The noises outside the window rose and fell like the sea. Somewhere nearby glass was breaking and a woman shrieked. The red glow brightened. He lay down and tried to sleep a little, but his rest was broken repeatedly by ragged eruptions of noise, falling back into the general din by the time he jarred awake, panting and sore. In his dreams, fragmentary images of the burning ship, which became glossy, black scales beneath the flames, curling and crisping at the edges. He rose once. There was a small dirty pitcher of water, but he was not yet thirsty enough to resort to it for a drink. He splashed his face with a cupped handful. His fingers came away streaked with soot and grime. He lay down again, there was more screaming outside, and a stronger smell of smoke.

It did not so much as grow light, as simply less dark. There was a thick sooty pall over the city, and his throat ached sharply. No one came with food, and he received not a word from his guards. Laurence paced his cell restlessly. Four long strides across, three lengthwise from the bed, but he used smaller steps and made it seven. His arms, clasped behind his back, felt as though they were weighted down with roundshot. He had rowed for five hours without a pause.

That at least had been something to do, something besides this useless fretting. The city was burning, and all he could do here was burn with it, or moulder to be taken a prisoner by the French, with Napoleon's army scarcely ten miles distant. And even if he died, Temeraire might never know. He might keep himself a prisoner long for lost cause, and be taken by the French. Laurence could not trust Napoleon with Temeraire's safety, not while Lien was his ally. Her voice, and the self-interest which would prompt him to be the master of the only Celestial outside China's borders, would be more persuasive than his generosity.