“If the world had not heard of you, after your adventure at Gdansk,” Kutuzov said, meaning Danzig, where they had rescued the garrison from the wreck of the Prussian campaign, “or after the plague, we should certainly have heard of you after Brazil. Where you go, you leave half the world overturned behind you. You are more dangerous than Bonaparte in your own way, you and that beast of yours.
“It is awkward you should have seen that feral just now, in Moscow, but in the end, it seems it will not make so much difference. The Tsar means us to chase the French all the way to Paris, and I cannot do that without four hundred dragons or more. I must get them out of the breeding grounds somehow.
“So! You will show us how to feed dragons on grain, and I will speak to Arakcheyev,” the Tsar’s chief minister, “and we will cut them loose.”
Laurence almost did not at first quite comprehend Kutuzov’s answer; he had long felt—long known—the many practical advantages offered by a more humane and just treatment of dragons; he had recognized the danger to Britain and any other nation in the stark comparison between the increasing consideration offered to French dragons, and the ill-treatment of their own. He had indeed made these practical matters his argument on many occasions, but he had grown so used to failure, to meeting with only a stolid, blind resistance, that to find not only a tolerant ear but agreement left him more nonplussed than rejection; he did not at once know what to say. “Sir,” Laurence said, and halted, overwhelmed by a perfect reversion of feeling, as though he had faced a mortal enemy, and been offered from his hand a priceless gift; he could cheerfully have embraced the old general with Slavic passion.
He with difficulty tried to express his sentiments; Kutuzov waved them away. “Don’t be too quick to rejoice,” he said. “We can’t cut them loose until we can be sure we can feed them. It hasn’t been so long since the Time of Troubles, you know; half the country would rise up if they saw dragons flying all over unharnessed.” He indicated with one thick finger a painting upon the wall, which depicted a band of pikemen heroically massed and their commander pointing aloft at a looming, snarling dragon, which stood with outspread wings over the broken body of a horse and clutched in one taloned hand a screaming maiden, her trailing white gown a banner stained with blood and her arms outflung in supplication as she cast her eyes up to the heavens.
“Sir,” Laurence said dryly, “permit me to assure you that the most vicious beast in all Russia would not prefer to make its dinner out of a lady of six or seven stone over a horse of one hundred.”
Kutuzov shrugged. “There were not always horses,” he said bluntly.
Laurence was nevertheless able to return to Temeraire with a spirit no longer weighed down with guilt, and share with him the satisfaction not only of having carried their point, but having won it in such a manner as founded the victory on the most solid of ground: that the Russians had freely recognized the necessity of reforming their treatment of their native dragons. “Well,” Temeraire said, “I am very glad to see that they have some real sense, Laurence; Kutuzov must be quite a good fellow, particularly as he means us to attack. And now we can do so wholeheartedly.
“Although,” he added, with a lowering frown, “I cannot like hearing that Grig has been carrying tales of us: whatever did he mean by it, and pretending that he was so wretched, if he is really quite the pet of his captain? I do not know what to make of it at all.”
“You must take it as a compliment,” Tharkay said, “that you are of sufficient importance to have spies set upon you.” He had expressed just such a sentiment on first learning that Gong Su had been all the while an agent of Prince Mianning; Laurence could not partake in those feelings, however, and was not in the least sorry to find the little dragon had prudently taken himself off and vanished into the general mass of the Russian forces.
But it was nevertheless with a gladdened heart that Laurence went to his tent, to clean his guns and sharpen his sword before the engagement, and was surprised to find Junichiro there. “I have neglected you, I find,” Laurence said, in apology: it had not escaped his notice that Junichiro had made extraordinary progress in his study of English, and had furthermore devoted himself with great attention to mastering not only aerial tactics, but learning as much as he could of all others as well: he had seen the boy make persistent overtures to the Russian artillery-officers, in particular, and questioning any he found who could speak at least a little French.
He had in short done all that anyone might have wanted, to make him an officer; but Laurence had realized, too late, that he was by no means a valuable mentor: the Aerial Corps would be more likely to scorn Junichiro than embrace him, for having Laurence’s good word.
“But,” he said, “I will write to Admiral Roland, and see if I can solicit her influence on your behalf—”