‘Can they be spared?’ Laurence asked.

‘More easily than they can be kept,’ Jane said. ‘Before you brought us your cure, we thought we might have to replace the entire population of the Isles. Now there are more eggs than we will be able to feed in a year, after all this plundering and bad management. As for our friend across the way,’ she added, tossing a pebble over the side of the cliff, vaguely in the direction of France, ‘Bonaparte lost forty beasts in his adventures here. He will not come over again shortly, and we will be ready for him if he does.’

He nodded and sat down beside her. Jane rubbed her hands together and blew upon them: there was still a chill in the air. Below, Excidium was inspecting the foundations with interest, Perscitia cajoling him to spray a channel for her through some of the stones, to allow water to run off more easily.

‘I am afraid, Laurence, you will be an official prisoner; it is understood you shan't be put in irons, or anything which should distress Temeraire, but so far as formality—’

‘I could expect nothing else.’

She sighed. ‘At any rate, I have had some work persuading them, but there will be crews for the new hatchlings going along too, of course; so I have managed that you will have your handful also, among them.’

‘You will not send Emily, surely,’ Laurence said.

‘I would rather risk her health than her spirit.’ Jane said. ‘She will do better to be as far away from my station as she can. I suppose you have not yet heard, they have named me Admiral of the Air,’ and she laughed. ‘Wellesley—Wellington, I must say now—is a damned hard-headed bastard, but do you know, he insisted on it; and that they make me a peer or some such nonsense, only they are still arguing over how to manage it, without letting me also sit in the Lords.’

‘I congratulate you most heartily,’ Laurence said, and shook her hand. ‘But Jane, we will be halfway across the world; I do not even know what we will do there—’

‘They will find out some work for you, I have no doubt,’ Jane said. ‘They mean to find a way into the interior; dragons will make easy work of that. And if nothing else, you may help them clear land. It is a waste, of course,’ she added, ‘and I hope we do not have cause to regret it, but I will tell you honestly, Laurence, I am glad you will go. I have not liked to think what should happen if you did not.’

‘I would not raise civil war,’ he said.