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whistled amongst themselves, in a cacophony made
    private only by the obscurity of their language, and
    finally Arkady turned back and professed himself willing to
    settle on the trade agreement, except that he insisted
    goats should be three to a cow, they having some contempt
    for that animal, more easily obtained in their former
    homeland and likely there to be scrawny.

    Jane bowed to him to seal the arrangement, and he bobbed
    his head back, his expression deeply satisfied, and
    rendered all the more piratical by the red splash of
    mongrel color which covered one of his eyes and spilled
    down his neck. "They are a gang of ruffians and make no
    mistake," Jane said, as she led them back towards her
    offices, "but I have no doubt of their flying, at any rate:
    with that sort of wiry muscle they will go in circles
    around anything in their weight-class, or over it, and I am
    happy to stuff their bellies for them."

    "No, sir; there'll be no trouble," the steward of the
    headquarters said, rather low, of finding rooms for
    Laurence and his officers; even arriving as they had out of
    nowhere and without notice. Most of the captains and
    officers were encamped out in the quarantine-grounds with
    their sick dragons, despite the cold and wet, and the
    building was queerly deserted: hushed and silent, as it had
    not been even at the low-ebb of the days before Trafalgar,
    when nearly all the formations had gone south to help bring
    down the French and Spanish fleets.

    They all drank Granby's health together, but the party
    broke up early, and Laurence was not disposed to linger
    afterwards: a few wretched lieutenants sitting together at
    a dark table in the corner, not talking; an older captain
    snoring with his head tipped against the side of his
    armchair, a bottle of brandy empty by his elbow. Laurence
    took his dinner alone in his rooms, near the fire; the air
    was chill, from the rooms to either side being vacant.

    He opened the door at a faint tapping, expecting perhaps
    Jane, or one of his men with some word from Temeraire, and
    was startled to find instead Tharkay. "Pray come in,"
    Laurence said, and belatedly added, "I hope you will
    forgive my state." The room was yet disordered, and he had
    borrowed a dressing-gown from a colleague's neglected
    wardrobe; it was considerably too large around the waist,
    and badly crumpled.

    "I am come to say good-bye," Tharkay said, and shook his
    head, when Laurence had made an awkward inquiry. "No, I
    have nothing to complain of; but I am not of your company.
    I do not care to stay only to be a translator; it is a rôle
    which must soon pall."

    "I would be happy to speak to Admiral Roland-perhaps a
    commission-" Laurence said, trailing away; he did not know
    what might be done, or how such matters were arranged in
    the Corps, except to imagine them a good deal less formally
    prescribed than in the Army, or the Navy, but he did not
    wish to promise what might be wholly infeasible.

    "I have already spoken to her," Tharkay said, "and have
    been given one, if not the sort you mean; I will go back to
    Turkestan and bring back more ferals, if any can be
    persuaded into your service on similar terms."

    Laurence would have been a good deal happier to have the
    ferals already in their service remotely manageable; a
    quality they were not more likely to gain, after Tharkay's
    departure. But he could not object; it was hard to imagine
    Tharkay's pride should allow him to remain as a
    supernumerary, even if restlessness alone did not drive him
    on. "I will pray for your safe return," Laurence said, and
    offered him instead a glass of port, and supper.

    "What an odd fellow you have found us, Laurence," Jane said
    in her offices, the next morning. "I ought to give him his
    weight in gold, if the Admiralty would not squawk: twenty
    dragons talked out of the trees, like Merlin; or was it
    Saint Patrick? Anyway, I am sorry to rob you of the help,
    and pray don't think me ungrateful, if you are in