Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  “Of course, you would do something like that,” Roy said, almost fondly. I didn’t like his tone.

  “Care to explain what that one means, or should I play questions?”

  “It’s just that you’re such a mother hen,” Roy said. “Don’t get mad, you know it’s true. I bet it’s killing you to spend all your time with new recruits when you want to be looking after your old ones.”

  “Anyway,” I said loudly, because Hal’d just come back into the room, and whether or not I was slowly taking a shine to him, this wasn’t a conversation he needed to hear. Wasn’t a conversation I needed to hear, either. It’d give me indigestion. “What’s that have to do with the mole on Lady Greylace’s left tit?”

  “How colorful,” Roy said. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

  “And you,” I told Hal, “should probably cover your ears.”

  “Oh, no,” Hal replied. “I’ve already heard that one.”

  I cleared my throat and Roy took his water from Hal at last, covering up a laugh and sputtering just a little on it. “I’m not sure yet,” Roy said finally, dabbing at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Margrave Ginette was working on mechanics on a much smaller scale than your dragons ever were. Little things—like your friend Balfour’s poor hands. The letter you showed me suggests a more … massive resurrection, as it were? How terrifying to think such a thing was discovered on that side of the Cobalts. No wonder there’s been no public statement.”

  “Grinds my guts,” I said.

  “I just can’t imagine there being any connection,” Royston said, sounding disappointed. I’d’ve admitted it: I was, too. “I had hoped … Well, never mind. At least you’ve decided to tell the other airmen about the possibility. If you’re sure that won’t make matters worse. Haven’t you even wondered about it?”

  “Not for a second,” I said. “It’d be the same as dragging my mother out of the grave, slapping a new arm on her, a new leg maybe, then having her walk and talk and make breakfast for me again, just like when I was a schoolboy.”

  “What a horrendous picture that is,” Royston said, “but I do think I see your point. Well, I’m sorry, in any case, for intimating I had some piece of the puzzle when it seems I really did not.”

  More information to clog up the necessary stuff I was trying to keep in order, I told myself. And wasn’t that just Royston’s style? “Well, thanks,” I told him. “It’s always so refreshing, talking to you.”

  “The same for you,” Roy agreed. “Now, what about dessert?”

  FOUR

  TOVERRE

  I was being most outrageous, but I had followed him out of the classroom all the way down the ’Versity Stretch, and now we were sitting in the same café. Together, but not together, for he had not yet noticed me.

  Laure had told me when I suggested it, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t going to be a part of this, not even for a second. Following people to gape and gawk at them and indulge in dirty thoughts was wrong, and that was where she drew the line, apparently. She had no idea that my thoughts really were as pure as the driven snow.

  I simply wanted him to notice me.

  And notice me he would, even if it took me weeks more of following him just this way, mapping out the places he stopped, noting what windows his gaze lingered upon. I would know everything that he liked, would have myself familiar with every shop and bookstore that he preferred. I would make note of and subsequently read the books he carried under his arms, and—at long last—I would gather up the courage and determination to speak with him, armed with the necessary tools to impress him.

  That was really all I desired. Laure would understand eventually that there was absolutely nothing dirty about that.

  There was, however, something very dirty about the table in front of me. I looked around for the waitress, to inform her she had done a very poor job of cleaning the table after its prior inhabitants, but she was nowhere to be seen. I inched my chair very carefully around the table and away from the coffee stain, then allowed myself another—very daring—look at the object of my affections.

  He was waiting for someone, that much was clear. I’d spent enough time watching people that I knew the signs not of impatience but of private longing. Every time the door opened, for example, he cast a casual glance around the café, not anxious—his company was not late, then—but hopeful. He had that air about him, like someone on his birthday, alive and bright with anticipation. I had never seen him like this before though I hadn’t yet had that many opportunities to observe him outside the classroom we shared. Then, he seemed somewhat intimidated by the large crowd, reminded of us only when he had cause to look up from his notes.

  It was on one of these moments, the door opening and a gust of cold wind blowing in and his eyes lifting from his book, that I hoped he would catch sight of me—as unlikely a possibility as it might have seemed to anyone else. Being of an amiable nature, he would no doubt strike up a conversation, and perhaps even invite me to sit at his table, whereupon I would do my best to impress him with how well—not to mention how quickly—I was adapting to Thremedon’s crowded streets. That was my ideal, the scenario I’d dreamed up while observing the object of my affections, and I was more fond of it than any master craftsman of his wares.

  Still, one had to be prepared for all eventualities, and loath though I was to consider the larger picture, I was forced to contemplate the odds given to me by our location. There were several men and women sequestered at tables, sipping at their hot drinks and twining their fingers together and generally behaving in a way that made me ill and jealous at the very same time.

  How uncanny.

  I began to steel myself against the possibility that he was meeting a young woman. She might well have been someone like Laure, with a pretty face and an upturned nose and exceptionally large attributes filling out the top of her dress. Laure herself referred to these last as a pain in the behind more than anything else, and told me I should try having them for a day to see how lovely they really were. But she didn’t know—or didn’t care—the effect they could have on a man.

  If I had been gifted for a day with a chest like Laure’s, not to mention the body to go along with it, I’d most certainly not have been wasting my time crouched in the corner of a café that ’Versity students seemed to favor. I would have been out enjoying myself and trying on fine clothes.

  The bell above the door jingled merrily once more, and this time when Hal looked up I saw the most attractive expression pass over his face. It was like the smile I’d seen him share with the class at least a half-dozen times over a scintillating part in the lecture, and yet different somehow, much more personal. Dare I say more intimate? I sought to memorize that look as surely as I had memorized the others, to sketch a living picture so I might always remember it, even on days less fine than this one.

  It was nearly impossible to keep from craning my head around at once to see if I could get a better look at whoever had kept Hal waiting. My patience paid off, however, as a very well-dressed gentleman passed into my peripheral vision just moments later. I particularly admired the cut of his black coat and the embroidered vest beneath, and even allowed myself a second—quite scandalous—to note his handsomeness, despite the fact that he was evidently closer to my father in age than he was to me. He had dark hair and a well-trimmed goatee.

  Hal rose to meet him, taking both gloved hands in his own.

  Perhaps he was a professor, I thought. He did have that air about him, though without the chalk dust on his gloves. They could have been there to discuss research or a project or an essay.

  But all my hopes of its being a ’Versity-related meeting were dashed when Hal leaned in to kiss this man full on the mouth.

  I had to look away after that—not for the same reasons of propriety that anyone in the country would have turned away, but for how quickly my heart was beating and how hot my face felt. I wasn’t given to a pretty blushing—that was more Laure’s do
main, though she blushed so rarely—but my face did see fit to turn mottled shades of tomato red whenever I was feeling any one emotion too strongly. Or perhaps when I was feeling everything at once and couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

  When I dared to glance back at their table, the man had removed his coat and gloves, but Hal remained latched onto one of his hands as though it were an anchor. No one around them was commenting on it, and no one was even staring at them, save for me.

  I’d heard stories of what it would be like in Thremedon, told in hushed whispers of disapproval over breakfast and before bedtime until the day I’d finally left for the city. I hadn’t taken them in the spirit they were intended—they seemed less a warning to me and more a promise—but neither had I let on to my family that all their cautionary tales were falling on deaf ears. They might have stopped telling them then, and I’d have had nothing to look forward to at all.

  In Thremedon proper, a man could embrace another man as he might embrace a woman. He could even kiss another man right in public and no one would give it a second thought or catch him out back behind the barn to pummel the air—and the deviance—out of him. It was an alternative to marrying a woman, however much I did care for Laure, and being forced to produce dozens of filthy babies for the approval of my relatives and to the benefit of my father’s name and pride.

  What was more, though I hadn’t known it before, I’d found myself attracted to someone whose preferences were the same as my own. This was the first time such a thing had happened to me. I had to press my hands against the table’s surface to keep them from trembling. It was too much freedom to contemplate all at once.

  I’d wash them—and my gloves—later.

  Now, however, there was the problem of making my exit since the law of averages dictated that, for however many times I’d looked over at Hal and longed for him to look back at me, my getting up in the hopes of leaving anonymously would be the one thing that managed to draw his attention. No matter how quietly I moved, making an effort not to scrape my chair or—bastion forbid—bump into anyone else, I was rather effectively trapped.

  As much as I was happy for Hal, I didn’t actually wish to stay and observe his tryst as it progressed. That would fall into the category of an invasion of privacy, or what Laure termed “creepy,” and never once had such a thing been part of my intentions.

  A shadow fell across my table, and just as I was about to assure the waitress that I didn’t want anything currently, thank her for her time, and inform her of the coffee stain, I realized it was someone I knew, not the waitress at all.

  “Toverre?” Gaeth asked, as though he didn’t already know. It was a curious kind of politeness that didn’t quite make its way back around to being coy, I’d decided, and it didn’t exactly bother me.

  Mostly because it seemed he wasn’t even aware of it himself, which made it endearing instead of completely awful.

  “Hello,” I said, instantly more panicked than concerned with impressing him. No one really ever spoke to me without Laure present, too. Or, at least, no one came over to speak to me, given the choice between that and the chance to avoid talking to me entirely. Gaeth obviously hadn’t learned that lesson yet, but he would in time.

  At the present, I supposed I had only to be grateful for the very large shield he made, which hid me quite effectively from Hal’s table.

  “Are you meeting someone?” Gaeth asked, casting a glance to the empty chair at my table. “I’m probably interrupting.”

  “I was just leaving, actually,” I told him, making a decision then and there. It would look less suspicious if I were to leave now, and I could hide behind Gaeth until we made it out of the café and onto the street.

  Our professor—the former Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps—would have been so proud of my sudden burst of strategy. Thinking on the spot when all your plans went to piss, as Laure would have said.

  “Have you tried the coffee in this place?” Gaeth asked, as I pulled on my coat. He was still wearing that beastly gray monstrosity of his—I supposed he didn’t have anything else—but one couldn’t be picky when it came to one’s instruments of escape. I was less inclined to be forgiving of his shabbiness than I once had been, now that I’d had some time to absorb how important fashion was to Thremedon. “I think it’s bad, but then I’ve never been much of a fan of coffee in the first place.”

  “It’s cheap,” I sniffed, arranging myself on his right side before we set out together. “I suppose that’s why the students like it.”

  “That’s what I heard, too,” Gaeth admitted, holding the door open for me. If he was under the impression that a show of good manners was going to cheer me in the slightest, then he clearly had no understanding of the depth of emotion a person like me was capable of.

  A shame, really. Considering how handsome he was, he had absolutely no finer breeding.

  In the light of day he seemed a little flushed but less absent than he’d been when I’d run into him with Laure in the Amazement. His eyes were clear, the whites very white and not at all bloodshot, and his nose dry. He didn’t appear to be suffering from a fever, but one could never be too careful with those healthy country boys and their ilk. They’d be fine one second, then dead of the plague the next, and at no point in between did they show any signs of it.

  “Uh,” Gaeth said, a look of concern creasing his brow. “Did I say something wrong? Or do I have something on my face?”

  “Neither,” I said, deciding it’d probably go beyond the bounds of our precarious friendship if I tried to feel his forehead. That was for the best; I really didn’t want to touch him, anyway. Laure often remarked that I “got meaner than a horse at a shoeing” when I’d been embarrassed by something, and I supposed she wasn’t far off. The expression, while inelegant, had a certain grim flourish that left little to the imagination. Even if Gaeth himself hadn’t been the origin of my discomfort, I still couldn’t shake the awful knowledge that he had been witness to my public heartbreak. “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

  I’d intended to set Gaeth free down whatever street he chose in order to let him get away, but when I turned in the direction of the path I’d followed to get here, for whatever madcap reason, he chose to come along with me. I was cross with him for invading my privacy, since I’d been planning on losing myself in my jumbled thoughts, but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t like Laure. He certainly wasn’t willing—nay, waiting—to jabber my ear off at a moment’s notice. In fact, I was so grateful for his silence that I didn’t even particularly mind having to slow my pace considerably in order not to get too far ahead of him in the crowd.

  Perhaps he had thoughts of his own to consider, thoughts that were slowing him down.

  It was colder than it’d been when I’d left the ’Versity Stretch that afternoon to follow Hal, and I blew on my hands, rubbing them together to try to coax some warmth into them. I’d been cursed with poor circulation as a child, and as a result I tended to feel the cold more than most. The chilblains were the worst, swelling my fingers and toes and cracking before they finally healed, sometime just before summer.

  “Do you want my mittens?” Gaeth asked all of a sudden.

  I cast a look at his coat and tried not to imagine too vividly what any mittens he might’ve owned would look like. Wearing them over my gloves would be impossible, in any case. I’d have looked quite the fool.

  “I think I’ll manage,” I said carefully, modulating my tone so that Laure wouldn’t be able to ask me why I’d scared our new friend away when he was only trying to be polite.

  “Nah,” Gaeth said, digging around in his pockets for something. “You’ll end up with chilblains for sure, and then won’t you be miserable. Here, I bought these for my mam, but I don’t think anyone’d be the wiser if you wore them back to the dorms. They’re new, so … you know, you don’t have to worry. About them not being clean, that is.”

  I stared at them, completely bereft of any words that might have helped
me to extricate myself from this situation with the proper finesse. A witty retort about women’s gloves, perhaps, or even something about chilblains, which as I knew only too well were horrid when experienced firsthand. Had he merely guessed or had Laure told him I was susceptible? The only part my mind could process—completely unhelpfully—was that the mittens were a rough, brown leather and looked as though they were lined with some kind of fur.

  “Take ’em,” Gaeth said. “They probably don’t have fleas. I mean, they definitely don’t have ’em. I checked.”

  “Hardly a convincing endorsement,” I muttered, but I took them nonetheless, tugging them on. The fur made them warm, though they were bulky enough to make my hands feel very clumsy.

  “You should get warmer gloves, yourself,” he added. “The ones you’re wearing are nice and all, but they don’t look like they help much with the cold. What you really need is something woolly, like the ones Laure’s always wearing.”

  “Ah, yes,” I sniffed. “Those.”

  “Something wrong with ’em?” Gaeth asked.

  I checked to see if he wasn’t making fun of me, the way Laure would have, or really anyone else in his position. It didn’t seem that he was possessed of enough guile to do so, but I wasn’t about to lower my defenses just yet.

  “If you must know,” I told him, “they’re ugly. And they itch. They get dirty easily and they don’t look at all like what anyone else here is wearing.”

  “Oh,” Gaeth said, nodding and shoving his hands into his pockets, though not before he tugged his cap down farther over his head. “Everyone here must have right cold hands, then.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t bother them,” I told him. Was he really so thick-skulled, or had he not noticed he was dressed differently from everyone else on the busy streets of Thremedon?