Steelhands (2011) (31 page)

Maybe I’d been feeling a little homesick, but being sent home for fever just seemed like quitting to me. And, most of all, I didn’t want to hear those voices again. Once was a fluke, but twice meant you were definitely going crazy.

“Have a nice evening, Laure,” Barn Owl told me.

“You, too,” I said, as she turned and went back in the direction she’d come from. With her gliding off through the mess hall, I got the impression she was about to hunt down and feast on some helpless mice.

That thought made me grin, at least, before I turned my attentions back to the card in my hand.

I felt the same way about it as Toverre would’ve felt about a dead roach. I wished I could just will it out of existence by wishing hard enough.

After everything that’d happened to Gaeth, I didn’t want to go back. It was all too eerie, and I didn’t want to know any more about it just as much as I didn’t want to be a
part
of it. It didn’t make sense to keep seeing a doctor who made you sick, not better. Besides which, I was just plain spooked.

That was the truth of it, and I couldn’t hide that from myself, let alone anyone else. I might’ve had fevers before, but I’d
never
heard
voices—clanking, whispery things that murmured to me in my dreams, right before I woke up. Despite how skeptical he was, I felt certain even Toverre would’ve heard voices if he’d been called in for a checkup like the rest of us. Whether or not he’d’ve been able to sort them out from all the other voices in his head—telling him to pick this up and scrub that stain and make sure those matched—was another matter entirely.

Maybe Margrave Germaine had learned from someone that Toverre’s head was too crowded for
another
talker, and that was why they hadn’t even bothered calling him in past the first screening.

Like he knew I was thinking about him, Toverre decided to take that exact moment to show up, right before I could drive myself
too
crazy thinking in circles. Sometimes it just helped to talk to someone—or, in Toverre’s case, to listen to someone else talk. His was one voice I recognized, and as annoying as it sometimes was, it comforted me because it reminded me of home.

Toverre was carrying a tray that had all my favorites: meat and bread
and
cheese, and he looked a little squirrelly around the eyes, so I could tell he was gearing up to apologize. He was the good kind of sorry—as far as Toverre being sorry went, anyway, coming to say so before he circled back around to being awful again.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the tray at me and looking uncomfortable.

I took a piece of cheese, popping it in my mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “All right,” I said, accepting the offering. “You can sit down.”

He tugged a napkin out of somewhere to clean off the seat across from me, then sat down in it very neatly. “Oh good,” he said. “I thought you were going to be in a snit. I thought maybe you had—”

“Don’t say it,” I warned him.

Quickly, Toverre switched tactics. “What’s that in your hand?” he asked. “I hope you aren’t soliciting men vis-à-vis their business cards?”

Because that sounded so much like me. Sometimes I didn’t know where Toverre got his wild ideas from. “Got a summons for another checkup,” I told him. No point in mincing words, and making Toverre grovel at my feet for forgiveness had never really been my style to begin with.

Toverre turned white—whiter than usual—leaning closer over the table.

“You aren’t
serious,
” he said in a grave whisper.

“Think I’d joke about something like this?” I asked him, shoving the card in his direction. “See for yourself.”

“Oh dear,” Toverre said, reaching for it, then drawing back quickly, not even willing to touch it. He probably thought he could catch the fever from it, or at least catch himself his own appointment. “Oh,
Laure
, no! I can’t have you going. We don’t know what … what those awful physicians might do to you this time. After the state you returned in from your last visit … Not to mention whatever’s happened to Gaeth …”

“Do you think I don’t know all that?” I asked.

“Well then, you mustn’t,” Toverre replied.

“I can’t just not
go,
” I said, though the idea was sounding pretty good to me right about now. “They’d know where to find me; all my information’s on some kind of file. What’s to stop ’em from just showing up and carting me off? Unless,” I added, “you want to run away with me to Molly. But I hear it gets dirty down there.”

“There are laws against that sort of thing, I should hope,” Toverre said, looking scandalized.

“Bet there aren’t
any
rules if they say it’s for your own good,” I replied, slicing off another piece of cheese and cramming it into my mouth. “I’m just a girl, after all. Nothing more than a simple ’Versity student, too. How’m I supposed to know how to take care of myself? Better I let these fine Thremedon physicians do it for me. Who’s anyone going to believe, them or me?”

Toverre bit his lip, looking uncertain of how to answer me. I took advantage of his silence, ripping open a roll and filling it with sliced meat. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until the food was in front of me. And Toverre didn’t even have anything to say about my manners, which meant he must’ve been troubled indeed.

“I’ll go with you, then,” he said at last, though I knew
just
how he felt about being stuck in a physician’s room. It was almost sweet of him to offer, even sweeter still for him to think he was capable of helping me. “I
am
your fiancé, after all. Surely there are some rights I might take advantage of. Perhaps I’ll pretend that I’m too simple to understand the particulars of a checkup—I’ll assume that your honor is being violated and insist that I
must
be allowed to accompany you. Otherwise, I’ll have to write home about this, no matter what you say. Doesn’t that sound intimidating?”

It did, but probably not for the same reasons he was imagining.

As much as I appreciated Toverre’s offer of self-sacrifice—and I did; it was enough to sweeten my sour-pickled heart—I was pretty sure that the only thing
worse
than being in there by myself would be if Toverre came along.

I could just picture him stopping Margrave Germaine before every step of the procedure, wanting to know if everything’d been sterilized, and if the sterilization’d been done properly, and who’d done it, and could he speak with them, too? They’d remove him by the scruff of the neck like an unwanted kitten, and in the end I’d be grateful, preferring the fever dreams to this new nightmare.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him around a mouthful of the sandwich I’d made.

“
Think
about it?” Toverre repeated, like I’d decided to take a vacation from my senses.

“It’s my appointment, ain’t it?” I asked, folding up the rest of my cheese in a napkin for later. I always got peckish around midnight, especially when I was studying. “It’s not for another few days. I’ve got time; I’ll think of something.”

“You’re not
really
considering going by yourself, are you?” Toverre asked. “Not when we still don’t know what happened to Gaeth?”

“He went home,” I told him, hoping that by saying it, I could convince myself.

“A very likely story,” Toverre replied. “Not without all his things, he didn’t. I don’t think our friend Gaeth was all that well-off, Laure. You could tell by his handwriting he had no kind of education. And the state of that winter coat …! He wouldn’t leave all his clothes and his best pair of boots behind.”

He was right. Just thinking about that empty room made chills run up and down my spine.

“How about this: I won’t do anything without running it by you first,” I offered. It wasn’t exactly the bargain Toverre’d been looking for, but at least it was the truth. “I’ll start right now: I’m going for a walk to eat some cheese and clear my head.”

“We do have exams to study for,” Toverre cautioned, staying planted in his seat while I stood up. There were crumbs in my skirts, and I shook them out onto the floor, Toverre quickly pulling his boots away so that nothing would get on them.

“I’m horseshit on tests whether I study or not,” I said. We both knew it, so there was no point in being polite about it. “And I’ve got other things to worry about.”

“I could always make you up some quick-cards,” Toverre said, thinking it over. “They did wonders for your grammar last year.”

“Sure, okay,” I said, since I knew the only thing he liked better than studying was proving he could teach the same stuff to me, too. “You do that. And I’ll come back to get ’em when I’m done with my walk.”

“You aren’t going to go somewhere dangerous?” Toverre asked, recalling, no doubt, my threat of running away to Molly from before.

“I’ll take this butter knife with me,” I offered, picking it off the table and making like I was going to hide it in my sleeve. Toverre looked so distressed that it wasn’t even any fun, and I dropped the knife back onto my plate. “Just walking along the ’Versity Stretch,” I promised. “I’m not that foolish. Not
yet
, anyways.”

Toverre’d made me promise just after we’d arrived—just after we’d nearly been robbed blind—that I wouldn’t walk around the city at night by myself. It was too dangerous for young women of a certain age, and even though I could take care of my honor just fine, I knew Toverre’s delicate constitution wouldn’t be able to handle all that worrying. That left the ’Versity grounds for me to roam, however, streets winding in and out of all the mismatched buildings, each one of them looking like it had been built for a different street.

It comforted me to walk routes I already knew, and the cold night air was bracing—not frigid and unbearable the way Toverre said. It was a crowded time of night, with laughter bursting up off every street corner. There were even night classes for the upperclassmen going on in some of the lecture halls, and I found myself standing in front of Cathery without ever having plotted out a real destination.

There was no one in the city I could really talk to, without being careful not to make them worry too much about my sanity. In fact, there was barely anyone I felt comfortable talking to about the weather, except for Toverre. There was only one person I could think of who might listen, and ex–Chief Sergeant Professor Specialpants Adamo’d made the mistake of telling me where his office was. He was double-cursed, since I kind of thought of him as the sort of man who’d clear out a cluttered head in no time.

It had to be him.

Before I’d had time to talk myself out of it, I was inside the building, the door blowing shut behind me with a sudden gust of wind.

“Cold day,” said the desk clerk, smiling at me in a familiar way.

Not as cold as me
, I thought, brushing past him with a grunt of agreement.

It took me a few tries to find Adamo’s office, because I didn’t remember the number Radomir’d given me off the top of my head—it was written down in my notes somewhere, but I hadn’t thought to bring those with me. Bastion, I hadn’t even been planning on coming at all. I should’ve been discouraged when I opened the door on a private session between a tall professor with graying hair and a young man about four years my senior, both of them coloring all kinds of purple when I barged in and interrupted them.

“Should’ve locked the door,” I said, giving them a salute. I left my own blushing until I got out into the hall.

Maybe Toverre was right about me—and the rest of the world, too, for that matter—and I was just a silly girl who couldn’t find her way about a simple lecture building.

But then I told myself
I
wasn’t the one who should be embarrassed since I wasn’t the one tangled up with a man at least twenty years my senior. They ought to’ve taken that someplace private if they were going to go for it at all.

By my fourth attempt, I’d at least started knocking, and when I heard Professor Adamo’s voice call out to me with a peremptory “Yeah?” I wondered what I was even doing there. What was
he
even doing there, considering he’d gone and said he didn’t even know where the place was? Well, maybe he’d made a point of finding it since exam season was coming up. It wasn’t for me to parse another man’s motivations, though; I had enough to worry about when it came to my own. What’d I plan on saying, I asked myself, and, maybe more importantly, what was the man going to think of me?

And still, I’d come that far. Might as well see it through all the way.

“Not interrupting anything?” I called through the door, a bit suspiciously. The ex–Chief Sergeant Professor didn’t seem like that kind of man, but then, I’d been wrong in my judgment before.

“Enter,” was his reply.

I turned the knob and pushed my way in to find him just sitting still and quiet behind his desk, hands folded in front of him, staring off into
the air. There wasn’t anyone else in the room, at least, and I found I was a little relieved that there wasn’t anything fishy going on behind his closed door. Try as I might, I just couldn’t see Adamo doing
that
with one of the other boys or girls. It made me mad as anything to picture it.

He didn’t even seem to like teaching them. Why would he bother with them outside of class on top of that?

“Well?” he asked, when I didn’t say anything. “Take a seat. I’m figuring you’re worried about the take-home?”

“Not worried at all,” I said, since I’d taken a glance at the copy Toverre’d gone and snatched the minute the test had become available. “There’s no answer to that first question. You’re better off skipping it altogether and spending your time on them that
can
be solved.”

Adamo went silent for a second, in a way that made me near certain I’d gone and stepped in it.

“That’s exactly right,” he said at last, not looking altogether pleased that he had to admit it. “It’s not that there’s no point to it, mind, but it’s the principle behind the question, rather than the question itself that’s so important. It’s a hard strategy for some to take to—sacrificing a lost cause so you can turn your attention toward the stuff
worth
salvaging. You’re the first person to figure it out if I’m not mistaken. Which I’m usually not.”