Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  But that wasn’t all, I realized, feeling a little overwhelmed. Luvander’d come along, too, and next to him was somebody my eyes wouldn’t believe I was seeing.

  “We brought a surprise,” that someone said, lifting his hand in a wave. “Can you imagine? It’s me!”

  “Now, Raphael,” Luvander cautioned, “Owen Adamo has had a very long day. Let’s try not to be unnecessarily wearing.”

  I had a lot of things to say, but I had to lick my lips a few times and force myself to be their Chief Sergeant, thereby not actually saying any of ’em. “Where’s Royston?” I asked finally. “He didn’t do anything stupid, did he?”

  “That remains to be seen,” Balfour said, coming inside the cell and searching for a key to unlock the cuff around my ankle. “He provided the distraction. We don’t have much time.”

  “Then toss Ghislain some keys and get the magicians out,” I told him.

  “It’ll take a minute,” Balfour said, trying another key. “I just need to be sure I have the right … Ah, there we go.”

  The manacle opened and I was free. Fortunately it hadn’t been on me long enough to do any real damage; though the skin was sensitive, it wasn’t yet raw.

  Without waiting any longer—so, without wasting any more time—Balfour tossed his keys up to Ghislain.

  “There were two in cells that I saw,” I told him. “Doesn’t mean there aren’t more around, so check all of ’em.”

  “There are more now,” Laure said, seeming unsure of herself when everyone looked around toward her, then soldiering on. “Margrave Royston said they were making arrests at the Basquiat right after you were taken. Stands to reason they’d be here, too, doesn’t it?”

  “Let’s hope,” I muttered. If they were anywhere else, chances were they wouldn’t be doing so well. It seemed to me that being where I was was actually being lucky, ’cause at least it meant nobody was dead. Then again, being dead didn’t seem to carry the same finality it used to. What was the world coming to?

  “I’ll find them,” Ghislain said, ducking under the low door of my cell and heading back out into the hall.

  With him gone, there wasn’t anything standing between me and Raphael anymore. I stared at him, and he stared at me. If we stood around in the cell any longer, I really was gonna start spewing all sorts of horseshit—and maybe give him an earful about idiots whose brains went lame in the war and didn’t have enough sense in their heads to come home after it’d ended, like everybody else.

  “Good to see you,” I said finally.

  “It’s good to be seen,” Raphael said. “I’ll go into detail later, but suffice it to say that I was living on the Seon border, being worshipped as a good-luck charm because of the size of my—”

  Am I to assume this very large and handsome man is part of your rescue party? Antoinette asked me suddenly.

  Yeah, I told her. That’d be Ghislain.

  It seems my luck has turned around, Antoinette said. He looks quite … useful. I see that he has Ginette and Wildgrave Ozanne with him.

  Already? I asked.

  He moves quickly, and so should you, Chief Sergeant, Antoinette said. I don’t know what sort of distraction Royston cooked up, but I imagine time is not necessarily on our side. Let us value his assistance.

  Got it, I said, drawing myself up to my full height. With Ghislain out of the picture, it’d actually seem impressive.

  Luvander and Balfour were both staring at me like they were afraid the sudden shock of seeing Raphael again might’ve harmed my brain. They were used to me operating faster than this, but I had to take stock of my resources before I could decide where to begin.

  In the corner of my cell, Gaeth and that skinny cricket were having a whispered conversation that seemed placid on one side—that was Gaeth—and all kinds of frenzied on the other. I heard the cricket demand, in a stage whisper, where in Regina’s name Gaeth had been all this time and something about mother’s gloves—probably just some of today’s slang I wasn’t up on—as Gaeth tried to explain he’d been here the whole time. Meanwhile, the cricket was trying to clean something off his shoulder, using a glove as a kerchief.

  Then there was Laure, who didn’t look worried, just mad and red in the face, like she was aching to get started. I knew what she was thinking—she didn’t know why we were waiting around in a prison for our captors to come back, making rounding us up again real easy—and I wished I had an answer for her, to put her worries to rest.

  There were a few magicians I didn’t know, though I’d heard gossip about them from Royston, even if I couldn’t keep all that horseshit straight in my head for more than two minutes. Antoinette would be a powerful enough ally, and I’d take her word on the rest of the troops.

  And then there were my boys. Ghislain would be good for anything; Balfour looked shell-shocked; Luvander could talk any enemy to death; and Raphael looked like you could bowl him over if you tapped him with a stick.

  These were the soldiers I had to work with—three of them too young, and totally untrained, to boot. They were students, and even if one of them had a dragon, I knew better than anyone that having a dragon didn’t all of a sudden transform you into a seasoned warrior. I couldn’t compare them to the boys I’d had before—wouldn’t be fair to anyone since there was no replacing that crowd—but maybe the idea of something new wasn’t completely off base. The way th’Esar’d gone about assembling it was all cockeyed, and if I was the first one to see him, Antoinette was gonna have to fight me for the honor of breaking his nose.

  I was just gonna have to hope that I could still lead—that after all this time, I hadn’t run out of juice.

  “All right, men,” I said, and Laure cleared her throat. “Troops,” I amended, “we’ve got a bad situation here. Once we get the others rescued, we’re gonna convene and see if we can’t come to some kind of agreement on what to do next. If Ghislain runs into any trouble, we don’t want him to be out there on his own, do we? When a man’s flying solo, we’ve got his back. Ain’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Balfour and Luvander chorused.

  Raphael, Gaeth, the cricket, and Laure all stared at them.

  “What?” Luvander said, shrugging his shoulders in Raphael’s direction. “It isn’t my fault living among the Ke-Han has destroyed your discipline.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking point. Just once, Balfour could hang back while I took over position of lead scout.

  Someone shoved into place right next to me—a small someone, but looking pretty fierce.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Laure demanded, studying the hall real carefully and not looking at me. If she wanted to ascertain the information for herself, an inspection would’ve been the smartest choice, but none of us was operating on all burners. “I mean, that Germaine—she didn’t do anything to you, did she?”

  “Nah,” I said, shaking my head. Her hair was in her eyes, so I reached over and tucked a piece back behind her left ear. No good setting out on a mission with your visibility compromised. “Guess I’m just not important enough.”

  “That’s not funny,” Laure said, then smacked me one on the shoulder. I didn’t know who looked more shocked afterward that she’d done it—me or her.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I said, not bothering to rub my shoulder on account of how we both would’ve known it was horseshit. “Maybe we can get hot chocolate in one of them real places, not a booth where they’re just as liable to sell you sweet brown water.”

  “Or dinner,” Laure suggested, innocent as the country lamb she wasn’t. “Since I’m missing mine to do this.”

  “If no one’s injured, we move on,” Luvander reminded us. I could’ve hit him myself. Only trouble was, he was completely right.

  It wasn’t exactly hard to follow Ghislain’s trail. Just had to follow the open cell doors, down the simple corridor with its flickering light. To the credit of my new recruits, none of ’em was whispering or muttering anything or—like one poor bast
ard I’d known—giggling nonsensically every chance he got at things that weren’t funny anyway.

  We were gonna have to do all this quick, before anyone came to check up on us and realized right away shit wasn’t right.

  I rounded the first corner, followed by Laure, and nearly ran straight into Antoinette. At least I could be thankful it wasn’t Ghislain. I had a hard head, but if anything could crack it, that would’ve been it.

  “I was wondering what was taking you so long,” Antoinette said. Her voice sounded a little different now that I was hearing it from outside rather than in. It made me feel like I had water caught in my ears, and I shook my head to wring ’em out.

  “Had to wrangle the troops,” I said, gesturing around behind me. It was gonna be like herding kittens; a couple of them actually were kittens, in my professional opinion.

  “That one is wearing the uniform of the men who arrested me,” Antoinette said, glaring around at Gaeth.

  “I never arrested nobody,” Gaeth insisted, eyes wide as the sky. “I was raised better than that by a long shot. That’s the Provost’s job, and no one else’s.”

  “I don’t suppose I can argue with that,” Antoinette said, sharp, scarlet nails drawing a stray piece of hair away from her face.

  “He says he’s with us,” I told her quickly. “He might not be in a cell, but he’s a captive. I was hoping you could tell us whether or not he’s lying.”

  Gaeth looked at Antoinette nervously. He had good instincts—sharp enough to tell he was supposed to be afraid of her. “How’s that done?” he asked.

  “Just a little scratch,” Antoinette said, though it was particularly gentle. “You’ll barely notice it.”

  “If you draw blood, Cornflower’s bound to come,” Gaeth warned. “It’s happened before, and it’s never been pretty.”

  “ ‘Cornflower’?” Antoinette repeated. “Does this boy think his prize cow is going to protect him?”

  Stranger things had happened before, I thought, but it was time for me to intervene. “She’s his dragon,” I explained. “I guess we’re just gonna have to take his word for it that he’s gonna help us get out of here. You wouldn’t go back on your word, now, would you, Gaeth?”

  “No, sir,” Gaeth said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Just don’t be rash,” the cricket hissed. “First Laure, now you … I’m surrounded by foolhardy lunatics!”

  “Is that Balfour?” asked another woman, standing just behind Antoinette. It was the one I’d seen in her cell earlier—Margrave Ginette. Under the bright lights she looked sickly, too pale. But then again, by my count, she’d been down there far longer than any of the rest of us. “I’m sorry I missed our appointment. I hope it didn’t prove too detrimental. How are you feeling?”

  “I should ask you the same question,” Balfour said, under his breath, like he knew Antoinette and I weren’t gonna approve of small talk.

  Heavy footsteps sounded along the hall, and I turned around to see Ghislain and three others making their way toward us. One of them was the Wildgrave Ozanne, and one the Margrave Cirse, who I recognized from a few parties Royston had thrown over the years. The third, of course, was the notorious Margrave Holt, who enjoyed breeding greyhounds—some said he enjoyed breeding them a little too much—but he looked normal enough.

  Guess it was the normal-looking ones that always got you. Troius himself looked real respectable, right up until the minute he opened his fat yap and started blithering about his ambitions and dreams and sitting next to th’Esar on his throne so the two of them could play dragons all day long with their thumbs up their asses.

  I was gonna enjoy spiking those plans, sure enough.

  “Getting to be a regular army,” Ghislain said, sliding the key rings onto his belt. “That’s all of ’em. Where to next?”

  “I need to speak with the Esarina,” Antoinette said, once the newly freed captives had all come within earshot. “I’m told that Nico’s scholarship students were a ruse, and that in reality, he’s been using them to re-create his lost army of dragons. I’m not sure how he got the idea—someone must have given it to him; it’s hardly his style to be so clever on his own—but he’s violated the provisions that allowed him to build the dragons in the first place.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Wildgrave Ozanne said. “Surely he knows the Basquiat would never agree to such measures—and we have treaties in place with the Ke-Han, not to mention! Treaties we went to great pains to hammer out. If they learn we’ve done this behind their backs … Well, I’m not going back there for a second round!”

  “We’ve seen the dragons,” Luvander said. “Well, pieces of them, anyway. They’re in a workroom upstairs, all laid out like clockwork.”

  “I’ve seen one completed,” I told them. “And I was told there were three more finished up. Might as well get that detail out of the way first. They’re little bigger than one of your hounds, Margrave Holt, and smaller than a full-grown man like Ghislain—but I’d say they’re real enough. Although I haven’t heard ’em talking out loud, and it seems like they’ve been bound to individuals somehow. That kind of magic’s out of my league for explaining. I only know what I saw.”

  “There’s Cornflower—she’s mine,” Gaeth said, sounding troubled. “And Ironjaw, who belongs to Troius. And then there are two more, but they haven’t found masters yet. I heard from Cornflower that there’s been trouble with the fourth. She picked someone, but they’re trying to rewire her so she chooses somebody else. It ain’t going so well, from the sounds of it.”

  “Cornflower,” Luvander murmured. “How times have changed.”

  “It will hardly fit into rousing song,” Raphael agreed.

  “Hush,” Antoinette told them. And, bless her, they actually listened.

  “They approached me to help them,” Ginette admitted. “I couldn’t, in all good conscience—which is how I ended up here. They wouldn’t tell me enough of their plan for me to be of any use, I’m afraid.”

  “It seems simple enough,” Ozanne said. “Gather a private force, strike when the Basquiat’s weak. There were so few magicians left after the plague, and many of them with useless Talents, for gardening and the like. Without adequate warning, I can only assume he’d have us cornered in no time.”

  “Which is why I think our best chance would be to speak with Esarina Anastasia,” Antoinette repeated, folding her hands in front of her. “She’s a sensible woman, and I believe she will listen if we plead our case. If the Esar’s plan is truly that far along, then our options are few. And I, for one, do not want to see a bloody civil war in the streets over this, which will most certainly be what erupts if we are not extremely careful when we act. At the same time, we must act quickly, before the element of surprise is lost. We have to step lightly here, boys—and that means you especially,” she added, with a glance in Ghislain’s direction.

  “That’ll be easy,” Ghislain said dryly. “No one’ll even notice when we walk up to the palace and knock kindly on the front door.”

  “Permission to speak,” Balfour said.

  “Granted,” I replied, knowing at least he wasn’t one to waste precious time just to hear the sound of his own voice.

  “I have reason to believe the workroom is connected to the palace,” Balfour continued; he sounded slightly breathless, like he really hated talking in front of so many people, but he was gonna do it anyway. Good old Balfour. He really did have Steelballs—and while I wasn’t the kind of man who took the credit for another man’s developments, I did hope I was part of the reason for helping ’em grow. “I’m not certain what kind of opposition we’ll face, or whether the passage will be guarded, but it seemed quite abandoned when I … It’s what Margrave Germaine used to escort me from the palace to work on my hands. Margrave Germaine gave me something, and it made my head unclear, but I don’t believe she counted on my expertise when it comes to memorizing the lay of the land. I passed through this very hall to get to the workroom up above; I�
�m sure of it.”

  “Ah, Germaine,” Antoinette said, drawing out the syllables in a way that made me real glad I wasn’t the woman in question, or even a distant relative, for that matter. “We’ll want to deal with her as well, I imagine. Since she was so eager to take the title of Margrave, then the Basquiat will try her as one. We should call a meeting.”

  “Then it seems pretty clear, doesn’t it?” Laure asked. “Who’s going where?”

  “I think some of us should be going home,” the cricket muttered, but he didn’t sound like he had hopes of it.

  “Let the girl speak,” Antoinette said sharply.

  Laure coughed but looked pleased. “Thanks,” she said, straightening out her shoulders. “The way I see it is this: Magicians go to the Basquiat to call that meeting, and the rest of us take a delegation to the palace to speak with th’Esarina. I’m assuming that’d be you,” she added, nodding at Antoinette, “since you’re the only one here who knows her by her first name.”

  Antoinette smiled, clapping Laure on the shoulder the same way I would’ve done for one of my boys, coming back from a successful raid. “It gives me hope to meet someone like you,” she said. Then, in clearer tones, she delineated the plan, instructing her fellow magicians to head to the Basquiat at once. If they ran into any trouble, she was clear enough about what they were to do—just obliterate it by any means and worry about being called to task for it later. None of them seemed ready to disagree with her, though Wildgrave Ozanne took a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbing the hair at his temples, where sweat had begun to bead.

  “I really do wish I could stop being arrested for no reason,” he said.

  Splitting up into two groups made me uncomfortable, but it was a necessary measure. And knowing that the Basquiat was being gathered was a nice piece of backup. We just had to buy them some time—and since Roy’d done that for me, I figured I could do the same for him.

  “Then we’re ready,” Antoinette said, as the other magicians slipped like shadows down the hall. “Balfour, lead the way.”

  “He always does,” I replied.