Steelhands (2011) (23 page)

“That’s just the fever talking,” I said, tucking her in. “Don’t worry about your work; I’ll see to it. And we’ll worry about all the rest in the morning.”

“Grimacing,” Laure mumbled, but she buried her face against the pillow and burrowed in deep. I had a long night ahead of me, finishing up one of her essays—she probably hadn’t even started it yet—and sleeping in the chair beside her, in case she needed anything.

I checked to make sure she was sleeping soundly, which she was, then went to gather the books I needed. My thoughts were troubling me, but until Laure was in a more lucid state, I would have to shelve them. And what better way to avoid thinking than by composing an essay?

I’d started the letter at least ten times already and scrapped just as many pieces of paper since. No matter how I phrased it, the words sounded too needful—as though I somehow didn’t realize Thom had troubles of his own to deal with on his travels, and with him so far from the city, there was nothing in particular he could even do for me.

It was just my luck to find someone at last in whom I felt comfortable confiding, only to see him leave Thremedon almost immediately after we’d been introduced. If it hadn’t been so sad, it would have made an excellent joke.

Dear Thom
, my current missive read,
I really would appreciate your advice …

But that was too abrupt, I thought, without any mention of his health, or Rook’s health, or how they were both holding up after their unexpected and nearly fatal adventure. I crumpled the eleventh page swiftly and tossed it into the corner with the rest of them, then pinched my brow too hard with my clumsy fingers.

Since we were friends, I tried to reason with myself, a simple task like this one really shouldn’t have been so difficult. He overthought things himself, to some extent—one of the many points of personality on which we came together—but he did manage to write letters despite it, asking for help or simply wishing to hear my opinion on matters both important and trivial. His latest letter, however, had made all my little woes seem relatively insignificant, and I hadn’t known how to reply to him.

Until now—now that I needed something.

It seemed greedy to me, like some fatal flaw in my manners, but I had no one else to speak to.

Dear Thom
, I tried again, holding the pen stiffly.
I heard from Luvander yesterday that there is a song in the bars of lower Charlotte dedicated to my hands, but also, to my ba
 …

That was completely ridiculous, I told myself, and tore that one up before I tossed it, so no one going through the garbage might be able to read it.

In warmer weather, I’d confided in the statues, like the old tale of a lonely boy whispering all his problems into a hole in the ground.

The crowds around the memorial generally left at night, and I was
able to lean against the sturdy foot of Jeannot or Compagnon and tell them, without feeling as though I were in some way complaining, that my wrists pained me, and that the metal was cold—although I did conclude all my confessions with an apology. It seemed rude to complain to dead men that my situation while living was troubling me, since I had the very good luck of still being alive. Apparently, though everyone believed differently, it seemed that I had
no
manners to speak of whatsoever when it came to dealing with my friends, former or current.

It was a thought that gave me much unrest. Adamo would’ve been quite disappointed if he’d known.

But it was too cold for that kind of trip now, especially with my hands in their current state. And anyway, the more I did it, the more foolish I felt. These men were gone, and they’d left their petty problems behind them when they left. I had no place burdening them with mine where others came with gifts, flower wreaths, and the like. Had I no real respect for the dead?

There’d also been a chance I’d have run into Adamo or Luvander while lingering at the site, and I’d wanted to avoid that at all costs—and the questions concerning my health especially. What answer should I have given them? Perhaps simply showing them what remained of me would be enough, but I couldn’t bear the idea of their pity.

I much preferred Luvander’s gossip and his jokes, as though nothing at all had changed. Uncomfortable as they might have made me, the discomfort was at least a familiar one.

Dear Thom
, I began again,
I wonder if you might be amused by the promise that upon your return to Thremedon, I will invite you to accompany me to lower Charlotte, so that we may learn the tune to the song praising my genitals and sing it together as a welcome-home present
.

At least this false start made me laugh. It even brought a few tears to my eyes.

If my current accommodations had come with a fireplace, it would have been getting an awful lot of fuel tonight. My mind was just too distracted to compose a letter though I knew the reasons for
that
well enough. My thoughts were currently in a turmoil I couldn’t conceive of putting into a letter, even if it was Thom who’d written about the matter first, to Adamo. He, at least, had the excuse of being far away from home, adventuring through the desert with only Rook’s moods to worry about. I didn’t blame him for being rash. He’d probably thought
that the information was important enough to risk everyone’s getting into a little trouble, and in strictest truth there
was
nothing illegal about what he’d sent.

By the way Adamo told it, Thom’s story had been a recounting of a very sad and disturbing experience that had begun and ended in the desert. But it did make me wonder how Rook had been able to deal with everything—he’d
been
there, right in the thick of it, seeing a resurrection none of us had thought possible. While I knew I would never be able to extract anything from him that resembled the truth of his feelings on the matter, I felt like I surely had some idea—the hope and longing, and eventual despair, he’d felt.

Like it or not, we’d all been tarred with the same brush, and now we were connected in ways I didn’t think any of us had ever considered before.

Privately, it made me wonder what I might’ve done had I been in Rook’s place at the time. Certainly I felt the twinge—the same as any man might have—at the promise of being given back someone I’d thought lost forever. But, just like Rook, neither did I believe in that kind of easy solution.

The Esar was a different matter. He’d never been close to the dragons, as we were. They’d been weapons to him, and nothing more.

Adamo and Luvander had both seemed willing to bet that the Esar wouldn’t experience my misgivings, and however much I tried to look at it in a different way, I was beginning to share their opinion. My meeting at the palace seemed all too suspicious in the light of Thom’s information—though what it meant for Margrave Ginette and the fate of my hands, I’d been too stubborn to bring up at the meeting. There was more to be discussed than my problems, which affected no one
other
than me.

I was suffering for it, though, my hands too stiff to write another letter even if I’d wanted to. I could still move them enough to accomplish all my daily tasks, but the result was stiffness quite similar to that suffered by my extremely arthritic grandfather, and it made me self-conscious to be seen in public.

The clumsiness, too, might have had some part in my frustration. I could no longer write quickly enough to keep up with my thoughts, and the cramps in my wrists shot all the way up my arms to the elbows.

Even though I’d stopped writing, my hand was still firmly wrapped
around the pen, and I knew that I’d have to use the other to pry it off. It was becoming inconvenient, not to mention painful, and I had to check the date again just to make sure I hadn’t gotten it wrong.

Some help was coming, at long last.

With timing that could only be called ironic—or impeccable—it had been only after my meeting with the remnants of the Dragon Corps that the Esar had finally contacted me. His letter—to which I hadn’t even been able to reply—informed me that he’d set up an appointment for me with one of the
finest
magicians for technical work, his own personal recommendation, and I must accept his apologies for not arranging something sooner but he’d been quite busy with this and that.

I’d been relieved just to realize that his letter had nothing at all to do with my shadowy meeting of peers.
That
was an act the Esar was bound to find suspicious if his present state of mind was as bad as some seemed to believe.

All this living while constantly looking over my shoulder
did
remind me, in some ways, of what it’d been like at the Airman, but it had all of the downsides with none of the brief, momentary upswings that had come alongside it. And, what was worse, Ghislain was not there to stand sentinel at the door.

Knowing that a man like that was keeping watch helped me sleep more deeply at night. I pitied whatever poor pirates crossed paths with him and wondered if they’d be singing about
those
exploits in Charlotte, soon enough.

The knock at the door startled me out of any further brooding thoughts I might’ve had, and I willed my fingers to flex with such force that I heard the metal creak in protest. This appointment was coming none too soon—for me
or
them.

I took the gloves from my desk and struggled with getting them on before I answered the door, while my visitor knocked impatiently for the second time.

They could wait, I thought stubbornly. The last thing I needed was for my hands to be seen by anyone other than a Margrave in
this
state. It reflected poorly on Ginette’s work, not to mention how I felt about them personally. Not everyone needed to know my private suffering—not even when it appeared to have become a matter of state.

“Good afternoon,” said the man in the Esar’s uniform who awaited
me, tipping his hat. “Sorry for making you wait. I got all turned around by the Basquiat, then couldn’t seem to straighten things out. I’ve got it now, though. All filed away in my head. Once I take a route, I
know
it. Like the back of my hand,” he added, showing me the hand in question. It was pink and chapped with cold, a little split around the thumb nail.

“That’s quite all right,” I said quickly, pulling on my coat and pressing
my
hands into the pockets. It was to keep them warm as much as it was to hide them. “Is the appointed place very far from here?”

“Won’t take us all day, if that’s what you’re asking,” the man said, glancing at me curiously. “You
are
him, right? Steelhands—no offense meant, that’s just what they call you in my part of town. I mean, we all heard what happened in the war, but I never … None of us up at the palace could even agree about what they’d look like, let alone how something like that’d even work.”

“They work very poorly at the moment,” I told him, being somewhat short because of how uncomfortable the question made me. Though some of my comrades in the corps had always gone out of their way to be at the center of attention at all times, such scrutiny made me twitch. The tavern songs a drunken mind composed in the dead of night were one thing, but I’d never wished to be famous in the first place, let alone for something I hadn’t even
done
.

“Right. Like I said, no offense meant,” the driver told me, stepping back so that I could lock the door and follow him down the stairs. He seemed appropriately sheepish, but I was too distracted even to apologize to him.

Dear Thom
, I began composing mentally, as I got into the carriage and the driver hopped up on top.
Today I took out my bad mood on someone who made the mistake of trying to engage me in friendly conversation. I doubt it’s a mistake he’ll be making again anytime soon, and if word spreads of my behavior, I’m sure you’ll hear tales of Balfour the Terrible—worse than any dragon—as far as you’ve traveled. Wherever that place may be
.

The journey passed quickly enough, me writing my imaginary letters and the driver no doubt working out the best way to tell his friends that Balfour Steelhands was a rude little bastard.

It was possible that I was exaggerating, but the stiffness in my hands left me little room for optimism.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t follow the narrow twists and turns of the streets as we rode through Thremedon—something none of my old friends would have ever allowed—and when the carriage began slowing to a halt, I realized that we were actually back at the palace, though not at the entrance I’d taken last time. The more I looked at it, I realized I’d never seen the palace from behind, and though the shape of the building was unmistakable, I wondered at being allowed to use this entrance, which clearly wasn’t meant for the common visitor.

They’d built walls to cordon off the area for a reason—to keep almost everyone
out
—and I marveled at how the gilding around the minarets was faded from the salty wind, and the colors of the turrets seemed somehow less bright.

“Not much to look at, is it?” my driver asked in a low whisper. “That’s ’cause the good parts face the rest of the city; but in the back here, it’s all shadow.”

I’d have to tell Thom about this, I thought, if I could ever manage to write a decent letter again.

There was a woman waiting for me at the door, so that I couldn’t very well hang back and ask the driver where in bastion’s name he’d taken me. I’d already made enough bad first impressions for one day, surely.

“Good day to you,” the driver called after me, taking his hands off the reins to give me a wave-off. “Good luck with them hands. Do wish I’d got a chance to see ’em, though!”

“Perhaps next time,” I told him, left with a strange feeling of abandonment as he rode off around the side of the palace, the carriage soon obscured by the wall and a group of ornamental trees.

There was nothing left but to approach the woman, who looked more like a physician than a magician to me, but then, I was hardly an expert. She had a kindly look about her though her attitude was brusque, and she was holding a clipboard with various notes and pieces of paper pinned to it. A pair of spectacles perched on her nose, dwarfed almost comically by her broad face.