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Chapter Text

ACCIPITER

PART I - CAPTIVE

                There had been a time when Calvin had believed strange things about the Indians – or as his father had called them in his customarily delicate and Christian way, "Our neighbors."

                Calvin had thought they were like everyone else, for one thing. That they had souls to be saved, and families they loved as anyone might. He'd thought they were reclusive and likely to leave you alone, if you didn't bother them. He'd thought that they would trade fairly with a man if he managed to be polite enough to satisfy their delicate sense of caution – which must be considered a natural product of living in the uncultivated forests, with bears and cougars and so forth. Anyone would need to remain guarded in that environment, and this must be what led to all the misunderstandings. Fights for territory, white men and Indians killing each other off, forts being raided, that sort of thing.

                Those regrettable matters were not helped, Calvin felt sure, by so many tribes selling their services as scouts and warriors to unscrupulous tricksters like the French. Association with them could teach a man nothing in the way of morals.

                But in all, Calvin had presumed, Indians only had as much potential for ill in them as any person, be they white or black or whatever came in between, and all the same chance to do good in the world. It was, he had held, unjust to oversimplify things and term them "savages."

                Calvin had clearly been completely wrong, because the three braves who'd captured him had earned the name of "savage" by ambushing him and beating him. And after all they'd done over the course of the day, he couldn't consider them human. A human being might break your nose when he was drunk and wanted a fight, or steal everything you owned. By God, a real bastard might outrage a woman's virtue or kill his parents for an inheritance, and if he were a lunatic he'd laugh about it as he was dragged to the gallows, never even seeing that what he'd done was wrong.

                But surely, no human being worthy of the name would seal another into a cave with a dragon's egg.

                For the dozenth time Calvin screamed "Let me out!" He kept pushing uselessly against the thick wooden grate over the cave's tiny mouth. He'd needed to duck his head to fit inside as the Indians forced him through.

                It was no use. Calvin was weak. The planks had been set into the rock itself and then lashed together. The savages looked in at him with eyes whose whites stood out brightly in the deepening dark of the evening. Three pairs of them. All of the wretches were barely older than he was himself, but leaner, stronger. They'd had no trouble capturing Calvin. One of them had shot an arrow into his pony's neck and the other two had subdued him once he'd fallen out of the saddle. It was a miracle they hadn't broken any of his bones, but his bloody nose had ruined his clothing and his cheek was swollen to twice its normal size.

                They'd killed his pony, and they were probably going to skin and eat her right in front of him, warm by their fire while he sat and ached and waited for death.

                One of the young men said something in his native tongue and the others laughed. The one who had joked stepped closer, and said, "English," pointing past Calvin, into the cave. He was indicating where the egg rested.

                That made no sense at all, of course. As though these fools could have stolen one of the Aerial Corps' precious eggs, which were kept under constant guard in places like Castle Island. The one they had was large enough that it must have been difficult to carry here, for that matter. "You're lying," Calvin said. "Why are you lying?" It wasn't as though the tribes didn't raise their own dragons. Everyone knew it was their practice to give their most courageous warriors the right to ride them into battle.

                Without warning, the brave knocked against the wall of wood with the butt of his musket. Calvin recoiled, falling onto his buttocks, the pebbly floor hurting him. "English! Man, English." he pointed at Calvin, then in the direction of the egg, and then repeated, louder and slower as though it would make more sense, "English." Then he put his hand next to his mouth and opened and closed it a few times while saying something in his own tongue.

                He wanted Calvin to speak English – which made no sense, since he already was. What did the egg have to do with it?

                "I'm speaking English. I only speak English." Calvin felt tears running down his cheeks; they were hot and stung where they touched the wheals on his skin. He was ashamed to be crying, and his captors seeing it made it all the worse.

                The brave sneered, stepping away, making some kind of hand gesture significant to his people but not to Calvin. The others laughed again from where they were making a fire using a bow drill with remarkable speed and ease. Calvin shut his eyes while gripping the bars again, listening to that whirring, scraping noise. He tried to gather his courage.

                Then he turned around, running the dozen steps it took to reach the back of the small cave. His teeth were bared. He was going to smash the bloody thing.

                The egg glistened only dimly in the shadows, blue-green and as tall as his waist. Inside was something that would, left to its own devices, break loose and kill him. The hatchling would turn him into its first meal. Dragons were always born ready to fend for themselves; he knew that much from stories. It was why their parents did not need to care for them.

                Well, the animal inside might already be strong enough to cut him apart and gobble up the pieces, but Calvin would rather take the chance that it would be weak and unformed. Unprepared. It might not be anything near sporting to kill something that hadn't been born yet, but when accidents happened and the hens laid fertilized eggs, you didn't waste time tending to them. If you didn't want cockerels, you broke them. It was a matter of practicality.

                Calvin tried to slam his foot into the very center and top, on the theory that this might let him hit the dragon's head, crush it, make it unable to hurt him back while he finished the deed. His boot wasn't too heavy, being only made of deerskin. But Calvin's legs were the one part of himself he considered reasonably strong from all the walking, the climbing, the years of crouched work at planting. He made sure to connect with the shell using his heel first.

                It not only didn't break, but Calvin's knee lost all feeling, and then his ankle did the same. They'd been bruised during his beating, but now they were strained by being slammed into something that felt as hard as iron. The shells of dragon eggs were supposed to grow tougher before the hatching, he'd heard, but this was beyond anything he'd imagined. The boy fell over, muttering every curse he knew, and he heard more laughter from outside. Through the water in his eyes he saw the Indians pointing and laughing, one of them patting his musket while shaking his head. It might not have been effective, but he wasn't meant to try it again, either. Calvin shut his eyes, whimpering. He had not been captive for a day, but he already felt starving and parched and exhausted.

                Father was dead. No one knew where he, Calvin, was – he wasn't even sure himself, as the area north of the Susquehanna's fork was barely mapped. If he'd even owned a map. No help would come, because in the entire world Calvin had no living relations. He barely had any friends.

                What was there left to even try living for, if he had nothing to look forward to but being eaten alive by the most vicious and terrifying sort of beast known to man?

                Well. It was a week until his sixteenth birthday, anyway.

                He wondered if he could last that long – but upon reflection, that depended entirely on the dragon, and how eager it proved to leave its shell and eat him.

                After only a few minutes of sleep, Calvin was woken by shouted commands that made no sense to him. They were entirely in the heathens' language, which was full of strange stresses and intonations that didn't match up to any tone of voice Calvin was familiar with. He couldn't so much as identify it – what tribes even lived in this area, at any rate? The Delaware? The Shawnee? There were people who knew all such things, and Calvin wasn't one of them.

                His father had probably known. Father had known half of everything. Other children Calvin had played with said they'd figured out at ten or eleven that they were as clever as their parents, or more so. They'd realized that their fathers weren't right all the time even if they were the heads of excellent homesteads with English educations. Calvin Priestly hadn't experienced those feelings; his father had always, without ever intending to, made him feel like an idiot.

                Sergeant Benjamin Priestly had been clever. Too clever for the station he had been born to back in England, or even in New York as an underpaid Marine who needed to take jobs on the side to clothe himself. The frontier was made for men like him, enterprising and ethical and fascinated by the possibilities of the unknown, rather than afraid of them. It fell to them to tame the wild country that was called America, and make it British.

                Whatever father didn't know, he'd learned or figured out. He would have been able to understand what the Indians were telling him with their hand signs and shouting about half an hour before Calvin did.

                They wanted him to talk to the egg, as part of God-only-knew what heathen ritual. It didn't appear to matter what he said, as long as he said it in English and as long as he didn't stop. Calvin obliged them, especially because they shouted at him to continue if he did anything other than drink the filthy water pooled among the rocks. He needed to do this often, to help his throat.

                So, day after day, Calvin talked. They didn't feed him, and didn't acknowledge him unless he slowed down or began mumbling things that weren't words. They seemed more or less able to identify it when he did this.

                His main solace was that they couldn't really understand him, no matter what he wanted to talk about. Calvin could go on about anything he liked, and he had plenty to say to himself. Things he felt it was important to give voice to, before he died.

                Calvin talked about how he'd gone out into the woods just to get sticks for kindling, and come back to find his father's body hunched over in his favorite chair. He'd known something was wrong before he'd even touched the body, since Father never rested while the sun was up.

                He talked about burying his father with his own hands, on a pitch-black night with raw palms and no idea how such a hearty man had sickened and died in only two days, scarcely complaining of the pain in his heart. He talked about heading south out of New York Colony's far reaches in search of the nearest real civilization, which was supposed to be here in Pennsylvania – if he'd made it into Pennsylvania yet, at any rate. Father had shown him how to follow the old, marked trail. Calvin had now lost that trail.

                Eventually, as he sat there speaking, it rained and the water got a touch fresher. But the ground turned muddy, and Calvin had to curl up in the farthest-back, darkest part of the cave. Right next to the horrible egg.

                Days passed. He began to talk about things that were small, childish. He recounted every detail of life in the cabin that had been home, so far from everyone and everything. How he and Father used to stuff and preserve birds, and how he'd been taught to recite all the binomial names of the ones they mounted on the walls of their cabin. Calvin had been made to read and re-read every one of their dozen-and-a-half books, so he talked about those. He rehashed the plots of the novels to himself. The history of the kings of England was recited, though he felt sure he'd skipped some. And then he made up some others to amuse himself. He summarized those books of the Bible he thought had enough adventures in them to be worth knowing.

                It was impossible for him to deliver Shakespeare, as he wasn't too capable with the outmoded language, but he could rattle off the stories, and did so, inventing the details he couldn't quite bring to mind. The plots worked quite as well when simplified, and fit in nicely with the ones he liked better, of the Greek gods and goddesses. Eventually he got down to trying to recollect every word of A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.

                Part of Calvin thought he would run out of stories to tell himself before too long, but he was alone with every bit of the contents of his head. Knowing that he would die soon, he appreciated the chance to reexamine them and cherish them, one last time. And in every story he told of his own life, he put his father front and center. The man who he had spent five years almost completely alone with, who had taught him everything he knew, and who was now gone to meet his Maker in the wondrous hereafter, leaving Calvin to face this far harsher world alone.

                He was so hungry that his belly didn't even ache, so sad that he'd lost the ability to cry. Deep in the night, while Calvin's captors were asleep, he kept on murmuring to himself about the time he'd been to the Chesapeake and seen a whale. He realized now that he'd never simply told someone about it who hadn't been there.

                Knowing that the egg was hardened and would hatch before long, his heart stopped when it began to move.

                Calvin sat up straight, watching the egg wobble ever so slightly, and then backed as far away as he could get without venturing to the front of the cave. He didn't want to wake the sleeping braves – it was just possible that if he timed this properly, he could kill the dragon before it had even been fully born. It must spend a time struggling its way out, like a bird, and he hoped that in those few moments it would be vulnerable. He would destroy it.

                And then the braves would come in and probably torture him to death. But it might be worth it to do them one last injury, ruin their horrible game.

                Except that he'd had enough of pain. His bruises were yellowing and ached constantly. Calvin could take no more.

                All right, then, maybe he could just hide in the shadowiest corner and hope they forgot about him while they tended to the dragonet. Although, of course, it was much more likely that it would just eat him, first.

                A hairline crack appeared in the turquoise smoothness, and then another and another, until a rough triangle was formed. At once this lifted, and then the rest was not so much cracking as crumbling apart, as though it had been brittle all along, though Calvin knew otherwise. In a moment most of it was shaken off by a dragonet that was crouched, shaking and covered in slime. It was brown as the cave's walls on top, but its belly reflected some light, being striped irregularly with white.

                It looked at him intently, at once. There was no hiding from it – it raised its head and extended a long, four-clawed foot out to take its first step. The glistening talons clacked on the rock. They were clearly sharp, each as long as his longest finger.

                It was like sitting inside of a nightmare, but on some level Calvin had given himself to death by now. He was ready to be eaten, and felt like his spirit was outside of his body. It was almost interesting to study this strange creature, so unlike any he'd ever seen in person. He had never looked at anything but pictures of dragons, and this one was quite like them, only smaller than he'd expected. It was just the size of a common dog. But of course it had far sharper teeth, long talons, instruments that would tear him apart if he tried to fight.

                The impression of fierceness reminded him of the birds his father had so liked to spot in the wilderness, recording every different species he could identify.

                "Accipiter gentilis," Calvin muttered.

                The dragonet really was very close in coloration to that species of hawk, excepting the eyes.

                Those were bright yellow, rather than orange. Instead of a staring dot the pupils were thin slashes of absolute dark that darted around – though they settled on Calvin again and again. The talons even reminded him of the preserved example of the raptor from just over his father's desk, where it had stood looking sagely at the far wall with its fake eyes. The curved black blades had always been used as an example to him. 'Our fellow frontiersman here always remembered to carry his knives with him. If you had to choose only one thing to keep with you while alone in these woods, it should be a knife!'

                Calvin wondered what being torn apart by talons large enough to gut men rather than mice was going to feel like. He'd never been stabbed before. Perhaps it would happen fast enough that he wouldn't feel it?

                The dragonet blinked – then it blinked again, somehow over the first eyelid. Calvin was confused. How had it done that? The first lid had been transparent and come from the side, and the second was more like a human's blink, two parts coming together from top and bottom.

                Then he remembered his studies, something he'd read and would never have been able to imagine without seeing it up close. It has a nictitating membrane. Like a hunting bird.

                It was just as he thought this that the dragonet stood up on its hind legs, extending its long neck so that its short-horned head was higher than Calvin's. Its mouth opened, and Calvin was looking at a semicircle of very regular, frighteningly sharp teeth. Two of them were fangs that were extremely curved back among queer folds of flesh. It was coming closer.

                Calvin shut his eyes and covered his head. His mouth felt salty and foul – if he'd had anything to eat, he would have vomited on himself, but instead he just gagged.

                "What does that mean?" he heard.

                Calvin didn't open his eyes. He remained nestled against the wall, mouthing the Lord's Prayer, feeling the dragonet's hot breath rush over him every few seconds as it exhaled. Finally its snout nudged him and Calvin shook fiercely, unable to stop himself. He pitched over, and the force of his forehead hitting the pebbly floor made him sit up, involuntarily rubbing mud from his soiled jacket. As though keeping it clean mattered at all now.

                He was terrified to find the dragonet's face a foot from his. He couldn't see its teeth anymore, but had already pictured them crushing his throat with a single bite. "I beg your pardon, Calvin," said the beast in a voice that was rather thin and pointed. Even stranger, it reminded him of his father's, a little. "But I asked you what that means."

                "Huh?" Calvin asked, unthinking. The dragon could not only speak directly upon being hatched – Calvin had felt sure that only grown, tamed ones should be able to do this – but it had surprisingly good manners. And it knew his name. The instinct of formality overtook Calvin, something ingrained in him to fall back upon at this trying moment. "Uh, I mean... I crave your... sorry, I ask forgiveness... what are you speaking of?"

                The still-slimy dragonet sat back on its haunches. Calvin remaining seated and tried not to move, not to do anything that might provoke a violent reaction. "The thing you said as I came out of the shell, of course. It was the first I have heard from you without anything in the way, so I am interested in it as a matter of course."

                "It..." Calvin's mind was racing. He wondered, if he could keep the dragon talking, would it perhaps not kill him for the time being? "... it's the binomial name, the scientific name of the Northern Goshawk. A hunting bird, well-suited to falconry. I've heard so, anyway; I've never owned a falcon. Or a hawk." He swallowed but his throat was dry, so he wheezed while he added "Accipiter gentilis means 'gentle hawk.' Is that interesting to you?"

                "Hmm," the dragonet said, and then set about flicking fragments of powdery eggshell off of itself with its talons. It spoke in an entirely conversational manner, as if it were completely used to talking to people who were cowering in fear from it. "Do you suppose I could use that for my name? Not the second part, it seems a wrongheaded thing to call a dragon. You said dragons are meant to be fierce, at one point. But hawks are hunting birds, and I think I would like a name to do with this matter of science. It seems terribly interesting."

                Calvin nodded rapidly. "Of course. Yes. Yes! Anything you want. Accipiter is a good name for a dragon, especially. It's normal for aviators to name dragons in Latin, you know."

                He didn't quite follow the order of events for a moment, just watching the dragonet breathe in and out heavily, its sides swelling and then shrinking as it tested its breath, its tongue tasting the air thoughtfully. Then it clicked into place. It heard me, it heard everything I said. It wasn't even born yet! "You understood me, then? While you were in your egg?"

                "Well, not at first," Accipiter clarified. "You see, when you began I had not heard English before. It was all the Unami way of speaking. So I had to come to understand you, which was not very easy since you talked about things altogether different from what I had heard of before. There was little to compare between them."

                "I see," Calvin said, not seeing at all. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

                "Do you have any food, Calvin?" Accipiter asked.

                Despite his fear, he couldn't very well lie. That might upset it. "N-no."

                "Well, that is too bad. But I suppose we can go get some."

                The dragon padded towards the mouth of the cave, its finned tail coiling and uncoiling over the ground as it walked, testing its muscles. Calvin bit his lower lip as Accipiter came to the carefully-sunk planks of wood, eying them up and down. It – no, he, Calvin felt sure the monster was male – would realize it was stuck, and turn on him now for sustenance.

                For the barest fraction of an instant Calvin considered trying to rush up behind the dragon and hit it on the head, perhaps stun it and then go about the grotesque work of killing it. But it interrupted him by saying "Oh, you were right; you are quite trapped in here. Well, the two of us shall have to get out. To stay in a cave forever would be very boring." And the dragon put both of his talons on one of the thick horizontal planks, raised all his weight onto it, and pushed down. His claws cut into the lashings and then broke them with a loud snap.

                Right away, the sleeping braves awoke with shouts of alarm and anger. Accipiter backed up a few steps, his tail actually slapping into Calvin's shin, and he looked quite pleased with himself. The corners of his mouth turned up just slightly, to suggest a smile. Dragons can smile? "Ah, here we are," Accipiter said. "We shall be let out in no time."

                The three young men were speaking in loud voices and apparently scolding each other; one was shaking his head with his hands on his temples in great distress. The brave who Calvin had decided was their leader came to the cave first, and seemed to think he should work on pulling the grate out of place carefully. Then he reconsidered and slammed his hatchet into it. After a minute's work or so, and with the help of his cohorts, he was taking the barrier apart once and for all.

                The Indian had moved on to speaking his own language in a coaxing tone of voice to the dragon. Calvin was bewildered, but he supposed the Indians must have their own way of harnessing – and it wasn't as though he even really understood the proper, European one in the first place.

                "Oh, I do not agree," Accipiter said to the young man, and then to Calvin's amazement he spoke a string of words in the Indian's tongue. This did not surprise the lead brave, who shook his head, smiling, still speaking very gently. Accipiter sat back again, this time actually lashing his tail and striking Calvin in the knee, the very one he'd hurt trying to break the egg. It hurt. "Pardon me, Calvin. I am simply rather upset. These men seem to think that they are going to take me away from you."

                Calvin, of course, would have quite liked for them to do just that, but he didn't say so. He merely watched as the braves spoke more and more insistently, with Accipiter shaking his head no at them, in imitation of their head movements. At length the leader of them raised his hatchet and pointed at Calvin, making some pronouncement that sounded both final and dangerous.

                And then Accipiter hissed noisily, spreading his wings as far as they could be opened in the cave's mouth. Although this blocked his view, Calvin could clearly hear all three Indians scrambling backwards, exclaiming. One dropped a coil of rope he'd been holding, another lost hold of the knife with which he'd hacked at the wall of wood.

                Accipiter bounded cleanly through the hole in the ruined barricade, and after a second Calvin clamored through too, on the theory that he might not have another chance to escape this place.

                The dragonet was still hissing and punctuating his sounds with swipes at the air, which the young warriors danced back from, looking to each other for counsel but receiving none. One went for rope, but Accipiter merely had to move closer to make him drop it and retreat fearfully.

                Calvin had no interest in sticking around to watch the outcome of the mess, though he hoped the Indians would all end up as dragon-food – and then, even more fittingly, as dragon spoor. He was very weak, but he got to his feet, grabbing the bone-handled knife that the brave had lost. Calvin took a few steps on shaky legs, but he felt sure that the feeling was coming back into them, that he would be able to run full-out soon, because he needed to... but then one of his legs disagreed with his thoughts. It cramped up and he fell over yet again, grunting.

                "Calvin!" Accipiter's voice came, "You need to run away! These men mean to do you harm!"

                Of course they do, thought Calvin, but then, he had never mentioned that particular fact to Accipiter's egg.

                It was at this point Calvin understood that the dragonet was intentionally putting itself between the Indians and his own prone body. The lead brave seemed to have decided that trying to harness the hatchling kindly was a lost cause and was angrily swinging his hatchet at the beast, teeth bared. He must want to either hurt it until it was docile or, failing that, kill it.

                "Go!" cried Accipiter, "I can fight them for you!"

                Calvin had known even as a boy playing soldiers that someone like him could only ever pretend to be brave. His father had been the stout-hearted one – metaphorically, at any rate. In constitution Calvin must take after his mother, who had been given to low appetite and frequent illness, and if he understood correctly, had sometimes fainted for no reason at all. It was only upon her death that Christopher Priestly had taken his young son out to settle the frontier, in the hopes of building a home before he was ready to remarry.

                But Calvin was not without a sense of justice. These Indian devils had shut him up in a cave, tried to feed him to a dragon, and now by some surprising grant of providence, their plan had failed and the dragon was defending him. Even if it were just in the manner of a street-dog defending some city-goer who had been kind to it in the past, it was a noble stand that Accipiter was making against evil enemies.

                And Calvin's father, he felt sure, would have thought that the only proper course of action was for his son to give as good an account of himself on the young dragon's behalf as the creature was giving on his.

                Besides, it wasn't as though his legs were able to take him out of here. What choice did he have?

                Calvin stumbled to his feet. Brandishing the long knife, he said, "You brown beasts can come kill me with your own hands, at last! Go on! I'll filet you first!" He eventually noticed that he was holding the blade facing himself and turned the knife around. "Come on! Fight like men!"

                The Indians completely ignored him at first, and then the one who had been trying to fetch the rope looked over at him, grimaced, and ran closer to the campfire. In one motion he had picked up, lifted, and aimed a musket – but he had been hasty, and that left his aim off when he fired. Besides which, Calvin had already started diving out of his way, his brave words coming to nothing. The musket's ball sped through the air and was not stopped by the corner of his muddy coat. It was reduced instantly to tatters.

                Before, the only sounds Accipiter had made were words and hisses. Now he roared – or shrieked – in a startling noise that mixed characteristics of things as different as a bellowing elk and water turning to steam on a hot pan. Then he coiled back his neck and held his mouth open very wide while hissing, and a look of complete terror came over the face of each Indian. They were staring at his mouth, where the two swept-back fangs had come more into line with the rest of the teeth. It was only a moment before they had quit the camp, running away without offering any further fight at terrific speed, despite the presence of roots and underbrush.

                Calvin quivered. "They've left?" Ferocious the hatchling might be, but he hadn't thought they would give up on trying to at least kill it. It wasn't quite as big as any of them, surely all three together could have beaten it, and Calvin himself barely factored into that situation.

                "Well, of course they did," said Accipiter with self-satisfaction, turning on the spot to face Calvin."They knew that if I bit them, they would not be able to move."

                That did not really make sense to Calvin. He supposed that this meant wounding them might make them unable to escape the dangers of the wild. He might have asked, but the dragonet inhaled deeply, leapt into the air, and with only a few flaps of his wings was perched on a sturdy tree branch, looking into the distance. In the moonlight his shape up there could almost be mistaken for an uncannily large owl. "I cannot see well, because it is so dark," he announced, "But I think they are not coming back."

                "All right. Well. Very good." Calvin began to back away, exhaling. "It was very good of you to keep them from me, Accipiter. Really excellent."

                "Yes, I quite agree," the dragonet said, landing lightly after a jump down from the tree. "Now, let us see if they have left any food for us. I am quite hungry. And do not go running off, or they are sure to come back and kill you while I am not present. That would be just the sort of underhanded thing real bounders would get up to."

                Calvin's stomach clenched on nothing at the mention of food, causing him to think about what he could manage alone, without provisions, in a wilderness where the natives had every reason to want to kill him. I have a knife, he thought. I did as Father told me.

                But it wasn't enough, and even before his capture he had worried that he would never make it, even if he went as cleanly south and east as possible to find the great river. He'd been in constant need to forage for food. "As you say," he told the dragon. "We should both eat."

                There was jerky and some cornmeal for Calvin, also the remains of his pony for the dragon. The Indians had only lazily buried it, just deep enough to keep flies from reaching – Calvin saw worms crawling around the carcass though, and he wondered at how the smell of desiccation had crept up on him, so that he had not even realized it was there. It seemed like the pony could be partly rotting inside, but Accipiter tore into it with aplomb. Calvin made sure not to watch. He had cared for that poor creature for almost two years.

                It was now very late at night, and the fire needed to be added to. "I suppose," Calvin said carefully, taking a swig from a metal canteen he'd found (which turned out to contain only water) "That you aren't going to eat me?"

                "Pray, do not be disgusting," said Accipiter. He seemed at the moment quite interested in a short necklace looted from the Indians' things. It was mostly wooden beads, but had a few on it that were of shiny purple wampum. "We can keep these things, can we not? Since the Lenape have left them, they must now belong to you and I."

                Being as they were already eating the food and Calvin had every intention of taking with him everything else that seemed useful, he nodded. "Well, if you want it, it's certainly yours." He was still not prepared to try taking anything from a dragon.

                Accipiter smiled again in that strange way of his, hooked a talon under the necklace and lifted it to examine it better in the firelight. He then tried to get it onto his own head, which failed because it became stuck around his little horns, and he growled in frustration.

                Calvin, who was against all odds somewhat amused with the sight, said "I will get that," without really considering it at first. But he found himself only a little afraid while he pulled the necklace around Accipiter's neck and fastened it. The dragon, he now felt sure, was not going to kill him, at least not without provocation.

                The jewelry didn't look very fetching against his brown coloration, but Accipiter was quite happy and said "Ah, thank you. Does it sit well?"

                "Yes, but I imagine it won't for long," said Calvin. "Dragons grow quickly, and who knows how big you shall become?"

                "Hm," said Accipiter, "I suppose that is not a bad reason to become unable to wear something fine." He raised his head, evidently having thought of something. "When I am too big to keep it on, will you wear it? If you do, then at least one of us shall look the better for having it."

                "I, uh," Calvin said, and then shrugged. "Well, yes, if we're together... at that time... you could present it to me."

                "I hope you do not imagine that I am going to let you wander off on your own, especially not out here. It is terribly dangerous. No, I think we shall have to get to a place with more people before that happens, though I am not large enough to carry you about when I fly, just yet. I think I must eat more for that. We should hunt, soon."

                Something was beginning to dawn on Calvin. It was hitting his brain with all the unpleasantness of a cold wind that stole ahead of miserable weather. "So, you're saying... that you are my dragon?" He was unsure if putting it into words was the best idea, but this had to be some sort of mistake. He had placed no harness on the creature, had not asked it to pledge any loyalty to him. Those must be essential steps to form such a bond. It was a dragon – a dragon, it couldn't simply decide of its own accord that it owed him any allegiance!

                "I mean you are my Calvin," Accipiter said. He had quickly taken on the air of someone outlining the way matters stood to a simpleton, one that might still not understand where the sun went at night.

                "Well, you have saved my life," said Calvin, "And I am indebted to you, I'm sure. But wouldn't you prefer a... a real aviator? I'm sure that given time, we can find you one." There were a few coverts in the Colonies; he was sure of that (though not precisely where all of them were). A companion with training could be found for Accipiter at one of them, that was surely the proper course of action.

                "That is very silly," said Accipiter, "Seeing as you are in my charge, and I must take at least some care of you. It is a matter of responsibility, and you mentioned that responsibility is an important thing for a man to have. Well, I am not a man, of course, but you will see my position. I do not understand why this is hard for you to grasp. You explained the notion quite well when you were talking about your father for all those hours."

                "Oh," Calvin said. "Oh." It had not been clear to him before, but Accipiter must have not just heard his words all this time, but taken his meaning as well. And almost from the first. "So... you know about my father."

                "Yes, you spoke about him so much I feel I know him a good deal better than I know you. He was interesting, at any rate – always trying to learn new things or make his home better, rather than complaining that he would not reach Pennsylvania, or that the neighbors would take his abandoned crops, or how he would never get the chance to mate with anyone..."

                Calvin's palm went to his face. Such private thoughts, and he'd had an audience all along! "Enough, enough! I am very tired, Accipiter." He gripped the bed roll he was sitting on. It was so soft, compared to dirt and bare rock. And honestly, he wasn't sure how much longer he had the strength to stay awake. "Do I have your leave to sleep at least?"

                "Hm, I suppose," said the dragonet, moving back towards the half-eaten pony and inspecting it with interest. "And I will make sure we are not attacked. But when it gets to be light, I have to go flying. I am quite eager to do so."

                "Yes, fine," Calvin muttered, burying himself in the deer skins.

                If he'd hoped that things would make more sense in the morning, Calvin was disappointed. For just a moment he was able to imagine that everything – being associated with a dragon, having been caged by Indians, even his father's death – had all been a series of strange dreams. He could forget them before long.

                Then he realized Accipiter was next to him, nudging him insistently in the side with a closed claw. "Calvin, Calvin, look what I have found! I have brought us more food."

                "Eh?" Calvin blinked the sleep from his eyes, sitting up and looking at the hatchling. It might be his imagination, or it could be because he was lying down now, but Accipiter looked noticeably bigger this morning. At the least he was thicker in conformation. More like a mastiff, perhaps, than a sheepdog. "Where? What? What are you talking about?"

                "Well, I finished that pony, but I was still famished. So I went up in the trees again to look around, and it was not long before I found this creature here nosing around in the bushes. And it did not look up and see me, so I came down upon it quite easily. I was quite like the hawk you were talking about, swooping down to kill it; you ought to have seen! So now I have dragged it back here for us to eat. It was very heavy."

                Accipiter was manifestly pleased with himself, and in a moment Calvin saw why. He went to his feet, exclaiming in astonishment "Lord! You've done this?!"

                The black bear was not small. It was a grown animal, larger than Accipiter himself. It had to weigh almost three hundred pounds, and after spending a few moments frozen and staring at it, Calvin determined that it was stone dead. It neither stirred nor breathed, even after he poked it with the butt of one of the Indians' muskets.

                "I only needed to land on its back and nip it," Accipiter noted, indicating the back of the bear close to the spine. "You see here? I have not spoiled the skin, so we may keep that for ourselves and enjoy it."

                "You bit it once?" Calvin asked. Had he crushed its spine, or – no, no, the bite mark was on the left side of the body, not directly on the back. "How did that kill it?"

                "I told you, it was not able to move." Accipiter evidently had a tendency to become short with Calvin when he did not immediately understand things. "And I bit particularly hard, and emptied my fangs, which I had not used at all yet. So I suppose its insides could not move either, and as they are quite important to carry on with living, it died. May we eat it now?"

                Calvin had only just realized that Accipiter had been serious about finishing the pony. Down to bones, it was quite picked clean, with ants crawling over the skull. "Yes. Well, I... you may. But I think I should abstain, because... Accipiter, I am reasonably sure that you are poisonous."

                "What does that mean?"

                He had never properly explained poison to the egg, actually, not even when talking about Hamlet. He'd mostly dwelt on the ghost of the prince's dead father, for obvious reasons. "When you do this sort of bite that paralyzes, you fill the bitten party with... with venom, it's called. The venom is what makes them unable to move. While I'll wager that you can safely eat whatever you kill with it, like a rattlesnake does, the poison might prove harmful to me. You are simply too dangerous."

                "Oh," Accipiter said with some disappointment. "Well, I am sure it is nothing to be ashamed of."

                "No, indeed," Calvin said with fascination. He had always been amazed by stories of dragons that could breathe fire or spit acid, and wondered how it was managed. There had been dragons with poisonous bites at one time in Britain, he was sure of that, but he'd never heard of one alive in the modern era. "It is a very useful gift for you to have, I am sure."

                "Actually, I was referring to your being unable to digest poison," said Accipiter. "I suppose it is normal among men, and not anything particularly wrong with you. Is that correct?"

                Calvin sighed. "Yes, Accipiter."

                "Ah, good." He sliced open the bear's belly and began chewing on its guts. Calvin didn't watch, but he could still hear it. The squishing made him wince.

                They went south day after day, traversing the endless wilderness at an easy pace. In this virgin country no rabbit knew how to avoid snares, and a dragon could feed himself after only brief searching for game. With no map and one of the Lenape run off with Calvin's compass on his belt, the boy felt lost, but not in an urgent sense. As impossible as it might seem, being a yard away from a dragon now the size of a carthorse (with poison in his fangs, no less) made him feel safe.

                Accipiter was not yet large enough to carry Calvin in flight, but he grew at a speed the young man would never have guessed at – nor even truly believed, if he had simply heard of it and not seen it with his own eyes. Calvin had thrown the old saddlebags over Accipiter's back, and the dragon had in no way objected. "Do they look well?" he'd asked, curving his long neck to try to examine himself. "The material could be finer, like your coat, but I suppose they are better than wearing nothing at all."

                "Do all dragons concern themselves with vanity so?" Calvin asked, although he did try to do a good job putting the saddlebags in the right place. He was also the one who suggested transferring the wampum necklace to circle Accipiter's foreleg, when his neck had become too large for it to stay there. Now it glittered above the dark claw, and when they were stopped the dragon would sometimes raise it in different lighting conditions just to appreciate how it looked.

                "How am I to know? I have met no other dragons. And you are the one who has given me the most information about them, both before I was hatched and now."

                "But the Indians must have spoken to you before I came along, if you learned their language in the shell. Which I am still amazed by. You were quite conscious?"

                "Well, it is very easy to sleep in the shell, as there is no light, and little to do. But there was speaking, always. It was women, I think, who were given the task of speaking to me. Mostly of the ways of the Unami and how my spirit was coming into the world to live alongside them. Which I admit, is something I do not properly understand the meaning of – but they said eventually that I would have the right to be companion to a great warrior with many victories. And they also spoke to each other in my presence about common things, which was quite instructive when it came to learning words to do with food and places and the like. But they did not speak very much to me about other dragons."

                "I saw no women near your egg," Calvin noted. "Only those three savages who kidnapped me."

                "I suppose I might have remembered wrongly," said Accipiter, rubbing a gleaming talon under his chin thoughtfully, as though touching a beard that was of course not present. Calvin could not imagine why he had that habit, although it reminded him amusingly of his father's tendency to do the same thing with his pioneer's stubble. "It is all harder and harder to recall the further I think back. But if they were by my egg previously, and then they were not, it has something to do with the commotion."

                "Commotion?"

                "Well, not long before you began speaking to me, I was conscious that... well, I went from being quite warm to not very warm, which was most disquieting. I also knew that the shell was hardening, and I felt like I would be ready to break it before long."

                Calvin still could not understand how the dragonet, imposing though he had been from the very first, had freed himself from that metal-hard egg. Perhaps something about it caused it to be breakable from pressure within, but not without? "What does that signify?"

                "I believe I was moved. Yes, it could have been nothing else, because I was very upset by all the turning around. Then the young men were speaking for a brief time, and after I was not being jostled about anymore, it was disagreeably cold. One of them told me that I would be a dragon for a young warrior."

                Accipiter was clearly not having an easy time remembering the specifics, but the gist of it was strongly imprinted on him. "Yes... they wanted me to have a young warrior, and not a broken-down old one. And I would kill many men with white skin and eat their hearts, and have all the acclaim I liked." He looked quite proud of himself for having recalled this, though it made Calvin's stomach lurch. "But then you came and began talking of more interesting things, like all of those stories, and learning about nature and the world with logic, and that sounded a good deal more pleasant than eating people's hearts. I do not think I would feel in the right if I ate a person at all, since men are somewhat cleverer than deer or bears, and would resent being food."

                "Thank you for the approbation," muttered Calvin. "I have always felt sure I was cleverer than a deer."

                Accipiter either did not hear him or did not think he was worth assuring on the subject. "Do you know, it is just possible that I was also kidnapped? I do not think I was meant to be paired with any of those young men, or you – the Unami must have meant me for a more important fellow."

                "Hm." That did make some sense. Calvin had never heard of a young man flying with a dragon among the Indians. In His Majesty's Aerial Corps, it was within the realm of possibility. Some dragon-captains must inherit beasts, thanks to their fathers' bonds with them – that explained why the same names reappeared among the Admirals of the Corps again and again between generations. And of course, British dragons had proper crews for fighting, as only made good sense. But the tribes left it one man to one beast, viewing the association between them as spiritual in nature.

                Blasphemous, yes, but they believed it strongly, so it must surely follow that they wanted men of good character and great accomplishment to be trusted with their dragons. "I don't suppose any of those boys had 'many victories,' as you were promised. We can find you a captain who has that experience, though, if you like?"

                Despite his growing affection for Accipiter, Calvin had the understanding that service to the Aerial Corps was essentially lifelong. He was young and probably able to learn all the skills necessary to advance himself in the service, and that wasn't an awful prospect – but it must make all his former expectations meaningless. He had planned to be a woodsman, a hunter, to marry (which he was not even sure aviators were permitted to do) and to turn the cabin he'd built with his father into a true homestead.

                "Oh, it is no matter," Accipiter assured him. "We can win a few of these battles I keep hearing of, and then you will be quite as important as anyone else, and with many excellent things to own, besides."

                Calvin sighed. He did not think it very likely that he would succeed in getting rid of this dragon. It was quite a step up from being murdered by marauding savages, naturally, but...

                "Here, Calvin," Accipiter said, interrupting his thoughts as he walked through a puddle, "You must get on my back and not walk in the muck so. You are dirtying your boots."

                It took some maneuvering not to sit on the row of rough spines that was growing on Accipiter's back, but thereafter Calvin had to walk a great deal less, and Accipiter never complained of the burden.

                And, in time, they flew.

                It was heart-stopping, it threw one's sense of balance completely off, it left you as afraid as a man could possibly be of anything – and yet, Calvin loved it.

                On the ground, he was a frightened boy. In the air, he was a creature of perfect confidence and grace, his nerves as cool as a hawk's.

                In a life spent as a timid, puny boy Calvin had never experienced anything to compare flying with. Not riding a horse at speed, or the time he had been on a sailing boat, or even jumping out of a tree into water as young people had liked to do back in New York. None of those things had made him happy. He'd been frightened by them. But he loved flying.

                Accipiter could roll over, dive straight down, climb as high as a mountain. Calvin even touched clouds, finding them cold and wet and thoroughly unpleasant to be in, but still wonderful. All of it was amazing. Accipiter even asked if he did not need some kind of better harness before attempting the more chancy maneuvers, and Calvin surprised himself by refusing. He wanted to go through them all, as soon as possible. "I think I love being in the air."

                "That is excellent," said Accipiter as they flew with the wind at their backs one morning, the sun illuminating the world below them. It was like sailing over an ocean of green canopy. "I would be worried about your quality of mind, if you disliked flying."

                He would never be rid of this dragon, no. But, Calvin thought, things could be much worse.

                No creature of the forest would give challenge to Accipiter at his present size, and Calvin had to grant that he looked quite fearsome, though he no longer had direct fear of the dragon. Accipiter's horns had not just grown longer and thicker, but had turned into something resembling antlers, featuring a collection of sharp points that curved upwards.

                The dragon looked at himself in the surface of the river they had begun following southwards, where Calvin was finally able to wash himself. There was cleared land in the distance, he had seen it, and he wanted to be clean when he finally encountered civilization again.

                "I wonder if any Indians have seen us," Calvin said while scrubbing his own back with his hand, conscious that he would not like strangers to see him naked. "We'd never know it if they spotted us, they're quiet as ghosts in the woods. Perhaps they've also stayed away for fear of you, though many tribes have their own dragons. But you'd do them great harm with your poison, I suppose, even if they were much larger than yourself?"

                "As I've met no other dragons, I cannot say," Accipiter noted, not for the first time. Despite his much increased size, he still had that same high voice. He was quiet and thoughtful as he watched Calvin rinse his hair, and said, "Why are you in the water like that, anyway?"

                "I'm cleaning myself."

                "You did not seem excessively dirty. Your clothes are, you might clean them more thoroughly, and so make them more satisfying to look at."

                "They're stained. But I've been sweating, and my hair had become tangled – and there, see, where I had a cut? It would be disgusting to leave the blood sitting on the skin like that."

                "Would it?" Accipiter blinked, and then eyed his own claws. He had always licked his mouth clean after eating, but never once bothered to get the dried blood off of his talons. "I do not understand why."

                "Well, perhaps it's different for a beast with scales, but in our case it's not consistent with hygiene. It could be very unhealthful."

                "Oh!" Accipiter said, "Then you must do a very thorough job. Do not forget to wash behind your elbows," he pointed out, suddenly becoming quite the nursemaid, "And you are quite right, your hair could be cleaner. And I must begin washing my claws as well, simply that you might not be made dirty by them."

                "I'm not planning to touch your claws," Calvin said, pulling himself onto the shore, "So what does it matter? You're a dragon, your needs of cleanliness are not the same as mine."

                "Oh, but you will have to," said Accipiter, "I will be too large for the bracelet soon, and then you'll wear it." This was what he called the necklace around his fore-claw. He was right about his growth, since he'd been eating entire deer nearly every day, and on one occasion had still wished to try some of the raccoon Calvin had shot and cooked. Accipiter was now a very large beast, though by dragon standards, Calvin could not judge what weight class he might be.  He was not acquainted with what any other dragons looked like up close.

                "Fine, I'll take it off. And wear it, if you like, although I warn you, it won't be appropriate for every venue."

                "It is by far the finest thing you have," Accipiter opined, "Aside from maybe the buckle of your belt." Calvin was presently engaged in retrieving his clothes from the useful flat rock where he had laid them, and found them not-quite-dry. The belt buckle was perhaps the shiniest article of clothing he owned, it having belonged to his father when he was still a Marine. "You should put it on, although in time perhaps we can replace it with something better. Since you are young and haven't the accomplishments of an Unami warrior, you will need to make a good appearance to seem worthy of me."

                Calvin turned around, frowning while holding his breeches in one hand and pointing at Accipiter's face with the other. "Look here," he said, "I am not a doll you will be dressing up. I believe in being presentable, as a gentleman should, but I am a man of substance. What I wear is of no consequence."

                Accipiter accepted this speech thoughtfully while Calvin stood waiting for a response, and then the dragon looked off to his right. "Oh, hello. What do you think, should Calvin not wear fine things to make a good impression?"

                Calvin looked.

                The girl was only some twenty paces distant, thick brush and boulders having mostly blocked Calvin and Accipiter from her view before that point. She was clearly not as old as Calvin, and was dressed in clothing that was exceedingly plain, her bonnet thrown back to show hair that was almost as fair as his own. In each hand she was carrying a basket of clothing that must be her family's laundry. Her mouth was open in an 'O' of surprise as she took in the remarkable sight of a naked boy arguing with a dragon.

                Not five seconds later she was gone, having dropped her laundry baskets and darted out of sight.

                "Ah," Accipiter said, "I must have frightened her off. You were right, some people will be unreasonably afraid of me at first sight."

                "Oh, God!" Calvin cried, "You daft beast!" He was jumping into his clothes and cursing while trying to decide what to do next. On the one hand, he had just exposed himself inadvertently to a young woman, and also frightened her with an Indian dragon. There was no telling which was the more scarring.

                On the other hand, she was a white girl, and there must be human society of some kind nearby if she had meant to do laundry. He needed to be near people just now, even if it were only to hear them scream at him that he was a pervert and a madman, and all he could hope was that they found the nerve to do that before they found their guns. Besides, he needed to make excuses.

                "I don't know how far out in the wild places you started, sir," said Mr. Harper. "But you've come a long way. This is Newtown, or close to it."

                "Is it all new?" Accipiter asked from his place well away by some trees, where he might not seem so threatening. Being nearly the same size as the wide-armed willow next to him did not help supply this impression. "Oh, you've done very well in such a short time!"

                "It's only a name!" Calvin yelled back at him. "And do not give offense by speaking out of turn! I told you, I'll introduce you properly when the moment is right!"

                Mr. Harper was a farmer, and he was talking to Calvin in the middle of one of his fields. It was not yet fully planted, the year being young. He did not appear terrified by the prospect of a dragon larger than his sizeable goat-house being only a stone's throw distant, which was a miracle. However, he was definitely concerned. "And you're sure you're all right, son? The Indians haven't done you lasting harm to speak of?"

                "I wouldn't go that far," said Calvin, who now wondered if his wits had been addled. He probably should have waited before haring off to find these people, as his clothes remained wet and his queue uneven. "But you'll excuse me sir, I had only a short time ago despaired of ever seeing a friendly face again. I came from the river in a hurry."

                Mr. Harper's face wasn't exactly friendly, though. It was more thoughtful. He smoked his pipe unhurriedly, nodding. "Yes, Margey came running as fast as I've seen her move. Your dragon put a fright into her, no mistake."

                "I'm sorry for that," Calvin said. "For... for startling her so, I mean. I assure you we were quite unprepared, and meant no offense."

                "Not your fault," said Harper. "Girl's never seen a dragon before, only been to the city a few times, and the couriers aren't thereabouts every day. But seeing as you're not a trained handler for the beast, I'll ask that you not bring him close up to my flock. Or my family."

                Calvin almost sighed in relief, but decided not to give himself away like that. Apparently Mr. Harper had not been informed that Calvin had been stark naked in front of his thirteen year-old daughter when she came upon him, and that was very good news. He owed Margaret Harper a great deal for holding back that detail. "I give you my word on it, sir. We'll be quite comfortable there, and I have a little money, I can pay for a goat or sheep that he and I--"

                "Oh, no," Mr. Harper said, waving his pipe in the air. "None of that. He can rest in the fallow field, and you indoors with us. My family is of the Society of Friends, Mr. Priestly, hospitality is our duty to any of God's children who have honest need of it."

                He might have guessed that the Harpers were Quakers by their daughter's dress, which was painstakingly simple. He could see through the window that both Margaret and a round woman who must be her mother were looking at him and talking to each other. Their homespun dark dresses matched in every detail. The girl had put her bonnet back on.

                Mr. Harper himself wore a straightforward black coat which no one could have inferred anything from. It did not even have metal buttons. In every particular his home was an example of that simple dignity for which his sect was known to strive.

                "Thank you so much, sir." That was all there really was to say.

                Dinner included the flavors of cultivated vegetables, something that Calvin hadn't even realized how much he missed. There was carrot soup in the style of the Pennsylvania Dutch, thickened with flour, to start. Then they offered him scrapple that had the taste of thyme in it, fresh white bread with cup cheese for spreading, and finally a stack of corn fritters that the family shared, which had obviously been flavored with some precious sugar.

                Calvin had probably eaten better meals in the past, but he had never enjoyed one so much, and every time he worried that he ought to slow down for propriety's sake Mrs. Harper would urge him to "Eat, eat! I can see your ribs through your shirt, boy!"

                The man of the house sat across from him at the square table, of course. He found that Mr. Harper had explained circumstances well enough that his wife had few questions - except perhaps if Calvin would not like a second glass of beer, which he declined as politely as possible. The bitterness was really too much for him, though he liked the way it let him feel relaxed in unfamiliar company.

                The only person who seemed inclined to interrupt his gorging on the excellent cooking was Margaret Harper, who kept asking for more details. She wasn't rude, exactly, and he still owed her a great deal for not mentioning that he'd exposed himself to her. But it was for that very reason that he had trouble looking at her while he spoke, which must not be considered good behavior for a guest. Calvin hoped that his being so long out of the society of people – particularly girls close to his own age – would account for the awkwardness to his dining companions.

                When it became clear that the chief subject she had not yet broached was his dead father, however, she eased off, and after all the food was finally gone, Calvin asked once more for the price of an animal to feed Accipiter.

                "No price," Mr. Harper said. "I told you that."

                "That is very polite," said Accipiter when told later on. He was already in the fallow field he'd been promised, watching the fireflies come out. Calvin was unhappy to see that the dragon had moved from the particular acre where he'd been left, getting considerably closer to the sheep pen in Calvin's absence. But he had at least managed to impress upon the Accipiter that it would be unpardonable to steal one without permission, and likely land Calvin in trouble. "Hm. I think we shall have to do something pleasant for them, in return. We are friends now, after all, especially since they have taken some care of you."

                "I suppose we all are," said Calvin. He felt a strange touch of unease about the idea of being apart from Accipiter at present, even if it were just to pass the night inside a house not a hundred yards away. The dragon had kept him warm in the wilds, put a sheltering wing over him during nighttime drizzles – and moreover, had saved his life.

                The superstitions Indians held with about that bond between dragon and handler being spiritual would never stand with Calvin; he'd been ministered to too well and too long. But it was hard to see how anyone who'd harnessed a dragon could not be conscious of it at all times. Accipiter insisted on knowing where Calvin was constantly, and at the same time the beast's well-being was fast becoming necessary to his own peace of mind. "You'll be all right?"

                "Oh, naturally. The ground is quite soft. But will you be warm enough without me?"

                "Yes. They have a stove inside, and the weather is warming up nicely at any rate. This is a lovely spring."

                "But having a fire inside of a wooden house presents no danger to you?" the dragon asked, in his worrying way.

                "None, Accipiter."

                "You will not choke on the smoke?"

                Calvin was about to explain how a chimney worked when he was distracted by noise from nearby. For the second time in a day, Margaret Harper came up to them unannounced, examining them quietly. This time she was carrying a lantern on a pole. Well, not a lantern, exactly, but a candle in a jar, suspended from a stick. It was the sort of thing a child might make – as she was younger than him by about two years, that might be precisely how she'd come into possession of it.

                The sky was still pink with light, but the candle glowed brightly in front of her, and behind her she dragged the carcass of a rather old but healthy-looking goat.

                "Good evening, Miss Harper," Calvin said, making a bow, which was in no way necessary since they'd just been eating together. But he was nervous, and that made him err towards ostentation. "I wish you had told me the goat was prepared, I ought to have been the one to-"

                "Don't worry," she said, stopping and dropping the legs of the poor creature onto the ground. "Not a guest's job." The girl had deliberately stopped just far enough from Accipiter that he could not have reached out and bitten her head off from where he sat. Although of course, if he'd decided to do just that, there was no way she could have outrun him. "Good evening," she said, looking Accipiter directly in the eyes. Her expression was one of mixed awe and apprehension. "I... have never seen a dragon up close before."

                "I have never seen a woman," Accipiter confided. "Or a girl, I suppose. Not until earlier today, when I asked your opinion on Calvin's clothing."

                He had to bring that up, didn't he? Calvin rubbed a place on his forehead that seemed to have started throbbing exactly a second ago.

                Margaret swallowed and pursed her lips, but soon went on speaking. "I suppose I didn't answer. I'm sorry for that, Mister Dragon. No, I apologize again. Your name is Accipiter." Margaret stepped away from the goat. "And I think your captain's clothes look very nice, considering what has happened to him. This goat is for you, from my family."

                "Thank you very much," said Accipiter. "But please do not stand even so close to it, I do not wish to get blood on you. I hear it is not consistent with hygiene."

                The girl backed away quickly, and Calvin, coming to her side, said "I also recommend not looking. Even when he exhibits his best manners, his meals are... messy."

                Margaret nodded and walked over to the closest stretch of fence, resting her lantern-stick between the rails, and then to his surprise she hopped up to sit on the top one. "Come on," she said, "This one's got a flat top."

                Calvin lifted himself onto the four-foot high fence, though as he did it he recognized that he would be, in effect, sitting next to a young woman as night fell, while not chaperoned. The house was within sight, maybe, but he could not see Mr. or Mrs. Harper, and there was every chance they could not keep an eye on him. The inappropriateness of it bothered him. And yet, surely her father must have sent Margaret to do this task, to bring Accipiter's dinner.

                "I'm sorry about earlier," she said quite fast, folding her hands together and not looking at him. "I didn't know you were going to be there, I hadn't any idea, and I didn't mean to see you... well, to see you."

                "Please don't mention it," Calvin said, feeling sick to his stomach. Especially not to your parents. "I should've, uh, found somewhere more remote for my ablutions." Was 'ablutions' the right word? He was suddenly finding it very hard to speak at his best, because Margaret was now trying to look him in the eyes. He had so little experience with girls his own age. Or other ages, actually.

                "No, you see, that's where I go to swim, too. So really, I should've expected that someone would find it one day." Margaret reached up and pushed her bonnet back. Calvin sat up stiffly, wondering if he ought to look away – who knew what custom might be appropriate to the Quakers, who had so many peculiarities? But she said, "I don't have to wear the bonnet, you know. Or clothes this simple, if I don't want to. We may not look it, but we're what they call 'gay Quakers,' so we can dress how we choose. We just haven't so much money that we can buy fancy clothes."

                "Oh," said Calvin, thinking it was somewhat inappropriate for her to be discussing how her family stood financially. She was very young, and a woman, besides. He thought he could acknowledge the statement but redirect the conversation with a compliment – father had always said that was the gentlest way to leave a bad topic. "I've found you as hospitable as anyone could hope. The Governor's residence could not have made me more comfortable." This was true; if he'd been staying in a governor's palace, he'd have been constantly on edge and worried about the impressions his manners would make. Although as a matter of fact, that was happening now, as well.

                "That's good," she said, "Papa's always nice to strangers. But of course he was also interested in keeping you happy, so that your dragon doesn't knock over our house."

                Calvin sat up stiffly. "What?!" The question coincided with a loud crack as Accipiter chomped through the very thickest bones on the goat. "I know he's a dragon, but..." There didn't seem to be any way to finish that sentence that made sense, so Calvin just said, lamely "... he's a very good dragon."

                "No, we know that," Margaret said. "Now. I mean, he's very frightening by himself, but we don't think he would eat us. At this point it's probably that Papa thinks this is like quartering, where you simply can't say 'no' to His Majesty's troops if they demand a room in your home."

                "I would never-" Calvin began, but she cut him off by putting a hand on his arm. His mouth shut all by itself while he stared down at her fingers clasping his bicep. But it was only a momentary gesture she was making, and she moved her hand away.

                "I said we know. But you're going to be part of the Aerial Corps soon. What would their Admiral say if he found out we weren't absolutely perfect to you, when you came to us?"

                "I've never met the gentleman. I won't venture to speak for him."

                "If he's anything like the Generals who let Regulars take peoples' homes, then he'd probably have you fly back here and knock over the house anyway, just to teach us a lesson. It's really that bad in Massachusetts Bay, you know."

                "I didn't know." How could he have? He'd heard little out of that colony since word of the destruction of all that tea. But they were unusual folk in New England.

                "I think the Quartering Act is expiring, but they'll have more. All of these coercive Acts are why we didn't offer you tea, did you notice? We're trying to get by without things made in Britain." Margaret adjusted her pole-light, to show it off more clearly. "That's why we've got to save and not buy a real lantern. The Continental Congress is to re-convene in Philadelphia, they'll decide if we do more than continue the general boycott. Oh, and continue not exporting anything to Britain as well, of course."

                Calvin had not understood there to be such a deep divide between Britain and her colonies. Admittedly, he only saw a newspaper a few times a year, and never a fresh one. But it had all seemed quite normal, even in the pages which reprinted official communications between men of import. There was the side that wanted more local governance, and the side that wanted them to stop making a fuss, and they were forever at odds. That was the general business of politics, to Calvin's mind; to argue some point until it no longer mattered.

                Something occurred to him. "Are you unhappy that I'm going to have to be in the Corps, Ms. Harper?"              

                Margaret shrugged. "I don't suppose you have a choice. They don't let militias keep dragons, even if they can feed them. The courier-weight ones are almost free in America, you know, to carry letters and make surveys, but... he's already bigger than that, I think. I'm not an expert, I've only ever seen them flying, but some of my books suggest it. Anyway, it doesn't matter what I think."

                "It matters to me," he said, completely failing to think before the words came out. Damned beer. He was totally unable to look the girl in the face, but he saw her smile slightly.

                "Do you swim often, Mr. Priestly?"

                "Sometimes. I prefer to keep clean, anyway, when it is possible."

                Margaret was twisting some of her blond hair around a finger. "I know they say it'll drain your natural oils and make you sick, but I love swimming. I don't know how long you're staying with us, but--"

                "Calvin," interrupted Accipiter from so close behind them that the two young people nearly fell off of the fence. His voice was commiserating, but it was far from quiet, coming from such a large throat. "You should give her the necklace."

                This was somewhat at odds with the possessive nature Accipiter had heretofore demonstrated. Calvin had been told by the dragon every single time that it was quite unfortunate to leave the hides of his kills, even though there was no practical way for Calvin to skin and clean the poisoned animals by himself. And Accipiter had treasured that necklace since he'd first laid eyes on it. "You said you wanted me to have it."

                "So it's yours to do what you like with," Accipiter explained, "Meaning you can give it to Margaret. And then you can mate with her."

                This time Calvin did fall off of the fence, collecting himself quickly so he could upbraid his dragon. "You perverted monster of a-"

                "Seeing as you never have, as you mentioned," Accipiter interrupted. He sounded very much like he was trying to explain the rules of a game to a child who was having trouble playing. "And I do not know how humans manage it, but it seems to me only sensible to give a gift if you wish to-"

                Calvin actually cuffed Accipiter on the nose, which didn't hurt him in any way, or make him particularly downcast. But Heaven did the favor of letting this shut the dragon up, just for the moment. "I apologize for him, Miss Harper, may we please go inside? I am becoming very tired."

                "I suppose," she said. At first he thought she had a hand over her mouth to hide a ladylike blush, but the dimples in her cheeks gave the wicked grin away. "Papa won't have realized I already fetched you a goat, after all."

                It having been made clear yesterday that social niceties were not going to come naturally to Accipiter, Calvin decided (after they'd made themselves useful to their hosts by clawing out an inconvenient stump that must have been a century old) that he had to teach the dragon manners. For all his clear and formal speech, he said whatever he wanted whenever he wished. Neighbors who came to call on Mr. Harper that morning were frightened off as Accipiter drew near and hailed them, asking if they also had work to do in exchange for food.

                It was infuriating in particular because Accipiter seemed to view the entire matter as a precocious notion that Calvin had come up with himself, rather than the settled order of society. He appeared sure that he was entirely within his rights to try arranging a liaison for Calvin as a sort of charge of his, who ought to be kept happy and well-appointed.

                "In the first place, you must leave conversations to the people having them," Calvin said, gesturing meaningfully towards the fence where he'd sat last night with Margaret. "Unless you are invited to join, or the occasion is appropriate."

                Accipiter looked down on him ingratiatingly. "And what is your idea of an appropriate occasion to interrupt?"

                "There are no appropriate occasions to interrupt! What you must do is wait until an introduction is made for you. I've already needed to let you talk to more people than I ever imagined I would, so we had better get used to it. Don't you want to make a good impression when you meet our commanders in the Aerial Corps?"

                "Why is it that we need to have commanders, again?" Accipiter wondered aloud, not really asking Calvin directly. He seemed more interested in watching the ways the clouds moved, the motions of the wind up high being something he liked to be aware of.

                "That's another thing," said Calvin, snapping his fingers to get the dragon to look at him again, "It will not help my standing in the world if you speak disrespectfully of my betters. Or my equals. Or anyone!"

                "Oh, very well. But I must tell you that all of this seems childish to worry about."

                "You can't call me a child; you were born no time ago at all."

                "But I am a great deal bigger than you, and I can fly and have sharper senses. Does that count for nothing?"

                "No." Calvin said. "It means nothing at all."

                Accipiter lay himself down on his belly. "Then how do you explain that I have heard something is coming along the path well before you? It seems to me I am forever letting you be interrupted. Are you so sure you understand the matter?"

                Calvin looked and saw nothing as yet, but he didn't doubt that the dragon was correct. "No, just-- no. I'll handle it."

                The carriage that came around the barn had two palomino quarter horses in front and a tall Negro driving them. He was not particularly well-dressed, but looked quite dignified and competent with the reins. That was an unusual skill for a man of his race to possess.

                The men riding behind him were well-heeled, each in a bright blue coat with golden buttons. They also had excellent hats. As they drew closer Calvin came to see that one was old and the other quite young, perhaps younger than himself. The boy had powdered hair and a thin face, but when they stopped he leapt from the carriage and opened its door before the black man could do it. Calvin approached them, saying "Stay, Accipiter."

                It did not please the dragon to be spoken to like a dog, but as it turned out staying made no difference. The older gentleman, once the youth had helped him descend, began walking briskly in their direction. He used a cane, but he was not much given to hunching over. However, the lifting portion of his gait was clearly labored. Judging by his large belly, Calvin surmised that he would be afflicted with some degree of the gout.

                His hair was gray, his nose very prominent but rounded, and on his nose rested spectacles of a truly unusual type. It almost looked like two lenses had been halved and stuck together.

                "Good morning, sir," said this old man, and Calvin returned the greeting. The black man bowed and went back to the horses, casting a nervous look at the resting dragon behind Calvin, but the well-dressed boy was not so fortunate as to be able to excuse himself. He was evidently a relative of the gentleman, and was meant to stay and attend him, but he was visibly frightened by Accipiter. The dragon looked him up and down with some interest, surely comparing his fine clothes with Calvin's battered ones.

                "I suppose I am correct in thinking I've found the Harper farm?" asked the old gentleman.

                "Uh, yes," Calvin said. "Are you here to see Mister Harper?" That seemed unlikely, judging by the way the old man showed absolutely no fear of the dragon. He was examining Accipiter keenly, adjusting those queer eyeglasses on his nose. Then he smiled at Calvin.

                "No, my good man, I believe I'm here to see you."

                This, Calvin felt sure, must be some representative from the governor, told of his presence. It was certainly not even a day's travel to Philadelphia from here. So Calvin bowed and said, "I am Calvin Priestly, sir, at your service."

                "Pleased to meet you, young man. My name is Benjamin Franklin."

END OF PART I

Chapter Text

ACCIPITER

PART II - CAPTAIN

                Calvin stood from his bow so fast that he almost lost his balance. "Good Lord. Doctor Franklin, it is an honor, the highest honor to meet you, please forgive me for not knowing you on sight. I... I treasure your Almanacs."

                This was the truth; Calvin had stuffed all the editions that his family had ever purchased into his saddlebags for fear of losing them. They were still there now, next to Accipiter's curled-up tail. The dragon insisted on treating their few, humble possessions like a hoard of gems.

                "It causes no writer pain to be recognized by his words rather than his face." The most famous man of the Colonies pointed at his own head with the gilded top of his walking stick, tipping up the front of his hat. "Especially a face so beaten from use as mine! Do not apologize on that score."

                Franklin went on after fixing the corners of his hat back to their proper positions. "Now, I am returned early from England. I had the pleasure of traveling with the Warspite as it accompanied a dragon transport. What should I hear soon after my arrival but that someone had already contrived to bring a beast of fighting weight into Pennsylvania's service, without troubling to send from England? A much more direct, simple solution, and thus firmly after my own heart."

                Doctor Franklin was the best-known advocate for the Colonies to rely on themselves. It was the chief matter he had been representing to England's great men for years; even Calvin had known of it. His return might mean that he'd succeeded in some capacity – but it could also mean the opposite. "The deed was no contrivance, Doctor, but sheer accident. You do me too much honor."

                Franklin ignored his humility. "It came into your possession soon enough to learn speech, I've heard?"

                "You have heard correctly," Accipiter said, adjusting the angle of his head to look at the man. "Did you think I would not understand you? Is that why you have not introduced yourself to me? Calvin tells me that is the proper manner of doing these things."

                Without evident surprise or discomfort at being addressed in this way by a dragon, Franklin gripped his hat and lifted it, revealing a far-receded hairline. He bowed as deeply as his old body would permit, smartly tipping his heel. "Apologies, my good dragon. I have not yet unpacked my luggage from travel. My best manners must still be folded inside some trunk or another; old men often misplace even needful things."

                Accipiter blinked, tasted the air thoughtfully, and then nodded. "Calvin," he said as an aside that was nevertheless quite audible because of his size, "That is a joke. It is quite amusing. Did you understand it?"

                "Yes, I understood," Calvin muttered back. He hoped that Accipiter was not going to make him out as some kind of dullard to everyone they met from now on. "Uh, Doctor Franklin, I thank you for your visit. It means a great deal to me of course, but what can I do for you? Do you carry word from a representative of the Corps, perhaps?"

                "Oh, I imagine there will be word eventually," Franklin said. "Once they hear of you."

                Calvin did not understand. "Then... someone apprised you of our presence, but not the governor, or... well, there must have been aviators on the dragon transport?"

                "Yes. The well-known Commodore Rankin and his wing." Franklin said the name politely, and with no malice, but then added with a trace of coolness, "Or rather, Admiral, now. He was recently made commander-in-chief of the Colonial Division, although at present he operates from the deck of the Indomitable, not a covert. Ah, but I should explain. His Majesty's servants are... not well-regarded in the cities, just now. Or the countryside, for that matter. Have you not heard?"

                "I had heard," Calvin said, "But not understood. You mean that someone came to you with intelligence of us, rather than to the proper..." Calvin rethought this phrasing, "... to other authorities?"

                "That's one way of putting it. But I am no authority over anyone but myself. And no authority on any particular subject, either. Rather, I am a constant student. One of the disciplines I have dallied in is the study of dragons. Fascinating creatures, endlessly fascinating. May I have a closer look at yours? Would that be safe?"

                "What do you say, Accipiter?" Calvin asked, hoping that the beast would not take it amiss and react badly to strangers getting so close. He had been at ease with Margaret, but that encounter could not have been said to have ended satisfactorily. "You're not going to hurt them?"

                "I cannot see why I would," said Accipiter, who seemed rather flattered by the idea of being the object of curiosity. "They may look at me all they like, so long as they cause me no discomfort."

                "Come along, Temple, I know you have not spoken with a dragon before, but the gentleman has given us his word that we are safe."

                "As have I," Accipiter pointed out.

                "Yes, as has the dragon himself, and I have never known a dragon to lie. They value their own thoughts too highly to give any false report of them."

                This appeared to bother Accipiter, but only for a moment. It was, after all, completely true. So he nodded again and then rested his head on the turf, his eyes settling on the boy with some interest. As he drew closer, he asked the young man, "So. You have not yet conversed with a dragon. Are you not long out of the shell, perhaps?"

                "Well, as I was saying," said Dr. Franklin to Calvin, pulling his attention away, "It is a pleasure to meet you, and your dragon as well. As you must know, you are the first of your kind in a great many years."

                "I... which kind is that, sir?"

                Franklin would have had every right to look at Calvin as though dealing with an idiot, but the man did no such thing. Instead he spoke as though both of them had precisely the same amount to contribute on the topic, and he was just clarifying some point or another. "You have captured a dragon from the Indians, a feat that was once much more common. We cannot even purchase eggs from them any longer. If I am not mistaken, the dragon is one of the schachachgekhasu breed."

                "Sch-aa-cha-ck..." Calvin fumbled over the word, even when trying to pronounce it a syllable at a time. He decided that the shame of quitting would be less than the shame of continuing and stopped halfway through the word. "I'm not familiar with the word."

                "It means 'striped,' to the Lenape," clarified Accipiter from nearby, where the boy Temple was even now examining his muzzle and being examined right back. Accipiter seemed particularly interested in the bright buckles of his observer's shoes "I suppose it is an accurate description of my belly, at any rate. Would those happen to be real gold?"

                "The schachachgekhasu were once common among the tribes of the Delaware," Franklin explained, "But our ancestors hunted them with particular fervor for fear of their venom. You know about the venom, don't you? Yes, of course you do. They are deadly in combat, even to larger beasts, being able to ground them if they can bite a sufficient number of times. It is why they became less common. A bounty was put up for eggs destroyed, in addition to the one for eggs captured."

                Dr. Franklin shook his head for some reason when he said this – Calvin didn't see why. It seemed like an eminently logical way of depriving savages of such valuable dragons, since carrying their eggs about wasn't always practical. At the same time, he couldn't see how they'd managed to destroy any eggs close to hatching, at which point they would have become so nearly indestructible. "In any event, I've heard no tale of one being captured by any of His Majesty's aviators since before I was born. So, an epoch or two ago, I suppose. If you can be troubled to talk for a while to an old man who will have a hard time hearing you, might you relate the story of how it came to pass?"

                "Uh, it isn't a short story, sir. Shouldn't you get off of your feet?" There had to be a more polite way of saying that, but Calvin couldn't think of it. "I mean... er, we could go inside if you need to, I'm sure the Harpers would be honored. This is their land, and they are your fellow Quakers..."

                "Nature has already supplied us furniture, here," Franklin said, hobbling onward a few steps. He turned around next to the largest stone at hand and neatly placed his backside on it, leaning forward on his cane and looking completely at home. "There. With the sun and breeze about us, no drawing room of London could be called more pleasant."

                Calvin had to like the unaffected and agreeable way in which Franklin spoke. Growing up in relative isolation, the people he had known tended to throw the same few turns of phrase back and forth until they were very nearly worn out. Doctor Franklin was renowned for having that particularly American breed of wisdom – a ready word of simple wit stored for any situation, not just a few to rely on and apply where they were of no use.

                He'd never had a living grandfather of his own, but Calvin supposed this must be what it was like to keep company with the best sort of them.

                Calvin sat on the grass and began talking. He'd worried that the events of the past weeks would be hard for him to speak of. However, Franklin seemed to have an easy time thinking of ways to praise Calvin's bravery in not giving up. He saw loyalty to his father in speaking to the egg about him, and noted how superb a temperament he must have shown to harness a dragon without ever meaning to. "It speaks well of your character," he said. "Dragons frequently forsake captains who show them the least discourtesy at their hatching, and you were under much distress besides."

                "Well, who would want to belong with someone who was unpleasant?" Accipiter wondered aloud. Temple had fetched measuring tape from a box in the carriage and was making notes on the size of the dragon's claws. He seemed to have quite lost his fear, becoming entirely focused on the pursuit of more information.

                "Do you mean that you might have refused to let one of the savages be your captain?" asked Calvin with some trepidation. He had not known this of the dragon. Harnessing did not seem like a matter the creatures should have a choice in. He'd come to assume they were like chicks that imprinted on a farmer and would follow them about the yard.

                Accipiter tilted his head and rolled his large shoulders to shrug. It was a very human gesture that Calvin had seen him perform before. His father had done it often enough – it was becoming eerie how much the dragon reminded him of the late Sergeant Priestly. "I suppose I would have given it a try, since they meant to offer me food. But they were objectionable fellows for taking me away from the women who were meant to care for me. I prefer to think that I would have left them eventually, when it became clear how badly they behaved."

                "About the Indians," Temple asked Calvin, looking away from his measurements. It was the first time he'd spoken yet, and he seemed excited. "Did you find them? Did you cut off their scalps for a bounty?"

                Dr. Franklin rubbed his own forehead and winced as though trying not to imagine an axe scraping against the top of his skull. "Mr. Priestly, I fear you will have young Temple thinking that American life is all narrow escapes and frontier adventures. Here, my boy, ask Moses to bring you a pad and you can sketch the beast." He looked at Accipiter and said, "To edify those not able to make your acquaintance."

                Accipiter liked this idea. He  uncurled his tail, saying, "That is a splendid idea. We must make me look quite as large as I am, even on a small sheet of paper. And I shall spread my wings, like this, so that they are not shown folded-up and less impressive."

                Soon the boy and Accipiter were back to their work, letting Franklin continue. "That should occupy our charges. Captain Priestly, I have a question for you."

                Calvin shifted in his seat. "I am not a captain, doctor. At least, I am not yet." His father would not have liked to see his son counterfeiting an officer's rank for even a moment.

                "No, no, you are. A dragon must have a captain as surely as a ship must. Thus, you are a captain as long as you command Accipiter. Or persuade him, I suppose... in any event, the business of attending to such an animal's needs and keeping authority over it takes more time and attention than any ship could ask. Now, are you at ease with the idea of becoming an aviator in the Corps?"

                Calvin was confused. "I do not see that I have a choice. I understand we Colonists have our differences with the government currently in power, of course. I am no particular friend of His Majesty, but neither am I one of his detractors. He's not the man his father was, but the same could be said of me. Who am I to judge a king?"

                "I think you have no right to judge him," said Benjamin Franklin, surprising Calvin. "Being that he is an ocean away... and with a sea of parliament members and cabinet ministers separating you, besides. At the same time. I think he hasn't a right to judge you, either."

                Without further prompting from Calvin, the old man began to elucidate matters. Very little of what he said was direct appeal to Calvin to come around to his way of thinking. Mostly it was giving facts.

                A fact was that the Massachusetts colony had been declared in rebellion by Parliament. It had been under occupation in practical terms nearly since the end of the last war, as everyone knew – but now it was out in the open. Boston was being ruled entirely by force, not by consent of its citizens.

                Another fact was that the commander-in-chief of all the Army present in North America had been appointed governor there. General Gage had actually sent men into Salem to seize the arms of the militia there... though of course they'd been moved before he ever arrived.

                The next step in setting things right would be a new Continental Congress, which was even now convening in Philadelphia. If someone had made a list of notable men of the various Colonies, almost every name on it would have been a delegate. The matter could not be more important.

                "Our people call for liberty or death," Benjamin Franklin said. Then he chuckled. "Well, one of them does, at least. And he says it so loudly that his words echo out of other mouths."

                Calvin was resting his hands on his knees. The day was only slightly warm, but he could feel himself becoming uncomfortably hot under his collar. He was glad he wasn't wearing a neckcloth or something ridiculous like that. "And you're saying that this is a choice I have to make as well, sir?"

                "Oh Lord, no!" Franklin smiled graciously. "This matter need not come to killing. It ought never to do so! A man of sense should take ill at the very thought. But we Americans – for that is what we are now, not simply New Englanders and Pennsylvanians and Virginians and so on – we must bring force to bear. The only path to peace is to make it clear that we face a war no one wants. Deterring it by restrained might is the last option available to us."

                "I think I understand." Calvin understood, but he did not agree. To his mind, no number of militiamen could give pause to the British Army's infantry regiments.

                His father had always been supportive towards the militia, of course, and his name had been on the rolls to defend his neighbors. But he'd also said that they were men who could be counted on to sneak up on a deer with their muskets and shoot it cleanly, but that this skill was useless to a soldier who had to stand and fight while the enemy shot back. "What I don't understand," said Calvin, "Is what you're suggesting this means to myself and Accipiter."

                Franklin's hands rested on top of his cane. "I am not going to try to keep you from representing yourself to the Corps in due course, young man. There would be consequences to that – riding your dragon around the countryside without as much as a by-your-leave? You would be treated like an Indian raider. Possibly worse. No, Admiral Rankin would be forced to hunt you down and bring you into service immediately, after severe reprimand. But we can stall that with kindness. Giving the good Admiral every reason to trust you will let him allow you your freedom. He will be unable to use you as a tool of intimidation for the foreseeable future."

                That phrase struck Calvin's mind immediately, tool of intimidation. It seemed considerably disrespectful to what would soon be Calvin's new service. He was about to ask what exactly what Franklin meant by it when the boy Temple hurried over, paper in hand. He'd done a more than creditable job – other visible pages of the sketchbook seemed to depict the life of a ship, something Calvin had no interest in at the moment. "Is it good enough to print in the Gazette, Grandfather?" he asked.

                Accipiter padded up behind Calvin. He looked down at Temple's pad and noted, "You have made a crooked line there, Temple. And my talon is much more gently curved, in a quite elegant way. See? But thank you, it is a lovely sketch."

                "It may serve," Franklin allowed, "But you haven't recorded the full story. You should draw the parts you have not shown, with front and back views. And the details otherwise obscured; the bottoms of the claws, for example. The shape of the fins on the tail, which are peculiar to American breeds – they will be of note to those readers only familiar with the European varieties of dragon, as they are quite distinctive. Have you looked at the horns to see if more branches are beginning to sprout? And scale, you must show his size – draw a person next to him."

                Temple was somewhat crestfallen, but he nodded and determinedly set about committing the details to paper. Accipiter stepped back to pose again, examining himself for any dirt while he did it.

                "My grandson," said Doctor Franklin to Calvin. "I only learned of his existence recently, while in England. I made every effort to put him in my care and his father was kind enough to oblige me."

                Calvin blinked. It seemed impossible that such an arrangement could have been made if the politics of the day were taken into account. "Sir, isn't your son His Majesty's governor of New Jers--" He cut himself off. It was an unpardonably rude thing to want to point out, in these circumstances.

                "Yes," Franklin said heavily. Once again, he moved on as though the digression had not occurred. He was very good at not letting anything break up a conversation. "Listen lad, what I said to Temple is good advice under any circumstances. Do not take only one view of the situation. Meet Admiral Rankin and see for yourself what you think of his mission, and whether or not you wish to be a part of it. He is a forthright man and will not prevaricate on the subject. With luck we can make his entire errand unnecessary before you are taken away for training, or must fly on the routes he'll wish to assign you. Perhaps you'll be allowed the duties of a surveyor, though I doubt it – your beast is already of fighting weight."

                "I don't think all is as clear to me as I might wish," Calvin said. " But I am not experienced in politics. And you must understand that I cannot shirk the responsibility of bringing a dragon into the Corps. Private ownership of them is illegal under the common law, I know that much. I don't think the Corps would consent to my taking one into the service of a militia, either. And if I have no obligation to the Crown, then at least I have my duty as a subject of Britain."

                Benjamin Franklin was silent a moment, though not taciturn. He only looked thoughtful. Then he said, "There are duties more important than those we owe to governments."

                Calvin supposed the Doctor must mean duty to God, though he could not precisely see how that applied to this situation. "I cannot be part of your counterweight to His Majesty's power in the Colonies. Taking such action would provoke conflict in itself."

                "I quite agree," said Doctor Franklin. "But you are the only dragon captain in the Colonies who isn't under any control by the Corps. I only want you to take full measure of what it means to come under that control. And when you do, I would consider it a personal favor if you would also remember that every party involved should do what they can to prevent a fight."

                "Of course," said Calvin, hoping intensely that the matter would never be left in his hands. Someone more capable should have to make these decisions. He knew he would only foul things up – the entire matter of this tension seemed pointless and short-sighted to him. "We should hardly be fighting each other, besides, when the true enemy is so near."

                Benjamin Franklin adjusted his gleaming cufflinks thoughtfully, though his eyes never left Calvin's. "I take it you do not mean France?"

                "No, sir. I mean the Indians." Calvin said this firmly. "At any time they may decide to take any one of us, steal our goods and women, and then melt back into the forests never to be seen again. They are disposed to such things; I have seen it for myself. No amount of civilizing influence will make them behave like human beings."

                "I have heard such sentiments before," said Doctor Franklin, and he looked – unsettled was not the word, but worried. Sympathetic, in an avuncular way, and concerned for Calvin's sake, which made little sense. "When the Paxton Boys killed the peaceable Susquehannock, and I needed to stop them from extending their fury to their closer neighbors. Let me ask you something, my young friend. If a white man was to cause you an injury, would you feel justified in revenging yourself upon every man of our race?"

                Calvin felt sure his face was becoming flushed as Franklin talked. However, his whole body felt rather numb, so he couldn't be sure if his cheeks were burning. Here he was, talking to the most famous mind in the Colonies, and it seemed to him that the man was as good as telling him he had no cause to be angry. What was worse, Calvin could hardly summon the words to refute such a skilled speaker. "They have done a barbarous thing to me, sir, and I beg you not to try persuading me that I have not had it so badly. Or that I ought not to feel anger."

                "I would never! No, no, you've mistaken me, I am sure it's my fault for not explaining well." He said it with all the air of sincerity, though of course he was one of the most skilled wordsmiths of his generation and just trying to make Calvin feel better. It had the opposite effect; Calvin wanted to look away, but it would be ghastly manners. And he liked Franklin, even if the man appeared determined to muddle the issue. "But I only hope I can persuade you to focus your ire more narrowly. A few members of a single tribe kidnapped you to teach a dragon our language through the shell, for their own purposes. It will never do for a young man of capable mind and good character to waste his energies and time. Which I fear will happen, if you go fighting those who have done you no wrong..."

                Done me no wrong! Calvin opened his mouth to retort, but Franklin was not done talking, and interrupting a man in his seventies would make him deserve every harsh word that could be turned on him.

                "... particularly not when you have a dragon at your back, who might be put to better use elsewhere – but we have spoken about that already. Here, forgive me for making our talk unpleasant for you. I have something which might at least leave you with a favorable impression of me."

                Doctor Franklin signaled to the Negro and Temple ran to lend some help. From the back of the carriage they hoisted a square trunk together, and although Temple was somewhat awkward with it, they eventually brought it near. Accipiter was very interested, not least because the trunk had some silver chasing on the lid. "That would be very useful for keeping our things in."

                "I cannot accept a gift from you sir," Calvin said automatically, though of course he felt very curious to learn what was inside of the box. "I have no way of repaying it."

                "That's exactly what a gift is meant to be," said Franklin. "Besides which, this is not a gift, but a contribution to the defense of my dear Pennsylvania, the same kind I would give when I was a militia organizer. Gentlemen, please, open it already, or are you waiting for me to leap up and set about it myself?"

                The Negro smiled, but Temple seemed to take this as a serious admonishment and immediately threw back the lid of the trunk.

                Inside was a large pile of thick leather straps, joined together by a kind of buckle that Calvin had never seen before.

                "This is a standard harness size for small dragons," said Franklin, "Though with a triangular lattice rather than a square one. More handholds. It's possible that Accipiter will outgrow it in time, but it can be adjusted by a leatherworker of any skill. However, it does have one peculiarity, thanks to my experiments. I think you'll be fond of it..."

                Now Franklin did get to his feet again, and without missing a beat the Negro handed him one of the fasteners from a pouch inside of the harness. Franklin actually whirled it around his finger casually, like a boy with a toy. "... the Aerial Corps of every European nation use ring-shaped, clipping carabiners made of solid iron. Very strong, but also very heavy. These are just as strong, though they take a smith of greater skill to make. They are hollow, and thus lighter, and no longer shaped as rings. This means that the attached strap stays in place better, with less chance of slipping. The metal is also textured for gripping, and to avoid glare from the sun harming an aviator's eyes."

                "They shine less?" Accipiter asked, almost disappointed. "Well. I suppose as long as it is practical, that is a fair sacrifice."

                He said "Thank you, sir, it is beyond anything," but Calvin bit his lower lip. He was conscious of the obligation this might place upon him. A dragon harness was not a small gift, and in this context, far from meaningless. What might it mean if he presented himself to this Admiral Rankin for service, with his dragon wearing a harness crafted by someone who was opposed to the man's very presence in the Colonies?

                 Calvin almost resented the gift for this reason – but at the same time, he knew what the prejudices against unharnessed dragons were. They existed for good reason. Before harnesses, after all, dragons had not served man, or anything but their own whims and hunger. "Say thank you, Accipiter."

                "Yes, thank you very much, Doctor Franklin," said Accipiter, bobbing his head in what Calvin realized was an approximation of a bow. "And you, Temple, and you, Moses. I will make sure to wear it the next time I see you all."

                "There are instructions for putting it on in the trunk," Franklin explained, "I hope you will forgive me for not allowing Moses and Temple a few hours to help you make adjustments, but they must transport me back to Philadelphia almost immediately. The delegates to the Continental Congress expect me. Apparently they think I have not run out of good council to give just yet."

                "I'll take myself to Admiral Rankin tomorrow, sir," Calvin said. "You explained he is on a dragon transport?"

                "The Indomitable. You'll have no trouble finding it," said Franklin with a chuckle. "It is the largest, ugliest old ship you shall ever lay eyes on. I would recommend circling for a time since you cannot signal that you do not mean them harm. I'm surprised that you didn't fly right into Philadelphia directly upon harnessing Accipiter. You seem to have kept yourself healthy and in no particular want of rest, and the interests of Philadelphia to the young are many. Or so I seem to recall."

                "Oh," said Calvin, "But I thought it would cause a stir, and I had not known that there were men of the Corps already in the city..."

                "Quite right, quite right," Franklin said, nodding. "People persist in their unreasonable fear of dragons in and of themselves. They will go on thinking that way until some clever soul can demonstrate to them, from an early age, that they are safer even than horses, being reasoning beasts. Ah... but I notice a much better reason for dallying here, which you chose not to mention."

                When he looked, Calvin saw that Margaret Harper was standing in the doorway of her home, smiling out at them with her arms crossed. Calvin scratched the side of his head unconsciously, wondering if his queue was in order, and then stopped himself. "That isn't... it's not the way things are, sir."

                "And why not?" Franklin asked, confounding Calvin utterly. "Hold off on enjoying your youth, Mister Priestly, and it will be gone before you get the chance. Here, young lady, won't you receive a visitor?"

                Margaret approached, smiling so widely that it actually made her large blue eyes look small. Without waiting for an introduction, as would have been proper, she said, "Doctor Franklin, Margaret Harper. I'm so pleased to see that you're in the Colonies again. How do you do?"

                Calvin was embarrassed that Margaret had recognized Franklin instantly, where he had not. But then again, she was also a Quaker, and the Quaker who didn't know Benjamin Franklin's face on sight was probably blind.

                Benjamin Franklin clasped one of Margaret's hands. "Charmed, Miss Harper. How I do is very well, now. Please convey my apologies for not greeting your father while I was here, but the business of the day will carry me away momentarily. I hope I shall see you all at a Meeting of our shared Society in the coming year."

                "We would be so pleased," said Margaret. "We've all wanted greatly for your wisdom while you were in England."

                "Then you'll be ready to do without it," said Benjamin Franklin, "When I have little to give, it all being taken by selfish politicians. I have a favor to ask, dear girl. You are clearly not afraid of this dragon..."

                "Why would she be?" Accipiter asked, still confused on this score. "Are there dragons who make a habit of eating their friends?"

                "... and Captain Priestly here will need aid securing this harness on him after we've gone. Please lend him a hand in the process; I'm sure you can make short work of it together."

                "Doctor Franklin," Calvin said, "I hardly think that attaching a harness to a dragon is suitable work for a young woman."

                "And why not?" asked Franklin. "Here, Margaret--"

                "I prefer Margey." Her eyes were on Calvin and not Franklin while she said it. He would have to remember.

                "Well, you seem able-bodied, from work on this excellent farm. Enough to clamor over a dragon a few times holding a harness strap, surely?"

                "I can climb a rope up to the second story of the neighbor's barn, sir."

                "Excellent. And you can remember simple instructions, can't you? Recipes, perhaps, and the wisdom of bible verses?"

                Still looking at Calvin, she recited, "Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame."

                Calvin contemplated jumping on Accipiter's back and flying away then and there. She would bring that up.

                "Good, good. So being that you are not afraid of Accipiter, and being that you are physically able... and because clearly you are not stupid, I think you are the perfect candidate to help with the harness. Spare your father's back and grant your mother the time to make dinner." Franklin nodded to Calvin. "And Captain Priestly, I cannot think of anyone who could justly blame you if you tarried here a few days. Trust me, I have checked on the matter, and there are no comforts in the world to compare with the simple pleasures of a Quaker household."

                "I am sure," Calvin said. "Sir."

                "Well, that matter being seen to, I hope you will apply to my office in the city when you arrive. I may not be present, but there are certain books on the subject of dragons – among other works – that it might be well for you to have a look at."

                After that Benjamin Franklin said his goodbyes and took his leave, with the boy Temple waving at them as the carriage rumbled back down the track it had come on. Accipiter waved back, with his tail.

                "Quite a man," said Calvin at last, not knowing what other cap to put on the unexpected meeting.

                "Yes," agreed Margey, "Pity his stove doesn't actually work."

                Calvin supposed that Benjamin Franklin's advice had been somewhat self-serving, seeing that it would have resulted in Accipiter remaining out of the hands of the Aerial Corps a little longer. Nevertheless, he was sad to be preparing to leave the next morning. "Please," he said, "I have two extra muskets from the Indians, sir. Won't you take one of those as payment?"

                Mr. Harper only shook his head. "You sell those and put yourself in food and clothing, young man. And keep your beast fed. He's miles better behaved than I would have credited, but I've seen the way he eyes the flock."

                "It is only that I have never tried a sheep," Accipiter explained, attempting to look innocent and small by curling up slightly. "They seem as though they would be very good eating. Does the fluff have any particular flavor?"

                Calvin ignored this and shook Mr. Harper's hand. He also bowed to the man's wife, who took the opportunity to ask him if he wouldn't stay for another meal. Being that they'd just eaten breakfast, he did not feel rude in refusing.

                Saying goodbye to Margaret – or Margey, he supposed he must remember to call her – was not as easy. Calvin bowed nervously, thinking that this might suffice, but she heedlessly approached and took his hand in hers. "Come on, I'll help you up," she said, pulling him over to Accipiter's side. It was quite unnecessary, of course. The harness had an ample number of places for Calvin to grasp and lift himself by. Once the tethers were attached by carabiner to the heavy leather belt around his waist, he could hardly imagine how it would be possible to fall, even if he had been standing. "I suppose this is goodbye for now, Captain Priestly," Margey said quietly, just quietly enough that her parents couldn't hear. "I'm going to miss you quite a lot, you know... Calvin."

                Calvin's tongue seemed not to want to form words for him. "I... I'll miss you as well, Margaret. Er, Margey."

                Margey patted Accipiter on the side and didn't meet Calvin's eyes. She had a strange habit of looking at him when she ought not to and looking away at other times, seemingly random ones. "Will you write to me?"

                "Well, I certainly will," Accipiter told her. "I shall make Calvin write the words for me, since my claws are too large to manage a quill."

                "Of course I'll write," Calvin added, feeling upstaged by his dragon. Then he realized what was appropriate here and said more loudly, to Mr. Harper, "Sir, may I have permission to write your dau--"

                "You had better!" Mrs. Harper interjected. "Or we'll get no peace." Calvin wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a hint of a smile behind Mr. Harper's pipe as he nodded his assent.

                "Because you offered first," Margey said to Accipiter, "I'll always read your mail before his."

                Accipiter appeared proud of this and said, "When we come back, I'm sure Calvin will have many victories, and be much more confident. Then he will not stumble so much when speaking to you. Goodbye!"

                Almost without warning, Accipiter leapt up while stroking his wings downward. A strong gust of air was forced against the ground and Calvin saw Margey fall over. At first he was going to yell at Accipiter for being a fool, but the girl's loud laughter could be heard clearly ten yards into the air. He could also make out her waving after them with her bonnet as they streaked over the trees, heading south, to Philadelphia.

                Calvin wasn't entirely sure what made him stop short of the city, but he brought Accipiter to rest on a hilltop barely over the Schuylkill. He told himself that it only made sense. An unfamiliar dragon flying over their heads would make even the famously well-tempered people of the city nervous, surely. Besides that, if there were books he could look at about dragons before ever meeting real members of the Corps, he might save himself from embarrassment on some point or another.

                Accipiter proved less worried about being separated from Calvin than the reverse. "I shall be fine here," the dragon said. "I can see much of the city. It will be pleasant to examine it from here before we get closer. Did you notice that it is all straight lines, without the winding roads we saw in the country? That seems very sensible to do, so that no one gets lost. Men seem not to have such a good sense of direction as I."

                "That's true," Calvin admitted. Accipiter had never needed to be told which way was north after he'd been told the first time – according to him, it was simply a matter of remembering. "Do not disappear, please, and if people or even dragons come to speak to you, tell them where I have gone and that I'll be back soon."

                "That will be no problem," Accipiter said. "Besides, I would only have to go somewhere if I became particularly hungry, and I have already eaten once today."

                Where before Accipiter had been happy to eat several times between morning and evening, he had begun to only take one meal a day. Calvin wondered if this meant that the dragon was reaching his full growth. He would have to consult the books that belonged to Doctor Franklin and see if they covered this. "All right. I'm going to make sure that the nearest people know not to bother you. See you in a few hours, Accipiter."

                The nearest people turned out to be those at a public house. The proprietor was a balding man with a fat stomach that suited his profession. No one wanted to buy food and drink from a thin fellow, after all, since his supply could not be all that good. His establishment was homey and had tall glass windows that let in as much spring sunshine as could be desired.

                "Good day, sir," Calvin said, and then realized that he had no idea how to explain his unusual request. "I am Calvin Priestly... of, uh, Accipiter."

                "Courier beast up on the hill?" the man asked, not sounding particularly surprised. He did look Calvin up and down as though searching for a uniform, but failing to find one didn't appear to distress him. "You're new. Well, you ain't the first aviator to rest his beast on the hill back yonder, I mean. Did Captain Irving tell you about us, and the deal? Perhaps Captain Vale?"

                "No." Calvin wondered if his face showed that he had no idea what the man was talking about.

                "Well," said the proprietor, "You want to rest your dragon here for the night, and yourself, we give you the room and a sheep. But you take our post back Boston way without charge, and stop anywhere along the route we want it to go. Much faster than waiting a few weeks for the riders to sort it out, see."

                Calvin was surprised. He hadn't thought of Aerial Corps men as being able to sideline like that – but perhaps it made sense. In a large country like this, with so few locations actually dedicated to the care of dragons, the men must operate independently a great deal of the time. At least the ones assigned to mail duty, who would fly a long way every day. "Unfortunately I haven't been given any directive to visit Boston yet, sir. I am reporting to the Indomitable."

                Calvin actually heard the innkeeper's jaws shut inside his mouth, right through his lips. Then the man said, "You serving in a combat wing, Captain?" while looking at Calvin clinically.

                "No," Calvin said almost defensively, although upon consideration he should not have been pushed into feeling ashamed. He should have stood up for the Corps – but standing up was not in his nature. "I am not serving at all yet. My dragon is not a part of the Corps."

                "Oh," said the man. He seemed much comforted, though also confused. "You're not going to up and quarter yourself in my best room without asking, then? I ain't givin' you a sheep if you do that. Not for any price."

                "I wasn't planning on it." Calvin shuffled his feet. "... I can pay for the sheep, when I get back, I may not need it. And I'll rest with my dragon, I don't need a room."

                They haggled over the animal's cost and eventually Calvin left, feeling the man staring after him and not sure whether it was with disapproval or respect.

                Philadelphia was not so densely built up as Calvin remembered of New York when he had lived there. Its streets were so wide that you could safely walk them without someone's bucket of homemade filth being dumped onto your head. Still, it smelled like a city, even without a constant press of unwashed bodies swarming around. Most of the people who did draw close were dirty enough for their odors to be noticeable. Calvin wondered why it was so hard for citygoers to run a little water over their skins, instead of just washing their hands and faces every morning. That appeared to be their whole idea of a bath.

                The only time he had to make way one these broad avenues was when a crowd gathered near the gate of a residence, rudely trying to peer into the lot and garden behind it. "The Adams boys are back there!" a young man was telling his friend. "Sam Adams himself... and the other one, too!"

                Calvin avoided this pointless nuisance and continued on about his business.

                Benjamin Franklin's printing office, where the Pennsylvania Gazette was made, was a surprisingly small storefront. It being early, Calvin wondered if it might not be closed. But the door was opened by the Negro he'd previously met, who ushered him in. "Thank you," Calvin said to him. "Your name was Moses, as I recall?"

                "It is, sir," the Negro said. He was tall and his wool-like hair was cut very short. Although not dressed particularly well, Calvin noticed that he did not smell as unclean as most of the people outside, and his sleeves were rolled up to keep them unsoiled. He did have an odor of ink about him, however. Ink and grease, from working with machines. "I maintain the presses here. I also set type, while Doctor Franklin's apprentices are reporting in Boston."

                That was a surprise. Negroes who had learned to read were rare enough, but setting type was a skill few educated men could master. Calvin inclined his head. "Forgive me for thinking that you were a slave yesterday, rather than an employee." It had been a foolish assumption, since Benjamin Franklin was said to hate slavery with the kind of passion most people reserved for loathing of the Devil himself.

                "There is no reason I need forgive a reasonable assumption," said Moses, circling behind a counter and reaching underneath it. "In these Colonies a Negro is marked a slave by his skin before his name is ever marked on ownership papers."

                Calvin was almost made uncomfortable by the statement, but Moses didn't say it with any fire in his voice, or a rude tone. Besides, it was true. Calvin didn't have much of an opinion on the subject of slavery, although of course he knew that the traffic to the Sugar Islands was brutal and in need of reform. "I believe Doctor Franklin had some books I am meant to--"

                Moses lifted three books from behind the counter and put them on top of it. All related to dragons and their care. To this pile he added several folded pamphlets, handled gently by his ink-stained hands so as not to stain them. "Doctor Franklin wanted you to have these as well."

                "What are they?" Calvin asked, picking one up to examine it.

                "Accounts of treaties," answered Moses, "That Doctor Franklin's published throughout his career. He was an Indian commissioner for the Province. There are many interesting accounts of the various savage nations' ways of living, and profiles of their wise elder men. He thought you might benefit from having them"

                Calvin put down the pamphlet. There was a sour taste in the back of his throat. "I don't need these."

                "Should I tell the Doctor that you won't accept them?" Moses asked, raising a thick black eyebrow.

                "No, I-- of course I'll take them." Calvin couldn't show disrespect to Franklin in that way, not after receiving a gift like the harness, but it seemed beneath the man. It also seemed as though it would make Moses unhappy. Calvin had met few Negroes in his life, but all of them had been of pleasant enough disposition, and Moses was both respectful and respectable, a professional man. "May I ask if there is a place I can sit to look through the books for a few hours before going?"

                "You may look through them as you like, where you like," Moses assured him. "They are yours, now."

                Another too-large gift. "I cannot possibly--"

                "Doctor Franklin said you would try to refuse them. I assured him that I'd make you take them by force if I had to, and neither of us will like for me to do that." Moses smiled. He was considerably taller and thicker-built than Calvin. The idea of a Negro making such a threat to a white should have bothered Calvin, but it was a clear jest, and despite the divide of color, Calvin felt partial to him.

                "Fine," Calvin said. He decided not to waste any time resenting this. "Fine."

                "Besides, Doctor Franklin assured me that your dragon will prefer to have the books read to him. To hear him tell it, the beasts are very curious about these matters once they've been put forward. I'd believe what he said; the man has a great liking for dragons."

                "He does?" Calvin asked.

                Moses nodded. "It isn't widely known because there isn't a market for writing about them in the Colonies, but he's fascinated by them. He thinks constantly about the uses they could be put to if people were made not to fear them, or if they weren't solely employed by the military. It's his routes the couriers fly up and down the coast. And you must know the famous story of his kite and key? Well, if any of the courier captains who visit Philadelphia would have flown into a lightning storm, he would surely have flown that kite from dragonback."

                After taking his leave, Calvin began the walk back to Passyunk township. He looked at the books with interest as he walked.

                Since they were from England, the volumes were largely focused on enumerating the breeds of the British Isles and the Continent. There were descriptions of the most notable breeds of England – chief among these was the middleweight Yellow Reaper, good-tempered and well-suited to all forms of service. Mention was made of the Longwing, the fearsome breed that could spit burning acid, and also the giant Regal Coppers that no dragons in the world could match for size.

                Less space was dedicated to the light-weight breeds, which were of more interest to Calvin, since he hoped learning something about them would relate to Accipiter's care. The smallest breeds for which there were substantial entries were dragons of courier weight, smaller still than Accipiter. The British ones were apparently called Winchesters and Greylings – and then the book skipped directly to the middleweight dragons, as though specimens of Accipiter's weight were just the wrong size to be interesting to the writer.

                In the catalogue of French dragons, however, there were numerous entries about light combat breeds of dragon. Calvin knew enough to have the correct pronunciations of their names, though not translate what they meant. Garde-de-Lyon, that sounded particularly impressive. All of them did, to him. Plein-Vite, Pou-de-Ciel, Chasseur-Vocifere. He was suddenly ashamed for not trying harder to learn how to pronounce the breed name of his own dragon, even if it was in a ridiculous Indian tongue.

                The book summarized the variety of light-weight French breeds in a way that was not encouraging. The smaller Size of thefe various Beasts being evidence of the inferior breeding Programmes of French Dragon-Keepers, it ought be made clear to the difcerning Reader that with the notable exception of the Chinefe, whofe Ifolation and Diftance make them unimportant to this Volume, the breeding of Dragons is practiced moft perfectly in Great Britain of all the Nations in the World, and this done in Spite of a shortage of native large Varieties.

                No identifying entries existed about the dragons of the Americas, at least not in the first book he checked. The writer simply acknowledged that they existed and then moved on. It was not promising.

                As Calvin walked, the two- and three-story buildings gave way to field and shed. The day was extraordinarily bright and fair. Calvin had to actually shield the white pages of the well cared-for book from the sun, so that the glare wouldn't blind him.

                Suddenly, there was no glare. For a moment Calvin stood in deep shadow, as though a storm cloud had passed over the sun in the middle of a clear day. An instant later, it was gone.

                At first Calvin had thought that he must've walked under some obstruction without realizing it. Looking up, he saw nothing to cast the shadow – when he turned around, however, he understood what had happened.

                A dragon, dark against the bright blue sky, had sailed over the lane and towards the city. A moment later it was wheeling around easily, directly over the tops of buildings, low enough to compare them in size. For a moment Calvin had thought it was Accipiter – but no, its wings were a bit shorter in relation to its body, and its tail came to a clean point rather than featuring the plane that Accipiter's did. Its build was thicker, too. Though the brightness of the day turned it nearly into a silhouette, he could see that its brown body was streaked with surprisingly bright yellow.

                It was also clearly larger than Accipiter. Almost as large as the houses it flew over. The dragon could have caved one in by landing on top of it. Calvin was surprising to see that it was allowed to fly so low over the city. It ought to have caused a panic. He stopped and watched as it disappeared, the green outlines of its crewmen barely visible on its back.

                "Bloody Redcoats," said a man to his friend as they walked by in the other direction. "And the green ones, too. Want us to see how easy it would be to sic their horrible great beasts on us if we started behaving like Bostonians." Then he spat on the ground, to which his friend nodded.

                Calvin stared off in the direction that the dragon had gone. He didn't want to believe that that His Majesty's servants would behave in such a threatening manner towards citizens and families. Certainly they would never have done it in Britain, where dragons were generally kept as far away from people as possible.

                He shook his head, and went about trying to identify the creature's breed in any of the dragon books, if it made an appearance.

                By the time he'd returned to the hill, Accipiter was not there.

                It took him thirty seconds of panicky searching to locate the dragon, who had walked down closer to the road to speak to the crowd that he had attracted. Some families observed him only from a distance, but a few had come closer, even allowing their children to pat his striped belly. It was a confounding sight after so recently hearing a man complain about dragons being present in the Provence at all.

                 Accipiter seemed to enjoy the attention. "There you are, Calvin! These people have all come to have a look at me. Apparently I am half again as big as any courier dragon they have seen, and also I have the advantage of not being part of the Aerial Corps. They say that would make me a 'pawn of oppressors,' which sounds quite an unfortunate thing to be."

                "Oh, Lord," Calvin moaned. He looked at the faces of the people who'd gotten close enough to address Accipiter directly, but none of them bothered with looking guilty over their propagandizing.

                One even doffed his cap to Calvin while smiling. He was a stout fellow, probably a workman, and dressed in economical clothes. The thin green feather in his battered cap seemed more like an acknowledgement that style existed than an actual attempt at it. "There he is, the man who's brought a fighting dragon into Pennsylvania's service without begging King George's permission!"

                "We'll see, sir," sighed Calvin, hoping that Accipiter had not been poisoned too thoroughly against the idea of the Aerial Corps. "I still need to negotiate with the Corps on what I'm to do next."

                "Ah, why not join us Irregulars instead?" the man said. "I'm Abe Marshall. I'll see to it you've got a ground crew and all the mutton your beast can eat. Men around here don't shy away from duty or dragons... long as the dragons ain't big enough to swallow 'em whole, at any rate."

                This was all making Calvin increasingly nervous. The plain fact was that he could hardly keep Accipiter from belonging to His Majesty, and he was beginning to feel in line with the Aerial Corps already. These Philadelphians had every sign of being entirely too rebellious. A dragon in a militia would be like a cannon in the hands of schoolboys; they'd probably want to use it to settle some childish grudge against rival tradesmen or the like.

                "Accipiter, we need to go," Calvin said, clapping the carabiners into place on the harness. "We're going to get this all of this sorted out."

                "Come back and visit us!" Marshall called, actually sweeping his ridiculous hat off and touching his knuckle to his forehead both. "And remember, 'Liberty must at all hazards be supported!'"

                Calvin had nothing to add to that, though privately he reflected that his own liberty would hardly be served by failing to cooperate with the law. He cried "Up!" and Accipiter threw himself into the air.

                Once they were up high and skirting the border of the city, Calvin heard Accipiter call over his shoulder, "Do you see, Calvin? The roads are all straight lines, like a farmer's fields."

                Accipiter was correct. "Philadelphia is a planned city!" Calvin called back, having to shout against the wind. The dragon was so fast that although he was harnessed in securely, Calvin had to hold on tight to keep from being pushed back by the rush of air. "The second-largest in the Empire!" He'd heard that somewhere, but it was hard to believe at the moment. From so high up, it looked more like a map than a real place.

                Still, the Indomitable didn't look small. Even with his minimal experience of ships, Calvin could see that it was huge, the wide fan of its dragon-deck spread out in the shadow of its countless furled sails. The ship was too large to simply dock, and small launches were moving back and forth from it for resupply.

                At first Calvin didn't see what Franklin had meant about the ship being old, but once they began circling around it he understood. Some things, like the barnacles on the hull, could be explained by its having just completed a crossing of the Atlantic. Others were harder to excuse. The planking didn't have any of the impressive shine that some other ships in the harbor displayed, and there were hints of rot in the wood – probably only a clue to what would be happening inside.

                Signal flags came up from the dragon-deck. They meant nothing to Calvin, so he continued circling, considering their approach. The curled-up golden-yellow body of a dragon rested on the deck, its head rising to watch them. Calvin bit his lip. After a few more high circles the dragon did not take wing to meet them, so they must not have been considered a threat. Ultimately, the flag officer began making a sign that no one could misunderstand, waving Calvin and Accipiter down towards a location on the deck that seemed unlikely to risk unbalancing the ship as they landed.

                "Think you can put down safely?" Calvin asked.

                "It will be interesting," Accipiter said. That did not inspire much confidence, but it turned out to be as simple as landing anywhere else – except that Accipiter's sharp claws left ugly scoring on the deck. Men immediately came running up, not upset but certainly surprised. "Ahoy there, sir! Please identify yourself!"

                "Calvin Priestly, of Accipiter," he said. He undid his carabiners and hopped off of Accipiter's back, feet clunking against the deck. It was clean, but there were places that the planks obviously no longer sat flush, and a huge number of streaks from other dragons' claws.

                Immediately a man knelt down next to him, beginning to undo the loop-bearing belt around his waist. Calvin almost brushed him away, but stopped himself. He was not some highbrow gentleman who was used to being dressed or undressed by anyone. But he also didn't want to get off on the wrong foot. "Um, do you need to take that off?" Calvin tried to make sure that the bone-handled knife stayed in his belt, his father's advice regarding always keeping a blade handy in mind.

                The man looked up at him, trying to hide confusion. He was fairly young, but had a bald head that was wet with sweat. It shined bright in the sun. "Begging your pardon, Captain, but if you mean to meet the Admiral, there's no reason to be wearin' your flying gear."

                "I'm not a Captain," Calvin said. Whatever Franklin might think, Calvin's father would never have tolerated his pretending to be an officer, even if it was meant to be his eventual destiny. "I'm just a--"

                Calvin was cut off by Accipiter leaning his head down and saying, "Look, Calvin. Look at how large that other dragon is."

                The dragon that had been resting nearby had unfolded itself, and as it stretched its wings Calvin forgot entirely about the matter of his harness belt.

                It was more than twice Accipiter's size. In contrast with the more earthy tones Accipiter showed, under the noon sun this dragon appeared to be gilded. Its metallic scales sparkled with light over most of its body, though curving streaks of pale green tracked down its belly and onto its tail. At the tips of the dragon's broad wings were curls of orange that reminded Calvin of flames.

                Unlike Accipiter's two antler-like horns, this dragon had many small spurs of bone framing his head. It looked at them with dark green eyes that were set deep in the head. They were shaded, contemplative. Around its neck, tied to its harness, the dragon wore a golden ring studded with green gems. The ornament added both to its dignified appearance and its imposing presence. Calvin had never seen so much gold in one place in his life.

                This dragon began walking across the deck towards them, and Calvin felt the entire ship tilt slightly but noticeably. The crewmen – some in the green coats of the Aerial Corps, some stripped to shirtsleeves owing to the heat of work – were now interestedly inspecting Accipiter and talking to each other. They didn't notice the movement at all, but Calvin felt his heart miss a beat with every step the dragon took, the vibrations making his knees shake.

                He hadn't been quite conscious of it while looking at Accipiter (who was familiar, and at least did not make a human look small and insignificant by comparison), but some dragons really could swallow a man whole, like Marshall had been talking about. A buried instinct in Calvin recognized it and registered unease.

                "Do you think I will grow that large?" Accipiter asked, with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation in his voice.

                "I don't think so," Calvin said. Suddenly he realized why the book he had been reading had not spent much time discussing small breeds. The larger sort certainly commanded the greatest part of one's attention just by their presence.

                When the dragon spoke, it was in a deep, resounding voice that clearly came from far within the chest. "I heard you say that you are Captain Priestly, sir? And you are Accipiter? I hope I have it right."

                Calvin was surprised. The accent was not merely English, but so cultured as to be almost aristocratic. The rest of the crew did not seem to be concerned that the dragon had approached and initiated conversation without the bidding of any person. In fact, they seemed to be holding back their own speech, as though not wishing to interrupt the conversation. "Yes, I am. That is, we are. Although I'm not a Captain yet, really, I just..." Calvin had no idea how to explain the situation, least of all to a dragon. "... happened to harness him by chance?" he finished, lamely.

                "You are not the first," the dragon told him in a tone of voice that was unmistakable. He was trying to reassure Calvin. It was very strange to have the huge creature, whose immense sharp teeth were quite visible every time its mouth moved, trying to comfort him in this way. "Although I am sure my handler would prefer to tell that story. I am Celeritas. My companion is Admiral Jonah Rankin. One of the runners has gone to fetch him, and he will be along shortly."

                'Shortly' proved to be no time at all. A man in a well-brushed bottle green aviator's coat came above decks at once. He wore flying goggles hung around his neck, and a sword at his waist whose hilt was of polished silver. Even on the splintery planks, he cut something of a dashing figure. The gray at his temples seemed to have nothing to do with the youthful bravado on his face, or his energetically moving limbs. He smiled at Calvin, and at Accipiter as well, greeting them both with a polite bow. Calvin returned it more deeply, but was surprised to find that the Admiral, a gentleman, grabbed his hand and pumped it thereafter.

                Calvin's father had once shaken hands with a general after a particularly well-fought engagement. He had described it as if the act were some kind of utterly solemn ceremony. It was not a common thing to have physical contact with a man of high standing, even for other such men. It was true what they said, then; Aviators maintained different protocols of society than other services.

                Rankin introduced himself first, another unusual choice. His voice was, high, clear and also thoroughly upper-class. "Admiral Jonah Rankin, young man. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I heard only this morning that there was a dragon outside of a pub on the other side of the city and surmised it must be a rumor – where else do drunks come up with them, after all? Celeritas and I would have flown over to see the truth of it in just an hour or so, but you have saved us the trouble... and now there is a good deal to discuss. Please, let's have some details out of the way... for example," he gestured with a wave, bemused, "Where you found this unusual harness?"

                "Uh, yes sir," said Calvin, and then introduced himself again. He gestured to the harness, which was even now having its netting examined by the bald man. "It was a gift."

                The bald fellow appeared to be chief among Celeritas's ground crew, and his hands had the kind of scars and calluses Calvin had seen sometimes on saddle-makers before. He must know a thing or two about dragon harnesses, but this one was clearly strange to him. "I never seen a pattern like this, sir," he told the Admiral. "Look, the rings are almost all dees, and the carabiners here..." he held one up, "... they're hollow, an' long instead've round."

                "Well, I'm sure you can fix him up a better soon," said Admiral Rankin.

                "... I'll look into it, sir," said the harness-man, though he was still staring at the carabiner with something like reverence.

                "Please come take some tea with me, Mr. Priestly." Rankin gestured towards the stairway he had just ascended. "Am I saying it correctly? Are you perchance related to the minister from the Royal Society who authored the Chart of Biography?"

                "Not that I know of." Calvin looked over his shoulder at Accipiter, who had drawn closer to Celeritas and was looking up at the larger dragon with an almost impudent interest. "Will they be all right together, sir? The dragons, I mean."

                "Of course. Celeritas has a talent for nurturing the young ones; it is a natural impulse at his age." Rankin nodded to his dragon, and Celeritas inclined his head back in what was clearly a bow – one a good deal like Accipiter's, actually. Calvin wondered how the huge, imposing creature had ever been trained so well.

                He followed Rankin down the stairs into the poorly-lit innards of the ship, amazed at how fast the bright and wide-open day was replaced by claustrophobic darkness. But in a moment Rankin had led them into a cabin whose windows were wide open, letting in light and fresh air.

                The Admiral's cabin was surprisingly cozy in its appointments. A small bed, a writing desk and a sea-chest were its primary features. However, Rankin – or possibly some servant of his – had added many small touches that made it seem more like a person's home. It was clearly not just a place to store himself and his things while traveling.

                There was a stack of books that was not small, the topmost being a work by the jurist Blackstone and the bulk of the rest being collections of short dramas. A Turkish dagger with an oval wooden pommel was hung on the wall, not particularly ornate but still given some flair by its curved shape. A conch shell with colors reminiscent of Celeritas was there, as was a small but recognizable portrait of the famous sixteenth-century dragon Conflagratia. A larger and more modern one of Celeritas, in profile, hung next to it.

                Rankin swept some letters he had been reading aside unceremoniously and sat down at the desk, motioning to indicate that Calvin should take the other chair in the room to do the same. From the floor he picked up an unusually-shaped clay teapot with swirling lines painted on the side. Calvin eventually recognized these as being writing in Arabic. "I know good tea is hard to come by in the Colonies these days," Rankin said, "Please, let me pour for you."

                "Oh, no, sir," said Calvin. He was mortified to imagine what his father would say to letting a superior do anything like that. But Rankin didn't listen; apparently he had left everything he needed for his afternoon tea on the deck of his cabin just to come meet Calvin, and was only now picking it up. He never passed Calvin the pot at all, just fixed him a small cup and pushed it forwards. "Well... thank you, Admiral."

                "You're completely welcome," said Rankin. "Now, let us introduce ourselves with more than just our names, as though we are men with purposes. I am an Admiral of His Majesty's Aerial Corps and commander-in-chief of that service here in America, which I think you already know. I am also brother to the Earl of Kensington, companion to the Malachite Reaper named Celeritas... and a good hand at jackstraws, last time I checked." He smiled to finish, and Calvin suddenly felt much more at ease. He was pleased to see that Margaret's suspicions about this man had been wholly unfounded. Rankin was instantly likable and personable, despite being both of high rank and elevated status.

                Calvin introduced himself again, as well. Feeling like he did not need to give an overly thorough account, since he would likely be spending quite some time under the man's command, he recounted his adventure in broad strokes. Admiral Rankin was kind enough to lift a toast to the late Sergeant Priestly after hearing that he'd died. Calvin thought his father would have appreciated that, especially its not being done with a drink as sinful as liquor.

                "Benjamin Franklin gave you a dragon harness..." Rankin said at the end, more to himself than to Calvin. "... I hope he didn't ask you to neglect your duty in coming to us?"

                "No, sir," said Calvin. It was true; Franklin had never gone that far.

                "Keep in mind, I respect Doctor Franklin immensely," Rankin noted, watching the steam rise from his cup. "The man is clever. Every time I meet him, I'm struck by his wit and his insight. But you must understand that he is utterly wrongheaded about several issues, and unfortunately made a nuisance of himself to Parliament recently. He seems to think that His Majesty and Their Lordships cannot effectively govern British citizens from Britain... despite the operation having carried on just fine for nearly two centuries."

                In point of fact, Doctor Franklin had explained it to Calvin with a bit more nuance than that. According to him there were questions of representation involved – and Calvin wasn't sure that he could imagine the soft-spoken Benjamin Franklin being a "nuisance" to anyone in Parliament. Particularly since there was no one else speaking there for the Colonies at present. "I am sure I have no strong opinion on the subject, sir. I am not a political animal, only a settler of land."

                "Yes," said Rankin slowly, "About that... listen, I respect what you Colonists are doing out West. It's a dangerous business and the rewards are wonderful for the Empire. But you are aware that the area you spoke of coming from is part of the Indian Reserve?"

                Calvin's jaw clenched. "I am familiar with the maps, though I do not own one myself."

                "Well, that land was ceded to us by France in sixty-three, but it was set aside for the use of the natives. Technically... it troubles me to bring this up, but technically it is illegal to have settled there."

                Rankin wasn't trying to be rude – in fact he was taking surprising pains to avoid it – but in this matter he did not understand the reality of the situation. Before the borders of the Reserve had ever been set, there were already entire villages of white men east of the boundary line, far into the wilderness. The Crown could make whatever claims it wanted, but settlers had already gone as far as the Mississippi, at least for purposes of establishing trading outposts. They could hardly be asked to turn back and leave their livelihoods and the lands they'd worked so hard to tame.

                Calvin didn't say anything, so Rankin went on, "I hope you understand that since legally speaking, you do not own that land, I can't allow you to return to it. A brief visit to set your affairs in order might otherwise have been allowed, but it would be impossible to explain that to Aerial Command in this case."

                This was unpleasant, but to be expected. "I said my goodbyes to my father already, sir." It was more unfortunate that the fertile land they had fought so hard to clear would now belong to weeds and wild growth, and that the small house would decompose and break – or more likely, fall into the hands of people Calvin had never met. No one would bother them about legalities.

                "I am sorry, Priestly," said Rankin, and he sounded as though he meant it honestly. "But your training into a real aviator must begin at once. You've done very well so far. There's no question that you've tamed your beast with very little help; they shall tell stories about it. No instruction at all, and you managed to tame him and name him. 'Accipiter' is a fitting sort of name for a dragon, by the way."

                "Thank you," Calvin answered. He finally felt at ease enough to take a sip of his tea, which was of superior taste, clearly not from re-used leaves. Rankin could obviously afford not only to have the best, but share it. "My Latin is weak, however, outside of the binomial names of birds. May I ask how you settled on 'Celeritas?' I'm not sure what it means."

                "It means 'Speed,' and I didn't decide." Rankin looked about to laugh at some pleasant memory. "My late father did, when he took Celeritas into harness from the wild."

                The teacup wobbled in Calvin's hand. "Sir? I thought that--"

                "That dragons could only be harnessed from birth? Yes," said Rankin with an amused shake of his head. "People forget the old techniques – my family used to practice them, when owning dragons was the right of every nobleman who could afford it. It requires a great deal of coaxing... perhaps you've noticed what Celeritas wears around his neck? That was a bribe of sorts, to get him into the service many decades ago. From what we can determine, he is almost a hundred and seventy years old, now, and much better-mannered than most dragons harnessed out of the egg."

                Calvin bit his own tongue. It was strange to think of any living creature as being so old, but of course there were some types of dragon that could live into a third century. "He is that, sir. I could not identify his breed at first. A heavyweight, isn't he?"

                "Middleweight, and not large for that," Rankin corrected. Calvin nearly sputtered out a mouthful of his drink. "No reason to be excited – or jealous, as some of the young fellows can be. Accipiter is a light combat dragon already, and perhaps he will grow as large as a middleweight. Who can say with these strange Indian breeds? At any rate, he will still be of phenomenal use."

                Calvin wondered if his dragon would soon be so large that no one would want to come see and admire him when he, for instance, touched down on a hillside. He hoped that the society of other dragons would be welcoming to Accipiter, because people in general were unlikely to let their children come pet a monster whose one claw might crush them by accident. "I wonder how my training will begin, then?"

                "Simply enough. Before too long you shall have to report to the breeding grounds in Halifax, where they shall get the measure of you both and decide where you need to be trained – likely in Scotland. Perhaps you were never schooled in being an aviator as a squeaker, but you're the proper age for going into harness, and will likely learn faster for knowing the value of a disciplined approach."

                Rankin tapped the surface of the desk in consideration before continuing. "I think we shall have to send to them and wait for orders to make sure, you never know what'll be considered interference by these breeders. For now, I think you can join Captain Colby and I on maneuvers, it will let us get a sense of your flying. Colby and Rixator are to be stationed here – or rather, in Fort Mifflin on Mud Island. When the Indomitable takes me back north to New York, you shall come along, and in time fly on to Halifax yourself. After we have taught you full orienteering, of course. I must stay with the ship. There are no coverts designed to fully equip fighting dragons in the Colonies yet, so it is serving as sort of a moving covert as needed." Rankin smiled. "Well. That covers it until we know more. Shall we go flying, Mister Priestly?"

                Calvin nodded. "Yes, sir." He put his teacup down and eyed Rankin carefully. "You enjoy it, don't you sir?" he asked, unable to stop himself. "The flying, I mean."

                "Oh, nothing compares to it," Rankin answered unreservedly, and Calvin decided that he liked the Admiral. He might be hard to pin down thanks to his mixture of gentlemanly airs and frank speech, but he also seemed a decent man. As he let Calvin open the door for him, the ship tilted just fractionally. One of Rankin's letters slipped along his desktop. "Ah, they'll have asked Celeritas and Accipiter to stand to one side as Colby and Rixator return. You and I can make a second pass over the route. It will scare the dickens out of these militiamen."

                Calvin's heart sank. He almost forgot to follow Rankin back towards the stairs, but caught up. "I... sir, is that why your wing has been flying over the city?"

                "Not quite a wing, when we're not together!" Rankin observed. "We have already left Crocina in New York and Majestatis in Boston, with the others spread across the cost. They are doing the same sort of thing, flying patterns over the cities and large towns just to remind the bully-boys who's in charge. Need to stop them from causing everyone trouble."

                Calvin had a shy nature. Though what he felt was distressed, timidity made his question come out sounding nothing more than curious. "You-- we're threatening them, sir?"

                "Oh, I know it's distasteful," said Rankin. He clearly did know, but he shrugged again. "If I had a choice in the matter I would never do it, but that's the nature of our orders. Besides, it isn't as though we would ever do any harm to innocents. We don't even carry bombs when we do the runs, simply to avoid accidents!"

                Calvin's palm quivered on the handrail. He felt like the ship was moving under him again, though it was doing no such thing. Dropping bombs.

                He had forgotten about bombs. Dragons had the ability to burn a city to the ground if their crews wished it. Philadelphia had no cannon with which to stop them, except perhaps at Mud Island – which was presently full of Redcoats. "Sir... sir, do the people know you aren't carrying bombs?"

                "If they did, it would be scarcely a show of force at all. Things are tense in Pennsylvania, as tense as Massachusetts Bay has been for years. If a little easy flying in a pleasant season will let both sides realize there's nothing to be gained by fighting, I hope you'll have no problem with it. A touch of intimidation can stop fights before they start."

                Calvin's legs felt heavy as he walked up the steps to the deck. His head, however, felt light. He's saying the same things as Franklin, he thought, they're trying to scare each other and making everything worse and worse. Margaret's father has every reason to feel afraid. He thinks Redcoats and dragons can kill him at any second...!

                His thoughts were intruded upon by an earsplitting, deep roar that knocked everything else out of his head. Calvin dashed up the stairs, nearly pushing Rankin out of the way. Was something wrong with the dragons?

                Sure enough, they were almost nose-to-nose, with Accipiter's jaws open as wide as they could go. His high, hissing cry cut the air directly on the heels of Celeritas's roar. Calvin felt his spine shiver at the alien, rattlesnake quality of the noise that seemed to be made of multiple parts. To one side a particularly young midwingman reeled back, covering his ears.

                Calvin was about to scream for Accipiter to stop, to keep the dragons from fighting – when Celeritas said in a tone of gentle approval, "Yes, yes, but put your lower chest muscles into it as well. The sound shall carry farther and it shall increase your lung capacity."

                "Oh, how useful!" said Accipiter, quite as though he had not just been bellowing at the top of his lungs. He looked delightedly over to where Calvin stood. "Good, you are back. Celeritas was just telling me how to make the most of roaring. It is very interesting."

                "I'm sure it is," breathed Calvin with relief.

                "I told you, Celeritas is the mentoring sort." Admiral Rankin actually clapped Calvin on the shoulder like they were old friends. "A good roar refreshes them, and lets them show fighting spirit."

                A third roar echoed from the sky. Shielding his eyes against the sun, Calvin saw the same silhouette from earlier in the day swooping towards them.

                "Also their favorite way of greetin' friends, 'specially the Xenicas," the harness-man added, though he did not look away from where he was scribbling down information about Accipiter's unusual carabiners.

                The latest dragon to arrive landed with a slide that seemed to indicate it had been going too quickly. Men who had been idling were snapping to attention and making preparations to receive it, but it did not stay in place to let its crew dismount. Instead it tromped over the deck, throwing a coil of rope awry and apparently not caring. For a moment Calvin imagined that it meant to offer some kind of challenge to Accipiter – but then it dropped its thick, spiny head as though in some form of submission. This dragon was slightly larger than Celeritas.

                Without a moment's delay its captain had leapt onto its – no, his, for the dragon was male – lowered neck and run down it as easily as a boy skips over rocks in a stream. The young man didn't bother taking off the hood that covered his short hair, nor sweeping back the long leather coat that was buttoned over his clothing. It seemed an excellent outfit for flying, to Calvin's mind. The wind would chill and sting less.

                "Captain Colby," Rankin said, his casual voice becoming quickly serious, "I meant to introduce you and Rixator to our new friend Priestly here, and Accipiter as well, but..."

                Colby shook his head. He did not appear in the mood for polite greetings. The rest of Rixator's crew was dismounting behind him, and they were speaking quickly to the other aviators on deck. Calvin tried to hear what they were saying, as there was distress in every face. But he was distracted as Colby wordlessly thrust a folded letter in front of Rankin.

                 It was a disrespectful way to bring anything to the attention of a superior officer, but apparently Rankin didn't care. He opened the note and scanned over it quickly.

                Captain Colby was staring at Calvin, and the man did not look happy. His thin face was white and his lips were very tightly pressed together. Calvin decided to avoid eye contact.

                "God's breath," Rankin said unexpectedly. He looked up at Colby and talked very fast. "Did you get this from the morning courier?"

                For whatever reason, Colby still did not speak. But he nodded solemnly.

                "All right. All right, no one can accuse the Corps of being unable to adjust when we must. Take this to the ship's first officer, Colby. Not anyone else, just you take it, we don't know who we can trust at the moment. And don't give it to the sot of a Navy captain, he'll be too far into his cups to understand by this hour."

                Colby nodded again and took the note back, then swept off, though not without casting a displeased look at Calvin that he did not understand.

                "May I ask--" Calvin began, but Rankin held a hand up. Then he pushed his own hair back with it, his jaws clenching tight. He was thinking very, very hard.

                After a moment the Admiral said, "I cannot explain just now, I'm sorry. Listen, the Indomitable will need to set sail... well, immediately, if the wind allows it. It is for Boston, as are Celeritas and I. You are not ready to come with us to stand on that powder keg. Colby and Rixator are going to Mud Island on the river here, and you shall join them."

                Calvin did not like what was happening. He felt Accipiter draw closer behind him and look down at Rankin to say, "You think Calvin and I are not good enough to do something with you? Is it very dangerous?"

                "I cannot speak of it," Rankin repeated, displaying a very slight temper as raised a silencing hand to the dragon. "Suffice it to say you'll have your chance to deal with trouble very soon, I fear. Celeritas, you must eat, we have a long flight ahead and we'll have to go as quickly as possible."

                "I shall see to it," said Celeritas, and quite without the guidance of his crew he moved to bend his head over the side of the dragon deck. Apparently he meant to speak to the level where the animals were kept through a porthole, and tell them to send one up – much faster than passing along a message.

                "Sir," said Calvin, "I believe I'm in the way here, unless you can think of some fashion in which I can help. I should set myself aside until Captain Colby has use for me. I intended to buy a sheep for Accipiter's dinner at the inn, tonight, would it be appropriate to take care of that now?"

                "You're right, you're right," said Rankin, already signaling for several crewmen to be about prearranged tasks. He was clearly so distracted by whatever had been written on the note that he had no time to worry much about Calvin and his little dragon. Nevertheless, he stopped to stare the boy straight in the face. "Mister Priestly, when you report to Fort Mifflin, you must do precisely as Colby tells you. It will be hard, you will understand why when it happens – but you absolutely must perform the patrol routes as ordered. And nothing is to leave the ports, either. The Indomitable was keeping it all orderly, but we must disallow every departure – this task will fall to dragons and cannon."

                "You want a complete blockade?" Calvin asked, incredulous.

                "No, I don't want any such thing!" Rankin half-cried, not at Calvin but seemingly at the world around him. A few of his crew started, but the Admiral composed himself in an instant. It was quite impressive, and the men were reassured at once and returned to their work. "Normally we would be able to assign you a crew and find you some kind of presentable uniform, but there is no time. Understand, it is critical that you continue our patrols here and maintain a blockade. Can I count on you for this?"

                The Admiral extended a gloved hand again, and this time Calvin felt sure that it was not a casual gesture. Agreeing to this was as good as swearing an oath, not just to the Corps but to Rankin personally.

                So Calvin did something he would never be all right with having done, for the rest of his life. Something that would have made his father ashamed of him, and which would keep him awake at night.

                He shook Rankin's hand, and lied to him. "Yes, sir. Naturally I will."

                Rankin nodded. "Excellent. Perhaps there is an error and things will be sorted out, but thank God for you. Every one of our dragons will need to do the work of more than two if this is going to end satisfactorily. Dismissed, Mister Priestly."

                Calvin bowed and Rankin trooped off, a hand on the hilt of his sword, suddenly barking orders with all the volume of a fishing captain rather than an Earl's son.

                From the raised dragon deck Accipiter and Calvin spent a minute watching the ship spring into life. Men were swarming to their stations and boys were climbing the rigging like monkeys to unfurl the sails. It was considerably more impressive to see than even one of Temple's detailed sketches of sailors at their labors.

                Accipiter was particularly interested while he watched the youths raise themselves so many times their own height into the air. "That is clever of them, to find a way to go so high without wings."

                "Yes." Calvin climbed Accipiter's side once he was geared up, and patted it as he clipped himself in. "Time to go, Accipiter."

                They took to the air, moving in a meandering way as Accipiter flew low to interestedly examine the swells, then high to see the shapes of the various ships from above. "I see it now. They use the sails to catch wind, much the same as I do."

                "Yes," was all Calvin could say at the moment.

                Accipiter took them higher, exerting himself briefly and then translating his altitude into distance with an effortless glide. "Where is this place called Mud Island, Calvin?" he asked.

                It took some thought, but Calvin pointed south, downriver. Towards the ocean. If he strained his eyes, he could see the cleared field within its angular walls. "There," said Calvin, "Commanding the river access to the city. Fort Mifflin is upon it."

                "Will we be going there?" Accipiter's voice didn't betray any uncertainty. In fact, it sounded bored. "To do this patrolling business?"

                "No," said Calvin. "I lied. Do you suppose that makes me a bad person?"

                "I am sure I do not know," said Accipiter. "I do not think you would have said anything that was not true for no good reason. But if patrolling is not something you wish to do, and if it would upset you, I would not have taken you out to do it anyway. That would not suit me at all."

                Calvin gave a hoarse kind of laugh. Despite being sick with himself, he could not feel sad while he was in the air. He wasn't even sure that he could feel afraid, flying and in the company of the friend who cared most for him in the world. "Thank you for that.  Admiral Rankin... I think he's a reasonable man, and a good one. He's also wrong to try frightening the Colonists into line. He has awful orders and they'll lead to awful consequences."

                "Then he should not follow them," Accipiter observed, as though this were something obvious and Rankin should have thought of it himself. "I know you would never do anything so foolish."

                "Oh, we'll see," said Calvin. "Maybe I've already started."

                "Well, what are you planning for us to do next?" The dragon looked behind himself in mid-flight, the normally bright yellow eyes covered by their pale wind-proof membrane.

                Calvin looked out over the grid of the city, and at the Indomitable just off the harbor. Its faded old sails were catching the afternoon light perfectly, making them shine fair. He thought of the Harpers, what they had feared from him, and what he owed them for their kindness. He wondered where, down in that complicated web of lives and worries and agendas, Benjamin Franklin was. Calvin wondered if he could – or should go to the man for council.

                He even thought of Moses, the free man, the Adams boys, the other delegates from all the Colonies – and realized that his choice could affect all their lives in a very dangerous way.

                "I don't know."

END OF PART II

Chapter Text

                The King's Head public house in Passyunk Township shared its name with dozens of pubs in Britain and several more in the colonies. Its sign said 'EST. 1723.'

                Ever since that date it had been the practice of the pub to decorate the sign with a relatively recent portrait of the King of Great Britain, beginning with a representation of George I after the famous painting of him by Sir Godfrey Kneller. During George II's reign the sign had been updated with regularity and ceremony, the picture raised during the War of Jenkins' ear being particularly lauded for portraying the monarch with a brave set to his jaw and his eyes narrowed with conviction. The artist had thoughtfully reduced the roundness of His Majesty's face and omitted the marks he'd received from smallpox, giving him a particularly soldierly appearance.

                The third king from the House of Hanover, despite being much more often committed to canvas (and generally considered to resemble his handsome father, Prince Frederick), had never faired very well on the King's Head signs. The first depiction of him had given him a weak chin that portrayed a certain immaturity – perhaps to be expected in a man coronated at only twenty-two years of age. The second portrayal had granted him his chin and added another two besides, in imitation of Thomas Frye's somewhat unflattering portrait.

                In the most recently raised sign at the King's Head, George III (King of Great Britain and of Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneberg and ruler of the entire Empire) looked like an oaf.

                The high hairline had been paired with a forehead that swept back a long way into the skull, as though it did not contain a brain. The mouth was small and smiled uncomprehendingly, as though pretending amusement at a joke too complicated for the listener to appreciate. The shoulders, which were the lowest part of the man on the sign, seemed sloped and unimpressive. Finally, so much red had been used in the cheeks that His Majesty looked as though he might be slightly drunk.

                All told, the effect might have been a depiction of an unglamorous, but friendly-looking man, except that some person had quite recently inked a straight black line across the wide neck. It did not stand out until noticed, but thereafter it could not be ignored.

                Though not in any color that suggested gore, or accompanied by further disfigurement, the statement it made was clear: "Off with the King's head." Or possibly "Cut the King's throat." No one had bothered to fix it. It would seem that no one disagreed enough to take the trouble.

                Calvin was carefully considering this line while Accipiter spoke to him. The dragon lay curled up on the hillside. Night had fallen hours before, but they had only recently returned to the inn. While they were in the sky it had felt to Calvin as though his problems could not reach them.

                They were certainly waiting for him here on the ground, however. The line would not let him forget it.

                "And also if you go in," Accipiter continued, his bright eyes catching firelight from the building's windows, "You may eat. I am not hungry, but I know that you are, and so I will insist that you have dinner. Otherwise you are bound to become weak and irritable, and not grow as much as you ought to."

                Calvin chose not to become upset by this babying. He tried to sort out his hair a bit with his fingers. Going anywhere on dragon back was not easy on a man's queue. He might have liked to hold his hair down with a bandana, if it wouldn't have too closely resembled a woman's bonnet. "All right, I'll go in," he said. "And I'll eat. And then I shall get you your sheep even if you aren't really hungry, because I've got no idea of the next chance you'll have to try one. Besides, I already lied to Admiral Rankin about one thing. I can at least have been honest about this."

                "Rankin does not seem worth troubling over much," said Accipiter, with discourtesy Calvin didn't like to hear. Before he could say as much, Accipiter added, "He may well belong to a dragon as impressive as Celeritas, but that is no reason he ought to be able to tell us what to do. And they are both gone for Boston, besides, so it should be of no consequence now."

                Calvin thought that in this situation, a proper aviator and captain would try to explain the ideals of duty and service to his beast. However, he was no part of the Aerial Corps, and the events of the day had proven he was totally unqualified to lecture anyone on those subjects. Instead he said, "There is still a middleweight dragon guarding the river, and I would rather be sure we can outrun it than outfight it. Only let me consult these books and ask a few questions, and we can think on our next move."

                "All right," said Accipiter. "But you must tell me what you learn. I still do not understand why the letters in books must be so small that I cannot read them – especially since so many people already have need of eyeglasses."

                With Doctor Franklin's books concerning dragons tucked under his arm, Calvin entered the King's Head for the second time that day.

                When there had been daylight and a breeze allowed in, the pub had been airy and welcoming. Now that the sun was gone, it seemed hot and cramped inside, thanks to the roasting fire. The atmosphere was by no means hostile, but Calvin was conscious of how unseemly such establishments were to be considered at the best of times. Too often they were the bases of operation for gangs of thugs and rabble-rousers, or misguided political associations. In addition, whatever the name 'public house' might have once meant, the main reason that customers visited them now was simply to find drink.

                Calvin tried to look nonchalant while he walked past some farmhands who were intensely discussing breeds of cow, and two Negroes at a table, one old and one young. None of these people seemed particularly engaged in sin. In fact, the Negro boy was seated next to what must be an elderly relative of his, and was helping him eat his spoon bread. The man had no teeth, and hands badly mangled by either accident or arthritis. The youth was clearly caring for him, which Calvin could only approve of.

                The only thing openly untoward in the room was a young woman seated against the wall, playing the Irish harp. Her dress was rather too low-cut for polite society and one of her ankles was clearly visible, so Calvin tried to look only at her face. She smiled at him and his heart skipped... but then he noticed the handful of boys and men in chairs drawn close to the woman, mooning over her. It was surely her job to smile at everyone.

                At the bar, Calvin set down the books and greeted the innkeeper. "Glad to have you back, Captain," the man said. Calvin considered it just as likely that he was glad to see the sheep he'd set aside would be sold.

                Calvin listened for a while to the unfamiliar tune that the harpist was playing, likely something of her own composition – DdAGgAFA twice to EdAGgAFA twice, and quickly. She was talented, however she chose to dress herself. Then he cracked open the thickest and most complicated-seeming book about dragons that he had to hand.

                The dragon that Captain Colby was paired with had been referred to as a 'Xenica.' This particular volume didn't have so much as a chart of dragon silhouettes to which he could refer, but the name was there, and the description fit. It had powerful forequarters for close fighting, with wings that were very strong for a middleweight, allowing for great speed in short bursts. Temperamental in the extreme, the breed had been thought impossible to harness until the Elizabethan era, when new techniques were developed that, the book said, 'turned its many dangerous qualities to the service of the empire, rather than againft the Aviators who attempted to handle it.'

                Calvin flipped to the entry for the heavyweight acid-spitting breed, the Longwing. As he remembered from reading about them earlier in the day, there was a similar notation to the Xenica's. At one time, they might have all been destroyed for their unruliness, but around 1581, a method of harnessing had been introduced that solved the problem...

                It didn't say what that method might be. Calvin wondered how anyone inquiring on the subject could be satisfied with so little information. Then he guessed that the new method for controlling the ferocious Xenica might be setting them fierce handlers, judging by the unkind looks Captain Colby had given him on their very first meeting. The man already didn't like him. Refusing to fly the patrols designed to frighten the Colonists would aggravate the situation.

                One of the books was more of a history of dragon studies, but scouring it offered a few items of interest to a boy who might be about to unwillingly enter the world of aerial combat.

                Virtually all breeds, it said, would instinctively dive when attacked from above, even if such action was not in the interest of the beast or crew. British breeds especially prone to this were the various Coppers (although it could sometimes be trained out of them,) the Yellow Reaper and the Cheq--

                "Ho there, Captain!" came a voice. Calvin was clapped on the shoulder so heartily that he worried his stool might tip over. Calvin turned around to find that Mister Marshall the militia organizer and three other men were standing together there. All of them were stout fellows, though Marshall was the only one whose weight was carried mostly in his belly. Despite being indoors, the man hadn't bothered to remove his battered hat with the green feather in it. "Priestly, wasn't it? Pleasant to see you again!"

                "Good evening, Mister Marshall," said Calvin. He couldn't imagine any way in which being introduced to three toughs in a bar might make this a good evening, but it wasn't the worst lie he'd told today.

                Marshall didn't seem interested in using his friends for intimidation. He introduced them as Mr. Lake, the well-named employee of a fish seller, and his friend Mr. Waits, a planter on one of the nearby farms. The third man was a mustached, short individual who had the most muscular arms Calvin had ever seen. When he greeted Calvin he pronounced it "Goot evening," and added a nod as though to make sure he was being understood.

                "That's Mister Ackermann," Marshall explained with a grin, "Previously of the city of Celle in Germany, somewhere or another. He has a hard time speaking English, but understands it just fine. Saving up money to go join relations of his in the Ohio territory – he carries boxes, and he also boxes. Brilliant at both."

                Calvin stood and shook hands with each of them. He was already concocting an excuse to leave (whatever militia or society they were part of would probably only get him into mischief and further trouble) when the front door opened and there entered a man with a face he thought he'd once seen on a bust of Cato. That face instantly took the attention of the men he was talking to.

                "The best of evenings to you, gentlemen," this man said, speaking directly to Marshall and company. His gold-topped walking stick reminded Calvin of Benjamin Franklin's, though this one was not of black crab tree wood. "I take it you're aware of the dragon asleep on the hill outside? Either it is new or I have failed to notice it these past few months. I admit either case to be possible."

                "It's his," Marshall said, jerking his thumb at Calvin. "This is Captain Priestly. Surely you've heard the news? He landed on the Indomitable and not an hour later it was sailing out of the harbor. We were just about to ask how he achieved so fine an outcome."

                Calvin was hoping they didn't imagine he had somehow frightened off the Aerial Corps, especially since the dragon transport had by no means carried all of the troops from the city –in fact, he was fairly sure it hadn't taken any. "I assure you, it was no cleverness of mine that removed them."

                "Still!" Marshall said, in a voice that was clearly meant to carry around the room. "There is reason to celebrate! We're leagues better off without the King's dragons threatening to swoop down and crash Carpenter's Hall down on Congress!"

                Calvin thought the interruption a bad-mannered one, but most of the patrons raised their voices in assent. Those that did not at least nodded.

                Only the short man with the dignified face did not indulge. He looked tired. Besides which, his clothing and white wig marked him as a higher class of person than Marshall and his boys – Calvin was actually surprised to see him in an establishment like this one.

                He said to Calvin, "I see you hold books, young man. No doubt you were at study when these good-hearted ruffians demanded your attention? The same has happened to me, on previous evenings."

                "It's not a problem," Calvin said, though of course he had just been preparing to quit the King's Head without eating just to escape them. "Pleased to meet you, sir. You have the advantage of me."

                "Charles Thomson is my name," the old man said. "I am secretary to the Continental Congress. A position of great utility and absolutely no prestige – as suits me best." Mr. Thomson gave a small, tight smile that also had something of Benjamin Franklin's covert mischief in it – Calvin wondered if the two men might know each other.

                "He's modest," Marshall put in, "Too modest. Every Son of Liberty knows of Charles Thomson. It's he who has gotten us the numbers we have today."

                Sons of Liberty. Calvin knew the name (though every political group that claimed to represent the values of British subjects would use the word 'liberty' in its name if possible). It was a group – or rather, a collection of groups – that had a hand in every act of defiance taken against the Crown in the Colonies. Or so they would have people believe. Calvin suspected they were more of a club for drinking and complaining – which were both still fine stepping-stones to trouble, in his opinion.

                "Perhaps I ought to have restrained myself in the recruitment stages," Thomson said dryly. "I used to be able to find a quiet beer, if I left the city's heart and came out here. Now I have to listen to endless conversation about all the grief His Majesty gives us – which is how I occupy myself all day in the first place."

                "If he goot king," Mr. Ackermann observed, stroking his mustache sagely, "He have more quiet king-dom."

                "Excellent logic," agreed Thomson, but nevertheless carried on towards the bar, looking as though he wanted to take his mind off of the issue as much as possible, but was not optimistic that he would get the chance. "Captain Priestly. May I hope for just a few minutes during which we can talk to each other at a civilized volume?"

                Calvin said "Yes, sir," without hesitation. He might have no aspirations to become a rebel, but this might be an opportunity he needed.

                The Continental Congress's authority was not derived from the Crown, but was nevertheless important to the political life of the Colonies. It was seeking to explain the difficulties of the Colonists to Parliament. Perhaps they could represent to Their Lordships or even Aerial Command why Calvin had been morally unable to fulfill the very first orders given to him.

                He expressed as much to Thomson, who it turned out did have an acquaintance with Franklin, though not an entirely happy one. "Ah, old Ben. It is very like him to give gifts that engender a sense of obligation in the receiver. He means no ill by it, but through long experimentation he has learned that he can channel people, as he does electricity. Now it is in his nature to do so without considering the difficulties it can cause them. He and I have reduced our association because of it."

                “I can only say that I was – and am – in no position to turn away help," Calvin said. Mussels and potatoes baked in the skins had been put before him, but he found himself possessing only a little appetite. “I don’t know what they do to aviators who refuse commands, but I imagine flogging is a part of it?” He didn't imagine that he would do very well under the lash. The frail, he'd always been told, ran the risk of dying if their hearts were too weak, or if their bodies were not strong enough to recover from the shock of having their backs flayed open.

                “You needn't worry so. I’ve never heard of the Corps punishing a captain that severely.” Thomson made a hand sign to order two pints of beer. “Dragons tend not to appreciate having their handlers beaten. That goes a considerable distance towards explaining why aviators are thought of as libertines... the captains can’t be disciplined in the normal military fashion, and there’s no way to turn them out of the service without losing the use of their dragons. So who knows what they might dare? Living isolated from normal society by their beasts, they place a much lower value on the esteem of the rest of us.”

                Calvin had also spent of the great deal of his life out of the reach of civilization, now that he thought about it, but fortunately he was no childish rake. He even examined the beer in the tankard in front of him, trying to determine its color.

                He was hoping to figure out if it was darker or lighter than the cup he’d been served at the Harper farm, because it only made sense to his imagination that if lighter, it would be somehow less concentrated, and therefore less spirituous. He couldn’t very well refuse it, since Thomson was making a gift of it, but this time he wanted to know what he would be getting into.

                “Then again,” Thomson went on, “I would hardly say that the men of the Congress are all the most polite gentlemen of their various countries. You would suppose that at least the Virginia delegates would be mild of manner, but if there’s a louder man in this hemisphere than Patrick Henry… I apologize, Captain Priestley, do you abstain?”

                “What?” said Calvin. “Oh, no, sir. Just examining the color of the beer.” It was, fortunately, pale in color.

                “Ah, an expert, then. Well, you’re our guest in Philadelphia.” The secretary raised his glass. “A friend to freedom, if a reluctant one. Expect to have more than a few free drinks passed to you. It’s how I get by, being that I perform my clerical duties without payment.”

                Calvin had to raise his tankard to the man’s principle and self-sacrifice. Then he had to raise it again when Thomson called a toast to Accipiter as the first dragon to truly belong to a man of the Colonies – “Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno!” – and one more time when he wanted to hide his blush from the attractive musician, who had continued to smile at him.

                Calvin had manifestly been wrong to assume that the beer would be weak, because all too soon he was wondering if he shouldn’t talk to the woman, who was significantly older than him. He was also answering questions asked by Marshall and his friends that would normally have annoyed him, and doing so with gusto.

                “He’s about to the only friend I have, but he's a good one,” Calvin said proudly of Accipiter. “Even if he can’t seem to decide whether I ought to be treated like a baby or a brother or a commander. I tell you, though,” Calvin added after a sip, belatedly realizing that the tankard had been refilled at some point without his asking, “From time to time, he’ll say something or do something that reminds me of my father, that’s for certain. The way he touches his chin, his choice of words, and certainly his voice.”

                “Odd, that,” Mr. Lake mumbled, looking vexed.

                “Not so odd to be reminded of your father, when a fella protects you,” Mr. Waits observed. “Did I ever tell you the story of when my pap saved me from drowning, even though he’s only got one leg?”

                “I don’t believe you’ve ever told us any other stories,” said Mr. Lake.

                It was one of those chance occasions when things go quiet in a room at exactly the wrong moment. The harp player had just finished a rendition of “Oh, How You Protest,” and the farm hands had finally come to some kind of agreement about cow feed being handled best in one way or another, and were all nodding in silent assent.

                It was because of this that Calvin was able to hear and see what the old Negro did. He was still sitting with the boy who took care of him, and said something half-audible to him while making a gesture.

                A characteristic of the way he moved his hand, the rise and fall of the palm, was familiar to Calvin. Despite the gnarled fingers he could detect the reverence in the movement, the expectation of feeling warmth and smoothness that was something like petting a fine horse. But the arc had been all wrong for that, and few men got such a profoundly tranquil look on their face from considering even uncommonly valuable horse flesh. Calvin thought he knew what it was.

                The old slave was pantomiming petting a dragon to himself, and he knew what he was about. That interested Calvin.

                Calvin left his place at the bar to approach the old man. “Pardon me, Uncle,” said Calvin, using what he understood to be the proper form of address in this situation – he had met very few Negroes in his life. “But might I ask what you were just saying?”

                The old man remained impassive, but surprisingly, the boy next to him started and shuddered. “It’s, uh, it’s nothing sir," said the boy, "He meant nothing by it. Please don’t pay it no mind.”

                Calvin looked at them, one and then the other. This was not what he’d expected to hear, and he knew enough about the ways people spoke to understand that the young man was trying to cover something up. He decided to continue talking to the old man. “What’s your name, Uncle?”

                “He can’t speak, sir,” said the boy. “Not our language, I mean. But Jacob, he live most his life in Africa. I mean, he lived most of his life in Africa. He don’t know better, he--”

                “Tell me what he said,” Calvin hissed. He was surprised by the vehemence in his own voice, but alcohol and a sense of being rootless, with no idea of what tomorrow might being, had rendered him prone to extremes of mood. Right now he could only be of good cheer or bad temper, and the pendulum was swinging rapidly from one to the other. “Tell me.”

                The young man was older than Calvin and a head taller, but it didn’t change how frightened he looked to have someone who was white demanding information of him that he preferred not to give. “I’m not like him sir; I swear I just help him eat. I can give a good account of my faith in Our Lord.”

                This was taking on a dimension Calving badly disliked without even fully understanding it. “You'll tell me now, slave!”

                Calvin instantly regretted talking down to the man in that way, even if he was dealing with a Negro who was someone’s property. Perhaps the same look of fear had been in his own eyes while he’d begged for his life, shut in that cave. It was unworthy to instill that kind of fright in someone who’d offered him no offense.

                Failing completely to meet Calvin’s eyes, the slave boy said, “He... he is Sotho, and I know some of his tongue from my mother. I translated your story, of your father dying and your capture. Jacob was saying... he says wishes that he might touch his own father’s scales again.”

                There seemed to be no sense that could be made of this, so Calvin only said “What?”

                “Don’t take the blacks’ superstitions seriously,” Charles Thomson urged from the bar. “Only the other day one told me that some spirit or another should be given an offering when I visited the cemetery. They are simple folk; they mean no harm by it.”

                “No,” said Calvin, “What is he trying to say about my father? About my dragon? I won’t have them insulted in any language!”

                Calvin had become loud enough that people – nearly everyone, in fact – had stopped what they were doing to listen. The slave boy put his head in his hands but would not dare the consequences of remaining silent.

                Calvin was staring into Jacob’s unafraid, cataract-clouded eyes while the boy said, “He believes that our ancestors come back to us as dragons. He… he thinks your father’s spirit must reside in your dragon, sir. To watch over you.”

                It was only shock at the inappropriateness, the absurdity of this that kept Calvin from crying invective at the old Negro. Behind him Marshall was saying, “Who owns him? He should have sense beaten into him.”

                “My father’s soul,” said Calvin under his breath once he had collected his thoughts enough, “Is in the glorious hereafter with my mother's, and if you say otherwise again so help me God I will fetch a musket again and I will--”

                Calvin was, at this point, interrupted. He was beginning to wonder if he’d ever manage a complete conversation in Philadelphia; the trouble with being in a city where something was always happening was that your attention was continuously pulled away from whatever you meant to focus on.

                The boy who’d rushed in was surely too young to be up so late, and really had no business being inside of a pub at all. Nevertheless, he presumed to call everyone’s attention to himself, crying “The dragon is going to eat the sailors!”

                Calvin, who had been getting ready to say that he was dealing with a slave and had no time for rude children, became abruptly and painfully sober. It was a bit like trying to find one’s way to the pot late at night, groggy and dazed, and then having a toe slam into the corner of a cabinet or chest. The old slave’s nonsense was a meaningless foible, the interruptions of city life were necessary evils, and the only thing that mattered was seeing to it if something was wrong with Accipiter.

                He sprinted to the window, cupping his hands to try and see through the reflections in the glass. His heart started beating again. Accipiter was there and unmolested, looking with interest at the stars. He was likely trying to find the constellations they’d discussed on previous nights – his favorites were Draco and Rangifer.

                “Master Lefebvre,” said Charles Thomson to the boy, “You must explain yourself.”

                The child, who has run in barefoot and panting, took a huge breath in, tried to speak, failed then had to breathe in again before making a proper go of it. “Harbor! The dragon will see the ship sailing out of the harbor!”

                Looks were passed around, and Mr. Lake said, “Well, what if it does?”

                Calvin’s fists were clenching. How could they not know? “The harbor is under restriction, as of today. Nothing is to go in or out. Ships leaving without permission are to be fired upon.” Hadn’t Admiral Rankin’s word been spread?

                “Well, this is the first I’ve heard of it!” Cried Marshall at the top of his voice.

                “Of course,” said Thomson, shaking his head. “They would have an excuse to fire a shot across someone’s bow and frighten them – why trouble to make an official announcement when they could frighten everyone more than they already have? It is what they hope will work.”

                “Benjamin Franklin heard of it!” the boy announced, pleased to try to keep himself the center of attention. “He was very upset! You could tell, because he was polishing his glasses when he did not need to, over and over.”

                A chill touched the base of Calvin’s neck. Strange to feel, in this hot room. “Did he send you here?”

                The boy nodded and then said, “He asks that, uh… wait, I know it… oh, that Accipiter and Captain Priestly fly to Mud Island and beg the garrison there not to fire on any ships, or to sic their own dragon on the ship which is now sailing!”

                “What’s a ship setting sail for at this hour?” Calvin asked the room at large, although he felt sure that he already knew the answer.

                “It’ll be one of the coastal smugglers,” said Marshall, as though nothing in the sentence was untoward at all.

                “It is the Cornelia,” the boy said, boastful because he was in the know and all these adults were not.

                Someone groaned.

                “Is that bad?” Calvin asked.

                “The captain thinks he’s in charge of the bloody Aquila,” said Mr. Waits, shaking his head. “He’s liable to try escaping the guns and the dragon.”

                This was a terrible idea, of course. Even a ship that could make fifteen knots would be under the same wind as the wings of a dragon pursuing it.

                Calvin was rubbing the bridge of his nose. How had these willful colonists not gotten themselves all shot to death yet with their wildness? How had His Majesty’s government imagined that any man in possession of pride and fortitude would tolerate this level of mistreatment? Somehow he had blundered, on the back of a dragon, into a situation that was threatening to turn into a rebellion at least on the order of the revolt in Boston. The savages had been terrible enough!

                And yet, there was a great deal in the balance. He could do something about it, even if it was only to warn the Cornelia off of its collision course with ruin.

                ... he wasn't sure that he would, though. So it was what honor asked of him. So what? Calvin’s father had, once or twice, talked about the way certain officers would sometimes insist on the brave and noble course, even if it was not the most sensible, even if it meant that good men would die. That was how he felt now; like he was being compelled by what was 'proper' towards action that was impossibly foolish.

                Maybe Christopher Priestly had talked a great deal more about doing the right thing under any circumstance, but Calvin was having trouble recalling those lessons right now. Not putting himself in the line of cannon fire seemed vastly more important, the kind of thing any boy's father should teach him to do.

                Some of the Sons of Liberty were already looking at him, expectant. They wanted him to speak. Charles Thomson saved him by asking, “How long shall the Cornelia take to reach Mud Island under the present wind?”

                There was some fast conversation and figuring done around the room, more details acquired from the messenger, and soon it was established that the Cornelia would be sighted and have a warning shot fired at it inside of the hour.

                “We must act fast, Captain Priestly,” Mister Marshall said. It was not within the scope of Calvin’s experience to have a grown man implore anything of him, but it was happening now. “We cannot let our countrymen come under threat!”

                “I believe the Cornelia is out of Annapolis,” someone pointed out.

                “Nevertheless!” Marshall raised his hand. “Even Marylanders are our brothers in this struggle. The King’s Navy grows by leaps and bounds, paid for by our tax money – just to patrol the Channel in peacetime, they’re building the largest dragon transport in the nation’s history. I ask you, how shall the Queen Gloriana keep us safe? What do we care for sailing the Channel? We can’t even leave our own harbor, and that’s down to them!”

                Even though Marshall was the one who had made this extravagant speech, all eyes remained on Calvin, and people were nodding and agreeing with the statement he had never made. He cleared his throat, trapped. “I… will need to get on my dragon.”

***

                “Are we to get in a fight?” Accipiter asked with far too much eagerness. “I suppose it is about time we started earning you victories.”

                “I sincerely hope not,” said Calvin under his breath. “And you are certain that you can voice your instructions loudly enough with just roaring? The Cornelia needs to be told to turn back as soon as possible.”

                “It will be easy enough to test once we have reached the ship.”

                It had actually taken some convincing to keep the core group of the Sons of Liberty off of Accipiter’s back. Calvin would have sworn that not a man among them would have been comfortable with the idea, but they were either liquored enough or incensed enough for this not to be the case. Still, seeing men so openly unafraid of dragons confused him – even if they'd still been uneasy about the idea of flying on one.

                “I bet you two shillings you fall to your death before I do,” Mister Waits had said to Mister Lake.

                “And how do you plan to collect if I’m dead and you’re still on a dragon?”

                “Well, I’m sure to fall soon after; I’ll get them then. At the gates, you know.”

                While wondering which of two sets of gates these might be, Calvin persuaded the men that he’d make better time without them as a burden, even if they were entirely comfortable with the idea of flying without wearing personal harnesses. They had ridden off with lanterns to the docks, to watch what would happen from their saddles.

                Calvin swallowed hard, still considering ordering Accipiter to fly away at best speed, to escape this insanity. But everyone would know it, if that happened. Charles Thomson could tell the entire Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin might print it in this week’s Gazette that Calvin Priestly was a coward. Accipiter would make his own judgments, too – as strange as it was, he didn’t want to let the dragon down. He wasn't sure that he could live with that.

                Lastly, Margaret – Margey – would know. Maybe it was the beer sloshing around in there with it, but that particular idea would not rest easy in Calvin’s stomach.

                Accipiter took off from the hill so fast and turned so swiftly that the stars swirled overhead. It was a bright night, and once they had the altitude they could see everything for miles around. The city, the harbor, the river. The ship. “There, Accipiter,” said Calvin, “Do you see her?”

                “Is it a ‘her?’" Accipiter wondered. “Is there some way to tell, with ships?”

                “It, then. Do you see it or not?”

                “Yes, Calvin. It is the two-masted sort of ship there, in the middle of the river.”

                That was an accurate description. The Cornelia didn’t quite make a third-rate in terms of size, but that by no means made her a small ship. She was giving excellent speed, in Calvin’s inexpert judgment. Sooner than he’d have liked, she would be passing Mud Island and the fort.

                “We must get there immediately,” Calvin urged, though what he actually wanted to do was cover his eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening. “Forget begging the fort; we shall have the ship turn around. Can you put on more speed?”

                “I can,” said Accipiter. His wing beats quickened, but he also added, “The other dragon may arrive there before me, however.”

                “The… the what?!”

                Calvin saw it even as he asked. The shadow became an outline and the outline was streaking over the water, its wings pumping back and forth strongly and evenly, propelling it in bursts. Oh, no.

                “I believe it is Rixator,” observed Accipiter, and no sooner had he said this than the other dragon roared at the ship. A flare went up from it almost at once, the standard procedure when approached by a dragon at night, but that was all. What else could they do? Would they dare to fire on the King’s dragon?

                Calvin thought not, surely. The Cornelia would now have to come about and return to port; the dragon frightening the crew was a better option than a warning shot being fired, at least. The aviators, he surmised, must have known this and come out to ensure the same result with less naked animosity involved. He should thank them. They'd shown more foresight than he would have.

                His mind was changed for him. Rixator flew by the sails at high speed, and in the sinking light of the flare Calvin made out the shape of a claw flickering away from the dragon’s body, only for a second. In that second, the main sail was torn, not in half, but given a great rent horizontally across its middle. It was done cleanly, expertly, and the ship was close enough that Calvin heard screams of outrage and horror.

                Rixator’s crew was shouting something at the ship using a speaking trumpet, and something was shouted back as the dragon circled wide. The Cornelia’s momentum was failing and she was likely full of panicked sailors, men who were at present far more interested in hiding from yards-long claws and scythe-like teeth than staying at their stations. If the ship was being commanded to turn by her crew, it was an order made with half a voice, impossible to carry out with a damaged mainsail.

                “Are they striking?!” Calvin cried, not to Accipiter, and not even to himself, really. He could see that the flags were not coming down. But was it because the captain refused to surrender, or because no one could reach them to reel them in? Even if the frightened men were willing to expose themselves in the face of a dragon attack, the ensign was hung from the yard of the damaged mainsail. It could be unsafe to try. Calvin was not well-versed in these matters.

                Nor, it seemed, was the crew of Rixator. The dragon kept pulling circles as tightly as possible around the ship, the aviators bellowing God-knows-what while the creature’s back bristled with men who were no doubt carrying plenty of loaded rifles…

                “I do not know if the ship can turn back, Calvin,” said Accipiter. “I could not catch enough wind to fly, if one of my wings had been torn so.”

                Surely if a dragon that had never so much as seen a rowboat before yesterday could make that determination, Captain Colby would as well?

                Calvin had hoped for too much. Rixator made another pass at the Cornelia and the jib became a ragged mess. They were near enough now that the shapes of men on the deck could be made out, moving, hurrying, standing together and gesticulating at each other.

                One of them was holding a pistol. He had it raised as though about to go riding with it, and it was not aimed – but the threat it represented could not be missed. A shot fired here and now would not be seen as a fool misunderstanding the rules of a blockade – one which was in turn being enforced by overeager officers. It would be an act of rebellion.

                Calvin did not think before he was pressing his heels on either side of Accipiter’s neck, as though spurring a horse, screaming, “We must get them to stop! Now!”

                “Ah!” Accipiter answered. “Very good!”

                It had seemed that they were moving at the limits of Accipiter’s speed before, but now the dragon’s wings snapped to his side and all his altitude was vanishing as he dove down, towards the ship and the dragon. It was not far, but they moved fast; Calvin felt sure that this sort of falling must be as fast as a human body could go without falling apart – his vision became queerly darkened for a moment and he clenched his mouth, hoping that the contents of his stomach would not try to escape.

                Rixator was growing larger and larger in Calvin’s vision and then with a twist of his tail Accipiter was rolling right over the other dragon’s head, so that for a moment Calvin was inverted, craning his neck to look down at a handful of astonished aviators who had evidently not imagined that the maneuver was in the offing. Hadn’t they seen Accipiter coming? Had his gray-streaked belly and the bottoms of his wings left his silhouette difficult to make out against the Milky Way? Had they been too busy terrorizing their smuggler prey to notice?

                Well, they could certainly see him now – once the roll was finished Accipiter was flying directly alongside Rixator, needing a few extra wing beats to each of his to keep pace, but managing it admirably.

                The crew might be stunned by the nimble maneuver, but the huge dragon they rode only snarled at the surprise appearance. He had not seen Accipiter coming at all; Calvin wished he had. Perhaps he would have dived involuntarily and put a stop to his harassment of the Cornelia.

                Accipiter ignored the snarl. “My captain,” he said, his reedy voice cutting through the wind, “Says you are to stop harming that ship at once!” As though struck by an inspiration, he added, “And if you do not, I shall make you!”

                I didn’t say that part! Calvin thought, and he was about to yell as much when he realized that he needed to be quiet. He had to hear the words echoing at him from a lieutenant holding a speaking trumpet – finally, a man who was trying to put things in order. This was an excellent excuse to give the Sons of Liberty and Charles Thomson; Calvin could simply bring back whatever he said to shore and spread it.

                The lieutenant was drowned out by a roar from Rixator so loud that Calvin would have sworn in court it made his brain rattle against the inside of his skull. There was force to it, the force of wind and heat, but for Calvin the roar also carried the primordial fright of being prey for a creature fashioned almost perfectly to kill clumsy, awkward boys. It made Calvin cry out involuntarily, surprised.

                That sign of discomfort being experienced by his captain was all the provocation that Accipiter needed. He returned the roar with one of his own unearthly, hissing screeches, and the situation was thereafter understood by all parties. A challenge had been laid down from one beast to the other, and now taken up. Things must take their course as surely as if the animals were adherents to the code duello. The only question was what form the contest would take.

                This had not been in the books Calvin had browsed. There had even been some notation about dragons of disparate sizes being naturally disinclined to fight one-on-one. But, Calvin supposed, even if Rixator’s powerful forequarters made him much the heavier dragon, they weren’t so very far apart in overall length. How was that sort of thing judged, at any rate? How could an aviator be sure when his dragon was completely outclassed?

                It didn’t seem that Accipiter considered himself to be at any disadvantage. His head darted out at one of Rixator’s wingtips to bite it, but the older dragon was by far the more experienced fighter. He changed the rhythm of his wing beats so that Accipiter’s teeth snapped shut on nothing, and then Calvin was hearing, muffled by the wind, “Present!” An order being given to men with guns. He'd shouted it often enough himself, as a child at play.

                “Stop!” Calvin cried before the call to fire could come, and in truth he was directing this at Rixator’s crew of riflemen, barely twenty yards away through the air. But whether for obedience’s sake or of his own accord, Accipiter did stop, flaring his wings and greatly slowing his forward motion.

                This proved to be an effective maneuver. The rifle volley that was snapped off from Rixator’s side had been aimed at their previous location, and missed completely. The white smoke formed a cloud that Accipiter carried through, now in pursuit of the larger dragon.

                “They might have shot you!” Accipiter exclaimed, sounding deeply affronted, as though the possibility had never before occurred to him.

                Calvin did not need this pointed out in the least: he wanted to scream that they should turn back right now, for safety’s sake. He’d put up his hands to deflect the wind and smoke from his eyes, and now wished that he owned some flying goggles like Admiral Rankin’s. The air made speaking difficult, let alone giving Accipiter an audible command, but it also carried the sound of someone with a high voice screaming from Rixator’s back, “I said hold fire, you fools! Hold all the bloody fire!”

                That order couldn’t restrain the man on the ship’s deck with the pistol. Despite a distance of hundreds of yards making the act utterly futile, he fired a shot in response to the ones he’d already heard. No doubt it was aimed in the general direction of Rixator.

                The noisy pop of that single pistol shot rang in Calvin's ears as long and loudly as if it had been fired right next to his head.

                That was it, thought Calvin, the ship has fired on them – that’s how they’ll see it. Even if the crew of the Cornelia did the sensible thing and tackled that idiot to the ground, every party here could be said to have committed an act of violence already. Everyone but Calvin, perhaps – and yet, he was Accipiter’s captain. What the dragon did was his responsibility, and his dragon had challenged the other. He needed to make some kind of choice, here, because if it were up to Accipiter's bold and innocent nature, things would only get uglier.

                He could barely make out the next shout from Rixator’s back as the Xenica eased into a turn that would set him up for another run at the ship. But Calvin got enough of it to hear, “-- the bombs!”

                It was exactly what he’d been afraid of. The Cornelia had marked herself out as an enemy vessel by firing that single shot, and now the Corps would sink her. In their view, they had every right to send scores of fathers and brothers and sons to a final rest at the bottom of the river. It was just as mad as the idea that the Colonists had some kind of right to smuggle goods just because obeying the law would cost them money.

                As far as Calvin could see, the parties deserved each other. And yet, who else was in a position, here and now, to save those sailors’ lives?

                “Stay on him!” said Calvin, ducking his head in the hope that it would cut down on wind resistance. “If you can keep him away from the ship, do it! Hurt him if you have to!”

                “Excellent,” said Accipiter, with a relish in his voice that Calvin was not happy to hear. “I shall use my fangs on him.”

                Calvin didn’t need to ask if Accipiter would be trying to bite with his paralyzing venom. “All right,” he said, mostly to himself. “All right.”

                Accipiter clearly understood what maneuvers to use better than Calvin. Why wouldn’t he? He was the one who could fly. Rixator was the faster dragon, but Accipiter could corner more tightly, using the fins on his tail to corkscrew his entire body and change direction all at once. It was badly disorienting to Calvin and would have thrown the aim of any gunners that Accipiter could have carried on his back – no wonder, then, that the Indians didn’t give their dragons any crews. With the way they flew, the men might be useless for shooting.

                Exactly as Calvin had said, Accipiter found a heading that would put them between Rixator and the Cornelia. The Xenica’s immense forelegs stretched out as though reaching for the ship, his wings trying to repeat that earlier burst of speed, but it was no good. Passing by the stern, Accipiter dropped while throwing his head back. He was below the range of the other dragon’s rifles, but still trying to puncture his belly with those curved fangs full of poison.

                He missed. Accipiter had dropped too low, and Rixator swept through the air just above, unhurt. A cadet hanging in the belly netting looked down at Calvin and his horned dragon in complete terror, a frightened child well aware that he was in danger of death. Calvin hoped he wasn’t sending the same look right back.

                “I shall keep on him,” said Accipiter, doing his utmost to match Rixator’s pace as the larger dragon flew back over open water.

                “Stay below their guns!” Calvin warned, thinking that the aviators must feel freer to shoot now that they were under direct attack.

                Accipiter had figured this out on his own. Rixator was flying above the level of the ship’s rails, gaining height, while Accipiter continued on lower down. Various curses and whoops were coming from the Cornelia. Calvin wanted to shout at them to stop acting like an audience and work on sailing away, but there was little chance they would hear it and less that they would take the advice.

                Rixator dropped intensely just ahead of them, wings tucked close to the body. The movement confounded Calvin for a moment, but he saw now that all four of the dragon’s claws tore at the surface of the water, casting up an explosion of spray. Accipiter flew directly through this, with Calvin getting smacked in the face by both blinding mist and a sheet of water.

                Accipiter’s nictitating membrane had protected his eyes from the splash, but it had still been surprising, and the dragon shook his head like a dog's. The trick might just as easily have blinded him, if not for the peculiar nature of his eyes. “He is clever,” the dragon said, no doubt meaning Rixator, whose wings were spread and flapping again to renew the lost height.

                “He is,” said Calvin, imagining that the splash had been the captain’s idea. Regardless of which of them might be correct, it had been neatly done and shown considerable ingenuity – not to mention flying skill. Accipiter was going to be badly overmatched in a direct engagement if they ever actually caught the dragon they were now chasing. Might it be that only the presence of the Cornelia was keeping the straight fight from happening?

                That could be the case. Rixator was avoiding passing the sides of the ship where the guns could conceivably blast iron straight through both dragon and crew – he probably didn’t want to slow down, since speed was what kept a dragon from being an easy target for a shipboard cannon.

                They hadn’t fired yet, but now that he thought on it, Calvin should be worried that they might. It might not be clear to the crew below decks that he and Accipiter were trying to protect them…

                Now they chased Rixator past the oaken masthead of the Cornelia, which was carved into the shape of a long-limbed girl with flowing hair and oddly-shaped wings. Possibly it was a botched attempt at an angel. Accipiter’s wingtip passed within inches of her nose, and then she was left behind as the chase continued, back in the direction of the dark shore.

                It became clear to Calvin that if they flew out of range of the ship, they could be sure that Rixator would turn around and offer them a fight they weren’t prepared for. He was on the point of asking Accipiter to give up the ill-advised chase, but first ventured, “Can you do nothing like that roll again? The one that surprised them? Is the moment not right?”

                Taking this to be another sort of challenge, Accipiter said, “I think it can be,” and followed it with another high-pitched roar.

                As though compelled by instinct, Rixator turned his head in mid-flight to respond in kind. This fractionally reduced his speed, and in the brief moment where it was possible, Accipiter closed the gap between them. It wasn’t a matter of fully catching up to the dragon, but it didn’t need to be. With another flip of his tail he was barrel-rolling underneath a surprised, uncoordinated rifle volley that Calvin heard rather than saw, with Accipiter’s entire spinning body blocking it from view.

                Accipiter's fangs were out, his long neck had sprung forward, and quick as a thought it was back again. Calvin was holding in a scream as the world turned itself over and over, finally flattening out with them back in the position of trailing behind Rixator.

                “I have gotten him!” Accipiter announced. “He did not expect me to try that!”

                Calvin hadn’t, either. He would never have been clever enough to think of baiting the beast with a roar or using the turning over trick twice, to become harder to hit. “Where did you…?” he began, but there was little point in asking. The location of the paralyzing bite Rixator had received was already obvious.

                The middleweight dragon’s left wing had become stiff. It no longer moved in time with the right one, and was not expressing its full range of motion. Rixator kept having to struggle to hold it out at all, and was desperately pointing his nose towards the nearest land – back towards the city harbor.

                “He cannot fly!” Calvin exclaimed. “You’ve finished it! You’ve beaten them!” He so little believed it was possible that the words tasted strange in his mouth.

                But rather than any words of commiseration, Accipiter paused and then gave a worried, “Do you know... I think he cannot reach the ground.”

                Perhaps if Accipiter had known to use the word ‘shore’ Calvin would have understood faster. As it was, he needed to look twice and think three times before it got through. “Oh.”

                The way Rixator was flying was too slow to keep him aloft for long. He could glide passably, but had only one wing with which to flap and try to find altitude. Each time he would do this, it would queer his direction, and the voices of his crew could be heard to urge him to stay level, not to tempt fate. But there was no other course; the dragon was falling fast, with only the water to catch him.

                The realization might have bothered Calvin a great deal less had he not stood in the company of the dragon, captain and crew that very day. That the situation was of the men’s own making did nothing to ease Calvin’s conscience; his own choices had played into it just as much, or more. He was responsible for this. “Can dragons swim?” he asked.

                Accipiter didn’t know any more than he did. The point was of little consequence at any rate. What if the poison reached the dragon’s heart and stopped it? What if, in striking the water, the aviators in Rixator’s belly netting – including that scared cadet, who was so very young – all drowned?

                It was becoming increasingly more apparent that the Xenica’s strength was failing, unable to struggle against the seizing up of all those wing muscles. He would not reach even the longest stone jetty for a crash landing. He wouldn’t even come close.

                “We must--” Accipiter began, but Calvin was ahead of him.

                “Take hold of the wing!” he said. “They might shoot us, but by God, it won’t be our fault if they won’t have our help!” He was trying to tell himself that it could work, without ripping the wing out of its socket. He almost believed it. “Hurry!”

                “You understand, then,” Accipiter said, as though he hadn’t been sure Calvin would be inclined towards mercy. “Good.”

                It was not a difficult matter to catch up to Rixator this time, but that wasn’t the frightening part of the operation. Calvin cupped his hands around his mouth, trying to remember the right words, and yelled, “Ahoy the wi--” before the snap of a rifle being fired made him stop.

                Calvin heard the ball whizz past his head, giving way to a threatening screech from Accipiter which led into him saying, “I shall not save you then; you all ought to drown!”

                “No!” said Calvin. “They don’t understand. You must tell them what you mean to do. My voice isn’t loud enough!”

                This Accipiter did. In the starlight it was just possible to make out the terrified faces of men realizing that they were completely at the mercy of an enemy they despised. Calvin wondered if they might try something like a boarding action while Accipiter worked to hold Rixator aloft, simply to save their own skins from the risk of a water landing. Certainly he didn't have any means to repel boarders with; the only weapon he had for close fighting was his bone-handled Indian knife, and that wouldn't be any bar to a crew of grown Aviators with swords and pistols.

                But there was no netting to cling to on Rixator’s wing, and there was no telling what would happen to it once it was held in Accipiter’s claws. It would very likely become the most dangerous place to be, and none of the men looked eager to seize more risk than they already had ahold of.

                “I am taking hold,” Accipiter announced, “Or you shall not make it. Try to keep him calm!”

                Rixator himself had breathing too labored to speak with, and his brightly-colored eyes were half-shut. He could not respond to any of this on his own, using all of his remaining energy in trying to reach that broad jetty in the distance, which he would soon fail to do. It would all come down to seeing if Accipiter, a dragon an entire weight class below him, would make up for the uselessness of a wing.

                Nearly at Rixator’s head, wearing a coat of long flying leathers that whipped in the wind, stood Captain Colby. A signal ensign was showing one flag that Calvin did not know the meaning of and another that was all white, indicating surrender, but it was the solemn nod from the captain that told Calvin that the commands were understood and accepted.

                “Do it!” he cried, and Accipiter’s curved black talons were piercing the muscular portion of the wing, tearing the membrane, gripping the bone.

                Calvin pinched his nose at the unfamiliar, metallic stink of dragon blood, but soon wished he’d plugged his ears instead. Rixator no longer had the lung power to roar, but he could choke his way through a wail of pain. It was an awful thing to hear; it was the sound Calvin had always imagined dying men on a battlefield must make, but a hundred times louder and deeper.

                It must be all the more horrible for the other crew and captain. Calvin deliberately avoided looking at them, instead leaning over to peer down at the water. Accipiter was working his wings furiously at first to find balance, and then tried to beat them in time with the one Rixator could move naturally. It had not lifted the wounded dragon, but he was at least no longer falling.

                Not that this meant the water was far away. “Keep going! It’s working!”

                “I know!” Accipiter said. He was trying to hide the strain in his voice.

                “I think--” Calvin pointed, though Accipiter could not see it, “I think we are meant to aim for the lights.”

                It was hard to be sure, but it looked as though a group of lanterns had gathered in the dark, on the docks. The glow they gave off was swaying, in the way a farmer might make the sign to a far-off shepherd to come in for the night. It was like watching a dozen fireflies swirling around each other with their illumination never dimming.

                “I have him,” Accipiter said, but he was holding his breath, between words “And we shall make it. But… grip something, Calvin.”

                Calvin felt almost sure that they were flying too low, that Rixator hung down and would smash into the side of the harbor's construction. Accipiter seemed to suspect it as well; he pulled hard with his legs, to little effect, admitting for the first time, “I am not sure this will work!”

                It did work. Barely. Rixator’s tail did not clear the edge of the jetty, thumping loudly into its stones and shattering a stack of empty crates while it flailed. The hold Accipiter had on the frozen wing proved harder to extricate than he had imagined, so even Rixator had slumped heavily to the ground. Accipiter was stuck to him, flapping and trying to free himself. He came loose and slid to a halt, with Calvin surprised that he did not immediately fly away.

                This was, now that Calvin had time to think on it, the scene of a crime. Here was the heroic Aerial Corps crew and their proud dragon, who had been wounded in the line of duty; here was the Colonial rebel and his venomous beast from the wilds, who had attacked them. Marauders in the night.

                Calvin wanted to shout, to tell himself and the world that it was the case, “I’m not a rebel!” But he resisted. There was the more pressing matter of escape to think of “Accipiter, we really ought to--”

                Rixator gave another moaning cry that cut him off, and then riders were approaching. Marshall and his Sons of Liberty, Charles Thomson included, were on the docks. It was their lanterns which had shone out into the darkness as beacons. He should have thought as much.

                Calvin expected Marshall to say something stupid, perhaps to congratulate him on the ‘victory.’ But instead the man was gesturing hard, with his hat in his hand so that the green feather waggled comically. “Go! Go, Priestly! We must do it before they can mount a proper resistance!”

                “What?” Calvin asked, blinking.

                Charles Thomson was somewhat bowed in the saddle, but his cane was tucked under his arm as though he’d been using it as a riding crop. Certainly he’d gotten here in good time. “You must accept the captain’s sword, sir. To complete their surrender.”

                Calvin had heard of this being the custom at sea, where one ship could make prize of another, but he wasn’t familiar with it being practiced by aviators. It made sense, of course; the bond between dragon and captain meant that only personal surrender by the beast’s companion would be final. The captain needed to admit himself fully at the mercy of the victors to end matters.

                “Come, come,” said Mr. Ackermann, and Calvin was concerned to see that the German was dismounting his horse with an entire splitting axe in his hands. He was looking around. “We haf cannon? Cannon for point to dragon?”

                Oh, Lord, though Calvin, unbuckling himself from the harness. “There’s no need for that!” He wouldn’t put it past this half-drunken rabble to find one of the harbor’s small defense guns and wheel it here. The last thing they should have control of was a charge of gunpowder. “Accipiter, we must go there. Protect me, will you?”

                “You know that you need never ask,” Accipiter told him.

                He and Calvin hurried down the dock to where Rixator had fallen, and Calvin found that without thinking about it he had pulled a musket from his harness bag. It wasn’t loaded, but he carried it as though it was, finding that Mr. Lake was nearly at his shoulder, a pistol at the ready.

                “I’ll blow a hole in the first one who raises a hand against you, sir,” Lake told him, and Waits echoed the sentiment just behind him.

                “That won’t be necessary,” Calvin repeated, hoping it was true. He wanted to believe that the white flag still counted for something, once everyone had hit the ground.

                It didn’t seem that it would matter. It turned out that he aviators were much more concerned with tending to their wounded than taking the fight any further. Some had broken bones from the impact; one or two had been thrown completely free and were lying about, moaning. The captain himself was being lowered down from the harness by a few stout men, one leg limp and clearly hurt in some fashion.

                “Put that man down, here!” Mister Marshall said, as loudly as he had previously addressed the bar. “And the rest of you line up while you lay down your arms!”

                "We can see to your wounded after that,” Charles Thomson added in.

                Calvin recognized now how exposed he was – there were still several green-coated riflemen here capable of shooting him dead. Yet they had given surrender, and must realize that Calvin had not let them die. Besides, Accipiter was nearby on his haunches, looking down at them all. Killing his captain would only send him into a rage against them, one they had no defense against.

                Rixator groaned his way through another hard breath, barely getting upright on one leg. Accipiter said  to him, “Well, it is your own fault that this has happened. That ship was not yours to tear the sails of, which I shall have you know made it unable to retreat. They need sails, to catch the wind. How should you care for it, if I had done that to your wings?”

                “You bloody well did do it!” a very young child among the aviators yelled, before he was pulled into line by one of the officers.

                “Hm,” said Accipiter, seeing the justice in this, “Well, it was still a poor-spirited thing of you to do.”

                The wounded Captain Colby was laid on his back on the stones, and it was only after the rest of the aviators had begun disarming themselves and laying their weapons down that Calvin approached him.

                "Your sword, sir," said Calvin, but the captain was already unbuckling his sword belt from the side opposite the weapon, rather than drawing it. He was careful to give no impression that it was being reached for to launch some kind of last-moment attack. The fellow didn't put down the weapon but rather removed it from the belt and tossed it towards Calvin, who somewhat awkwardly caught it by the sheath.

                Calvin was just feeling that he had a good grip on it when he nearly dropped it again, the ground shaking so that everyone about wobbled on their feet. Rixator had just hit the ground for a second time, unable to keep any of his limbs under himself. He now lay nearly splayed across the jetty, almost too big for it.

                "Rixator!" the captain screamed, his voice high and shrill, tinged with all the fear of someone who thought a member of their family was about to die. He didn't just move towards his beast; he tried to hop to his feet and run, the action causing his eyes to bug out and his teeth to clench, and he fell back down.

                The action brought Calvin around to recalling that the situation was still precarious. Dropping his unloaded musket, he pulled the sword out of its scabbard.

                In his entire life, Calvin had never held a real sword, only the sticks and toys that boys play with to pretend. Even his father, the soldier, had not been an officer or of the gentlemanly class, and so had never owned one. The weight was strange to lift, being almost nothing at the tip, but the handle felt about right for his palm. There was gilding on the guard with details he had trouble seeing in the dark, but for the moment the blade was what was important. It was three feet of bright steel, conspicuously tapering after the fullers to give it an unusual appearance. He knew this to be called acolichemarde, the kind of sword only an officer would own. It was probably the single most expensive object that had ever been in Calvin’s hands.

Calvin had no idea how to look imposing holding the weapon, so he stepped closer to the wounded captain and discouraged the man from rising by pointing the sword just under one of his red cheeks, not more than an inch from his neck. He resolved that he would kill Colby if he tried to move again. Uncomfortable, but necessary.

                "Damn you!" said the Aerial Corps captain, as though the sword were not there at all. "You've killed him!"

                "I have done no such thing," Accipiter explained from nearby. He had been inspecting the men of the Corps, no doubt to compare their states of dress and appearance with those of his own captain. The metal buttons on their coats seemed to be of particular interest.

                "Gentlemen," Calvin said to his allies, more steadily than he thought he could have made his voice at the moment. "Please inquire if any of their crew is a surgeon, or otherwise capable of--"

                "Irons!" the wounded captain bellowed from the ground, with enough authority that he still seemed in control of the situation. "They'll let you treat him! Get to it, you bloody fool!"

Calvin didn't appreciate that someone he had just captured was still giving orders, but at least they were ones of which he could approve. He hardly wanted the dragon to die.

                "Finally!" came a cry, and then someone was jostling past Mister Ackermann, holding a surgeon's bag.

It was a woman. A woman in a pair of loose breeches and wearing a leather apron, with flight goggles on. Her blouse was stained by gun smoke.

                Calvin's jaw clenched and unclenched by reflex. He looked again, just to make sure, and almost called her back to confirm it, but there had been no mistake.

                What the devil, he thought, What in hell?

Why had there been a woman on a dragon's back in combat? And for what possible reason would she be holding medical equipment, and coming forward when the call had been for a surgeon?

                It made no sense, and his stomach churned at the idea that he had, by offering combat, been endangering the life of any woman… even if she seemed willing to break the laws about clothing and go about in men's breeches. Well, he had to allow that were probably the only safe thing to wear on a dragon performing maneuvers. Could she have been forced into it? She must have been; what woman’s temperament would even allow her to ride a dragon?

                Yet she was drawing huge balls of cotton from her bag and stuffing them into the bite-wounds on the bleeding wing, and next drew out a cup for listening to the heartbeat. She ordered a young midwingman to check the strength of the beast's breath, and did it all with practiced authority.

                Perhaps she was a midwife, who had been the only person available to take into combat with some medical skill? Did that make sense? Yes, that had to be it, there was no other logical explanation, no one would be so lacking in decency as to directly throw a woman into harm's way, except in the case of most extreme need. And even then, they had to be conscious that they'd done something immoral, and expect to face a court martial. They deserved nothing else.

                Their Lordships in the admiralty board would not allow a crime like this to go unpunished. A middleweight dragon was not a ship, which might carry passengers and have no means of discharging them before an engagement; its purpose was combat. No one should be allowed on one who could not be reasonably asked to risk their lives.

                Calvin was thinking all of this while looking down with disgust at the defeated Captain Colby. He had selfishly allowed such a passenger, and yet spent no time looking properly ashamed. Instead he devoted all his attention to watching the woman minister to the dragon, while calling for a hot bar to cauterize something-or-other.

                The captain was clearly quite young, but that was no excuse. Calvin was even younger, and he would never knowingly put a lady in harm's way. He was about to say something to this effect when found himself noticing another thing.

                It was the middle of the night, but the surrendered captain was completely clean-shaven. Even Calvin, who was not old enough that he needed to use a razor every day, had a few hairs poking out of his chin by this hour – but this man didn’t. There was not a trace of stubble, and in fact Calvin could not really envision that jaw line being hairy. Something about it did not fit properly in his imagination. It curved the wrong way to support a beard, or it came to too fine of a point, or...

                He nearly jerked back his sword at the very idea he was having, but instead muttered, "If you would look at me a moment, sir?"

                Colby, who had been paying attention only to the wounded dragon, looked up. The hood and the darkness made it hard to tell, and Calvin felt the wrongness of the action even as he used his sword to prod the aviator's hood out of place. He shouldn't have a blade so close to that face, shouldn't be threatening it at all.

                The sandy hair was cut so short that it was hard to tell, even when looking straight into those wide, angry eyes - but there was no mistake. The supposed captain was a woman.

                "This is a trick," Calvin said under his breath. It was only shock that kept him from pulling the sword away at once, but he started to do so after a moment. Then he remembered that he needed it where it was, so as to keep the situation under control for now.  Pointing a weapon at a woman who was on her back – what could excuse such an action?

                The woman – or girl, because at her age she could not be long out of the schoolroom – gave him a contemptuous look, did not answer, and went back to watching her dragon, paying close attention to every shallow movement of his chest.

                "Mister Ackermann," Calvin managed to say, "Please... keep the prisoner there a moment." The big German’s hatchet was shaking in his hand – he had clearly seen the truth as well – but he nodded and moved closer, the captive woman remaining in place on the ground.

                Calvin stumbled over to edge of the dock, stuck his head over it, and was painfully sick into the water.

***

                "Some dragons," the young woman explained patiently, evidently well-practiced at breaking the uncomfortable news, "Prefer female captains."

                Her name was Wilhelmina Colby, and she insisted that her captors call her "Captain Colby."

                None of them had yet found it within their power to do so. They had also not been able to bring themselves to tie her to the chair in the office of the harbormaster they had broken into, though there was plenty of rope to hand. So there she sat, with her hands folded on her lap, in men's clothing.

Her hair was cut so short that it could not even have been tied back at all. Calvin had never seen a woman with such short hair; he kept staring at it, like he was just looking at it from the wrong angle to get the full, proper effect.

                The crew of the captured dragon Rixator was outside, bound, and with all their own guns trained on them by Sons of Liberty. There seemed to be no chance they would try anything, however, while their supposed leader's life was in danger – in danger as they saw it, anyway. It was causing Calvin no end of distress to think that he was keeping a woman hostage against their good behavior, even if it was not through any choice of his own. His stomach being empty now didn't stop it from complaining every time he looked at her.

                Instead, he had his back turned on her and was examining her sword – now his sword. He knew that the polite, soldierly gesture was to return the enemy commander's weapon once they'd surrendered, to show respect. The same tradition probably held true for the Aerial Corps. But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Women shouldn’t own such things. This one had the emblem of the Solingen wolf on it – and if it was a fake, it was a very high-quality one, made for dueling and combat, not just for show.

                "Well, to Perdition with what dragons prefer!" Marshall said with a clenched fist. "I'll not believe that they would put women in the way of such harm simply to satisfy the whims of an animal!"

                "It's nothing so trivial," Colby said with an icy voice. "We do it to defend the Empire from the likes of you."

                "You mean to tell us about defending the Empire, little woman?!" Waits hissed, finding words for the first time in Colby’s presence. Like many of the men, he had been shocked into silence. "I've never gone for a long walk with my father because of the service! It's down to the Empire that he’s only got one--"

                "Mister Waits, enough," said Calvin. He was uncomfortable with stopping a man a few times his age from speaking, but it worked, and he was glad of it. This was a time that called for cool heads. Calvin was surprised to find that he had one, even if he was not remotely at ease about what was going on. “Miss Colby--”

                “Captain Colby. If you don’t believe I have the rank, you may ask any of my crew – or my dragon. Who I wish to speak to at once.”

                “He isn’t speaking yet,” said Calvin. Since the decision had for some reason been put into his hands, Calvin had allowed the woman in charge of the dragon’s health (Irons, the ‘surgeon’) to remain with the beast. She had announced that he would need to have air pumped into his lungs with several of the largest bellows available, and eventually these had been located. Accipiter had expressed doubt that it was even necessary, so Calvin was optimistic. He hoped that no one would die as a result of tonight’s events; it would make putting things in order infinitely harder.

                “Young lady,” said Charles Thomson, who was somehow the least alarmed by the presence of a woman in the uniform of a military officer. He was speaking to her as though she were exactly what she was dressed as. “You must understand that regardless of its legitimacy, we will need to make your position public. I do not know if you obtained your rank by a continuous subterfuge over years – which is very doubtful – or through secretive choices by the Admiralty Board. In either case, the public will not stand for it, especially not if what you say is true and there are other women serving with dragon crews.”

                “We captain every Xenica and Longwing in the service,” said Colby without the least hint of shame. She even sounded proud. “The corps will not give us up to pacify any level of outcry. The dragons are too valuable to sacrifice to any childish notion of chivalry.”

                “Well,” said Marshall, “It’ll serve them right to have an outcry about something on their hands, even if not about how they’re treating us. We’ll have to get some nice etchings of you to spread around with the facts of the matter, to blacken their eyes.”

                Colby shrugged at him, with no sign of feminine deference at all. It was a little like taking to Margaret Harper, except that now Calvin found the frankness terrifying rather than engaging. “Fine, if you think anyone will believe you. If you imagine the Corps won’t claim that you killed Rixator’s real captain, dressed a woman in his uniform and made them out to be rascals who send girls to do their fighting for them. That sounds like what a bunch of Colonial bumpkins might think up, imaging that they were clever. Yes, it’ll play well in London; Yankees Frame Lady for Imaginary Crime! I’ve always wanted to feature on a broadside. Be sure to get me from the best angle.”

                The men in the room all looked at each other doubtfully, trying to puzzle this out. Only Charles Thomson kept his full attention on Colby. “Tell me, Captain, do other nations give women charge of their dragons? Is it a common practice?”

                “I’m sure I don’t know,” she said, “And I don’t care, either. My duty is to King and country, something you evidently know nothing about.”

                Thomson nodded solemnly and looked to Calvin, saying, “You must accept this woman’s parole, Captain Priestley – we cannot free her, but we shall need it if we are to keep her out of a common prison.”

                “I…” Calvin had little understanding of these matters, but as he had it, surrender was something offered by a military officer to another military officer. Captain Colby was a woman dressed in the wrong clothes, who had somehow been given charge of a dragon... and, apparently, its crew. He was himself the accidental companion of a beast that he seriously doubted his own ability to control; certainly he had no right to accept a parole in this situation. “… sir, do you think that’s wise? I am involved in no...” he groped for the words, “… command structure. And we would be legitimizing her…”

                “My good Captain,” said Charles Thomson, reaching out to put a hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “We are in a difficult situation; I see it as plainly as you. We have captured an officer and a dragon. That is what matters and that is what shall be put about. If all the facts are aired it will do no one any good… least of all us and our cause, which already has innumerable difficulties before it.”

                Calvin wanted to say that he still didn’t understand this ‘cause,’ and wasn’t sure that he cared for it, if it meant concealing something so wretched when the truth ought to be known. But at the same time, he didn’t think that Colby deserved to be imprisoned with whores and thieves for what the Aerial Corps had made her do, or had made her into. Placed in a sanatorium, perhaps, but not imprisoned.

                It would also be the best way to keep her dragon under control until it could be determined what should happen next. Perhaps if he took her parole, she would abide by it, and even if they ended up releasing her Rixator would no longer be permitted to harass Colonists – that was the nature of the practice. She would need to give her word of honor that she was out of the conflict for the duration.

                “I am going to draw up papers for it,” said Charles Thomson, “It is, I believe, within my power as Secretary of the Continental Congress, if I can speak to the President and enough delegates. We shall identify her as ‘Captain W. Colby of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps’ and no one shall know whose assistance is not necessary.” He looked at each of the rest of the Sons of Liberty in turn. “Is that understood, boys?”

                He got a smattering of begrudged agreement before tapping his cane on the ground, hard and saying, “This is for freedom, do you understand that? If we are serious about the matter, then let us be serious about it!”

                The men responded well to the rhetoric and it was decided among a core group who would have the privilege of guarding the woman at which times of day; Calvin had already decided that if he was going to accept anyone’s parole – which he could hardly believe was his right – then he would not be leaving their side, either. He would need to watch the woman and her dragon. There would be no sleep for him tonight.

                Colby was staring daggers at him. “I’ll take your certificate,” she said, referring to the document paroled soldiers usually received to show that they had been rendered unable to fight, “And show it to Admiral Rankin, with your name signed to it. It'll say that you captured me and held me at the point of my own sword. What do you imagine he’ll say to that?”

                Calvin decided to go keep guard over the dragon, first.

                Outside, it was early enough in the morning that birds could be heard beginning to sing. He wondered what would happen when the city woke to find that some idiots had gotten in a fight with one of the King’s dragons, all to protect lawbreakers, putting peace in jeopardy. How close had they come to real civil war out there? How close were they, now?

                “Calvin.” Accipiter was small enough that he could stand on the harbor’s unpaved road without blocking anyone who would want to get by him. Not that anyone did. The laborers who were beginning to appear to begin their day’s labor would see the dragons and turn around, off to spread rumors Calvin would rather not imagine. “You are not well.”

                It wasn’t a question. Calvin looked up at his dragon’s face, with its enormous mouth and startlingly bright eyes. A child might draw such a face to illustrate a monster, but Calvin felt no fear of it; instead he reached up and rested a hand on Accipiter’s nose. “I'm afraid for us. We may have made enemies tonight.”

                Accipiter bowed his neck so that Calvin could put his hand up higher and pat him on the head. “I hope the enemies are very terrible and very strong, then. They say that a warrior is to be judged by the strength of those who set themselves against him.”               

                “Who says that?”

                “The Unami. It was told to me in the egg.”

                For once, Calvin wished that he could believe as the Indians did about something. “I hope that we do not need to fight like that again, though. I am not a warrior. I haven’t the constitution or the bravery for such things.”

                “But now you have a fine sword,” Accipiter noted, clearly appreciating the gold on the hand guard and scabbard, “And you may take more guns from the captured arms, I am sure. You shall be respected.”

                “I doubt it, Accipiter.”

***

Saturday April 21, 1775.

The PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE.

Containing the Frefheft Advices, Foreign and Domeftic

                “A complimentary copy!” the boy was saying in his unusual, low-class accent, which had a touch of foreign sound to it. He’d handed Calvin the newspaper just as dawn broke, as though Calvin had been waiting for regular delivery of it. It was the same child from the King’s Head, Benjamin Franklin’s errand boy Lefebvre.

                Calvin was skimming before he had even finished the first sentence, his attention jumping to locations, to names, to numbers. The Sons of Liberty nearest to him looked like they wanted to read over his shoulder, so he read it aloud, the picture becoming clearer in his head. "Some troops marched out of Boston to make an attack in the country of some kind… oh, they were only seizing the militia stores. At Lexington. No, wait, at Concord – and militiamen fired on regulars. They fired! They were engaged the entire morning yesterday!"

                Something became clearer to Calvin now. The dispatch he had seen Admiral Rankin receive the day before – surely it had been about this. That would be why the Indomitable had set sail for Massachusetts at once. A battle had taken place there. A real battle. It could well be that a war had already started.

                "Then other people have been fighting too," Accipiter observed, surprising everyone with the volume of his speech. It must seem odd to many of the men that a dragon would have opinions on the contents of a newspaper. "So we have not done something so out of the ordinary, after all. That should be a relief to you."

                "How?!" Calvin cried out, putting a hand to his head. "This will make it seem like I am throwing in with these bully-boys in Massachusetts, though I hadn't the slightest idea of what they were doing. For all I care they ought to have let the Regulars take their powder – I had only set out to save some men's lives, not to offer a fight with His Majesty's troops! Not to go capturing dragons for Congress!"

                "Turn the page, for that!" the young man Lefebvre urged, and Calvin did so. The men around him craned their necks to see.

                It was similar to the front page, being all one article, but in the center of it a drawing in thick lines was evident. Familiar, but altered to change its meaning. Whether its intention was to be satirical or rouse sentiment, Calvin did not wish to guess.

                "Hmm," came Accipiter's voice, "I understand the message, but must they really have shown me cut into pieces like that? And my horns are a good deal more splendid than those, I think. They ought to have gotten Temple to sketch it out; he is much more skilled at art."

                "I drew it," the boy announced, somewhat crossly. "Well, Moses helped. And it is very like Doctor Franklin’s original piece! We almost reprinted that one, but then had the idea for this. This is much cleverer!"

                "I will not deny that," Accipiter agreed. "Calvin, tell me what the newspaper says. Does it mention how splendid our flying was?"

                But Calvin was simply looking over the whole page, understanding the implication of an entire printing order of newspapers like it being disseminated throughout Philadelphia. It wouldn't be a week before every man of the Colonies had access to the reports within. "Oh God," muttered Calvin, wondering at how Benjamin Franklin could have allowed this to happen. Or had he done it himself? The Gazette was his publication, after all. "Oh, we have really done it to ourselves. We need to write a letter of apology this instant, and try to head all of this off. We can't go starting some kind of... some kind of general action against His Majesty's government!"

                Lefebvre looked in some surprise at Calvin, who surely was not acting like the kind of adventurer he'd expected. "I do not see there is any way around it now! Not if New England is about it, and Pennsylvania has had a hand. Or a claw! The Colonies are in revolt, and the British know you are with us!!"

                Calvin stared back at him, not really taking in anything he was seeing or hearing. Eventually he returned to trying to read the body of the article that was about himself and Accipiter and their fight in the sky, which if it was to be believed, people all over Philadelphia had woken up to watch without his ever realizing it.

                But his attention kept straying back to the simple image at the center of the page. It was of a dragon that curled, snakelike, from one side of the paper towards the other. Its wings were raised, its mouth open as if roaring or biting. It had very simple, pronged horns sticking out of its head, and its body was divided into segments with letters marking them out. Each represented a different Colony.

                Beneath was a familiar three-word slogan that had been bandied about the Colonies for years – first as a sign to stand against the French to the west, then to affirm unity in the face of tax increases. To Calvin, it had taken on a new meaning.

JOIN, or DIE

To Be Continued