Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  Despite all that had transpired, I was still able to say I preferred this life to the one I had been living before the fateful day I arrived in the city. I had nearly been robbed; I had been assaulted by living conditions far below even the dirtiest urchin’s standards; I had been involved in a royal plot against the Basquiat magicians, not to mention the effective usurpation of the throne of Volstov; and, though I felt as though I would never be clean again, I had survived every indignity with only some indignation of my own.

  Besides, without me, who would make sure Gaeth did not get himself lost again?

  As Laure moved to follow Adamo out of the room, I had a premonition that explaining the dragons to my father would have been the least of my worries if I was ever to return to my old home. But I had a good feeling I simply wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  ADAMO

  After our little secret meeting broke up, everyone’d gone their separate ways to prepare for another long day ahead. Some of us had more work to do than others, and I knew we were gonna be meeting again soon so Antoinette could do what she needed to do to make sure we all kept our mouths shut. Even those of us she could trust to hold our tongues were suspect, and there were some of us she couldn’t trust at all.

  As much as I wished I could’ve gone back with my boys, I’d decided to take care of a few things at the ’Versity first, and so I’d ended up walking the kids back to their dorms.

  The screwy cricket’d almost passed out on his feet, but Gaeth had claimed he could take care of him and I wasn’t one to argue when one of my boys told me he could do something.

  Guessed that was how I was going to have to start thinking about him, too—Gaeth and Laure, since I’d somehow signed myself up for a second round of Chief Sergeanting faster than you could blink an eye. That was what I got for having secret meetings in the first place, on no sleep, in the middle of the Basquiat. Some things were said without you realizing, and the next thing you knew, you were signing yourself up for the same job that’d given you so much damn grief in the past. I could look forward to singed gloves and the stench of dragonmetal hanging over my clothing; the complaints from Royston that I smelled like a burned-out pot someone’d left on the oven too long. I could also look forward to the same headaches I used to go to sleep with—the same headaches I still had when I woke in the morning, wrangling personalities more stubborn and difficult than dragons themselves.

  At least there were less of ’em to work with this time, even if I couldn’t quite convince myself that was a good thing.

  Laure hadn’t seemed that tired, but I could tell it was all will and nerves keeping her awake, same as what’d kept my boys awake during the longest of the late raids, when we’d been hauling ass to race the sunrise back to Thremedon and our soft beds. I’d been able to tell she was chewing on something, trying to come up with the best way to spit it out, and I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her, so mostly we’d been walking in silence, past the Whitstone Road and onto ’Versity Stretch itself. It wasn’t a half-bad situation, since it’d given me time to try to sort out a few things, too.

  Basically, I didn’t know how appropriate it was gonna be to take one of my corps out to dinner. For obvious reasons, the situation’d never quite come up before, and I was getting caught on that more than I had been on the idea that she’d been my student.

  Although that was a sticky little piece of work, and there was no getting around it, either. Roy was gonna have himself a field day no matter what happened, plain and simple. Not that I was planning on letting what Roy said stop me. If I ever let myself go down that road, then I’d never get the chance to do anything fun.

  Speaking of Roy, I’d’ve thought the cricket might’ve been more like him—talking endlessly no matter how tired he was, just to let the sound of his own voice keep him awake—but somehow he stayed quiet, which I guessed more than anything was a sign of how weary we all were.

  It’d been a long twenty-four hours. Not the longest in my life, but closest to. And maybe, just maybe, it’d been the weirdest.

  Finally, halfway down ’Versity Stretch, Laure’d cleared her throat.

  I almost twitted her about needing a lozenge, but I figured that kind of thing was best saved for another time. “Something to say?” I’d asked instead.

  I’d always been better at readying a strategy once I knew exactly the mess I was riding headlong into.

  “Just thinking,” Laure’d said, puffing her cheeks and blowing out air like a horse. “I feel a little stupid, getting duped like that by th’Esar. Not to mention I’ve gotta come up with some way of telling my da that I’m staying in Thremedon for good—sure can’t go home and leave that beauty here all on her own. Don’t think she’d even let me, and like I said, I couldn’t keep her in the barn, now could I?”

  “Doesn’t seem right,” I’d agreed.

  “So that leaves me in a tight place,” she’d explained, glancing over at our walking companions to make sure they weren’t paying attention, but they’d been pretty wrapped up in their own thoughts. I’d known right then I was gonna have more trouble with Gaeth than I was gonna have with Laure. Balfour’d be easy ’cause we each already knew how the other one worked, and, in my own way, I was gonna enjoy rebuilding the shit job that was Troius, watching him cry like a baby until he finally manned up. No one wanted to start th’Esarina’s reign with more useless killing, and it wasn’t as if the poor bastard was evil—he was riddled with ambition and questionable morals, the same way some people carried infectious diseases. It was only a matter of finding him the cure for his stupid ideas. Then I’m sure we’d get along just great, so long as I made sure to have eyes in the back of my head and watch him like an owl watching a barn mouse. Even though none of us had what you might call warm feelings toward the bastard, nobody wanted him to end up as a brainless maniac. That was part of the reason we were having Ironjaw rebuilt; Troius knew it, and I figured that was most of what would be keeping him in line at the Greylace manor. He was the type of man who’d make himself useful in the long run—if I could get him to pull his head out of his ass long enough to see sense.

  “At least you’ve got a place here now,” I’d tried to reassure her. “No one else can fill that position but you. Don’t think about it like you can’t go home. Look at it this way, instead: You’re needed in the city. Not many people can say that.”

  “Also, you owe me a square meal,” Laure’d said, giving me one of those sideways looks that women were always giving Roy, poor hopeless chickens. I hadn’t even known Laure was capable of that kinda look, considering how straightforward she’d always been.

  Didn’t much mind seeing her use it, though. It wasn’t all guile, just an attack from the side route, like I’d been lecturing about a few weeks back.

  “Do I strike you as the kind of man to go back on a deal?” I’d asked. I didn’t even have to fake sounding put out, since I was still thrown off my kilter by that look.

  Magoughin had always said there was something dangerous about a pair of green eyes. It was a shame I couldn’t tell that horse’s ass how right he’d turned out to be.

  “Guess not. I have to sort a few things out a little first,” Laure’d concluded, sucking it up and taking it like the perfect soldier.

  Yeah, I’d thought. We were gonna get along great.

  I even told her as much—private, so Gaeth wouldn’t hear it. It was something I’d never even said to one of my boys because they’d all needed less encouragement, not more, when they’d come to me.

  “Looking forward to working with you,” I’d said, then we’d shaken hands on it. There was something about the way she’d held my hand that suggested she might’ve been interested in a friendlier kind of good-bye, but whatever else I was, I’d never been the sort to go carrying on in the street where you didn’t know who was watching. Call me old-fashioned, but some things just belonged behind closed doors where a man couldn’t get arrested for it. And besides, I was giving her the same respect
as a commanding officer gave a soldier who’d done a job right. Anyway, she was grinning when I’d left her, so I figured she didn’t take it the wrong way. It was a first step. And if it turned out we ended up getting more familiar with each other up at the Greylaces’ estate, Royston was never gonna let up on riding me.

  After that, I’d gone back to my office. It was still so early in the morning that there was hardly anybody up; classes wouldn’t start for a while yet, and Radomir wouldn’t be coming for at least an hour. Maybe, if he’d heard about my arrest, he’d decide to take the day off.

  I just had a few things to get in order—not that I’d ever seen fit to spruce the place up or bring anything of my own in, but there were essays and excuse notes and that kind of thing scattered all over the place. I gathered ’em all together and put ’em in a heap for Radomir to sort through, or whatever poor, hapless, miserable bastard inherited this job from me now that I was finished with it.

  The semester wasn’t over yet, so I signed a piece of paper that said I was quitting, and for all I cared my donkey-brained assistant Radomir could be in charge from now on. As far as I was concerned, he could teach the students any way he liked—that is, if there was anyone in the world able to teach ’em anything, now that the only one who was worth her salt probably wasn’t going to be attending classes anymore. That alone took away all my reason for staying.

  Then, because there wasn’t anyone in the world who could fire me now and I’d held it in for too long, I added, If you want a bunch of half-wits scoring high on essays and going through life thinking they know something, that is. We’d better hope, if there’s another war someday, these piss-pants aren’t involved with any of the decision-making. And if they are, I ain’t fighting. Then I signed it ex–Chief Sergeant Owen Adamo, and left it on my desk.

  It felt good, ’cause I was officially free. I’d suffered through this horseshit way too long to respect myself, but I was gonna have to get some of my dignity back now if I wanted to do this job, this real job, that actually meant something to me.

  Why’d I even put up with this in the first place? I wondered. I guessed I’d been missing my girl so much that I’d figured there wasn’t anything I could do that was better, and my life the way I liked it had ended right there in the lapis city, on the other side of the Cobalt Mountains.

  I wasn’t the sort of man who liked taking pleasure out of other people’s misfortunes. It was why I hadn’t joined in on all the parades in the streets, whooping it up ’cause the enemy was beat. Now that so many people’d been hurt and so many lives’d been changed just to get these new dragons off the worktable, it was wrong of me to feel so bastion-damn elated.

  I guessed I’d have to deal with judgment later, when I finally went to meet my maker.

  But I still had one more thing that it was up to me to deal with. It was something that wasn’t easy for any man, but especially not for me, since I couldn’t remember a time when I’d done it.

  I reached Royston’s place in the Crescents at a little past nine, judging from the sound of city bells pealing in the distance. When I knocked on the door, I knew he wouldn’t answer; he was the kind of man who stayed in bed until at least eleven, even when he had a coffee appointment with another man—the sort who was always punctual—at ten thirty.

  Hal answered the door, looking tired and worried. He looked more worried when he saw me because I hadn’t even bothered to clean up before coming over, and that was wrong of me. I just had to do all this while I was still feeling it, or else I’d never get the balls to do it again.

  “You’re not …” Hal began.

  “Arrested anymore?” I asked. “No, it looks like I ain’t. And I’ve got Roy to thank for that, which I guess is why I came here.”

  “Come in,” Hal said, and I did exactly that. I took my boots off in the hallway, so I wouldn’t trek mud and snow all over the place, then stood there in my socks, trying to work up what I needed to say. “He’s coming down with a cold, actually, so just …”

  “I know he can be stubborn as an ox, and mean as one, too,” I said. “I’m used to dealing with it. Hope you get used to dealing with it, too.”

  “Well, I was a tutor for very small children,” Hal replied, cheeks coloring. “The principles are almost the same.”

  “Good thing you’ve got the proper training,” I told him. “Thanks for putting up with it. Not many men can.”

  I left him in the hall like a whirlwind’d just hit him—maybe it had. I knew where the bedroom was, and I’d prefer to do the next step alone, just me and Roy.

  He did look like shit when I opened the door, not bothering to knock. I’d already seen everything there was to see, and I knew he wouldn’t let me in to look at him like this if I’d given him fair warning: big nose puffy and red, bags under his eyes, dark circles, and everything. He was in the middle of blowing his nose into his handkerchief and he made a sound of horror when he saw me.

  “Bastion,” he said, doing his best not to sound stuffed-up and failing. “Which one of us looks worse?”

  “You,” I wagered. “Just came by so you wouldn’t worry about me.”

  “And not to see how I was doing,” Roy replied. “Of course not. That’s so very like you. I’ll have you know I had to hide in a snowdrift for over an hour before I was able to make my getaway. I’ve been sneezing all night and you know how my Talent gets when that happens.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re missing a special secret meeting of the Basquiat lying around in bed with your hankie, too.”

  “No,” Royston said. If there was anything that’d get him out of bed right quick, the idea of missing out on something that important would probably do the trick. “Hal! Is my coat dry yet?”

  “I’ll get your coat,” I said. “If it’s not dry, you can have mine.”

  “I am not showing up at the Basquiat wearing your coat,” Roy told me, then paused in searching his dresser drawer, looking at me suspiciously. “It’s only a cold,” he said. “I’m hardly dying. Why offer to get me my coat? Why not just tell me to get it myself?”

  “ ’Cause it’s easier than the other thing,” I replied.

  “What other thing?” Roy asked. He really did look like he was gonna keel over. Funny, ’cause I bet he’d definitely been expecting the cold to be the thing that did him in, and not me.

  “Apologizing,” I said, simple as that. It wasn’t so hard, now that I knew I was giving him the vapors. “For what I said before about Freckles. If he can put up with you while you’re like this, then I guess he can’t be half-bad.”

  “Bastion,” Roy said again, staring at me openly. “What did they do to you in there?”

  “Some of that you’ll find out at the meeting,” I said, enjoying that one a little more than I had to. The only thing Roy hated more than suffering the indignities of a common cold was the idea that someone somewhere knew more than he did, before he did. I probably shouldn’t’ve teased him about it at all, since I really couldn’t tell him the particulars about what’d happened to me after I’d been arrested. I trusted him, but it’d only be putting him in danger—not to mention I’d already sworn to the rest of the group that we wouldn’t be telling anyone anything. Everybody had friends they trusted; that didn’t mean they got to unburden themselves to them about every little detail.

  “Oh, I see,” Roy huffed, turning back to his dresser drawer and pulling out his favorite vest—some black-and-gold piece that, according to him, “never went out of style.” According to me, he just liked the damned thing, but you couldn’t tell Roy he was doing a thing sensibly for once without him taking offense and going to extraordinary lengths just to prove you wrong. “And here I thought I’d get the story from you firsthand. Perhaps, since you’ve never been involved in a political scandal before, you have a limited understanding of the etiquette involved, but it is customary for someone personally implicated to give his closest friend all the pertinent details. Especially when that friend sacrificed his goo
d health and clear sinuses to be of use in the first place.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, which wasn’t quite as hard to get out as the apology had been. “I know how important your sinuses are to you.”

  Roy gave me one of his sharp looks though the effect probably wasn’t quite what he’d hoped since his eyes were all red and watery from blowing his nose. Didn’t know how a grown man could make such a big fuss over one little cold, but somehow he managed to wrangle me around into feeling sorry for him anyway.

  Or maybe I was feeling guilty since I couldn’t tell him about the dragons. And this was gonna pose an interesting obstacle for our friendship.

  “Meeting’ll be interesting, at least,” I offered, with a shrug. I figured I could let him in on that much without giving anything away. And it was the truth. I almost wished I could’ve been a fly on the wall at the Basquiat when Antoinette let the magicians know what th’Esar’d been planning.

  Roy was gonna hit the ceiling. I only hoped he didn’t sneeze in the middle of the meeting, right before the dramatic reveal.

  “They are always interesting,” Roy said, with a little sniff I figured was on purpose instead of necessary. He knew I was yanking his chain—probably because I wasn’t very good at all that diplomatic subterfuge—but at least he seemed to realize I was being cryptic for a reason since he wasn’t threatening to get Antoinette down here to read my thoughts for him.

  Little did he know we were on the same side now, the lady and me.

  “Well then, this one’ll be especially so,” I said, which was where I had to end it. Much as I loved twitting Roy, I was gonna work my way around to having to give another apology if I kept at it too long. Silence was what worked best for me most days anyway, so I shut my yap and introduced a little quiet into the room.

  With Roy present, I knew it couldn’t last long.

  “I understand,” Roy said finally, resuming with his vest, and searching out a scarf to match it. Bastion help me, but he even had more than one. “You’ve been sworn to secrecy on some count, and you’re a soldier, too good to let a little thing like torture force your tongue. Believe it or not, there are things that even I do not wish to know, occasionally. At least that’s what I’m trying to tell myself. I think I’m managing to believe it.”