Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  At least the dragons were pleased to be given a job—guarding the guards, as it were, until such a time as we could decide what would be done with them. Because of lack of training, neither Laure nor the ex-airman Balfour could have remained in contact with them from such a distance, but Gaeth was able to, and so he kept tabs on them, telling us at intervals that all was still well and no daring idiot had attempted any mutinies just yet.

  Troius, the short-tenured captain of his ill-fated platoon, had posed something of a problem since no one trusted him in the slightest. We’d brought him along as our personal prisoner; though Ironjaw was injured and wouldn’t pose a threat with the others also guarding her, it was difficult to communicate with one another freely while he was still a wild card.

  There’d been some question—from Professor Adamo in particular—about whether or not Troius should be brought along at all, but Antoinette and the Esarina both felt that it was necessary to include him because of his connection to the dragon. He certainly hadn’t seemed to appreciate his place in the proceedings, but then he was tied to a chair, with Ghislain standing watch over him. I would have questioned my place if I were in his boots. There’d been dried blood all down his face, staining the front of his uniform, which was also caked in tunnel dirt. The sight of him made me ill; it was a sentiment that seemed to be shared by and large with everyone else in the room, however, though perhaps their reasoning was slightly different from mine.

  Ghislain, for example, had looked as though he was just waiting for Troius to make his first escape attempt, so that Ghislain could break his nose all over again.

  The Esarina—cleaner than Gaeth, I realized quickly, but I couldn’t very well presume to stand by her—had appeared distracted, declining the seat offered to her in favor of pacing the room like a lonely ghost. No doubt she’d been concerned about her husband’s condition; Antoinette had arranged for a few trusted healers to see to him in secret but I could tell from the way everyone had been acting that no one expected him to live, nor did they know what to do with him given either possible outcome.

  There was something disturbingly poetic about the Esar having been done in by his own obsession, the very pride of his life that he’d sought to re-create—but I’d done my best to keep that thought private. While everyone else talked business, I’d done my best not to feel as though there were maggots and beetles and worms crawling all over me.

  It proved very distracting—making it even more difficult for me to plead my case.

  For, given the gravity of the situation, it seemed that the finest minds in the room had all come to the same conclusion. While the rest of us had still been scrabbling at straws, doing our best to make sense of what had already happened, they’d been looking to the future—trying to sort out what step to take next. Immediately it had become very clear to me that no one planned to let the secret of the dragons leave Antoinette’s private room.

  That realization had made me very uncomfortable indeed. How, I’d wondered, did they intend to swear us all to secrecy?

  “We destroy the dragons and bury the evidence,” Antoinette had suggested firmly. I appreciated that she wished to take charge and had been more than willing to go along with whatever she suggested.

  Until, of course, Troius spoke up, giving us all a very grave piece of information. “I’ll go mad if you do that,” he said. From everyone’s reaction, it was clear not too many people cared, and he quickly did his best to clarify his point. “Gaeth as well,” he said. “It’s possible that the others—Laure, was it? And Balfour—will suffer the same fate. Our blood has been mixed with the dragonsouls. If you break them, our minds will be broken.”

  I felt a slim shiver of outrage, at which point Luvander gently cleared his throat.

  “I don’t believe we should destroy them even if such difficulties hadn’t presented themselves,” he said. “It would be akin to murdering all the witnesses. Unless that is what you intend, in which case, let me inform you, it is a difficult task to slit my throat.”

  “The Ke-Han can’t learn of them,” Antoinette countered. “Nor any other country, for that matter. They would all take arms against us—the Ke-Han for violating the terms of the treaty, and Arlemagne in particular would assume we intend expansion. We’d make enemies of them, not allies. Do you really want more war?”

  “But you can’t very well just do that to Gaeth,” I said hotly.

  Troius cleared his throat. “Nor to the other one, I suppose. And to take that risk with Laure and Balfour—why, we’d be acting no more humanely than the Esar!”

  “Nice one,” Laure muttered to me under her breath—just like she thought we were whispering together in class.

  “Thanks,” Gaeth added, scratching the back of his head. “Don’t want to go crazy. Not any more’n I already have, anyway.”

  “Well then,” Antoinette said, and I felt singled out, like a cutup during a lecture. “What do you suggest we do, little man?”

  Adamo snorted—I realized it was to cover up a laugh—and with everyone staring at me, and me looking dirtier than one of my father’s pigs, I felt very miserable indeed. It wasn’t my place to decide these things, I thought. But then again, someone had to do it.

  “We’ll just have to keep ’em secret, I guess,” Laure said, speaking up in my place and rescuing me, as always. “If killing ’em’s so bad and we can’t let anybody know about ’em either, then that’s the only way.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Antoinette said.

  “With all those guards acting as witness?” Adamo asked. “I don’t like our odds. It’ll leak, and sooner than later, by my thinking.”

  “Well,” Antoinette murmured very demurely. “I would of course be able to take care of them.”

  The Esarina stopped her pacing, and we were all drawn to her without her even needing to clear her throat for our attention. Though she was a slim, pale woman, there was something about her that to me indicated vast reserves of strength. “Toying with the minds of others?” she asked. “Erasing information because to us it is inconvenient? This sounds more and more like my husband’s reign. And if he is unable to rule after this—and if I am indeed to take his place—that is not the way I would wish to begin. Just because someone else would be doing the dirty work for me, I would not find it easy to turn a blind eye. His Highness used many of his subjects as pawns during the war—Caius Greylace, for example—and I was always distraught that he would play so casually with the lives of others.”

  “It would be but one memory,” Antoinette said, I suspected more gently than she was wont to be. “I would turn it into a shared dream. I would not hurt them, nor would I drive them mad. And the little Greylace now lives quite comfortably in the country, I’m told. More comfortably than us, at present.”

  The Esarina pursed her lips. “And what of this merry band?” she asked finally, with a hint of humor so faint it nearly passed over all our heads.

  “I rather enjoyed this experience,” Raphael admitted. “I would prefer it if I was allowed to keep the memory.”

  “The ex-airmen have always been trustworthy,” Antoinette said. “Despite how they may behave. And the girl and the boy attached to the dragons can’t very well forget about this, now can they?”

  That just left me, I thought with a gulp, glancing around as everyone’s eyes were drawn to me. Once again, it was Laure to my rescue, as both she and Gaeth stepped closer—as though they were my private Dragon Guard.

  “I’ll see what I am able to do,” Antoinette conceded at last. “There may be something I can manage, allowing you to retain your memories yet rendering you unable to speak of this to anyone outside this room. How does that sound?”

  “Just great,” Adamo replied, in a tone of voice that made it very clear he meant the opposite. It was, however, our best option. As though we were hammering out the terms of our own private treaty, we were forced to make compromises. I was merely glad not to be singled out as the only useless—and expendable—
fool there. “Guess it’ll be good for my friend Troius over here,” Adamo added, after a moment’s thought. “ ’Cause even though I’m planning on watching him day and night ’til one of us dies of old age, I’m also planning on getting some shut-eye, some of the time.”

  “And what of the dragons?” the Esarina asked shrewdly.

  “We wouldn’t let the dragons rust,” Antoinette replied carefully.

  “And you’d likely need someone to be Chief Sergeant,” Luvander added, glancing at Professor Adamo. “I don’t think he enjoys the kind of teaching with which he’s currently saddled. But I also don’t think.”

  “Did I ask you to do me any favors?” Adamo asked.

  “Not at all,” Luvander replied cheerfully.

  “I’d feel better with Adamo in charge,” Laure spoke up, adding her weight to the scales. “Not that I’m sure whether or not we’re planning on becoming soldiers or anything that’d need a Chief Sergeant, but it seems to me he knows a lot about the dragons. And we’re gonna need someone like that.”

  “I would like to propose a compromise,” Antoinette said, with a glance toward the Esarina. “That Adamo and I share equal responsibility in this matter. Not that this is a comment on your abilities to work alone, Adamo, and I hope you aren’t offended. But as far as I know, you are no magician. The dragonsouls themselves require someone of Talent to fully understand them—and as I plan on handling the situation with Margrave Germaine personally, what we do next will benefit, I believe, from someone with my expertise. It will also help,” she added pointedly, “to have someone with whom you are able to share the blame.”

  “Bleak outlook,” Laure murmured, shaking her head.

  “Joint Chief Sergeants, huh?” Adamo said, looking uncomfortable but dead certain at the same time. “Well, I can’t say it’d harm my ego any. Not to mention, if something goes wrong, two heads are a lot better than one.”

  “What do you plan on telling the rest of the Basquiat?” the Esarina asked. It seemed that instead of allowing her husband’s condition to distract her, she was using her worry as motivation to think—and behave—like a ruler in his stead. I wondered what I would do if Laure was injured so gravely; I would never be able to go on with such grace or dignity. “I hardly think you can trust every Margrave to keep his or her mouth shut—you know how Volstov loves gossip—and you couldn’t use the same trick with them as you plan to use on us, surely.”

  “It’d take a dangerous woman to do all that,” Ghislain said appreciatively.

  “No,” Antoinette said, shaking her head. “There are too many strong minds within the Basquiat—some of them quite stubborn, while others have trained to withstand mental attacks. I would not be able to carry out such a feat, even if I wished to—which, I assure you, I do not.”

  The Esarina’s voice was wry. “I assume you have some other plan?” she asked, wringing her hands.

  “What I propose is this,” Antoinette continued, as though she’d been expecting that lead-in. “No one has seen these dragons save for us and the Margrave Germaine. Thus, we will tell the Basquiat in strictest confidence that the Esar, with Germaine’s assistance, was planning on rebuilding the Dragon Corps. That was why he had the students, that was why he made the arrests—and Margrave Ginette is our proof that he was asking other magicians to help him. But none of our fellow arrested magicians ever saw the dragons for themselves; thus, they have no way of knowing how far the plan progressed. As such, no one outside this room ever needs to know that particular detail. And no one will, for that matter.”

  Since it was a solution that didn’t involve any further minds being wiped clean—which was a sentiment about which I ultimately found myself unexpectedly calm; certainly, there were aspects of the night I might have been more comfortable forgetting—no one seemed to have any objections.

  “Ah,” Balfour said suddenly. He looked somewhat startled by the sound of his own voice, but he didn’t let that stop him. “We’ll have to come up with something to tell the envoy from Arlemagne as well. Both Troius and I were dealing with them … before.”

  “You’ll never keep it under wraps,” Troius added, reminding us all he was still in the room. “These glorious creations were made to be seen by everyone. They are Volstov’s pride and joy.”

  “No one outside the Basquiat hears even a whisper of the word ‘dragon,’ ” Antoinette warned after hushing him. “I imagine that I’ve been very clear on this point already, but if the Ke-Han were to receive word that there were now four new dragons in Volstov, then it will matter very little that none of us knew about them in time to halt proceedings. We’ll tell the Arlemagnians—not to mention everyone else—that Nico sustained his injuries in an earthquake. Our mutual friend Margrave Royston set the precedent for that to seem plausible, I believe.”

  “Good old Royston,” Adamo said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Never thought I’d be the one getting him mixed up in politics.”

  “You’re a terrible influence on us all,” Luvander agreed, crossing his arms. “All I wanted was to run my haberdashery in peace.”

  “Horseshit,” Ghislain said, eloquently.

  “Where does that leave us?” the Esarina said, gently cutting in before the conversation could become too lively.

  “Where does that leave us?” Laure added, echoing the Esarina’s words with a more personal touch. Unlike me, she didn’t seem embarrassed when everyone turned to look at her. “What I mean is, since the Esar’s scholarship program was all just some big ruse to get young bodies who didn’t know any better out of the country and test ’em for the dragons, it’s not like that program’s gonna last now that he’s not … You know what I’m saying. So what do the rest of us do? I don’t know about Gaeth, but my da’s certain to notice a great dragon following me about, and it’s not like I could keep her in the barn. She’d frighten the horses. Maybe burn the whole thing down. And she wouldn’t even be happy.”

  “Obviously, the dragons will have to be kept underground, as they were before,” Antoinette replied. “As for the children, I see no reason why they cannot be allowed to continue their education—if that meets with your requirements, Anastasia.”

  “It does,” the Esarina confirmed. “I intend to continue that precedent, in the spirit in which it should have been intended.”

  “Can I say something?” Gaeth asked. Antoinette nodded curtly at him to go on. “I don’t mean to interrupt anyone while they’re talking and all, but I’ve spent a long time with Cornflower now. I know you all were talking before about Adamo and his experience, and that seemed to me that something was gonna be done different. And, well, I figure no one else has really had the experience I had, because I was there with ’em while they were kept locked up as a secret, and I know how it made ’em feel. It makes ’em real unhappy. Cornflower was always miserable, with no room to stretch her tail or anything. I know everyone’s real concerned about keeping them under wraps and not starting any wars and that it’s the most important thing and all, but … Well, I just don’t think it’s right to lock ’em back up again.”

  “The dragon I had dealings with—my dragon—did exhibit a certain jubilation at having enough room to move around at last,” Balfour admitted, causing Gaeth to look gratified that someone was agreeing with him. I felt curiously pleased. “Perhaps if we merely moved them somewhere outside the city, where they might be able to stretch their wings? Some of us could even stay with them—though that’s easy for me to say, isn’t it? It’s not as though I have any particular ties to my apartment. Especially considering the noise …”

  “They’d like that,” Gaeth said. “A little fresh air. I’d like that, too. Gets musty belowground. It ain’t decent.”

  Antoinette was looking at Gaeth sharply, in a way that I could tell made him somewhat nervous. Despite feeling filthy and exhausted, I stood up straight beside him, so that Antoinette would know that this was a team effort. Laure and I were there for him, even if one of us proved far more useful in
such situations than the other. I was simply there to raise the appearance of greater numbers.

  “There is an estate to the west of Thremedon,” Antoinette said finally, looking somewhat reluctant. It was clear to me how quickly her mind must have been at work, faster than any machine. “It passed into my possession from the Greylaces, and since I conduct my business within the city itself, I’ve never had cause to use it. The property is extremely isolated—something the Greylaces no doubt found highly amusing, but I’ve never been one for all that. Needless to say, the house and its grounds are more than large enough for a few dragons, not to mention any dragon handlers who might have trouble letting the animals out of their sight. Does this suit your needs? I imagine at least one person would have to stay there at all times in order to keep an eye on our friend Troius.”

  “Truly, I don’t deserve such kindness,” Troius said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “House arrest, huh?” Adamo said, brightening perceptibly. “What do you say, Ghislain?”

  “Big house filled with dragons? Sounds familiar,” Ghislain replied, cracking his knuckles while eyeing Troius meaningfully. “Guess my boat does need some time to air out. Raphael’d have to come along, too. Needs the rest. Country air’s good for a man; it’s what I was raised on.”

  “Wonderful,” Antoinette said, smoothing her hair back from her face, neatly tucking behind one ear a curl of hair that had been bothering me for at least fifteen minutes. At last, I thought, and breathed a sigh of relief. “If no one else has any other concerns to raise, I’d like to suggest we retire for the morning. I, for one, have a great deal of work to do.”

  “I would like to be able to see my husband,” the Esarina added.

  The meeting was over at last, I realized, which meant a hot bath was only moments away. Though much had changed, for the time being at least, Laure, Gaeth, and I would not be forced to return to our homes—to the way things were—which, for me, would have been the worst possible ending.