Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  “No doubt you are wondering why we called you here,” the Esar said, once the door had closed behind the Esarina and we were alone in the private audience chamber.

  No witnesses, my mind pointed out, and I stamped the thought out ruthlessly. I couldn’t afford to be irrational.

  “I am curious, Your Highness,” I admitted, not seeing the harm in that. “Although, as I’m sure you already know, our talks with Arlemagne have been put on hold for the time being, so I … That is to say I wasn’t doing anything of importance, when the summons came. It is my honor to serve you,” I concluded. A little official flattery never hurt.

  “You’ve no idea at all why you have been summoned?” the Esar repeated back to me, just to verify. He shifted in his chair, and I felt suddenly as though I was being watched. Perhaps my initial impression of our being alone in the room together, with no witnesses, had been too hasty. “By your knowledge, there’s no reason at all we might have to invite you here to speak with us?”

  “Not anything I can think of,” I said slowly, racking my brains. I did hope this wasn’t a test. “Unless it’s about my hands.”

  “Curious,” the Esar said, leaning forward suddenly in his charge, so that I almost felt he was about to lunge at me from the dais. “Why would it be to do with your hands?”

  “It is the topic most people are interested in, once they learn about it,” I replied. “That, and my time as an airman of your Dragon Corps—though the latter they have more difficulty believing. With the former … I am simply able to show them the evidence.”

  “And how much evidence have you given?” the Esar asked, rubbing at the side of his jaw, where his beard was freshly trimmed. “How many people have you shown?”

  “I wear gloves, as you can see,” I replied, “since the sight often … troubles people. As a diplomat of Volstov, and a servant to Your Highness, I thought that distracting those diplomats with whom relationships are already so tenuous would be unwise. And … a little vanity, too, no doubt plays some factor in it.”

  “How very prudent of you,” the Esar said. “Do you have trouble with them?”

  “The hands?” I asked. He nodded, and waved for me to continue without waiting for him to speak. I swallowed, throat feeling dry, but carried on. “It took some time to master them. In the first month, I found myself able to operate only a few of the fingers. Now even more complicated tasks—replacing the oil in a lamp, managing a fork and a knife at the same time—pose less and less trouble.”

  “So they are a part of you now, and do as you command?” the Esar asked.

  The Esar would think of it that way, I realized, but I nodded once. “Indeed, Your Highness,” I replied. “Though they do not feel natural.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” the Esar said. “It is of no consequence to us. I am told that you have had difficulty with the magician who treats you.”

  “I cannot seem to find her,” I explained, forgoing any jokes about losing a Margrave. I didn’t think he would appreciate them. “No one knows of her whereabouts. She lived alone, and left no information, it seems.”

  “No one can find her?” the Esar asked. “You are sure about that?”

  “Your request for my presence came at a fortuitous time,” I said. “Since missing my most recent appointment, I’ve been … concerned about the state of the prosthetics.”

  “Of course,” the Esar said, leaning back in his chair. There was something on his mind, but it was far beyond my capacity to know what. “We’ll find someone else and send them to you before anything more discomfiting should happen to you. The way out is the same as the way in.”

  I bowed very deeply, wishing more than ever that the Esar was a more approachable man. Or at least deigned to answer as many questions as he raised during any simple conversation. I wanted to know, of course, about Margrave Ginette, but to push my luck—even for her sake—would have been about as suicidal as my final mission with Anastasia.

  It was so much easier to be a hero in wartime, I thought, ashamed of myself. But I left the room without furthering my case or hers.

  If the Esar had an agenda, he didn’t want me to know it. And I, being his subject and therefore his servant, had to abide by that. It was law.

  I saw no further sight of the Esarina on my way out, and the halls of the palace were eerily quiet, like a summer estate in wintertime. The carriage that had brought me was waiting outside, the driver and the horses alike stamping their feet with the cold and impatience, and they were even so kind as to deposit me not in front of the bastion but at my own home. I tipped the driver somewhat clumsily, my hands so stiff I could hardly move them.

  He eyed me strangely, tugging at his cap. With a clatter, he and his equipage were gone.

  It was quiet along the streets after that, and I fumbled with my key as I made it up the apartment steps into the long hall. No one was waiting for me when I opened the door, and I was able—after so much excitement—to convince myself that I preferred it that way.

  LAURE

  Of all the things I hated—exams, mending clothing, being told I had to ride sidesaddle, talking to people I didn’t like—it was possible I hated appointments with a physician most of all. Especially when they were someone I didn’t know, like an old man with wrinkly, cold hands, attempting to be kind while I mostly wanted to grab my clothes and hightail it out of there, fast, before anyone could see me.

  Back at home, the local doctor was just like that, and when he came I usually hid in the pantry, then in the barn when my pantry deal was found out. I never got sick anyway. I didn’t have any need for him.

  With this damn ’Versity appointment, I didn’t even know what to expect, or who. Even worse, Toverre had his in a few days, so we couldn’t even go together for support. For Toverre’s sake, I’d have to pretend like sitting in the foyer of some stranger’s house while an apprentice took my measurements wasn’t one of the least comfortable things I’d ever done in my life. Considering how many times I’d fallen off a wild horse, put my foot in my mouth at the dinner table, and gotten stuck on the shelves while trying to get myself out of the pantry, that was saying something.

  Toverre was going to hate it.

  If only Gaeth’d been around, I would’ve pressed him more for details on what it was like—whether they leeched any blood or kept any blood, that kind of thing. I had no idea how it worked in the big city, just heard rumors from the stableboys about what crazy shit they did to you in Thremedon. But I hadn’t seen Gaeth in a few days, even though I’d been keeping an eye peeled for him. For a lad that big, he didn’t have much trouble disappearing on you.

  The apprentice checking up on me was a weedy little man, but up close I could see he was even younger than I was, with freckles and thin orange hair. He’d be bald by the time he was twenty.

  I had to think mean thoughts about him because he was writing all kinds of things down about me—my height, my age, my weight despite me being a lady, and the day and year I was born—checking my tongue with a flat wooden stick, peering into my ears with some device that was sharp at the tip, which really made my skin crawl.

  All this seemed much more complicated than it’d ever been at home and, in my opinion, couldn’t’ve been too necessary.

  He just needed to get to the bloodletting and be done with it, I thought, because too much longer steeling myself and I was going to talk myself right back into wanting to run away again.

  Not like I couldn’t take care of myself when it came to these little things, of course, and it wasn’t like I was scared or anything. I didn’t like being made to wait, while in the next room I could hear all kinds of things being prepared. It wasn’t going to hurt and even if it did, I didn’t mind. I just hated all the anticipation.

  “Can we get on with this?” I said, sharp and exasperated. It made the apprentice jump, and he fiddled with his spectacles nervously.

  “I’m sure she’ll be with you in a moment,” he replied, the nostrils of his otherwise t
hin nose flaring wide. “There’s a lot to prepare in advance.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked. “Like what?”

  That, of course, he didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he was as uncomfortable as me and was pretending not to hear so that he could escape as quickly as possible.

  Stood to reason one of us got to escape, anyway, and he was probably in a better position for it than I was. I bet Chief Sergeant Adamo—Professor Adamo now; it must’ve been awkward for him, what with people slipping up all the time and calling him the wrong thing—would’ve come up with some brilliant getaway strategy, pants on fire or no.

  Then again, if I’d had a dragon to command and call my own, there wouldn’t be anyone making me wait more than five minutes for anything, and definitely not in a cold little physician’s room, either.

  A girl had her dreams, and I had mine. I’d heard all about how it was the dragons that did the choosing, and not th’Esar or any magicians from the Basquiat, either. So what if one of the dragons had gone and chosen a woman, just because she liked one better? Probably the only reason that none of ’em ever had was because no woman had been presented to the dragons in the first place, but sometimes when I’d closed my eyes at night back home, I’d imagined what it might be like to slip through all the nets just to get my chance to stand in front of one of those beauties and have her pick me out of the lot of ’em.

  After all, if the dragons were girls, why couldn’t the riders be?

  “Thank you for your time,” the assistant said, bobbing his head and scuttling out of the room.

  I managed to keep from sticking my tongue out at him while his back was turned, but only by imagining what Toverre would say if I told him I’d done it. Sometimes, I thought, he should’ve been the lady and not me. He’d still have been ten kinds of crazy squeezed into one person, but at least he’d’ve had all the right airs, not to mention all the right clothes. And if I got to be the boy of the two of us, Da’d be happier, and I would be, too, because of it.

  I swung my feet back and forth, trying not to feel too antsy. I was almost grateful when the door opened again—and I never thought I’d end up in a position where I’d be looking forward to a little bloodletting, but that was what Thremedon had done to me.

  My physician was a stout woman—something I wasn’t expecting at all, to be honest—with black hair and sturdy, square-shaped hands that would’ve been aces at soothing horses if she’d been born on a farm. I guessed she was aces at soothing patients, because the sight of her even relaxed me a little. That put my good sense at about the same level as a horse’s, apparently.

  “Sorry to make you wait so long,” she said, looking over the chart her assistant had left behind before she glanced up at me. “I’m Germaine, and I’ll be your attending physician for the next half hour or so. We got a lot of you country folk in today, as you can probably imagine. Preliminary check says you’re fit as a fiddle, so that’s good news. We’re just going to draw a vial of blood for some more advanced testing, then we’ll get you out of here, Miss … Laurence, isn’t it?”

  “It’s Laure, actually,” I told her, hoping I wouldn’t have to get into the whole explanation.

  “I see,” Germaine said, checking something off on the chart, though she probably wasn’t striking through the nce at the end of my name. Didn’t strike me as professional. “That’s good to know. I didn’t want to be looking at the wrong chart after I’ve gone and given you a clean bill of health.”

  “That would be awkward,” I agreed. Anything to get this over with more quickly.

  “Is there anything you want to ask me about?” Germaine asked, folding the chart against her chest and giving me what amounted to a kindly look. Or at least, the closest thing to it that it seemed she could manage. “I know that it can be difficult, being away from home, and Thremedon’s certainly an acquired taste. At your age, you probably have most of the basics figured out, but if you have any questions about your body and what’s good for it, then now’s your time to ask.”

  “Nothing that comes to mind,” I answered—too quickly, I realized, since I could see the disappointment in her face. She probably thought I was lying, or maybe too dirt-stupid to ask the important questions, but I knew most of the things she wanted to talk to me about already. All the natural things, at least, that I could see happening with the horses just by being with them all day. Lying with a man led to having babies; I’d been getting my monthlies for years and they were the same pain in my ass as ever. And unless there was a potion they’d invented in Thremedon to shrink the size of my chest down to something more sensible, then I was sure there was nothing this woman could do to help me. Even if she really wanted to.

  “You seem certain enough,” Germaine said; there was some questioning in that, too.

  “I’m betrothed,” I told her, putting an end to the discussion. She didn’t need to know that my fiancé was Toverre, and that he was about as inclined to do things to my naked body as I was to his, these days.

  “I see,” Germaine said, ticking something else off on the chart. It was maddening to know that there were strangers writing down all these things about me to keep as long as they liked—worse still that I wasn’t allowed to read what any of it said—but at least she’d gone for my bluff. “Well, if you ever change your mind, I’m here from noon to eight on weekdays. It might take time to schedule an appointment in the next few weeks, but after the start of term rush is over, it should get easier.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not wanting to seem like too much of an ungrateful boor right off the bat. The poor woman was just trying to do her job, and I wasn’t making it any easier by acting like a particularly sullen cow. “I’ll be sure and remember that. If I need anything.”

  “Well,” said Germaine, with a little sigh, “I suppose you’re anxious to get out of here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, before realizing it’d probably been one of those rhetorical questions.

  Lucky for me, she didn’t seem to mind that I’d gone and answered anyway though she did gesture for me to scoot back up in my seat. I leaned back, staring up at the whorls on the wooden ceiling, and noticed a place where there must’ve been a leak, because the plank was warped and stained. A little bit of tar would solve that problem, easy. Didn’t these city folk know anything?

  “Roll up your sleeve,” Germaine said, setting my chart down. “I’ll be right back.”

  I did as she’d told me, biting down on my tongue. She didn’t leave the way she’d come in but instead went through a door I hadn’t noticed at the back of the examining room—probably because it was painted white, the same as the walls. She’d put the chart facedown on the counter, so I couldn’t even try to sneak a glance while she was gone, and I didn’t know if she’d be out of the way long enough for me to hop down off the table and scamper across the room to check it out. It’d be just like me to get caught with my hand in the cookie jar, and seeing as how I didn’t know what the punishment for peeking at your files would be in Thremedon, I decided to be a good little girl and wait for my bloodletting like everyone else. Even though I shouldn’t have to be cautious when it came to my own files, but all Toverre’s obsessive behavior was starting to rub off on me.

  Curiosity was liable to kill me if I kept focusing on it, so I turned my sights to something else, instead.

  Germaine had left the door slightly ajar when she’d gone through it, I realized, because it left a long sliver of dark against all that boring, white wall. That was probably where they kept the really mean-looking instruments they didn’t want anyone seeing until they stuck you with them. We did the same with the horses at the stables, and even though Da never bothered to brand our cows, Toverre’s parents had a separate room for that kind of stuff that smelled of burning hide, so they had to keep the doors locked at all times. If I leaned back, I could even see all sorts of weird, silvery equipment that I didn’t recognize, and the tools I did recognize were ones I’d never seen in a physician’s
office before. Shears and pliers and all sorts of cogs, big and small, littered the slice of desk, illumined by bright lamplight. It looked more like a clockmaker’s desk than anything. I didn’t like the idea of that one bit, because if she was a clockmaker, then I felt like the clock, but I was probably getting ahead of myself. Maybe it was a hobby she kept on the side. You never could tell with these Thremedon folk.

  Also, I was getting a crick in my neck from leaning so far back on the table.

  The door creaked and I heard footsteps, so I straightened up, tugging at a piece of my hair and trying not to look like I’d been sneaking a look at something that didn’t concern me. This Germaine woman seemed pretty passive as far as physicians went, and I was a head taller than she was besides, but they were all pretty big on the rules here. I didn’t want her to decide she didn’t like me right before she was about to stick me with a needle, either, which was just plain common sense.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting again,” Germaine said. She sounded a little out of breath, like she’d been climbing stairs or something. It made me wonder how big the space behind the examining room really was, or why they kept the bloodletting equipment so far away from everything else they needed, but it was probably top secret physician stuff, and none of my civilian business. I clenched my jaw and refused to look at the needle she was holding. That was the only way to do it so you didn’t spook yourself.

  “It’s fine,” I said, because what else was there to say really? My arm was getting cold, and my heart was racing.

  She rubbed the soft crook of my elbow with something that made it colder, then snapped her fingers to one side to get my attention.

  I always fell for that stupid trick, even if it was for babies.

  The actual needle never hurt as much as all the waiting leading up to it, and this time was no exception. It was like a pinprick, and I’d had worse than that during my forays into mending clothes, despite how many times I’d tried to explain that I just wasn’t made for it. Hurt more to take the needles out of my fingers, too, or when I forgot a pin somewhere and stepped on it.