Steelhands (2011)

by Jaida Jones

  “Well, they’re going to have to change,” I said, “unless th’Esar’s the type of man who pardons someone after calling him out as a criminal.”

  “Only if they’re more useful to him alive than dead or behind bars,” Luvander said. “But he does do it.”

  “Margrave Royston being one of them, if I recall correctly,” Raphael added. “Sweet Mary Margrave, was it? But we’re not allowed to call him that in front of Adamo. The nostalgia is killing me.”

  “See that it doesn’t,” Ghislain suggested. “I worked hard bringing you back.”

  “I get seasick,” Raphael explained.

  “So do I!” Toverre exclaimed suddenly. Everyone paused to look at him, and he bristled. “It’s difficult to break into the conversation,” he sniffed. “You all have your own preestablished rapport; it makes outsiders feel somewhat excluded.”

  “Anyway, while my boat’s airing out,” Ghislain said, ignoring him completely, “guess it wouldn’t hurt to do something about this bad situation.”

  “We have to wait for Margrave Royston,” I told him, though it nearly killed me to admit it. “He’s talking to people, gathering information, learning what we need to know about where Adamo is and maybe why he’s been taken there.”

  “And here I’d been hoping it was another Arlemagne scandal.” Raphael sighed sadly. “To remind us of the good old days.”

  “Hear, hear,” Luvander said.

  “How can you lot joke around when Adamo’s in trouble?” I demanded, no longer able to control myself. “Wasn’t he your Chief Sergeant? Don’t any of you have any respect for him?”

  “Of course we do,” Luvander said, blinking widely.

  “Like he was my own father,” Ghislain agreed. “Except better. And not fired from his position as stableboy for sleeping with my mother.”

  “My fear of the man is equal only to my enormous affection for him,” Raphael concluded.

  “They cope with their emotions by burying them under their idea of humor,” Balfour explained gently. “They’ve always done it, and, taking everything that’s happened since the end of the war into consideration—Ghislain’s choice to become a pirate; Raphael’s stint as a Ke-Han god of fortune; Luvander and his hat shop—I doubt they’ll ever change. Does that answer things for you?”

  “Guess it does,” I admitted. I supposed it wasn’t my place to judge them—not when they’d seen a lot more than I had.

  “Balfour’s changed, at any rate,” Raphael said, looking him over with newfound appreciation. “Bastion—if only Rook were here. Then we’d have a real showdown.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that just yet,” Balfour admitted. “Someday. We can only hope I’ll get the chance.”

  “If someone else doesn’t shut his mouth for you first,” Raphael said, indulging in a happy little sigh. “I really have missed this place. Being worshipped was nice, but I’m hoping I can get a little worship here, too. Along with some old-fashioned Volstovic cooking.”

  “Coming, my dear,” Luvander said.

  “If they don’t arrest you tomorrow,” Balfour added darkly, “for the crime of being alive when the Esar thought you were dead.”

  “Like to see him try that with me here,” Ghislain said. He shifted his weight from one side to the other, folding his arms over his chest as he did so. I was pleased as Punch he was here, and not on somebody else’s side, either. “So we wait for Margrave Royston to show up, is that it? No wonder we needed Adamo. We’re shit at planning.”

  “He should be here soon,” Luvander said. “Unless he’s been arrested, too. Which, when you think about everything we’ve burdened him with doing, is actually entirely possible.”

  The heroes of the war, I thought, and the most they were capable of so far was sitting around and having a tea-party reunion. It was weird now to think of how safe I used to feel when I imagined them soaring through the clouds on their way to enemy ground.

  But I didn’t have any better ideas, either.

  “In the meantime, make something nice for Raphael,” Ghislain suggested. “To fill his empty stomach after he filled my boat with puke.”

  “He’ll never let me live it down, I suspect,” Raphael said.

  “Not until you’re healthy enough to clean it up,” Ghislain agreed.

  “I think I hear something down below,” Balfour murmured. He didn’t have to speak up for us all to snap to; I was glad I was still holding that poker.

  Th’Esar’s men, or someone on our side? I wondered. Soon enough, we’d know the answer.

  BALFOUR

  One of the first things I’d been taught as a child was not to stare at anyone. It caused others to feel self-conscious, and it was rude, no matter what your intentions were. Curiosity was a feeling best indulged in private, when no one else would take notice, and I knew that I had finally reached adulthood when I was able to keep myself from staring, no matter how much I might have wished to.

  Still, I’d have defied any of the others to be sitting on a couch next to Raphael and not look at him, just a little, for some evidence that he was actually there.

  I wasn’t afraid of being teased since I’d weathered all that and more in the past, and there were more important things for everyone to be thinking about than mocking me. What I was frightened of was that this would all turn out to be some cruel dream. That in reality, I’d fallen asleep on Luvander’s couch while waiting for news, and any second now someone was going to shake me awake and tell me that Margrave Royston had arrived, and also, that I’d missed supper while sleeping like a little lamb.

  It was the most wonderful surprise I could ever have asked for, but it hurt, too. Knowing Raphael had been alive this whole time but unable to make some contact with the rest of us, with his home, made me feel guilty, as though I ought to have sensed him. His dragon would have been able to if she were still in one piece.

  But the worst part about Raphael’s resurrection, despite my gratitude, was that it sparked new hope in me. It inspired the foolish—and highly unlikely—possibility that there might be others out there, still alive and not lost forever at all, just living out the past half a year in some other remote fishing village.

  It had taken me a long time after the war to convince myself that my fellow airmen were really and truly gone. I would never see them in the streets again or hear them laughing raucously at a stupid joke at someone else’s expense. They’d never fill my boots with piss or my gloves with other, less savory liquids. They were dead, and no amount of magic could bring them back.

  Except that Ghislain had brought Raphael back without using any magic at all.

  This was a dilemma, one that I’d be agonizing over for years to come. The possibility might have been slight, the chances incredibly slim, but now that I had new hope in the form of Raphael, alive, I would never be able to stop wondering, What if?

  If Adamo had been with us, he would’ve told me—told us all—that there was no point in focusing on the dirty end of the stick when you’d finally turned up some good fortune at last. It was morbid and unnecessary and a waste of time. Whether or not Adamo himself believed that, he would’ve been able to make us believe it. That was something he was uncannily good at.

  Still, I wished Adamo was here to see this. Despite knowing very little about the man in question’s more personal feelings, I did know how much it had bothered him to have so few of us left. Privately, I almost worried he felt responsible, but I’d never been able to broach the topic. Not even with all my shrewd diplomatic training could I find a humane way.

  And so, as with most topics, we had all avoided talking about it.

  Ghislain, however, hadn’t been afraid to look the matter squarely in the eye. He’d chased a rumor of the seas and found one of our fellows, presumed dead—and still looking as though he might keel over at any moment though he was putting on a brave face for the rest of us.

  Maybe it was just the rough journey back that made Raphael look so shaky. But the wh
ite in his hair made him look like the Esar in the old tale—the one who’d lost his three sons to fever and gone mad the following year.

  The noise from downstairs had at least given me an excuse to stop thinking about the whole mess and an excuse to stop staring at poor Raphael as well. He looked as though he needed a full week’s sleep, and there we were hauling him along on another calamitous adventure.

  He wouldn’t have had it any other way, of course, but it hardly seemed decent.

  Laure positioned herself by the door, and, with the purposeful, stony weight of a golem, Ghislain stood up. Since Ghislain barehanded was more than the equivalent of both Luvander and me and half the Provost’s Wolves all armed with pokers, I remained seated on the couch, and Luvander continued chopping eggplant at the counter, though his entire demeanor had sharpened. He’d use that knife as well as Ivory if he had to, covered in slices of vegetable as it was—something Ivory himself would never have allowed.

  Light flooded the stairwell from below, and we all held our breath.

  “I’m so glad I’m back,” Raphael whispered privately to me as Toverre moved quietly over to stand with us. Perhaps he assumed, however falsely, that as members of the ex–Dragon Corps, we’d be able to defend him from any sudden attacks. “This is even better than a welcome-home party.”

  “Stop yapping,” Ghislain suggested from the doorway.

  We did as we were told and waited for the intruder to show himself. As my heart pounded in my chest, I thought I could hear the sound of large, metal gears turning—but it was probably just my imagination, the sound of the cogs inside my hands moving, made louder by anticipation.

  Then Royston crested the top of the stairs, presumably having found the switch in the storeroom so he wouldn’t have to blunder about in the dark.

  “You know, I do have a bell,” Luvander pointed out. “Although since everyone I know seems intent on simply letting themselves in, I wonder why I ever bothered to have it installed in the first place.”

  “I didn’t want to cause a commotion,” Royston said, shaking off his coat, the shoulders of which were glistening with melting ice. Sometime between afternoon and nighttime, it had started to snow. When he was finished, he paused, looking at Laure with her poker, Ghislain by the door, and the rest of us, ranged around the room and—speaking mostly for myself—positively vibrating with nervous energy. “Did you multiply while I was gone? I know that children are made during times of duress, but really, this is too much.”

  “Ghislain just has excellent timing,” Luvander said, tasting a sauce he’d been stirring around in a pot. “It seems he brought a friend with him, too. I hope that’s all right. We can vouch for him; he was an airman, you know.”

  Royston gave him a distracted nod, then did a double take, eyes falling on Raphael with more attention than they had before.

  “Hello,” he said, passing a hand through his hair to shake out the melted snow. “You aren’t Rook.”

  “Bastion,” Raphael said, giggling faintly. “Can you imagine if I was? What a life that would be! I don’t even think I can imagine … If the fishermen were shocked by the size of my assets, they would have all fainted dead away once they saw Rook’s! Actually, I’d rather not think about it. It’s too perverted.”

  “So he’s a babbling idiot?” Royston asked, still carefully regarding our newest companion.

  “He has always been a babbling idiot,” Luvander huffed.

  “Found him near Seon,” Ghislain said, sitting down now that we’d determined Royston wasn’t a threat. “They were worshipping him for being a fish god or something.”

  “And for the size of my—well, no need to anger the lady any further, especially when she’s wielding such a fearsome weapon herself,” Raphael said, catching himself.

  “Now he sounds a little more like Rook to me,” Royston said, then smiled. “I’m sorry for staring; my manners aren’t usually this atrocious. I was merely thinking about how happy Owen would be to see you … But of course, thinking about him reminds me of this whole rotten situation, and it hasn’t found me in the best of states.”

  “Owen?” Raphael asked, as though someone had just told him it was his birthday and they were giving it away for free at Our Lady of a Thousand Fans, all in his honor. “Ghislain—someone—please tell me I heard that correctly. Who’s Owen? Is that who I think it is?”

  “Owen’s Adamo,” Luvander said, sliding the sliced eggplant into the pot. “Or rather, he’s Owen Adamo. I’m not sure which is more fun to say, really.”

  “I’m glad we’re all so concerned about him that we’re cracking jokes about his name,” Laure said, setting her poker down at last. She rounded on Royston, and I didn’t envy him his position as sole receiver of her wrath. “Weren’t you supposed to come back here with someone?”

  “I had intended to, yes,” Royston said, looking put out. “I thought I’d left Antoinette in a rather reasonable state of mind; but as it turns out, she lost her temper after I left and ended up being ‘hauled in,’ as Josette so charmingly put it. Hauled in! Can you imagine? If my lover had me arrested—”

  “Hasn’t your lover had you arrested before?” Luvander asked cheekily.

  “The scenario was different,” Royston replied.

  “So that’s it, then?” Laure demanded. “We’ve got no Lady Antoinette, still no Adamo, and not even a plan now?”

  “It’s truly a comfort that even though Owen is not here to badger me, I have you in his stead,” Royston said, taking a seat on the arm of the couch. “You’ll recall that I said velikaia have a way of casting their thoughts outward—like a net from a ship, for catching fish—which makes it difficult for other people with Talent to ignore them. Well, I can still sense her. The projection is faint, but I believe I could follow it to Adamo’s location. I don’t plan on going alone, of course, since I am not the Esar’s favorite person to do business with. But if you’re willing to follow me, instead of your captive leader, for a little while, I believe I can be of some use to you, at least in guiding you to him.”

  “And then what?” Laure asked.

  “And then … something,” Royston replied. “I am not a Chief Sergeant or even an ex–Chief Sergeant, you know.”

  “But can’t you make things explode just by looking at them?” Ghislain asked.

  “I wouldn’t call it that, precisely,” Royston said. “But yes, I quite take your point. If it comes to that—and I really would prefer that it didn’t—I can be of more than ‘some’ use. Though exploding a hole in the wall of the establishment would not be the most subtle choice, and could result in unwanted carnage, some of which might even be our own, depending on how closely Owen is guarded.”

  “How do we get in?” Laure demanded. Now that she had some indication of a target—any target—she was clearly dying to get out and start swinging at it rather than standing around discussing our next move. It was there that she and Adamo differed, I thought, though Adamo didn’t like to dwell on strategy for too long, either.

  “I did what I could in terms of research before returning to you,” Royston said. “Not to give too much fanfare to my own skills, but you’re fortunate that I am the one who can sense her since my knowledge of the city resembles that of an obsessive lover. The direction from which I could sense Antoinette is to the north of Miranda—an out-of-the-way location, but not so remote as you’d think. Unless they’ve built something new in preparation for this sudden purge—which I don’t think they’ve had time to do yet—then the only appropriate building given the location is a prison they once used to hold disagreeable magicians captive. It’s underground.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any tunneling equipment?” Luvander asked, his voice hushed, but still unable to keep from making the joke entirely.

  “It is manned on the surface,” Royston said, rubbing his fingers against his jaw, “as it’s the location of one of the old Provost’s buildings. Not the main one, but there are a few officials there to keep an
eye on things. Still, the only real difficulty would be in getting to the actual prison cells underneath the city. I can’t communicate with Antoinette directly; otherwise, I’d ask her for a more comprehensive layout—that is, if she has one in that head of hers. But since she’s always made a point of knowing everything there is to know about the Esar’s business, private or no—”

  “How scandalous,” Raphael said.

  “Get to the point, boys,” Laure warned.

  “Though I’m reluctant to assume anything,” Royston continued, “I will tell you what I think, based on what little information I have gathered, from what Antoinette seems to be implying, and from what Josette herself told me. Though neither of them is in the best of mindsets; the former being imprisoned and the latter dealing with Lord Temur’s questioning. What a mess. I suspect the force that took Adamo and Antoinette is not the Wolves, since they’re being kept elsewhere, and I never once saw Dmitri. Thus—and again, this is merely speculation—I can assume that it’s a more private force, one the Esar would trust implicitly not to betray him. They’re obviously less concerned with secrecy than they were once since they’ve arrested people in the streets; but they’ve managed to assemble without drawing much attention to themselves. That speaks to a rather small contingent of personnel, all things considered. Just enough to keep an eye on their dangerous guests.”

  “So we go down there, you blow up the building, I crack some skulls, and we carry Adamo away,” Ghislain said, cracking his knuckles again for emphasis. The way he said it, it almost sounded like a viable plan. But then, Ghislain could be very convincing. “What’s the problem?”

  “Besides potentially murdering innocents and forcing the Esar to retaliate in a harsh and likely fatal manner? Oh, nothing,” Royston said. “No problem at all.”

  “What if I …” Laure began, then stopped herself. When everyone turned to look at her, I saw her gather her considerable mettle, forcing herself to finish the thought. “You think there’s a chance that he’s in there because of me, right? That Margrave Germaine made me crazy, and she’s been trying to hunt me down ever since. What if I went down there, said I’d heard about Adamo, and wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help? They wouldn’t be suspicious of me ’cause I’m a girl, and the rest of you could sneak in—though with that big bugger you might want to give up on the idea of being stealthy and skip straight to the exploding part.”