The Temeraire Series Books 1-3: Temeraire, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War. Naomi Novik
with that poor fellow. ‘I have brought you some books as well,’ he said. ‘Shall I begin on Newton for you? I have found a translation of his book on the principles of mathematics, although I will warn you at once that I am wholly unlikely to be able to make sense of what I read for you; I am no great hand at mathematics beyond what my tutors got into my head for sailing.’
‘Please do,’ Temeraire said, looking away from his new treasure for a moment. ‘I am sure we will be able to puzzle it out together, whatever it is.’
Laurence rose a little early the next morning and breakfasted alone, to have a little time before the training would begin. He had examined the new harness carefully last night, looking over each neat stitch and testing all the solid rings; Temeraire had also assured him that the new gear was very comfortable, and that the crewmen had been very attentive to his wishes. He felt some gesture was due, and so having made some calculations in his head, he now walked out to the workshops.
Hollin was already up and working in his stall, and he stepped out at once on catching sight of Laurence. ‘Morning to you, sir; I hope there is nothing wrong with the harness?’ the young man asked.
‘No; on the contrary, I commend you and your colleagues highly,’ Laurence said. ‘It looks splendidly, and Temeraire tells me he is very happy in it; thank you. Kindly tell the others for me that I will be having an additional half-crown for each man disbursed with their pay.’
‘Why, that is very kind of you, sir,’ Hollin said, looking pleased but not terribly surprised; Laurence was very glad to see his reaction. An extra ration of rum or grog was of course not a desirable reward to men who could buy liquor easily from the village below, and soldiers and aviators were paid better than sailors, so he had puzzled over an appropriate amount: he wanted to reward their diligence, but he did not want to seem as though he were trying to purchase the men’s loyalty.
‘I also wish to commend you personally,’ Laurence added, more relaxed now. ‘Levitas’s harness looks in much better order, and he seems more comfortable. I am obliged to you: I know it was not your duty.’
‘Oh! Nothing to it,’ Hollin said, smiling broadly now. ‘The little fellow was made so happy, I was right glad to have done it. I’ll give him a look over now and again to make sure he’s staying in good order. Seems to me he’s a little lonely,’ he added.
Laurence would never go so far as to criticize another officer to a crewman; he contented himself with saying merely, ‘I think he was certainly grateful for the attention, and if you should have the time, I would be glad of it.’
It was the last moment that he had time to spare concern for Levitas, or anything beyond the tasks immediately before him. Celeritas had satisfied himself that he understood Temeraire’s flying capabilities, and now that Temeraire had his fine new harness, their training began in earnest. From the beginning, Laurence was staggering straight to bed after supper, and having to be woken by the servants at the first light of morning; he could barely muster any sort of conversation at the dinner table, and he spent every free moment either dozing with Temeraire in the sun or soaking in the heat of the baths.
Celeritas was both merciless and tireless. There were countless repetitions of this wheeling turn, or that pattern of swoops and dives; then flying short bombing runs at top speed, during which the bellmen hurled practice bombs down at targets on the valley floor. Long hours of gunnery practice, until Temeraire could hear a full volley of eight rifles go off behind his ears without so much as blinking; crew manoeuvres and drills until he no longer twitched when he was clambered upon or his harness shifted; and to close every day’s work, another long stretch of endurance training, sending him around and around until he had nearly doubled the amount of time he could spend aloft at his quickest pace.
Even while Temeraire was sprawled panting in the training courtyard and getting his wind back, the training master had Laurence practice moving about the harness both on Temeraire’s back and upon rings hung over the cliff wall, to increase his skill at a task that any aviator had been doing from his earliest years in the service. It was not too unlike moving about the tops in a gale, if one imagined a ship moving at a pace of thirty miles in an hour and turning completely sideways or upside down at any moment; his hands slipped free constantly during the first week, and without the paired carabiners he would have plummeted to his death a dozen times over.
And as soon as they were released from the day’s flight training, they were handed straight over to an old captain, Joulson, for drilling in aerial signalling. The flag and flare signals for communicating general instructions were much the same as in the Navy, and the most basic gave Laurence no difficulty; but the need to coordinate quickly between dragons in mid-air made the usual technique of spelling out more unusual messages impractical. As a result, there was a vastly longer list of signals, some requiring as many as six flags, and all of these had to be beaten into their heads, for a captain could not rely solely upon his signal-officer. A signal seen and acted upon even a moment more quickly might make all the difference in the world, so both captain and dragon must know them all; the signal-officer was merely a safeguard, and his duty more to send signals for Laurence and call his attention to new signals in battle than to be the sole source of translation.
To Laurence’s embarrassment, Temeraire proved quicker to learn the signals than himself; even Joulson was more than a little taken aback at his proficiency. ‘And he is old to be learning them, besides,’ he told Laurence. ‘Usually we start them on the flags the very day after hatching. I did not like to say so before, not to be discouraging, but I expected him to have a good deal of trouble. If the dragonet is a bit slow and does not learn all the signals by the end of their fifth or sixth week, they struggle with the last ones sadly; and here he is already older than that, and learning them as though he were fresh from the egg.’
But though Temeraire had no exceptional difficulty, the effort of memorization and repetition was still as tiring as their more physical duties. Five weeks of rigorous work passed this way, without even a break on Sundays; they progressed together with Maximus and Berkley through the increasingly complex manoeuvres that had to be learned before they could join the formation, and all the time the dragons were growing enormously. By the end of this period, Maximus had almost reached his full adult size, and Temeraire was scarcely one man’s height less in the shoulder, though much leaner, and his growth was now mostly in bulk and in his wings rather than his height.
He was beautifully proportionate throughout: his tail was long and very graceful, his wings fit elegantly against his body and looked precisely the right size when fanned out. His colours had intensified, the black hide turning hard and glossy save for the soft nose, and the blue and pale grey markings on the edges of his wings spreading and becoming opalescent. To Laurence’s partial eye, he was the handsomest dragon in the entire covert, even without the great shining pearl blazoned upon his chest.
The constant occupation, along with the rapid growth, had at least temporarily eased Temeraire’s unhappiness. He was now larger than any of the other dragons but Maximus; even Lily was shorter than he was, though her wingspan was still greater. Though Temeraire did not push himself forward and was not given precedence by the feeders, Laurence saw on the occasions when he observed that most of the other dragons did unconsciously give way to him at feeding times, and if Temeraire did not come to be friendly with any of them, he seemed too busy to pay it mind, much as Laurence himself with the other aviators.
For the most part, they were company for each other; they were rarely apart except while eating or sleeping, and Laurence honestly felt little need of other society. Indeed, he was glad enough for the excuse, which enabled him to avoid Rankin’s company almost entirely. By answering with reserve on all occasions when he was not able to do so, he felt he had at least halted the progress of their acquaintance, if not partly undone it. His and Temeraire’s acquaintance with Maximus and Berkley progressed, at least, which kept them from being wholly isolated from their fellows, though Temeraire continued to prefer sleeping outside on the grounds, rather than in the courtyard with the other dragons.
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