I tied my hair back with the ribbon Toverre’d picked out, hoping he wasn’t going to make a fuss about me hopping over to the ’Versity with wet hair. It was only a short little jaunt, and it wasn’t even snowing.
Toverre’s door was open when I reached his hallway, and he was on his hands and knees, scrubbing parts of the floor I was fairly certain I’d never been sick on.
“I’m ready to go,” I told him, just so he wouldn’t think I’d snuck out behind his back or anything like that. “Can I dump my laundry in with yours?”
“Please do,” Toverre said, straightening up and wringing out his little sponge into a brand-shining-new bucket. “I can’t stand the sight of your clothes when you do them. They come back all wrinkled, and then it’s so many hours I have to spend on ironing them.”
“You don’t have to bother with that,” I told him, feeling somewhat guilty as I dumped my clothes on top of the bed linens I’d mussed. “Then again, you’re you, so I guess you kinda do.”
“Stop stalling,” Toverre said, checking his watch. “Professor Adamo’s latest lecture should be letting out at any minute; if you talk to him straightaway and don’t waste too much time, you’ll still have time to make Professor Ducante’s general consultation hours.”
We heard the peal of the bells as we were crossing the grounds, which made Toverre pick up his pace. I had to do the same just to keep up with him; for someone with such skinny legs, he sure could run. I found myself looking for Gaeth’s face in the crowd, and occasionally I caught sight of a flash of golden hair, but it only ever let my hopes down when I craned to see a face that wasn’t his. Gray coats seemed to be “in” this year, as Toverre would have said, and eventually I gave up looking.
Where was he? And more importantly than that, was he all right?
“There he is,” Toverre hissed in my ear.
My heart jumped, and I jerked my head around. “Where?” I asked.
Toverre nudged me in the right direction, and I realized at once he hadn’t been talking about Gaeth but Professor Adamo. My thoughts were way too scrambled, as evidenced by my inability to concentrate, and I wished I’d had some better plan—one might even say “strategy”—laid out before I came to speak with him.
At least the professor was a fan of improvisation, I told myself. That might earn me some points if I didn’t choke on my own foot first.
“Now go talk to him before he’s surrounded,” Toverre instructed, still poking me in the back. Bastion, but it was annoying, and I swatted his hands away as I made my own way into the hall.
Professor Adamo—hard to think of a war-hardened man like him with a “Professor” tacked on in front of his family name, and I didn’t think he could much fathom the title, either—didn’t seem like he was swarmed by students to me. He was having some kind of argument with his assistant—a prissy little prancer if ever I saw one—and no one was even trying to get close to them.
I should’ve taken that as my cue, but Toverre was hissing what must have been his idea of encouragement behind me, and there was no turning back. Instead, I catapulted myself forward, before I could lose my guts, and landed right in the middle of what Adamo would’ve described as a “preexisting skirmish.”
“Ahem,” I said.
Both of them whirled on me; if they’d been wearing weapons, I suspected, right about then was when they’d’ve been drawn. Thankfully, they weren’t—although if it’d been that kind of fight, my money would’ve been on Adamo, no question. His skinny little note-taker was the worst kind of know-it-all; I doubted he could apply even a fraction of what he knew to real life.
“Well?” Adamo demanded. “What is it?”
“I …” I began.
As ever, I was reminded of how very solid Adamo was. He wasn’t even that tall—barely a few inches over me—but he was the squarest and most-sturdily built person I’d ever known, reminding me more of a brick storehouse than a man. His chest was particularly wide, which I imagined helped while he was shouting out orders to everyone; and, now and then, when he forgot himself in the middle of a lecture, he’d use that voice without any warning. Now, that woke all the sleepyheads up, and made some of ’em piss their trousers, too.
I loved it, which was why his was my favorite lecture class. You never knew when he was going to start shouting like the war was back on, and it gave me a feeling of genuine excitement.
Toverre just said it made him hyperventilate. Now, there were two men so completely different it was impossible to imagine they were both the same species, I thought, and rubbed at the back of my neck to keep from smiling.
“I believe you’ve intimidated her,” Adamo’s assistant said. I’d actually forgotten about him—which was what I usually did with people I didn’t care for, so that they wouldn’t annoy me. I wasn’t like Toverre; I didn’t like to let these things fester. Instead, I just cut them out. “Do you see what you’ve done? She can barely speak. Come with me, that’s a good girl, and I’ll get you some tea, or perhaps a cup of coffee, and we can speak like civilized people, without—”
“I don’t think so,” I replied, jerking away the moment he tried to touch me. “I came to talk to the Chief Sergeant—to the professor—to tell him where I was yesterday’s lecture, and today’s.”
“That’s right,” Adamo said, looking pleased for some reason. I had my suspicions that he had no use for his weasel of an assistant, either, but then again, what man in his right mind would? “I didn’t think I saw you. We were discussing battle tactics of the Ke-Han hordes.”
“Damn it,” I said, knowing that Toverre—wherever he’d hidden himself to eavesdrop—had probably lost consciousness over my language by now. “I was looking forward to that.”
“Well, then,” Adamo replied. “You probably should’ve come.”
“I was sick,” I explained, hoping he wouldn’t think I was one of those slack-jawed shirkers. And I had been looking forward to how the Hordes conquered the Xi’an peninsula. Apparently it wasn’t just to do with their special horses, but now I’d never know, since I’d gone and slept through the one lecture I was most looking forward to. “With the fever.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about this ‘fever’ the past few days,” Adamo said a little skeptically. “Lots of kids been out with that one lately. Guess it’s really becoming an epidemic.”
“I don’t like what your tone’s implying,” I replied. Somewhere above me, on the stairs, I heard a strangled groan. That was Toverre, on the verge of collapse. “You can ask my physician—Margrave Germaine—whether or not I was in her offices yesterday. If I wanted to skip out on one of your lectures, it probably would’ve been the one you spent getting sidetracked about how pointless naval battles are these days. And I wouldn’t’ve come up to tell you about it afterward, either. I’m no liar. But if I was, I wouldn’t be a bad one.”
Adamo blinked, so that for a second I almost thought I’d gotten one in past all his defenses. I hoped not. What kind of Chief Sergeant—ex or no—would he be if I could win a round with him? He was probably just trying to decide the best way to kick me out of the ’Versity, now that I’d gone and let my mouth get the better of me again.
“Margrave Germaine, you say,” Adamo said at last, just as I was about to offer to escort myself off the premises for him. “I’m gonna remember that.”
“You can, if you like,” I said, making a concentrated effort now to keep from banging the final nail into Toverre’s coffin all by myself. “And all you’ll find out is that I’m telling you the truth.”
“You’ll have to forgive my skepticism,” Adamo replied, not sounding like he wanted my forgiveness at all.
“Oh, will I?” I asked.
“And naval battles are pointless if there’s no water between you,” Adamo added. He crossed his big arms over his chest, like he couldn’t quite let that one rest. “Even worse if you’re going after a string of islands like the Kirils, since it’s costing you all that money to go forth and back, and m
eanwhile they’re just sitting on their dockyards laughing at you as you waste good fuel.”
I wanted to laugh at the thought, but I felt like Toverre might’ve taken it as the last straw, so I smiled instead.
“Sounds to me like you don’t much like the water,” I pointed out.
“Ever been down to the Mollydocks?” Adamo asked, before he stopped, looking cross with himself. “No. ’Course you haven’t. And you shouldn’t go down there, either. And if you do go down there, don’t say I sent you. My point is, anyone who takes to that water’s been landed one too many blows to the head. Me, I’ll stick to the ground.”
“Well, not entirely,” I ventured. Adamo hmmphed. “I guess after having been up in the air, nothing else seems quite as good?”
“Nah,” Adamo said, scratching the back of his neck. “You can say that again.”
It felt like a moment to be quiet, so I somehow managed to button my lip for the pause, giving him a minute to remember whatever it was he was thinking about.
Da said the war did all kinds of things to people before it was over, and I’d seen some of the effects firsthand when a few of the boys came back and weren’t quite able to look anyone in the eyes. I figured that if I’d been the one riding a dragon every day for years only to wake up and be told I couldn’t do it anymore, I’d’ve been a little out of sorts, too. No wonder the man was so ornery all the time, like his britches were bunched up too tight.
The Chief Sergeant’s horrible little assistant cleared his throat, which I was probably meant to take as a sign to curtsy and get out. Either that, or he was real keen to get back to the debate I’d saved him from losing. Some people just didn’t know how to show gratitude.
“Look, if you’re really interested in hearing about Ke-Han strategies, you can come by my office sometime,” Adamo suggested, snapping to all at once. “At least, if I have one of those. They said something about me having an office. Radomir, where’s my office?”
“It’s Cathery 306,” Radomir said, looking greatly put-upon. “That’s this building,” he added, for my benefit.
“Could I really?” I asked, momentarily in too good a mood to even feel irritated about Radomir acting like my brain worked too slowly to figure things out for itself. “I wouldn’t be interrupting important business or anything?”
“If I had important business, I wouldn’t be there,” Adamo said. He looked surprised I wanted to take him up on his offer, and maybe even a little pleased that I’d shown some interest, which was a new one for me. Usually the only looks I got from professors were more in the range of resigned disappointment. My tutor back home had quit fifteen times before he finally left the countryside altogether. “Come by sometime next week, and if I can find the place, I’ll be in it.”
“It’s Cathery 306,” I told him. “Just ask Radomir; he knows all about it.”
“And maybe wear a hat the next time you go out,” Adamo said, as a parting shot. “Scarf, too. Pair of gloves. A little common sense keeps a soldier from getting sick.”
I decided to let him have the final word. He seemed like a good sort, and he was probably just trying to look out for me in his own way.
Toverre came scrambling down at me like a human avalanche as I passed the staircase, his face red and mottled. He probably thought he was the one who’d just had to talk it out with a professor. But, I thought, I’d been pretty convincing. At least I’d managed to end things on an up note, and I hadn’t been kicked out of the ’Versity.
Seemed like I was good at being diplomatic after all—despite what everyone said about me.
“Now, Toverre, that wasn’t so bad,” I told him, feeling victorious. I’d held my ground pretty well with a master tactician, even though my own strategy had consisted of nothing more than just telling the truth over and over again until it stuck. The simple tactics were always the best, or so ex–Chief Sergeant Professor Adamo was always reminding us.
“ ‘Wasn’t so bad?’ ” Toverre repeated, like I’d just started jabbering in foreign tongues and he was trying to piece together what I was saying. Poor thing needed a little more sleep to be in a better mood. “Not bad? I thought he was going to start breathing fire himself when you said that about not liking his tone! And it’s not as though you can repel fire—I certainly didn’t buy you that kind of dress. Do you have a death wish, Laure, or are you simply confusing brave with stupid?” He paused to draw in a deep breath, and I braced myself for round two. “Do you know, I think he actually likes you?”
I’d been expecting everything except that last bit, and it threw me for a loop as surely as if I’d been riding a dragon myself. Of course, I supposed that if I had been riding a dragon, I’d have been looking to make the Chief Sergeant proud of me. I’d just never really thought about it in those terms before. If you were gonna dream about something, it made sense to dream about the big beauties rather than the men that rode them.
Wish I could’ve been, I thought wistfully. It was probably way better than riding a horse, and that was one of the things I loved most in the world.
“He’d like anyone who told him what they were thinking up front like that,” I insisted, feeling a little warm all of a sudden. It was because of the damn heat they pumped into these buildings, so that a girl couldn’t bundle up for the weather outside without shedding her layers like a wet, newborn butterfly when she came in from the cold. Was it any wonder all of us were getting fevers? “He’s a simple man who likes some honesty, that’s all.”
“I’m sure that’s what he likes,” Toverre said, with one of those all-knowing looks that really got on my nerves.
This was the sort of thing Toverre liked to read too much into; I knew that from his own affairs. He’d turn a simple glance or turn of phrase into something more meaningful, just like magic.
“Come on,” I said, taking him by the arm. This time, it was my turn to drag him out the door. “If we hurry, we can still make Professor Fuss-budget’s special what’d you call ’em? ‘Consultation hours.’ Then we gotta look for Gaeth.”
By the sound of things, he wasn’t the only one who was missing classes.
BALFOUR
Germaine’s workspace was much larger than Margrave Ginette’s, and she had a variety of exotic tools that I’d never seen before, even in Ginette’s extensive collection.
I supposed it made sense since she was a specialist hired by the Esar personally, but I found myself first surprised and then fascinated by the selection: slender pliers wrought in gold and steel, and drivers for the smallest screws I’d ever seen—so small that she required magnifying lenses in order to work with them.
She didn’t like to talk, I realized quickly enough, and after she’d given me her name I fell silent so as not to distract her any further. The room was overwhelmingly bright, though I suppose that made it easier to see all the more intricate parts of my hands, and she made a noise of displeasure when I took off my gloves.
My fingers were stiff and frozen into place; try though I might, I couldn’t even move them when she told me to, save for the twitching of my right forefinger.
“They do this often?” Margrave Germaine asked, prodding at them with a thin metal instrument.
“Never before, as long as I’ve had them,” I told her.
“So they perform best with regular upkeep,” Germaine said, scribbling something down on a chart. “Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head, my friend. I’ll have these babies in proper working order by the time you leave here. Better than new; that’s a promise. And intervals between checkups’ll be longer, too, I’d wager. Here I go.”
She delved in with her clever tools, rooting around in a way that looked as though it should have hurt, when in reality I felt nothing. It made me slightly squeamish to watch as she pried apart fastenings and loosened catches and even drew out a gear or two, setting them neatly on the table beside her. She unscrewed my left palm, setting the thin metal plate aside, and I could see there was rust along the bottom and a
round the site of one of the screws.
Just as I was about to look away, she seized upon something with her pliers and pulled it out with the utmost care. The look on her face was strange, almost tender, and she held the thing up for me to see.
It was a vial of pearlescent liquid, no bigger than my thumbnail. It shimmered in the bright light like a precious jewel, and I found myself rather taken with the thing despite not knowing what it was.
“This here’s the key to your hands,” Germaine said, reading my mind as though she were a velikaia. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Quite,” I agreed readily, though its removal had cut off all communication with my hand, and the resulting feeling of cold, foreign steel against my wrist was eerie.
She didn’t place the vial on the tray, but rather somewhere behind her, out of my sight entirely. After that, she pried the little vial loose from the left hand as well, so that I was left with nothing else but to sit there while she worked, arms tense, feeling disturbed and helpless. I supposed it was something I should’ve been used to, but Margrave Ginette had always left that part in place, leaving me full use of my hands even as she worked on them.
Everyone did have a different method, and at least Germaine was here to help me. It wasn’t for me to complain, no matter how long it took.
The time always passed slowly, but this session seemed longer than usual. Perhaps it was nothing more than my own impatience—that, and I was used to being able to watch the clock while Ginette saw to my hands’ upkeep.
“Stay put,” Margrave Germaine said at long last—her first words after what must have been hours of silently working on my hands. “I have to calibrate some tools to suit your needs, but we’re almost done here; just be patient. If you feel like you have to take a nap, I won’t judge you any, either. I’m told the lights have that effect on people, and you look like a wreck. No offense.”
I hadn’t noticed anything other than a curious warmth in my face and chest, but now that she mentioned it, I did feel somewhat drowsy. It probably had something to do with sitting for so long in one place. It couldn’t hurt to sleep, I thought. I’d caught a rest in stranger places before, thanks to my time at the Airman.
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