‘Aye, sir,’ the seaman said, ‘brought him in with a guard like he was the King, and to the finest bedroom but the one old Boney copped for himself, if you please. There was a right noise about it. And that beast of his out front wailing fit to end the world. We thought she would have us all on fire; she said she would. She has only gone quiet this last hour.’

Laurence risked it. A quick dash to the corner of the house was enough to confirm Iskierka's presence. She was coiled in what had been a small garden adorned with statuary, and which was now a heap of rubble. She no longer wailed, but gnawed sullenly upon the remnants of a cow, with steam issuing from her spines, and she was not alone. Lien was sitting beside her, saying, ‘You must know that he cannot be given back to you, unless he gives his parole and swears never to take up arms against the Emperor again. There is no sense in your lying here and being uncomfortable. Come away to the park, and you may have something more to eat.’

‘I am not going away anywhere without my Granby,’ Iskierka said, ‘and he will never do any such thing. As soon as I have him back I will kill you, and your emperor, and all of you, only see if I do not. Here, you may keep your nasty cows,’ and she threw the mauled remainders of her dinner in Lien's direction.

The white Celestial flattened her ruff in displeasure for just a moment, and then nudged a mound of earth over the carcass with one talon, careful never to touch the offal. ‘I am sorry that you insist on being so disagreeable. There is no reason we should be enemies. After all, you are not a British dragon. You are a Turkish dragon, and the Sultan is our ally, not Britain's.’

‘I do not give a fig for the Sultan. I am Granby's dragon, and Granby is British.’ Iskierka said, ‘And anyway, I have stolen thirty thousand pounds of your shipping, so of course we are enemies.’

‘You may have another ten thousand, if you would come and fight for us, instead,’ Lien said.

‘Ha,’ Iskierka said disdainfully, ‘I will have another thirty thousand instead, and take the prizes myself; and I think you are a spineless coward, too.’

The nearest troop of guard, and the couple of courier beasts prudently stayed back, with a nervous eye upon Iskierka, and so a clear path lay open from the house towards her. ‘If we can get hold of Granby,’ Laurence said quietly to Tharkay, once he had crept back to the stable door, ‘and get him out to the open, even an upper window might do, anywhere she might reach us—’

‘As soon as we are seen looking like ragpickers, it will send up a howl,’ Woolvey said.