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 Channel fleet is going after them, but there is a Flamme-de-Gloire present, and the fleet cannot engage without aerial support.’
‘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 materiel,’ she said, whipping her hair into a tight braid. ‘Do you see my coat over there?’
Outside the window, the sky was thinning to a paler blue; soon the candles would be unnecessary. Laurence found the coat and helped her into it; some part of his thoughts already occupied in calculating the likely strength of the merchant ships, what proportion of the fleet would be detached to go after them, how many might yet slip through to safe harbour: the guns at Le Havre were nasty. If the wind had not shifted since yesterday, they had favourable conditions for their run. Thirty ships’ worth of iron, copper, quicksilver, gunpowder; Bonaparte might no longer be a danger at sea after Trafalgar, but on land he was still master of Europe, and such a haul might easily meet his supply needs for months.
‘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 labourers beginning on their rounds to look for work, maids in their clinking pattens going to market, and the herds of animals with their lowing breath white in the air. A clammy, bitter fog had descended in the night, like a prickling of ice on the skin. At least the absence of crowds meant Roland did not have to pay much mind to her cloak, and they could go at something approaching a run.
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 skinny children who peered out suspiciously at the sound of strangers passing. A sludge of liquid refuse ran along the gutters of the streets; as Laurence and Roland ran, their boots broke the thin skim of ice on top, letting the stench up to follow them.
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 and 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 armourer, made only more awful by an eyepatch and the seared red skin about it. ‘I’ll learn them properly, never fret.’
‘Thank you, Patson; carry on,’ Roland said, and on they went. ‘Whatever are those lobsters doing here? Not officers, at least, we may be grateful. I still recall twelve years ago, some Army officer found out Captain St. Germain when she got wounded at Toulon; he made a wretched to-do over the whole thing, and it nearly got into the papers: idiotic affair.’
There was only a narrow border of trees and buildings around the perimeter of the covert to shield it from the air and noise of the city; they almost at once reached the first clearing, a small space barely large enough for a middling-sized dragon to spread its wings. The courier was indeed waiting: a young Winchester, her purple wings not yet quite darkened to adult colour, but fully harnessed and fidgeting to be off.
‘Why, Hollin,’ Laurence said, shaking the captain’s hand gladly: it was a great pleasure to see his former ground-crew master again, now in an officer’s coat. ‘Is this your dragon?’
‘Yes, sir, indeed it is; this is Elsie,’ Hollin said, beaming at him. ‘Elsie, this is Captain Laurence: who I have told you about; he helped me to you.’
The Winchester turned her head around and looked at Laurence with bright, interested eyes: not yet three months out of the shell, she was still small, even for her breed, but her hide was almost glossy-clean, and she looked very well-tended indeed. ‘So you are Temeraire’s captain? Thank you; I like my Hollin very much,’ she said, in a light chirping voice, and gave Hollin a nudge with enough affection in it to nearly knock him over.
‘I am happy to have been of service, and to make your acquaintance,’ Laurence said, mustering some enthusiasm, although not without an internal pang at the reminder. Temeraire was here, not five hundred yards distant, and he could not so much as exchange a greeting with him. He did look, but buildings stood in the line of his sight: no glimpse of black hide was to be seen.
Roland asked Hollin, ‘Is everything ready? We must be off at once.’
‘Yes, sir, indeed; we are only waiting for the dispatches,’ Hollin said. ‘Five minutes perhaps, if you should care to stretch your legs before the flight.’
The temptation was very strong; Laurence swallowed hard. But discipline held: openly refusing a dishonourable
