Steelhands (2011)

by Jaida Jones

  “He is the Esar,” Royston said with a shrug. He stood, crossing to the sink and pouring the coffee out, peering after it as it gurgled down the drain. “Shall I see what I can find out about Germaine? Other than her penchant for wearing brown?”

  “She’s got a skill for machinery, it seems,” I explained.

  “And so you are suspicious of her sudden appointment,” Roy concluded for me. “Since she is one of the Esar’s, it would make sense that—if he did anything about this new technology—he’d probably have her working on it right this very moment.”

  I polished off my sandwich, wiping the crumbs on my napkin. “That’d make sense,” I agreed. “Except why would he have her doing common physician’s appointments with ’Versity students?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Roy replied.

  “Well, he is,” I told him. “And you’d better watch out for your … boy, too, since apparently there’s some kind of fever going around.”

  “It means so much to me when you act concerned,” Roy said.

  “Doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,” I explained, “because I haven’t gotten sick in over fifteen years. But you—”

  “I don’t enjoy the feeling of congestion,” Roy replied tartly. “And once, when I sneezed, I exploded the living room.”

  “I wish I had you in my classroom for practical demonstrations,” I said. “If those pansy-sniffers thought they had reason to cry before, I’d like to see them after—”

  “No thank you,” Roy said, though I could see he was regretful. “As much as I enjoy teaching a good lesson, I’ve been in enough trouble for one lifetime. Still, I’ll see what I can do about this Margrave Germaine. Looking after ’Versity students and Balfour’s hands, you say?”

  “For whatever reason,” I replied.

  “Let’s hope I have more luck with this one,” Roy said.

  At that, we heard the door down the hall swing open and Hal’s voice calling for Royston to see if he was in. Something shifted on Roy’s face, a change from loneliness to contentment, and he didn’t even try to hide it.

  If Hal ever did anything to hurt that, I thought, I wasn’t just sitting by on the sidelines of Roy’s ill-fated love life anymore.

  “You look positively gruesome,” Roy said, snapping me out of my vengeful thoughts. “Is something else wrong?”

  “It’s that coffee stink,” I told him, and went to dump the contents of my own cup down the drain.

  LAURE

  Toverre was supposed to meet me for supper, at which point I supposed I’d apologize to him for being sharp-tempered, but only if he’d apologize to me. Though it was hard to explain—even to myself—what I wanted him to apologize for.

  But the more time I spent in the ’Versity, counting up the number of lecturers that were male versus them that were female—and the more time I spent seeing how some of the pretty students flirted with the professors to bring up their marks—the more frustrated I became. Even Toverre, with his picky little self and his barbed words, had a better chance of being who he wanted to be—whatever that was—because no matter which way I looked at it, I was only a girl. And being one of those meant using your tits more than your brains. At least, that was what everybody expected of you.

  Back home it hadn’t mattered so much. Or maybe I’d just been too busy raking hay and doing everything Da expected of me to notice. But in Thremedon, where the girls did their hair and their rouge just so every day, so few of them coming to classes and those who did spending more time passing notes with the boys than listening, I wondered why I’d even been invited to come in the first place.

  It was all just a show, and flirting with that dorm master only served to remind me of what was expected from me. I didn’t just want to be Toverre’s wife.

  What I did want to be was harder to decide, but I was still young, wasn’t I? The city meant a whole world of options I hadn’t even known about before I’d left home, and the idea that I wouldn’t get to experience any of them was too cruel. I wanted the freedom to be able to decide.

  My mood was made worse by everything that had happened with Gaeth, and remembering that dark metal voice echoing through my dreams. Gaeth had heard it, too—he’d put it down on paper, in his own hapless way—and now I couldn’t pretend anymore that it hadn’t happened.

  Of all the ways to wind up equal to a boy, hearing voices definitely wasn’t top or bottom on my list. So I was in a pretty foul mood for more reasons than one, and at least Toverre had gone against all his natural instincts and somehow refrained from asking me if I was on my monthlies. Which, thankfully, I wasn’t.

  That was another thing about boys: No one assumed they blew a gasket for any reason other than they were just really upset. They were allowed to be, and nobody blamed where the moon was in its cycle, or whether or not they had the ill fortune of leaking from their privates. It was plain unfair.

  I heard dainty footsteps coming up behind me in the hall and made up my mind once and for all to be forgiving—or to at least give Toverre a chance by begging for my forgiveness.

  But it wasn’t Toverre at all. Instead, it was one of the little old owl-women who worked in the post center, where I mailed all my letters home and sometimes got a package back, when I actually remembered to check my cubbyhole. I wondered if she was coming to tell me that I’d forgotten to pick up some surprise from Da and the food had all rotted, but she didn’t look as mad as I was expecting, so it couldn’t have been that.

  It’d happened once before, and I’d tried to tell Da that you couldn’t just send a good cut of meat in the mail and hope it’d come through all right on the other end. He never was that good at listening, though, and he wanted to make sure I was keeping my strength up. Little did he know I’d’ve had to cook the thing in the fireplace.

  “Hello, Laurence,” said the woman. She was Barn Owl, because of how the way her hair framed her face reminded me of one. The other two were Snowy Owl and Screech Owl, both for reasons that were pretty obvious if you knew anything about owls. “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner.”

  I hadn’t gotten anything to eat yet, so I didn’t see how she could’ve been, and I told her so.

  “Not at all,” I said, as polite as you please. If I’d been standing, it would’ve gone nicely with a proper curtsy.

  “I have this card for you from the physicians’ administrator,” Barn Owl said, pulling a stiff white card out of her pocket. “Now, you know how we normally don’t make deliveries, but post pickup’s closed for the evening, and they indicated to me that it was rather urgent. Given past precedent … the meat incident … well, you understand.”

  “Sure,” I told her, distracted by the appointment card in my hand. I could recognize Margrave Germaine’s blocky, thick handwriting by now, though that didn’t make it a familiar comfort. I wasn’t suspicious like Toverre, and I didn’t believe in being afraid of something unless it gave me good reason, but I knew right away that I didn’t want anything to do with that physician’s appointment.

  Maybe I’d been feeling a little homesick, but being sent home for fever just seemed like quitting to me. And, most of all, I didn’t want to hear those voices again. Once was a fluke, but twice meant you were definitely going crazy.

  “Have a nice evening, Laure,” Barn Owl told me.

  “You, too,” I said, as she turned and went back in the direction she’d come from. With her gliding off through the mess hall, I got the impression she was about to hunt down and feast on some helpless mice.

  That thought made me grin, at least, before I turned my attentions back to the card in my hand.

  I felt the same way about it as Toverre would’ve felt about a dead roach. I wished I could just will it out of existence by wishing hard enough.

  After everything that’d happened to Gaeth, I didn’t want to go back. It was all too eerie, and I didn’t want to know any more about it just as much as I didn’t want to be a part of it. It didn’t make sense to keep seeing a doctor
who made you sick, not better. Besides which, I was just plain spooked.

  That was the truth of it, and I couldn’t hide that from myself, let alone anyone else. I might’ve had fevers before, but I’d never heard voices—clanking, whispery things that murmured to me in my dreams, right before I woke up. Despite how skeptical he was, I felt certain even Toverre would’ve heard voices if he’d been called in for a checkup like the rest of us. Whether or not he’d’ve been able to sort them out from all the other voices in his head—telling him to pick this up and scrub that stain and make sure those matched—was another matter entirely.

  Maybe Margrave Germaine had learned from someone that Toverre’s head was too crowded for another talker, and that was why they hadn’t even bothered calling him in past the first screening.

  Like he knew I was thinking about him, Toverre decided to take that exact moment to show up, right before I could drive myself too crazy thinking in circles. Sometimes it just helped to talk to someone—or, in Toverre’s case, to listen to someone else talk. His was one voice I recognized, and as annoying as it sometimes was, it comforted me because it reminded me of home.

  Toverre was carrying a tray that had all my favorites: meat and bread and cheese, and he looked a little squirrelly around the eyes, so I could tell he was gearing up to apologize. He was the good kind of sorry—as far as Toverre being sorry went, anyway, coming to say so before he circled back around to being awful again.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting the tray at me and looking uncomfortable.

  I took a piece of cheese, popping it in my mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “All right,” I said, accepting the offering. “You can sit down.”

  He tugged a napkin out of somewhere to clean off the seat across from me, then sat down in it very neatly. “Oh good,” he said. “I thought you were going to be in a snit. I thought maybe you had—”

  “Don’t say it,” I warned him.

  Quickly, Toverre switched tactics. “What’s that in your hand?” he asked. “I hope you aren’t soliciting men vis-à-vis their business cards?”

  Because that sounded so much like me. Sometimes I didn’t know where Toverre got his wild ideas from. “Got a summons for another checkup,” I told him. No point in mincing words, and making Toverre grovel at my feet for forgiveness had never really been my style to begin with.

  Toverre turned white—whiter than usual—leaning closer over the table.

  “You aren’t serious,” he said in a grave whisper.

  “Think I’d joke about something like this?” I asked him, shoving the card in his direction. “See for yourself.”

  “Oh dear,” Toverre said, reaching for it, then drawing back quickly, not even willing to touch it. He probably thought he could catch the fever from it, or at least catch himself his own appointment. “Oh, Laure, no! I can’t have you going. We don’t know what … what those awful physicians might do to you this time. After the state you returned in from your last visit … Not to mention whatever’s happened to Gaeth …”

  “Do you think I don’t know all that?” I asked.

  “Well then, you mustn’t,” Toverre replied.

  “I can’t just not go,” I said, though the idea was sounding pretty good to me right about now. “They’d know where to find me; all my information’s on some kind of file. What’s to stop ’em from just showing up and carting me off? Unless,” I added, “you want to run away with me to Molly. But I hear it gets dirty down there.”

  “There are laws against that sort of thing, I should hope,” Toverre said, looking scandalized.

  “Bet there aren’t any rules if they say it’s for your own good,” I replied, slicing off another piece of cheese and cramming it into my mouth. “I’m just a girl, after all. Nothing more than a simple ’Versity student, too. How’m I supposed to know how to take care of myself? Better I let these fine Thremedon physicians do it for me. Who’s anyone going to believe, them or me?”

  Toverre bit his lip, looking uncertain of how to answer me. I took advantage of his silence, ripping open a roll and filling it with sliced meat. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until the food was in front of me. And Toverre didn’t even have anything to say about my manners, which meant he must’ve been troubled indeed.

  “I’ll go with you, then,” he said at last, though I knew just how he felt about being stuck in a physician’s room. It was almost sweet of him to offer, even sweeter still for him to think he was capable of helping me. “I am your fiancé, after all. Surely there are some rights I might take advantage of. Perhaps I’ll pretend that I’m too simple to understand the particulars of a checkup—I’ll assume that your honor is being violated and insist that I must be allowed to accompany you. Otherwise, I’ll have to write home about this, no matter what you say. Doesn’t that sound intimidating?”

  It did, but probably not for the same reasons he was imagining.

  As much as I appreciated Toverre’s offer of self-sacrifice—and I did; it was enough to sweeten my sour-pickled heart—I was pretty sure that the only thing worse than being in there by myself would be if Toverre came along.

  I could just picture him stopping Margrave Germaine before every step of the procedure, wanting to know if everything’d been sterilized, and if the sterilization’d been done properly, and who’d done it, and could he speak with them, too? They’d remove him by the scruff of the neck like an unwanted kitten, and in the end I’d be grateful, preferring the fever dreams to this new nightmare.

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him around a mouthful of the sandwich I’d made.

  “Think about it?” Toverre repeated, like I’d decided to take a vacation from my senses.

  “It’s my appointment, ain’t it?” I asked, folding up the rest of my cheese in a napkin for later. I always got peckish around midnight, especially when I was studying. “It’s not for another few days. I’ve got time; I’ll think of something.”

  “You’re not really considering going by yourself, are you?” Toverre asked. “Not when we still don’t know what happened to Gaeth?”

  “He went home,” I told him, hoping that by saying it, I could convince myself.

  “A very likely story,” Toverre replied. “Not without all his things, he didn’t. I don’t think our friend Gaeth was all that well-off, Laure. You could tell by his handwriting he had no kind of education. And the state of that winter coat …! He wouldn’t leave all his clothes and his best pair of boots behind.”

  He was right. Just thinking about that empty room made chills run up and down my spine.

  “How about this: I won’t do anything without running it by you first,” I offered. It wasn’t exactly the bargain Toverre’d been looking for, but at least it was the truth. “I’ll start right now: I’m going for a walk to eat some cheese and clear my head.”

  “We do have exams to study for,” Toverre cautioned, staying planted in his seat while I stood up. There were crumbs in my skirts, and I shook them out onto the floor, Toverre quickly pulling his boots away so that nothing would get on them.

  “I’m horseshit on tests whether I study or not,” I said. We both knew it, so there was no point in being polite about it. “And I’ve got other things to worry about.”

  “I could always make you up some quick-cards,” Toverre said, thinking it over. “They did wonders for your grammar last year.”

  “Sure, okay,” I said, since I knew the only thing he liked better than studying was proving he could teach the same stuff to me, too. “You do that. And I’ll come back to get ’em when I’m done with my walk.”

  “You aren’t going to go somewhere dangerous?” Toverre asked, recalling, no doubt, my threat of running away to Molly from before.

  “I’ll take this butter knife with me,” I offered, picking it off the table and making like I was going to hide it in my sleeve. Toverre looked so distressed that it wasn’t even any fun, and I dropped the knife back onto my plate. “Just walking along the ’Versity Stretch,” I pr
omised. “I’m not that foolish. Not yet, anyways.”

  Toverre’d made me promise just after we’d arrived—just after we’d nearly been robbed blind—that I wouldn’t walk around the city at night by myself. It was too dangerous for young women of a certain age, and even though I could take care of my honor just fine, I knew Toverre’s delicate constitution wouldn’t be able to handle all that worrying. That left the ’Versity grounds for me to roam, however, streets winding in and out of all the mismatched buildings, each one of them looking like it had been built for a different street.

  It comforted me to walk routes I already knew, and the cold night air was bracing—not frigid and unbearable the way Toverre said. It was a crowded time of night, with laughter bursting up off every street corner. There were even night classes for the upperclassmen going on in some of the lecture halls, and I found myself standing in front of Cathery without ever having plotted out a real destination.

  There was no one in the city I could really talk to, without being careful not to make them worry too much about my sanity. In fact, there was barely anyone I felt comfortable talking to about the weather, except for Toverre. There was only one person I could think of who might listen, and ex–Chief Sergeant Professor Specialpants Adamo’d made the mistake of telling me where his office was. He was double-cursed, since I kind of thought of him as the sort of man who’d clear out a cluttered head in no time.

  It had to be him.

  Before I’d had time to talk myself out of it, I was inside the building, the door blowing shut behind me with a sudden gust of wind.

  “Cold day,” said the desk clerk, smiling at me in a familiar way.

  Not as cold as me, I thought, brushing past him with a grunt of agreement.

  It took me a few tries to find Adamo’s office, because I didn’t remember the number Radomir’d given me off the top of my head—it was written down in my notes somewhere, but I hadn’t thought to bring those with me. Bastion, I hadn’t even been planning on coming at all. I should’ve been discouraged when I opened the door on a private session between a tall professor with graying hair and a young man about four years my senior, both of them coloring all kinds of purple when I barged in and interrupted them.