(eng) Naomi Novik - SSC by Golden Age

Author:Golden Age [Age, Golden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dragons and Decorum

(art by Laurie Damme Gonneville)

Author’s Note: As soon as I saw Laurie Damme Gonneville’s illustration, this

story leapt into my head almost entirely complete.

“WELL, MR. BENNET, such dreadful news,” his lady said to him one day. “The Seventh Wing is come to Meryton. Whatever is to be done?”

“I do not see that anything can be done,” Mr. Bennet said. “The Admiralty are most unreasonable, to be sure, but I believe they insist on safeguarding the nation. We will have to endure not being bombarded by the French in the night.”

“Oh! Pray do not joke about such a thing, and you must know I am speaking of Elizabeth: what is to be done?”

Miss Elizabeth Bennet did not ordinarily occasion any great maternal anxiety. Indeed, Mrs. Bennet contrived tolerably well not to think of her second daughter at all, save to pronounce her “comfortably settled, with her uncle,” and very occasionally to write the girl a long, badly-spelt letter detailing the most recent of her woes and nervous maladies. The object of these missives responded with brief and encouraging notes which a more careful reader than her mother might suspect were written without any reference to the original.

Mrs. Bennet was of a family less respectable than her husband’s. Her elder brother was indeed an officer in the notorious Aerial Corps, though himself gentlemanlike in his manners and respectably married. Having achieved the rank of first lieutenant, the elder Gardiner did not look further, and as officer to one of the Chequered Nettles stationed in London, enjoyed there a settled family life. They naturally did not move among the better circles of society, and displayed a distressing lack of concern for it.

Meanwhile, with her husband’s estate entailed upon a distant cousin, and having produced five daughters dowered with little more than an inclination to be handsome, Mrs. Bennet early began to consider herself justified in indulging an anxiety for their future. Her fretful concerns occasionally found in her brother an audience, and drew him at last to bring forward a hesitant offer couched in vague terms, of a form of support which he might perhaps be able to offer one of his nieces.

Her answering raptures made him cautious. “Pray do not be so enthusiastic, my dear sister,” he said with high alarm. “I must speak with my brother, first,” and insisted on closeting himself at length with Mr.

Bennet without any further intelligence.

“I am sure you have the best uncle in the world,” Mrs. Bennet informed her eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth then being thirteen and ten years of age respectively, and considered old enough to bear their mother company in the sitting room of a morning when no more entertaining visitors had presented themselves. Her good opinion was a little shaken, shortly thereafter, when Mr. Bennet disclosed to her the full nature of her brother’s proposal. But she was possessed of that happy sort of character which was very soon able to discard such considerations as danger and hard use and loss of respectability, when these were weighed against the certain and immediate satisfaction of having one of her beloved children taken off her hands. After only a brief hesitation she renewed her approbation, and pressed her husband to accept.

This was no less than to sacrifice one of her daughters to the Aerial Corps, to be trained as a captain for some peculiar and recalcitrant breed of dragon which refused male handlers. “I would not suggest it for a moment, my dear sister,” Lieutenant Gardiner said that evening to his sister and brother-in-law, as they sat together in the drawing-room after dinner, “save that there are two Longwing breeding pairs currently at work and a third to come shortly. We confidently expect to have a new beast to harness every other year for the next decade, and there is a sad lack of coming candidates. My niece is quite certain to make captain, if she have any aptitude for the work.”

“Oh! A captain in the Corps!” Mrs. Bennet said. “I am sure it would be a splendid thing for any of the girls.”

“And which of the girls would you propose?” Mr. Bennet said, in his dry way, having been silent for most of the evening. Mrs. Bennet was not so unnatural a mother as to be equal to the question.

The next afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets had the questionable pleasure of accompanying their father and uncle to the covert at Meryton, where a courier-dragon had brought him on his visit, and of seeing the beast themselves. Jane shrank away in alarm from the inquisitive Winchester, which had thrust its head forward to inspect the ribbons on her gown, but Elizabeth, already independent-minded and bidding fair, in her mother’s opinion, to be a difficult girl, after only a few shrinking moments asked if she might safely pet the creature.

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