Steelhands (2011) (64 page)

I barely had time to wonder what she meant by that before another dragon poked its head out of the hole. She was mostly gold, with patches of other metals soldered to her carapace; I barely had time to admire her before she’d squirmed her way into the room with us, followed by Laure, then Adamo, then the rest of our ragtag rescue team, like rabbits being smoked out of a warren. They looked very much the same as I felt—as though they’d been buried, then dug back up again like a dog’s prized bone—but no one was missing, and everyone seemed to have their limbs all in the right place.

For a raid, Adamo always said, those were good statistics.

Last to exit the tunnel was the young man in the green uniform, whose name I seemed to have misplaced in the shuffle.

“I wondered if we’d be seeing you again soon,” Antoinette said, not looking particularly shaken, though I saw her cast a sharp look over at the new dragon, her lips tight. After all the trouble that’d been caused for their sake, I understood the source of her animosity even if I didn’t share it.

I checked the Esar again to make sure he was still breathing. If he was aware of anything that was currently happening, it wasn’t apparent. I wondered if what I’d felt hadn’t been his last breaths—but then I saw his chest rise and fall a second time. His breathing was shallow, but it was definitely there.

“More dragons,” the Esarina murmured. “How many
are
there, exactly?”

“Four,” Adamo grunted, looking around. “Appears as if we missed the battle.”

“Got caught in one of our own,” Ghislain explained.

“Just a small one,” Luvander said.

“And we didn’t do much,” Raphael admitted.

“I told Cornflower to keep watch over the others in the tunnel,” the young man in the green uniform explained. “I promised I’d go back for her soon, but we wanted to make sure everything was all right up here, first. She’ll let me know lightning-quick if anything goes wrong, but Ironjaw was in such a state after them two ganged up on her, and Troius didn’t have so many men with him that it’d be a problem for my girl to take care of.”

“Forgive me, but I understood so little of what you just said that I
fear you might as well have been speaking a foreign language,” the Esarina said, wringing her hands together. “And my husband is still in great need of medical care.”

I saw Adamo looking around the room, noticing the Esar for the first time, then the guards cowering in the corner, then me and my vigil. My dragon, of course, he’d seen right away—that was one thing he was trying his best
not
to look at, which was a sentiment I could understand. It was difficult for me to look at her as well, but I didn’t wish to give offense for a second time.

The rest of the group looked bone-tired. Even Ghislain wasn’t standing as straight as he usually did, though that could have been attributed to all that crouching in the small tunnels. But how Raphael was still on his feet, I’d never know. Stubbornness had a great deal to do with it, I’d imagine. Even Laure, who’d been raring to go since the minute we’d learned of Adamo’s arrest, looked like she was beginning to wind down.

What we all needed was a hot meal, an even hotter bath, and a good long rest. Sadly, at the minute, all those things seemed so remote as to be almost completely unattainable—far more extraordinary than a dragon.

“I think we’d better call a meeting,” Antoinette said at last, brushing the stone dust off her skirts, “before any of this—or any of
those
”—she added, gesturing to the dragons—“gets out.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Adamo agreed.

Days ago—perhaps even hours ago, though I’d long since lost track of time and its passage—the idea of a clandestine meeting held within a secret chamber of the Basquiat would have delighted me to my core.
How marvelous
and
dangerous
, I would have thought. But a great deal had happened since then, and I was a changed man. I’d been given my marvels and my dangers, my clandestine meeting held within a secret chamber of the Basquiat, and I was ready to see the back side of all these things. Quite simply put, I was sick of them.

It hadn’t helped my impression that, for the duration of said meeting, I was exhausted and itchy, not to mention
incredibly
filthy, and no one seemed to share my desperate need to pause the proceedings and take a bath. My own foulness was only a mite more distressing than everyone else’s. There’d been no one at the meeting who wasn’t caked with dirt and dust. At least our lives had no longer been in explicit danger—though it was difficult to believe even that after having seen what I had.

At least the Esar would not have the chance to arrest me just yet. I had real evidence now that I’d be too delicate for prison—especially if all prisons were so unhygienic.

At the meeting I’d placed myself strategically next to Gaeth, so I could lean on him whenever I began feeling drowsy—he was the cleanest of us all, somehow—and also so I could be certain that he wouldn’t disappear once more in the gathered crowd. As soon as this
impromptu assembly was over, I was going to have some
incredibly
sharp words with him regarding the etiquette and bad manners involved in leaving your friends high and dry. It seemed to me that the poor fellow really was as hopeless as I’d always imagined him to be; as someone of better standing, not to mention considerably more advanced in the world of knowledge, it was my responsibility to take him under my wing until further notice.

I didn’t precisely relish the task, but neither was I dreading it as I might have, once.

We were fortunate Antoinette’s hidden chambers were so large, since we’d somehow managed to squeeze so many people into them—Antoinette; the remaining airmen; the Esarina; Laure, Gaeth, and myself; and also Troius, though fortunately we had not attempted to squeeze the rest of his men
and
the Esar’s personal guard in with us, as well.

The dragons—all four of them, or three and a half by Laure’s count, after the damage done to Ironjaw—appeared to be put out when they’d been told to stay behind and out of sight, banished once more to the tunnels. They’d done terrible damage to the floor at first, forcing all owners to be
quite firm
with the beasts until they did as they were told and curled up, though some managed this with far less metallic rumbling than others.

Laure’s in particular seemed to be difficult though I don’t know why
that
ought to have surprised me. We were all merely lucky that Laure herself hadn’t been born with claws that fierce.

At least the dragons were pleased to be given a job—guarding the guards, as it were, until such a time as we could decide what would be done with them. Because of lack of training, neither Laure nor the ex-airman Balfour could have remained in contact with them from such a distance, but Gaeth was able to, and so he kept tabs on them, telling us at intervals that all was still well and no daring idiot had attempted any mutinies just yet.

Troius, the short-tenured captain of his ill-fated platoon, had posed something of a problem since no one trusted him in the slightest. We’d brought him along as our personal prisoner; though Ironjaw was injured and wouldn’t pose a threat with the others also guarding her, it was difficult to communicate with one another freely while he was still a wild card.

There’d been some question—from Professor Adamo in particular—about whether or not Troius should be brought along at all, but Antoinette and the Esarina both felt that it was necessary to include him because of his connection to the dragon.
He
certainly hadn’t seemed to appreciate his place in the proceedings, but then he was tied to a chair, with Ghislain standing watch over him. I would have questioned my place if I were in his boots. There’d been dried blood all down his face, staining the front of his uniform, which was also caked in tunnel dirt. The sight of him made me ill; it was a sentiment that seemed to be shared by and large with everyone else in the room, however, though perhaps their reasoning was slightly different from mine.

Ghislain, for example, had looked as though he was just
waiting
for Troius to make his first escape attempt, so that Ghislain could break his nose all over again.

The Esarina—cleaner than Gaeth, I realized quickly, but I couldn’t very well presume to stand by her—had appeared distracted, declining the seat offered to her in favor of pacing the room like a lonely ghost. No doubt she’d been concerned about her husband’s condition; Antoinette had arranged for a few trusted healers to see to him in secret but I could tell from the way everyone had been acting that no one expected him to live, nor did they know what to do with him given
either
possible outcome.

There was something disturbingly poetic about the Esar having been done in by his own obsession, the very pride of his life that he’d sought to re-create—but I’d done my best to keep that thought private. While everyone else talked business, I’d done my best not to feel as though there were maggots and beetles and worms crawling all over me.

It proved very distracting—making it even more difficult for me to plead my case.

For, given the gravity of the situation, it seemed that the finest minds in the room had all come to the same conclusion. While the rest of us had still been scrabbling at straws, doing our best to make sense of what had already happened, they’d been looking to the future—trying to sort out what step to take next. Immediately it had become very clear to me that no one planned to let the secret of the dragons leave Antoinette’s private room.

That realization had made me very uncomfortable indeed. How, I’d wondered, did they intend to swear us
all
to secrecy?

“We destroy the dragons and bury the evidence,” Antoinette had suggested firmly. I appreciated that she wished to take charge and had been more than willing to go along with whatever she suggested.

Until, of course, Troius spoke up, giving us all a very grave piece of information. “I’ll go mad if you do that,” he said. From everyone’s reaction, it was clear not too many people cared, and he quickly did his best to clarify his point. “Gaeth as well,” he said. “It’s possible that the others—Laure, was it? And Balfour—will suffer the same fate. Our blood has been mixed with the dragonsouls. If you break them, our minds will be broken.”

I felt a slim shiver of outrage, at which point Luvander gently cleared his throat.

“I don’t believe we should destroy them even if such difficulties hadn’t presented themselves,” he said. “It would be akin to murdering all the witnesses. Unless that is what you intend, in which case, let me inform you, it is a difficult task to slit
my
throat.”

“The Ke-Han can’t learn of them,” Antoinette countered. “Nor any other country, for that matter. They would all take arms against us—the Ke-Han for violating the terms of the treaty, and Arlemagne in particular would assume we intend expansion. We’d make enemies of them, not allies. Do you really want more war?”

“But you can’t very well just do that to Gaeth,” I said hotly.

Troius cleared his throat. “Nor to the other one, I suppose. And to take that risk with Laure and Balfour—why, we’d be acting no more humanely than the Esar!”

“Nice one,” Laure muttered to me under her breath—just like she thought we were whispering together in class.

“Thanks,” Gaeth added, scratching the back of his head. “Don’t want to go crazy. Not any more’n I already have, anyway.”

“Well then,” Antoinette said, and I felt singled out, like a cutup during a lecture. “What do
you
suggest we do, little man?”

Adamo snorted—I realized it was to cover up a laugh—and with everyone staring at me, and me looking dirtier than one of my father’s pigs, I felt very miserable indeed. It wasn’t my place to decide these things, I thought. But then again, someone had to do it.

“We’ll just have to keep ’em secret, I guess,” Laure said, speaking up in my place and rescuing me, as always. “If killing ’em’s so bad and we can’t let anybody know about ’em either, then that’s the only way.”

“That won’t be easy,” Antoinette said.

“With all those guards acting as witness?” Adamo asked. “I don’t like our odds. It’ll leak, and sooner than later, by my thinking.”

“Well,” Antoinette murmured very demurely. “I would of course be able to take care of them.”

The Esarina stopped her pacing, and we were all drawn to her without her even needing to clear her throat for our attention. Though she was a slim, pale woman, there was something about her that to me indicated vast reserves of strength. “Toying with the minds of others?” she asked. “Erasing information because to us it is inconvenient? This sounds more and more like my husband’s reign. And if he is unable to rule after this—and if I am indeed to take his place—that is not the way I would wish to begin. Just because someone else would be doing the dirty work for me, I would not find it easy to turn a blind eye. His Highness used many of his subjects as pawns during the war—Caius Greylace, for example—and I was always distraught that he would play so casually with the lives of others.”