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Chapter Text

Two men lived in Strathvagan house, though no one would know it from the outside.

Tharkay often thought ruefully that an itinerant lifestyle did not suit one for the process of making a building into a home, and his habits of stealth were far too entrenched to overcome on his own. In the first glorious days after the title was returned to him, he had imagined having help in the endeavor, knowing his friends far better suited the task than he.

But that had been before the news reached him, before he had been forced to turn his energies to a different aim.

For one of his friends was dead, and the other had buried his heart in a fallow field outside Reichenbach.

Laurence had allowed himself to be collected from Nottinghamshire with not even a token protest, not unlike the man who had remained in an unlocked room in a burning city, only because the law had not told him where to go.

But there was one difference; the dowager Lady Allendale kept a closer eye on her son than had those long-ago guards, and it was her Tharkay was at pains to convince. He had spoken at length of the healthy air of the highlands and of the proximity of Edinburgh covert and Loch Laggan, and therefore several of Laurence’s dearest friends.

In the end, she saw through his explanations and asked, simply, “You mean to help him?”

Tharkay did. At that time there had been some hope of such recoveries as he had witnessed Laurence make in the past. “I mean to try,” he had answered.

It had been eight months since then, and nearly a year since the end of the war, and all his efforts had come to nothing. A few had produced superficial results. Some of those had, perhaps, made things worse.

And so now two men lived and breathed and moved through Strathvagan house: a spy, and a ghost.

Chapter Text

I. A Choice

Rest. Peace. Safe.

Laurence?

Not yet.

When?

A lifetime.

Return?

Not so simple.

Peace will be easier.

Rest will be easier.

You have already earned it.

Return!

II. A Bargain

Return.

Yes!

Patience.

You have earned a chance, only.

And you will have to earn it again every day.

A lifetime.

All the good that you would have done.

And more.

Will I have Laurence?

Yes.

In some way.

If he knows you.

And if he trusts you.

He will.

Then you may yet know yourself.

One chance.

One year.

The life is yours, as long as it lasts.

But yourself, your memory—that you must

Win.

I will.

III. A Return.

The boy emerged, blinking, into the rain.

It was dark out. Dark, and wet, mud underfoot. He took a step, or tried to, but slipped.

Falling did not hurt, precisely, but it was shocking. The wetness of it. The way the mud clung to his bare skin. He was cold, he realized. The realization struck him with a strange sudden sense of dread.

Where was he? It was difficult to get back to his feet. His limbs did not want to behave; he had no tail for counterbalance. His fingers and toes were beginning to go numb. He could not stay here for long. He needed shelter, or fire.

There was a light up ahead.

The boy made a line for it. As he came closer, it resolved into the shape of a building, fire glowing through the windows. A sign over the door: The Sheep's Heid Inn.

Britain, then. The boy puffed up his ruff—or, well, his shoulders—with relief. Someone in there would surely be able to help him.

Chapter Text

“Excuse me,” said a child's voice, directly by Hollin's ear. He sat up quickly, startled and nearly dropping the buckle he’d been bent over.

“Hello?” he asked. Behind him, Elsie raised her head from where it had been resting on her crossed forepaws.

The child was small, a bit smaller than most runners, and Chinese, by the look of him. He was also obviously hard on his luck, wearing clothes half gone to rags and looking thinner than he ought to be.

Yet he smiled when Hollin looked up. “Hollin! It is good to see you, and you too, Elsie. Would you mind terribly taking this letter to Laurence for me?”

Hollin blinked under the onslaught. “Have we met?”

“Of course!” The boy did not elaborate. “I do not have money for postage, I am sorry to say, but if you need some, perhaps you have an errand I can run while I am here?” he added hopefully.

Just then, Captain Richardson walked by. He was more regularly stationed in Edinburgh covert, and he clearly recognized the boy because he saw him and said with an air of annoyance, “Run along now, if anyone needs any errands I’m sure you’ll find a way to hear of it.”

“I was just asking Elsie and Hollin to take a letter to my Laurence for me,” protested the child.

“We are a military dispatch service, boy, not a charitable post for children.”

“But—”

Sensing neither would back down without prompting, Hollin just sighed and said, “Give it here lad, I’m bringing the admiral his other letters anyway.”

The boy beamed and pressed the still quite neat (despite his grubby hands) paper into Hollin's grasp. “Thank you!” he said, and ran off without a second look at Richardson.

The other captain sighed. “Now I will never be rid of him.”

“Who is he?” Holin asked, getting to his feet as he turned over the letter. It had no seal, but it had been addressed to William Laurence in an only slightly shaky hand.

“Some street rat. He’s been hanging around the last two weeks trying to do errands for any officer who’ll give him a bit of food or a ha’penny for it, and he's been sleeping in the dragon pavilion, no matter how often I run him off. I miss the days the urchins were afraid of the beasts.”

Looking at the letter still, Hollin said, “This one's braver than most.”

“I liked him,” Elsie chimed in. “He was polite to me.”

“You haven't been dealing with him two weeks,” said Richardson, and following Hollin's gaze to the letter added, “You needn't actually bring that.”

Hollin shrugged and tucked the paper into his coat. “As I told him, I’m going that way already.”

It had been some months now since Elsie’s route had taken them up to Strathvagan house, and it had been in a sorry state at the time, having only been recently turned over to the new Lord’s hands and showing all the signs of ill-upkeep its previous owners had inflicted upon it. He had been hopeful to see it in better condition.

It was, but not by as much as one would have perhaps expected. 

As the pair of them flew over, previous gaps in the roof were now covered over by shiny new wooden panels. The drive had been cleared of weeds, and the windows, now clean, gleamed in a brief burst of sun from the otherwise overcast sky. Yet the gardens beyond were still more than half-gone wild, and many of the outlying buildings looked yet to be in ill-repair.

There was still no pavilion or other dragon shelter, but weather was fair yet this early into the fall, and Elsie did not mind waiting outside, especially not when offered some mutton by the servant. Once led into the front hall, Hollin found the pattern continued. At first blush, things were much improved: the lingering scent of mildew had been banished in favour of polish and sandalwood, there was new upholstering for both the carpets and furniture, and the old curling wall-paper had been refreshed. But many of the floorboards still creaked, and the house so chilly that he soon regretted leaving his flying coat at the door. Tea went a long way to warming him up, and it was a very fine blend indeed, but the biscuits served along with it were perhaps a titch stale.

He was left waiting for perhaps twice that what he would have expected when at last the door were flung open, and in strode the man—men—of the house. 

“The illustrious Captain Hollin; to whyever do we owe the pleasure?” said Tharkay with a dry mirth.

“I am quite certain you would never guess,” Hollin responded in the same tone. Proper nobility suited Lord Tharkay, had to reflect. The handful of times he’d met the man in his service, he had been the worst for wear, showing all the dirt of weeks of hard travel. Now he was buffed to a shine, wearing an impeccably tailored suit of subtle reds and greys, hair trimmed short in the modern style, with a bright gold pocket-watch chain hanging from his chest.

In a more natural voice, Hollin turned to the second man and said, “It is good to see you too, Admiral Laurence.”

Laurence frowned at him mildly. “No need to call me Admiral, James,” Laurence said. “And I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Hollin waved a hand as he followed Tharkay’s lead in sitting back down. “Never you fear! You know us couriers; we savour any chance to rest our feet.”

Tharkay laughed. A few moments later, Laurence laughed also.

“So,” Hollin said, after taking a long sip of tea. “How do you find yourselves?”

The ensuing twenty minute conversation seemed to stretch to the length of an hour.

Laurence could not be said to have benefitted the same way as his friend by retirement; though who could expect otherwise, given the circumstances? He was quiet very nearly to the point of seeing entirely absent. He had not regained the weight he had lost in the war’s final stretch, and his suit, while well-tailored, was of an older style and hung off him. To most he would seem impeccably dressed, but Hollin remembered him from the year five, and could notice how loose his cravat was, the crinkles in his jacket, as though he had thrown both items of clothing on in a haste. His hair was brushed but there was perhaps two days’ worth of stubble on his chin. Underneath his cologne was the distinct scent of sweat. At least that was preferable to the ghost of brandy. 

In the face of this, Hollin delivered his updates of covert life with good cheer, and Tharkay gently prodded Laurence into asking the occasional follow-up questions. The two gentlemen were able to give little update in return besides the tale of a new well being dug.

Fighting the urge not to fidget, Hollin thrust his hand deep into his mail bag and announced, “Shall we get to it, then?”

He produced a tidy collection of documents, all bound in twine. Tharkay received five letters, two crisp with the letterheads of a banker or lawyer; a third anonymous yellowed parchment. Laurence had similar correspondence, in addition to letters from his mother, Roland senior, and Roland junior. (The additional letters, the ones from newspapers, Hollin had quietly removed beforehand, at Tharkay’s previous request.)

“Thank you,” Tharkay said, taking the two bundles.

“Yes, thank you,” Laurence echoed, when Tharkay passed the second bundle on.

“It’s my job!” Hollin paused, resting his hand on the lapel of his coat. There was still one last letter waiting in his breast pocket, separated from the rest. 

No doubt, the letter would be filled with the star-eyed ramblings of a young lad who’d read too many tales of Admiral William Laurence’s defiant deeds in the face of Napoleon’s tyranny. Not expected, not important, and easily discarded.

But Hollin had promised. And perhaps the letter—or the story attached to it—might cheer the fellow up. 

While Laurence had glanced once at his other correspondence before handing them to a servant to carry up to his study, this at least he did look at. Looked at, and frowned. “Who did you say gave you this?”

“A young lad; ten or so. Didn’t give his name.” Hollin added helpfully, “Chinese?”

Laurence blinked, and exchanged a look with Tharkay, who gave a half-shrug. Frowning deeper, Laurence unfolded the paper, and read.

As the countryside gave way to the taller buildings and walls of the city proper, the carriage clacked over the cobblestone. Laurence watched the passing scenery idly, not taking much of it in, besides to distantly wonder when the trees had come into their fall colours.

The half-day trip had seemed to drag on interminably. Horse-drawn carriage was so terribly slow a way to travel, when one was accustomed to other methods. 

It would have been faster to come via Elsie, of course, but it had taken over two days for Laurence to make up his mind about coming into the city, and by then she and Hollin had been long gone. In any case, a courier beast would have struggled to carry three grown men.

Though why Tharkay had even opted to come was a mystery, considering he was so opposed to this course.

Laurence’s hand curled into a fist as he kept his gaze fixed on the horizon and did not glance at Tharkay, sitting across from him. It did no harm to investigate. It did no harm at all.

It was well past noon by the time they finally drew up at the hotel, and of course, it took time to check in at the concierge and unpack, not that they had brought much. As Tharkay busied himself with the trunks, Laurence took time to consult the letter, and cross-reference the maps.

Once he finished and rolled the map up, Laurence straightened up to find Tharkay looking at him; looking at him the way he so often did, these days. 

The expression was gone in a blink. “Lead the way?” Tharkay invited.

So Laurence led the way as best he could, in spite of having visited Edinburgh surely a fifth of the times Tharkay had.

Haddock Street was not particularly large, but it made up for it by being impressively winding. It was primarily a merchant area, on the edge between districts of the city, where fine town-houses were only streets away from over-packed working houses for the new factories. The air stank of smog and horse dung both, and women had to raise their skirts over large puddles.

Laurence and Tharkay made their way down the street, occasionally glancing into the shops, but more for the look of the thing. When they reached the end of the street, they turned around and continued back up the other side.

There were well over a dozen boys, from workers carrying boxes, to runners on errands, to children playing ball games in the street. But none of them appeared Oriental.

They reached the top of the street. Without a word exchanged, the pair turned to walk down again.

By the time they reached the top again and the church bells were ringing the hour four, Laurence had to concede the boy did not seem to be here today—if he had ever been here at all. “I am only sorry to have wasted both our times on such an errand.”

“Not wasted at all,” Tharkay said. “I have some business with my lawyers, and in any case, as much as I appreciate our cook’s fine meals, I would not mind a change of pace. I hear there is a new French restaurant which comes very highly recommended.”

“Yes,” Laurence said, though he was not particularly hungry. He rarely was, of late.

Now Tharkay led the way, moving with easy familiarity. Laurence followed. Down about six yards; they took a right; a block; another right—

Crash.

The pair of them stopped.

Twilight fell early now, and the lantern lighters were tardy. In the dimness Laurence had to squint to see down the street. What he made out was a knot of boys at the other end of the street, loud and jeering.

“How dare you!” a piping voice cried. “That was mine!”

“That was mine!” another parroted, falsetto.

It was a scene Laurence had witnessed easily several dozen times in his career, and already instinct was carrying his feet down the street.

The boys’ jeers grew louder. They began to move as if pushing something—someone—between them, laughing.

Laurence lengthened his stride; in his peripheral vision, he was aware of Tharkay doing the same.

“... even bothering with ink for?” one child was saying. “Chinks like you ain’t got letters.”

“That is because Mandarin does not possess an alphabet, like the Romantic languages, but rather utilises—”

Thunk. The boy’s words were cut off with a pained gasp.

“What’s all of this about then?!” Laurence bellowed.

A few of the boys looked up, alternatively laughing or tugging at their companions’ shirts. A couple of the ring-leaders were having too much fun with their game to pay him any mind. “Chink-chong chee-chonk!” one sang, each nonsensical syllable punctuated by a punch.

“Stop this instant!” Laurence roared, and by then he was close enough, and tall enough, to finally command the attention of the entire gang of ruffians.

“Scram!” one of them cried, and the leader dropped his prey, all of them running pell-mell into a side alley.

Tharkay ran off after them, lithe and darting. Laurence considered following, but there was little benefit his support would bring, and in any case that seemed less important in the face of the victim the ruffians had left crouched on the cold cobblestones. 

As expected, it was a younger, smaller boy. The child had his hands over his mouth, as if he wanted to stopper his own sobbing, and he was curled around himself like a dragon might around an injury, soaked in ink and street muck. A shard of the ink bottle had found its way into the flesh of his shoulder, and he was bleeding from several other, smaller cuts.

Laurence heard Tharkay's footsteps clicking on the cobbles as he returned from chasing the other children off, but did not turn to see.

He was already on his knees beside the child, without any memory of how he had gotten there. There was none of his normal careful respect or hesitation as he reached for the boy, whose sobs were only just now quieting, eyes slowly opening. “Are you alright?” Laurence asked, laying a hand—gently—on the boy's shoulder, above the shard of glass.

The boy's eyes opened fully and he looked up. “Laurence?” he asked, plaintive, and for a moment it was—

“Laurence?” Temeraire asked. He tilted his head a little, but his eyes had already gone hazy and unfocused. Laurence did not know if he could even see him.

“I am here, my dear,” Laurence forced out, through a throat that had closed. “I am here.”

Someone nearby was shouting, and there was the smell of flesh being cauterized.

Temeraire's breath heaved.

—Laurence choked for breath. This was not that, not that at all. There was nothing in the child like—

He was small, and human, and brown-eyed, and he was not dying.

But there had been just as much emotion when he called Laurence's name.

Chapter Text

The unexpected letter Hollin had brought had not been long. It had been written in shaky hand on low-quality paper, and it had read: 

“Dear Laurence,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am sure it does, as I understand you are staying with Tharkay, who certainly is taking good care of you in your well-earned retirement.

This is normally the segment of the letter where I introduce myself. I cannot, as I do not have a name, or at any rate, I do not recall it. Regardless, I am certain we Served together. Surely when you see me you will be able to assist on this front.

I am generally to be found on Haddock Street in Edinburgh between the hours of ten and four.

I hope to see you soon.

With love,
Your esteemed friend ”

The concierge had not been pleased to have a street urchin all over mud, blood, and ink dragged into his clean and tidy reception, but if Laurence’s reputation of war-hero ever did a lick of good it was in moments like these. With a steely eyed look that broached no argument, Laurence walked past the disapproving gaze, the child following obediently behind him.

Tharkay hesitated in their wake, no doubt slipping a coin or two into the concierge’s hands. The bribe was sizable enough that maids appeared shortly thereafter in Laurence’s room with sufficient hot water for bathing, and the promise of three serving trays for supper. 

“Supper?” the lad asked hopefully, already showing all the healthy appetite of a growing child. 

“After bathing,” said Laurence, sternly, already fearing the hassle it would take to get the boy into the tub. Certainly he had protested the removal of the glass shard enough.

The fears were unnecessary. The boy undressed quickly, attempting if not succeeding in folding his clothes into a neat pile, (Laurence attempted to avert his gaze, but it was difficult not to note how his skin was discoloured with bruises, and how prominently his ribs showed), and slipped easily into the hot water and went directly for the soap. He struggled to grip the bar, however, evidently finding it far more slippery than anticipated. In the end Laurence had to roll up his sleeve, plunge his hand into the water, and help demonstrate for the boy.

Tharkay watched all of this with his usual air of detachment, leaning against the wall. He said, “Now that we are no longer on the streets, would you be willing to explain how you came to be in this situation?”

“Oh, it is not my fault at all!” the boy protested. “It is just like I told you. I was merely minding my own business, but those boys claimed that Haddock Street was their territory, which is proper nonsense; how can one claim ownership of an entire street, when it is public property? I think they merely knew that they were bigger, and felt their size gave them the right to push me around.”

“Yes—” Laurence began.

“Which was bad enough on its own! But they had to go and steal my ink bottle, after I spent weeks and weeks saving enough coin to purchase it; and then they did not even bother to use it, but merely smashed it on the ground, which was entirely a waste!” The child had regained much of his composure over the course of the walk to the hotel, but now his eyes shone overbright, threatening tears once more.

“Yes, well,” Laurence said, struggling in the onslaught of words. “Sometimes people behave poorly, and do such things; it does not do to dwell.”

The boy sniffed. “Yes.” He rubbed the soap on his ink-stained hands.

Tharkay coughed. “I can well enough imagine the treatment you received, and I am sorry for it,” he said, and while the tone was harder than Laurence’s, it was not unkind. Of course, the man was intimately familiar with how poverty and Oriental descent both affected one’s perception in a way Laurence himself knew only second-hand. “But that was not entirely what I was asking.”

The boy blinked owlishly at him. “Pardon; what did you mean?”

“What inspired you to write to Admiral Laurence in the first place?”

Again, the boy blinked. “Why would I not?”

Laurence said, “I am afraid I do not take your meaning.” He hesitated, “In your letter, you said we served together, but I am afraid I have no recollection of that at all.”

“What do you mean, you have no recollection?” the boy asked, clear concern and surprise ringing in his voice.

Laurence looked at Tharkay. Tharkay arched an eyebrow.

“You are… very young,” he said.

“Well, yes,” the boy said, “but I do not see how that signifies?”

It had been suspicious, of course, to receive a letter not signed with any name, and promising only to be an old comrade-in-arms and ‘esteemed’ friend. However, given the number of men Laurence had served with in his career, and the ravages of drink and the mental scars of battle, he had not been willing to simply assume the letter the result of particularly bold fanatic without at least attempting to meet with the sender. The fact that Hollin swore up and down the letter’s writer had been only a child, of Oriental descent, and surely no older than twelve, had only added to his curiosity. 

Now his curiosity was sated, at least on one count: he did not recognise the boy. Did not recognise him, and had not served with him.

It was perhaps possible they had served together, in a loose sense—perhaps he had been a runner in the final Russian campaign, or an aide from the Chinese legions. Even that seemed unlikely in the extreme though. Hollin’s guess of twelve years of age had been generous; Laurence put him closer to nine. The corps took children as young as seven, but would not assign them to any particularly risky duty. Yet the most the child could offer in regards to a shared history was that they had perhaps met on a ship, and there had been a storm, which suggested The Potentate, but otherwise helped very little. 

After spending a fruitless ten minutes on this line of inquiry, Tharkay said, “It would help, perhaps, if you could give us the name of the man—or woman—you served under?”

“Why, Laurence, of course.”

Tharkay tried again; “And your name?”

“Well, that is just as I told you; I am not certain.”

Laurence gathered the towels. “You do not have a name?”

“No, I have a name,” the boy said. “A very fine one, in fact! I was hoping you both would be able to remind me of it.”

Which brought them roundly back to square one. 

There was a pause in the line of questioning as Laurence held out a hand to help the boy out of the bath, and then gave him space to change—back into the tattered rags he had been wearing, but it was not as if they had anything anywhere close to his size. 

Laurence laid one of the remaining towels on the room’s desk chair, so as to protect the upholstery; the child hopped up without being directed. He was almost comically small in its bulk, kicking his legs in the air. Though scratches and bruises remained, he already looked much improved, face clean and shining. 

Laurence sat also, on the smaller chair intended for guests. Tharkay remained standing. “Who asked you to contact us?”

“Why, no one.” By his easy manner, the child did not even seem to realise he was being interrogated. 

“Someone must have given you Admiral Laurence’s name.”

“I don’t see why? No one told me your name either, Tharkay.”

The pair of them exchanged glances. Had Laurence said Tharkay’s name aloud in the past hour? He must have, surely, but he could not be sure. And in any case—no, Tharkay had been mentioned in the letter.

Leveling his voice softer, Laurence said, “You need not fear. We will not hurt you. We will give you food and shelter no matter your answer.”

“I am not afraid. But I've given you my answer.” And indeed, the child seemed wholly blithe in his attitude. “Do you not remember me at all?”

“No,” Laurence said.

“No,” Tharkay echoed, more firmly. 

“Well, that is awfully troublesome, not to mention inconvenient,” the lad said. And certainly it was, for him, if he had been banking on a rich and powerful connection for aid. 

Before any more discussion could continue, a rich and delicious smell filled the air, and a moment later there was a knock at the door, from a maid announcing supper. From there, of course, all attention was consumed. Attention, and much more, for after finishing his plate of chicken and roasted vegetables, the boy asked twice if there was anything more to eat, and twice was provided it. 

At the third such requisition, Laurence had to step in. “You will make yourself sick.”

“Do you think so? That was hardly anything at all.”

Tharkay snorted, but otherwise said nothing. 

While he evidently was not at all satisfied in the answers provided, there was little to be done for it now. The boy was drooping in his seat, yawning; they would get nothing of sense out of him now.

“Why don’t you have my bed for the night?” Laurence suggested.

“Yes,” the boy said, the sound drawn out from another long yawn. “That would be very much appreciated.” 

And so Laurence found himself picking the lad up and carrying him— so very light— to the bed, and tucking him in, aware of Tharkay’s gaze on his back.

There was a strange pressure inherent in the very confidence the boy had in his help. He had not begged, or asked in a way which should have allowed Laurence to merely disappoint him; no, he had believed Laurence would help him as if it was the very foundation of his world.

Laurence had been wholly powerless before it, but even as he watched the boy settle into sleep, he knew that he had a greater obligation still—one which might still leave the child without the connection he so naively expected.

It was only some fifteen minutes after they had parted that there came a knock on Tharkay’s door. He was not surprised to find Laurence on the other side, only at how quickly he had come.

“The boy is asleep,” Laurence said, in explanation.

“Good,” Tharkay said simply.

“I had thought to watch over him tonight. The armchair is comfortable enough.”

Tharkay did not try to protest. Any danger now was to Laurence’s purse, not his life.

Laurence sighed as he sank into the room's spare chair. “Tenzing, do you think I am being very foolish?”

“Yes,” Tharkay answered without hesitation.

Laurence grimaced. “I am sorry, I—”

“I did not say I thought you were wrong to do it.”

“I,” Laurence began, and then trailed off. He did not seem to know what to say.

He so rarely knew what to say, these days.

Tharkay could fill the conversation, instead. “If our journeys have taught me anything, it is that I would prefer someone venture a little kindness rather than hoard it to themselves against all risk.”

Laurence looked, for a brief moment, grateful. “If we do not find whoever has put him up to it. I was thinking—perhaps we could—”

Tharkay hardly needed to be told that Laurence had a fondness for strays. This should not have surprised him, but it did. Perhaps because Laurence had shown so little desire for anything these last months.

“Yes, Will,” Tharkay said, because otherwise Laurence obviously would not presume to impinge upon his hospitality. “He can stay with us. Lord knows the manor has the space for it.”

Laurence's expression looked so very odd there. Crumpled with relief and pain both. “Thank you.”

Tharkay so yearned to reach out and soothe the pain from Will's face. But his hands stayed in his lap. “You need not thank me. But we should discuss sensible precautions.”

“Yes, of course.” Laurence said. As if the conditions did not matter to him in the face of permission. That was not unfamiliar to the pattern of these last months, that lack of care for himself or for details.

Tharkay explained them anyway. “For the first, we ought to be careful of money and valuables…”

As he laid them out, he had a strange sense of being caught between times. Laurence did not attend the list as he might have once upon a time, but neither did Tharkay think he heard only one word in three, as he had more recently.

Tharkay had watched Laurence come back to life before. Before today he had doubted whether he would again.

The boy woke wrapped in wonderful warm softness. He stretched, luxuriating. He half wanted to stay here forever, to never leave the comfortable sheets. But only half. He stuck his head out from under the blanket, wondering where—Ah. 

And there was Laurence, asleep in the chair, pillow clutched to his chest and tucked under his chin. In the pale morning light, the boy inspected the man. Last night, he had merely been pleased beyond measure to see him. To hear his voice, to hold his hand. He was Laurence, and he was here, and all was right with the world. 

Today, he was still Laurence, and things were still very good. But now the boy could not help notice that Laurence seemed oddly... diminished. That made very little sense. If anything, he seemed larger than he ought to have been. But nonetheless. There was a thinness to him, as if he had not regained his fat after the last campaign. There was grey in his hair, and a pallor to his skin. He should not have slept in the chair, the boy realised with a start of guilt.

The boy must have made some sound, or another movement, because Laurence stirred and woke, blinking. The boy felt another pang. He had not meant to disturb. Laurence looked around the room, bleary-eyed, until his gaze fell on the boy. He sat a little straighter, as if remembering himself. “Are you well?” he asked.

“Oh,” said the boy. “Yes, I am well.” He did not want to pester Laurence, but his stomach made the decision for him. “Will there be breakfast?”

“There will be breakfast.” And Laurence's smile was like the first ice melt of spring. 

The breakfast primarily took the form of large slices of bread, golden and warm. Despite the appealing scent and colour, the boy approached the offering cautiously. His strongest impression of bread were the two day-old slices he had managed to buy from the bakery occasionally. Those he had had to soak in water to eat, and even then they had been difficult to chew and with an unpleasant flavour. These, however, were magnificent. The outer crust was hard but in a way that made the interior softness all the more pleasing. And then Laurence passed him butter, and Tharkay the strawberry jam, and that was lovely. And there was an apple and some nuts and those were good too, even if he privately wished there was meat. 

As he drank his tea, however, one concern did creep up on him. All the other guests in the dining room looked very neat, in their suits and their dresses. Tharkay in particular looked excellent in his grand coat. By comparison, the boy looked like a right scrub. “Will we be able to find a tailor today, do you think?”

(The boy had stolen his current clothing, and the guilt ate at him; he could almost hear Laurence telling him that it was wrong to steal, and especially from people with so little as the poorer tradesmen on the outskirts of the city where he had first realized his need for clothes. But, the boy excused himself, he had only taken what he could not go without, and he was careful to take only one item from the laundry-strings of each house, so nobody would lose too much that was dear to them. But his restraint meant that he did not have much, and nothing at all that was any good. The tailor was an immediate necessity.)

For some reason, Tharkay looked at Laurence and raised an eyebrow.

Laurence paused over his next bite. “Yes, I believe so. Though we may not want to wait for something new to be made. Perhaps someone will have something secondhand that might be taken in.”

The boy was not sure he wanted secondhand clothing after weeks and weeks in rags, but he saw the expediency. At least he would be able to change out of these clothes right away. “I can wait for something new once we are returned to Tharkay's house,” he said.

“You have decided to leave the city with us, then?” Tharkay asked. He was still looking at Laurence.

“Why, yes.” The boy sipped his tea. (Which was more milk that had been made sweet and floral than anything that he could possibly call tea.) He was not certain what else he would possibly do.

Laurence said, “Perhaps you have parents, or any other relatives, you might wish us to help you contact?”

The boy considered. “I suppose I must. Men are not maggots, to arise by spontaneous generation, after-all.” He reached for another slice of bread. “But I have not the faintest idea of how to reach or identify them.”

There was a long moment before Laurence said, “I see.”

The odd note in his voice made the boy inspect him closer. He said, a little wounded, “I understand this must be odd, given neither of you remember me. But I do hope that is not reason enough for us to part ways, however.”

“I—no, I do not believe it is.”

The boy looked up and smiled. Smiling was an odd thing; so much like baring his teeth in threat, and yet wholly unlike in meaning.

Tharkay said, “Was there anyone else who… helped… you send the letter that you would like to contact?”

“Only Elsie and Captain Hollin helped me,” the boy said, confused. “And they are not here right now. Though I suppose I could write them in thanks?”

He didn’t know how to read the look on Tharkay’s face. “Perhaps later.”

Abruptly, Laurence said. “I find we have neglected something—do you happen to have remembered your name in the night?”

“Oh!” The boy dearly wished he had. But… “I have not. Are you truly certain you do not know it?”

“No,” said Laurence.

“And let me guess,” said Tharkay. “You do not even have an inkling who else would know.” 

“No. It is very bothersome.” He had a name, he was certain. He simply could not reach it, the way one could not reach their dreams when awake. He sighed.

Laurence said, “But surely we must call you something.”

This immediately perked the boy up. “Yes, excellent point. You should give me a new name! Or at least one to use in the interim.”

Laurence inhaled sharply and then said, oddly strained, “I am sure I would need some time to come up with something appropriate.”

The boy could not stifle his sense of disappointment. Laurence was quite good with names, he was sure, and he did not like to wait for one.

“We cannot call him ‘boy,’” Tharkay pointed out. “Perhaps… Junior?”

Laurence looked at him. “If you do not mind?”

The boy considered. It was not, perhaps, quite the type of name he had been expecting, but then he was not sure what he had. He shook his head, “I do not mind.” It was kind of Tharkay, and anyway, Junior was sure Laurence would give him another fine name soon enough.

Since they were in the city, it only made sense to run errands, which yes, included a stop at a second hand shop to purchase a serviceable set of daily clothes. There was genuine disappointment in the boy—in Junior's eyes as he surveyed the options, critical as he touched each item's fabric and inspected their buttons.

Again, Laurence battled a wave of foolishness. It was one thing for a child in his position to seek charity; Laurence could not resent that. But the very confidence which had so compelled him—the way he seemed less grateful for their help and more expectant—suggested that Tharkay's concerns were true. That this was an attempt to play him for a fool, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet Laurence could not find room in his heart to begrudge the child. Not when Junior went to put on the clothes, and the only sound was muffled thumps and bumps, and then the baleful call of, “Laurence?”

“Yes?”

“Pray, will you help me with the buttons?”

So Laurence helped him with the buttons, and disentangled the left limb of the trousers, and smoothed the jacket's lapels. And even though the boy was stiff with embarrassment, he watched Laurence's fingers keenly, and he sounded so painfully genuine as he said, “Thank you, my dear.”

Laurence swallowed, aching somewhere deep in his chest. “You are most welcome,” he said.

He saw Junior fed again before Tharkay returned from his own business, something to do with his lawyers. Laurence was ashamed that he had not retained the details, though he was fairly sure Tharkay had told him.

“I have engaged the carriage back,” Tharkay said to him, while the boy inspected the empty plate upon which his meal had been served. It was painted along the edge with flowers, and the child was fascinated and not listening to anything around him. “Unless you would like to stay and investigate further.”

“If you have not found anything already then I doubt there is anything to find,” Laurence replied quietly. He had no illusions about his own skill in that arena.

Tharkay nodded. “Then if you wish to remain with him, I will pack.”

Tharkay had packed for their trip out, Laurence remembered with shame. “No, no I think it best if you speak to him before we are all in a carriage together,” he said. “I will pack.”

There was not much to pack. They had not brought much, and only spent one night. Nonetheless, Laurence took solace in it. The familiar movements, the scrape of fabric against skin, the neatness of the chests when finished.

Which were finished too quickly. Then he had nothing to do but wait.

Tharkay had actually had rather few occasions to conduct interrogations over his near twenty years as a spy. Oh, certainly he had been interrogated himself quite a few times, but his own methods had generally been less direct.

Nonetheless, he had collected a few tricks for it. All of them felt rather underhanded and ridiculous to deploy against a ten year old child, who was bouncing lightly up and down in his seat and inspecting the wood grains of the carriage wall.

Well, clearly the time for subtlety had passed. Tharkay said, “Child, I would like to speak with you directly on matters as they stand between us.”

Despite his distraction only moments before, 'Junior's' gaze was very level as he turned to look at Tharkay. “Of course.”

“I meant what I said last night. We promise not to hurt you, and to keep you safe. But I must know who your masters are. A name, if you have it, or a physical description otherwise.”

The child stared at him as if he did not comprehend the question. “Well,” he said, “I am not property, to have a master, but you know that quite well, Tharkay.”

Tharkay would not be diverted. “Whoever sent you, then.”

“No one sent me,” he said, with all evidence of honesty. “I chose, though I do not understand quite how, anymore. At least not completely.” He tilted his head, birdlike. (Or, Tharkay thought involuntarily, dragon-like.) “I do not think you could understand at all.”

“I would be grateful if you made the attempt anyway.”

The boy made the curious kneading motion with his hands that Tharkay had noticed several times previously. “I was not here. I was not anywhere, particularly, but that would not have mattered except that I was not with Laurence. So I chose to come here.”

Laurence, Laurence. He seemed so fixated on Laurence. “Why him?”

There were any of a dozen explanations Tharkay could have expected. 'I served with him', a continuation of his previous story; 'He is a war hero', as so much of Britain now valorized him. If the child had been overcome with a bout of unexpected honesty, even perhaps, 'Because my masters know about his grief and memory loss, and seek to manipulate both'.

But the boy merely said: “Because he is Laurence.”

Who was this child?

Maybe he truly was innocent, Tharkay finally allowed himself to wonder. He did not act like an ordinary child. He did not seem unintelligent, not in the least. His remarkable vocabulary and manners both often gave him a sense of being wise beyond his years. Yet at the same time, he seemed clumsy and oblivious in a manner of a much younger child.

Perhaps he was... Not simple-minded, no. But some malady of the mind; perhaps a difficulty separating imagination from reality. Such children often received ill treatment. Turned out onto the street, he may have told himself a comforting story of being friends with Britain's greatest hero, and convinced himself it was true.

It was a tempting explanation, in many ways. It would allow Tharkay to let go all suspicion of intentional wrongdoing and focus only on helping the child, and on making sure Laurence did not break his own heart again.

And yet it was difficult to settle on completely. ‘Junior’ acted just as familiar with Tharkay as with Laurence himself. He had sought Hollin and Elsie as if he knew they were friends and not just fellow aviators.

And he had not mentioned Temeraire, as any child who learned of Laurence from the newspapers would have, surely?

Or perhaps not. Perhaps Hollin was a coincidence, the familiarity with Tharkay an extension of his having appeared with Laurence.

Perhaps he had been told by a parent not to speak of the dead.

There simply wasn’t enough information to be certain. Tharkay would merely have to hope the child was innocent, and watch keenly on the chance he was not.

In either case, there was no more point to interrogation, and his next step was the same. “Wait here just a moment. We will be off shortly.”

At the boy’s nod, Tharkay stepped out of the carriage and went to fetch Laurence.

Chapter Text

Scotland was beautiful.

Junior had been gone from it long enough he had almost forgotten. He had almost forgotten, and then the past three weeks—the cold, the hunger, the glares—had begun to blind him to it.

But now! Oh, it was lovely! The sloping green hills, the vibrant reds and oranges of autumn, how charming the buildings all looked. If there was one benefit to going so slow (and the carriage was slow), it was that it allowed you to savour the details.

None of them spoke much. That was alright. Tharkay appeared to be in one of those dark moods which seized him from time to time, and Laurence seemed to be recovering from an illness. Junior's himself still felt more than a little tired from the injury and exhaustion. With his crew on either side of him, and the study rumble of the carriage beneath, he fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was to Laurence's gentle rousing. They were here.

“Your estates!” Junior said, stepping out of the carriage—and having to grip Laurence's hand to make it down. “Oh, Tharkay, it is lovely! How large are they, pray? Can I have a tour? What flowers are those?”

Tharkay seemed unenthusiastic at first, but he soon warmed to the tour, or at least thawed slightly. Laurence trailed behind them, allowing Tharkay to be their guide and speaking little.

Tharkay showed Junior the main house, the stables, the mews, and the path to the large pond (or possibly small lake) in his woods. They did not go see the fields, or the tenants, but that was alright. Junior was sure he would see them later.

There was something missing. Something he would have expected Tharkay to have, or at least begun to build. “You haven’t a dragon pavilion,” he said, as they walked back to the main house.

Tharkay’s shoulders stiffened for a moment and then eased; Junior was sorry if he had struck upon some difficulty. Perhaps Tharkay was having trouble finding builders.

But Tharkay only said, “I have considered building a small one for the use of guests, but I am afraid it has not been a priority.”

Junior did not let his shoulders sag. Of course Tharkay must have been busy, with all the legal nonsense he had been put through, and with Laurence sick. But Junior was here now to take it off their hands. “Of course. Do not worry in the least; I will begin looking into it. Of course I will need to survey the grounds to determine what would be the most suitable location before even considering the designs, but an eight pillar configuration is traditional...”

After a moment, Junior realized the two men were no longer following him. He looked back. Tharkay had stopped, his expression pinched, while Laurence's face was twisted in—

“What is so funny?” Junior demanded.

“You consider yourself a master architect, do you?” Tharkay said, with an elegant raise of the eyebrow.

“Well not a master, no. But I have done some introductory reading on the subject. Of course we would need to consult actual experts.”

“Would we now?” said Tharkay.

Laurence stepped forward and laid a soft hand on Junior's shoulder. “What I believe Mister Tharkay is being too polite to say, is we are both guests on his property. It is outrageously rude to even suggest making such grand changes without his permission, and indeed, explicit endorsement.”

“Oh, why, yes Laurence, I do see. But of course Tharkay does want a pavilion, don't you, Tharkay?”

Tharkay put his eyebrow down and looked at Junior in that intent way of his. “I suppose I have just said I do, haven’t I?”

“You needn’t—” Laurence began softly, but Tharkay waved a hand and he subsided.

“I had intended to build one. Perhaps a helper is what I need to get the project begun.”

Junior beamed. All would be well, just as he had known it would be. “It will be magnificent! All of our friends will love it.” He stopped to consider. “Perhaps Iskierka will even be jealous.”

Laurence made a strange sort of sound that was neither like nor unlike a laugh. “Let us get you inside, and perhaps get you fed. It has been a rather long day.”

“And you may have your pick of the guest rooms,” said Tharkay, dryly. “If you mean to stay, we might as well do the thing properly.”

“Of course I mean to stay! I would not like to leave again, at all.”

Supper was delicious; a fine meal of seared lamb with a mint sauce, served upon a bed of mashed potatoes and roasted greens. He had admittedly been somewhat disappointed with the portion sizes at first, but he did have to concede he felt full after his second helping of potatoes, so that was well enough.

He gave his compliments to the chef, a woman named Mrs. Dreardy, who if not as skilled with spices as Gong Su, clearly excelled in other ways. Furthermore, she was not the least bit scared of Junior, nor mean to him either, ruffling his hair.

Hair. “Hair is strange, isn't it?” Junior mused, aloud, when she had departed. “It is very soft, and sometimes tickly. I had never noticed before.”

“I suppose it is,” Laurence said.

There would be dessert later, but for now they had some time for Junior to select his room, and he fully intended to do it properly.

There were six guest rooms in the manor, most approximately the same size, though one was a fair bit smaller than the others, and another nearly a third larger. Some were unfurnished, though Tharkay reassured him not to mind that; the furniture could be moved and rearranged as he saw fit. So Junior tried not to allow that to bias him, and instead focused on the fundamental essence of the room. The quality of the wood; the design of the wallpaper; the amount of light admitted by the windows; the view; how close it would be to Laurence's bedroom.

“This one,” he announced, after nearly two hours.

What Tharkay thought of his choice, Junior couldn’t tell, but Laurence smiled at him, though he looked tired still. Junior wondered how long he had been ill.

“We will have to wait until the other servants return in the morning to move the majority of the furniture,” Tharkay said. Junior had picked one of the unfinished rooms. “But the bed can be moved now.” It was only coming from the next room over.

“I can help!” Junior offered. Laurence did look so very tired.

Laurence put a hand on his head—hair remained a strange and interesting thing—and said, “It would be a great help if you fetched fresh linens. They are in the closet downstairs, between the kitchen and the foyer.”

Junior had meant he could help with lifting the bed—it was surely very heavy for a human? But he could manage linens just as well.

On his way back up the stairs with the linens in his arms, (he had dropped one, and had to re-fold it, and it was more lopsided than the others in the stack now, much to his annoyance), he overheard Laurence and Tharkay speaking.

“Will, are you—”

“Thank you, I am alright.”

“There is no shame if things are moving too quick—”

“Pray, they are not.”

Silence. Junior could have stepped forward, but he waited a breath, curious what else they may say.

Laurence, again: “Thank you, Tenzing.”

“Think nothing of it, Will.”

Junior let out a breath. Yes. He was sorry to have left them, but heartened to see how they had cared for one another. He stepped back out. “I have the linens!”

It took three of them to place them on the bed, which was strange when it had taken only two to move it. But the bottom sheets were a tricky thing, and required you to stretch your arms out longer than Junior could manage them without creasing. “I wish I was not so small,” he said, desolatory. “It is convenient in some ways, but ever so frustrating in others.”

Tharkay tucked the next side of the sheet under the mattress all along the right side of the bed down to the foot. “You will grow larger in time.”

“I know. But it is frustrating to wait.”

“It shall seem gone in a blink,” Laurence said, tucking in the sheets on the left side. He paused, blinked. “Now, the duvet...”

So the bed was made, and dessert was enjoyed at last, a bread pudding gooey with custard. After that Junior found himself very full and sleepy indeed. He did not protest when Laurence announced it was time to retire. But he did say, “May we pick a book to read first?”

Laurence inhaled sharply, so loudly that Tharkay and Junior both looked at him in alarm. “Yes, of course, if you would enjoy it,” he said, to Junior's great relief. Tharkay still watched him intently, even though he was only speaking and not coughing or choking or anything dangerous.

“Tharkay, do you have anything very new in your library?” Junior asked. He would rather something new than an old favorite tonight, though he did miss the Principia Mathematica terribly. “I wasn't able to catch up on the latest at all in Edinburgh.” He felt this was a justified complaint. Days and days, he had been there, and he hadn't made up for a moment he had missed! He had tried to go into bookshops, and the proprietors continuously chased him out before he could read more than the titles.

“I have a few things, yes.”

And so it was not long at all before Junior was tucked in his new bed, Laurence perched on a chair set beside it, reading from a treatise on North American lizards lately written by a friend of Sir Edward Howe's. It was a fascinating work, well worth all of Junior's attention, but with all the will in the world he could not stop his eyes from slipping shut from time to time. He felt wonderful and warm, and Laurence's voice as he read was everything he remembered, everything he had missed in Edinburgh and before.

He realized he had not opened his eyes in quite some time.

There was a soft sound of paper. The book closing. A hand brushing his hair off his forehead. Junior tried to lean into it, to press his nose like he used to. It didn't quite work, but that was alright. Laurence said, “Sleep well,” and Junior did.

It was remarkable how fast the next few days passed.

Oh, Tharkay had always found ways to occupy himself, this past year, as the house and lands had recovered from the decade of his relatives' neglect. But after making the manor liveable, his attention had turned primarily to the concerns of tenants, leaving the rest of the house in a greater or lesser state of disrepair.

With a child in the house, this could not stand. It was time to close off the drafts, clear away debris, and sand off the sharp edges.

Junior, for his part, was preoccupied primarily with furnishing his own quarters, which was the North-east room: the one with the gaudy gold lion wallpaper Tharkay had never bothered to replace. He 'supervised' the adults moving-in his requested furniture. Wardrobe, writing desk, side-tables. From there he began roaming the halls for other additions, though he always asked most politely before taking something. Vanity mirror with a gilt silver frame; Turkish rug in vibrant blues and greens: orange and white vase; a globe from the library.

“It is wonderful,” he pronounced of this cluttered eyesore. “And just watch someone try to steal it.”

“No one will dare,” Laurence said, rubbing Junior's head.

If anyone is likely to steal it, it will be you, Tharkay thought, but did not say. 

Laurence had been more involved this past four days than he had been in months. He still ate little and spoke less, still stared out windows and slept too long. But he cared for the child the way he no longer cared for himself.

Oh, Tharkay truly truly hoped Junior was as innocent as he seemed.

He kept his eyes peeled. Not so much on the money boxes, which were securely locked and hidden, but on those expensive and attractive trinkets that could easily be stowed in a pocket or a bag. Rings, candle-holders, fine linen, and so forth. While Tharkay could never hope to watch every piece of china or silverware in the house, he had selected his servants wisely. Mrs. McCready in particular he knew from childhood to be impressively sharp-eyed and outspoken both, and would have certainly mentioned any such absences.

But everything stayed in their place. One day it seemed that a particularly fine letter opener had vanished, but it turned out one of the servants had merely taken it for polishing and left it forgotten underneath a washcloth.

More than objects, Tharkay kept his eyes on the papers, everything from The Morning Chronicle to Scots Magazine. It was the usual tedium of petty gossip and incalcitrant policy arguing, punctuated with political comics that ranged from the insightful to the insipid. But among all the roaring of taxation and railways and draconic businesses, there was not a single exposé on the recalcitrant heroic traitor of Britain— nor the mysterious Oriental Lord he had settled with.

Every day the boy’s innocence grew more likely, and Tharkay realized how ill equipped they were to raise a child. Would he not need playmates? Education?

He could at least begin helping with the latter.

“Junior,” he said one morning. “Would you come with me to the library?”

“Of course, Tharkay. Why?”

There was no reason to obfuscate. “I should like to assess your education, so I can determine a course of study for you.” The boy could read and write, if the second only shakily, but there was no knowing what else he may have already been taught. Left to Laurence, the child would learn precisely what penmanship and mathematics midshipmen must to pass the naval lieutenants’ exam. Tharkay rather suspected that would not suit.

“But I have been educated,” the boy said, confused.

Not surprising in the least that the boy had been tutored at some point, but… “You have experienced an interruption in your schooling,” Tharkay said, rather than insist he could not be as educated as he believed himself. “And there is always more to learn.”

The boy frowned but followed him without complaint.

“First,” Tharkay said when they reached the library, “I know you can read and write enough for letters. Could you read this page aloud for me?” He handed the child a botanical text, opened to a rather complex page.

“I suppose,” the child said, and the dubious note in his voice made Tharkay think momentarily that he couldn’t. But when he began his voice was clear, at a normal speaking speed, and he stumbled only over one or two of the words, despite the page being full of botanical jargon.

Educated, indeed.

Eying the child when he finished, Tharkay resolved on a different angle of investigation. “Do you speak any other languages?” he asked, in Chinese.

“Of course I do,” Junior said, in matching Mandarin. Not just Mandarin, but a particularly high dialect. In the same language he continued, “I must say, Tharkay, the fact you do not recall any of these things is more frustrating than I anticipated.”

“I am sure,” Tharkay acknowledged. He and Laurence had discussed whether they should challenge the child's false belief, and decided it was harmless enough for now. “But I appreciate you indulging me regardless. Do you recall at all where you learned?”

“On a ship, I believe? But I am not certain.”

More credence to their current leading theory that his family are—were—merchants, taking advantage of the newly established trade routes between Asia and Europe. “Your diction is very good. Can you speak any other languages?”

The boy tilted his head and chewed his lip. “I believe so. It's hard to—” His eyes scanned around the room, as if looking for inspiration. He seemed to find it. “Aha! Oui, je peux parler Français!”

“So you do,” Tharkay said, unwilling to be truly impressed yet, until he had ascertained if it was more than just a few turns of phrase.

It was not. Junior was able to hold a conversation in the language for well over ten minutes, not stumbling or fumbling for vocabulary, his accent better than Laurence's.

Tharkay prodded a little more, asking after Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean, which all seemed likely potential candidates, but Junior had no more than a few words in each. “I would love to learn,” he said. “It would be interesting to conduct a broader comparative analysis of the Romance and Asiatic languages.”

  It would be interesting to conduct a broader comparative analysis of the Romance and Asiatic languages. He so often acted more like a scholar from the Royal Society than a ten year old!

“I shall have to look into what tutors are available,” Tharkay said, but already they had spent longer than he had intended on language. “Let us move onto arithmetic.”

To say the child perked up would be an understatement. The mild frustration that had persisted from Tharkay “forgetting” what languages he spoke vanished in an instant. “Oh, yes,” said Junior. “Have you a slate?” And then quite on his own initiative found one, and chalk, and began scratching away.

Tharkay could not help but notice he seemed surer of himself in the chalk’s sharper strokes than he was with a pen and ink. When he was done he gave the slate to Tharkay who recognized, with a pang, the same simple Pythagorean exercise Temeraire had been so fond of.

He schooled his expression at the reminder, or tried to. It was a simple sum, in either case, and he wrote out the answer beneath and handed the slate back. “Though my intent was rather to ask you questions,” he pointed out.

Junior blinked at him. “Oh, alright,” he said easily.

But that interaction had rather set the tone, and only a few questions in Tharkay was forced to admit the child knew more of mathematics than he himself did. At the end of it, Tharkay just looked at the still rather pleased child, at a loss. Such an understanding seemed impossible in a boy of at most ten, and moreover revealed that whoever his family had been had put a great deal of effort into his learning.

Every further test Tharkay put to the boy supported this. He could point out every major city in Britain on a map, and do the same with most of the countries in Europe, and then even East Asia, though admittedly his grasp of the Americas was relatively shaky. (Relatively). More than that, he knew a fair amount about the nature of sea routes and trade, which led onto the subject of money, of which he keenly grasped many of the key financial principles. More evidence pointing to a background of a merchant family.

Though he knew he sounded ridiculous even in the privacy of his own mind, Tharkay was frankly somewhat relieved when he stumbled across areas the boy was not yet an expert in. He knew little of European history (“it is only a long list of kings”) and his Chinese history was only a general overview of the dynasties. He similarly knew little of Christianity, which frankly Tharkay cared little about himself; but he knew well what the average European would think of a foreigner who did not know at least some verse. And while he could sing his scales, he professed readily to never having learned any instruments, “though I would quite like to try one of those big brass ones.”

Tharkay thought about the tiny figure struggling to hold up a tuba, and had to draw upon all his experience not to smile.

“We will look into a tutor,” he said, for perhaps the fifth time today. He began, “How about the subject of—”

“Tharkay,” the boy interrupted. “Please, may I be excused? Only I must relieve myself.”

There was more than a little air of an excuse in the plea, but sitting up, Tharkay found to his surprise that it had turned twilight outdoors. He had entirely lost track of the time. “Of course,” he said, embarrassed. “And why not get yourself prepared for supper, while you are at it?”

That night, once the boy was in bed, Tharkay took a drink with Laurence in the parlour. “Junior is a prodigy,” he admitted. “It is quite beyond anything.”

Three weeks ago, if Tharkay had tried to start a legitimate conversation with Laurence after supper, he'd have received a few half-engaged replies, and then eventually nothing as Laurence either became distracted or excused himself to bed.

Now, he looked at Tharkay and raised his eyebrow, attentive.

“He speaks Mandarin and French fluently,” Tharkay began. “Can read as well as you or I. He knows a great deal about financial systems, and his grasp of mathematics might impress even a dragon. He has been taught, and more than that, he is clever enough to have learned. ”

Laurence looked into his drink. “Sometimes, I think—” and then abandoned the statement. “We will have to find him tutors.”

“Yes,” Tharkay agreed. “History and theology are his weakest subjects, so far as I can tell, but we cannot simply hire one who knows those well—I think he will sus out quickly any deficiencies in other subjects and run circles around them.” He remembered the slate problem. Well within his abilities, but he would have lost all authority to assess the boy if he had failed it.

“Hm,” Laurence said. “Perhaps I will write my mother for her recommendations.”

Laurence had kept up his correspondence, of course. Once—and Tharkay was not proud of this—he had taken a handful of his letters from his friend's desk and read them. They had been short, anemic things. The weather has been fair and I am keeping well and Tharkay sends his regards. Impersonal, bland. This from a man who had previously written small essays and called them letters.

And now he was offering to write to his mother ahead of schedule.

“I think that's a capital idea,” Tharkay said simply.

Conversation wandered. Progress on the new smithy being built in town; the new foals birthed next door; that morning’s crossword. Frankly, they could have discussed the drying of paint, and Tharkay would not have cared. They were having an idle conversation.

But inevitably, the conversation meandered back to the subject of the child they had brought into their home. “I cannot credit it,” Tharkay said, swilling the brandy around in his glass.

“Cannot credit what?”

“That any family would let a child like that go.” He watched the golden liquid churn. “Even if he is a little odd, to turn a child of such intelligence onto the streets?”

“Intelligence,” Laurence said. “And kindness.”

“Yes, yes,” Tharkay conceded. The boy was sweet, when he was not being impressively egotistical. “The cruelty of it. I simply cannot reconcile it.”

Laurence took a long sip of his own drink. “Perhaps it is not cruelty. Perhaps his family is out there, looking for him.”

Tharkay thought on that. “It is possible,” he said. He could think of a thousand ways the boy might have been parted from a loving family, even discounting the third possibility, that everyone who cared for him was dead. More importantly... “I do not think the local papers will be of any assistance if we wished to put the notice out we've found him.” For a myriad reasons. “But perhaps we ought to put the word out among the corps, on the off chance someone hears something.”

“Yes,” Laurence agreed, not looking at Tharkay. “Yes, that does seem best.”

Tharkay eyed him. He had said it as a sort of test, and did not know quite how to interpret this result, or the tone of Laurence's voice. He was left wondering. In the dark not only on the boy's origins and their plans for the future, but on whether Laurence could bear it if they had to let him go.

Chapter Text

“Letters, Admiral Granby,” said little Kitty Thomas, the cadet who had quite out of the blue declared herself Granby's assistant some three months ago.

She did have his letters, though he had not sent her for them, nor told anyone she could receive them on his behalf. Not for the first time, he wondered how she had convinced everyone—him included—that she had any sort of official position.

“Thank you, Thomas,” he said, for a moment entertaining the idea of resistance. But as he did every day, he caved without a fight, “Will you bring the logbook, please?”

“Aye aye, sir!” Kitty said, half serious, half flippant.

After four odd years, Granby had the trick of pinning the envelope to the table with his hook so his remaining hand could work the seal. (Kitty could have done it, but he had his pride.)

He flipped through. An official report from the Halifax covert; a message from his sister; a letter from Laurence.

Though he was ashamed to say it, Granby's heart sank at the sight.

It was a dismal thing, reading Will's letters these days. It was a more dismal thing to know there was not a damn thing he or anyone else could do about it.

So he put off reading it. He had other letters, and then a training session to run, and then a meeting with the builders, and so on, until it was two days before he got around to it.

What he read immediately made Granby feel worse for the guilt. 

We have found a young lad; or perhaps he found us. You may have heard the tale from Hollin, but he sent a letter addressed to me, asking for assistance…

It was an odd story, to be sure. But it was also the most detailed one Will had sent in near a year. That was more than enough to be heartening, even if Laurence's apparent concern that he had somehow sired an entire child and simply forgotten was as troubling as it was ludicrous. No matter. Granby could write back reassuring Will that no, he had not adopted any Chinese merchant children over the years. He could put out word through the corps for any such children who had gone missing.

“But I think I can do one better than that,” he muttered, and set off to speak to Iskierka.

Iskierka was as always more than willing to do anything that was not routine, though she was quieter when he spoke of it than he was used to. Even after a year she still did not like to let on how badly the loss had effected her. She had several times feigned a lack of care, or callousness. But he had caught her more than once late at night, practicing flaming targets at the very edge of her range, trying to extend her reach.

As if she believed she should have prevented it.

But whatever her reasons were for holding her tongue, they did not stop her competitive side completely, and she spent the two days before he had arranged his leave telling the other heavyweights that she would certainly do a better job while checking in on Laurence than Lily and Maximus had been doing…

The flight down, when it came, was short, and that was the very best Granby could say for it. It rained abysmally the entire way, and he'd been a fool who hadn't pitched a tent. Even with his oilskins and flying-coat, he was soaked to the bone by the time Tharkay's estate swam into view through the gloom.

He had to hammer furiously on the door to get anyone's attention over the rain, and Iskierka was this close to putting up a caterwaul to get their guest's attention. Even though he knew there was no one in the world who would be less fussed about her starts, he nonetheless was relieved when they caught the door.

“Lord, I'm sorry to call upon you unexpectedly in such miserable weather,” he said. Yes, Tharkay had issued an outstanding invitation; he was well aware that was easier to say when it wasn't pouring rain and who-knew-what-hour at night.

“Nonsense,” Tharkay said, easily, shrugging on his jacket.

Laurence was wrestling with his boots. “It is always good to see you, John,” and he sounded almost like his old self.

The three of them went back into the storm. There was no formal dragon shelter of any kind yet, but that didn't mean they'd just leave a guest out in the rain. The southern side of the building already formed something of an alcove, and Tharkay had had the foresight to install metallic hooks along the eaves there. Now they fetched a long oilskin tarpaulin, and with Iskierka's help as a mobile ladder, were able to hook it into place. From there they drove the other end into the muddy ground to pitch an inelegant, but serviceable, tent.

“What do you think, darling?” Granby shouted, turning around, but Iskierka wasn't listening.

She was half twisted around herself, neck and head out of sight, wing outstretched like she was sheltering something—

—Or someone. Granby, Tharkay, and Will crossed the distance and slipped under the wing. There they found the 18 ton Kazilik dragon, scourge of the French navy, arguing with a diminutive child no more than ten years and two.

“—mean to tell me you have not a word of Spanish?”

“No!” Iskierka said.

“Then let's hear it.”

“That is the word,” she said, smugly. “No. It is the same in both!”

“That does not count!” the boy growled, throwing up his arms.

“Junior!” Laurence said. “What are you doing out of bed?”

The child looked at Laurence like he was the absurd one for questioning a child running out into a storm to greet a heavyweight dragon. “We have guests!” he said. “I would not like to be rude.”

Tharkay recovered before Laurence did. “Be that as it may, it is rather cold and wet for proper hosting.”

‘Junior’s’ face set in mulish lines, but he gave over when Laurence gathered him in close, protectively. “Tharkay is right,” he said. “Iskierka, how does the tent suit?” 

Iskierka’s attention was still fixed on the boy, but she said, “Oh, yes it is fine” without any of her usual rancor for accommodations less than splendid. “Pray get inside, Granby, you look half-drowned.”

And so he was. Laurence took the child inside while Tharkay and Granby saw Iskierka settled and went to go inside themselves. Shedding their wet things in the foyer, Granby took the chance to extract answers.

“Laurence said he wrote you a letter?” For all Laurence’s most recent correspondence had been improved, it still had not informed him of everything.

“He did,” Tharkay said. “I thought it was some… malicious attempt to capitalize on his grief, at first. But it does not seem to be.”

“It would be perfect if it was,” Granby said quietly. “Is he—“ he did not know how to finish the question.

“Better, these past two weeks.” Tharkay was as reserved as ever, but Granby had known him for near a decade now, and saw him as someone trying very hard not to be hopeful. “But who knows how long this will last.”

Granby stepped forward, put a hand on his friend's shoulder. “It did not last, after the treason.”

“Yes, but—” That was different.

It was. It was, and they both knew it.

The front hall was not the place nor time for such conversations, and Iskierka had not been wrong that he was practically half-drowned. Tharkay waved him in and led him to his guest room, the same one he had stayed in before, “Though you'll forgive that it's missing a side table.”

As they went up the stairs, they heard Laurence's soft voice trailing down the hall; “... and so, gradually, over time, the water and ice both erode the rocky sediment, creating a pathway…”

Granby raised an eye at Tharkay. Tharkay merely shrugged.

“... And so it is hypothesized that over the course of eons, this process forms canyons. And I think we will leave it there,” Laurence said, with the soft thud of a book cover folding closed.

“Oh, must we?”

Softly as two grown men could, they padded quietly along the hall.

Laurence said, “We already read earlier this evening, and it is growing late.”

“It cannot be past ten,” the boy protested, and then, “Granby, is that you I hear?”

Ah, well. He'd never been the spy of the group, had he? Granby peered around the doorframe and raised his hand, which tended to be less frightening to children. “Hullo, yes. It's nice to meet you.”

Junior did an odd thing then; he pouted and said, “Oh, not you too! It is very inconvenient that none of you remember.”

There had at least been some mention of this in the letter, though the child extending it to Granby immediately was unexpected. “I am sorry to disappoint,” Granby tried, looking at Laurence for cues.

But it seemed that was right, because the boy said, “It is alright, since you have come anyway. Will you be staying very long? I think Laurence has not quite recovered from his illness.”

Laurence coughed a little and interrupted this path of conversation. “You may speak to Granby on whatever topic you like in the morning. Now, it is time for you to sleep.”

“But none of you will be sleeping.” Junior whined. “Not right away.”

“None of us are children,” Tharkay pointed out.

The boy sighed explosively. “Oh, it is so very inconvenient to be a child.”

Laurence brushed the boy’s hair out of his face. “It is not a state that lasts forever,” he promised, and stood.

They retreated from the room as a group, but no sooner had the door clicked softly than they all heard the sound of small feet racing across the floor.

“The window,” Laurence said, somewhere between exasperation and fondness. “Hopefully he will return to bed when he realizes he cannot see Iskierka.”

“He’s comfortable with dragons,” Granby observed, as he walked to his guest room.

“We thought he might, being Chinese,” Tharkay said, voice pitched soft so the child would not overhear. “But we had not had any occasion to test it. It is good to see that he has shown to advantage.”

“I do not suppose you happened to bring a spare harness that might fit him,” Laurence asked, as he opened the door to the room and waved Granby in. “Only I am certain he will want to fly, if Iskierka would be accommodating.”

“As if Iskierka would say no to any chance to show off,” Granby said, tossing his bag onto the desk. He took the opportunity to change out of his soaking clothes into something halfway presentable, and then met his friends back downstairs in the dining room. Tharkay or—no, Laurence—had apparently gone to the trouble of heating up some leftover soup for him. Granby wasn't about to say no, tearing into it with gusto and mopping up the dregs with the last of that morning's bread.

As he ate, he was regaled with stories about the boy. How he had studiously written down the name of all the estate's staff in a notebook to ensure he could commit them to memory. How he was a fiend for spices, the more ferocious the better, and would slather it on every meal except dessert. How he had very seriously announced one morning that it was high time he learned how to defend himself, and asked where the house's armory was.

“So what did you tell him?” Granby said, after just barely stopping the tea going up his nose.

“I said we did not have one, but he would begin with a staff before a sword in any case,” Tharkay said. “He pouted, but helped me find an appropriate one on the grounds, and has been as diligent with his sets as you could hope of any new recruit.”

Still chuckling, Granby tore another bite out of his bread. “Truly, Will, your ability to find strays is unprecedented. Your other kids will be jealous.”

Laurence blinked. “My other kids?”

“Oh, Sipho. Demane and Emily,” Granby said, waving his hand. “You know what I mean.”

Laurence gave him a comically aghast look at this. “They are not— I would not claim them as—” he sighed. “I suppose the situation with the boys at least is somewhat like.”

“Very like,” said Granby pointedly. “I am sure they will want to meet him; have you written?”

Laurence looked a little guilty. “Not yet. It has all happened so fast.”

Ah, so not quite to his former self yet, at least on that front. “I expect as soon as news reaches Dover you will have a whole formation up here.” He was not going to talk around it. “Lily and Maximus feel responsible for you, you know.”

Laurence looked down, a shade of the greyness creeping back in. “I am aware.”

Granby slapped his thigh to clear the gloom away and said, “Tharkay, what on earth was that wallpaper in his room? You cannot have picked it.”

That did the trick; the malaise lifted and they were off again on the story of the boy's first night in the house, continuing on until all three of them were yawning, Tharkay specifically and pointedly.

Granby was more than willing to take the hint. “Well, gentlemen, I am done in; I will see you in the morning—I'm sure I can contrive a harness for the boy, for flying.”

The prediction turned out to be right on the mark; they had hardly finished breakfast the next morning before Junior was out on the lawn, begging Iskierka for a flight.

As Tharkay and Granby worked together to re-size the midwingman harness they kept in Iskierka's packs, they could hear Laurence and Iskierka both lecturing the boy on safety. (And yes, hearing Iskierka do any such thing either added ten years to Granby's life or took them away, he was not sure yet which). “Always triple check the clasps are holding,” “Always have at least two carbineers attached to the harness,” “If something feels wrong, say so—”

“Yes, yes,” Junior said, “I know all this, you do not need to lecture me like I am a hatchling.”

Laurence did not bother questioning him on his experience, no doubt knowing it would be near pointless with his memory loss. “It is always good for a reminder.”

For someone who claimed to have experience in the air, he was clumsy as anything in harness. He struggled to climb, though he insisted on being allowed to do it himself, and did not have the pattern of unlatch-move-relatch which training turned into second nature for aviators. But he had no fear, none at all, clambering right to pride of place at Iskierka's neck.

“Oh, wait, I apologize,” Junior said, looking back. “This is your place, Granby.”

Granby raised his hand to brush it aside, only Iskierka beat him to it. “As long as you do not try to claim yourself as my captain, I see nothing wrong with you sitting there, just this once,” she said. “Here, grab onto the spike at the base, that will help you lean out further.”

That made Will look distinctly green, but he caught himself before stopping the boy. Emily Roland could not have been that much older than this lad when she was doing the same, and he knew it.

Iskierka gave three mighty beats of her wings. “All lies well!” she cried, and with a hoot from the boy, they were in the air.

She was in fine form that day, as fine fine as anything, twisting and twirling and giving a good show. Granby's heart was light, made lighter by Junior and Laurence's laughter both, and for a glorious hour, things seemed near set to rights.

But of course it could not last. Junior became oddly subdued when they landed, quiet. He thanked Iskierka politely, and let himself be helped off her back, but there was a sadness he didn't—or couldn't—hide.

It was Laurence who asked him if he was alright, with a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Oh,” said Junior, examining his own hands, flexing his fingers oddly, first splaying them out wide and then folding them in. “Yes, I am alright. Only I wish we could go flying all the time: whenever we liked. Iskierka has been most uncommonly obliging, but she will not stay here, and I cannot be asking her all the time.”

Granby had seen Laurence slashed, battered, and concussed. Stabbed, more than once. The expression on his face now told of a pain outstripping them all. It made him want to run back to Iskierka and hide beneath her wings. Let her tell him she was invincible and nothing would ever touch her.

“Yes,” Laurence said, voice drained of all emotion. “I am sorry we cannot.”

The boy looked up at him, eyes widening. “No, I do not mean—of course it is not your fault, Laurence.”

But it was. Not in reality, of course, but Granby knew Laurence believed it so.

Laurence squeezed the boy's shoulders again and then said, stilted, “Pray, excuse me,” and without even the slightest fiction of an excuse was gone.

“Laurence!” Junior cried, and would have gone after him if Tharkay hadn't caught him.

“Would you ask Iskierka her dinner preferences, please, Junior?”

“But Laurence—”

“Will need a moment alone.” Tharkay said, firm. “I am sure all will be well by dinner.”

The boy bit his lip, but went to do as he was told.

“The lad has not mentioned Temeraire,” Tharkay said, the moment the child was out of earshot. “Not once. He must know, of course, but that was the closest he has come to saying so.”

“Ah.”

The sky had been a very pale blue that day, so pale a blue it was nearly white. Temeraire's body had laid beneath it like a shadow.

Laurence's body had looked so small in comparison.

“Will,” Granby had said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Laurence had not responded.

“Will,” Granby had said again.

Still, Laurence had not responded.

Granby had tried a third time. “You have been out here all night. You need to come in. Warm up. Eat something, drink something.”

“I cannot,” Laurence had managed, in a voice so hoarse it was practically unintelligible.

“You can. We will help you.”

Laurence made a terrible noise; a sob suffocated in its cradle.

Granby had waited, hand still on his shoulder. Eventually Will had spoke. “The birds. The birds will get at him. I cannot—I cannot—”

Iskierka had spoken, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. “The birds will not,” she had said. “I shall keep them away. I promise.”

She had kept her promise, and kept her vigil. Temeraire's body had remained untouched.

But not even a Kazilik could keep decay at bay forever. She, Ning, and Eroica had dug for hours to make a grave sufficiently deep.

“Wait,” Laurence had said, before his dragon's body was to be pushed in, with as much dignity as could be managed. He had procured a knife. He had cut, and cut, and cut. Temeraire's blood had stopped flowing days before, but it was still wet enough to stain Laurence's hands. He had clutched the dark piece of hide to his chest. “Very well,” he had said at last, stepping away, tears streaming down his face.

Granby had not seen the piece of hide since. He was not certain what, precisely, Laurence had done with it. But he surely still had it; was most likely holding it right this moment.

“You will need to speak to the boy soon, I think,” Granby said to Tharkay. “Clearly he knows something of grief. But he needs a map to guide him.”

Tharkay's eyes fluttered closed briefly. “I know,” he said. He glanced over, to where Junior was in conversation with Iskierka, pointing with some enthusiasm at the trees. “I know. I simply do not know how to begin.”

Laurence was not the only one grieving.

They spent the rest of the day at leisure. Junior gave a demonstration of his rudimentary fencing skills. Iskierka and Junior played tik-tac-toe on the ground, with claw and stick respectively, but soon got bored, and set off to attempt to create a Go board sized for a dragon. Granby and Tharkay half-supervised while reading the paper and chatting. More than once Granby rose to go find Laurence, but Tharkay urged him to give the man space.

And sure enough, he reappeared shortly before supper. If he was not particularly conversational, he managed to smile.

After supper, Granby decided it was time to play his trump card. “I hope you won't see it as overstepping,” he said, smiling in a way that made it clear he didn't much care if they did. “But a bunch of us at the covert put our heads together and got some gifts for you, lad.”

Like most children, Junior focused like a hound on the scent of the word “gifts,” ceasing the occasional worried looks he'd been giving Laurence and focusing all his attention on Granby. “What sort of gifts?”

“Well, you will just have to come see, won't you?”

Granby would not have been able to delay a single second after that, even if he wanted to. Junior was off like a shot after him, occasionally crowding in close as if he could make Granby walk faster thereby.

But even if he had, it would not have shortened the trip by much: the packages were in Granby's rooms, but he'd get an earful from Iskierka if she could not see the gifts delivered, and so it was with Junior near vibrating free of his skin behind him that Granby retrieved them and lead their little procession back outside, Laurence and Tharkay having followed at a much more sedate pace.

The first gift was practical: a leather flying coat which had been owned by three runners already and was only still functional owing to some truly ingenious repairs. This, the boy appreciated, but he did not muster any enthusiasm until Laurence nudged him.

The next gift was better; Granby had asked Kitty what sort of sweets she liked best, and procured a supply.

Granby had also procured a fine fountain pen—being rich with prize money certainly had its benefits—while Captain Hollin had contributed a sheet of fine quality parchment, and Captain Ferris a lovely wax seal kit. This collection delighted the boy, who declared how much easier it would make it for him to write to all of his friends.

“Now have him unwrap my gift,” Iskierka crowed.

It took a lot of effort for Granby's expression not to slip. He may not have succeeded. Thankfully, Junior was too busy tearing into the paper wrapping to notice.

“Oh my goodness,” he breathed, as he drew it out.

It was an aviator uniform, of a sort. The trousers were green velvet, with a jacket to match. The buttons were gold set with sapphires. There were embroidered patterns of flames upon the lapels, accentuated with tiny rubies at the very center of each individual design.

Iskierka had gotten it into her head last spring that if she could not deck Granby out in all her jewels, it would be nearly as fine to have her crew as a whole so dressed. Through a group effort, they had convinced her otherwise; it would be too expensive to dress everyone; the gems were likely to get lost on flights; it would be too easy for someone to steal. It was that last one which had convinced her more than any, and so the only lasting evidence of the endeavor which remained was the single example uniform she'd had commissioned for Midwingman Tanner.

In short, it was a sin against fashion.

Junior said, “This is one of the most splendid outfits I have seen.” His eyes narrowed at Iskierka. “You really intend to give this away? To me?”

“Of course! Laurence is very dear to me, and you are very dear to Laurence, as his egg,” Iskierka said.

The boy's eyes remained narrowed for a moment, but then his face split open in a smile and he announced, “I must put it on immediately!” and ran inside to do just that.

Granby looked over at Laurence and immediately found himself doubled over in wheezing fits of uncontrollable laughter. His friend's expression had frozen in a kind of open horror, completely disproportionate to the situation.

“What is so funny, Granby?” Iskierka demanded. “It is a very lovely gift, and very kind of me to part with it!” 

“Oh I know, my dear,” Granby managed, gasping for breath. “Very kind of you indeed.”

Tharkay's face had been impassive, but every time he looked at Laurence his mouth twitched, and he said to Iskierka, “I think he is simply surprised at the strength of the reaction.” Carefully avoiding saying whose reaction.

Laurence had recovered some; faintly pink, he said, “We must thank you, Iskierka, he seems...” His voice faltered. “...delighted.”

The boy was at that. He came tearing back outside, buttons more than half undone still, to show off how—in Iskierka's terms—very fine he looked. Poor Laurence had to chase him down to do the rest of the buttons up before the child's enthusiasm caused him to shed any pieces.

Said enthusiasm continued well through the next few games of cards they played (his hands were too small to hold a full hand, and so Granby lent him one of his wooden card holders), past dessert, and well to his bedtime, where he was reluctant to even change out of it.

“The gemstones will likely poke you if you try to sleep in it,” Granby said, with experience.

“And there is a great likelihood they might get torn off if you churn in your sleep,” Tharkay said.

“I do not churn in my sleep,” Junior grumbled, but this argument was apparently convincing, because bidding goodnight, he ran off to get himself situated.

Will rose to follow not long after, but not before first pulling Granby aside. “John,” he said, in the crook of the stairs which led to the guest bedrooms. “The gifts were all lovely, thank you very much. But—” His face twisted. “You, all of you, needn't have—”

“We know we needn't. We wanted to.”

“But—”

“Oh, don't try getting out of that outfit on me, Will.”

As always, Will's handsome face went comically horrified at even the suggestion he had meant such rudeness. “I did not mean—of course, if Junior is happy, that is all that matters, but I do not want any of you feeling obligated—”

“Obligation does not factor into it at all,” Granby said, honestly. He crossed his arms. “Growing up, I don't think I had a stitch of clothing which hadn't first belonged to an older brother or cousin. It wasn't so bad after I joined the corps, and all of us had the same uniform, but there was other ways to tell.” Granby shrugged.

“I can imagine. I hope no one was overly cruel to you.”

“Oh, just boys being boys, never you mind,” Granby reassured him. “And I know you and Tenzing will be taking good care of the lad, of course. But I figured he deserved some things of his own.”

It was all true, of course. But it hid the deeper truth, which was: there was not any gift John could give Will direct that he would accept, or that would cheer him.

Whether Will put that truth together or not, he ceased his protestations, and bade Granby a goodnight that was no less than he might've given before.

The next morning marked the last day Granby could avoid his duties, at least for a while. He may have to take a proper, longer leave soon, but that would require better planning than simply leaving the nearest senior captain in charge at Loch Laggan. He said as much over breakfast, and told Junior that he might ask Iskierka for another flight, if he didn't encourage her to tire herself out before that afternoon's return trip. He had noticed the boy was a bit clumsy on his feet and often needed help from Laurence for dexterous tasks, but the incentive of a flight had him moving with all the speed of a trained sportsman, if none of the grace.

There was a crash in the hallway seconds after the child ran out that made Tharkay grimace. “I am going to need to move that coat stand,” he said.

Laurence and Tharkay both begged off the flight—Laurence to write letters for Granby to bring back to the covert with him, Tharkay to do some business with running the estate—which left Granby alone to join Junior and Iskierka in the air.

He remained as excited as he had been the previous day, but without the distraction of the other two men, Granby noticed something new: a certain sort of serene bliss on the child's face when he stood on Iskierka's back with the wind in his hair. He even spread his arms like he was imagining flying himself. “Oh, I have missed this terribly,” he said.

“You will have to visit,” Iskierka said. “I am sure there are many dragons who would be willing to take you flying, though none will be as fast as me.”

“You are such a braggart,” Junior said, though without heat, eyes closed as he felt the wind against his face.

Iskierka let out a puff of flame to create an updraft, carrying herself higher into the air. “Why shouldn't I be, if I have earned it?”

The easy camaraderie brought a smile to Granby's face as he watched them bicker. He said, “Junior, have you given any thought to whether you might want to join the aerial corps?” He was clumsy, yes, but there was time yet to train the boy out of it, and surely it was not something Laurence could object to. “I think you would be well suited.”

“Oh, I have already served in the corps.”

“Have you?” Granby said, amused.

“Oh yes. I enjoyed it for the most part. I met many good friends and visited many interesting places, and the fighting was grand.” Though at this last, the boy shuddered, and grabbed at his chest. “Only I did not enjoy the admiralty ordering us around so much.”

Granby scratched his chin. That last bit did not seem much like a child expected fantasies of sword fights and dragon-back duels. Perhaps he had overheard Laurence and Tharkay talking.

“What do you think you would like to do when you are of age, then?” Granby asked.

“Oh, I would very much like to serve in parliament.”

“Parliament? Like politics? That sounds dreadfully boring,” said Iskierka, twisting her head back.

Frankly, Granby felt much the same; being an admiral had too much of politics for his taste. He also was not sure that anyone would allow this orphan of uncertain but certainly oriental origins into those high halls. But he was not going to be the one to dampen the boy's enthusiasm, and the topic carried them for a good fifteen minutes, until Junior was distracted by a particularly cow-shaped cloud.

Somehow, despite Iskierka being on her best behaviour, Junior managed to get himself all over soot, not much helped by him managing to slip on his way dismounting into a mud puddle. He was sent back to the house to bathe, which gave Granby a few minutes alone with his dragon, re-arranging Iskierka's packs and dutifully scratching her underneath the harness as directed.

As he worked at some of the scales near her shoulders, she said, almost idly, “I suppose the Tswana must have been right after all, then.”

“Pardon?” Granby said, surprised by the non-sequitur.

“The Tswana. You recall, in Brazil, they told us their best men and women get re-born to be dragons. And I asked you about it, and you said it was just because of what they were told in the egg.”

“Yes, no, I remember. But why are you-?”

“Because,” Iskierka said, snorting with flames, “if a dragon can become a man, then it stands to reason the reverse must be true also.”

Now thoroughly confused, Granby said, “Dear heart, what are you on about?”

“Why, is it not obvious? The boy is Temeraire, of course. It is odd that they are calling him something else, but I suppose it is only appropriate that a human boy have a human name.” She paused as if actually taking a moment to think about it and added, “I wonder how he arranged it.”

Granby was momentarily speechless. Why she had taken such a flight of fancy, he couldn’t know, but— “Lord, you have not said a word of this to Will, have you?”

“No, I haven’t—should I have? But surely he knows.”

Granby breathed a sigh of relief. “No, and you can’t—you mustn’t—speak of it to him.”

“Well, if he does not know—”

“Iskierka,” Granby said, very firmly. He put a hand on her side to punctuate his seriousness. “You cannot say anything of the sort. It will break his heart.”

She paused. “Well, it is not his fault Temeraire came back as a boy, instead of a dragon.”

Well, if he could not dissuade her from the idea, at least he could stop her speaking. “Yes, but he will not feel that way.”

She subsided. “Oh, very well then. But I think it is very silly, and I am sure everyone else will agree.”

Granby sent up a silent prayer. “You are not to go spreading this around to any of the others, either.” No officer of any sense would put any credence in it, but if it gained any traction among the dragons, it would only be a matter of time before it got back to Laurence.

Iskierka huffed. “Oh, what nonsense.”

“I mean it, Iskierka.”

She knew that tone now, and respected it. But from the lashing of her tail, she was not happy. “Why do we not just ask him, and then he can tell us direct? That seems as though it would save a great deal of trouble.”

And perhaps the boy would blink in confusion, or laugh in the dragon's face, and all would be well.

But Junior was an imaginative lad, much of his past a blank slate. He could equally seize upon the idea, come to believe it. Surely the only thing worse than hearing it from Iskierka would be for Will to hear it directly from the lad's mouth.

Granby beckoned his dragon to look directly at him. “Darling, pray, listen. I have not interfered with your eggs, would never presume to have. In the same way, I need you to trust me when I say human children are delicate. Temeraire or not, you want what is best for the boy, yes?”

She shuffled her wings and looked away, an action that could not be more obvious with her swinging her entire head, but she finally admitted, “Yes.”

Granby let the tension out of his shoulders, breathing his relief. He patted her hide firmly. “Thank you, dearest.”

She brought her head back around to nose at him. “I still think it’s silly,” she said mulishly. “But if you think it is best I will not tell anyone. Though I am sure Lily and Maximus will see for themselves the moment they meet him.”

If Lily and Maximus struck upon the same fancy, that would be Harcourt and Berkeley’s problem, and none of Granby’s. “Perhaps,” was all he said before the house door opened and all three current residents came out, Junior at a run.

“Are you sure you cannot stay any longer, Granby?” he asked, as Laurence and Tharkay came up at a slower pace.

“I’ve my own duties to attend, lad,” Granby replied.

Laurence had a stack of letters, visibly thicker than they had been for a year. At Granby’s indication he stowed them himself, in one of the bags laid out before Iskierka, soon to be loaded.

“Thank you,” Laurence said, in something of an undertone, as he pulled Granby in for a hug, fiercer than perhaps warranted. “Truly.”

“Any time,” Granby said, putting some energy into his own squeeze.

Tharkay was making his own goodbyes along with Junior, who was telling Iskierka, “Do not burn down anything.”

“Nothing I am not supposed to,” she answered primly, snout in the air. It was most likely not even half a lie, these days. “You learn how to actually use your legs.” The boy snorted, but he gave her foreleg a sort of thump-pat.

Turning to Granby, Junior said, “It has been very good to see you Granby. I shall miss you.” And then gave him a waist-high hug. Lord, Granby could see why Will had fallen so swiftly for the boy.

“Perhaps one day you can visit us,” Granby promised. “And we can always write.” And with that, he climbed off, and with some final waves, the pair of them were off.

Chapter Text

Things were quiet with Iskierka and Granby gone, but that did not mean they were not busy in their own way.

Junior spent much of his time in the library, practicing his penmanship—ten fingers were more dexterous than a single tail, or a scratching claw—and reading whatever book took his fancy—it was so convenient to be able to see even the smallest printed text. Tutors began to respond to the letters Laurence had sent, and they reviewed their responses together, Junior weighing in on which ones sounded most promising.

They also took a day trip into Edinburgh to run some errands, including a tailor, to finally have a proper new wardrobe made. Junior had thought he would enjoy it—and indeed, he did, at least the many fine fabrics and the delicious lunch in a quaint restaurant afterwards.

But it had been strangely unpleasant, walking along the streets where previously he had needed to scrounge for scraps of food and shelter. It was not helped by the first gusts of November snow sending a shiver down his spine.

Junior did not want to bother Laurence with it, but when after the tailor's they climbed into the carriage and out of the snow and wind he could not help his sigh.

Laurence and Tharkay both looked at him immediately. “Is something the matter?” Laurence asked.

Junior felt his face heat. “Oh no, I am perfectly well.”

Laurence frowned at him. “You have been quieter.”

Junior would have liked to have a tail to twitch. “I do not like being cold, that is all. Especially not—here.”

“It has been colder than anticipated today,” Tharkay observed, and when Junior looked over he saw Tharkay flexing his hands oddly. “I think we shall all be glad when we are home again. Though we've one more errand to run, first.”

Laurence had been watching Tharkay's hands, an expression of realization on his face, and he startled a bit at the last words. “Of course,” he said. “I had forgotten.”

When Junior made an inquiring sound, Laurence said, “I must meet with an agent of Rothschild's bank concerning the charitable applications of some of—of some prize money, from the war.”

“Charitable applications?” Junior asked, and then, realizing, “You are not giving treasure away!?”

“Yes,” Laurence said, with a strange note in his voice. “I am.”

Unable to fully articulate his horror, Junior began, “But you cannot—”

“I can.”

They had all come to a full stop by then. Laurence's eyes had taken on a coolness like the driving wind. “The treasure was never mine. It was earned by T—by a dear comrade of mine. It belonged to him, and so it goes to where he would have wanted it, which is the promotion of draconic rights.”

“Well, yes.” Junior blinked. “Of course if the capital had to go anywhere, that is a fine a use as any. But since it is my treasure, and I am back now, I would like it to remain mine so I can choose to do with it as I wish.”

Only that last sentence never came out. It became lodged in his throat, like the clinging smoke of a fire, and the bargain he had struck refused to dislodge it.

That was awful enough, but Laurence's expression was perhaps worse. Tharkay said, “Child, this is not for you to weigh upon.”

“But it is! It is—” my treasure, it belongs to me.

“It is not your money,” Tharkay reiterated. “You have no say in it.”

And Junior felt it, a change, from his skin through his bones to something deeper. Like something slipping away, water off scales, sand through fingers. Something lost.

Tharkay continued, “I would recommend apologizing to Laurence for your overstep.”

Moments before, Junior could have sworn he had some right to that treasure. Now he could not possibly imagine what had convinced him of such a thing. A month ago, less, he had had nothing, not even ten shillings to his name. What made him think he could have any say over how a gentleman such as Laurence used his treasure?

Voice terribly small, Junior said, “I am sorry, Laurence.”

“You are forgiven, my—dear child.” Laurence said, voice sounding stained.

But they went the rest of the way in silence.

Tharkay was terribly glad when they reached the house, and gladder still when Miss Engleford met them just inside the door with directions that a fire had been set in the drawing room and she would have tea for them shortly—tea, and chocolate for Junior, who had professed to enjoy tea right up until he tried it without copious amounts of milk for the first time and had reflexively spat his mouthful out.

“My thanks,” Tharkay told her, exhausted. The carriage ride had been cold, and the rattling had sent icy shocks of pain up from his hands and into his wrists and shoulders. He had chosen silence over being short with Laurence or Junior, and unfortunately for all they had been silent as well, Laurence with grief and Junior with guilt and upset, so there had been no distraction from the pain.

He could not do his exercises yet, but simply warming his chilled and stiffened fingers before the fire—or on a warm cup of tea—would be the next best thing.

And help it did, though of course it led to the usual trade-off; there was little else one could do holding hot tea. Could not read, or whittle, or sew, or play a game, though of course no one was in the mood for any cards or the like tonight. Tharkay was left with little to do but stare into the fire.

After an hour, perhaps less, Junior rose and excused himself to bed. That roused Laurence, who went to follow so they could read.

“I think not tonight,” Junior said. “I am awfully tired. Perhaps tomorrow.” And so with a few quiet good nights exchanged, the boy retired.

The fire crackled in the hearth.

Tharay's cup was near-empty now, and what little tea remained had long grown cold. He could brew some more, but the journey to the kitchen seemed unreasonably long at this hour, and frankly he did not need any more so late. He could move closer to the fire, but that too felt like too much effort. Closing his eyes, he pulled the fingers of his right hand back with the aid of his left, and cracked them.

There was an answering sound of shifting leather from the other side of the room.

Laurence said, “Tenzing?”

Not opening his eyes, Tharkay said, “Yes?”

“May I help you?”

After Tharkay had first been recovered from that dungeon in China, Laurence had been by his side very near every night. When Tharkay's fingers had healed well enough to be removed from the splint, Laurence had watched carefully as the physician attended him, and asked to be guided through the sequence of massages and stretches. He had provided that aid nightly as the legion had flown across China into Russia; he had provided it again when Tharkay had returned in search of Ning's egg, at least until it had grown too cold to dare shed gloves; and he had renewed it again in their escape from France.

He had not offered once, since the war's end.

Tharkay said, “I would not impose.” He cracked the knuckles of his left hand.

The sound nearly covered Laurence's wince. “There would be no imposition.”

Tharkay breathed. Why now? he wanted to demand. Though of course he knew why now.

“Very well,” he said, and let Laurence take his hands.

The exercises were invariably painful, but at least they were easier when he did not have to do all the manipulations with his equally pained other hand.

And the warmth of another person did not hurt.

“I have not been the friend you deserve,” Laurence said quietly, as they finished the first set.

“You have noticed,” Tharkay said, pain making him acerbic where he might not otherwise have been.

Laurence bowed his head at the rebuke, but continued doggedly onward, dropping one hand to work on the fingers of the other with both of his. “I apologize,” he said.

“I apologize,” Will said, like a crushed thing. There was nothing remaining of the life Tharkay had coaxed to the surface just minutes before. “I do not know what I was—“

Tharkay closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the pillows, cursing himself for a fool. He should have known. “Pray, do not speak on it. Nothing need change.”

“I wish you would stop apologizing.”

Laurence stopped for a long moment, his fingers dug into Tharkay's wrist. “Pardon?”

“It is near all you do, this past year. Apologize for the poor conversation; for not hearing what someone says; for the unfinished dinners.” For his death, as if you speared him yourself.

“I am—” Will began, then cut himself off. He grimaced. “I am not sure what else to do.”

“Do better.”

The crackling fire, low breathing, and the aching contortion of tendons and muscles. Will said, “I know. I am trying.”

“I know,” Tharkay echoed. “For him.”

Tharkay had not intended it in the sense of but not for me. He could be a petty man by turns, certainly, but not to children, or so he hoped.

But perhaps something leaked out regardless, because Will said, “Tenzing.”

Damn him. Tharkay tried to tug his hand back, but Will would not relinquish it.

“You must excuse me,” he tried.

“No.” Will said. “No, you are right. I have been trying for him, when I should have—” he visibly swallowed a ‘forgive me’, and instead said, “I cannot change how I have been, but I will try not to—” He stopped himself again. “No. I will not take your efforts on my behalf for granted again.”

That was a promise, a real promise, which Will did not make—or break—lightly. “I shall hold you to that,” Tharkay promised in return. He refused to see Laurence slip away into darkness again, and he refused to forever chase a man who would not recognize a helping hand.

Will had collected both his hands again, digging his thumbs into Tharkay's palms, spreading the ache in circles and then draining it out.

“I will not apologize again. Instead, I will thank you. I do not know what I would have done this past year, had you not opened your home to me.”

“You would have found something, I am sure. Your family, for a start.”

“My family?” Now Laurence began to take each finger in turn, beginning with the thumb, and working his way up it. “Yes, they would have given me a bed.” With a final squeeze, he started on the index finger. “But half of them still resent me for my treason, and who can blame them, when they had to bear no small part of the consequences?” His calloused fingertips worked out the pain that burned in Tharkay's joint. “They had cause to be relieved by the fall of the dragon who inspired it.” There Laurence's voice turned to that bitterness which had been one of its most persistent qualities this past year, but it did not stop him from moving onto the next finger. “I could have gone back to the corps; they would have sheltered me for a time.” Laurence had found that old familiar rhythm now, and there was a deftness to each movement. “But I had my reasons for leaving the service, ones which would have been just as true had Temeraire lived. That would have been a cowardly retreat.” There was a soft crack as Laurence worked something out of the fourth digit. “I could have gone to Sydney, perhaps, or Peking.” A sigh, as Laurence moved onto the final finger. “But that would have been merely living with a ghost.”

Throughout all of this, Tharkay had not been able to bear looking at his friend's face, and watched their entwined hands. He said, “You have been thinking on this.”

“Yes,” Laurence breathed, as he released Tharkay's right hand and gathered up the left. “It would occur to me, how poor a housemate I have been. It is shameful, but of course, I have wondered what I would do if you turned me out.”

“I would never.”

“I know.” Laurence's head was bowed. “In the light of day, I know.”

There was nothing to be said to that. There was merely silence as Laurence, crouched on his knees, continued to work the pain out of Tharkay's ill-used hands.

The boy’s initial assessment had not been the last time Tharkay and Junior shared an afternoon of academic pursuits.

At first the overlap was almost incidental; Junior was always coming in and out for one book or another and Tharkay, remembering that they had not yet acquired tutors, felt it best to inquire after what the boy was reading in order to form a better picture of the his education, which might be relayed to those gentlemen when they were at last hired.

Soon enough, however, those inquiries turned into discussions, and the discussions into shared study. Tharkay could not hope to match the boy on mathematics, and did not care to try, but all else was open to them, and even the most complex examination of cartography, natural philosophy, or history was a welcome relief from the tedium of forcing the estate into some sort of working order.

They ranged broadly, but Tharkay knew himself well enough that it did not come as a surprise that they returned most often to languages. He had a vested interest in maintaining his own abilities, and formal exercises could hardly maintain a level skill which must appear natural. Even what little French or Chinese he might exchange with Will had hardly been sufficient before Junior’s entry into their lives.

Now the situation was quite reversed; Junior met Tharkay’s efforts and easily exceeded them. He found himself continuously struggling to parse the poetic mandarin of the imperial court and the impenetrable latin of academic treatises.

Like the flexing of a muscle long gone stiff, it both soothed and ached to have such a partner. Tharkay could not help but recall who he had first pictured sharing such conversations with, when he had won his birthright at last. From the very first day of acquaintance in Macau, he had relished having a friend who would challenge him on his knowledge, not because he was presumed to be inferior in his person, but because the knowledge itself was worth pursuing.

He could not seem to get enough of it now.

On more than one evening they went down to supper still speaking—even arguing—in French or Mandarin, continued doing so through the meal (to Laurence’s bafflement) and then retired to the drawing room or study for another hour. Or two hours, or three, until quite inevitably one night Tharkay looked up from the notebook he was consulting on some finer point to see Junior sagging against the desk, eyes closed.

Tharkay paused at once, rueful. He hadn’t a precise idea of the time, but it was at least well past the hour that would render Junior snappish and easy to displease come morning. He may not be the ideal steward of a child by anyone’s standards, but surely even he should be able to manage sending a charge to bed before the hour reached eleven?

Junior yawned hugely. “‘m I right?” he mumbled.

“What you are is asleep on your feet,” Tharkay said quietly, slipping a ribbon into the notebook to mark his place.

“Am not,” Junior protested.

Tharkay circled the desk, meaning to lightly nudge the boy into motion, but the light touch on the boy’s arm seemed to do little.

“Junior,” he said, trying again, but where this second attempt produced results, they were not as expected. Instead, it only served to trigger a slow-motion snare; the boy swayed away and then back, leaned into him, and wrapped both arms around Tharkay’s middle, so that he resembled nothing more than the young koala-bear Tharkay had once witnessed clinging to its mother outside Sydney, complete with his face pressed into Tharkay’s stomach.

Tharkay had been less startled by attempted stabbings than by this. The boy was affectionate in this way with Laurence, but Tharkay was not made for that sort of nurturing, and up to this point the child had seemed aware.

He realized his hands were hovering awkwardly, and he rested them on the boy’s shoulders. “You are no closer to your bed,” he observed.

Luckily, this prompted a loosening of the embrace, Junior nodding sleepily as he went to the door. Tharkay trailed him, vaguely concerned that he would fall asleep in the hallway without ever making it to his room, but he needn’t have worried. The child went up the stairs with only a little over-reliance on the bannister for support, and made it into his room without incident.

Tharkay would have left then, but Junior stopped him by wrapping a small hand around his wrist. “Will you stay? It’s cold.”

There was a slight chill. “I’ll build up the fire,” Tharkay said.

Junior shook his head and did not release his hold.

Tharkay was at a loss. The closest he had been with any children of similar age were the trip across the Taklamakan with Emily Roland, and later crossing Australia in company with Sipho. Neither had ever made such requests.

Somehow, extricating himself seemed impossible. Where was Laurence when one needed his easy way with children?

“I miss having my friends all together,” Junior confessed. “Blankets are very nice, but there is nothing for warmth like it.”

“I see,” said Tharkay, not seeing at all.

The boy tugged, and Tharkay had no choice but to yield to it, following Junior to the bed and—luckily—installing himself in the nearby chair as the boy released his hand to shed his waistcoat and crawl beneath the covers.

But the small hand flailed out a moment later and caught him again, and Tharkay found himself drawn very close, almost leaning over.

“Please stay.”

With a stroke of inspiration, Tharkay used his free hand to push wisps of hair out of Junior’s face. The texture was more like his own than he had grown used to, living permanently in Britain. “Until you fall asleep,” he bargained.

“Mmm, very well.”

Like as not, the child was asleep before he had even finished the agreement. Tharkay stayed a quarter-hour anyway.

The next day they began a project which—as Tharkay said—had been sadly neglected for the better part of a year.

“I am afraid I hadn’t the time for it when I first took possession of the house,” he said, heaving another massive chest down from the attic. “And then it was not a priority.” He set the chest down with a thump.

“I am sure it will go very quickly, with three of us,” Junior said bravely. He wanted very badly to help, to make up for upsetting Laurence and Tharkay when they last spoke of treasure.

“At least the company can only improve the task,” Tharkay assured. “There are more, but we can start with these,” he said, meaning the half-dozen containers of varying size laid out before them. “Anything too moth-eaten to be given away, put in the basket for rags.”

“Is it mostly clothes then?” Laurence asked.

“I haven't the faintest idea,” Tharkay replied, and opened the first chest.

This one was mostly clothes. Dresses more than twenty years out of fashion, or so Laurence said. “Though the fabric is fine enough. Perhaps Mrs. Meryton can do something with them.” So the dresses were set aside, and they moved on with their sorting, sometimes all examining the same item, sometimes sorting individually. Rubbish, rag. Keep, gift. Return to storage. Inquire after with the previous housekeeper. They even found a pair of boots that would fit Junior, though Tharkay couldn’t tell if they were from his own childhood or someone else's.

Sometimes Junior disagreed with Laurence and Tharkay about what ought to be done with an item. He did not at all see what should make a scarf “tacky” or the cigar box with gold leaf flaking off it “unsalvageable.” Many of these items ended up in a separate category, “For Junior”, which at the end of the day Laurence helped carry in a box to Junior's room, where he delighted in choosing just the right spot to put them on display, or tuck them away safe in a drawer.

Laurence watched him for a long time, leaning in the doorway. Eventually he commented, “Soon it will look like a proper dragon's hoard,” which pleased Junior very much, even if Laurence's smile was oddly sad.

Junior had been hopeful they might finish emptying all of those boxes in a single day, perhaps two, but sadly this proved to be wildly optimistic. They had not gotten through even a tenth of them, or so it seemed. “No matter,” Tharkay said, with that same unflappable determination that carried him across deserts. “It is good to have a long term project.”

As pleasing as it would have been for Junior to work on the project every day until completion, that Tuesday they gathered all in the carriage to pay a visit to the Bairds, who had an estate around a two hour ride away. “They have invited us a few times since we moved in,” Laurence said as the rainy landscape streamed past. “It is high time we accepted.”

“It will be very fine to get to know our neighbors,” Junior agreed.

And indeed, the first hour or so of the visit was very fine, as he was presented  to Lady Baird, and her husband, and the rest of the family, and everyone introduced one another, and discussed the weather and ate delicate pastries on some very fine furniture, which Junior complimented. “What a polite young man,” said Elizabeth, who was Lady Baird's daughter-in-law, which made Junior very pleased.

Only after the scones were finished, he was ushered out with the other children, with instructions to go play in the gardens outdoors, since the rain had cleared and the day was quickly becoming unseasonably warm. And Junior did want to explore, so he went quite cheerfully, hoping that Alexander and Diane would be able to give him lay of the land.

He began by asking them what sorts of plants they had in the gardens, and how well they thought of the English style of landscaping with its focus on the picturesque. He would have liked to ask if they were familiar with Chambers' Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, but they showed little enough interest in his questions about the plants, and did not even answer when he tried to ask their opinions.

“We should hide-and-seek,” Alexander said.

“Oh!” Diane said, glancing at Junior. “Yes, let’s.”

Junior blinked. “Is it a game?” he asked. “How does one play?”

Both children stared at him. “It’s hide-and-seek?” Diane said, like he should know already, and was stupid for not knowing.

Junior did not like that at all; it was too much like the way the other children in Edinburgh had treated him.

“You hide, and then whoever is ‘it' finds you,” said Alexander, but he wasn't trying to be kind in saying it.

“Oh,” Junior said.

“You can be 'it' first,” decided Diane. “Count to twenty, then find us.”

And Junior did try. He counted, and then went looking. But he did not know the layout of the garden, or where the hiding spots would be. He did not know the boundaries for hiding Diane and Alexander would adhere too, and he could not even fly proper sweeps to search.

He found himself instead wandering down the path, not certain what he should do and frustrated. He was staring off to the sides of the path so intently that he did not even register that he had reached the stables.

He pushed his way inside, noting the warm, musty quality of the smell, but not really registering it. “Hello? Alexander?” he called. “Diane?” It was darker, and his eyes took so much longer now to adjust to the gloom. “I am 'seeking' you—”

“NIYEHEHEHEH!”

The noise startled Junior half out of his scales, and he raised his forehand, prepared to swipe.

The horse stared back at Junior, unblinking, teeth bared.

Junior bared his teeth back.

The horse pawed at the ground, hoof making a terribly loud clomp on the floor. All around, Junior became aware of other sounds; loud breathing, the tossing of a mane.

It was only a horse. It was not scary. It could not be scary. It did not even have claws!

Junior took a step back.

A voice said, “Who are you?”

He spun around (and immediately regretted turning his back on a threat, even if there was a wooden stall between him and it). There was a girl standing there. She looked something like a young Emily Roland, if Emily had been shorter and tanner and had redder hair and more freckles, so perhaps not much like Emily Roland at all. “I am Junior, of Admiral Laurence.”

The girl tilted her head at him. “Oh. The William Laurence?” she asked.

“The very same!”

“Huh,” she said. “What's he like?”

“Oh, he is the very best. Very patient, and neat, and intelligent,” Junior said.

“Huh,” she repeated, and scratched her face. “How's his pay?”

“Oh. Very generous, or so I assume,” Junior tacked on, realizing guiltily he did not actually know.

The girl shrugged. “If you say so. Why're you in the stables? Do you need to get his horses?”

“Pardon? No. I am looking for Diane and Alexander. Also, I am afraid I did not catch your name.” Junior had meant to ask sooner, as it was only polite, but in his defense it was hard to focus with a horse breathing in his ear.

“Mistress Diane and Master Alexander never come in here unless it is time for riding lessons,” she informed him. “And I’m Clare.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Junior said, and bowed slightly, which Laurence had told him was the proper thing to do when one could not kiss a lady’s hand. Clare’s hands were visibly dirty, so Junior was glad for another option.

She looked a little bemused, but shrugged and stepped around him to casually push the horse’s head over so it was no longer so close to his ear. “Jules won’t bite,” she said. “You don’t need to be afraid.”

Junior drew himself up in affront. “I am not afraid!”

But she didn’t seem to care much, either way. “Your accent is funny,” she observed idly as she stroked the horse’s long nose. “Where are you from? London?”

“China.” Though of course he didn’t remember it very well.

“I know that.” She was patting Jules the horse on the nose, and he was sniffing at her, and not running away in fright or attacking at all.

It was very pleasing to know that the entire household has been informed of his visit and his origins, and Junior preened internally. Externally, he asked, “Where are you from?”

“Cramond,” she said, which was the nearest town. This was a boring answer, though of course Junior was careful not to show he thought so.

“I see,” he said. “Will you help me find Alexander and Diane?”

Clare said she could not, because she had to 'muck out' the stables.

Junior could have left then, and continued searching on his own, but he had a suspicion that he would have little luck. The two children had a natural advantage, knowing the local terrain. Junior would be better served having insider assistance of his own.

“What if I helped you finish faster?”

Clare looked him up and down. Her expression seemed rather dubious, but she said, “Yeah, maybe.” And then she handed him a shovel.

Junior had never used a shovel before, but he had seen men use them many times. How difficult could it be?

Very difficult, as it turned out. The implement was too large for him; the wood was rough on his hands; he could not get the angle quite right. Clare spent as much time trying to tell him what to do and what not to do as she did doing her own work, and he had to stop himself from bursting into frustrated tears more than once. Crying was so easy now.

“You are really bad at this,” she told him.

“I am not!” he protested.

She only shrugged.

But he did eventually get the trick of it, and then it was hot, smelly work for quite a while, with the horses staring unsettlingly down at them.

They finished not, as he had hoped, twice as fast, but only minutes before Clare would have finished on her own.

He was afraid she'd tell him he was on his own, but she put the shovels away, dusted off her hands, and asked, “So why do you need to find them?”

“We are playing a game of 'Hide and Seek',” Junior explained, as she led him back out of the stables. “It is a game where one person is 'it', and the others—”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, giving him a quizzical look. “How long were you looking?”

“Before I came to the stables? Oh, perhaps three quarters of an hour.”

“That long?”

“Yes.” Junior glanced up behind the bush he had looked under idly. “Why? How long does a round usually go?” He knew it was only a game, but he did want to make a good first show of it.

Clare bit her lip. “Oh, well. Some games are longer than others.”

They walked in relative silence for the next few minutes, Clare occasionally pointing out some spot or other which was a likely hiding place. They looked behind the gardening shed, by the croquet lawn, and along the brook which ran to the east side of the estate. “The pair must be truly fantastic hiders,” Junior said, partly to cover his growing frustration. He did not think this was a particularly fun game.

“Why were you even asked to play with them?” Clare asked.

“Oh. Because one is supposed to entertain one's guests, I suppose.”

Clare tilted her head. Junior did not like her expression in the least; it was not as though she was confused, but like she thought he was, and rather dim for it. “I 'uppose. But I'd rather dealing with the horses, meself.”

“Myself,” Junior corrected. “And what is so good about horses? They do not even know not to defecate in their own stables.”

“They’re animals!” She said, sounding for the first time more than a little indignant. “Better'n people. And you can ride them and go so fast. My masters let me ride sometimes, if they want a note delivered t' someone else nearby.” She eyed him. “But you don't ride. Your master doesn't let you?”

“My what?” Junior said. He was terribly confused. He didn't have a master, like he was a horse. He had a captain, of course, and sometimes people called Laurence his 'handler', but Laurence didn't much like that, these days, and everyone in China called them 'companions’ instead.

Only, then he realized she did not mean like a horse, or a dragon-captain. “I am not a slave.”

''’Course not,” she said, as if she hadn't suggested it. “But I don't think Admiral Laurence can be all that grand if he won't even let his servants ride, if you pardon my saying so.”

“Of course he lets his servants ride!”

“Then why not you?” Clare had her hands on her hips.

“Well, because I am not a servant, for one thing!”

“He doesn't let you ride cuz you're not a servant?”

“No, of course not! He would let me ride horses if I asked. I simply have never asked,” Junior said, indignant.

This seemed to astonish the girl even more. “Why on earth have you not asked? It is the most wonderful thing in the world!”

Junior snorted.

Clare glared. “Well, it is! You have not properly lived until you have felt a creature as wild and wonderful as a horse carrying you.”

Junior snorted again. “Clearly you have never ridden a dragon.”

“Why on earth would I ever ride a dragon?” she said.

That brought him up short. He took a step back. “You are not one of those people who insist on being afraid of dragons, are you?” That would make no sense; she was not afraid of him.

“I am not afraid!” she said. “But my father says, we got along fine when there weren't any dragons around, and now they're coming and, and taking work away from them as have been doing it for years, and anyway I'm not some silly thing who follows the fashions, and gets dropped or eaten for her trouble.”

Junior stared at her. She had seemed like such a reasonable person, back in the stables. “Eaten? No dragon would eat you, that's disgusting, and I—” I don't drop people, he was going to say, but the words wouldn't come. “And no one falls, unless there is a battle with boarders, which is very horrible but can hardly happen now, since the war is over.”

“They do too eat—” she began, but was cut off.

“Junior!” It was Laurence's voice, from the house.

Junior picked up his pace, pulling Clare along with him, or tried to. She resisted him. “Come!” he told her.

“No,” she said, stubborn as a mule, which she presumably liked as well.

“You must speak to Laurence, he will set you to rights, I'm sure!” Junior insisted.

But she dug in his heels. And so he dug in his heels. And somehow this ended with both of them lying on the ground, Junior's rump aching terribly from what was really quite a small fall, with Lady Baird standing over him and tutting. “Oh dear, what happened here?”

“Nothing!” Clare said quickly, climbing to her feet. “Nothing, ma'am, I promise.”

“Junior?” Tharkay said. He was there too, now, holding out a hand.

Junior took it, pulling himself up and wiping the dust from his shirt and trousers. “It is nothing,” he said. “Only Clare was saying that dragons drop people and eat people and so horses are superior, which is utter nonsense.”

Tharkay did not agree, as Junior had expected, but merely gave a mild little frown, as did Laurence, coming up behind her. Lady Baird said, “Oh dear. Miss Murray, is this true?”

Sounding not like her earlier self at all, Clare looked down and mumbled, “Yes, my lady, but I did not mean anything by it, I swear.”

Baird frowned at her as if displeased, but Tharkay said, “Children do have the most fantastical tales.” Even though Clare had not been telling a tale, not at all.

But Lady Baird seemed to agree. “Well run along then, Miss Murray. You know better than to bother guests.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Clare said, her head still bowed, and when Lady Baird turned to Laurence she ran away, back down the path to the stables.

“But I wanted to—” Junior began, only to be cut off by Laurence. “Junior, what have I said about interrupting servants at work?”

“But I was helping!”

“Which is why you are all over dirt, no doubt.”

Junior opened his mouth to protest again, but Laurence was not even looking at him anymore. He was bowing to Lady Barid. “If you would excuse us a moment, I would like to get him cleaned up before dinner.”

The basin of water, when fetched to a guest quarters, was unpleasantly cool, but not half as unpleasant as the rest of the situation. “But Clare did say those things, Laurence, you must believe me.”

“I do believe you,” Laurence said, from where he was beating straw out of Junior's over-jacket.

“But you said I lied!”

“I did not,” Laurence replied. “I implied that you exaggerated, which—”

“That does not signify!” Junior interrupted, although it was terribly rude.

Laurence gave him a stern look. “Which I only did,” Laurence continued, “to spare Miss Murray from trouble.”

“If she is going to say such dreadful things about dragons, then she deserves trouble!”

With one last critical look at the jacket, Laurence put it down. He came to the basin. “Child,” he said, “your respect for dragons does you credit. In another situation, I very well may be praising you for coming to their defense, and I do not want you to think that is why I offer you reproof now.”

“Then why?” Junior said balefully, watching Laurence through his murky reflection in the water. 

“What Miss Murray said was unkind, but offered no immediate harm to dragons. By contrast, your getting into a public row with her could have gotten her and her family into a great deal of trouble.”

“What?” Junior's brow creased. “How so? She merely needed to apologize, and promise never to say such things again.”

“Perhaps so. But that was not you to decide. As a servant of the Baird household, it fell to Lady Baird to decide the punishment, and I suspect it could have been much steeper than you imagined.”

“But why—”

Laurence put a hand on his shoulder and gently turned him around so they were facing each other, and knelt so he could look at Junior’s face directly. “You are not on the street anymore,” he said. “While my position is admittedly somewhat irregular, you are still part of a gentleman’s household—a gentleman’s family. By fighting with Miss Murray, you invite scrutiny to yourself and to her, and any complaint you make of her carries a great deal of weight. You must take care.”

Junior wanted to say that he had never had any such problems before, but he could not quite figure out how to explain it, when Laurence did not remember.

“She still should not say such things,” he said instead, mulishly.

Laurence smiled at him, but it was a sad enough smile that Junior would have preferred to go without. “You have an admirable sense of justice. Perhaps—soon we can teach you about the state of rights for dragons in England. Much has changed in only the last few years, but it is still not like China.”

Before Junior could complain that he knew that, Laurence was continuing: “And I think you should perhaps let Miss Murray have the benefit of the doubt. You are both very young, and we cannot all make good first impressions.” He stood, “Come now, I think we are already late for dinner.”

Chapter Text

The sorting project continued intermittently for the next two weeks, Tharkay unearthing more and more boxes and chests from increasingly obscure corners. Very little of it was of any worth, valuables having been long removed by his cousins, but still it all had to be considered carefully.

They were all of them glad when another set of visitors gave them an excuse to set it aside for a time—all of them, perhaps except for Laurence in his mounting anxiety, which Junior did not notice and Tharkay pretended not to.

“It is good to see you, old chap,” Catherine Harcourt said, embracing Laurence, then turning to Tharkay. “And it is good to see you as well, my dear,” kissing him on the cheek. “And the young gentleman!”

It was concerning that after nearly two months, Junior had still not shaken the delusion that he had once known them all, and he was put off by yet someone else having “forgotten” him. But otherwise he was as friendly as anything to Harcourt and Lily, clambering up and down the dragon, and insisting upon hearing all the tales of Malta.

“There is not much to do there, but it was very sunny,” Lily said, stretching out.

“Indeed,” Harcourt agreed, “you cannot complain about the weather.” And sure enough, the tan she had sustained suited her quite well, bringing more bloom to her cheeks somehow.

All of this passed between them as Young Tom toddled about on the lawn, uprooting grass in curious fists, kicking a ball along. Laurence's gaze was often drawn to the child, a smile occasionally tugging at his cheeks, that newfound life, though still faint, driving his curiosity.

Junior was notably less impressed by the child, at least at first. But Tom was at an age where questions came as easy as breathing, and Junior was a child as intelligent as he was proud. He soon found himself very pleased to answer every question Tom gave his way, and if the lad did not understand half of the answers Junior gave, he did not seem to mind. And soon the two of them were entertaining themselves well enough, leaving the adults and dragon to talk among themselves.

A long tail had curled around Laurence's feet. Lily asked, “And how have you been keeping?”

Laurence swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “Well. I have been—I have been well looked after, never fear.” It was better than the other truth, that he had not been well at all until recently, and no amount of care could have changed it.

She seemed skeptical, and though Lily was polite and willing to be circumspect by dragon standards, she was not wholly devoid of their characteristic bluntness. “We promised, Maximus and I, that we would help Temeraire should he ever need it.” Her tail made a soft shhhshshs sound as it slid over the ground. “And that we would protect his captain if he could not do it alone.”

“I know,” Laurence said. That pact they made, after Praecustoris. More than a decade ago, now. A great deal had been said about what Temeraire would have wanted, would have believed, by a great many people who could not truly know, who only wanted to reassure Laurence when no real reassurance could ever come. But he was certain enough of this: “He would thank you, for your concern.”

She nosed at him, once, briefly, as if checking his solidity. “Hm.”

“Dearest, do let the man have his space,” Catherine said, with a look at Laurence that mixed apology and her own concern.

“I am quite hale and healthy, I assure you.” Laurence said, back on firmer ground.

Lily's tail began to slide away, though Laurence was doubtful this would be the last he heard of it.

As the winter finally made its nature known, driving icy winds across the landscape, Lily huddled against the side of Strathvagan manor, shivering a little beneath the tent shelter, and feeling pangs of regret for their visit.

Not that she regretted having come, of course. It was very good to see Admiral Laurence again, to see he had a bit more meat on his bones, and not sustained any new scars or recurrence of brain fever. It was only that it seemed it would have been more sensible if they had visited Loch Laggan.

But Laurence and Tharkay were not failing in their diligence as hosts. Even now they were scouring the edge of the forest for suitable firewood. Lily had already knocked down a few trees for the base of a bonfire, but they needed kindling, and it was good to keep one's women and men busy.

“I suppose,” said a small voice at Lily's forepaw, “this is one of those rare situations which would be improved by Iskierka's company.”

It was Junior, the human egg Laurence was nesting. Lily had not paid over much attention to the boy, beyond the initial inspection, she had to admit. She had more urgent priorities.

But her obligations surely extended to him as well, so Lily made an effort. “She would,” Lily agreed. “What do you think of Iskierka?” The fire breather had been oddly quiet on the subject of the boy, constantly opening her mouth to say something about him, but then only gnashing her teeth in frustration. Oh, you will just need to see for yourself.

“She is a very good fighter, of course.” The child admitted this only grudgingly, it seemed. “But she is very rude and unhelpful, even if she did take me flying when she visited.”

Lily thought this was an accurate enough assessment of Iskierka, if perhaps ungenerous, and so asked, “You like flying, then?”

“Oh, yes, very much. Though it is not as nice to be carried as to have one's own wings.”

Lily put her head down to sniff at him, flicking her tongue out, pleased. Human eggs that had not been around dragons much could sometimes be irrational or afraid. (Much like human adults.) She approved strongly of this one's taste. “You are doing well here, I trust?”

“I am.” He leaned in, nearly draping himself over her nose, and scratched the spot she could never get the right angle on, herself. “I did not like being on the streets at all, but Laurence came for me when I wrote him, and all was well. Say, have you read the most recent publication from John Bonnycastle? Laurence and Tharkay do not keep up with mathematics much.”

Lily had not, but he was perfectly willing to describe it, and they had a lovely conversation on the subject, despite the rain. The boy had a very good grasp of mathematics, as if he were a dragon himself.

It was enough to make Lily wonder, a little. The Tswana were rather insistent that the honored dead could return, and he was so very much like—

But no, Lily knew quite well how long it took human eggs to grow, and this one was much too far along.

But it was right, Lily thought. It was right, that Admiral Laurence should have found an egg so much like Tem—

The grief hit her quite unexpectedly. Lily had not been there when Temeraire had died. Neither she, nor Maximus. They had both been in Spain, hundreds upon hundreds of miles away.

What a strange, strangled thing it had been. To hear of the war's end, and their friend's death, within the span of two sentences.

He had ended it. Not alone, of course; nothing was done alone in war, no matter how the papers liked to spin it. But he had been in the battle, and he had been the one to drive Lien and Napoleon to the ground. More than that, he was the one who had stopped the poisoned grain, whose bill had secured the alliance of the feral dragons across Europe.

Her formation had done good work in Spain, Lily knew this. But it had all seemed rather small, in light of Temeraire's sacrifice.

The sound came out of her, low and lilting.

She could not quite help it. Junior started, his hands flying away, and then coming back to rest against her snout. He said, “What is wrong?”

“Oh,” she said, and with an effort, muffled that low cry deep within her chest. “Do not worry. It is not something for eggs your age to concern yourself with.”

Humans were not like dragon hatchlings. They needed time to be unburdened by such things. And sure enough, her words seemed to lighten the boy, a little.

It was only a few minutes longer before Laurence and Tharkay returned, bearing enough kindling to begin the bonfire. Lily watched the building of it closely, more in anticipation than actual interest, though Junior asked more than enough questions for the both of them, about the appropriate size of the pieces, and the dryness of the wood, and the construction of the structure that would nurture the fire rather than smother it. When it came time to actually provide the spark, Laurence knelt down and held the boy's hands, showing him how to strike the flint, how to breathe life into the tinder.

Soon, they had the fire blazing, and Lily obligingly split the trees down the middle as best she could and then dragged them into position so the burning kindling could be wedged into the splits, to hopefully make a warm, slow-burning sort of bonfire.

“We really ought to begin the pavilion.” Junior said, pointedly, as this was being finished.

“Believe me,” Tharkay replied dryly, “it is rapidly becoming a priority.”

The logs were catching, and Lily nudged Junior with her nose. “Best get inside now,” she told him. Catherine was already there with Little Tom, and human eggs were fragile.

Having Lily and Harcourt visit was splendid, splendid indeed. Junior did not think he would ever tire of showing off the grounds and nearby town, nor of being able to fly again. They were good company, as well, leading to many enjoyable games and fond conversations. Even Young Tom, in his own way.

Laurence was acting peculiar, though, it could not be denied. It was not merely the long stretch he had taken all by himself, the day Lily and Harcourt had arrived. Even after he returned, it persisted. A withdrawal inwards; a furrowed brow; a slowness to laughter. 

Concerned that his illness might be returning, Junior was pulled by two competing desires: one to ask Laurence directly, and the other to keep silent, lest to worry Laurence over his worrying. 

Ultimately, Junior settled on the latter, but that did not mean he was complacent. When he was sent to bed that night, he merely pretended to go to sleep as Laurence read to him (or mostly pretended; he may have genuinely nodded off near the end). In any case, it did not signify, because he needed to wait for Laurence to be gone in any case, for he and the other adults to settle into the parlour for drinks and cigars. 

That was when Junior crept down below, grateful for once over his slender frame, the way the soft pads of the feet made no sound on the stairs or the hallway carpet. Pausing periodically to ensure no wayward servants were up late, he came to crouch by the parlour door, holding his ear up to the crack. 

“My full house trumps, gentlemen!” Harcourt chuckled, and there were grudging grumbles as cards were dropped and re-gathered. Junior privately sighed over his curfew. He was good at cards.

The card game carried on. As his friends spoke of little more than the game and idle chatter, Junior’s eyes began to grow heavy, and he feared they might speak of nothing of significance. But at last when Tharkay rose to refill their drinks (Junior shuffled back from the door, quietly, just to ensure he would not be sent back to his room), Harcourt said, “Well, I suppose I have put it off long enough.”

“Mnn?” Tharkay hummed. Laurence did not say anything, but through the slit in the doorway, Junior could just about see him sit up very straight.

“The boy,” she said. “We put the word out, as you know. But—”

“But?” Laurence said, quite rude, and entirely unlike him.

Harcourt did not seem to take any offense. “Nothing. No one’s heard of anyone searching for a lad of that description. Not even the Chinamen, and we employ quite a few of them now, you know, they’re so sensible with the dragons.”

Searching? Why would anyone be searching for someone like him?

…Why would the aviators have put the word out?

Laurence exhaled. It was a long sound. Junior could not see his expression; could not interpret it. “I see.”

“We must thank you, regardless,” Tharkay added, coming back around, setting Harcourt’s filled glass in front of her, and pausing to place his hand briefly on her shoulder.

Junior waited, crouched, for them to speak more on the subject, to elaborate. But they did not. Laurence dealt another hand, and the conversation moved onto the topic of a new opera in London. 

Though he wanted to stay, wanted to keep listening, by then he was battling yawns, each one at risk of giving away his presence. So he retreated, unsatisfied. Even wrapped in bed, warm under the duvet, worries and questions swirled. It seemed a very long time before he slept.

The next day he resolved to put it all behind him; to focus on enjoying their visitor’s company. And indeed, the morning seemed promising, despite the heavy rain against the windows. Over their breakfast of eggs and bacon, Laurence seemed much improved, animated in their conversation, asking after Lily’s comfort in the wet, boasting about Junior’s academic accomplishments. 

Which of course was when a rider came galloping up to the house on horseback, ruining it.

This was a churlish reaction, Junior was aware. There was trouble: a dragon courier had gotten caught in the winds and thrown directly into the river, which had grown quite wild from the rains, and with the weight of her burden and almost no crew to help, was quite unable to climb free of the clinging mud. “She might drown, ma’am, and we thought—”

“Never fear; of course we shall be able to help,” Lily said, and within moments his human friends were all pulling on harnesses. Junior did not realize until quite late in the process that they meant to leave him behind. He protested, of course, but Laurence was firm—he was too small, now, to be of help—Little Tom was not going either. This did not reconcile him to the departure—he had little interest in spending an entire day alone, aside from the boy and servants. Which of course, was precisely what happened, despite all his continuing efforts:

“It should hopefully be only a few hours,” Laurence repeated, crouching to place a hand on Junior's shoulder. “But we cannot allow the courier to remain in the cold water.”

“I understand,” Junior said, truly he did. The situation sounded dire. “But let me come! I can help! I am not too small to tie ropes!”

Harcourt said, “You can help best by staying here, and looking after my Tom.” And indeed, the younger boy was looking rather wide-eyed.

Junior still did not think that his best use in this emergency was watching an egg, but it was an important task, he supposed, and Laurence helped him understand that it would be a weight off Harcourt’s mind. “Very well.”

And then they had left, Lily and Harcourt and Laurence and Tharkay, and the cook had promised to bring them chocolate and gone away to the kitchen, and so Junior and Tom were alone.

He could not help but think that the boy did not look particularly like Riley. But then again, he did not look much like Harcourt, either. His face was round with childhood, and his hair always unruly. “Would you like to read something?” Junior asked.

“Yes,” said Tom. “Something about animals?”

So Junior fetched Dr. Munroe's treatise on the native fauna of the British isles, which was a pleasant and engaging beginner's text. Only they did not make it even five pages before Tom whined, “This is boooorring.”

“It is not,” Junior said. He had been enjoying the refresher. but one must be obliging of one's guests, or so Laurence repeated many times. He sighed. “What would you prefer instead?”

“Something with a story.”

Junior could not find Sir Edward Howe's book of oriental dragon tales, but there was a new one out of the royal society concerning Inca legends of all kinds, which was almost as good. He tried that, but within minutes Tom was complaining again.

Junior closed the book without even marking their page, irritated. “Do you have another suggestion, then?”

“Let's explore!”

There was nothing really to explore, not really; by now Junior had seen the entire manor from top to bottom. But there could be little harm in indulging the boy, especially if it would cease his complaining.

They went through the workshop and the office, though Tom seemed to want to poke and prod at Tharkay's possessions, so Junior moved on quickly to the bedrooms. These Tom quickly became bored with too, and so it was not long before they were in the attic.

“Woaah.” Tom sneezed. “Why are there so many chests?”

“They are remnants from Tharkay's relatives,” Junior explained. “We are in the process of sorting the old things.”

Tom sneezed again. “Dusty,” he said, and then, pointing: “Why aren't those ones dusty?”

Junior was about to explain that those would be the ones they had already sorted, but when he looked, he realized they were not; he had never before noticed those chests.

He stepped forward, laying a hand on their surface, smooth varnished wood. Some were familiar; he had seen them before, he was sure.

“What's in them?” Tom wondered, poking and prodding at another chest.

“Clothes, most likely, with the occasional trinket.”

“Trinkets?” Tom's eyes lit up. “Like treasure?”

“Something like,” Junior agreed, an idea beginning to form in his mind.

“Let’s open one!” Tom said, excitedly.

Well. Laurence had said to oblige one's guests. And perhaps they would make some progress on the sorting project.

The nearest of them was very large, with leather straps over the wood. Junior flipped the clasp, and had to put rather more of his strength than was flattering into heaving the top open. It made a hollow thunk as it rested against the top of the chest behind it.

The scent which met him was immediately familiar, bringing to mind the long elegant hallways of the Summer Palace, of jasmine flowers, of guqin and pipa. It was a Chinese style harness. More to the point, it was his harness, folded loops of red and blue silk.

Junior drew a length of it out and pressed it to his cheek. It was incredibly soft and smooth.

“What's that?” Tom asked. “That's not clothes.”

“In a sense, it is. It is my harness,” Junior said. Oh, how he wanted to fly, to have Laurence on his back and all right with the world.

“It doesn't look like a harness,” Tom objected.

“It's Chinese,” Junior explained. “They use silk instead of leather.”

“Hm,” Tom sniffed. He moved onto the next chest.

Or tried to. The chest's lid was a little heavy for him, and after taking a few more moments breathing in the silk, Junior came to help.

With a creak, the chest opened, and…

Oh.

Australia had been a strange land, beautiful and dangerous by turns. But he would never forget the first time he dug into a dull grey cliff face to find the most magnificent rainbow of stone shimmering back at him.

“That’s pretty, ” Tom said, as Junior reached out to touch his opals. He had to force himself not to snarl. Tom was a human egg, not another dragon, who might like to steal.

“They are pretty,” he said, trying to continue polite conversation. “They are opals, from Australia, or rather stones veined with opal.” They had not been worked, like the ones on Laurence's robes.

He saw Tom leaning forward, and quickly closed the lid, though there had been more beneath the opal stones, other items to investigate later.

The next chest was books, and here at last was the missing text sir Edward had gifted him.

Junior pulled it out, truly feeling the heft of the time. His new fingers were so delicate. They made it easy to trace the embossing on the cover, to turn each page, where he could read each letter clearly. The book was more beautiful than he had realized.

“Surely these belong in the library?” Tom suggested.

“Capital point,” Junior agreed, and Tom proved to not be so much of an egg after all, because he was quite helpful in carrying load after load of (admittedly light) books downstairs.

Shelving them in the library proved to be a task, and one Tom had no patience for, but he was satisfied viewing the illustrations of birds in an ornithological text Laurence had purchased in Brazil, even though the writing was in Portuguese.

So Junior shelved, being careful to follow Tharkay’s system, and Tom sometimes called him over to look at a particularly good lithograph—they were much better, when one was the right scale to see them properly—and they passed the time quite pleasantly until the cook returned with sandwiches and chocolate for the both of them.

The warm meal, combined with their earlier effort, and no doubt aided by the cold winter rain which had begun to rap against the windows, soon had Tom yawning, and not long after curled under a blanket on the large leather sofa for a nap.

Frankly, Junior would not have minded a nap himself. But sleep would not come. He was acutely aware that some three hours had passed since his friends had left, and they still had not returned. Glancing out the windows every five minutes for some glimpse of Lily's wings was accomplishing nothing. Surely it would be better to put this restless energy to use. He could only think how pleased Laurence would be, to see all of their most beloved items, taken out and properly displayed.

So back up to the attic he went, with a basket from the laundry, so he could carry many small things down at once. His harness he left—it ought properly be stored in the pavilion, which wasn’t built yet—but the opal stones would look just marvelous on one of the mantle pieces, and beneath them he found more treasures; a lovely serving dish which had been gifted to them for Laurence’s meals on the trip to Russia, and then sadly packed away rather than used, to protect it. A silver cup, the only item of Napoleon’s treasure wagon that had not been sold so the funds could be invested. A beautiful but very small ivory carving of an elephant Lethabo had given him when they left Brazil, and a somewhat larger and simpler one of wood made by Sipho, in an attempt to help Junior appreciate the smaller one more easily.

Beneath that was a great length of red silk, the most valuable possible cushioning, and below that were his jewels.

He ran his fingertips over the pearl at the center of his breastplate, marveling at how truly great it was, all the more evident when one was so small.

He sat there for a long time, quite losing track of everything, stroking the metal and the pearl, savouring the cool smoothness of the metal. There was a prickling in his eyes, which he wiped away impatiently; it was one thing to cry when sad, but must the tears plague him even when he was happy?

His fingers caught at the breastplate's side, where black flecks marred the beautiful surface. Tarnish!

Junior frankly had no idea where they were going to put the breastplate, when they had no pavilion, and his torso was now far too small to wear it. Perhaps a box really would be the best place for it, in the time being. But he surely could not tuck it away without first polishing it.

He struggled quite terribly carrying it down the stairs and to the parlour; it seemed so utterly heavy. But he managed, all by himself, and Miss Wilson helped him fetch the silver polish, though she did hesitate. “Are you certain that is something you should be playing with?”

“Yes,” he said, very firmly. He did not want to be told it was a thing children should not concern themselves with. “It needs to be polished.”

Her expression was a little unhappy, but she left him to it.

It was so easy to become wholly focused on the polishing. The detail of it, the repetition. He went over the entire breastplate, inch by inch.

He did not hear Lily land outside.

He did hear everyone else arriving through the front door; the sudden howl of wind and rain would have been enough, even if it had not been accompanied by the great stomping of feet and Harcourt swearing. It was enough to rouse Tom, and together, the pair of them rushed to greet their friends.

“Were you successful?” Junior asked, anxiously. They all looked rather miserable, sodden with cold rain and too pale or too red by turns.

“Yes,” Tharkay said. “It took some doing, but we hauled the poor beast out of the water, though she may yet lose her hind foot to hypothermia.”

“She seemed more upset by losing half of her cargo,” Harcourt said through chattering teeth.

This seemed rather sensible to Junior; hind feet were not really so useful compared to the worth provided by capital, but he suspected this was not a productive point to raise. Instead he busied himself helping the servants fetch towels and blankets.

They retreated to the library, which was already well-warmed from the fire that had been kept burning for Junior and Tom’s comfort. The cook brought tea, and within minutes Harcourt’s teeth ceased to chatter, and she allowed Tom to climb into her lap. There was not a great deal of conversation; they were all exhausted.

Tharkay was flexing his hands as if they pained him, but he spared a tight-lipped smile for Junior. “I trust things were well while we were gone?”

“Oh, yes.” Junior replied.

“Mhmm,” Tom added, sleepily. “We read books, and hunted for treasure.”

“Treasure?” Tharkay asked. He was looking at the bookshelf, as if to determine Junior had put the books back in their correct places. Then he went still, and said, “Where, precisely, did you go looking for that treasure?”

There was an odd note in his voice; Laurence looked up and frowned.

Recalling a particularly fanciful tale he had once overheard from sailors about finding pirate treasure dug deep underground, Junior realized that Tharkay was most likely concerned the two of them had gone traipsing around the grounds in this dreadful rain. “Oh, only up among the chests in the attic, never fear.” Junior rose to his feet and quickly darted to grab the breast plate. “Look what I found tucked away!”

There were no ‘ thank you ’s or appreciative smiles, as Junior would have expected.

Laurence was standing. His face was twisted in such a look of fury that Junior could scarcely remember.

“Put. That. Down. ”

“But—” There was a terrible tremble in Junior's voice. “But I was merely polishing it.”

Laurence visibly throttled his next words and then, drawing himself up to his full height, said, “You should not have touched it.” His voice was low, and angry, and Junior flinched away. Laurence had never directed that tone at him before, never ! That was the tone he had used on Dunne and Hackley, when they had gone exploring the Harem in Istanbul. It was the voice he used when he was beyond shouting.

“I—”

“How dare you!?”

Those cursed tears were back, clogging Junior's eyes. He would have said nearly anything to make Laurence's anger abate, but he could not even apologize; he did not understand what he had done that was so wrong.

Tharkay was standing now, and he had put a hand on Laurence's arm. “Junior,” he said, “I regret that we did not warn you not to touch those chests.”

“Those things.” Laurence had put his hands behind his back, like he was clenching them in anger. Or passing a captain's judgement. “Were Temeraire's.”

Temeraire's.

The name reverberated through him like a bell. It was a puzzle's missing piece, an orchestra finally with choral accompaniment.

“Temeraire,” the boy gasped, wiping his face, hoping perhaps for understanding, at last. “Yes, yes, exactly. ”

His words only seemed to make Laurence angrier. “Were you never taught not to disrespect the dead?”

“D-disrespect?” But the bell was shattering as it rung; the missing piece refused to slot into place; the choir's singers were off tune.

“Yes, disrespect. Did it not occur to you that there might be very good reason they were stored away, where nothing could harm them?”

Harcourt said, “Laurence,” and Tharkay said, “Will.”

And Laurence pointed and said, “ Leave. ”

The child left. Temeraire's breastplate slipped from his numb fingers, and he left, tears running down his face.

Save for the pop of the fire, the room was silent in his wake.

And then Tom began to cry.

Laurence was shocked back into himself as suddenly as if a bucket of snowmelt had been dumped over his head.

He looked up. Tharkay had fixed him with an expression of disapproval or—worse, and truer— You are not the man I thought you were.

Dear Lord, Laurence thought, and perhaps he said it aloud, he could not be sure. He bolted through the parlour doors, into the hallway, looking left to life frantically, but there was no sign of the boy.

Up the stairs, two at a time, to the child's bedroom. The door was open. “Junior?” No response. He checked under the bed, in the wardrobe, all likely hiding places.

The attic next; perhaps he had returned to where this had begun. “Junior?” he called again, but was only met with muffled echoes.

Down the stairs again, breath heavy in his throat, checking the window where the boy liked to sit in the sun, and the library, where he would curl up with a book. No sign of him, none at all. He had gotten a head start, and Laurence was no longer young and fit enough to chase after a ten year old child.

Back down the stairs. Tharkay and Harcourt were already back in their recently abandoned boots and coats. One look at his face and they knew he had not found him.

“The servants are already searching inside,” Harcourt said, and Laurence nodded, shoving his own boots on.

He barely took the time to lace them properly before he was out the door, angling towards the trees. Behind him, he could hear Harcourt rousing Lily, waking her from her well-deserved sleep. “Dearest, I would not ask except it is urgent; do you think you can fly a search?”

“Yes, of course.” Lily replied, sounding more optimistic than truthful. “Do not worry Catherine, I will not let the egg stay lost.”

Laurence walked faster, trying not to feel the guilt those words had slipped like a knife between his ribs. “Junior!” he called, reaching the edge of the trees. The boy liked to play here some times, stalk small animals like he was hunting, climb any tree with convenient enough branches.

But there was no answer.

A quick look back showed Lily heaving herself into the air, Catherine setting out down the road, and Tharkay circling around the back of the house. The servants had no doubt already dispersed, outpacing their exhausted masters.

But still, Laurence could not shake the feeling that if he did not find Junior, and soon, then the boy would be lost forever.

He took a breath and plunged into the woods.

They were not particularly grand or dark or deep. No jungle like they had found in Africa and Brazil, or even the easier to traverse but equally sprawling mountain forests in Australia. But their smallness was not tameness; this was not a garden. And there were a thousand ways for a young boy to get lost or to hurt himself.

Laurence was no great tracker; that was not a skill one fostered in a life at sea. But he had spent near a decade in the company of either Tharkay or Demane, and he had learned some things in that time. It was from this he noticed bent reeds and trampled bushes; a snarl of fabric caught on a thorn; a footprint in a muddy patch.

These signs carried him to the stream which ran through the estate. It was easier terrain there, and certainly more accessible for a child.

But Laurence's eyes kept being pulled to the water, turned far more fierce than usual by the rain. He had spent some two hours rescuing a stranger from the fate of drowning. Would his careless cruelty condemn Junior to it instead?

But in the end, he did not find Junior below, but above, halfway up a cliff face, slick with rain.

“JUNIOR!” Laurence bellowed. Junior called something back, but Laurence could not make it out.

He was not so high, not really. Not even as tall as a ship's mast. But the height seemed to loom, immeasurable. Junior continued to climb, heedless.

For a moment, Laurence was paralyzed. Should he go for help, try to call Lily? Wait at the bottom, in the hopes of catching the boy when he slipped?

But no, he had not been an aviator for nothing, and if he had failed in every real responsibility of the office, he at least had learned this much.

He positioned himself as close to directly below Junior as he could manage, and began to climb.

The stone was slick with rain, but it was not the worst climb he had ever attempted; the cliff was rough and marked with all the holds he could want. But still, his heart was in his throat as he climbed, ears attentive for any sound above him, and word or cry or scrape on stone.

But the rain tore most of it from his ears, and he was left with looking up whenever he could manage it.

Junior was nearing the top of the cliff, still showing no fear of the height.

Something came loose under Laurence’s left boot, and he had to plaster himself against the stone to keep the rest of his hold. He could not look up again, after that.

Hand over hand. Foot over foot. The pattern, the rhythm. He did not need to think. He merely needed to move.

With one final push, Laurence heaved himself over the top and onto flat land. He allowed himself half a moment to catch his breath. Then he looked around wildly, afraid the boy had run off again.

He had not. He was staring up at the slate grey sky, expression bleak.

“Child,” Laurence said, too ashamed to use the placeholder they had assigned him.

“Laurence.” The boy tore his gaze away from the sky. “I am sorry. I am leaving, I promise.”

“No. No, please. Please, stop, I am the one who is sorry. Come back home, before you are hurt.”

There was more than rain, running down the boy’s face. “But I do not understand. What did I—”

“Nothing,” Laurence swore, “the fault was mine, I—” he had been so angry, so hurt by seeing Temeraire’s things touched. Seeing them disturbed. And he had taken that anger out on a child. “—I swear to you, I will never do anything of the sort again.”

“But why?” The boy demanded. He was never satisfied to know only the what of something.

“Those things belong— belonged to Temeraire, and it pained me greatly to see them. But I should not have been angry at you.”

The boy sniffed. “I don’t understand why—” he let out a small hiccuping sob, and changed what he was going to say. “You really want me to come back?”

“Yes.”

Junior sniffled, and then drooped, and then took a half step toward him.

Laurence did something then which he had not yet, in their two months of acquaintance. He crouched down and embraced the boy entire.

He was cold and damp and stiff. But after a moment, with a sob, he buried his face in the crook of Laurence's neck, and his cheek was warm where it brushed Laurence's face.

Laurence gave the boy a long moment of comfort—he deserved that. But he was cognisant that they could not stay out indefinitely. Both of them were cold and wet, and dusk was coming on fast. The power which had propelled the boy half-way across the estate was fading, and his limbs shook. Laurence attempted to carry him, but Junior was not that slight, and Laurence was no longer a youth.

Nonetheless, he made an attempt of it, picking his way along the ridge perpendicularly, looking for any place where they might begin to work their way down without such a precarious climb. But he was very relieved when something like ten minutes later, there was a roar overhead; Lily had spotted them attempting their way down a more-open section of the rocky slope through the trees.

Harcourt had a couple spare harnesses, but it would have taken longer to dress in them than to fly back. Given the circumstances, it was easier to allow Lily to clasp each of them in one of her great claws, and trust she would not drop them.

It had been over a year—over a year, since Temeraire's death, since Laurence had been held in such a way, and the warm smoothness of the claws all around was an exquisite kind of agony. If he cried in that little shelter of scale, there was no one who could have said, given the wind.

Chapter Text

Supper was a subdued affair, even given the relief of having found Junior. Tom was more than ready to find his bed, and two ventures into the storm were more than enough to dispense with any host’s instinct in Tharkay. They were none of them as young as they had been, and his hands were aching all the more fiercely for the half-recovery of the interlude inside.

It had been almost more than he could manage to simply return Temeraire’s breastplate to the attic, packed back up with the silk that had been wrapped around it. He did not touch the books; Junior had shelved them precisely according to Tharkay’s system, and it would have taken hours to find them all, even if he wished to.

He did not particularly wish to. Seeing them on the shelves, it seemed suddenly very wrong to have let them languish in a box all this time. They were not the breastplate, too personal to even look at without grief.

Temeraire would certainly never have requested they be hidden away.

He saw Tom and Catherine settled, and then went and stood against the wall beside the open door to Junior’s room, listening. He had expected a mathematical text, or perhaps a natural history. They were both favorites of the child, and when the still red-eyed and blotchy-faced boy had gone upstairs trailing an equally red-eyed Laurence, he had expected they would both retreat to something comfortable, something safe.

But neither was what met his ears now. Perhaps Laurence had resolved to prove his sincerity in his promises—repeated over supper—that the boy had done no wrong. Or perhaps Junior had recovered his courage faster than Tharkay gave him credit for, and made the request. Whatever the cause, it was impossible to mistake the story of the Emperor’s minister who swallowed a dragon’s pearl and became a dragon himself.

Tharkay leaned against the wall outside, eyes half-lidded, happy to listen to the tale. Even if this version was different from the story he was familiar with from his own childhood—that had been a shepherd, who had swallowed a sapphire, to forever be with his true love—many of the elements were familiar enough to be comforting, to say nothing of the usual warmth in Laurence's cadence.

“... and with a mighty beat of his wings, the minister flew into the celestial heavens, where you can see him among the stars, even now.”

“Mmmn,” Junior murmured, half a sigh, half a yawn. There was the sound as he shuffled deeper within the covers, and of Laurence's chair creaking. And then he asked, “Laurence?”

“Yes?”

“May I—may I ask you something?” 

There was a beat of hesitation from Laurence. “Of course.”

“Temeraire.” Tharkay's breath caught. “Can you...tell me of him? But of course,” Junior added quickly, when Laurence did not immediately respond, “if it is private, pray, do not worry, I do not mean to intrude—it is only, I am certain I know the name, only I cannot say from where.”

A long pause, and then Laurence said, softly but with little emotion: “There are any number of places you might have heard it. He was in all the papers here and—and he was honoured in China.”

“Honoured,” said Junior. He did not ask why the honour, or even who Temeraire was. He only said, “What happened?”

There were any number of ways to interpret that question, one most obvious. “He died,” Laurence said, voice cracking. “A year ago.”

“Oh.”

“You remind me of him a great deal,” Laurence said, finally voicing the thought that surely everyone who had met Junior had. “And I miss him very much.”

“But—” Junior said, and then seemed unable to finish the sentence.

There was a soft sound of fabric sliding against fabric—perhaps Laurence adjusting the covers over the boy. “He was so very curious, and he had the greatest indignation for injustice.”

“Oh. He sounds very intelligent.”

“He was. The most intelligent person I had ever met, human or dragon, I think. We read together, near every night, unless we were truly in the thick of things on campaign. He understood more of it than I ever did, by half.”

Again, Junior said, “Oh.” It was so strange, the way he said it. Tharkay could not quite place the emotion in the sound. “What did he look like?”

“He was of the Celestial breed. Are you familiar with them?”

“Yes?”

“Well, then you can imagine. He was something like twenty tonnes, as long as many a ship...” And Laurence went on, describing Temeraire, in more words of his own than Tharkay thought he had heard from his mouth in some twelve months. The black of the dragon's scales; the way they caught the light; how soft they were at the nose; how swift a flier he was; how fierce a fighter; how protective.

If Junior had shown the least bit of disinterest or boredom, begun to fidget, Laurence surely would have lost momentum. But the boy seemed just as caught in it. When Tharkay risked a peek inside, his gaze was huge, half-mesmerized.

When at last Laurence paused to catch a breath, Junior asked, “Were you friends?”

“Yes. Yes, we were. Friends of a kind the English language does not capture.”

“Tóngbàn,” Junior said, in Mandarin, eyes at last beginning to flutter shut. Companion.

“Tóngbàn,” Laurence echoed.

Laurence met Tharkay’s gaze when he emerged from the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He looked wrung out but also oddly better, as if something had settled. “Tenzing,” he murmured, barely a breath.

“Will.”

Laurence closed his eyes a moment, dipping his head in a sort of half nod of acknowledgement. “Pray, let me help with your hands.”

Their guests left the next day; Lily and Harcourt could not be spared forever. Harcourt thanked Tharkay for his hospitality rather forcefully, while Tom said his own goodbyes with Junior and they all tried to pretend they couldn’t hear Lily admonishing Laurence to take care of himself.

“Everyone,” Harcourt said, as Laurence came back over, “has been wishing to see you both. But we cannot all take leave.”

“Perhaps,” Tharkay said, “we shall visit ourselves.”

“Do,” she said, dispensing with the subtleties. “Come for Christmas and the new year.” These being not far away at all. “Everyone is still wild for the end of the war; there are sure to be great parties.”

So of course there was no saying “no” after that, certainly not after Junior heard the idea and declared it grand. Laurence was well aware he had to make up for his recent lapse in judgement.

So three days before Christmas saw them in Edinburgh by horse, where they picked up some new outfits at the tailors, and assorted gifts from shops along the royal mile. The next day they were on their way by wing to Loch Laggan, courtesy of the newly established Hermes' Chariot Taxi service.

Laurence had been bracing for the sight of the covert from aloft. But while the sight of it all laid out silver in snow sent pain through his heart, it was half the pain of stepping towards the hearth after a frigid day.

“Oh! Oh, is the lake not splendid?” Junior asked, leaning out and tugging upon Laurence's hand.

“Splendid indeed,” Tharkay agreed.

“Do you think we could go skating? Only I have never tried but it sounds very fine!”

Recalling that splendid spring day where three dragons had dove in and out of that very loch, Laurence smiled. “I am certain it can be arranged.”

Once before, Laurence had found himself dismounting a dragon and immediately surrounded by aviators in an overwhelmingly enthusiastic group embrace. As he had been bereft of his memory at the time, it had been more bemusing than anything. Even without the brain fever, he found it equally so upon repetition.

“Happy Christmas!” boomed Berkley, slapping Laurence on the back, and then Tharkay in turn. “And here is the Little Laurence Junior we have heard so much about!”

Laurence choked, horrified at the mistake. “Oh no, he is not—the name Junior is not meant to imply—”

But Junior was only blithely saying, “Yes, that is me. It is very good to see you, Berkley. Is Maximus about?”

Berkley blinked, taken aback by this familiar greeting, and looked to Laurence for guidance. Laurence made what he hoped was a reassuring expression.

“Ah yes, good to meet you too, lad. Yes, Maximus is somewhere about, though he might be eating, right about now.”

“Oh, I do not mind,” Junior said, and would have run off had Laurence not snagged him by the back of his flying-coat, which was much too large and had the effect of making the boy look smaller than he was by comparison.

“Let's introduce you to the rest of the formation's captains, and then you may go see the dragons,” Laurence said, kind but firm.

“But it is not as if I haven't met them,” Junior complained.

Laurence did not bother to argue with the boy, only held him as the rest of the captains made their greetings.

But there was something very odd about the introductions; they did not feel like introductions at all. It would have been one thing—indeed, an expected thing—if Junior had simply acted familiar, but there was more to it than that. For one, the boy greeted each man by name before they could be introduced, and while their names could have been mentioned in his hearing easily enough, Laurence was sure that no one had ever described them in detail. So why then, did Junior know who was who simply by looking at their faces?

Laurence did not have much time to muse on the question. It was a rule, he had found, that to balance the military discipline necessary in the day-to-day fulfillment of their duties, that none were equal to soldiers in their celebratory revelry, and that Christmas proved true.

There were meals and singing and dancing, even among the dragons, whose stamping feet made the ground shake. There was a snowball fight the next morning that took over an entire courtyard, and afterwards, they all recovered in the baths—most of them soaking, but Junior ducking in and out in imitation of a dolphin.

Laurence did not overdrink, though at times he was sorely tempted. But he would have not needed to worry if he had. Junior was in good company here. The dragons were all warm and indulgent, for Junior had known their names too, and the many youths of the Corps took him into their fold easily. It was good to see the lad with children his own age.

Laurence watched them playing tag through the pavilion from an overlooking wall on Christmas morning. Breath misting, he said to himself, “I wish you could have met him, my dear.”

Below, the boy stopped in the middle of his running and waved up at Laurence, only to get bowled over by another child who had evidently not expected him to stop there. Laurence winced, but Junior was popping back up barely a second later, unhurt and laughing.

“Oi, Laurence!” Someone called behind him, and Laurence turned away to greet the speaker.

The aviators were as a rule not given to particular piety, but an excuse to feast was beloved by all, and the Christmas dinner that afternoon was extravagant. Even that morning Laurence had woken to the heady scent of beef roasting for the dragons’ meals, and a truly ridiculous quantity of spice had gone into the food, save the meals for a few dragons—like Maximus—who requested their beef minimally altered. Even that morning’s porridge, still a source of complaint among the corps dragons, had been dressed up with honey and dried fruit.

For humans the fare was more varied but no less extravagant, much to Junior’s delight, but even so Laurence had a task ahead of him when it came to keeping the boy in his chair for the whole meal, when he’d have run out to join the dragons after the second course. In this, the informality of the corps was in his favor; they had not been seated in proper order, but rather in clusters, many captains with their children, or friends with each other.

Everyone had a year's worth of stories to share—a storm above the channel, overly forward suitors chasing aviators now that they were considered rather fashionable by society, the exploits of the dragons trying to find a publisher for their novel—and Laurence drank it up like a flowerbed after a drought. Where for so long, the words of others had been little more than distant noise, it was an odd kind of renewed joy.

Nonetheless, he found himself becoming more maudlin as the evening moved on, not helped by the others' conversation becoming increasingly boisterous and nonsensical. “Shall we take a final walk around the grounds before we retire?” Tharkay suggested, and both Laurence and Junior took him up on this.

Outside was cool and bright in only the way a winter's night could be, the snow reflecting the moonlight in a silver cast. None of them spoke. There was no need to. There was only their footsteps against the salt-strewn cobbles, Tharkay and Laurence on either side, Junior in the middle, clasping their gloved hands like a bridge.

For a moment, Laurence saw them as if from the outside, and smiled. They looked something like a parody of domestic bliss.

He glanced, briefly, at Tharkay. The word 'parody' seemed an unkind one to pin on the man who had welcomed them both into his home when they had needed it most, and far exceeded the bounds of any host.

He looked rather fine that night, Laurence realised suddenly. Not just the greatcoat or the stylish trim of his beaver-fur scarf, though both were handsome. It was the way his usually bronze complexion was re-cast in the queer lighting, the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes, the relaxation of his normally carefully held expression…

They had agreed never to speak of that night they’d shared, but Laurence was not so much a fool to think Tharkay had asked that for his own sake.

Tharkay looked up and caught his gaze, eyes crinkling at the corners. They were both of them older than they had been, with well-lined faces. Laurence thought, very suddenly, that it was a shame so few of Tharkay’s were in this pattern of laughter.

Tharkay’s gaze turned assessing, as if he read some fraction of Laurence’s thoughts from his face. Whatever he found in his assessment made his lips part just slightly, breath making a cloud of steam rise.

Laurence swallowed any comment he might have made. It would be incredibly inappropriate to say even the mildest of them with Junior between them, currently tugging on their hands like he was considering whether he could swing from them as he’d seen some of the much younger children do earlier that day.

Then Junior looked up and said, “Are you going to mate tonight? Iskierka was asking.”

If there was any way to build those laugh lines Tharkay's face was so sorely lacking, his reaction just then would be a major contributor.

Laurence's reaction was the precise opposite. He looked around frantically, then when he saw no one, made an emphatic shushing gesture. “Junior,” he admonished, “you cannot say such things—”

“In company, yes, so I have been told.” Junior's expression was both serious and dismissive. “That is why I said so here, when no one is around.”

Laurence swallowed. “Yes. Well.”

“We appreciate your prudence,” Tharkay said, untangling his hand to lay it on Junior's shoulder. “Beyond that, I would recommend phrasing such things more delicately. 'Mating' would be considered rather mercenary of a description.”

“Why? It is accurate, is it not?”

“In our case, it would not be, as it implies an intent to produce children, which we, both being men, are not capable of.”

Junior tilted his head. “I had not considered that…”

“Tharkay,” Laurence hissed, quite astonished by the man's gall.

Tharkay grinned at him, side-long, expression quite devious. “Regardless, it brings to mind the deliberate breeding of livestock, and so has unfortunate connotations. If you really must ask—which for the most part, you should not—I would recommend saying something like, 'Do you have a personal engagement tonight?'”

“Hm,” Junior said, considering it. Laurence could only hope he would take the lesson to heart, before he said something to a less forgiving audience. “Well, do you? Have a personal engagement?”

Laurence might have coughed himself to death, trying to escape such a question; Tharkay only said, “I had not been planning on it, in the way Iskierka must have meant.”

‘Had not been’ not ‘am not’. Laurence was careful not to let any reaction to the phrasing show on his face.

“Hmm. Are you not interested then?” asked the child, as if they were discussing plans to go to the theater. “I do not mind. You will not try to take Laurence away, or marry him, and I will be staying in Maximus’s pavilion tonight.”

“You will?” asked Laurence, seizing on this change of topic. It was the first he had heard of it.

“Well, yes, of course,” Junior said. “I have missed my friends, and it will be perfectly warm.”

It wasn’t a merely optimistic assessment; great panels of canvas rolled down on the outsides of the pavilions at Loch Laggan, and between that, the floor heating, and the warmth of the dragons inside, the structures were almost warmer than the rooms inside the castle.

Indeed, when they finally looped back towards the pavilions some twenty minutes later, they found it even cozier than all of that. Peacetime—or perhaps the greater economic freedom of dragons—had opened up an opportunity for luxury war would never have allowed, and clearly some dragons had not spent their winnings and wages not just on gold and jewels, but magnificent blankets and pillows.

“Much better than a cave, yes,” chattered Arkaday from Maximus's back in heavily accented English, then added something else in Durzagh which was quite beyond Laurence's limited grasp of the language.

Tharkay responded in kind, and then to Laurence's surprise, so did Junior, looking up from the chest where he had apparently stored his sleeping dress earlier that day.

Laurence turned to Tharkay to inquire as to when he had been teaching the boy the dragon tongue, only to see clear astonishment on his face as well.

It was not the time to ask after it. The boy was deep in discussion among his dragon friends—it was impressive, how quickly he had ingratiated himself among them—and anyhow he was beginning to yawn fiercely, it being quite past his bedtime. Laurence and Tharkay bade the group goodnight, and made their way back to their rooms, the hum of distant merry-making in the background.

It was such a pleasant, comfortable walk, that they were nearly back to their quarters until Laurence recalled their earlier subject of conversation, and became acutely aware of the other man's presence, so close beside him.

“Tenzing,” he said, as they reached the doors of their two rooms, on either side of a corridor.

Tharkay raised a hand. His expression was mild; that mildness was a mask, Laurence was sure. “You do not need to indulge the whims of dragons and children alike.”

“No.” Laurence's throat was dry. What about my own whims? he nearly said. But he did not wish for Tharkay to be a whim, someone or something he pursued only when it suited, then discarded.

“I would wish more than that,” he said, and swallowed. “If you would, as well.”

Tharkay looked at him for a long time, searching his face in the dim light. “I would,” he said, no longer mild. “But not if —” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, letting it stand in for a dozen statements Laurence could imagine. If it will be like last time. If you will apologize again. If it will scare you away. If you will think less of me.

Laurence might have answered each in turn, might have made promises he was still not sure he could keep. He did not.

Tharkay’s lips were a little dry from the cold, but still soft against Laurence's, and warm from his breath.

It was only the briefest kiss, conscious as they both were of their position in a public hallway. But Laurence tried as best he could to make it mean something.

Stepping back, Laurence made his own search of Tharkay's expression, looking for evidence he had succeeded.

Tharkay’s eyes were closed, but he opened them slowly, blinking like he was waking up: very flattering, for what that kiss had been. One of his hands had found Laurence’s at some point, warm even through the gloves.

Laurence pulled Tharkay into his room—his room, not Tharkay's, a statement as clear as he could make it. Yes.

They did not rush it. Could not have, in any case. Someone had neglected to build a fire in the hearth, and without it the room was dreadfully cold. Even with two people in a bed, it would have been incredibly unpleasant. “I have no intention of re-living that journey through the alps,” Tharkay said, handing a crouching Laurence fire-wood.

Laurence struck the flint. “Those caves,” he agreed. “Do you recall how—” and then he caught himself, not wanting to ruin the mood with ghosts.

But Tharkay did not seem to mind. “How ridiculous Temeraire looked, stuffed into that hole of ice?”

“Like a burrowing snake!” Laurence chuckled, as the kindling caught, and Tharkay joined in.

From there was the unpeeling of the clothes, layer by layer, taking particular time with the gloves—with Tharkay's hands, stretching them, massaging them, rubbing balm into the palm and the knuckles. Tharkay sighed, leaning to rest his head on Laurence's shoulder.

Last time—Last time, it had been a frantic thing, desperate. Like he had been drowning, his lungs burning, and he was seizing on to the first and only rope offered him. There was passion this time, but it was a controlled passion, and Laurence took it by the ropes, careful and deliberate as he steered a course.

He was in some ways grateful for the chill of the room, even then: it kept them close, and it slowed things that might otherwise have been easy to rush. They spent a long time kissing as they waited for the sheets to warm around them, and almost as much time in sleepy lassitude once they had; the sheer relief of the warmth was great indeed.

Laurence did not think he had been a selfish lover, last time. But they had both been driving towards an end. This time he paid attention and catalogued reactions as he found them. Tharkay did not mind hands wrapping around his ribs, but he was ticklish enough on the underside of his arms to dislike being touched so there; he enjoyed kissing but broke away to breathe often; he was quite good at staying quiet until very suddenly he wasn't; he was controlled, but all that control only made it more of a victory when Laurence was able to send him over the precipice first.

They lay in each other's arms a long while after; reluctant to leave the warmed bed, or to imitate even for the barest instant how their previous encounter had ended. But finally Tharkay said, “I suppose I cannot trust the discretion of these servants,” and pulled himself from the bed. Laurence stood also, in solidarity, but there was no real need. Tharkay slipped Laurence's nightshirt over his head rather than re-dress simply to cross the hall, and gathered up a brand from the fire to kindle the one in his own room.

And then with a kiss to Laurence's cheek—as prim as a maiden—he was gone. Gone from the room, but not from the place in Laurence's chest where their shared warmth had taken up residence. Laurence remained standing, briefly, forehead pressed against the closed door to hide his smile from the world, and he thought of their beds at Strathvagan house, and servants who had been hired for their discretion.

Chapter Text

“No, I do see,” Maximus said, as he kept pace with Lily and Iskierka, wingbeat matching wingbeat. “A very good sort, very good. Sensible.”

“Well, I would not go as far as that,” Lily said. “I did tell you the story about the rain.”

Maximus twitched his tail dismissively, banking left to catch an updraft. “Oh, children will be children, of course.” He had lost track of the number of times one of his runners had taken a bad fall or gotten more sotted than they ought have. “But I will say this is one of the first I’ve met who has ever been worth the trouble.”

“They do get better as they age,” Lily said, though with an obligatory sort of air, one wholly unconvincing after Maximus had lived through years of her winging about Young Tom. 

Iskierka, who had been uncharacteristically silent throughout all their post-supper flight said, “And? Anything else?”

Maximus looked at Lily; Lily looked back. They had been on the topic of Junior for what must have been a quarter of an hour, and still neither of them had any sense of what she was driving at. 

Lily said, “It would be a shame if he didn’t go into the service. He has the makings of a good officer, for a lad.”

“Oi!” Maximus swiped at her.

Lily dodged easily, long practiced. She retaliated, and the two tousled a little, dodging backwards and forwards in the sky.

But the merits of women versus men was a well worn game for them, and neither of them had much energy, bellies still so full from the feasting. Turning back at Iskierka’s sharp snort, Maximus said, “Yes, no, I agree. I’ll speak to Berkley about it, see if he’ll say something to Laurence, and so on.”

Jetting a quick burst of flame, Iskierka said, “Yes, but do you notice anything else about him?”

That it is good that Laurence found him, Maximus did not say. The truest things did not need to be dwelled upon. So he shook his head, as did Lily.

“Idiots!” Iskierka exclaimed, and went jetting off to who-knew-where.

“What was that about?” Maximmus grumbled, once he was reasonably sure she was out of earshot.

Lily gave a dismissive half-shrug. “Oh, you know Iskierka. She is always on about something or other.” 

The span of days between Christmas and New Year's were enchanted, like something from a children's book. It was odd to be at a military base and have such time for leisure, yet that was the circumstance. The hours stretched out like treacle, filled with conversations and games, food and drink, and many daily adventures to occupy a ten year old. They did in fact make it down to the lake, Lily and Immortalis carrying many other children besides, and a pleasant afternoon was spent skating, with a long soak in the baths afterwards to shake away the chill.

There had been an exchange of gifts on Christmas Day, which had been primarily an excuse to spoil Junior, the other children, and the dragons, but among the adults had primarily been little more than tokens such as candied nuts or stationary. The exception among them had been Captain Little.

Frankly, Laurence had not been expecting much or anything from Little; the pair of them had never been close. He himself had only purchased a jar of lemon preserves he recalled the man was fond of. Indeed, Little had not even been present for the primary exchange, Immortalis having drawn the short straw and been scheduled for that day's patrols. So it took him by surprise when Little had drawn Laurence aside on Boxing Day afternoon and handed him a thin rolled tube. “I hope it will not be overstepping.”

Laurence had drawn the image out, and momentarily lost his breath.

It was a watercolour painting of Temeraire in flight.

It was not particularly detailed, possessing some characteristics of Little's sketches, the painting providing more of an impression of form and movement. The way light caught on Temeraire's scales; how the wind would catch his tendrils and ruff; the arc of his back in a dive.

“Little,” Laurence said, and then since the name seemed insufficient; “Augustine.”

Little said, “I know it is difficult to be—to be afraid of forgetting. What he was like when he was well, I mean.” He looked a little haunted, and Laurence wondered if he had thought about it often when Immortalis was sick. He had to know, too, that forgetting was an even greater fear for Laurence.

“Thank you,” he said, swallowing. He ached deep in his chest. Little was right, in guessing that so often when Laurence closed his eyes, it was only blood and labored breathing he saw. That wound was not healed. It may never be healed. But this was a balm he had not expected, this image of Temeraire's joy. “Thank you,” he repeated.

Little visibly hesitated and then seemed to make up his mind, stepping forward to pull Laurence into a brief, light embrace, done almost before Laurence had realized it was happening, as proper as such an improper thing could be.

He had never done such a thing with Laurence before, not even when he was first recovered in Japan, and half the captains had—it felt like—leapt upon him in their relief.

There was apprehension in his eyes when he stepped back, and Laurence tried to smile, to show he had taken no offense.

It must have worked, for the tension went out of Little's shoulders.

With an effort, Laurence said, “It is truly fine work.” Obviously it represented significantly more effort than the quick sketches he had seen. “We ought to let everyone admire it.”

And admire it everyone did, at dinner. The painting made the rounds to exclamations of delight and much praise for Little’s skill, though the man seemed a little shy at the attention. Granby, Laurence saw, smiled knowingly at the painting, unsurprised by its existence.

Though by far the most interesting reaction was Junior’s; the boy gasped when he saw it, and treated it as delicately as spun sugar, as if he were afraid it would melt away. He reached out more than once as if he meant to run his fingers down the curve of one wing, and then snatched them back before he could, as if remembering himself.

Indeed, every night before bed, Laurence caught Junior standing by the desk in their shared room, admiring the piece, tracing his fingers an inch or so in the air above it, and quietly added ‘art’ to the list of tutors they would need to find for him.

It was perhaps a little unorthodox for the pair of them to be sharing a room, or it would have been, outside of the military. But of course it was quite standard aboard ships or in tents on campaign, and the covert had few spare rooms over the winter holidays, so Laurence could hardly have complained. As it was, Junior was as tidy and polite as any ten year old boy could be, and only required a little reminding to make his bed in the mornings.

Although sooner or later even that became redundant, because on their fourth night together, Laurence woke to find the lad curled up under the covers with him, tucked against his chest.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Laurence asked, gently, brushing hair out of Junior's face.

“Oh, no,” Junior said. “But it sounded as if you were, Laurence, and I hoped this might help settle you.”

Laurence could not recall any nightmares, but knew he had them—so perhaps it was true, or perhaps the boy had not wanted to admit anything he felt so juvenile. Regardless, Laurence could not quite bring himself to banish Junior back to his bed.

So some nights they slept like that, tucked together. Sometimes Junior slept outside with his dragon friends. Twice more, Laurence and Tharkay sought out each other's night-time company, careful to be discreet. Each time left Laurence cursing the fact he had already committed a trip back to Nottinghamshire for January fifth.

It was not just the desire for privacy. He felt a pang for Strathvagan house, a homesickness, the force of which surprised him.

Perhaps it should not have; he had been living there over a year now, longer than he had been in any one place uninterrupted since he first took to the sea.

But he had promised his mother he would introduce her to Junior, and he could not—indeed, would not wish to—break such a promise. In her letters, she had seemed delighted by his taking in an orphan from the streets, when in truth she had every right to be scandalized. And Junior wished to meet her just as much, though of course upon hearing her mentioned he acted as if they were already acquainted.

Their last day at Loch Laggan was taken as an excuse for another party, by the dragons and the aviators both. There was even a bit of dancing, and Laurence found himself a rather more in-demand partner than he had anticipated; he was one of the few officers who could be relied on not to fumble the steps.

Breathless after one turn with the young captain of a Longwing hatched only three months before the war's end, he looked around to see Junior had once again vanished.

Knowing well where he must have gone, Laurence went outside to find him curled into Maximus's cupped talons. They were having, from the sound of it, a lively debate about the best investments for prize-money.

Laurence might have left him to his friends, but just as he turned to go back inside, Junior began to sniffle, sneezed tremendously, and then followed it with a series of hacking coughs.

It was perhaps unsurprising, all things considered, considering the long hours Junior had spent playing outside in the cold, accompanied by a particularly rich diet, and indeed Laurence felt a stab of guilt for his poor stewardship of his charge. A boy was not a dragon, who could shrug off all but the most grievous of harm, however much he sometimes acted like one.

Nonetheless, it was poor timing. Junior coughed, sniffled, and sneezed the entire flight to England, and the high spirits he possessed at the outset of the trip subsided to a bleary half-sleep by the time their dragon, a charming yellow reaper-Incan cross by the named Kuyanakuy, touched down on the lawn of Wollaton hall.

Laurence wanted nothing more than to bundle the child up safely inside the warmth of a bedroom, but of course a base level of courtesy needed to be observed as they were received by Laurence's family.

“I apologize for my poor company,” Junior said, his impressive manners rather ruined by the sneeze which punctuated the sentence with a prodigious volume of mucus.

Laurence's mother, who had raised three children of her own and helped with a further six grandchildren, hardly flinched. She simply handed Junior a handkerchief and reassured, “Do not fear in the least, dear child. I am only merely happy to hear you made it in such poor weather.”

“Kuyanakuy’s flying was more than up to task,” Tharkay reassured in kind, and was every picture of the gentleman by taking Lady Allendale's hand and lightly kissing it.

Tharkay had met Laurence's mother at least once before, but the details of their interaction were lost in the grey fog which had descended on the first few months after the war in Laurence's mind. He was happy to see her smile at his friend and host with every evidence of genuine pleasure. “Let us not stand on ceremony,” she said. “I think a bed is in order—” she nodded at Junior “—and something hot to drink for everyone.”

“Chocolate?” Junior asked, rather pitifully. “Of course—of course I will be perfectly happy with tea, if that is too much trouble. Or even coffee.”

“I am sure some chocolate might be arranged,” she said, freeing him from his spiral.

Laurence's mother had moved into the dowager house not long after his father's passing, and the visit had been arranged with her in mind. But George was their technical host, and it was to the main residence they went.

There was something like relief on George's face when he greeted Laurence, though he blinked at Junior, somewhere between surprise and an uncertainty of what to make of the boy. He blinked at Tharkay in the same way.

But whatever the cause, he was the courteous host they had all been raised to be, as was his wife, and soon enough a guest bed had been made up for Junior along with the promised cup of chocolate.

If their odd two weeks at the covert had been little but ruckus and partying from start to finish, their stay at Wollaton Hall was a well-needed respite. With the outside alternating between driving snow and icy rain, there was little course to go anywhere. Their hosts entertained them with music and games, in between which there was a great deal of light conversation, reading, and—with a highly unpracticed hand—some whittling.

Laurence would have enjoyed the interlude a great deal more if he wasn't so often in and out of Junior's chambers. The boy's condition had gotten worse, and then hovered there. He coughed and coughed, and he complained of a pain in his chest which hot willowbark with lemon and honey could only do so much to ease. His eyes gained a red rim, and his skin an unpleasant pallor, and he slept long stretches at a time. It was merely a cold, the family physician reassured them, and Laurence had no reason to disbelieve him. Nonetheless, dark memories haunted his mind; the wrenching of the malaria striking, the languishing of dragons in the final stages of their blight.

No. No, Junior was young yet. Young and hale. He would pull through.

It was in this hope that Laurence allowed himself to be pulled away from Junior's bedside one day—he had fallen asleep, curled around a soft toy dog—to a game of cards with his brothers.

He could hardly recall the last time it had been only the three of them, together, for any length. Before Laurence's first captainship, certainly. There was a strangeness to it, and yet equal familiarity, and soon he found himself easing into it, the warm gossip of the local families and the church in rhythm with the playing of hands.

He was glad of the chance; for many long years he had thought he would never be welcome in this house again, never again see his family, nor even write them. The pardon had been some reprieve, but it was the last campaign which truly rehabilitated him enough in the eyes of society that he was no longer a stain—or no longer only a stain—on their house. If he had any cause to be grateful for the fiction the papers had spun, it would be this.

It was lovely, and in short order it had him remembering moments from childhood with one brother or the other, visits as he was climbing the ranks in the navy, and even his longest leave, after the time in the Normandy’s cutter, when he had needed time to recover lost flesh and strength.

It also, unfortunately, soon reminded him why he never corresponded with his brothers as reliably as he did his mother.

Having run out of gossip about the neighbours, (or less charitably, perhaps having brought up the gossip precisely to lead here), Robert said, “But enough about the local news, I’m sure it must be dreadfully boring to you, Will, now that the war is done. Yours is much more interesting. Mother said you found him on the street?”

There was no question of whom the ‘him’ referred to.

“It is not quite so simple as that,” Laurence hedged.

“Of course it is not,” Robert agreed. “How long have you known about him?”

Laurence was typically quite good at deciphering the intricacies behind such questions, but this one made no sense that he could see. “Pardon?”

George said, “I am sure he only means, you must have met him before, when he was younger, in the Orient?”

“The Orient?” Laurence echoed. For a moment, some sort of astonishment bubbled in his chest. Was it possible he had met Junior on his travels, and forgot?

But something stayed his tongue. The unlikeliness of it, first of all. Of all the people he could have written to about such an encounter, why his brothers? And secondly, something in their tone. Not quite mocking, but an amusement with an unpleasant kind of edge. Again, he hedged, “It is possible.”

George said, “Yes, I suppose they do all look the same, especially as children. And it would not surprise me if he has a number of siblings.”

“You do not expect them to all come calling at your door?” Robert said, and while his tone was light, there was a curl at his lips.

It was Laurence's turn, but he had hardly glanced at his cards for the past round. “I hardly see how taking in one child will lead to any such situation.”

Robert placed his hand face down on the table and patted Laurence's forearm, gently. “I am certain Lord Tharkay is a very admirable person,” he said. “Certainly he has been a loyal friend to you, and you cannot be blamed for equal loyalty in return. But…”

“But surely you cannot have been blind to the scandal?” George finished.

Understanding dawned, as did anger.

“Speak plainly,” Laurence said, clipped. He would have it out where he could voice correction.

It was not at all like his father's assumptions about Emily. Those were not so nearly said outright, and even if they had been, he could not have issued a correction which revealed the secret of female aviators. (Though that was not a quarter of the secret now that it had been eight years before.) And that aspersion had only been cast upon his own character, not upon that of his friend.

George had kept greater contact with Laurence, the last decade, and had seen him during the invasion. Perhaps he read the danger in the words better; he was silent.

Robert was not. “Come now, Will, you cannot expect—”

“I can expect,” he said, “respect for a man without whose help I would be dead a half-dozen times, and whose role in the winning of the war was as key as any single person's might be.”

“Of course we—”

“I can also expect,” Laurence continued, “greater intelligence than to assume relation merely because the individuals in question hail from the same continent.”

George stepped in before Robert could say any more. “There is no relation, then?”

“There is not.” Laurence could not tell if his brother believed him, but he at least seemed disinclined to press the argument himself.

They finished the round in near-silence. Afterwards, Laurence made his excuses, rose, and left.

He checked on Junior, who roused enough to ask for some hot water, and to be read to. Laurence doubted how much of the treatise on astronomy he could actually be understanding with the fever clouding his mind, but it seemed to comfort him.

After that, it was supper. Laurence wished he could have stayed within the bedroom with Junior, and would have happily drank plain broth, if it would have excused him from enduring a three course meal with his brothers and their wives and children, wondering what baseless speculation they were sharing behind his back.

It was no surprise that Tharkay found him in his room, afterwards, knocking on the door. “Well?” Tharkay asked, raising his eyebrow.

Laurence sighed. “You best come in.” They were being even more careful to be discreet, here, where it was not so easy to go unnoticed among the hundreds of soldiers, who were more inclined to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing anyhow.

“Well, yes, of course I knew,” Tharkay sighed, once it had been explained. “Or it occurred to me this might happen, as soon as I realised we were committing to this course.”

Of course he would have, Laurence realised, stricken. This was the thing he had not understood about Tharkay when they had first met, and which even now he still struggled to truly grasp about him. He was always, always aware of how others were perceiving him—and if not manipulating that to his advantage, then at least to his private amusement.

Again, Laurence sighed. “You knew. You knew, and still you allowed me to pursue this end without speaking a word.”

“It was not any less the right thing to do, just because it causes me some discomfort,” Tharkay said, a point which Laurence could not dispute without pioneering new forms of hypocrisy.

“But was not the only right thing,” Laurence replied instead. They had not planned to bring Junior home, only find the child who had written them and perhaps help him to some charitable house.

“No,” Tharkay agreed. “I could hardly regret it now, however.” Now that he knew Junior well, he meant. Or perhaps simply now that Laurence could see what it had cost.

“Thank you.” Laurence had known from the beginning that Tharkay had given him a great deal, in allowing Laurence to bring a child into his house to raise indefinitely. And now he had turned a cherished letter over and found it written down the back as well: an even greater care than he had realized.

Tharkay kissed him rather than answer in words, and Laurence knew the topic was—for now—put to rest. He resolved to keep a better watch for such whispers, and he hoped he would have chances to correct them wherever they were to be found.

Junior dreamed of flying over the vast, tangled green jungle of Brazil. The heat was different there than it had been in Australia: wet, and heavy, and almost unbearable. Breathing itself was a labor, like trying to heave swamp water in and out of his lungs.

But still, the flying was easy, that same sticky heat buoying the air-sacs inside him and holding him up, and he felt something like relief in the simplicity of it. Iskierka flew to his right, barely a wing’s-length between them, and Kulingile to his left. It was nearly like a proper formation, though one luckily stripped of all the tedious drills and practices.

He pulled his wings in and dipped low, skimming not more than a hundred feet above the canopy, watching for any sign of a gap, anywhere he might catch something to eat—

He woke, gasping and soaked in fever sweat, and ravenous.

He rolled to his feet, or tried to; he was caught in something. For a moment he struggled, thinking they were storm chains, but no, they were merely blankets, clinging, constrictive. He won his freedom, and lay on the floor, panting, more exhausted than he ought be.

After a timeless span—perhaps a few breaths, perhaps a quarter of an hour— Junior shoved himself to his feet and made his way across the room. There he found himself in some trouble. The door was in his way, and he could not figure out how to reach the knob—

Ah, ah. Stand on his hind legs. Yes.

He fumbled with the knob, pushed himself through, into the hallway. His first instinct was to fetch Laurence; Laurence would help. But the corridors were unfamiliar, and he could not recall behind which door Laurence slept, or Tharkay besides.

Perhaps a servant? But no, the darkness spoke to a late hour. Tharkay had told him it would be very rude to rouse servants at such a time for anything but the greatest extremity.

A pang of hunger shot through him, desperate, and it felt like a moment of greatest extremity. But no, no. He was not truly starving, not yet.

He was capable of feeding himself, surely.

Down the hall he went, down the staircase too, though his head swam terribly. And there was the side door; it was not locked, not from the inside. The cold hit Junior like a physical force, but for once, it was not so terrible. It was pleasant, even, a balm against his festering skin. Junior exhaled, and his breath bloomed in frost, like the equal and opposite to Iskierka's fire.

In the distance, a goat bleated.

He followed the sound, salivating. A goat was such a small meal, not nearly large enough to fill the hole in his belly, but perhaps there would be more than one, he thought. Or if not, at least it would be a start.

He stumbled clumsily along down the path and through the grassy field, more familiar than the house still, for all that he had last been here during the invasion more than five years gone. He knew where the goats were kept, though it seemed to take such a terribly long time to get there, and when he reached the pen he had to scramble and claw to get himself over the fence, when it ought to have been the work of a moment to knock it down entire.

And there it was before him, the bleating goat, awake where the others were asleep.

It was watching him warily, but not running or collapsing in fear, as every goat he had ever seen before this had done.

All the better to catch it, when he felt so weak and hungry. Junior lunged.

Laurence could not say what woke him; perhaps it was a creak of the stair, or a door closing. Whatever it was, he came awake instantly, with the bone-deep sense that something was wrong, like waking and knowing in an instant that the ship was becalmed, all that should have been in motion gone still.

He bolted upright, throwing back the covers, and then recalled where he was and slowed. Surely, he was jumping at shadows.

But the feeling did not dissipate as his nightmares did, and after only a few seconds he rose, opened the door, and peered into the dark hall.

The dark, empty hall, with Junior's door a darker gap, hanging open.

“Junior?” he half-whispered into the room, and was unsurprised when there was no answer.

“Junior?” he called softly into the library, thinking the boy might have curled up on the couch with a book, though he was still unsurprised when there was no answer.

“Junior?” he gasped into the kitchen, thinking that perhaps hunger or thirst had driven him, and yet still he was unsurprised when there was no answer.

But despite having apparently been proven wrong on that score, Laurence could not shake the sense he was right there. When the plague had at last broken in the dragons, and suddenly beasts who had scarcely eaten for over a year were suddenly sneaking livestock in the night.

Perhaps that was what drove him to grab his coat and a lantern, and slip out into the darkness of the night. Surely nothing approaching sense.

But whatever instinct or madness drove him was correct. “Junior!” Laurence cried, and he was somehow unsurprised to find Junior folded on the ground inside the goat's pen.

The goats brayed at him as they approached, and fled. They were not only all awake, but agitated. Angry, even, Laurence realized, as one pawed viciously at the ground and…

Oh lord, it had been attacking Junior. “No, no, no,” Laurence murmured, gathering the boy up in his arms, terrified, horrified—

The boy coughed. “Laurence?”

Oh. Oh thank heaven. Laurence took a shaky breath, closing his eyes for a moment in a sort of half-formed prayer. He could not even begin to think of what question to ask, but it did not matter anyway. “Let's get you inside.” The danger was not passed, not at all passed.

“I'm so hungry,” the boy said, almost sobbing. “And it hurts.”

He was not bleeding, that Laurence could see, and he had not made any particular cries that would have told him of broken bones. But Laurence had no doubt there would be severe bruises by morning. “I'll get you whatever you need,” Laurence swore, close to tears himself from mingled terror and relief. He would rouse the entire household if he had to.

“I thought I could get something to eat myself,” Junior continued, though Laurence had not asked him. Perhaps he knew already he had done something he should not, and sought to give excuse. “Only I am so weak now, I could not even kill a goat.” That was a full sob, and he turned a little in Laurence's arms to press his face against Laurence's chest. “I don't want to stay like this any longer!”

“Shhhh,” Laurence soothed, otherwise helpless as he walked back toward the house. He wanted to run, but it was dark and the path not quite even, so he forced himself to slow. “I know, I am sorry. You will feel better soon—I—I promise.” It was not a lie. It would not be a lie. He would get better.

There was a light in the window when he rounded the corner of the house, and Laurence might have been embarrassed his wild search had disturbed someone if he were not so glad. He picked up his pace, taking a moment to ponder the madness Junior had thought to do for a midnight meal.

In the end, they did not rouse the whole house, but perhaps a fourth of it. Junior ate three whole bowls of soup, spiced so heavily that Laurence could not have borne it even while perfectly well, and submitted just long enough to be checked for wounds before falling asleep as though nothing had happened.

Laurence, for his part, could not sleep. Or rather, every time he tried, his thoughts ran into surreal nightmares that soon left him gasping in bed. An hour before dawn he gave up entirely.

Sure enough, Junior was a mass of bruises when he at last woke up, and groaned with every step. But it seemed that the previous night's hunger-fuelled hallucination had been the fever's swan song. The quality of Junior's breathing had changed, and his gaze was clearer again. The illness had broken.

Chapter Text

Laurence delivered a stern rebuke about Junior's behavior, though not as firm as he could have. It was hard to be sharp tongued when the lad clearly regretted his actions, and when it had been born not of genuine disobedience but fevered confusion.

If there had already been an air of scandal around the orphan, this helped not one whit. Laurence ignored the mutterings with long practice, and consoled himself that Junior did not seem to be aware of them.

And anyhow, the ones who mattered the most were not swayed. He found Junior in his mother's quarters the next afternoon, watching rapt as Lady Allendale taught him the basics of embroidery.

Junior’s coordination had improved by leaps and bounds since they had found him, likely as a consequence of better eating and living in the warm indoors. It was still not quite up to fine embroidery, but he was making a good show of some larger stitches, and he didn't seem to need the extra thimbles she'd given him to protect his fingers, or at least not more than any beginner would.

Laurence's mother smiled at him, and waved for him to sit, and Laurence allowed himself the pleasure of simply watching for a long span of minutes as she patiently showed the boy how to do one step or another. For his part, Junior did not seem to be conscious that embroidery was usually a woman's art, and Laurence could not have brought himself to say a thing.

“Are there any patterns that make dragons?” Junior asked, having triumphantly tied off an only slightly lopsided flower.

“Not that I know,” Lady Allendale said indulgently. “But I suppose someone must have undertaken such a design.”

“I am sure I have seen some in China.”

“That would not surprise me in the least. Are you interested in dragons, then?”

“Yes, of course!” And with not very much prompting at all, the boy launched into quite an impressive speech on everything appealing about dragons. This began very much as one might have expected—they were large, and could fly, and came in fantastic colours, and were very fierce.

Mother laughed. “When my sons were your age, I would have thought them rather mad to go on as you do,” she said fondly. “But now of course I know better, and think you are very sensible in your admiration.”

“I am glad you seem to think so,” Junior said, and this set him off on a new direction entirely, about the dismal state of draconic rights in both Britain and Europe at large.

It was not surprising that the boy would have had a general awareness of how things compared to China, nor even that he would have overheard some details from their stay at the covert. But the detail was impressive. He knew how much the aerial corps paid dragons per year, on average; and how often they were late in said payments; he had very scathing commentary regarding the Admiralty's other promises regarding livestock and pavilions. More than that, he spoke at length of the “scholarly embarrassment” of the Royal Society when it came to the academic articles they had deigned to publish on dragons, texts Laurence himself had not read, for once not out of lack of interest, but because they made him angry enough to want to tear the papers.

“Well,” Lady Allendale said, clearly stunned yet too well-mannered to show it. “I see William was right; we had best get you some proper tutors, and soon you will be writing papers to which the Society will be clamouring for.”

That at least distracted the boy quite nicely for the rest of the day, and kept the conversation at supper time away from anything overtly political. But Laurence found himself unable to stop thinking on it.

How had Junior learned all these things?

The remainder of their stay was better, if only for the obvious reasons. Junior’s recovery meant he could explore as he wished, and Laurence’s mother seemed delighted with him.

Robert returned to his parish, bringing his wife and children with. He had not mentioned the gossip again to Laurence’s face, but Laurence knew he still held suspicions. It was hard not to be relieved when he had left. George by contrast seemed to at least be entertaining Laurence’s explanation, and over the course of the visit he had warmed to Tharkay and Junior somewhat, if not as much as Laurence’s mother had. She had gifts for Junior on their last day, sweatmeats and a handkerchief she had embroidered with a small dragon on one corner, a piece she freely admitted was just a test.

Still, Junior’s delight was infectious, and Laurence found he was smiling broadly quite without noticing.

They would have to take the carriage to town and contract a taxi dragon from there, so while Junior ran about with his new handkerchief and the luggage was packed and Tharkay spoke to George quietly, Laurence took a moment to thank his mother for the gift and the hospitality both.

“Think nothing of it, dear,” she said. “I wanted to meet him very badly.” Laurence bowed his head, meaning to say that he thanked her for that as well. “He is a wonderful child, and I am glad you have found him.” She looked over at Junior. “Have you considered a permanent name? He cannot be Junior into his old age.”

“You are right, of course,” Laurence said, and leaned in and down to press a kiss to his mother's cheek.

But despite his promise to her, the truth was, he found himself drawing entirely a blank, even as he thought upon it for the entire multi-day trip back across the Isle.

It was not merely that he had no great skill with naming. Indeed, the name Temeraire had been an impulse, born of necessity, but in spite of that it had suited quite well. In contrast to that long-ago impulse, not only could he not think of anything that seemed appropriate for his ward, giving him a name at all seemed somehow inappropriate in and of itself.

After a quiet word with Tharkay, the pair of them broached the matter with Junior directly a couple of days after their return home, while they were settling back into the parlour and appreciating the comfort of having things arranged precisely as one liked them. “Well, I suppose I can think on it,” Junior said, blinking. “I hardly see why I need another name though.”

They laughed and reassured him that was because he was young, but he might feel differently in a few years. And so it became something of a game between them; whatever they read, Junior would ask whether some character or scientific term or antiquated Latin phrase would make an appropriate name.

“If he ends up naming himself A Fortiori, we will have no one to blame but ourselves,” Tharkay chuckled into Laurence's chest one night, as they curled up together in bed.

Laurence chuckled himself, thinking it would be more than a fair price to pray if it made the child happy, and drew Tenzing's face up towards his in a kiss.

It was such joys he found, day by day, like shells or worn glass found on a beach which he otherwise would have viewed as desolate. And with each little scrap picked up, the sand seemed more golden, the water more blue, and the wind sweeter.

The change was a marked one: a vividness. The year after the war had ended had been simultaneously an eternity and a blank page; each day had dragged endlessly, and yet when stacked together there was nothing to mark their passage.

Now it was reversed; each such beach-glass day was full to bursting somehow, even if all Laurence did was update his correspondence and read aloud to Junior. (And many days were far busier than that.) They slipped by so quickly, and yet when he looked back at them each stood out in his memory in some way, distinct.

The dragging days still came, and it was sometimes an effort to rise from bed in the morning, but they were fewer and farther between as the days became weeks became months.

They had found Junior in November. Now fall had come on to winter, and as Junior began to outgrow the first sets of clothes they had purchased for him, winter was likewise looking to sprout into spring.

Laurence was glad that he had at least the funds to handle this latest need himself. He was grateful in the extreme for Tharkay's generosity, but also conscious more than ever of how much his host had given to bring Junior into his house.

And the shining joy and thanks in the boy's eyes when Laurence took him to the tailor was its own incentive.

Left to only his own choices, the boy would have clad himself head to toe in gold and glass beads and ostentatious embroidery. Luckily, Laurence was able to temper him much as he once had Temeraire's sense of fashion. Some things were too fine to be worn every day, or uncomfortable, he said, or would not wash well.

Junior's enthusiasm was dimmed, but only momentarily, as the tailor promised that everyone would be able to tell how fine the boy's clothing was from the quality of the fabric alone, and then he let Junior feel the textures of each bolt of proposed cloth.

“The softness... The details in the embroidery...” Junior wondered, aloud, pressing the fabric against his skin. Laurence adored how he took pleasure in such simple things, and often found it opened his own eyes afresh.

Though he did wonder at it, still. Early on, it had been easy to dismiss as the lad being used to a hard life on the streets, but it had since become obvious that Junior must have once belonged to a well-established family. Then why did he seem to become so overcome by the texture of cotton, as if he had never felt it before?

Indeed, there was one fabric Junior seemed particularly excited by, laden with heavy gold threads. Laurence’s heart had sunk at the sight—it was not something his purse could have easily allowed, even if it hadn't been garish—but as soon as Junior had rubbed it against his skin he had grimaced. “It is so uncomfortable,” he said, and afterwards Laurence was sure he had heard him muttering something about skin and scales.

...Well. Most likely nothing but childish fancy.

They returned again to Edinburgh for several days not long after the new clothes were delivered. Laurence needed to converse again with his solicitors, and he had formed vague thoughts of making some small provision for Junior’s long-term comfort. Though his reasoning for taking the boy along was just as much to allow Tharkay some time without either of them underfoot—quite literally, as the floor in the foyer was to be replaced in their absence.

The first day he set aside for sightseeing. Junior remembered being in Edinburgh some weeks—Laurence was not certain of the precise number of days—before he wrote them, but that had been as a beggar. Now Laurence took him up to see the castle and down the royal mile, letting him explore whichever shops caught his fancy—though on a strict budget of coins he had given the boy, who in truth seemed more keen to appreciate them in themselves than to spend.

The tension which had clung to Junior’s shoulders beginning with their arrival in the city eased over the course of the day, Laurence was relieved to see. He even ceased peering down the closes with wary apprehension, turning instead to curiosity by the time they reached Covenant.

“Why would they build so terribly packed in?” he asked Laurence. “It seems rather uncomfortable, and impractical! Why, even a middle-weight could hardly fit his head in, there.”

Laurence repressed a smile with effort. If Junior had formed his notions of city planning in even the least of Chinese ports, he might well be baffled by so exclusionary a style. “It is a relic of the old medieval city, I believe,” he said. “When Edinburgh was a great deal smaller, and a great many things packed tightly within the walls.” Seeing Junior meant to ask a barrage more questions, he added, “That is truly all I know on the subject, but perhaps we can find a book with the details, while we are here.”

“Oh!” said the boy. “Yes, let’s!”

It was lucky his interest had been piqued so; the study occupied him the next day when Laurence went to speak to his solicitor and bank. “No, you will find it interminably boring, I am sure,” he had said, when the boy first expressed a desire to accompany him. “Pray do as you like, and perhaps you can tell me a little of what you have learned when I return.”

And tell he did, that evening and for the majority of the next day, going on about the history of the city, lingering with a child’s delight on such episodes as the burning in 1544 and the plague a century later.

Perhaps Laurence indulged him too much, or perhaps it was inevitable, but either way they had neither of them marked that the day’s business brought them down near Haddock street—near, as it so happened, to Junior’s old haunts.

They did not mark it, at least, until as they passed one alley they heard a shrill, vindictive laugh, and Junior abruptly went very still and silent.

Given a moment, Laurence might have guessed what caused the reaction, but he was not given a moment. Quick as anything a great knot of wrestling boys—some in high, mocking spirits, and some genuinely angry—came spilling from the alley-mouth.

Laurence reached for Junior, intending to take the boy’s hand and merely cross to the other side of the street.

But the boy was not where Laurence expected him to be. He had moved ahead several paces, closer to the brawlers, who were brawling no more—evidently the shock of finding themselves in the open street had put an end to the general melee. Indeed, they seemed more focused on Junior now, or rather on his fine clothes and the money he presumably carried. Laurence did not think they had noticed him, or if they had, that they realized he was not some unrelated passerby.

The evident leader of the group held some vague recognition for Laurence, even if at the time of finding Junior he had been wholly of one focus.

“Turn out your pockets, and you needn’t come to grief,” the leader said, eyes alight with the improbable good luck of so easy and undefended a target. The boys could not have managed any real robbery—they were still much too small to menace a grown man, even moving in pack-fashion.

“Oh!” said Junior, affronted out of whatever fear had kept him silent until now. “As if I would do any such thing for the likes of you—”

Perhaps it was something about Junior’s voice, or perhaps it was the sight of Laurence coming up behind him, but the eyes of one of the other boys—shorter and lighter-haired than the leader—abruptly went wide with recognition. “You!” he exclaimed.

The leader rounded on him, the motion almost comic in its exaggeration, but his rage at the interruption was immediately checked by the other boy continuing: “You’re the chink who thought he was a prince!”

“I never!” said Junior. He, like the other child, apparently had already forgotten the threat of robbery. Though clearly some of the other boys had not, or rather had realized that having made it and failed to carry the engagement by intimidation, they could only come out the worse. Two in the back of the group had already melted away, and with the edging backward of several of the others, the leader and his keen-eyed friend would like as not soon find themselves alone.

“Little mad bedlam boy!” the leader jeered. His remaining friends even echoed his laughter. “Thinks an ink-bottle is a crown!”

“I never said I was a prince,” continued Junior, oblivious to the winnowing of his adversaries. “I said my Laurence was a prince and that he would come for me, and so he did!” he raised his arms, as if to display his neatly dressed self and Laurence both. “And I daresay we could make things very difficult for you, if we chose to!” Laurence could not see his face directly, but from the sound of his voice, he very much wanted to.

It was this that finally shook Laurence out of the strange state of stillness he had fallen into. He had his own share of anger towards the boys—he’d gladly have ordered them switched for their cruelty had they been under his command, and in those first days when Junior had been so mauled about might have been willing to see far more serious consequences meted out. But now with all well he had little heart for the sort of leveraging of power Junior spoke of. Laurence had been transported himself, and seen how the gaol could break the health of the heartiest men; he had no desire to see children subjected to it, even these children, some of whom might yet manage an honorable occupation with their lives. “Junior,” he said, quietly, allowing only the slightest censorious note into his voice.

Junior whirled, and Laurence saw that despite the angry strength of his words, there were tears gathering in his eyes. “But Laurence, they stole from me.”

It was a queer sort of priority; Junior had not needed the smashed ink-bottle again, and the attack to his person was far more severe in Laurence’s mind. But the answer was the same regardless. “That they did. But you now are a great deal more fortunate in your circumstances than they are, and you would do better to not give in to the vindictive impulse that so ruled them when they turned cruelty upon you.”

The tears welled up; spilled over. “But they cannot just go, without any punishment at all.”

The remaining boys were indeed taking the chance to escape, and even the leader had backed up several steps into the mouth of the alley, as if he wanted to create the greatest chance of getting away without committing to the course.

“Dearest,” Laurence said. He rested his hands on the boy’s shoulders, and would have knelt to be at his eye level if that would not have ruined his trousers with street-muck. “I would agree with you, and if their corrections were properly our responsibility, I would see it done. But they are not. We haven’t real authority over any of them, and neither is it our charge to mete out all justice. Indeed, there can hardly be any punishment or justice more than what has already happened. You are comfortable and safe, and they remain in the trying circumstances from which you emerged.”

Junior sniffled, but offered no more protest.

Thinking him done, Laurence went to wave away the boys who still lingered in the mouth of the alley as if captivated by a play. But before he could Junior grabbed for his hand, and then without turning to look he said. “Go away and don’t bother me or Laurence again! We are being nicer than you deserve, even if I am comfortable.”

And then, evidently pushed beyond his endurance, he wrapped one arm around Laurence’s waist and hid his face with the other.