League of Dragons by Naomi Novik

Author:Naomi Novik
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

“BY GOD, TO HAVE spent two days mid-air for this,” Wellington said. “No, you may not have Roland. If you want another admiral in Spain, you may find another general while you are at it, and I will go home and sleep for a month.”

“Your Grace, I beg you will understand the Admiralty’s position,” the Prime Minister said wearily. He threw a glance of distaste in Laurence’s direction, which would not have had the power to wound him, save that Perceval had known his father, and been welcome in their home: he had only the prior year at last shepherded through the formal abolition of the slave trade, and had even begun to open tentative relations with the Tswana, in the teeth of much opposition from those whose estates, in the West Indies, relied heavily upon slaves. Laurence could not be glad to meet with disapproval in such a quarter, even if he were not surprised.

Wellington only snorted. “I understand well enough: you dislike requiring the services of a man you would rather see hanged. Since you do require them, more’s the pity, you must take your bread as you find it and stop asking for pudding.”

“Your Grace,” Mr. Yorke said—the present First Lord of the Admiralty—“surely the urgency of the situation in Prussia—”

“The situation in Prussia!” Wellington said. “I have not fifty British dragons, with three hundred ragged Spanish and Portuguese beasts, most of them half-feral, to match against five hundred trained French dragons, and you want to bleat at me about Prussia. Bad enough you called Roland and myself away for a week: I dare say we will find half a dozen villages reduced to rubble by the time we get back, and the Flechas threatening to burn down Madrid. Now you tell me,” with a sharp wave in Laurence’s direction, “that Bonaparte will have four thousand beasts to throw at us in a year, half-trained and half-grown or not. And you want to snatch my aerial commander and waste her as a false front? Nonsense.”

“Nonsense, indeed,” Jane said, later that evening, in her house near the London covert. “Worse than nonsense. I am just as glad they did leave me out of the conference, after all. I do not trust what I would have said to them if I had been there. I have got spoilt, Laurence; I have not had to deal with any foolishness of this sort for a year and more. The Spanish officers would try and fuss me a little, at first, but I have got them flying straight by now.”

She sighed, and reached for the decanter of port. She was incongruous in her heavy boots and aviator’s coat amidst the velvets of her sitting-room, which better matched the coronet than its owner. Laurence knew she had applied to his own mother for advice on setting up her establishment, and her house-keeper was familiar to him—she had once been a young scullery-maid at Wollaton Hall and willing to permit a small boy to snatch an occasional pastry when a banquet was in the offing.

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