Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  This wasn’t so bad. I’d been acting like a big baby, imagining all kinds of things that weren’t there, and all over a simple blood testing.

  It was my head that needed testing, I thought, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you could joke about with a physician.

  Germaine offered me a tight smile and checked her watch—a pretty little thing made of gold, or at least colored to look like it was. On the face were all these foreign symbols—things I’d never seen on a watch before, not even in the history books I’d finally cracked open late the night before, which talked all about how magicians of Volstov had once told time by the sun and the moon. It had two hands like a watch did, though, and a third little one that went ticking in a circle though not in any kind of recognizable rhythm.

  I’d ask Toverre about it later. Maybe it was the newest fashion in Thremedon to wear a watch that didn’t actually tell time.

  “All done,” Germaine said at last, which was my cue to look away so she could pull the needle out again. Blood didn’t bother me, not my own or anyone else’s, but it hurt more when I looked at it, and I was brave, not stupid. I’d forget all about it if I just put it out of my mind. “Very good. No squirming or anything; a few of the boys before you fainted when they stood up.”

  “Got all the squirming out of the way in advance,” I told her. “And I’ve never fainted in my life.”

  “You’re a very sensible girl,” Germaine said, tying a clean bandage tight around my arm and sliding her funny watch back into her pocket. The vial of my blood was sitting on a little tray between us, clearly labeled with my name and date of birth. It was much darker than it ever looked when I bloodied my nose or scraped my knee, and there was something creepy about it. Fascinating, too.

  Then, just as I was about to ask what came next, Germaine plucked the vial up and whisked it out of my sight. Maybe she didn’t want it to become homesick, so far away from the rest of me.

  “We’ll let you know the results in about a week,” she told me, offering me another one of those tight smiles of hers. “Keep the bandage on for at least an hour, don’t wash tonight, and check to make sure there’s no infection. But there shouldn’t be.”

  “Good to know,” I said, remembering one of Da’s stableboys who’d died because of a needle that wasn’t clean. That sort of thing made me shudder, though I wasn’t about to let it happen to me.

  “Thank you so much for your time,” Germaine said, lingering at her secret doorway. She wasn’t going to step inside, not while I was still hanging around. It piqued my interest, sure, but the whole thing left a bad, metallic taste in my mouth, like sucking on a ha’penny. I wasn’t too keen on sticking around.

  I rolled down my sleeve over the bandage, stretching my arm out and making sure all the blood didn’t rush to my head when I stood up.

  It didn’t.

  Only an idiot would faint after something like this, I thought. An idiot who didn’t know not to look at the needle while it was going into ’em.

  “You, too,” I said, even though we both knew we were just doing our jobs.

  FIVE

  ADAMO

  Luvander had always said, to anyone who’d listen to him and even to those who weren’t listening at all, that when he made it out of this war he was going to open up a hat shop on the Rue d’St. Difference, and no amount of the boys’ jeering was ever going to stop him.

  With the money he’d received as a stipend for being a Volstovic hero, he proved he wasn’t a liar, although in my opinion it was easier for him with most of the boys not being around to make good on their promises of jeering.

  If there’d been any of them left—besides me and Balfour, who was too quiet for it, and Ghislain and Rook, who were smart enough to get their clever asses out of Thremedon because she held too many memories for them—they would’ve been lined up in front of the store howling and hooting and jeering at all hours of the day and night. They’d’ve been proud of him, too, of course, but they’d’ve scared so many customers away he wouldn’t’ve lasted too long. And the last thing I needed to see in this lifetime was Compagnon putting on one of those big velvet hats and parading around to impress all the others, and whatever poor lady shoppers were caught up in the chaos along with them.

  Those were my boys, all right.

  As it was, the location of the shop was pretty much ideal for those who wanted to say they’d bought their hats from the milliner airman. Him deciding to call it Yesfir after his girl was another stroke of genius, and, I guessed, also a tribute in its own way. Most importantly, Luvander liked to shoot the shit, which was part of the reason, in my personal opinion, he’d wanted to be a shopkeeper in the first place. He loved all that gossip—not the sort that was passed along by the lower maidens about guttings and knife fights, but the high-end crap, like which Margrave was having an affair with which member of the Arlemagne court, and who’d been found having a little ménage à trois with the Wildgrave Gaspardienne?

  It was exactly the kind of ambiance I wasn’t suited for, which was why I didn’t spend too much time scaring away his customers and looking out of place, like a sword-and-leatherware mannequin that’d been delivered to the wrong store.

  I had been there once, back when it opened, a small place selling outrageously priced hats and some gloves, too. In honor of Balfour, Luvander added to me, privately. But also, apparently, because gloves were all the rage these days.

  They probably weren’t anymore, knowing how quick Thremedon fashions could change. One day, all the men and women were dressing like the airmen, and the kids were charging around in the streets pretending they were flying. The next, you saw the ladies wearing silks from the Ke-Han, and everybody was gossiping about what’d happened on the other side of the mountains.

  I wasn’t too insulted by it. They were fickle and it was nice not to be the center of attention for a change. Now, if they started building statues in the middle of the Rue of Ke-Han emperors and warlords and shit, then I’d’ve felt slighted, but I didn’t think th’Esar’d be stooping to that level anytime soon. And as for the rest of it, people could wear what they liked.

  In the end, I wasn’t too surprised to see that all the hats in Yesfir’s window were shades of blue and green now rather than the patriotic red and gold of a few months before. With all the feathers, it looked like a slaughtering house for peacocks.

  A little bell jingled over my head when I opened the door.

  “I am so sorry to tell you we don’t serve men here,” Luvander said from behind the counter, just wrapping something up in a box with pretty white paper. The boys would’ve loved to see this, and maybe he knew it. Maybe that was why he was doing it, carrying on the joke for them that couldn’t laugh about it anymore. “Unless you’re buying something for a sweetheart—but I doubt it; what mad wench would settle for you? Or you fell off Proudmouth one time too many in your day—in which case I feel it’s my duty to tell you none of these styles suit you, except maybe the purple one with the white veil.”

  “Just browsing,” I told him, glancing around and shuddering. I’d been a bachelor for a long time—long enough that maybe I was coming around to accepting I’d never have children, much less grandchildren, but no matter how desperate I ever got, I wouldn’t take up with a woman who’d wear hats like these. No offense to Luvander and his perfectly serviceable wares, of course. They just weren’t my style.

  “I suppose I can allow that,” Luvander said. He finished up his packaging with a ribbon and a bow—even Yesfir would’ve crowded into the shop to make fun of him for that detail, I thought, but then again, Proudmouth wouldn’t have been too keen with the way I was handling, or failing to handle, my students. What our girls didn’t know was for the best these days, all things considered. “But please, don’t touch anything. You’re not delicate enough. You’ll tear something.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good to see you, too, Luvander,” I said.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, grinning. “I�
��ve just always wanted to order you around. You can’t blame me for taking my chances now, can you?”

  “Guess I can’t,” I agreed.

  It seemed funny to me that women would flock to have such delicate accessories sold to them by a man with a big purple scar on his throat—wasn’t it the kind of thing that made the daintier sex faint clean away?—but he’d covered it up for the most part with a white scarf, tucked into the front of his vest. He looked good, healthy, like he was living well and taking care of himself. I didn’t have anything to scold him about.

  “But don’t you think this would look sweet on Balfour?” Luvander asked, plucking up a little blue number with a peacock feather sewn right onto it.

  It actually, somehow, reminded me of him.

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again right quick. I wasn’t about to wade into that hill of fire ants for any reason. Besides, I knew when a man was having a laugh at my expense, along with someone else’s.

  “I’m so sorry; it appears I’m still teasing you,” Luvander said, setting both the box and the fancy little hat aside with a loud crinkling of wrapping papers. “I suppose it’s my own small way of letting my nerves get the better of me. Not to mention paying you back for all the times you woke me up by shouting in the night. Soiled my pants more than a few times because of you, so I might as well make you squirm now, right?”

  “Too much,” I told him. “Don’t need to know what’s in your pants, Luvander.”

  “Hah!” Luvander said, coming out from behind his counter. “I suppose you’re right, at least about that.” He paused for a moment, pushing aside one fancy curtain and peering out onto the street. “He’s never been here yet, you know. Balfour, I mean. Said he’d come and he never did, that charming little snake. It’s because all those diplomats got hold of him, and he perfected a no that sounds just like a yes.”

  “He was probably just worried you were going to rig a bucket of glue to pour down onto his head the minute he crossed the threshold,” I told him, eyeing the door. The layout of the shop was perfect for that kind of setup. Ghislain and Jeannot would’ve had it up there in no time, teamwork never being a problem when you shared the common goal of making another man miserable. “And then you might’ve put that fancy little peacock number on top of the glue, and he’d be wearing it for weeks, at least until the glue flaked off.”

  “I would never!” Luvander said, putting a hand to his throat like a woman grasping for her pearls. He took that opportunity to tug the scarf up to cover the mean hook of his scar, where it’d started peeking over the top. “Wasting an expensive hat like that—you have no idea. And the glue’d be murder to get off the floors. I haven’t broken even yet, much less made enough to hire a shopgirl for that kind of thing.”

  “Bet you a shopgirl’d work here for free,” I said. “You could hire some fresh-faced ’Versity student who’s all ideals and no brains; she’d be falling all over herself to work for one of the famous airmen. Just a little something to write home about; she’d be the talk of the town.”

  “Speaking of which, how is your professoring coming?” Luvander asked, leaning his head on one hand. Some of what I was feeling must’ve shown on my face because he glanced over my shoulder toward the door, then shook his head. “That fantastic, is it? Seeing as how we’re still waiting for the silver-tongued—and silver-handed, I suppose—diplomat to arrive, you might as well go ahead and tell me. Unburden yourself. No one I know will care, even if I do use your misery for idle gossip.”

  I snorted, rubbing at the back of my neck. “Same as always, it’d seem. ’Versity’s started some new program that takes kids off the farms and crams ’em into our schools, so that’s been going about as well as you’d imagine.” I remembered the girl who’d asked if our pants caught on fire midflight, but she was just about the lone bright spot in a dark sky of children who’d been taught how to count cows and what to do when the crops came back poorly and not much else.

  They were useful things to know, for certain, but it didn’t mean the students were going to have an easy time of it picking up the basics of strategy.

  “Oh dear,” Luvander said, taking in the look on my face. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. Should I put on some tea? Or—I can’t even remember—are you more of a coffee man?”

  “Tea’s fine,” I said. Too much coffee set all my nerves to sounding like the Airman’s bell, and I’d had enough of that at the Airman, not to mention the ’Versity.

  I couldn’t even count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I’d jerked to attention when the signal for class starting or ending rang out through the lecture room. It was a good thing my pupils were so blissfully unaware of everything or else they’d’ve seen me start for the door every time.

  “Excellent,” Luvander said, scampering away like an overgrown grasshopper dressed in Miranda’s finest. “Tea’s all I have, anyway.” He disappeared into the back of his shop, hollering out to me like we were back in the air. “I hope you’re all right with black tea, of course. The latest fad is all this green powder and leaves they’ve been bringing over the Cobalts as a gesture of goodwill, but you know—it’s the funniest thing. I can’t bring myself to drink it. What do you think?”

  I didn’t think that was so funny, myself, but that was probably me being old-fashioned again. Not willing to move on with the times and see my world changing.

  “It smells like gunpowder,” Luvander added, popping his head back around the corner. “Isn’t that strange? Why anyone would want to drink something that looks like algae scraped off the docks and smells like the sky in wartime is beyond me. I suppose that’s why I have such trouble with it. Welcome,” he trilled, as the bell over the door jingled merrily behind me. “It breaks my heart to tell you this, but I simply must inform you that we are actually closed for the evening. Please come back another time, remind me of my inhospitality, and I’ll see if I can’t manage a discount for you.”

  “Oh,” said a soft little voice that hadn’t hardened itself up any since I’d last heard it. “I … Did I get the time wrong? Or were we supposed to meet somewhere else?”

  “Hey, Balfour,” I said, just so he wouldn’t take Luvander too seriously and let himself be chased away. “Took you long enough, but the time’s still almost right.”

  “No,” Luvander said, stalking out from the back and around his shop counter. “Not Balfour.” He came right up to the man and stared at him, eyes bulging like a dead fish’s did on the chopping block. “No, you look very much like him, but I’m sorry to inform you that my friend Balfour is no longer with us. If he was, you see, he would have no excuse—none whatsoever—for having taken so long to come and visit my shop. And me. What a cruel prank to play on a man, especially a veteran hero of war. Entirely without taste.”

  “Hello, Luvander,” Balfour said. He was wringing his hands a little, and I could see that he’d taken to wearing gloves again. Probably because he didn’t like people staring at what currently passed for his hands—an ironic touch that didn’t slip my notice. He definitely wasn’t used to them yet, though I had to wonder how long it was supposed to take for a man to grow accustomed to such a strange thing. “It’s a lovely shop. Really, just marvelous. The colors in the window are—”

  “All right, all right, I guess you are Balfour after all,” Luvander said, waving his hand. “Stop now before you embarrass yourself and our former Chief Sergeant. You didn’t salute him, but I think he’ll forgive you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Balfour said, shooting me a pained look. “For being late, I mean. And I suppose for not … Did you want me to salute you?”

  “Bastion, no,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “That’s all we need: for th’Esar to think we’re brewing some kind of revolution in here. But just in case, you’d better lock the door, Luvander, seeing as that’s all of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Luvander said, saluting me just to be a burr in my trousers. He turned the lock, and flipped the hand-painted sign in
the window from Open to Closed.

  I felt relieved once he’d done it, though I couldn’t’ve said why. I wasn’t the sort of man who jumped at shadows, but Royston’s missing Margrave had me on edge. I’d have to ask Balfour if he knew anything about her once we’d gotten all these pleasantries out of the way, and judging by the way he’d been so quick to agree to this little tête-à-tête, it seemed like he might have some stuff to get off his chest, too.

  “Is someone boiling water?” Balfour asked, interrupting my train of thought.

  “The tea!” Luvander said, scampering off again into the back, and leaving the pair of us to follow in his wake.

  Balfour seemed too pale by my standards, but he’d gained some weight since I’d last seen him, so he wasn’t all rail and bone and long shadows under his eyes like he’d given up living along with his hands, and I guessed that was a start. The gloves were probably a good sign, too, since he’d always seemed to like fussing with them before, and I definitely caught him sneaking a peek at the lavish displays Luvander’d set up in the corner of his shop, gloves in blue and green and purple.

  His own were navy, made of stiffer, heavier fabric, and matched his coat.

  Of all my boys, it was always Balfour who concerned me the most. He had all the manners and donkey shit it took to get along in the world, and he knew how to talk to people without insulting their dicks or their wives, but he couldn’t take care of himself worth a damn and he’d never figured out how or when to tell someone to take a walk off the far end of the Mollydocks. This whole diplomacy thing was just about the worst thing for him, as far as I could tell, since it suited his strengths way too much and didn’t challenge him to speak his real thoughts. He’d’ve been better off hitching up with Rook and Thom, or even setting sail with Ghislain. Sure, it might’ve ended up with the sharks getting a special meal of fresh Balfour meat, but somehow I didn’t think so. Ghislain would’ve kept his head above water if he needed the help.