Throne of Jade

Roland drew the curtains; it was already growing dark outside. “Do you care for a concert?”

“I am happy to accompany you,” he said, mechanically, and she shook her head.

“No, never mind; I see it will not do. Come to bed then, my dear fellow; there is no sense in sitting about and moping.”

They put out the candles and lay down together. “I have not the least notion what to do,” he said quietly: the cover of dark made the confession a little easier. “I called Barham a villain, and I ca

“It makes me quite ill to hear about him bowing and scraping to this foreign prince.” Roland propped herself upon her elbow on the pillows. “I was in Canton harbor once, as a mid, on a transport coming back the long way from India; those junks of theirs do not look like they could stand a mild shower, much less a gale. They ca

“I thought as much myself, when I first heard,” Laurence said. “But they do not need to fly across the ocean to end the China trade, and wreck our shipping to India also, if they liked; besides they share a border with Russia. It would mean the end of the coalition against Bonaparte, if the Tsar was attacked on his eastern borders.”

“I do not see the Russians have done us very much good so far, in the war, and money is a low pitiful excuse for behaving like a bounder, in a man or a nation,” Roland said. “The State has been short of funds before, and somehow we have scraped by and still blacked Bonaparte’s eye for him. In any case, I ca

“No, not for two weeks now. There is a decent fellow at the covert who has taken him messages for me, and lets me know that he is eating, but I ca

He could scarcely have imagined even saying such a thing a year ago; he did not like to think it now, but honesty put the words into his mouth. Roland did not cry out against it, but then she was an aviator herself. She reached out to stroke his cheek, and drew him down to such comfort as might be found in her arms.

Laurence started up in the dark room, sleep broken: Roland was already out of bed. A yawning housemaid was standing in the doorway, holding up a candle, the yellow light spilling into the room. She handed Roland a sealed dispatch and stayed there, staring with open prurient interest at Laurence; he felt a guilty flush rise in his cheeks, and glanced down to be sure he was quite covered beneath the bedclothes.

Roland had already cracked the seal; now she reached out and took the candlestick straight out of the girl’s hand. “There’s for you; go along now,” she said, giving the maid a shilling; she shut the door in the girl’s face without further ceremony. “Laurence, I must go at once,” she said, coming to the bed to light the other candles, speaking very low. “This is word from Dover: a French convoy is making a run for Le Havre under dragon guard. The Cha

“How many ships in the French convoy, does it say?” He was already out of the bed and pulling on his breeches: a fire-breather was nearly the worst danger a ship could face, desperately risky even with a good deal of support from the air.

“Thirty or more, packed no doubt to the gills with war matériel,” she said, whipping her hair into a tight braid. “Do you see my coat over there?”

Outside the window, the sky was thi

“And just give me that cloak, will you?” Roland asked, breaking into his train of thought. The voluminous folds concealed her male dress, and she pulled the hood up over her head. “There, that will do.”

“Hold a moment; I am coming with you,” Laurence said, struggling into his own coat. “I hope I can be some use. If Berkley is short-handed on Maximus, I can at least pull on a strap or help shove off boarders. Leave the luggage and ring for the maid: we will have them send the rest of your things over to my boarding-house.”

They hurried through the streets, still mostly empty: night-soil men rattling past with their fetid carts, day laborers begi

The London covert was situated not far from the Admiralty offices, along the western side of the Thames; despite the location, so eminently convenient, the buildings immediately around it were shabby, in disrepair: where those lived who could afford nothing farther away from dragons; some of the houses even abandoned, except for a few ski

Here the streets were truly empty; but even so as they hurried a heavy cart sprang almost as if by malicious intent from the fog: Roland hauled Laurence aside and up onto the pavement just quick enough he was not clipped and dragged under the wheels. The drover never even paused in his careening progress, but vanished around the next corner without apology.

Laurence gazed down at his best dress trousers in dismay: spattered black with filth. “Never mind,” Roland said consolingly. “No one will mind in the air, and maybe it will brush off.” This was more optimism than he could muster, but there was certainly no time to do anything about them now, and so they resumed their hurried progress.

The covert gates stood out shining against the dingy streets and the equally dingy morning: ironwork freshly painted black, with polished brass locks; unexpectedly, a pair of young Marines in their red uniforms were lounging nearby, muskets leaned against the wall. The gatekeeper on duty touched his hat to Roland as he came to let them in, while the Marines squinted at her in some confusion: her cloak was well back off her shoulders for the moment, revealing both her triple gold bars and her by no means shabby endowment.

Laurence stepped into their line of sight to block their view of her, frowning. “Thank you, Patson; the Dover courier?” he said to the gatekeeper, as soon as they had come through.

“Believe he’s waiting for you, sir,” Patson said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder as he pulled the gates to again. “Just at the first clearing, if you please. Don’t you worry about them none,” he added, scowling at the Marines, who looked properly abashed: they were barely more than boys, and Patson was a big man, a former armorer, made only more awful by an eye-patch and the seared red skin about it. “I’ll learn them properly, never fret.”