despairing of Simon being highly unsympathetic of his plight I am pretty sure that Simon is only not smirking because of long practice at holding a poker face; this seems like the kind of thing he'd find v amusing.

Miles probably is rather sad the spacedragon didn't want to join the Dendarii, but it's definitely for the best Oh good God, can you imagine Temeraire in the Dendarii? I'm not sure if that would end well or ridiculously badly. I mean, the Dendarii are a lot less chain-of-command focused than Laurence's military is, but I'm not sure he'd really fall into the whole cult of personality thing Miles has going there, and you still need /some/ ability to follow orders/go along with the troop. (Though, on the other hand, he'd probably get along well with Tung!) (--and now it's occurring to me that the only way he'd go along with Miles like that is is he were /Miles'/ dragon, and there is a truly terrifying notion, even aside from completely blowing Miles' cover.)