Steelhands

by Danielle Bennett

  “Better be careful,” I said, picking out a gray scarf, which he rejected immediately. “That sounds dangerously close to self-improvement.”

  “That implies I have room to improve,” Roy pointed out. He froze all of a sudden, going still all over like he was about to sneeze. I wondered whether I should hit the deck or maybe jam my fingers up his nose—but then his posture relaxed. “False alarm. I accept, by the way.”

  “Pardon?” I asked, getting the distinct feeling that I’d just been deliberately thrown off my guard.

  “Your apology,” Roy said; I noticed him tugging the exact damn scarf I’d shown him in the first place out of his drawer and winding it around his neck. Maybe he thought I was too color-blind to notice what he’d done, but I knew what he was trying to pull. “I accept your apology. It seems sincere enough, and I know how it kills you to admit you like anything, not to mention anyone.”

  “Just don’t chase this one off,” I suggested, which was far from what I actually meant, but I figured Roy’d get it anyway. He knew a lot of languages, and there was no reason “crusty old curmudgeon” couldn’t be one of them.

  “Indeed,” Royston said, examining himself in the mirror and poking at his red nose critically. “Well, if this cold doesn’t do it once and for all, I suspect nothing will. What a charming thought.”

  “You’d better get going,” I reminded him, before he could get that lovestruck look on his face and go all moony on me. Even if the Basquiat wasn’t getting the full story, I knew he was gonna want his whole focus for the meeting. And he was gonna have a lot he’d want to talk to me about after, too.

  “It’s considered rude to hustle a man out of his own house,” Roy said, clearly angling for at least another seventeen minutes to agonize over what he saw in the mirror. As far as I was concerned, there was no chance of it getting any better or any worse, and no amount of staring at himself was going to change things. He just wanted to make an entrance, show up a little late and make a big splash, pretending it was all on purpose—but I could’ve told him this was one meeting where he didn’t want to miss the beginning.

  “Lucky for me, I never cared much what people thought in the first place,” I said, getting around behind him and pushing him out of the room like I’d done so many years ago at the ’Versity just to avoid making us both late for exams. It was lucky we’d both been stubborn as bulldogs since I didn’t see how our friendship could’ve lasted so long without us both holding on.

  Don’t know why I’d even bothered dragging him to exams the way I had since the bastard always marked higher than me no matter what class we’d been attending.

  Some people—Laure, Gaeth probably, and me included—weren’t meant to succeed in a classroom. All I could do was hope that I’d be able to teach ’em in the way that had worked for me, not to mention some of their stubborn predecessors, a few of whom hadn’t even been able to sign their own names.

  I guess in some ways I was going back to being a teacher, but this time without any pampering ’Versity rules or parents writing angry letters about how the classroom wasn’t a situation room and their babies deserved more respect. Roy’s collection of complaints would suffer, but I was looking forward to being able to tell people to piss off again. I knew I could count on three of my new pupils to try and get the job done—whatever that job was gonna be—and if the fourth didn’t live up to my standards, I wasn’t going to hesitate showing him what it felt like to get your nose twice-broken.

  Now, there was a style of teaching you couldn’t put into practice at the ’Versity, no matter how much you might’ve wanted to.

  Hal was waiting in the hall where I’d left him, still looking befuddled. That was nothing compared to what he looked like when he saw the two of us coming down the stairs, Roy blustering indignantly but somehow never quite seeing his way around to pushing past me so he could get back upstairs.

  He could call me a bully all he liked, but we both knew who had the real firepower between us.

  Also, there was a mirror in the hallway, so he always had a second chance to make a fuss.

  “Is everything all right?” Hal asked, caught someplace between nervous silence and plain laughter. “You’re out of bed. I thought you said you were never getting out again. In fact, I believe that was an exact quote.”

  “Change of plans,” I explained, from over Roy’s shoulder.

  “Are you feeling better?” Hal said, looking suspicious, like he meant to block the door with his body if the answer didn’t satisfy him. Guess he was worth some esteem after all, even if it’d taken me a while to come around on the subject. “If you go out and make that cold worse …”

  “It’s Basquiat business,” Royston said. Evidently wonders never ceased—he sounded cowed, almost like he was making an apology. “I’ll be inside the whole time—perhaps I’ll even ask Wildgrave Ozanne to heal me up while I’m there. Doesn’t that sound like an appealing solution to this whole business?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Hal said, reaching for his coat and Royston’s at the same time. There was a willful set to his jaw that I was beginning to recognize from all the time I’d spent around mulish young people of late—a stubbornness only the vitality of youth could maintain. “I can wait outside, if I have to, but we’re coming home straight afterward.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” Royston said, looking to me for support.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “I’m with Freckles on this one.”

  SEVENTEEN

  LAURE

  A week after I’d found her, I still didn’t know what to name my girl.

  It was a small detail, but everyone who knew about it kept bringing it up, like it was the most important thing I had to look after. Not the letter to Da explaining I’d got a job working for Chief Sergeant Adamo—I didn’t put “ex” in there, just to keep the whole thing true; I never could lie to my own family—nor all the hassle I went through withdrawing from my place as a student right at the end of the semester. Even though nobody in the ’Versity actually wanted me, much less wanted me to stay, they sure kicked up a stink about me leaving, though the paperwork all went through once they remembered I was a scholarship student and they weren’t making money off of my attendance.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d quit right before the end of the race. Though I was following in ex–Professor Adamo’s footsteps, and for me, that was a right noble position.

  Neither of us was cut out for it—not like some. Toverre, for example, probably couldn’t fail an examination if he tried. Despite the constant bathing—he had four of ’em a day, three after meals and one for good luck or something—and how he was dogging Gaeth’s footsteps out of sheer stubbornness, he still found time to study and pull off top marks. I wasn’t even jealous of him, just impressed, since Da taught me to give credit where it was due, and it was nice to be reminded that Toverre might be of some use to someone, someday. And not just as Thremedon’s finest laundryman.

  I was glad I didn’t have to study, or even think about studying, since so much was happening all at once. The city itself was in an uproar, distracting most of the good students from getting any work done since history was being made right in front of their eyes. I bet they were wondering, So why in bastion’s name am I studying it? The big thing was th’Esar being as good as dead, out like a light, and those of us who’d been there the only people who knew the truth. Even I didn’t rightly understand how they were keeping him alive since it had to do with Talent and I had none, but Antoinette had assured us all that she’d take care of things, and she was the kind of woman who made you believe a thing when she said it. All I understood was your body got weaker the longer you slept, and even though th’Esar had been an ox-looking fellow, it was safer to keep him stabilized with magic. The only thing worse than th’Esar in a coma, after all, was th’Esar suddenly up and dying on us.

  It was all people could talk about, and I guess I didn’t blame them too much; all they knew was that the man wh
o’d gotten them through the war had been taken out of commission, and I didn’t envy th’Esarina one bit having to convince them she’d do just fine in his place. No one knew whether the envoy from Arlemagne would stick around to deal with her or whether they’d consider themselves well shut of Volstov altogether. At least th’Esar hadn’t died—since according to my dragon, that would have meant the end of all the dragons—but I guess I could sympathize with the people a little. They hadn’t been there when it happened, so it had to have come as kind of a shock.

  Toverre hadn’t wanted to talk about it much though he did mention to me just once that he thought it dreadful that, with all the assistance from the Basquiat’s best magicians, th’Esar’s conscious mind couldn’t have been saved.

  But to me, it was pretty obvious why they hadn’t—or why they couldn’t. Th’Esar’d staked everything on the new dragons; he’d thought they were gonna be devoted to him and him alone, making up for how the first ones weren’t. And when one of them betrayed him, going so far as to hurt him in the process, he realized how wrong he’d been and how he’d misplaced all his trust. After that, he’d probably just given up.

  You couldn’t wake someone when his own dreams turned out better than reality.

  I almost felt sorry for him, except it was hard to see my way toward forgiving a man who’d been willing to use me as a pawn.

  Meanwhile, I was being called in left and right by Antoinette for private counsel; she wanted to go over all kinds of things with me, even give me advice, like she thought I was her own daughter and I needed the extra guidance. But she had some interesting things to say, and I appreciated it because I knew she had the experience I didn’t.

  There was also the matter of how I didn’t have one of those keys in my hand, while the others—Troius, Gaeth, and even Balfour—did. Even though Balfour was a special case, I had nothing. My girl chose me, so she’d do what I said, but if she was destroyed, I wouldn’t go crackers like the others.

  “And it’s even more difficult to get anything done in Volstov when you start out at a disadvantage,” Antoinette’d explained. “For a man as well, I suppose, but especially for us. I’ve worked three times as hard as my counterparts, and I’m generally disliked for it, even by those who pretend to be my friends. I’ve weathered gossip and insults, not to mention the disappointment of being passed over by those with fewer qualifications for positions far above their capabilities.”

  “And is it worth it?” I’d asked.

  “I sleep very well at night if that’s what you’re asking,” Antoinette had replied.

  She’d been reluctant to use Germaine’s services again, and I was even more reluctant, but she’d promised me she’d be looking into it, and in the meantime, I’d just have to work extra hard to make it clear I meant business. It wasn’t something I wasn’t used to. I was willing to fight for anything if I was sure I wanted it.

  And I knew I wanted this.

  There was also an individual meeting that all of us who’d been involved in “The Incident” had to attend, during which Antoinette put this spell in our heads that kept us from talking about what’d happened with anyone who hadn’t been involved. When I tested it—on Wildgrave Ozanne, who was probably always gonna remember me as that bell-cracked ginger—I felt my tongue turn to ice. No matter how hard I tried to say the word “dragon,” it dried out before it ever passed my lips.

  “Bathroom,” I finally managed, and the Wildgrave pointed me in the right direction. I was grateful to escape though I felt him staring at me as I fled.

  I didn’t like it much, but at least I could talk to Toverre about it still, and Adamo, if I needed to. And I submitted to it because I knew it was a necessary precaution; Antoinette was just doing what she had to. And maybe it’d make her crazy someday the way it’d made the Esar, but I hoped she was too strong to let that happen.

  After everything was tied up, and everyone was still walking around like ghosts mourning the end of th’Esar’s rule, Gaeth and Toverre and I had one last, late supper in Toverre’s room—since it was the cleanest—to celebrate Toverre’s success and the end of the only semester of schooling I’d ever be attending. We ate food we brought up from the dining hall, on Toverre’s clean little plates, and even though it was supposed to be a party, it felt more like a funeral.

  The entire week’d been leading up to something I knew I had to do—but there’d never been a good time for it, or even time for it at all since we’d all been so busy. If I didn’t get the chance to do it soon, I was gonna turn chicken. Finally, when everyone was finished eating and no one was talking, I decided it was now or never.

  “You mind excusing us for a bit, Gaeth?” I asked.

  Despite being a little slow sometimes, like a horse that was bred for racing but turned out placid, Gaeth always picked up on things when you least expected him to, and he never made things uncomfortable by asking too many questions.

  “I’ve been needing to pack, anyway,” he said. He folded his napkin—a habit he’d picked up from Toverre—and excused himself from the table.

  “But I was going to help him,” Toverre protested, already getting twitchy. Now, he was someone who could read all the books in all the libraries in all of Volstov but never know how to read a room. “Otherwise he’ll mix all his socks together.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Gaeth assured him. “I’ll just be taking them out again, anyway.”

  “But you’ll be taking them out in the wrong order,” Toverre said.

  “I’ll see you both later,” Gaeth said with a half-salute and slipped out of the room.

  “Well, I hope you’re happy,” Toverre told me peevishly. “Now he’ll be wearing mismatched socks for the rest of his life.”

  “You won’t even be with us at Antoinette’s place most of the time,” I pointed out. “You’ll be here, studying, terrifying professors with your handwriting.”

  “But I’ll know,” Toverre explained. “And what about when I come out to visit?”

  I was surprised he even wanted to—I could tell the dragons made him uncomfortable, though thank bastion he hadn’t given me tips yet on how to polish one. I couldn’t really blame him since to anyone on the outside, it was impossible to tell what they were thinking because no one else but us connected ones could hear ’em talking. And after the big display in the tunnels, we knew how dangerous they could be. Ironjaw was still recovering, so my girl told me, and being tetchy about it to boot. But she didn’t have the same constitution my girl had; Troius was probably going crazy from listening to all her complaints.

  Still, it was good to know there’d be something familiar amidst everything new, a face I recognized that’d remind me of who I used to be, not who I was changing into. Toverre was my best friend, and I wanted things to stay that way.

  One thing, however, had to change.

  “Hey,” I said, never one to put off what needed to be said, “don’t you think maybe we shouldn’t get married?”

  “Oh,” Toverre said, wilting but also looking very relieved. “Yes, I rather think that’s an excellent idea.”

  “All right, then,” I replied. “So it’s off. That’s a relief.”

  “You could have been a little more delicate about it,” Toverre added, reaching across the table to pile the crumbs from Gaeth’s dinner together, swiftly sweeping up the pile with his napkin. “Because I would have been a very good husband.”

  “I wouldn’t have been clean enough for you,” I replied.

  “I would have been clean enough for both of us,” Toverre said, but he was smiling wistfully. “This means I will never be married, you know.”

  “Me neither,” I told him, bristling. “I mean …”

  “You never know what could happen,” Toverre cautioned. “You’ll have thousands of offers—but it will take only one.”

  “It’s not something I wanna think about yet, anyway,” I said, wishing this conversation was over with already. Talking about suitors was making me uncomfo
rtable, all the more so because the idea wasn’t so fuzzy as it used to be. Had a face attached to it, so to speak, which made it all the more terrifying. “I’m eighteen, and I’ve got things I want to take care of. I don’t wanna be anybody’s fiancée. No offense. Though it was funny since everybody always looked shocked to hear it.”

  “Much to my embarrassment,” Toverre said.

  We sat in silence for a little while, and I thought about how free I felt but also how sad. It’d just been a fact of life for so long that being without it made me feel like I was adrift at sea. It was important though, mostly because I was positive now that neither of us thought about the other in that way—not even a little—and it didn’t seem right to force ourselves. It would’ve been like making the dragons live underground, when they needed room to stretch and breathe as much as anyone else.

  I’d get over it, sure, but I didn’t want Toverre to be lonely. Then again, I was doing this for his sake as much as for mine. He had Gaeth, to scare off or—this being the more frightening prospect—to latch onto in his own prickly way. I’d have to come up to the city proper to let ’em both know what’d happen if they messed things up. If Gaeth was worth it, he’d stay the course. But something told me he wasn’t the type to spook easy.

  “Thank you,” Toverre said finally, breaking the silence. “Mother will be so sad, though.”

  “Da’s going to be scandalized.” I sighed. “It just doesn’t seem fair to anyone else—if there ever is anyone else, I mean, so don’t get that look, ’cause so far there isn’t—to make ’em live with me having a fiancé when we both know that doesn’t mean anything to either of us.”

  “It did mean something,” Toverre corrected me, a stickler for details, no matter how sensitive the topic. “Just not what anyone else would assume a betrothal meant. I will say that if I had to be engaged to anyone, I count myself incredibly lucky that it was you.”