Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  “Nonsense,” Royston said, heading in the direction of the back door. He’d left his newly purchased hat behind, but then I supposed he was coming back for it later. “The only time Thremedon is truly herself is when she’s boiling over with political scandal. The two of you are getting the authentic experience. If you live through this, then you can take anything she’ll throw at you.”

  “And if we don’t live through it?” Laure asked.

  “It will make an excellent story,” Royston replied.

  He took the rear exit, not braving the public side of the shop, and though his words were glib, I sensed he was worried.

  For a man who’d already been on the wrong side of the Esar’s graces to be so shaken, it was clear everyone else had good reason to watch their backs.

  And for a man like Adamo to be arrested, it was clear the whole city had been turned upside down.

  ADAMO

  There was one thing I was grateful for, and that was: I hadn’t been arrested in front of my students.

  It would’ve made their little lives to see the cruel taskmaster, burdening them with questions that couldn’t be answered and battles that couldn’t be won, punished for all his injustices, just like they’d always dreamed of. It’d give ’em a skewed view of the world, too—one in which somebody actually got his just deserts in as grand and embarrassing a way as possible.

  The second thing I thought was, didn’t I merit being taken in by Dmitri himself and not some green little squadron?

  Then I realized these weren’t the Provost’s Wolves at all.

  On the downside of being taken away quiet—followed back to my office like it was a meeting they were after, the enemy let through the gate by my own damned lecturer’s assistant—was not knowing how long it’d take before anyone knew I was missing. And a whole lot of shit could happen to a man in a short amount of time. Especially when Dmitri wasn’t involved, because at least I knew he was a fair lot who liked to ask a man questions before beating his head in.

  But it’d been four and a half full hours—I’d developed a system for telling time in case I was ever taken captive by the enemy, locked up in a dark little cell like this one—and my head was still in the same shape as ever.

  No one had even come to see me; I’d just been put out of the way like an out-of-fashion hat, stored somewhere dark until somebody had use for me.

  There was noise coming from other parts of the prison, which could only mean one thing: I wasn’t the only one who’d been arrested.

  I had to hope that they hadn’t taken one of my boys—that they’d gone after me because of all the snooping I’d been doing on my own and not because I was calling secret meetings of the ex–Dragon Corps in Luvander’s hat shop. If the latter was true, then I’d sent one of my students—someone I’d been trying to look after, and keep safe—straight into the eye of the storm. I cursed myself for that misstep, but I hadn’t figured the situation was dire enough.

  Yet here I was, suffering the consequences of letting my guard down just because it wasn’t wartime anymore. I had to hope my other inmates were strangers, and that someone’d come along eventually who’d slip up and give me the information I needed to know even though I was likely going to be the man being questioned.

  I’d heard the sound of footsteps three hours after my arrest, and then again at the four-and-a-half-hour mark.

  Only half an hour later—give or take a few minutes—at the five-hour mark, I heard footsteps again. These came closer than the others; it took me only a few moments to realize they were coming for me.

  The way I was being kept wasn’t too uncomfortable. I wasn’t even chained up properly, just a shackle around one ankle. There was a chair in the corner of the cell, but no bed, which meant I probably wasn’t meant to stay there long. It was more likely a holding cell than anything else—an in-between prison, before the serious shit happened. I sat on the chair, folded my arms over my chest, and got all questions off my face.

  Barely a moment later, the door to my cell opened.

  “Good evening, Adamo,” said a familiar young man. I recognized his face, but it took his name a couple more seconds to come to me. That piss-pot in Balfour’s apartment—Troius. “I told you I had connections, didn’t I? Try not to look surprised on my account.”

  I hadn’t looked surprised, and we both knew it. I resettled in the chair, not giving him the satisfaction of answering him.

  “Well, all right,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

  He was dressed different than before, wearing some kind of uniform, all black. There was a familiar smell on him, too, something that brought back good memories rather than bad ones. Dragonsmoke, mostly; the stink of hot metal.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way between us, you know,” Troius said, folding his arms. “I actually respect you enormously. I was excited to see you in Balfour’s apartment that day, though of course I was saddened to realize what it meant—that you were conducting meetings behind the Esar’s back, no doubt about a little matter concerning his hands? You couldn’t be content with your status as heroes, could you? Some people never can appreciate their good luck. They just have to press it.”

  “So is this my sentence?” I asked, shifting around in my chair. “You gonna stand there and talk me to death?”

  “Death?” Troius asked, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand why you men of war always leap to that dire conclusion without pausing to consider any of the steps in between. He’s like that, too, you know—the Esar. It’s why he needs someone like me. I believe I told you before that I come from a very long line of diplomats. It didn’t impress you then, but perhaps once you realize how my skills can come in handy for your own benefit, you’ll show a little more appreciation.”

  “Doubt it,” I said. I was being—as Roy would’ve said—a stubborn ox, but the way I saw it was that men like Troius liked to hear themselves talk more than anything else. If he had something to say, he’d end up saying it whether I kowtowed or not. This way, I wouldn’t have to abase myself and feel dirty afterward.

  Plus, I wasn’t exactly feeling generous after being hauled down to prison and all. Since he was definitely a clever kid, Troius would figure it out quick enough.

  “Yes, well,” Troius said, looking annoyed for a second, which satisfied me more than it should’ve and definitely more than I let on. Sure, I was in a bad mood, but things hadn’t gotten so bad I was feeling suicidal—whether this little shit-eater told me death was in my future or not. “I suppose I can’t blame you for your lack of imagination. The Esar was the same way. He wanted the lot of you executed, but I intervened on your behalf. The truth of the matter is that it’d be a criminal waste to kill someone of your Talents. I prefer to recruit my betters rather than massacring them in the streets as an example to my peers.”

  “You got one part right, at least,” I said, listening for the sound of more footsteps. There weren’t any, so at least I knew this wasn’t some kind of distraction to keep me talking so I wouldn’t be prepared when the real guard came to haul me off. “As one of your betters, let me give you a little tip: It doesn’t exactly put people in a good mood when you throw ’em in a cell. Their first thought usually ain’t ‘sign me up!’ ”

  “You’re very funny,” Troius said. “I wish I’d been the one to know you, instead of Balfour. I tried out for the same position, you know, and yet somehow he actually won the heart of a dragon. Sometimes they really are just like women. Totally unpredictable. And nonsensical in their choices, too.”

  “They don’t call Balfour ‘Steelballs’ for nothing,” I pointed out, leaning sideways to spit on the floor. Him talking that way made me mad, but there was no point in letting him see it. “I doubt you’d measure up. No offense meant, and all. Just not much room for diplomacy in the skies.”

  “I can see that I’m going to have to use stronger methods of persuasion on you,” Troius said, lacing his fingers together to crack them. He was wearing gloves, too, I sa
w, black like the rest of his uniform, but with a stripe of bright green down each seam.

  Here it comes, I thought, bracing myself for whatever screwy-minded torturer they kept down there to get his jollies out on prisoners because he couldn’t get it up with a woman, or a man, or even a barn animal. But instead of calling someone in, Troius walked out of my cell door, leaving it open.

  Now, that was one kind of torture, I guessed, staring at freedom while my leg was chained up.

  But before I had time to get too confused by the tactic, he returned with a few guards in tow. One of them bent down to unshackle me while the other two stood on either side of Troius. They must’ve thought I’d been kept in solitary for long enough to go mad and that I just might be crazy enough to rush him, frothing at the mouth like a wild dog. But I wouldn’t break that quickly—even if I did want to snap the little whelp’s neck in two. I was smart enough to wait for the right time to do it.

  “That will be all, thank you,” Troius said with a smug look on his face. I did want to rush him, maybe knock that look and his head off along with it; unfortunately I had a brain rattling around in my skull, and it was telling me not to make a move until I knew the lay of the land.

  Keep it patient, Owen, I thought. This wasn’t all-out war—not yet, anyhow.

  It’d been a long time since I’d played chess with one of my boys, and most of the corps save for Ivory and Jeannot had been shit at the game, making me complacent with winning. But at least a man never forgot the basics.

  “Quite effective, aren’t they?” Troius said, once the big lugs’d filed out again. I didn’t like how they were all dressed, in uniforms the same as the Dragon Corps had, like a private force the purpose of which I could only start guessing at.

  “Depends on what they’re supposed to be,” I said, standing up. It felt good not to be shackled to that chair anymore, but I wasn’t about to admit to how grateful I was. “You been hoping to make an army? Because I got news for you; the Esar already has an army and they wear red, not green.”

  Troius looked smug again, and I instantly knew I’d brought up something he’d been trying to goad me into saying. Playing right into his hands—or so he thought—and even if it rankled my pride, I guessed I had to keep letting him think that was exactly what I was doing.

  “I want to show you something,” he said, affecting a little bow that made me want to knock him over like a ninepin so he’d learn some humility. He started out of the cell again, then paused by the door. “If you’re thinking of doing anything foolish, I really would counsel you against it—I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I made your case single-handedly. It wouldn’t be very … strategic, shall we say, to attack your only ally in this place.”

  “Duly noted,” I grunted, since that seemed to be what he wanted to hear. But if he thought we were allies, then not only was he conceited, but he was as mired in dreams of shit as a dung beetle.

  “Excellent,” Troius said, turning smartly on his heel and—I guessed—expecting me to follow.

  It was real hilarious to have a guy like this thinking he belonged in the same sentence as Balfour. None of my boys would’ve ever turned their backs on a prisoner, even one who’d promised nice and mild not to pull anything stupid. Apparently he thought my word meant something to him, but I never gave it to someone I didn’t respect.

  Maybe he was just expecting, because he had all the power and I had none, that I’d have to admire him. The poor thing really did believe whatever his doting mother had told him all his life: that he was a special, precious boy.

  The hallway was lit up with flickering track lights, same as the Airman had been, though that was about the only similarity. The prison was much quieter, for starters, no boys whooping it up from behind closed doors.

  Since Troius had turned his back on me, I took my chance to look around. There were fewer guards than I’d expected roaming around—just enough to keep me from making a move—and the cell next to mine was empty, despite Troius’s insinuations that there were others in my position.

  I just hoped he hadn’t laid a hand on one of my boys. I’d have to kill him for that.

  The next cell, however, housed a redheaded woman in a blue dress. I almost panicked at the color before I realized she was older than Laure; her hair was cut shorter and her face was all wrong. I knew her from somewhere, though. She was sitting on a sagging bed, hands folded in her lap, looking utterly hopeless. Though she wasn’t a soldier and didn’t have my training, I could still tell by her air of defeat that she’d been there for a long time. She kind of reminded me of the look Rook’s brother’d got when he felt he was making progress, only to wake up the next morning with beetles in his hair.

  Strangely enough, it was thinking about that cracked-nut professor that gave my brain the jump start it needed. I was nearly past her cell entirely before I realized that I’d met her working on Balfour’s hands in the common room—a couple weeks before we’d all moved out of the Airman for good and into our own places, so day in and day out we weren’t forced to look at each other.

  So Margrave Ginette wasn’t dead after all. She’d been scooped up, whisper-quiet, the same as me. That didn’t exactly bode well for my own situation, seeing as how she’d been missing for weeks, and nobody I’d talked to had guessed to look in prison.

  I wondered what she’d done to get hauled in. If she was anything like me, then the answer was “next to nothing.”

  Up ahead and around a bend in the hall, there was another woman, shouting blue murder in Ramanthine. My cell had been far enough removed that I hadn’t heard her earlier but I could hear her muffled voice echoing off the walls. Troius didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Maybe he was just used to the noise by now.

  I recognized the voice before I saw her face through the barred window: a dark, smoky accent I’d heard at countless parties, mostly events Royston dragged me to before abandoning me. It was his associate and occasional companion, Lady Antoinette.

  She was th’Esar’s occasional companion, too. They’d been lovers once, or so Roy said, but it didn’t seem that could possibly still be the case unless th’Esar was up to something weird in the bedroom.

  Antoinette was pacing the floor like a caged panther, stalking back and forth in a fine dress the color of blood-dark Ke-Han wine. Troius paused in front of her cell, and she ceased shouting long enough to give him a glare so cold I half expected him to turn to stone on the spot.

  Just my luck that he didn’t.

  “I take it you’re enjoying your stay,” Troius said.

  “Insignificant worm,” Antoinette said, spitting on the floor of her cell. “I’ll crush your skull.”

  Attagirl, I thought but didn’t say.

  “Still out of sorts because you can’t get into our heads?” Troius asked, tapping the side of his temple. “You’re only going to tire yourself out trying. Best to quit while you’re ahead. That way, no one gets hurt.”

  “How very droll,” Antoinette said, drawing close to the bars of the cage. “Because I was going to say precisely the same thing about your little revolution.”

  “It’s hardly a revolution if the man in charge condones it,” Troius said.

  “It’s amusing that you assume it is that man who controls Thremedon,” Antoinette snarled. She hadn’t noticed me until that point, but I saw a brief look of confusion pass over her face when she did.

  “A pleasure, as always, my lady,” Troius said, bowing.

  Antoinette reached her arm out between the bars so quickly that I acted on instinct, putting myself between her and Troius. One of her nails caught me on the back of the neck, so sharp it drew blood.

  “Just like an angry cat,” Troius said. “Did she hurt you? How embarrassing.”

  “Wasn’t even a scratch,” I said, wiping the blood off—without him noticing—before we continued on our way.

  I’d heard all about this kind of thing from Royston, and I braced myself for things to get freaky.

&n
bsp; Sure enough, they did.

  Royston is coming to help us, murmured a smoky voice in my head. In one of my proudest moments, I somehow managed not to twitch like a fly’d landed on my neck. Troius was watching me for signs of that very communication, and I scratched my cheek, keeping a surly look on my face with my eyes focused straight ahead.

  Oh, great, I thought, hoping she could hear me, because I sure as shit didn’t know if I was doing this thing right. We’re fucked now.

  Don’t be absurd, Antoinette replied, her voice growing more distant the farther I moved from her. I cannot communicate with him directly—he is very far away—but we can still sense each other. It will be the way he finds us, once he realizes I’ve been taken as well.

  Why can’t you read this idiot’s thoughts? I asked, trying to make it quick, before our connection was severed completely. Not enough thoughts in there to read?

  Because of the … Antoinette replied. True to my luck, she faded out before I could hear the key piece of information I needed, but we’d already passed through a door and were ascending a flight of stairs, and I assumed it meant we just weren’t close enough anymore.

  Maybe when I was back in my cell, then we could talk a little. That is, if I was even taken back there at all.

  Troius took me through a small door, which led directly out onto a narrow stone bridge. We were still underground, I suspected; the bridge crossed over a dark body of deep water, and everything smelled like ancient, wet rock. The prison was behind us, and there was another door ahead, with the bridge connecting them.

  “It’s just this way,” Troius said, turning to look at me over his shoulder. “She doesn’t like prisons, you see. She’s finicky about that.”

  I wondered if I had another—less friendly—velikaia to contend with at the end of my journey, one who’d do a lot more to me than scratch my neck. It’d make the most sense for them to pry through my head to see what my treasonous self had been up to, but I was shocked I was even getting such just treatment. Part of what Troius had planned for me, most likely; his warped idea of what constituted “fair play” among his “allies.”