“Why not?” Temeraire demanded. “I am still hungry.”

“The blasted egg is hatching,” Keynes said. He was already tearing and heaving at the silken swaddling, throwing off great shining panels of green and red and amber. “Don’t stand there gawking, come and help me!” he snapped.

Granby and the other lieutenants sprang to his assistance at once while Laurence hurriedly organized the men to get the second egg, still wrapped up, back into Temeraire’s belly-rigging; it was the last of the baggage.

“Not now!” Temeraire said to the egg, which was now rocking back and forth so energetically that they were having to hold it in place with their hands; it would otherwise have gone rolling end-over-end across the ground.

“Go and get the harness arranged,” Laurence told Granby, and took his place bracing the egg; the shell was hard and glossy and queerly hot to the touch under his hands, so he even took a moment to pull on his gloves; Ferris and Riggs, on the other side, were wincing their hands away alternately.

“We must leave at this moment, you cannot hatch now; and anyway there is almost no food,” Temeraire added, to no apparent effect but a furious rapping noise from inside against the shell. “It is not paying me any mind,” he said, aggrieved, sitting back on his haunches, and looked rather unhappily at the remnants in the cauldron.

Fellowes had long since put together a dragonet’s rig out of the softest scraps of harness, just in case, but it had been rolled up snugly with the rest of the leather deep in their baggage. They finally got it out, and Granby turned it over with almost shaking hands, opening some buckles and adjusting others. “Nothing to it, sir,” Fellowes said softly; the other officers clapped him on the back with encouraging murmurs.

“Laurence,” Keynes said in an undertone, “I ought to have thought of this before; but you had better draw Temeraire away at once, as far as you can; he won’t like it.”

“What?” Laurence said, just as Temeraire said, with a flare of belligerence, “What are you doing? Why is Granby holding that harness?”

Laurence thought at first, in deep alarm, that Temeraire was speaking out against the harnessing of the dragon in principle. “No, but Granby is in my crew,” Temeraire said, obstinately, an objection which disqualified every man in sight, unless perhaps he had not yet formed an attachment to Badenhaur or the handful of other Prussian officers. “I do not see why I must give it my food, and Granby.”

The shell was beginning to crack, now; none too soon. The patrol had slowed their approach out of caution, perhaps imagining that the British meant to make a stand from behind the shelter of the walls, since evidently they were not fleeing. But caution would only keep them off so long; soon one of them would make a quick dart overhead, see what was going on, and then they would instantly attack in force.

“Temeraire,” Laurence said, backing away a distance and trying to distract Temeraire’s attention from the hatching egg, “only consider, the little dragon will be quite alone, and you have a large crew all for yourself. You must see it is not fair; there is no one else for the dragonet, and,” he added with sudden inspiration, “it will have no jewels at all, such as you have; it must surely feel very unhappy.”

“Oh,” Temeraire said. He put his head down very close to Laurence. “Perhaps it could have Allen?” he suggested quietly, with a darting look over his shoulder to make sure he was not overheard by that awkward young ensign, who was presently engaged in surreptitiously running his finger around the rim of the pot, and licking it clean of a few more drops of soup.

“Come, that is unworthy of you,” Laurence said reprovingly. “Besides, this is Granby’s chance of promotion; surely you would not deny him the right to advance himself.”

Temeraire made a low grumbling noise. “Well, if he must,” he said, ungraciously, and curled up to sulk, taking up his sapphire breastplate in his foreclaws to nose over and rub to a higher shine with the side of his cheek.

His agreement was only just in time; the shell did not so much break open as burst with a cloud of steam, speckling them all with tiny fragments of shell and egg-slime. “I did not make such a mess,” Temeraire said, disapprovingly, brushing at the bits stuck to his hide.

The dragonet itself spat bits of shell in every direction; it was hissing below its breath in a strangled sort of way. It was almost a miniature in form of the adult Kaziliks, with the same bristling thorny spines all over, scarlet with shining purplish armor plates over its belly; even the impressive horns were there, smaller in scale; only the green leopard-spots were missing. The baby dragon looked up at them with glaring yellow eyes, hot and indignant, coughed once, twice, and then drew in and held a deep breath that made its sides puff out like a balloon. Abruptly thin jets of steam issued out of its spines, hissing, and it opened its mouth and jetted out a little stream of flame some five feet long, sending the nearest men jumping back in surprise.

“Oh, there,” she said, pleased, sitting up on her haunches. “That is much better; now let me have the meat.”

Granby had been looking perfectly white beneath his sunburn, but he managed a steady voice as he stepped nearer her. He was holding the harness draped across his right arm, where she could see it plainly, without thrusting it at her. “My name is John Granby,” he said. “We will be happy to—”

“Yes, yes, the harnessing,” she interrupted, “Temeraire has told me about that.”

Laurence turned and eyed Temeraire, who looked vaguely guilty and pretended to be very occupied polishing away a scratch on his breastplate; Laurence began to wonder what else he might have instructed the eggs in, as he had been nursemaiding them now nearly two months.

Meanwhile the dragonet put her head out to sniff at Granby; she tilted her head first to one side and then the other, looking him up and down. “And you have been Temeraire’s first officer?” she said interrogatively, with the air of one asking for references.

“I have,” Granby said, rather flustered, “and should you like a name of your own? It is a very nice thing to have; I would be happy to give you one.”

“Oh, I have already decided that,” she said, much to Granby’s further consternation and that of the other aviators. “I want to be Iskierka, like that girl was singing about.”

Laurence had harnessed Temeraire more by accident than design, and since then had never seen another hatching; he did not have any very clear idea of how it was supposed to go, but judging by the expressions of his men this was not characteristic. However, the baby Kazilik added, “But I should like to have you as my captain anyway, and I do not mind being harnessed and fighting to help protect England; but hurry, because I am very hungry.”

Poor Granby, who had likely been dreaming of this day since he had been a seven-year-old cadet, every moment planned out with full ceremony and the name long-since chosen, looked tolerably blank for a moment; then abruptly he laughed out loud. “All right, Iskierka it is,” he said, recovering handsomely, and held up the neck-loop of the harness. “Will you put your head in here?”

She cooperated quite willingly, except for stretching her head impatiently out towards the pot while he hurried to fasten the last few buckles, and when finally loosed, she thrust her entire head and forelegs into the still-hot cauldron to devour the remains of Temeraire’s dinner. She did not need any encouragement to eat quickly; the contents vanished with blazing speed, the pot rocking back and forth as she finished licking it clean. “That was very good,” she said, lifting her head out again, her little horns dripping with soup, “but I would like some more; let us go hunting.” She experimentally fluttered out her wings, still soft and crumpled against her back.