled patterns over the ground and the irreconcilable square of cloth sitting flat on a patch of grass, its corners weighed down by small stones. “What is happening, exactly?”

“I will go swimming, I think,” Guinevere says, flipping the tips of her wings. “Do not go so far that I cannot find you.”

“Oh, get away,” Forthing says, fondly, and pats her hind leg. “Only amuse yourself until I call for you, understood?” When she has taken off again, only to immerse herself in the water behind the nearest island and splash about, Forthing lowers the basket onto the ground.

“Edward,” Ferris says, a slow, ridiculous realisation beginning to settle over him. “Are you… is this a picnic?”

Forthing somehow manages to look bashful. Ferris realises belatedly that despite the relative informality of the flight itself, Forthing is freshly bathed and wearing his best shirt: his coat has been brushed, boots polished, beard trimmed; even his eyebrows look less unruly than usual. Ferris is all of a sudden faced with the entirely unfamiliar awareness of being courted like a first-season debutant, complete with chaperone.

“Very French,” he murmurs, not sure what else to say.

“I need to apologise,” Forthing blurts out, suddenly. “I should have—I have not been to see you, enough.”

Or at all, Ferris thinks, stung a little by the reminder. “I noticed that Peter had a little more free time than usual,” he says, slowly. “Funny how he seems to like spending time in my room, more than getting up to mischief with the other boys.”

“Sorry,” Forthing says, grimacing to have been so transparent.

“Never mind.” Ferris feels the twinge still in his side as he shrugs. “I know how you feel about doctors, and sick rooms. I hardly expect—”

“No,” Forthing says, forestalling him, and looks up. The expression on his face is pained. “No, it was not that, I—” he lets out a short, frustrated breath. “God, I told myself I would do this. It ought not be so difficult.”

“I hope you will not hold back on my account.” Ferris stands awkwardly on the other side of the blanket, wondering if he ought to sit. “God knows we have been through enough to speak plainly to one another.”

Forthing shakes his head, but holds his gaze. “No, you are right, as usual, so I will answer for it; the truth is, I could not abide it, seeing you in that way. It was bad enough, watching Guinevere waste away for days, but then…” he swallows. “I used her recovery as an excuse to stay away, and it was wrong of me.”

“Ned,” Ferris sighs. “It is all right.”

“No, it is not,” Forthing says, sounding almost desperate, “not after what you did—”

“I think I prefer you did not see me, either,” Ferris admits. “I am sure it was not a handsome sight. Besides, I hardly remember most of it. Please do not… it does not matter.”

Forthing hesitates. “I did come… once,” he says, cautiously. “Do you—would you remember that? Or what you said to me?”

Ferris shakes his head. By all accounts he had said a lot of nonsensical things for the first few days, until they had started weaning him off the laudanum. “I hope it was not embarrassing,” he says.

Forthing sighs, and looks away. “Something about buying a cow?” he asks.

“Oh,” Ferris chuckles, nervously. “Granby is taking care of that; the local runners have put out word to their contacts among the tribes, to see if they can track down the native dragon who took me to Saint John.” He does not feel right using the word ‘feral’; Munkwon is not feral, she is a thinking, speaking, compassionate creature, and he will not feel at all right leaving this country knowing he is still in her debt to the tune of at least seven, and possibly up to thousands of lives. “If she can be found, she will be paid threefold, and Granby would not take a penny from me to do it.”

“Well, good,” Forthing mutters, almost as though he has not heard. He seems to remember his basket, and goes to one knee on the blanket to open it. “Will you eat something?” he asks.

“Please,” Ferris says, relieved at the prospect of having something to do with his hands, more than anything else. Forthing extracts from the basket and lays out several sliced apples, bread rolls, butter, cheese, hard boiled eggs, slices of roast chicken, and even what appear to be a pair of fruit turnovers: Ferris’ favourite. There is also a bottle of wine, with glasses, and Forthing does not wait for encouragement before filling them. Ferris lowers himself gingerly onto the blanket, stretching out his legs, and accepts the offered glass, helping himself to a slice of cheese on bread. Forthing sits beside him, but no closer than anyone else of his acquaintance might have.

Although it is well into the morning, the grey shape of the moon is still visible on the horizon, so clear against the powder blue of the sky that one can make out the dark outlines of its craters. It appears that the storms have finally passed, for which Ferris can only be glad. “A shame we can’t stay, really,” he finds himself saying, after they have sat quietly for a while. “It is so beautiful here.”

“Aye,” Forthing agrees. “I thought… you might like to see it like this—the country, I mean—so you will not only remember fighting it for your life.”

Ferris smiles across at him. “Thoughtful of you,” he says. “However did you manage this, anyway? Did people not ask where we were going? Did Guinevere not—” he stops, struck by a thought that almost certainly ought to have occurred to him long before now. “Ned… does Vivi know?”

“Of course she knows,” Forthing says, dismissively, seemingly unaware of the way he has just casually rearranged Ferris’ world view. “She is my companion for life, you know, it would be impossible to keep secrets from her. Besides, dragons do not have the same objections people do to this sort of thing; she does not mind, and she understands she must not speak about it to anyone else, but I think I would go mad, if I had no one to talk to about it.”

“About me,” Ferris says, flatly, still shaken by this revelation. “You know you could just talk to me, instead.”

“Oh, could I.” It is not a question. Forthing makes a face that is half amusement, half discomfort. “Anyway, you do the same thing.”

“What?” Ferris blinks at him, confused. “I do not.”

“Well, I know you talk to the admiral about me, for one.”

Ferris’ mouth falls open. “I do not,” he says again, shocked not only at the accusation, but the offhand nature of it, as though it were merely a statement of fact. “Granby spoke to me, all of once, and it was not until after we came here.”

Forthing’s face falls. “Oh,” he says, his cheeks burning a little. “But… then… you have not spoken about it, to anyone?”

“Certainly not! I am not a gossip, to go telling your—our business, all over the place. I thought you must have said something to Granby, since it is hardly like him to come out with it like that, without prompting, or invitation...” The ensuing look of guilt on Forthing’s face is enough: it might as well be a full confession. “You did speak to him?” Ferris demands. “And you are sitting there, accusing me—”

“I am not accusing you of anything, Henry; Lord, calm down. I would not have said anything to him at all, but he was dropping hints, you know, that I might. And I was getting to my wits’ end, and he—well, I know we have never been intimates, as you are, but he is a plainspoken man, like me—”

“Please, spare me the details.” Ferris grimaces.

“I only meant… to have to keep it all only to yourself… is it not lonely?”

“I had not considered it; I did not realise there was another option,” Ferris says, bitterly. “Why stop there? Does Fox know? The rest of the crew?”

Forthing only sighs, which is not in the least the reaction Ferris had expected.

“Ned!”

“No—no—I have not told them anything, Christ…” Forthing puts down his glass and runs a hand over his face. “I am doing this all wrong, I only meant… I would not be too surprised, if some of them have guessed. We are not so subtle as we think we are, I suspect, although I should hope we are not quite so obvious as Shepherd and Devereaux.”

“Peter?” Ferris asks, breathlessly.

“I don’t think so. But, Henry, that is part of what I want to say to you. I have been wondering if I ought to tell him, before he gets much older.”

“What?”

“He is a clever lad; he will work it all out, eventually. I would rather he hear it from me, than some rumour, or God forbid if he saw us, somehow—”

Ferris’ stomach turns. “You realise what you are saying,” he says. His mouth is dry; he reaches for the wine and takes a deep swallow. “You realise how dangerous… what a risk you would be taking, for both of us—”

“Of course I know. That is why… well, it is one of the reasons I asked Granby his advice. I do not take it lightly, but I have been thinking about it for some time. Do you really think he will be upset? You have raised him for almost as much time as I have, by now. And he loves you.”

Ferris shakes his head, slowly, not quite able to believe what he is hearing. “Not like that,” he says. “Not the way he loves you. You are his father.”

“Exactly.” Forthing looks intently at him. “Everything I do in life is for him. Everything, since his mother died… going to the other side of the world after an egg, dragging my arse across every continent known to civilised man, trying to lift myself up in society, all of it, so that he might have a better life some day than I have. Even Guinevere… I love her, you know I do, but she is for him, really. So that he has some certainty, some sense of the future, such as I never had. The only thing I ever did that was just for me…” he hesitates, teetering, and then, as though fighting his way through a breaking dam, goes on, “Henry, I tried to tell you something, back at the cave…”

“I know.”

“I am glad you did not let me, in the end. I want…. I want to say it right.”

Ferris’ heart is pounding again. He imagines he can feel it straining against his cracked rib, although he is fairly sure neither thing is really that close to one another. Forthing reaches out and puts a hand on his, shifting closer to him and ignoring the boiled eggs that spill around his knees.

“What I have done with you is the most selfish thing I have ever done,” Forthing says. “And I do not regret it, not at all. I care for you, more than I think you know. But if I tell Peter, it becomes something else, do you see? Something more.”

Ferris nods, slowly. “Yes,” he says. “I do see. You want to be sure.”

“I am sure.” Forthing puts his other, tentative hand to Ferris’ cheek, his fingers curling around the back of his neck. “Or I would not be telling you this.”

“Then you want to know if I am sure.” The touch on his face sparks something; a memory, or a dream, it is impossible to tell. Come back to me, and tell me again, it whispers. “While I am not also rambling about cows?” he guesses.

The good side of Forthing’s mouth turns up, relief spreading across his face. “You do remember.”

“Maybe, a little.” Ferris frowns. “Did you really think I would leave the crew?”

“Henry, I never know what you are thinking. Until this disaster of a posting, I might have believed almost anything, at least as far as your feelings toward me.”

“You could have asked me!”

“Well, what can I say, I am a coward,” Forthing says, most of the tension gone now from his shoulders as he leans in toward him. “Does this mean you accept, then?”

Ferris puts out a hand, catching Forthing by the chest and holding him back. “You have not actually asked me anything, yet,” he says.

“Oh.” Forthing winces. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “Henry Ferris… if I swear to be yours and only yours, and to… to love you, as you deserve to be loved… will you love me? Will you be mine, and only mine? Will you care for my son, as if he were your own—”

“Oh stop, stop,” Ferris exclaims, knowing he is flushing red to the tips of his ears. “Enough, yes, I swear. You only had to ask, you great oaf—”

The kiss that follows is more intense than being shot in the chest. Forthing is careful not to jostle him too badly, but it still leaves Ferris gasping, clutching blindly at Forthing’s coat sleeve to keep himself upright. For a moment there is nothing left in the word but the solid, profound pressure of Forthing’s hand at the back of his neck, and the taste of sun-warmed wine on his tongue. “Ned,” he breathes, when Forthing draws back.

“If you are fit to fly,” Forthing says, cautiously eager. “Does that mean…”

“I don’t believe Dr Olsen was specific on that point,” Ferris pants. “Help me with my coat, will you?”

Forthing obligingly helps him out of his coat. When he goes to get up, to put it carefully aside, Ferris grabs his wrist. “Leave it,” he growls.

Forthing’s eyes widen. “Whatever you say, your Lordship,” he says, settling back on his knees.

Ordinarily Ferris would protest this epithet, but in this moment he finds he might even like it, a little; it sends a little shiver down his spine. He looks instead over Forthing’s shoulder, trying to see where Guinevere has got to. “She is not watching, is she?” he asks.

“She is on the other side of the island,” Forthing promises. “Scaring off all the fish.” He pulls Ferris into another kiss, all while shrugging off his own coat and tugging at the rest of Ferris’ clothes. Ferris lets him undo and take off his belt, until Forthing’s hand is suddenly sliding onto the bare skin of his chest beneath his shirt.

“Wait,” he says, panting, momentarily frozen.

“What?” Forthing draws back, immediately, his face full of concern. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Ferris says, hesitant. He puts a hand to his ribs, holding the fabric protectively against the skin. “It’s just… there is a scar.”

Forthing’s eyes widen in puzzled surprise. “So? You won’t let me see it?”

“It is ugly.”

Forthing snorts.

“What?” Ferris demands, feeling his face redden.

“Two things.” Forthing leans his weight forward, gently but firmly pushing Ferris back until he is lying on his back on the picnic blanket. “One,” he says, and Ferris suddenly hears his own voice echoing towards him, having travelled three long years forward from the past. “Do not use that word; it does not become you. And two…” Forthing raises a pointed eyebrow. “At least yours is not on your face.”

Ferris lets out a startled breath. “Sorry,” he says, suddenly ashamed.

Forthing kisses him again as though nothing has happened, using one hand to blindly pull buttons out of their holes. Then his head lowers, and Ferris closes his eyes, bracing himself in anticipation of Forthing pulling back, or perhaps making some sound of disgust, but he does not. Instead, Forthing presses his lips to Ferris’ side, over the place where the cauterising iron had sealed shut the wound, leaving a round, rippled patch of ruined flesh. Ferris’ next breath is ragged and unsteady. “Ned,” he moans aloud, and that is all the encouragement Forthing needs.

They make love, there, by the lake, the sun trickling through the branches overhead to wash their entangled limbs in changeable warmth. Forthing is gentle, conscious of every sound Ferris makes, and almost frustratingly cautious. Ferris has to urge him on with reassurances at least twice, until they settle into something less fervent than their usual level of activity but no less satisfying. Ferris can lose himself at last in Forthing’s arms, the strength of his thighs, and the reassuringly familiar scent of him under the intoxicating aura of soap and wine and dragon, and the faintest hint of gunpowder.

It is not quite warm enough to lay naked, after, even in the full sun nearer to the lakeside, so they pull their shirts and trousers back on loose, too sated and content to do any of the fastenings. Forthing leans his back against a tree, and Ferris sits between his legs with one of Forthing’s arms slung around his waist, and the back of his neck resting against Forthing’s shoulder, while he catches his breath. His side is a little sore, but no more than it might have been after an hour aloft; he will not complain only to have Forthing fuss unnecessarily. He is perfectly comfortable right here, and he intends to enjoy it for as long as it can possibly last, although before long he expects he will be hungry enough to manage a fruit turnover.

“May I ask you something?” Forthing murmurs against his neck.

“Mmm?” Ferris raises himself out of his half-doze, turning his head a little to show he is listening.

“When did it change for you? You and me, I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Ferris yawns. He considers the question. By now, he thinks he could give half a dozen answers, but one in particular seems to stand out in his mind. “I think it was the ball,” he says, feeling not a little embarrassed. “When I saw you dancing with the princess.”

“Oh?” Forthing sounds pleased. “Jealous, were you?”

“I wanted to shove her out of the way and take her place,” Ferris admits, making Forthing laugh. “And it was all the worse knowing the whole thing was my idea, and I had no one to blame but myself.”

“Well, at least you have nothing to fear on that account,” Forthing says, still chuckling. “She is famously married.”

“And she only likes princes,” Ferris adds for him. “Or dukes.”

Forthing winces. “Fair enough,” he says. “I asked for that.”

“What about you?” Ferris asks. “When it changed for you?” Forthing does not answer, at first; Ferris can feel him going still at his back. “Well?” he insists. “Come on, turn about is fair play.”

“You must promise not to laugh,” Forthing mutters.

“Fine, I promise.” Ferris rolls his eyes, wondering how the answer can possibly be more humiliating than his had been.

“Well… it was on the island. When we were marooned.”

“What?” Ferris’ face splits into a disbelieving grin, he looks around to make sure Forthing is not joking.

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh.”

“Ned, that was five years ago!”

“Do you want me to tell you, or not?”

“All right, all right.” Ferris settles back into place, holding Forthing’s thickset arm against him in case he decides to be offended enough to try to remove it. “Go on.”

Forthing sighs. “It was after the sailors had tried their luck,” he says. “The dragons were all furious. Kulingile had kidnapped Demane, we were all tired and hungry—”

“I remember.”

“Anyway. The captain was asleep, I think, and Temeraire was miserable, fretting about something happening to him, trying to come up with ideas for getting us out of there. I said something about there not being any chance of leaving that island until the French returned to release us, quite sensibly, I thought, but you can imagine how he took that, especially coming from me. You looked at me like I had lost my wits—and I had determined to despise you long before then, so that was hardly surprising. And then you told Temeraire… it sounds silly now, but you told him nothing would happen to Laurence, because you and I and all the rest of the crew, such as it was, would simply not allow it. Now, I knew that was pure bravado, considering we were outnumbered ten to one, and I am sure Temeraire knew it just as well, but it settled him anyway, for a little while, because it really sounded like you believed it. And, I don’t know… I thought… I had never seen a dragon listen to someone like that, who was not their captain, nor even a serving officer.”

“That’s Temeraire for you,” Ferris said, uncomfortably; he does not remember the conversation at all.

“It was not just that. You knew what to say. And I watched you, after that; you always know what to say. I had always thought of aristocracy… breeding, classical education, and so on… useless stuff. Fit for lords and ladies, not soldiers. But you were not just educated, you were clever, and quick with it; you had good ideas and you made them heard. I could see why they liked you so much; Laurence and Temeraire, both. And I still hated you, a little, but I also wanted to be you, only I knew I never would be.” He stops. “I am not explaining this at all well, am I?”

“I don’t mind,” Ferris says. Perhaps it does not make very much sense, but he is enjoying it anyway. “So, after the rockslide, when we…?”

“I was cock of the walk, weren’t I.” Forthing snorts. “Thought I had won something, somehow, by having you. Thought that was it, I could put you out of my head for good. Only it just made it worse, then. I could scarcely think of anything else, when I wasn’t thinking about how close we were to dying on any given day. And I started to realise it had become something obsessive. Meanwhile, poor Granby had lost half an arm, Laurence was shot, I was shot. And there you were, prancing about without a scratch on you. Such a pretty-boy. Infuriating.”

Ferris has to fight the temptation to elbow him in the ribs. “I have a scratch now,” he points out.

“Aye, from a blind old farmer who couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow,” Forthing says. “Couldn’t even get yourself decently shot by the enemy.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Forthing laughs, a rumbling deep in his chest that Ferris can feel vibrating through his back. “I know I told you I wanted to learn civility from you,” he says, “but I think I might have rubbed off on you as well, just a little.”

“Probably,” Ferris mutters, only a little mollified. “Are you sure you don’t want a woman?” he asks, determined to at least get a dig in. “Since you seem to love argument for argument’s sake?”

“Hm. I hadn’t thought of that. Your sisters are all married, aren’t they?”

“Ned!”

Forthing grins. “And you asked for that.”

Ferris turns on him, and they wrestle around for a while, but Ferris has a distinct disadvantage; it is the work of a moment for Forthing to pin him down, after which Ferris decides he is properly hungry after all, and reaches for the nearest turnover.

“When we get back to England,” Forthing says, after they have sat for a while and watched Guinevere’s distant shape duck dive around the little island, sending up spray so high that it dampens the tops of the trees, “I think I will buy a house. I know I don’t have much, but I have never had a home to go to, outside of the Corps, and I want that for Peter. It don’t need to be anything grand.”

“Where?” Ferris asks, swallowing his current mouthful. “Edinburgh?”

“You think they will send us back to Edinburgh after this? The lightweight and her crew who saved Halifax from an invading army? We will be reassigned to the channel, you mark my words, no matter how many defaming letters Cochrane likes to send after us.”

Ferris has to admit that he has not considered this, but it makes sense. “Plymouth,” he says, his heart sinking. The covert is the closest one to his family’s house in Weymouth. Not so close that he is likely to run into them by accident, but still; they cannot fail to hear of the posting, once it happens.

“Most likely, with the current threat coming from the west. Will you mind?”

Ferris thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head. “I cannot avoid it forever,” he says. “Besides, I have been thinking that I ought to visit my mother, no matter what Albert says. I think I will regret it, if I don’t. I think my other brother might support me, if I approach it right.”

Forthing puts a hand on his knee, comforting. “I could come with you, if you like,” he offers, pointedly. “With Vivi. I would like to see them send you away, with her looking through the upper windows.”

Ferris chuckles. “Let me think about it,” he says. “Anyway, this house. In Plymouth, then?”

“Somewhere outside of town, I think. With enough room for a dragon. Pavilions are all well and good, but I was thinking of an extension to the house, like a barn, big enough for a lightweight; why not? The nobility build all sorts of nonsense, all the time.”

“I think that sounds very fine. And a room for Peter, of course.”

“Yes.”

“And a guest room?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so, if it is the done thing.”

Ferris nudges him. “I was hinting, Edward.”

“So was I, you lag-wit,” Forthing mutters, and rubs his forehead.

“Oh.” Ferris lets out a nervous sort of laugh. “Perhaps we ought not do that, from now on. Too many misunderstandings. We should just…”

“Speak plain?” Forthing asks.

“Yes.”

Forthing clears his throat, and looks him dead in the eyes. “I want you to live with us,” he says. “And you don’t need to sleep in a guest room.”

Ferris grins at him. “All right,” he says. “But I insist on paying rent. And you ought to have the room anyway, for appearances; no one will bat an eye at you having a lodger.”

Forthing shakes his head, wearily, but does not argue. “Well, since that is decided,” he says, “perhaps we ought to go back to the covert. I don’t need Shepherd panicking and coming after us; the poor man has not quite recovered from the shock of being grounded, I find.”

“Where do they all think we are?” Ferris asks, for the second time, as Forthing begins packing up the food again. “I cannot imagine the excuse you gave the admiral, for taking Vivi out on our own for half the day.”

“I did not have to,” Forthing says, his expression conspiratorial. “Granby knows where we are; he gave us the day off and some sham orders to cover for it.”

“Oh, of course. I should have known the two of you would be in this together. You are the best of friends now, I suppose.”

“Well, no one was quite sure if you were going to live or die; I had to have a contingency plan,” Forthing says, eyes dancing. “Which reminds me.” He puts two fingers to his lips and makes a loud whistle that carries easily over the water and alerts Guinevere, who climbs out of the lake and shakes herself off before coming back over to them. Then he says, to Ferris: “We are invited to dinner with him and Captain Little, when we are home.”

Ferris stares at him.

“Well?” Guinevere asks, when she has landed on the rocks beside them, water dripping still from the edges of her wings. “Is it settled? Will you come and stay with us?” She nudges Ferris gently with the tip of her nose, and he rubs his hand along the underside of her chin.

“Yes,” he says, and when he looks at Forthing, the man is smiling like a boy who has come outside on Christmas day to find the garden covered in snow. “Yes, I will come.”

“Oh, good,” she says with enthusiasm. “Then we can go back: I am ready. But, Edward, might we not go the long way, this time?”