Palliatia landed with four more Yellow Reapers and a couple of Grey Coppers, all hungry, and punished him by making his subterfuge quite real. They fell upon the porridge, and were noisy and quarrelsome while eating. When it was all gone Palliatia said belligerently, ‘And where will we eat tomorrow? No treasure and no food either; what of all your fine promises now?’

He was rather taken aback to be so challenged, and said, ‘You needn't snap at me, because we have lost a battle. If Napoleon were so easy to beat, he would not have any treasure worth taking. So you must expect some difficulties; and I call it poor-spirited to begin to complain only because you were not clever enough to find enough dinner last night.’

‘Oh, but you did not talk of difficulties before,’ she said, ‘and you did not seem to think so much of Napoleon either. If he has so much treasure, then it stands to reason he must be very difficult to beat, and perhaps we are not going to win at all.’

‘And if we do,’ a Grey Copper named Rictus said pointedly, raising his head out of the porridge-pit, ‘I suspect there will be no pavilions, or treasure for us, or leastways not for those of us who haven't got our captains again, and a place in the Corps waiting for us any time we like. No, it'll be back to the breeding grounds with us, and if we are only to end up as we began I don't see why we are going about getting ourselves shot and clawed, and flying across all creation hungry.’

There was a low scattered murmur of agreement, and worse, several other dragons raised their heads, to see how he would answer. Temeraire sat up angrily. ‘I am not a sneak, and if you like to call me one, you may say so at once, and plainly, instead of creeping about implying it.’

‘Well then, what do you mean to do, when we have won?’ Ballista said, having listened in so far. ‘Rictus isn't wrong to worry: you are not unharnessed anymore, even if you haven't much of a crew to speak of.’

Temeraire flattened his ruff at this last remark. After all, he had Gong Su back now, and Dorset, even if Dorset was not quite so desirable as Keynes, and there were of course Emily, Demane and Sipho, and Fellowes and Blythe, and even Allen, so he had a perfectly respectable number. ‘You had a crew before, and might have one again; so might any of us,’ he pointed out, ‘so the question is not whether one is in harness, but whether one may choose to be, or not; and if it is only a choice between being in harness or being in the breeding grounds, then that is not enough of a choice at all.’