Martin started a little, at being called, and looked over; but then he turned his back and walked on into the citadel with the rest of Orchestia's crew without a word, or even a gesture.

‘Temeraire,’ Laurence said, ‘you will oblige me very greatly if you will make no such gesture again.’

‘No, I will not,’ Temeraire said, much subdued. It was not only that Martin had ignored them, though he had done it so very openly, as though he wanted everyone else to know he meant to do it, there was something particularly unpleasant to it. One may at times not feel like conversing, of course, but he had been showing-away how little he wanted to with them. ‘But surely,’ Temeraire said to Laurence, slowly, ‘does that not mean he disapproves of what we did, that we took over the cure? He would not have wished to see all those dragons dead—’

‘Between the two evils, he might have found that the lesser than treason,’ Laurence said, without lifting his head from the book he was reading.

‘Oh! then I am not sorry to lose him,’ Temeraire said defiantly. ‘He may stay with Orchestia; if she wants him.’

He felt rather wounded, though, for all his bravado, and had not yet understood the worst. He did not realize the full implication of what they had done to poor Ferris until that very afternoon. They were assembled and ready to fly. Temeraire's harness was rigged out and his epaulets shone bright in the thin wintry sunshine. A runner approached to let them know they might go to Edinburgh, and he said, ‘Mr. Laurence, your orders, sir, from the Admiral,’ handing over the packet.

‘Yes,’ Laurence said, and did not correct the boy. He simply took the papers and put them in his coat pocket; and for the first time Temeraire realized, looking closely, that Laurence was not wearing the gold bars upon his shoulders, which the other captains wore.

Temeraire did not want to ask; he did not want to hear the answer, but he could not help it. ‘Yes,’ Laurence said, ‘I have been struck from the service, too. It does not matter now,’ he added after a moment, when of course it mattered, as much as anything. ‘We must away.’

Laurence stood by the parapet, looking out to sea, from the upper courtyard of Edinburgh Castle; Temeraire lay somewhere in the dark covert below, resting in the darkness beside the illuminated city that stretched around the castle and down to the river Forth. Ships rose and fell in the harbour uneasily as he watched, and the wind blew sharp needles of frozen rain into his face. In the far distance he could see a handful of lights moving: too high for ships, too bright for stars, a few dragons on patrol.