‘Where does he live?’ Temeraire asked, interrupting. He felt that anyone who had no time for politics must be rather sensible.

Majestatis was indeed sleeping when Temeraire came to see him; his cave was out of the way, and not very large. But Temeraire noticed that there was a carefully placed heap of stones, along the back, which blocked one's view into the interior. If he widened his pupils as far as they would go, he thought he could make out a darker space behind them, as if there were a passageway going back deeper into the mountainside.

He coiled himself neatly and waited without fidgeting, as was polite. But at length, when Majestatis showed no signs of waking, Temeraire coughed, then coughed again a little more emphatically. Majestatis sighed and said, without opening his eyes, ‘So you are not leaving, I suppose?’

‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, his ruff prickling, ‘I thought you were only sleeping, not ignoring me deliberately. I will go at once.’

‘Well, you might as well stay now,’ Majestatis said, lifting his head and yawning himself awake. ‘I don't bother to wake up if it isn't important enough to wait for, that's all.’

‘I suppose that is sensible, if you like to sleep better than to have a conversation,’ Temeraire said, dubiously.

‘You'll like it better in a few years yourself,’ Majestatis said.

‘I do not expect so,’ Temeraire said. ‘At least, the Analects say it is not proper for a dragon to sleep more than fourteen hours of the day, so I shan't, unless,’ he added, desolately, ‘I am still shut up in here, where there is nothing worth doing.’

‘If you think so, what are you doing here, instead of in the coverts?’ Majestatis said. He listened to the explanation with the casual sympathy of one listening to a storyteller, and passed no judgment, other than to nod equably and say, ‘A bad lot for you, poor worm.’

‘Why have you come here?’ Temeraire ventured. ‘You are not very old, yourself; do you really like to sleep so much? You might have a captain, and be in battles.’

Majestatis shrugged with one wing-tip, flared and folded down again. ‘Had one, mislaid him.’

‘Mislaid?’ Temeraire said.

‘Well,’ Majestatis said, ‘I left him in a water-trough, but I don't suppose he is still sitting there.’

He was not inclined to be very enthusiastic, even when Temeraire had explained,. He only sighed and said, ‘You are young, to be making such a fuss out of it.’

‘If I am,’ Temeraire retorted, ‘at least I am not complacent, and ready to let this sort of bullying go on, when I can do something about it; and I do not mean to be satisfied,’ he added, with a pointed look at the back of Majestatis's cave, ‘to arrange matters better only for myself.’