Steelhands (2011) (35 page)

“Guess I can’t make fun of you for stalking him down like a rabbit in tall grass, now can I?” I asked. If it weren’t for Luvander, after all, I didn’t even know when I’d’ve caught wind of all this gossip. Looking Balfour up, finding out where he was living these days, would’ve been difficult, too.

I’d probably have started at the bastion, asking everyone I met and causing an international incident just by being there. Balfour might’ve been the safe, declawed version of an airman that made the Arlemagnes feel more at home—he certainly wasn’t the sort who looked like he was going to slap any asses—and after everything that’d happened with Rook back in the day, I guessed that made them feel appeased. But I was a different kind. Just looking at me was bound to remind people of the war.

Especially at present. Part of my ease in getting through the streets was that people were clearing out of my way left and right, without me even asking. It was handy; I’d have to remember the expression I was wearing for later, when I was late for appointments and couldn’t afford anyone slowing me down.

“It’s just a little farther this way,” Luvander said, steering west of the bastion toward a tall clump of apartment houses, all grouped together and built with the same gray stone. The architect had done his best to
spruce ’em up with some fancy design work up around the rooftops, but the masonry was starting to crumble. One of these days an unlucky bastard was gonna catch a gargoyle right in the head; I was keeping my eyes up, just to make sure that unlucky bastard wasn’t me.

“Are you having a staring contest with your brother up there?” Luvander asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “While the resemblance is uncanny, I would ask that you do
please
try to stay focused. I’m reasonably sure you’d win the match anyway, but it makes you look very peculiar, and you know how people talk. We wouldn’t want to damage Balfour’s good standing in the neighborhood.”

“If you’ve been visiting him, then it’s probably been knocked down a couple of pegs already at least,” I said, casting one last stubborn look upward. Luvander was right, though. And if Balfour was feeling poorly, then the last thing he needed was a living gargoyle pounding down his door. I took a deep breath, willing the crags in my face to smooth out.

Luvander surveyed my attempts, cringed, then shrugged.

“I’ll have you know that
I
happen to be universally beloved wherever I go. It’s as though a magician put a spell on me at a very young age in order to make me happy and successful for the rest of my life. Hello, my dear flower, how are you today?” Luvander directed this last not at me—thank Regina—but at a middle-aged woman in a dark green uniform, who seemed to be the concierge for Balfour’s apartment building.

I’d half been expecting him to suggest this was a stealth mission and to surprise Balfour we’d have to pick the locks, so I guessed this moment of sanity was a pleasant surprise.

“So there’s two of you this time,” the woman said, adjusting her spectacles. They were attached to her face with some kind of jeweled chain—no doubt she thought it very handsome indeed, but it made her look like a cat in a fancy collar to me.

“Two of us,” Luvander confirmed, putting on that winning smile that made him look just a little
too
devious for my liking—like he was about to announce that he’d found Raphael’s old books at last, after everyone’d been searching for days, and somehow I always got the feeling
he’d
been the one to hide them. “I hope that won’t be a problem. I just happened to pick up another concerned well-wisher on my way here. Some people bring flowers, others bring old friends. Of course,
the flowers might’ve brightened up the place more, so I think at this moment I’m experiencing buyer’s remorse.”

“All right, that’s enough outta you,” I said, shrugging my shoulders uncomfortably.

“If you’re sure you
want
to visit him,” the woman murmured, adjusting her spectacles.

“And why wouldn’t we?” I asked.

“Haven’t you heard? They’re saying he went mad right in the middle of the bastion,” the woman said, leaning forward with an air of confidentiality, like she’d been waiting all day to get some proper chin-wagging in. “He just up and left right in the middle of something important. Guess that’s one way to show them Arlemagne cunts you mean business, isn’t it? Tell you what, though, talks’d never have gone on this long if the dragons were still around. Mark my words, they’d be pissin’ in their boots and running back to their cindy king in no time.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Luvander said carefully, eyeing me like he thought I was going to wade in and tell her what for, and he assumed he was going to have to bodily restrain me.

Like he could even if he wanted to.

Truth was, I had more important things on my plate than educating some lonely gossip. If I started in with every backward-headed civ who didn’t know their ass from their ankle, then I wouldn’t’ve had any time for teaching my actual students, not to mention all the other things I really enjoyed doing.

Luvander relaxed slightly when he didn’t see me wind up for some kind of wrestling match. “You know, it would be fascinating to see what they
would
do if they came to the rooms one day to find a few dragons waiting for them,” he added, getting a faraway look in his eye. “One never could outargue my dear Yesfir—she was much too clever for that, old girl—and if I recall correctly, Cassiopeia never even bothered with conversation. A little too burn-happy, if you ask me, but that certainly would make those talks interesting, wouldn’t it? They’d end because there’d really be no one left to talk
to!
”

“Before my friend’s swept away by nostalgia,” I said, “do we have permission to visit Balfour, or not?”

“You two head on in,” the woman said, pausing to polish one of her spectacle lenses. Fortunately, Luvander’s wild little story had blown
right past her. “I ain’t seen him today, but that don’t mean much. He’s a real quiet fellow, keeps to himself mostly. Last person
I’d
expect to cause a scene in the middle of the bastion, but it just goes to show I ain’t got the sense given a mouse.”

“You ain’t kidding,” I muttered, and Luvander gave me a little shove in the back, just to show me he’d heard and I should’ve been sweeter-tongued while talking to a lady.

It was more than a few flights up, which I guessed was all right for exercise, but I had to wonder how Balfour’d managed it when his hands were troubling him. By the time we finally reached his floor, even I was a little winded. I let Luvander knock, seeing as how
he
never ran out of breath, and then we both stood there, the strangest get-well party I’d ever been a part of. Also, we were probably the first.

“Perhaps I
should
have brought flowers,” Luvander said regretfully, “but I think he was allergic to the pollen … Do you remember that one time Compagnon collected all those stamens—”

I didn’t have time to ask if he’d cracked his head on one of the low-hanging beams coming in, because Balfour was there opening the door.

To put it frankly, he looked like shit.

The thing with someone like Balfour was that he was always so damned tidy and put-together. The minute he didn’t bother with it, he ended up looking like he was about to drop dead. He was pale, probably clammy, and his hair looked like something for birds to nest in. There was a neat little pattern of wrinkles on his cheek from a pillow, and when he saw us he looked like he wanted to sink through the floor and disappear.

That, at least, was a familiar look.

“Oh,” he said, fidgeting with the doorknob. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, but fuck me if I was going to stare and draw attention to something that made him uncomfortable. I focused on his face instead, even if I was curious. “I didn’t realize you were coming. I didn’t realize anyone was coming …”

“We thought we’d surprise you,” Luvander said, inviting himself in. He pushed past Balfour into the sitting room and made a noise of despair. “In the nick of time, by the looks of it. Let’s get some sunlight in here, shall we?”

That left me and Balfour staring at one another at the door. He
wanted us to be elsewhere, and I definitely wanted us to be elsewhere, but neither of us was gonna get what we wanted just by wishing it and staring at each other.

“You eaten yet today?” I asked, giving him my look. If he said no, he was going to regret being so careless, and I’d know if he was lying. That was the look I’d perfected.

Too bad it didn’t seem to work with students and their homework. They just didn’t have the right amount of shame or common sense for self-preservation.

“A … little,” Balfour said carefully, glancing over his shoulder as Luvander started making some kind of infernal racket with the window shade. “I suppose you’d better come in.”

“Before Luvander gets you slapped with room-destruction charges?” I asked.

It was an okay little place, if sparse, with barely any color on the walls. Either Balfour’d just moved in or he hadn’t seen the point in adding something personal to the place. No posters on the walls; no paintings or portraits. There was a settee on the far side of the room and a table with a few chairs in the middle of it; the room opened up into a kitchen the size of a closet, and I noticed the water closet and the bedroom next to it. Sure would’ve depressed me to live in an empty little place like this, I thought, especially coming from someplace so distinctive.

But maybe, after everything the boys’d put him through, he’d felt like he needed some peace and quiet.

There could be too much of that, though, so much that you didn’t notice yourself getting so lonely until it was too late. I cursed myself for not checking up on him sooner and was grateful Luvander had been nosy enough to do it for me.

“I suppose you’ve heard about the little incident, and that’s why you’re here?” Balfour asked, sinking down into one of the wooden chairs by the table. “Troius said it wasn’t as humiliating as I seemed to believe, but I take it he was lying to spare my feelings?”

“Who’s Troius?” Luvander asked from the window. I glanced over to see that he’d managed to get himself tangled in the curtains, and I had to wonder if he was acting like a clown on purpose, so that Balfour would crack a smile or something. If that was his intent, then it wasn’t working.

Even though it wasn’t my style, I had a moment of appreciating Luvander’s intentions. Not the way he wouldn’t shut up when everyone was sick of hearing him talking, but his heart was in the right place, even if his head was up in the clouds.

“One of my … friends, another diplomat,” Balfour replied. He hesitated before the word “friends,” then looked guilty after he used it, like he didn’t believe he even had friends.

Well, that was where he was wrong, for starters.

“So we’re not the first to visit you?” Luvander asked, finally managing to pull one of the drapes aside. Balfour shied away from the shaft of sunlight that flooded the room, shielding his eyes. Bright light glinted off metal, even blinding me for a moment.

I cleared my throat and looked away so he’d feel more comfortable. “Wanted to hear what happened, in your own words,” I said, keeping it businesslike. “But before that, wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m all right,” Balfour replied, like a physician’d tapped his knee with a little mallet and the response was pure reflex. “Thank you for coming. It’s very kind.”

“Of course we’d come,” Luvander huffed, stalking over to the other window. “Do you think we’re criminals? Ivory might have been,” he added, “but
we
certainly weren’t.”

“Sit down, Luvander,” I said.

“Just trying to liven up the place,” Luvander protested.

If I’d been at the top of my game, he wouldn’t’ve had the balls to protest at all. I tried again. “Luvander, sit
down.
”

“Oh, all right,” Luvander acquiesced, pulling up the third chair and draping himself into it backward.

“Now you’re gonna stop talking,” I explained, “and Balfour here’s gonna start. Whenever he’s ready, though; he can take his time.”

“Well …” Balfour said. “There isn’t much
to
say, really. I’m sure that whatever you’ve heard, it was right. ‘Mad Airman Ruins Diplomatic Proceedings; Runs Wild through Bastion Hallways.’ Does that sound about right?”

“There was some fainting in there somewhere, too,” Luvander said lightly. “Was that also a part of it?”

“Oh, yes,” Balfour replied. “How could I forget?”

I didn’t like his entire demeanor, I thought; it was pale, like his face, and the dark circles under his eyes made him look like a ghost. He
needed a mother of some kind to bring him soup and blankets, in my professional opinion, but the last thing he needed was me telling him that.

“I believe what Adamo is trying to ask, in his own way,” Luvander said, gentling as he leaned forward across the table, “is what exactly happened on
your
end of things.”

“Like if I had some kind of reason, or if I just went mad?” Balfour asked.

“Exactly,” Luvander agreed.

Balfour folded his hands onto his lap, hiding them under the table. It still seemed like the sunlight was bothering him, and every now and then I caught him twitching, head jerking around like he thought he heard something. “I …” he began, licking his lips.

“You want something to drink?” I asked.

“No, it’s all right,” Balfour said. “I’m merely trying to see if there is a way to say this without seeming as if I
did
just go mad that day. It’s quite possible there isn’t any, because I might well have … And yet it does seem embarrassing to admit to it, doesn’t it?”

“Saying it helps,” I said. “Makes you feel better.”

“People’ve called
me
mad before, not to mention,” Luvander added, trying to be supportive. “And I’ve gotten by just fine, haven’t I?”

Balfour caught my eye, and I figured he couldn’t’ve been feeling
that
bad if he was still up for poking a little fun at Luvander’s expense.

“I see how it is,” Luvander began, about to embark on a meandering tale of sorrow.