Steelhands (2011) (46 page)

“I’d assume the details are a little too grisly to share with such delicate company,” Luvander supplied, when Balfour seemed unable to reply.

“I’m not that delicate,” Laure said.

“I, of course, meant your companion,” Luvander explained. “I’m not sure how prepared he is to hear the details. Don’t take it too personally. I’m not even sure
I’m
prepared, and I was there, myself.”

“We held tight to the reins,” Balfour said suddenly, our heads whipping round in unison to look at him. “One of the many precautions we took to keep from falling off should we have to dodge a missile attack. They were made of metal, because leather would have burned too quickly, and I’d wrapped them round my wrists. When Anastasia—my dragon—was hit the final time, her neck snapped. My mistake was trying to hold on to her; she moved in such a way that pulled the harness too far, and the reins sliced clean through.”

We were all silent for a moment, each of us falling prey to our own ghastly thoughts. I couldn’t imagine the pain, or what it must have felt like in that moment to realize his hands were gone—what it must have
been
like to realize that it wasn’t all some terrible mistake, a nightmare from which he could disconnect himself.

“Now we’ve done it,” Luvander said finally, the cheerful tone in his voice wavering only for an instant. “We’ve become sidetracked—just the kind of thing Adamo hates—and where
is
the old man, anyway? If one of
us
showed up late, he’d grab us by the ear and dangle us out the window himself!”

“You said you heard voices?” Balfour asked. The moment of recollection
had passed, and though he was now as white as a sheet, the faraway look in his eyes had diminished almost completely. He no longer looked like a ghost. “After visiting Margrave Germaine?”

“Yeah,” Laure said, shrugging uncomfortably. “I know it doesn’t sound right, but I
swear—
”

“Did they say anything?” Balfour asked. Apparently, he was interested enough that good manners no longer applied.

“Nothing, really,” Laure began. She bit her lip, staring up at the mask over Balfour’s head like it was challenging her somehow, then sighed, shoulders slumping. “Maybe a few things. Most I could pick out was my name. Just kept saying it over and over again in the night.”

“I’ve seen Margrave Germaine for these,” Balfour said, lifting his hands to us. I could see some of the gears were still visible at the junction between his thumb and forefinger, breaking the illusion of metallic skin. “I also … heard things.”

“Bastion,” Luvander said. “What a merry, strange crowd this one is.”

“Gaeth heard voices, too,” I said. On instinct or habit, I touched his letter through the fabric of my vest pocket, which was where I always kept it—in case someone should be snooping through my things and find it by accident. It seemed necessary somehow for me to protect him this way from those who would believe he was a madman
and
a simpleton, when I knew he was neither.

“And who is Gaeth?” Luvander asked. “Your other fiancée?”

“The student who went missing,” I replied. “He left behind a letter—it described the same phenomenon.”

“I wonder if this is the way the magicians felt, during the fever,” Balfour mused, looking distant again. Memories of the war could have been nothing but painful for him, I assumed, and here there was no hiding from them.

“Yes, but where in bastion’s name
is
Adamo?” Luvander asked. He checked the clock for the hundredth time, fiddling with the knot in his scarf. All at once, the clock began to chime—a horrible, squawking noise that sounded like a bird being murdered. Even Laure jumped a little. I could feel my heart move in my throat, and Balfour’s hands gripped the lip of the table so tightly that, when his fingers came away, they’d left little indents in the wood.

“Why do you own such a horrible timepiece?” Balfour asked. “I’ve kept quiet about it for this long, but it’s worse than hearing voices!”

“Ghislain sent it to me,” Luvander replied, somewhat sulkily. “It was a gift. I’m certain he murdered pirates for it. You really don’t like it?”

Balfour opened his mouth to reply when I heard the faintest of bells ringing somewhere behind me, within the shop.

“Someone’s at the door,” I said, for that was the only assumption I could draw from the sound.

“The shop is closed,” Luvander replied. “I understand that my wares are in high demand, but for once I agree with Adamo—there are more important things than hats. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“Mightn’t it
be
Adamo at the door?” Laure asked. “Who knows how long he’s been ringing, with us yapping like this.”

“I told him to come around back,” Luvander said. “But he’s getting old, isn’t he? Perhaps his memory’s failing him. I’ll go see to it.”

He stood, the chair scraping beneath him, and headed to the door. It swung open without a creak, swinging back and forth on well-oiled hinges. Luvander’s disappearance left only Balfour, Laure, and me together—the most awkward of trios. None of us wished to be the first to speak, and so we sat in uncomfortable silence. I could tell that Balfour and Laure wished to question each other in more detail about their similar symptoms, but neither of them felt comfortable doing so in front of me. And so I was the third wheel, I realized. But I could never have left Laure alone with Balfour, impeccable manners or no.

“Well,” Balfour said at last. “Do you remember
what
it sounded like?”

“Metal,” Laure replied. “All whirs and grinding gears. Kind of what I’d imagine those hands’d sound like, if they were three times as big.”

“Incoming,” Luvander said from behind the door, and barged in a moment later.

Behind him—in a moment of utter, bizarre coincidence—was the older man I’d seen with Hal on more than one occasion—the one who I could only assume was his lover. He was alone, without Hal, and I knew immediately from the expression on his face that something was amiss.

“I’ve come on Owen’s behalf,” he said, “since the man in question has just been arrested.”

Once, in the middle of the war, I’d seen Cassiopeia set light to a store of powder. Everything had happened as if in slow motion—the yellow flames arcing through the night, one moment of perfect silence suspended in the air before Ivory’s target caught flame. It’d sent explosions ripping fiercely through the battlefield, nearly knocking me off Anastasia, since I’d been closer to the ground doing my usual reconnaissance.

The effect Margrave Royston’s announcement had on the room was quite similar to that experience. Everything went still and cold. Then, abruptly, the room exploded.

I was very nearly knocked off my perch again, though this time by the young lady Laure, who’d surged to her feet and strode right over to Margrave Royston as though she thought he’d been the one to do the arresting personally.

“What d’you
mean
, ‘arrested’?” she demanded.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Margrave Royston replied—without any of the witticisms for which he was so notorious among the diplomatic circles.

“What
for?
” Laure persisted. I couldn’t blame her for leaping into action at once, after all. She hadn’t been trained to deal with this kind of situation—she was a student, and not an airman, retired though we were. It was always nice to have someone so forceful among our numbers, unafraid of asking the difficult questions. Before, we’d been gifted with rather a surplus of forceful personalities, so that neither Luvander
nor I was used to speaking up. Usually that someone was Adamo; but obviously, under these circumstances, someone else needed to step up and take his place.

“That is a very good question,” Royston said, “one which I find I cannot answer officially. I have my suspicions, though, if you’ll hear them.”

Laure didn’t seem impressed by the diplomatic answer. I folded my hands to keep them steady while privately wondering whether the young woman had ever been told it was bad luck to behead the messenger. “What kind of city
is
this, anyhow, where you can go around arresting people like that—just willy-nilly?” Laure demanded. “And what sort of friend are
you
that you didn’t
stop
’em?”

It was a great deal to absorb all at once. The girl’s companion—young Toverre, who’d been clinging to a napkin through the entire thing as though it were a life raft—practically leapt up from his seat to try to calm her, elbows and knees everywhere, while I myself glanced to Luvander to see what he made of this mess. While my responsibility toward him was considerably different from that of a fiancé, I’d spent quite enough time hiding in the bastion, away from old friends. Now, more than ever, it was important to show solidarity—especially if what Royston said was true.

He was sitting very still, hair falling tousled over his knitted brow, and he hadn’t even reacted to the revelation of Adamo’s first name, which I myself hadn’t been aware of until just then.

Surely I must have known it at one point—perhaps when I’d first joined the corps, during a whirlwind of preparations and paperwork—but that was feeling as distant a memory as my early childhood. Adamo had always been
Adamo
to us, just as we’d known each other by single names. It evened us out when we entered the Airman, where no one was a country lord or a petty thief. We were all just Dragon Corps.

“Young woman, please restrain yourself before you do both of us physical harm,” Margrave Royston said. He looked troubled, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Adamo was untouchable, or so I’d always thought; I couldn’t imagine him allowing this, nor could anyone else in the room, it seemed. Even the war had never managed to faze him. We were all shaken. “Trust me when I assure you—I attempted to do the very thing you have suggested, and I was informed that this was no happenstance arrest but rather was being carried out on the orders of
the Esar himself. I don’t know how much comprehension you have of Thremedon’s particular politics, but a magician trying to argue against the Esar has almost no chance at all of overturning his ruling. In fact, if he became aware that
I
was making a fuss over things, he might just make things worse for Owen in order to make a point. He likes magicians very little, but he likes
me
even less. The quieter I was, the less
messy
things would become.”

“That’s horrible!” Laure said. Her face was turning red the same way Merritt’s always did when he inevitably discovered the latest indignity to be visited upon his poor boots.

Toverre was standing beside her, attempting to calm her down, though he seemed reluctant to actually touch her, thereby risking the full force of her wrath turning in his direction. A wise move, I thought, and I was shamefully grateful that Luvander had no such temper to speak of.

“Did they tell you what the charges were?” Luvander asked at last.

“Treason,” Margrave Royston said with a blank expression that stirred something dangerously close to fear in the deepest part of me. There was no chance he’d misspoken; I wouldn’t lie to myself and hope for something like that. “Conspiring in private with secret information to use against the Esar, more specifically. I came here to warn the rest of you—I half assumed the shop would be crawling with Wolves when I arrived—but perhaps we’re still ahead of the pack, so to speak.”

“They wouldn’t come
here,
” Toverre said, glancing over his shoulder in sudden suspicion, as though he was having second thoughts about having come to the shop.

Perhaps that was the smart reaction to take, but I couldn’t have moved even if I wanted to. I felt rooted in place, a curious mixture of guilt and horror doing battle in my stomach. Of all the people I knew, Adamo could take care of himself the best—that was never in question. There had always been the possibility during the war that one or more of us might be taken captive at any time; we’d always been prepared for it. Indeed, after our last flight over the Ke-Han capital, some of us
had
been held in their prisons. It was merely that no one had ever imagined those doing the arresting might be on our side of the Cobalt Mountains, rather than the Ke-Han. Despite that, our course of action was clear: If Adamo was in trouble for something that involved all of us, then it was up to all of us to get him out of it.

It also implicated everyone in the room, including the two young students. What a warm reception they were having in the city.

I hadn’t even been given chance enough to ask Laure everything I’d wanted to. Given the gravity of Margrave Royston’s news, it seemed unlikely we’d be able to focus on anything other than Adamo’s plight—hardly what Adamo had planned for us, I realized. Even in prison, he’d be trying to protect us all, keeping our names out of it.

Perhaps I’d been trained too well by him—I should’ve been furious, but I found myself coming down closer on the side of admiring.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Laure asked, suddenly hushed. “I went to him, told him all those things about that Germaine woman. I knew not going was gonna get me in trouble. But it got
him
in trouble instead.”