Steelhands (2011) (60 page)

“How convenient,” Antoinette said. I knew that light in her eyes—she was busy adding everything up, the way Adamo was, making sure she was keeping each piece of the puzzle in mind before she made her next move.

“We should press on,” Adamo said, casting a glance back through the tunnel. “Hate to be the one to remind everyone, but time isn’t on our side.”

“True enough,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the jewel in the center.
Ke-Han blood magic
, Antoinette had said; just the sound of it made me feel dirty. That jewel was the same color as the vial of blood Germaine had taken from me. Same color as Gaeth’s blood, too, I’d be willing to wager, since it probably
was
his blood.

Was this what Germaine’d been planning to do with me? When I thought about how close I’d come to being trapped underground there myself, I felt like my lungs were being crushed.

“I don’t mind going first again,” Balfour said, slipping into the tunnel pass.

“Only the two of us will go,” Antoinette said, taking Balfour’s arm. “The rest of you wait here.”

“Now, don’t be cruel,” Luvander said. “We’re not babes in arms. We’re seasoned soldiers.”

“So you know when to follow orders, don’t you?” Antoinette asked. I glanced over at Adamo, who was chewing things over again.

“Antoinette’s right,” he said finally, making me feel proud. “If an attack comes, I’m betting it’ll come through here. So we station our strongest men at the head of the pass, the rest of us standing behind them, and we buy Antoinette and Balfour some time to plead their case with th’Esarina.”

“And for us?” Toverre asked, voice shaky.

“Heading back through the tunnel’s too dangerous,” Adamo replied. “Besides, you made it this far, didn’t you? I won’t send you away.” He glanced at me, and I grinned at him, just to show him I planned on doing all right. So long as I was there, wasn’t
nothing
that was gonna be allowed to touch him.

“Come,” Antoinette said simply, taking Balfour by the hand. He seemed startled, and I didn’t understand why, until I remembered all of a sudden what his hands were made of, and I guessed nobody ever had reason to touch them. Antoinette, to her credit, didn’t even flinch.

Then, without any more talking, they disappeared into the tunnel.

Ghislain shifted out to the front, and Adamo followed him. I wanted to go with them, but I knew I’d serve everyone better if I flanked Toverre and protected him.

Staring at Adamo’s back made me feel like I was a real part of the battalion. Nobody’d told me to step aside because I wore skirts over my boots, not trousers. Da would’ve been proud to see me here—in his own way, after he asked me what in Regina’s name I thought I was doing going against th’Esar like this—but more importantly,
I
was proud of me.

Gaeth stood on Toverre’s other side, twitching around like Cornflower was probably talking to him.

I’d come
real
close to having a dragon in my head, I thought. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or like I’d missed out on something most people were too meek even to dream of.

Adamo held up his hand suddenly—I knew what it meant even without him having to say anything. Someone was coming.

A moment later, I heard it, too, the sound of feet against stone. Whether it was a few men or a whole damned army, we were ready for them. I swallowed and braced myself.

It was about damn time. All this dillydallying didn’t make me too impressed with th’Esar’s ability to protect his people. He was so twisted around, busy looking after his own hide, that he’d probably forgotten about everyone else. And considering the Dragon Corps had given their lives to protect him once upon a time, I wasn’t too impressed with that kind of self-centered thinking.

I felt sharp fingernails digging into my arm, and I glanced over at Toverre. He was white as a ghost in the darkness, probably scared out
of his mind. But he’d come all this way for me, and I was oddly grateful—not as grateful to him as I was to whoever’d decided to let me have Adamo and Ghislain on my side, but it was a different kind of gratitude.

He didn’t have to be afraid. Gaeth and I were gonna protect him.

Then, all at once, the opposing force appeared.

They were dressed the same as Gaeth, and I sensed him tensing immediately. Ghislain and Adamo stood between us and them—and there was Luvander and Raphael, too, as the second force, with us as the last resort—but it was too cramped to tell how many of them there were, or get a good sense of our odds and their numbers. That worked in our favor, actually, since it meant they wouldn’t be able to come at Ghislain or Adamo too many at a time, and I had a good feeling about whether or not they’d be able to pick off the opposition nice and easy, at a pace that suited them.

“Bastion,” the man at the front said, slowing rather than leading the charge, so I knew straightaway what an asshole he was. “What kind of ragtag effort is this? You can’t really think you have a chance, do you?”

“Hey there, Troius,” Adamo said, like he was checking out dirt underneath his thumbnail. Whatever I’d been thinking about the man, Adamo clearly thought even less. “I was wondering when you’d show. Ain’t polite to keep people waiting.”

“You’ll wish I had kept you waiting longer,” Troius replied. “You don’t really think you can stand against us? You know firsthand the damage we can do.”

“Sure I do,” Adamo replied. “And back when the dragons were in testing, and none of us first wave knew if they’d be with us or turn against us, we were prepared to stand against ’em then. They were a damn sight bigger in those days, too.”

“I really had thought you’d join us,” Troius said, sounding disappointed. “Did the offer not suit you? It gave you a real chance to be who you were again.”

“Adamo knows who he is,” I said, since none of his other boys seemed prepared to speak up. “But who the hell’re you?”

“I’m depressed,” Troius replied. “Sad that such a great man has been reduced to leading a depleted army—if it can even be called that—made up of women and children.”

“Uh-huh,” Ghislain grunted. “And where do you figure me into that?”

Troius didn’t have time to answer the question, because Ghislain had struck out to break his nose—fast for a giant and ten times as strong as a regular man.

I recognized the sound from the number of stableboys back home who’d suffered the same fate at the hooves of one of Da’s wilder horses. I cringed and Toverre cried out, hiding his face so he wouldn’t have to see all the blood.

“Damn it!” Adamo shouted.

“Regina,” Gaeth whispered. “That’s no good.”

“Are we hitting now?” Luvander asked, happily holding up his fists.

I stepped forward—because if it was gonna come to simple brawling, then we were gonna have to show some solidarity—but then the reason for Gaeth’s distress became apparent as a metallic scream sounded out from below us. Not even a second later, the floor exploded.

I wondered if this was the way Royston’s power manifested itself. Then I didn’t have any more time for wondering, as out of the rubble burst a dragon. Smaller than I’d been expecting but no less beautiful. There were a few streaks of dirt on her here and there, and her face was half dog, half horse, with giant nostrils and a rooster’s comb made of sharp steel pieces, but all in all she was pristine, the kind of craftsmanship that’d make everyone who knew what they were looking at feel weak in the knees.

“Bastion fuck,” I said.

“Now you’ve done it,” Troius added, sounding all wet and pissed from the blood. “Ironjaw! Attack them!”

“We’re going to be killed,” Toverre practically shrieked, ruining our stalwart moment. Everyone else was just too stunned to react.

At least there wasn’t too much room down there for the dragon to maneuver. It took her too long to turn around, claws scraping at chunks of stone, shaking her tail out and nearly bowling over one of her allies. The time that bought us was all Adamo needed, howling at us like the Chief Sergeant he’d always been—even in the lecture room.

“Fall back!” he bellowed, and even Toverre hopped to like a trained soldier, all of us pressing back into the tunnel, where most of the advantage a beast like that had over us would be squandered.

Excepting, of course, if she had firepower.

Then, we were all cooked. Literally.

I was crowded behind Raphael and Luvander, who were, I realized, using their own bodies like shields for Toverre and Gaeth and me. They didn’t have to do that, I wanted to tell them, though I’d already put myself between Toverre and the dragon, knowing how delicate his skin was. I guessed we were all just trying to protect each other.

But something was rumbling beneath my feet. An earthquake, I wondered, or the whole place being brought down on top of us from the impact as the dragon broke through foundations to protect Troius?

I was gonna have to stop wondering, because nothing I came up with ever got close to reality. It wasn’t any earthquake, but a second dragon. I couldn’t see it as well as the first, what with Ghislain blocking my view, but from what I could see, they weren’t identical. The new one was patchier all over, made out of different metals, though I was no expert on what dragons were supposed to look like. If there were two dragons against us now, I thought darkly, then we didn’t stand a chance.

“Don’t worry,” I heard Gaeth tell Toverre, as Toverre did his best not to be thrown down onto the dirty floor. “That’s just Cornflower.”

The second dragon was on
our
side, I realized. Or, at least that’s what I thought Gaeth was saying.

Everyone scrambled to get out of her way as she clawed up from the ground like she thought she was a groundhog. There were parts of her that were silver, too, and parts that were another metal with kind of a blue sheen to it. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d’ve assumed that was what’d given Gaeth the idea to name her Cornflower. As she oriented herself in the tunnel, facing our attacker, I could see that all the exposed gears under her belly and her arm and leg joints were bronze, and she had a sharper snout than Ironjaw, with the same enormous nostrils and rows of glittering silver teeth.

Then she lunged forward with a shriek that sounded like metal scraping on rock—or maybe she wasn’t screaming, and what we were hearing was just her claws tearing through stone. Gaeth shouted, and Adamo pushed the group by using Ghislain as a shield, moving us clear back through the tunnel while I scrambled to see what was going on.

Cornflower, like any loyal animal worth her salt, had thrown herself in the way of danger, not letting anyone or anything threaten her master. I could see her tail whipping around, scraping at the tunnel walls and sending little showers of sparks and rock down around her.
Ironjaw let out a growl and slashed out at her with those mean-looking claws, but Cornflower dodged the blow and held her ground. Likewise, Adamo was holding
our
ground, moving us just out of range of those razor-sharp tails as they whipped back and forth, driving the guards in green back same as us.

The lucky thing about the dragons being between us was it meant that slimy snake Troius couldn’t get any closer to us than we could to him. We were trapped on either side of the dragon battle, and I could only hope that man’s nose was hurting him something fierce.

Sparks showered up like fireworks around the tunnel as Ironjaw lunged at Cornflower, trying to dart past her. For the second time, Cornflower knocked her back, jaws snapping as she kept her opponent at bay. In a way—though I’d never say this to Toverre, since I could feel him trembling next to me—there was something beautiful about the way they fought, neither one giving quarter but both surging up at once, claws flying and metal gleaming.

Ironjaw rose up on her hind legs and Cornflower sprang at her throat, jaws seizing around the gears there and tugging at one of the cog pieces.

“Attagirl,” I heard Adamo mutter, just ahead of me.

But the battle wasn’t won, not by a long shot. Ironjaw was slapping at Cornflower with the sharp end of her tail, and it seemed to me like they were pretty much evenly matched, capable of tearing each other to pieces before the fight ended in a draw. I didn’t know how much it must’ve cost to build ’em, but I knew how much of a loss it’d be if they destroyed one another. It didn’t seem right to me to be pleased about it, just because of how ticked off th’Esar would be, after all the things he’d sacrificed—his honor chief among them—to build them in the first place.

I heard something else then, real close by, over the clang of metal meeting metal and Toverre’s whimpering beside me. It was a funny whispering sound, the likes of which I’d heard before, but I’d never welcomed it. Balfour wasn’t even with us anymore, so I couldn’t sneak a glance sideways to see if he was twitching around like
he
was hearing things, too.

“Everyone get back,” Gaeth said suddenly in a firm voice I’d never heard him use before. He’d already taken Toverre by the arm and started pulling—assuming rightly that he’d gone catatonic on us now
that there was so much danger and dirt around. The rock dust was especially thick in the close tunnel air. To Toverre, it probably felt like the end of the world. “Ironjaw breathes fire, and Cornflower says she’s about to—just get back!”

None of us asked how a dragon would know something like that.

“You heard the boy!” Adamo roared, tearing his eyes away from the fight and pushing the line back. Ghislain followed suit after a split second, though I could tell it almost killed him not to be watching, to say nothing of giving up more ground. But it wouldn’t matter how much ground we held if we all ended up fried to a crisp.

Gaeth’s warning hadn’t come a moment too soon, either. As we were still scrambling to get clear of the battlefield, orange flames surged around all four walls of the tunnel; they licked hungrily along the stone and swallowed up my sight line of the two dragons. I felt like I’d stuck my head too close to the oven; I couldn’t imagine what it must’ve felt like at the center of the blast, with the tunnel walls so tight and the ceiling so close it practically
was
an oven down there. We were still near enough to the center of action that it made my face feel hot, but I was behind Adamo, so I knew
I
wasn’t in any danger.