Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  The latch clicked and the door swung inward.

  “Welcome, Adamo,” Hal said, leaning against the door for a moment and looking nervous. Well, he had some thoughts for self-preservation in his head, at least, while I was beginning to believe Roy had none at all. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long. Please, come in.”

  Didn’t have to ask me twice. The wind picked up just as I stepped inside, stomped the frost off my boots on the mat, then sniffed the air suspiciously for any signs of something burning on the stove.

  Hal cleared his throat. “Royston’s changing his vest,” he explained, almost too softly for me to hear him. How did he hope to get anywhere in life being so quiet like that? Whether he was a delicate flower by nature or not, it was up to the gardener to make sure his prized bloom didn’t get knocked over by somebody’s fart.

  And that was enough flower-metaphoring for me for the rest of my days.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Hal in particular. He seemed all right enough, and you had to have more than just dumb luck to help save an entire city. And it wasn’t that I was against Roy’s particular tastes, either, because if that’d been the problem, we wouldn’t’ve been friends for so damn long. I was just fine with whatever made a friend happy, provided of course that it did make him happy. But Roy had a type, and that type was always too damned young to see who he was and know him for a good thing. They always ended up leaving, which was why there was no point in me getting attached to them.

  No point in Roy getting attached to them, either, but that was another story for another day, and I sure as shit wasn’t planning on meddling.

  I sniffed the air again, shrugging out of my coat before Hal could offer to take it or something, which would’ve embarrassed both of us, and Roy probably would’ve come down right in the middle of us struggling over it, demanding to know why Hal was trying to steal my coat in the inner hall.

  Wouldn’t’ve been the first time Roy took up with someone who turned out to love stealing more than he loved Roy, and right up until that business with the Arlemagne prince, I’d’ve said he was the worst of the lot by a mile. You’d think that kind of thing would put a man off looking for partners half his age, but Roy was nothing if not stubborn as a mule, despite how he hated mules and all their country ilk. I guess the rat’d been charming, in his own slippery way, but he’d helped himself to several pieces of the good silver and sold one of Roy’s prized first editions before anyone was the wiser.

  Never saw him again. Lucky for him, anyway.

  How we’d gotten that book back was a story in itself, but the simpler version involved a lot of cracking heads together while Roy made things explode, then refused to speak to me, because I’d been right about that crook all along and he needed somebody to punish.

  Before he’d taken up with the thief, he’d been with the actor, up-and-coming in the Amazement, who’d quite enjoyed the boost in status Roy’d brought him. Of course, he’d cut loose once he’d decided he’d met all the right people, and Roy wouldn’t go to the theaters at all that season for fear of running into him, which seemed like a damned waste of season tickets if anyone asked me. Which, of course, they never did.

  The most recent—before the country boy—had been the infamous Crown Prince of Arlemagne, whom I’d only met the once, completely by accident, when I’d left the Airman to stretch my legs and ended up at Roy’s place in the Crescents as friends sometimes do. The prince’d looked like one of those dolls they sold to little girls along the Rue, blond ponytail and blue eyes and roses in his cheeks. They’d been having tea, of all things, and I couldn’t understand a damn word of Arlemagne myself, but Roy’d been kind enough to take pity on me, explaining that tea was not all they were having and would I very kindly escort my dragon-stinking ass elsewhere, since all my scowling was putting a damper on the mood.

  There was no way that one could’ve ended well. Even if the Arlemagne didn’t get their knickers in a bunch about men kissing other men—and they did, as I understood it, almost as much as they didn’t like being slapped on the ass in public—you couldn’t just up and have an affair with the heir to the throne and expect everything to run smoothly after that.

  Honestly, I didn’t know who was stupider about that one.

  For a man I knew could be impossibly clever—when he had the mind to be—Roy had about the same amount of good sense as a common house cat, but with less grace to stick the landing. He’d gone and got himself exiled for that one, and that was where he’d met Hal—the latest in a long line of young men who didn’t look back when they slammed the door. He’d lasted longer than the others, though. That was one good thing I could say for him.

  It was with no small amount of trepidation that I was coming to accept him in my own way though I still felt like I was waiting for the other boot to come down, so to speak.

  But it didn’t mean that I couldn’t be polite as I knew how in the meantime. Some people around here had manners, like greeting your friends when they paid a visit.

  “You said he was changing, right?” I asked Hal, partly to make sure he wasn’t really cooking and partly because all the silence between us left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he was unfriendly—quite the contrary, actually—but more like if you let him, he’d drift off to another place altogether. That usually left me holding the thread of the conversation and feeling like an idiot once I’d realized what’d happened. I was used to dealing with simple folk whose everyday thoughts didn’t work the same as dreaming. When Roy said Hal’s different, I believed him all right. “Hasn’t taken it into his head to try making dinner or anything like that, has he?”

  “Bastion, no,” Hal said, shaking his head with a little laugh that didn’t seem unkind. There wasn’t any mocking in it, anyway. “I don’t think he’d eat at all if we didn’t go out.”

  “True enough,” I agreed. “He burns bread just by looking at it. I’ve seen it happen.”

  Hal laughed again, touching the knob of a coat hanger on the wall beside him. “I tried to bring him a cheese sandwich once. He told me to add lettuce, tomato, salt and pepper, then to take out the cheese and bring it back to him when I was done.”

  “And you actually did it?” I asked, since not only would I have told Roy exactly what he could do with a good cheese sandwich, I’d probably have threatened to give him a demonstration just so I’d know he’d received the message.

  Hal shrugged lopsidedly, one shoulder higher than the other. “I don’t mind. If I’m home, then I usually have the time to spare anyway, and I’d rather he eats than doesn’t.”

  “Now, there’s a sensible statement if ever I heard one,” I said, and I even meant it, too. “If he ever gets it into his head to start dieting again or something like that …”

  “You can count on me,” Hal said, with a little burst of firmness. So there was some steel under all those wispy clouds of his. Guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. It took a lot to be able to deal with someone like Roy on a daily basis. I knew it firsthand from my years in the ’Versity, back when there’d been so many students you couldn’t just choose to have no roommate at all, which would’ve been my preference. It would’ve been Roy’s, too, considering how poorly he got along with both friends and enemies when it came to living together day in and day out in such cramped quarters.

  Around the end of the winter semester, I’d decided I was either gonna wring his neck with my bare hands or we were gonna end up friends for life. He was too smart for his own good—too much of a smart mouth for his own good, I mean—and I’d taken to sitting in back of class with him just because he made me laugh with his comments. No one else seemed to appreciate that about him, so I guess I ended up unconsciously resigning myself to sticking around for the long haul. Just ’cause he needed someone with the patience to put up with him for that long, and it sure as shit wasn’t gonna be the other fly-by-nights he associated with.

  Some days, I still wasn’t sure I’d made
the right decision. Especially when, in senior year, the bastard locked me out of our room all night so he could make time with our linguistics professor.

  I was willing to bet there’d been some lingual action going on, but if it had anything to do with tutoring, I’d have eaten my boots. He was my best friend, but I wouldn’t live with him again for all the gold in th’Esar’s vaults and a night with th’Esarina, beautiful as she was. There were limits to a man’s patience, after all, and living with Roy was my limit.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Roy said, appearing at the top of the stairs. Finicky bastard always did like to make an entrance, especially if there was an audience, though it didn’t seem to matter much either way because we were both used to him. “We’re ordering in. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “My stomach’s had enough of your good old-fashioned home cooking to last a lifetime,” I told him. Having food brought in was like reprieve from battle at the last moment, as far as I was concerned, and I wouldn’t be paying for it in the trenches afterward, either.

  “You told me you never cooked,” Hal said, with a smile like he already had some idea where this was going. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Royston since he’d appeared on the stairs, which was sweet in its own way, if also a little nauseating by my own personal standards. No carriage could run on three wheels.

  “There is a very good reason for that,” Royston said, shooting me a dark look. “Though one wouldn’t expect a man of war to be so squeamish. I ate it, anyway.”

  “Man can be more than one thing at the same time,” I said, which was true enough.

  The caterer arrived before we’d even made it into the dining room. Despite the Crescents’ completely off-the-rocker design and how easy it was to get lost just trying to pass through it, somehow the deliveries always made it there, probably because it gave them most of their business. Roy intimated that it had to do with some magic spell or other, but I had a feeling it was more to do with the fact that most magicians didn’t have time for making dinner, and coin was the real magic at work.

  The dining room itself was a cozy enough place, or at least I’d always liked it: dark mahogany furniture and a small chandelier set over the table to give off light. I didn’t know my ass from my top end when it came to decorating a room, but I had to hand it to Roy. He had a knack for putting things together so that they just felt right. It wasn’t a skill I could’ve used in any way—put down a chair and a table and a bed and you had yourself a house you could live in just fine—so I didn’t envy him so much as I enjoyed reaping the benefits from time to time. There was a stack of books in the corner, no doubt related to whatever rubbish Roy was working on at the minute and couldn’t bear to be parted from, and I saw something on the china cabinet shelf that looked distinctly like an essay or some lecture notes. That made me shudder, bringing to mind my own lecture notes, which were currently just a list of pupils I didn’t like, as well as the ones I knew I wouldn’t like by the time the week was out.

  I supposed I wasn’t the sort of guest you’d bother to clean up for in the first place, and bastion knew Roy wasn’t the sort of person to go around dusting. He refused to hire a maid, too, because, in his words, they “moved things around” to his dissatisfaction.

  He had once employed, as far as I knew, a young man to come in and sort through the ruins of the upper floors once a week, but it’d ended badly—to the enormous shock and surprise of all involved parties, one of whom was me.

  Despite not having a taste for what the rest of the world called real food, Roy did know how to order when it came to dinner. My own favorite part of the meal was definitely some kind of roast bird coated in brandy and lit on fire to get its skin all burned and crackling. Roy’d done the honors, of course, showing off pretty obviously for Hal, but it was equally obvious to me that Hal enjoyed it, so who was I to be the sour apple in the bin?

  Except apparently that was my newfound purpose in life, and I was just gonna have to embrace it with open arms.

  Halfway through the duck—and more than halfway into some kind of noodle dish with mushrooms—I got sick of watching Roy push vegetables around on his plate like that would trick anyone into thinking he was eating them. Besides, I’d come so we could have a real discussion, and even if I didn’t feel entirely comfortable talking in front of Hal about something that could get the both of us arrested—and get Hal arrested just for watching us talking about it—he did have that whole saving-the-city thing under his belt. Maybe he’d even be of some help.

  I just had to hope, if anything were to happen, he’d come down on Roy’s side more strongly than he came down on th’Esar’s.

  “Oh dear,” Royston said. “You have that look on your face.”

  “I don’t have a look,” I told him. “I was just thinking.”

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Roy said, spearing a bright orange piece of carrot and finally lifting it to his mouth. I guess mocking me brought his appetite roaring to the forefront. As much of an appetite as he ever got, anyway. “Have you made any decisions since the last time we spoke?”

  “Been thinking about it,” I said, which sounded lame even to me. If Proudmouth’d still been in one piece, she’d have definitely let me have it. “In between classes and all. During classes sometimes, too. But I’m feeling that the right thing to do is let the boys know, even if that means setting the light to the fuse myself. It might make things a little messier than if I was the only one of us with the information—then I could say something like, I was gonna make an executive decision on account of being ex–Chief Sergeant and all—but if Rook knows, then it isn’t fair to keep it from the rest, you know? And I’m not Chief Sergeant anymore, just a civilian, so it’s not really up to me who gets to know what.”

  “You’re hardly ‘just a civilian,’ ” Roy said.

  “I’ll get you some water,” Hal said, getting up from the table and clearing his plate while he was at it. Had to hand it to the boy, he had excellent timing. And maybe he could read a room as well as he could read a book.

  “I suppose this is the part where you lay all your wisdom before me and tell me I’m acting like a eunuch in the ’Fans, all frustration and no equipment,” I said, leaning closer and taking care not to land my elbow in the duck.

  “No,” Roy said, fingers steepled together in thought. “I won’t pretend that I am any better equipped to judge this situation—and I’m certainly not one to be rational when it comes to dealing with privileged information. It just seems to me that if this were news the Esar wanted known, he’d have announced it by now.”

  “When does th’Esar ever want matters known?” I asked. But it wasn’t really a question that needed answering.

  “Exactly my point,” Roy agreed. “One can only imagine he’s using this information to his own benefit as we speak, or thinking up a way how. If that’s even possible, since the creation of the Dragon Corps was only afforded to him by wartime provisions. We are not, as you may have noticed, currently at war. Such extreme measures are illegal, even for the Esar. I can’t imagine most members of the bastion condoning it, much less the Basquiat. But … there’s another matter that’s come to my attention.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, meaning it with every fiber of my being. “Why’s it that as soon as it starts raining, the rain turns to piss? I must’ve been a real son of a bitch in some past life, I’m telling you.”

  “Don’t overreact,” Royston said, chiding me softly. “It might not be anything. It’s only that Margrave Ginette’s been absent from the Basquiat for several days. No one’s seen her, or had a word of communication for that matter, and she’s not the type just to drop all her responsibilities without warning. She had a fair few—work that a great many of us were interested in. I’d been meaning to talk to her myself, only I’ve been busy.”

  I snorted, knowing full well the kinds of things he’d been busy with. “Why’s it that I know that name from somewhere, then?” I asked.

  “Who knows
?” Royston replied, leaning back in his chair. “An indiscretion in your wilder youth, perhaps? She was a very beautiful young woman. I’d say she was just your type, but then, I’ve no idea what your type even is.”

  “Not your type,” I said. “You can bank on that.”

  Roy assumed that funny, wry smile of his. “Of course not,” he said.

  It was bothering me, though, a familiar name I couldn’t place. What business had I ever had with magicians? It’d be a real laugh if she was one of the ones who’d worked on my girl, but then, those names’d never been released and I was pretty sure all those who’d worked on the dragons were no longer in the city—either removed to make sure they kept their secrets or because they didn’t want to stick around and reap whatever “reward” th’Esar had coming for them.

  I wasn’t one for treason, though my thoughts could’ve easily been called treasonous. I just knew on which side to butter my bread, what separated night from morning, and how little you could trust th’Esar when he promised you something. I tried to remember if it was nostalgia getting the better of me or if he hadn’t always been like that, chasing down shadows at every turn. But I guessed the war could make even the strongest mind jump at noises that weren’t there. I sure as shit wouldn’t’ve wanted to be in his position; I was just lucky I hadn’t been born underneath a heavy crown.

  No, I’d just been born to be a part of something—somebody, which was the way I’d always looked at Proudmouth—a damn sight bigger than I was. Then, just as quick as you like, it was over and gone.

  At least I still had my hands, I thought, staring down at them and feeling sorry for myself, whether I liked it or not.

  “Any luck?” Roy prompted me.

  “Yeah, actually,” I said, the whole thing dawning now. “Balfour mentioned her once, back at the beginning. Margrave Ginette was working on his—you know. His hands. Looked into her to make sure th’Esar was giving him proper care, but those I asked said she knew a fair bit about that kind of thing, so there you have it.”