Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik Page B

out her spines
    to clear them. "I want to sleep in a pavilion, too: I do
    not like this cold dirt at all."

    "Well, you cannot have one," Temeraire said. "This is for
    our sick friends, and anyway you have no capital."

    "Then I shall get some," she declared. "Where does one get
    capital, and what does it look like?"

    Temeraire proudly rubbed his breastplate of platinum and
    pearl. "This is a piece of capital," he said, "and Laurence
    gave it me: he got it from taking a ship in a battle."

    "Oh! that is very easy," Iskierka said. "Granby, let us go
    get a ship, and then I may have a pavilion."

    "Lord, you cannot have anything of the sort, do not be
    silly," Granby said, nodding his rueful apologies to
    Laurence as he came into the clearing, along the trail of
    smashed branches and crushed hedge which she had left in
    her wake. "You would burn it up in an instant: the thing is
    made of wood."

    "Can it be made of stone?" she demanded, swinging her head
    around to one of the wide-eyed tradesmen. She was not grown
    very large, despite the twelve feet in length she had
    acquired since settling at Dover with a steady diet, being
    rather sinuous than bulky, in the Kazilik style, and she
    yet looked little more than a garden-snake next to
    Temeraire. But her appearance at close quarters was by no
    means reassuring, with the hissing-kettle gurgle of
    whatever internal mechanism produced her fire plainly
    audible and the vents of hot air issuing from her spines,
    white and impressive in the cold.

    No one answered her, except the elderly architect, a Mr.
    Royle. "Stone? No, I must advise against it. Brick will be
    a much more practical construction," he opined; he had not
    looked up from the papers since being handed them, so badly
    nearsighted he was inspecting the plans with a jeweler's
    loupe, an inch from his watery blue eyes, and could most
    likely not make either dragon out in the least. "Silly
    oriental stuff, this roof, do you insist on having it so?"

    "It is not silly oriental stuff at all," Temeraire said,
    "it is very elegant: that design is my mother's own
    pavilion, and it is in the best fashion."

    "You will need linkboys on it all winter long to brush the
    snow clear, and I will not give a brass farthing for the
    gutters after two seasons," Royle said. "A good slate roof,
    that is the thing, do you not agree with me, Mr. Cutter?"

    Mr. Cutter had not the least opinion to offer, as he was
    backed to the trees and looked ready to bolt, if Laurence
    had not prudently stationed his ground crew around the
    border of the clearing to forestall just such panicked
    flight.

    "I am very willing to be advised by you, sir, as to the
    best plan of construction, and the most reasonable,"
    Laurence said, while Royle blinked around himself looking
    for a response. "Temeraire, our climate here is a good deal
    wetter, and we must cut our cloth to suit our station."

    "Very well, I suppose," Temeraire said, with a wistful eye
    for the upturned roof-corners and the brightly painted
    wood.

    Iskierka meanwhile took inspiration, and began to plot the
    acquisition of capital. "If I burn up a ship, is that good
    enough, or must I bring it back?" she demanded, and began
    her piratical career by presenting Granby with a small
    fishing-boat, the next morning, which she had picked up
    from Dover harbor during the night. "Well, you did not say
    it must be a French ship," she said crossly, to their
    recriminations, and curled up to sulk. Gherni was hastily
    recruited to replace it under cover of darkness, the
    following night, undoubtedly to the great puzzlement of its
    temporarily bereft owner.

    "Laurence, do you suppose that we should be able to get
    more capital, by taking French ships," Temeraire asked,
    with a thoughtfulness very alarming to Laurence, who had
    just returned from dealing with this pretty piece of
    confusion.

    "The French ships-of-the-line are penned in their harbors
    by the Channel blockade, thank Heaven, and we are