Work Text:
He had rationed his magic with the utmost precision in his navy days.
He knew exactly what was safe then, and the balance that must be maintained was easy in his mind. What magic was not only permissible but required to stay in-practice, what magic could be done without a pang, only the tiniest drop of his lifetime allotment, and what magic he had to spend in emergencies—it would not matter if the date of his retirement and his necessarily giving up magic entirely crept forward by six months if his ship did not founder in a gale now, or if the blade aimed at his heart did not strike true.
He could hardly enjoy the fruits of his frugality if he was already dead.
Still, even with the emergencies of his early career—his months under Barstowe, and the weeks in the Normandy's cutter—he was still quite comfortable with his prospects by the time the Reliant encountered the Amitié. At the rate he was going, he might continue with magic well into his fifties without any real risk of burning, and if Bonaparte was defeated and Britain at peace once more within the next few years, he may even have longer than that before his time ran out.
And then Temeraire hatched, and all of his careful plans were shattered.
Aviators, as a rule, did not use much magic before being promoted to captaincy. In fact, a man could be passed over for promotion if it was known he had burned through too much of himself in his youth.
There was one single, simple reason for this harsh practice: a dragon needed magic constantly.
Oh, there were ferals, of course. wild things who managed with magic from other sources—volcanoes and faery circles and the old magic wellsprings that still dotted the more remote parts of Great Britain—but fighting dragons—
Fighting dragons could not subsist on these, and must perforce be supplied by their captains.
Laurence, with his years in a service which rather encouraged young officers to use magic they would no longer need much by the time the reached flag rank, would ordinarily have been passed over for any connection with a dragon. He would have to relinquish his captaincy of Temeraire terribly soon—nearer to forty than fifty—unless he wished to continue past the point of safety and risk eroding the barriers between his magic and his soul so much that a conflagration became a matter of when rather than if.
But Temeraire would take no other captain, and by the time Dayes was presented, Laurence himself could not imagine giving up their bond. He examined the tether steadily feeding Temeraire the thinnest trickle of magic, and decided he would bear the circumstance and all its consequences; if he had to retire at forty and find Temeraire some other captain then, so be it. He could at least hope to see a Europe freed of Bonaparte's shadow before then, and he supposed a retired man might find a home near an Aerial covert.
“You have been using too much magic,” Tharkay observed repressively. “Do you think you will atone for not hanging by building a pyre of yourself instead?”
Laurence did not look him in the eye; Granby must have told him. “I have no intent toward that end.” Self-slaughter was a sin, even for traitors.
“One might arrange such things without intending them.”
Laurence looked up. “What would you have me do? Invaders walk upon our soil, eating the fruits of our farmers' labor, and sleeping in the beds of our citizens. I can do no less than any other man.”
“I know of no other man courting the witch's death for the sake of killing irregulars. Nor—” Tharkay continued sharply, when Laurence would have attempted a response, “—do I know any captain who would allow his dragon to remain ignorant of so dangerous a course.”
Laurence froze. “He shall have to reconcile himself to the loss in any case.” He forced the words out. They were the only sop he had been able to offer himself, when he told Wellesley he would do as not-quite-ordered.
“You have made him the instrument of your death, and you imagine that will hurt him less than your loss in battle, or at the hand of the law?”
It was nothing Laurence did not know, and yet hearing it in the voice of another—
Shame rose within him, overwhelming even the cold blankness which had held at bay all feeling unnecessary to the task.
He put his face in his hands.
Recognizing the capitulation—no, the total surrender—Tharkay at last went silent.
“I have…kept it from him,” Laurence admitted, his voice sounding raw to his own ears. “How can I ask his forgiveness when—” When to do so he would first have to confess the lie. Not the lie of the last few months, but the one which had begun upon their arrival in China, when he learned that Celestials were meant to be lifelong companions—that in contrast to Chinese practices concerning fighting dragons, who would draw magic in small quantities from their entire crews, Celestials drew only from their one royal partner as long as the human lived. Even upon their Emperor's death, they would pull from no other.
The wellspring of natural magic in the forbidden city was old and deep, tended so well that the magic flowed without flaw or fault, and more than sufficient for the unattached palace dragons at peace.
That the magic of a single person (even a prince who had little need of it otherwise) could sustain a heavyweight dragon for a lifetime was difficult to imagine, but when Laurence asked for an explanation, hoping for some technique to stretch his usefulness, he received only what sounded like poetry about the wellspring and some springtime renewal ritual.
It was, he supposed, better than what he had feared to hear as a response: that the emperors turned to darker strategies to preserve themselves and the exclusivity of their connections. The practice of barrier-sacrifice—of tearing the membrane which kept magic and soul safely separate from another person and using it to patch one's own—had been forbidden in England since before William the Conqueror, but it was not so hard to derive the theory of it from principles, and some magicians still occasionally attempted it. Usually with disastrous consequences for both magician and victim.
Temeraire had never quite understood how curtailed Laurence's use of naval magic in his youth had left his allotment, and he had taken the Chinese explanation with an innocent acceptance that Laurence had been incapable of willfully shattering.
Tharkay was uncompromising. “Have you already begun to spark?”
Laurence jolted. Did Tharkay truly think he had gone so far in a few months of sporadic unbalanced battles? “No,” he said. “No, I am yet—stable.”
“Then I think the consequences of your explanation can be borne.”
Laurence bowed his head once again. Tharkay was kind to leave the word coward out of it, but it rang in Laurence's thoughts all the same. And I have earned it, he thought, as I have earned traitor.
He closed the ledger on the table before him. “Very well,” he said, and went out.
Temeraire was drowsing when Laurence found him. He had been doing that much of late, his boundless natural curiosity suppressed by their grim circumstance and poor rations.
The guilt stabbed at Laurence's insides. He had done this.
Temeraire woke at his touch, the drop of magic rolling down the tether between them as easy as breathing.
“My dear,” Laurence said to the sleepy blinking eye. He so longed for them to go. To fly, to be away from this place, at least for the duration of the conversation. But to venture out alone in country still somewhat hostile would be a foolish risk. “May we speak?”
Temeraire instantly put out his foreleg for Laurence to sit on. “Of course!” he said, peering down anxiously, first with one eye and then with the other. “Is something the matter?”
Laurence put a hand on the warm hide beneath him. “My dear, I fear I have wronged you terribly.”
Temeraire's head went up so that Laurence was no longer looking at the intimate side of his face, but instead at his nose and sharp teeth directly. It was the prey's view, but Laurence felt no fear; he could not.
“Oh!” Temeraire said, “But you can't have! I don't believe it!” He paused, “Unless something has happened to my talon-sheaths? Not—” he added hastily “—that that would be wrong either. I told you they were yours to do with as you pleased, after all…”
“No, my dear,” Laurence said, raising a quelling hand. There was a warmth in his chest, so unlike the burn of overused and overtaxed magic he had been feeling recently. If it grew any more he might weep for it. “It is not that. But I have misled you, and allowed you to act in ignorance of the consequences we court.”
Slowly, Temeraire's head lowere and he pulled Laurence closer, tucking his othetr forelimb beneath himself. “Pray explain?” he said, almost plaintive.
Laurence took a deep breath. “Do you remember speaking to your mother of how Celestials treat the magical tether?”
“Why, of course,” his dragon said, puzzled. “She said no-one could force me to take magic from another captain if I did not wish to.”
Laurence had long suspected that was Temeraire's primary concern in that conversation. “And I swore to her I would do everything in my power to prevent anyone trying.” Wellsprings were not so common in England as China, and most of those remaining were contained within corps-controlled breeding grounds. If Temeraire were denied access, he could well be forced into taking magic from another man. “I am sorry, my dear, but it is this task which I have failed.”
Temeraire was still more confued than upset. “But how? No-one has tried to make me take any magic, except Lloyd wanted me to fly to the wellspring more often at Pen Y Fan. But that was only a wellspring, and I took some from the one in China anyway.”
Laurence shook his head. “I am afraid it is only a matter of time until others will begin to try—far less time than we could have hoped. I have been…reckless.” Temeraire was focused upon him now. He had no choice but to complete the confession. “I have a great deal less safe magic use remaining in my lifetime allotment than I have lead you—or your mother—to believe, and in these last few months I have used what should have lasted you years.” He leaned forward. he was close enough to press his forehead to the firm hide of Temeraire's chest and breathe in the safe smell of dragon. “I am sorry, my dear.”
Temeraire was very still. “You are not—” his voice trembled. “You are not burning?”
“No,” Laurence said. “Not yet.”
Temeraire keened in distress. “Then I must, we must go to a wellspring. we must leave now—”
“It is not so dire!” Laurence said, voice loud to cut over draconic distress. “My dear, I beg of you,” he added, quieter. “Do not be so alarmed. I have magic left to give you, without trisk to my life. It is only that I have shortened our time to a handful of years, instead of the decade and more I hoped to give you.”
Temeraire was calming, and faster than Laurence would have expected; he had thought that even with this assurance the dragon would be inconsolable. They could remain in contact once their magical tie was broken, but it would not be the same.
But he was terribly young still. Perhaps the difference between a few years and a decade seemed a trivial concern to him after being so scared by the immediate alternative that Laurence had already bought for himself the witch's death.
It was a relief, in any case. he had feared Temeraire would see Laurence's recklessness as a reflection upon him. “I am sorry, my dear,” he said again, for he was. “In China I feared knowledge of my limits would form another excuse to separate us, but to have kept the truth from you was beneath me, as was using you in my recklessness.”
“Oh, Laurence, it is alright.” Temeraire shifted around, curling himself until he made a barrier of his body around Laurence. “We shall simply have to find a wellspring when we need it,” he added resolutely, as if such things were easy to secure—as if a stationary wellspring could give Temeraire half the freedom he so cherished. “And you must tell me when it approaches.” Now his voice held the reproach Laurence had been expecting. “I must know if I am to plan properly.”
Laurence swallowed. “Of course, my dear.” There was too much relief in him for the reprieve from having caused true hurt for him to question the odd reaction or hesitate to make a promise he was still not entirely certain he could keep. If Temeraire's life were at risk he would outlay enough magic to destroy himself without hesitation.
But Temeraire was satisfied, and so Laurence put it from his mind.
In the valley in the Australian mountains there was a natural wellspring. It was ancient—as many things seemed to be, here—and well-tended by the Wiradjuri, though rarely greatly used by them; they had no dragons in need of constant fuel, only greater workings of their own which might need more magic than a magician could provide safely in a single moment.
They did not mind Temeraire drawing upon it.
It was a tidy solution, insofar as they could carry it. It preserved Laurence's much-reduced capacity for their rare trips to Sydney, allowing their tether to remain unbroken without undue risk.
Had they remained in the valley, it might have allowed them to stay tied until the years took Laurence.
But Hammond came, and with him all the world. And it was not in either of their natures to preserve themselves when there was work to be done.
Dresden was aflame, the battle before them so thoroughly impossible that Laurence could scarce imagine success in carrying it off themselves.
And yet, this was their task.
Laurence reached deep within himself, grasping at the jagged edges of his magic. the barrier between it and his soul was thinner than ever. The long flight after the sinking of the Allegiance (when he'd poured it into Temeraire unceasingly to keep the dragon aloft another minute, another hour) had not been kind to him. neither had the Russian winter been, or the desperate hunt for Ning's egg through the Alps, when he'd needed the magic to hold his own bullet wound together as much as to bolster Temeraire.
he had warned Temeraire that they were drawing close to the inevitable severing of their bond, but neither of them could imagine abandoning the war effort now. Not when they were so terribly close and the consequences of failure so dire. They had seen the eggs laid at the French covert. Bonaparte must be stopped now, or not at all.
Temeraire climbed above the level of the French dragons, wings momentarily outstretched, riding the rising heat of the fires.
Then he dove, and the battle was joined.
It became in an instant more akin to a storm at sea than a fight as Laurence knew them. There was Accendare, and there were the other dragons, crewed not with aviators but with young artillery mages, men specializing in incendiary magic.
Laurence had no choice but to bring his own seldom-used naval skills to bear to shield Temeraire. Preventing fire aboard ship by magic was a skilled task, and one he could manage far better than any of his officers. Emily Roland had learned and might have been able to lend her strength to the effort, but she was aboard Fidelitas.
So Laurence poured his strength into the spells alone, all the while feeding Temeraire what the dragon needed as well, the thin thread of magic tugging stronger every time Temeraire employed the divine wind.
And through it all the flames about them burned hot, hotter, coming sometimes so close they singed skin and hair.
Later, Laurence would put it down to this that he failed to notice not all the burning came from without.
When at last the second group arrived, Fidelitas charging bravely accross the sky, Temeraire won his first moment to breathe in an hour. He hovered in place, muscles quivering under Laurence's boots. 'Are you alright, Laurence?” he called plaintivley.
“I am well, my dear,” Laurence answered without thought. He was standing, uninjured save for minor burns and scrapes he could not tie to any one moment. His chest burned with exertion. “All is—” And then he froze, staring at the puff of bright sparks fading from where they had burst from his mouth alongside his words.
“Laurence?”
There was too much fire and smoke in the air for the crew to have noted it, and there was nothing to be done, nothing at all he or anyone else could change now. “All is stable,” he lied. “Let us rejoin our comrades.”
By pure effort, he held the sparks at bay through the end of the campaign. there were no more battles like Dresden, requiring more of Laurence magically than support of Temeraire.
He was not fool enough to think it could last forever. The barrier within him was too eroded; already holes allowed the sparks through more regularly, and more than once he had needed to fake a coughing fit to hide them from Granby and the other captains. Soon enough his magic would truly breach it, burning soul and body alike.
He would have to tell Temeraire, and soon. He would have to get his affairs in order.
The second of the two he began easily enough, mere days after Napoleon's capture. The patterns were familiar from the eve of great aerial battles and naval campaigns alike. He wrote letters. One for his mother, a personal if paltry note. Another for his older brother George, detailing connections in the Navy and Corps where mentioning Laurence's name might still gain favorable postings for George's youngest son, who had been showing signs of dissatisfaction with the church as a path for his life. He also wrote for Harcourt, for Berkeley, for Granby and Jane. He wrote final instructions for his accounts and contacted a solicitor. Upon consideration, he wrote one to Emperor Mianning, offering what details he felt certain of regarding Temeraire's position in England. It felt vaguely disloyal still to do so, but Temeraire's well-being was his responsibility, and he shuddered to think of the dragon coerced in any way.
It took longest to write that one, as he had to manage the Chinese without Temeraire's assistance, and he was not finished with it until he and Temeraire had already been returned to Wollaton some weeks. As such, he had only just begun to write a letter for Tenzing when the man himself appeared.
A parliament seat for Temeraire was his offer, and “there is an old wellspring on the property—not large enough to be on the registry, and badly neglected for centuries aside from what the local hedgewitches have done, but it would be more than enough for one dragon in peacetime.”
Laurence could have staggered for the relief. Trust Tenzing to accomplish the impossible yet again. All his fears about coercion or involuntary exile to China were laid to rest in an instant.
Tenzing gave him a small, private smile, and Laurence was pleased to return it.
Temeraire was eager to see Tharkay's estate, which suited Laurence well; it covered for his own desire to see Temeraire established quickly.
Their departure from Wollaton hall was swift, but not as fraught as previous leave-takings had been. Laurence had thought he would never see the home of his childhood again once before. If it was now true then it was at least under better circumstances. The shadow of war had lifted, and George was already employing two of the small local dragons for transport and construction.
Laurence held his mother tightly, and visited the grave of his father.
Tharkay's home was not in the best possible state when they arrived, but neither was it the nigh-unlivable squallor the man had jokingly hinted it might be. Temeraire (with the deafness to social custom so characteristic of dragons when it came to things they considered theirs) paid immediately for workmen to complete what little was urgent. Tharkay took this with amusement and good grace, both of which eased Laurence's heart. they would remain good friends to each other after he was gone.
Every day he woke with the thought I shall tell him today. And every day he saw Temeraire's excitement—with the war over and a parliament seat in the offing, the dragon overflowed with plans—and his resolve broke as completely as the courage of men facing down the divine wind.
He still had a little time.
Tharkay took to watching him with shrewd eyes, making note each time Laurence had a “coughing fit,” and so it was hardly a surprise when one evening Laurence came in from reading to Temeraire and found Tharkay waiting for him, one of Laurence's singed handkerchiefs in hand.
“How long?” was all Tharkay asked.
Laurence closed his eyes. “Since Dresden.”
“Then you have very little time left.”
It was thanks to Tharkay that Laurence had this time at all. Since coming to the estate, Temeraire drew almost exclusively from the wellspring. He had taken to spending hours near it, coaxing the magic to flow truer while he listened to Laurence read or dictated correspondence. He had sometimes been oddly anxious over his progress with it, but lately that anxiety had turned to satisfaction as the faults in the magic finally cleared.
“There are treatments.” Tharkay said.
Laurence shook his head. He did not think Tharkay truly meant to suggest he slay another to preserve his own life. Even if he did so it would not be effective for long. The transplanted barrier was invariably damaged in the theft.
Tharkay looked at him. “I must depart for London in the morning. Will you still be here when I return?”
“Yes,” said Laurence, though in truth he was not certain. The sparks came more now, and the burn was ever-present, but he had no standard by which to measure the progression.
Tharkay nodded and turned to depart the room. “Tell him, Will,” he said over his shoulder, “or I shall.”
Three mornings after Tharkay departed, Laurence woke gasping. The burning in his chest had opened up, spreading down every extremity. The case of the pillow beneath his head was singed in a dozen places, only sheer luck and the dampness of the Scottish morning saving it from flaming up entirely.
Laurence was not sure how he dressed, or how he made it down the stairs and out the door. The next thing he knew clearly was Temeraire's surprised eyes as he stumbled onto the platform which was all that had so far been built of the planned pavilion.
“My dear—” he said, and did not manage any more as the dragon swept him up in hurried but careful talons and leapt into the air.
The wellspring was not even a fifteen minute walk by foot; dragon wings carried them there in less than two.
Temeraire landed nearly atop it, curling himself to surround Laurence and the rift in the Earth both. Light poured from the spring, a true blue light which overwhelmed the watery sunrise and cast the space boundaried by Temeraire's body in eerie off-colors, like a dream.
It was good Temeraire had thought to come here; the natural magical sink of the spring could absorb some of the coming storm.
And Laurence did not wish anyone else to see this.
“I am so terribly sorry, my dear,” Laurence said, echoing himself. “I should have told you.”
“Well, it would have been nice to know it would come today,” said Temeraire, with baffling casualness. “I am sure Mr. Donnely will wonder where I have gotten off to when he comes with my breakfast.” He shifted a little, and then at Laurence's—surely shocked—expression, he added earnestly, “but that is alright.”
Laurence wondered if the burning had made him feverish and mad. Or perhaps Temeraire had gone mad. There was no other explanation for his unconcern.
Still, Laurence had not thought every morning of what he had to say for naught. The words came—at last— easily to his lips. “I haven't regretted it, not a moment,” he began. “I would not trade a day with you for whatever years I might have had otherwise.” Sparks dropped from his mouth with every word. Smoke poured out with his breath. “I—”
Temeraire tilted his head, eyes lighting blue as he drew upon the power of the wellspring and swelled with breath, potential accumulating in the air like lightning, like the hair-raising presence of the divine wind. “I know,” he said, very calmly.
And then the storm broke.
The wind came from nowhere, the light grey sky of a typical Scottish morning darkening in minutes as Æbba flew the last few miles to the estate.
“Might be best to put down,” the dragon said, watching the clouds nervously. “Don't know if I much fancy flying in that.”
“I shall double your fee, Tharkay said. “If you can reach the estate before it breaks.” Finding his old less-than-scrupulous magician contact in London had taken a day longer than he'd hoped, and minutes may count now.
Æbba eyed him, but gamely picked up the pace.
The storm did break before they reached the estate, but only just. The dragon came down before the house in the driving, soaking rain, and instantly slunk into the shelter of the closest stand of trees.
Tharkay was off like a shot, pounding up the stairs and into the house. The technique was held firmly in his mind, spell ready to cast at a moment's notice.
It was not so terribly complex a working, but it did have to be precise. Splitting one's own membrane in half left no room for error, even when the one meant to receive the donation was not already balanced on the pyre precipice.
But when Tharkay threw Laurence's bedroom door open, the man was not inside.
The bedding was a mess of singed holes and ashes.
No. No, he could not be too late. He would have gone to Temeraire, to the pavilion site—
Tharkay was soaked to the skin through his greatcoat before he even reached the platform. The rain came down with a violent desperation that he felt all too strongly. Where—
He had turned, ready to run for the wellspring—Temeraire had spent so much time there recently—when one flash of lightning cracked across the sky before—even more abruptly than it started—the rain stopped.
The thickness of the clouds seemed to melt away all at once. the watery morning light returned, and Tharkay could even see empty patches of blue above.
He was standing there, shocked and hyper-aware that this could be no natural weather when he saw black wings rise above the treeline.
He sank slowly to the ground as he watched Temeraire approach. the dragon's head was bowed, and when he landed on the platform he did so hesitantly, coming down on his back legs.
“Temeraire.” Grief and horror combined to make Tharkay's voice sound distant to his own ears.
Temeraire tipped his talons forward and a simultaneously soaked and singed (but alive, very much alive) Laurence rolled out.
Tharkay's feet moved without his choosing, and he found himself offering the man a hand up.
Laurence was less the worse for wear than he had looked from across the platform. Viewed up close, his shirt and breeches seemed to have lost a fight with a campfire, and his arms were oddly smooth where the hair had been completely singed off, but he was otherwise—miraculously—intact.
The spell Tharkay had been holding as potential in his mind dissipated. “How?” he demanded.
Tharkay had seen Laurence embarrassed, ashamed, chagrined, and rueful. This outstripped them all. The man put a hand to the back of his neck and looked up at Temeraire, turning red in a way which had nothing to do with burns or witchfire.
“Well,” he said, “evidently I ought have paid more attention to Chinese poetry about wellspring-worked magic.”
The aftermath was, in some ways, more difficult to bear than the grinding difficulties of the anticipation.
“But what do you mean,” Temeraire cried, ignoring his breakfast, “You did not know? My mother was quite clear about it! She said there was no reason it should not work for you if I had a good wellspring to hand when the time came. Was that not why Tharkay found one for us?”
Laurence reflexively reached for the barrier within himself, unable to resist worrying at it as one does the hole left by a pulled tooth. It stood, strong yet flexible. Whole and healed, protecting him. It had the unmistakable feel of Temeraire to it, familiar from their years-old tether.
It was like the tether in other ways, actually. A deliberately built thing, not the inefficient inadequacy of the old natural membrane. “My dear—”
“But then—then all this time, you have been planning to die?” Temeraire's voice rose, resonant in his distress.
Laurence hesitated. “It is not as if I wished—”
“I think,” Tharkay drawled. “That we have all been ridiculous.” By which he most likely meant unutterably stupid. He still had a bit of the drowned-cat look about him from his soaked hair, though he had removed his coat and passed it off to the housekeeper to rescue. He looked at Temeraire, “Here I was thinking you were choosing not to see the danger, when you were hurrying him along the whole time. We worked at cross-purposes.”
“Well,” said Temeraire, his worry replaced just the slightest hint of affront. “I wasn't hurrying him along. It is a very difficult working, you know, and it took some time to clear the spring.”
“We are duly impressed,” Laurence assured him. He had heard the magic explained to him in relatively plain terms, and thought it poetry—what it described was completely impossible in his understanding of magic. He did not doubt the depths of the achievement. Surely if it were easy it would be incredibly widespread in China. They would not need to spread the magical weight to entire crews of aviators then.
And from the way the wellspring had been partially dimmed when they left, it could not be done in rapid succession from the same source.
The theoretical underpinnings did not matter to him as much as they should, at the moment. He was alive. he would not be leaving Temeraire to face all the challenges of peacetime alone.
For all that—of the three of them—Temeraire had been least worried about the outcome, he seemed to feel it in the atmosphere now. It was the only explanation Laurence could think of for why the dragon swept him and Tharkay both up in an oversized draconic embrace and refused to let either of them depart until Laurence had read him three chapters of Principia Mathematica.
But Laurence did not think any of them really minded.