Steelhands (2011) (21 page)

With nobody to interrupt him, Balfour hesitated, then pressed on. “I received a summons while I was at the bastion, complete with a carriage and no explanation other than that the Esar needed to see me. It reminded me so much of when Rook … Anyway, I arrived there and—well, I suppose the first thing you should know is that I think he’s been firing his servants. There was barely anyone in the palace proper. He doesn’t trust the people around him, at least not to perform the same duties they once did, seeing as my escort into the audience chamber was the Esarina herself.
She
said it was because we were going to be discussing things of a sensitive nature, and the less other people knew about our meeting, the better, which I thought sounded a lot like the last thing a man hears before he’s carted off to some nameless prison to spend the rest of his days. But somehow—fortunately—it didn’t turn out like that.”

“So what
did
he want?” Luvander asked, leaning so far forward in his chair that I was sure he’d topple out of it at any moment.

“He wanted to talk to me about my hands,” Balfour said, staring at the table. I expected that was because he found it easier than staring at either of us. “He just … wanted to talk. He asked if they
obeyed
me, or if I’d been having any trouble with them. I told him that the most trouble I’d had was the attending magician up and vanishing, the same as I
told you only more polite, and he told me he’d assign a replacement. After that he had nothing further to say, and so I was sent home.”

“Sounds like there’s something you’re not telling us. No, that’s not how I want to put it,” I corrected myself, before Balfour’s face could seize up in hurt. “It sounds like there’s a missing piece to the story that maybe
you
don’t know even though you were there. When you think about it, getting the Esarina involved, that’s a whole lot of secrecy to talk about something that might just as well be common knowledge for everyone in Thremedon. You’ve got those hands. Nothing to be ashamed of, anyway.”

Balfour caught himself before he pulled them off the table and folded them, awkward and stiff, one on top of the other.

“They sing songs about you in lower Charlotte, you know,” Luvander said, scratching behind his ear. He probably thought that was going to be comforting. “ ‘Balfour Steelhands,’ they call you. You wouldn’t know, what with being so busy you never visit, but they do. Though sometimes, in the verses, it’s not your
hands
that are made of steel. But I assure you, all versions are extremely complimentary to your manhood.”

Balfour colored up to his ears. “I don’t know what to say,” he murmured.

“Don’t have to say anything,” Luvander replied. “But if you
did
come to visit, you’d never be lonely. That I
can
tell you.”

“Luvander,” I warned. I could look out for the runt of the litter now because this wasn’t wartime and he wouldn’t get it even worse from the boys once I turned my back.

Balfour rubbed his thumb against the tabletop. “I suppose my visit with the Esar might have coincided with his receiving news about what happened with Rook and Thom,” he said, still not looking at all comforted by the idea that someone out there might or might not’ve been composing a ditty to his balls. “My hands are made with the same principles in mind as the dragons, I’m told, even if they’re not precisely the same materials. I suppose in some ways it was an experiment, since to my knowledge it was the first time they’d ever attempted to create something on this scale, hands being so much smaller, after all. I don’t even know how they
work,
” he added, with a faint little smile. “Trust Thom to figure it out, though.”

“I don’t like it,” I said, reaching down to take a sip of my tea, mostly
lukewarm by now, and all the leaves swirling around in the bottom like a bad omen. “Sounds to me like
someone’s
trying to squeeze all the information outta one end without giving anything back, like he thinks he can get our help, then just shut us out of whatever he’s planning.”

“We don’t know he’s planning anything,” Luvander pointed out, his finger tracing over the pattern on his cup, gold leaf and green. It looked like the kind of thing that might’ve found its way to Thremedon on a pirate ship, maybe one captained by a mutual acquaintance, but I wasn’t about to ask and derail the whole conversation. “You know whose side I fall on should the situation warrant taking sides at all. But I just feel compelled—as a sensitive and sensible-minded creature—to remind you two headstrong louts that,
technically
speaking, we have no proof of anything. We have good common sense, and our instincts are a sight better than anyone else’s given word these days, but I believe that for the time being, the safest course of action would be to keep open minds. And perhaps more importantly, we keep our eyes open, as well.”

I shifted impatiently, like my girl when I’d told her we had a long night ahead of us, but I knew Luvander was right. I knew
we
were right, too, about th’Esar having something up his ermine sleeve, but moving without proof too soon might mean we’d never get another chance later.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about Proudmouth and the others, or what Rook must’ve seen there in the desert. If th’Esar was thinking he could get someone else to fly my girl …

“I’m not good at sitting around on my ass when there’s work to be done,” I said finally, the sound of my own voice drowning out too much heavy thinking. “I’ll be the first to admit it.”

Balfour let out a chuckle, then promptly looked horrified when we both looked around at him at the same time, like he hadn’t realized we could hear him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still smiling, “that wasn’t—I wasn’t laughing at you at all. I was just thinking that so much of diplomacy
is
sitting around and waiting to take action. I believe I’ve inadvertently been training for something like this all along.”

“You’ll have to share your secrets,” I told him, just a little proud in the midst of being irritated as a mule in fly season.

“I think I’ll write to Ghislain,” Luvander pitched in, tapping his
index finger against the table. “I’d been meaning to do it anyway, and this seems like the sort of thing he’d want to be here for. Of course, I haven’t any idea where he is or how long it’d take him to haul up the anchor and sail home, but it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? Who knows where the winds will take him.”

“About putting all that stuff in a letter,” I started, being sensitive about that particular way of conveying information.

Luvander scoffed, pushing his chair back from the table with a loud scrape. “If
that
was the only way I had of getting Ghislain to come back to Thremedon, do you think I’d ever see him at all? I have considerably more wiles in my arsenal than you give me credit for. I’m going to tell him that Balfour is taking regular meetings with the Esarina and I
think
that they’re carrying on an affair, but I need him to come back so we can squeeze the information out of him properly. Can’t do that without one man to hold and the other to tickle.”

Balfour blanched, the smile wiped clean from his face. I’d caught the boys doing that to him once, though I’d put a stop to it by telling them they were acting like schoolboys in love. At least, that particular torture was ended, anyway.

“Don’t you think that might also be considered … well,
slightly
provocative information, if someone else should open the letter?” Balfour finally asked.

“You’re confusing gossip with treason,” Luvander said, tugging his scarf up again. “When people read about an affair, the first thing they do is tell their neighbor,
not
th’Esar. And who wants to be the one to tell th’Esar his wife’s been stepping out on him with a younger man? No, thank you! But, if it makes you feel better, I won’t use your name.”

“Oh,
much
better,” Balfour said, with a hint of the brand-new edge he’d shown us earlier.

“Ghislain or no,” I said, steering the conversation back around with as much difficulty as I’ve ever had with Proudmouth when the sky started getting fire-crazy, “we sit on this until th’Esar gives us reason to do otherwise. We keep our eyes open, Luvander rakes in all the gossip, and we don’t do anything stupid. At least not straightaway. Agreed?”

“Of course,” Luvander agreed, as Balfour nodded beside him. “In strict confidence, I’m more concerned with what comes after that point.”

To be honest, so was I.

As much as I loathed the entire concept of a physician’s checkup—and I did, with both body and soul—I was beginning to feel that there was some personal slight in their choosing to overlook me. I’d had an initial appointment along with several other members of our dormitory floor, but they hadn’t even so much as drawn my blood! Rather I’d merely been asked about my medical history and summarily sent on my way. If that was to be the standard of care for those of us at the ’Versity, I was going to be sorely disappointed. It was practically no better than home.

Gaeth had been to at least two by my count, and Laure had returned from
her
first last week, only to be summoned back almost immediately.

“They probably just want to give me my blood back,” she’d told me, the image very nearly making me sick. “I’ll keep it in a little locket, like a lover’s trinket.”

All these trips to the physician were leaving me on my own with nothing to do and no one to talk to. I’d given up my trips along the Rue to follow Hal—that affair, it seemed, was doomed before it ever began—and Gaeth was as elusive as marsh fog, which had always disappointed me as a child for its ability to disappear right when you thought you’d caught up to it. I’d stopped by his room on multiple occasions to try to return the gloves he’d given me—surely his “mam” was suffering from very cold hands indeed, by now—but every time I’d knocked, there had only been silence. I’d even had Laure try it once or twice, so I knew he wasn’t avoiding me.

In the absence of her
and
Gaeth, there was no one in the first-year dormitory building who warranted any real or prolonged conversation, and not just because none of them seemed interested in talking to me.

If Laure was sick, then I was going to have to write home to my mother for reinforcements just to make sure she was taking care of herself properly. My Laure was the kind of person who’d walk outside in a snowstorm when she was running a fever just to cool down a bit, and she’d end up winning a few snowball fights with the local farmhands in the meantime just because she didn’t like staying indoors.

I looked out the window and cast my gaze onto the all-too-familiar and now-quite-dreary sight of the ’Versity Stretch in awful, never-ending winter. It was going to either snow or rain, because gray clouds had gathered above the buildings, casting everything in a miserable light. On the street below, men and women were hurrying to get their business over with before the storm began.

I did hope Laure wasn’t caught in it on her way back.

She never took an umbrella with her anywhere she went, much less a parasol, and her new coat would be absolutely soaked in a winter storm. My father and
her
father would both be very distressed indeed if I failed to protect my fiancée from the dangers of city life—even though I’d been doing my best with what little I could, and, though they didn’t know this, it was more often Laure who protected me than the other way around.

Lost in my idle thoughts, I didn’t hear the knock on the door—at least, I assumed there must have been one I missed—as a moment later Laure burst into the room, hair frazzled and coat undone.

“Don’t feel well,” she said.

A moment after that, she was sick all over my floor.

In the chaos that followed I managed, most bravely, to keep my wits about me. Nor did I panic, though I wanted to. I moved as in some kind of dream—or some kind of nightmare—guiding Laure from the doorway to my bed, avoiding the site of the mess completely.

I knew, of course, that no one who worked in the building would come to help me clean any of this up because in this place no one ever saw fit to clean anything. It was a losing battle, one that would require constant work and round-the-clock vigilance, and we were only simple students. It was up to me to make this better, as quickly and as quietly as possible.

I didn’t want to make Laure feel bad for having done it, now did I? Nor did I want any of it seeping into the floorboards.

Laure curled up in my bed and I closed the door, leaning back against it to gather my strength. Then I put on my two oldest pairs of gloves, one on top of the other—one couldn’t be too careful when it came to this sort of thing—and began to clean the floor with a mop and bucket I’d bought from the local bits-and-bats shop on the corner, for exactly this kind of unforeseen tragedy.

“Sorry ’bout the mess,” Laure moaned from the bed.

I closed my eyes, resigning myself to opening a window—for the smell, of course—which would let all the cold air in. And it was nearly impossible to build up any kind of warmth in my room, especially after the sun set.

“Don’t think about it for a second longer,” I said, trying to sound soothing and instead sounding strained. “You aren’t feeling well. What did the physicians say? Please take my mind off this awful task.”

“Didn’t say anything,” Laure replied. I heard her shifting in the bed, and when I looked back at her, she’d pulled the covers up over her head. The rest of her reply came out muffled, and I had to strain to hear it. “Didn’t tell me I was sick or anything, just sent me on my way and told me to come back next week.”

“What incompetents,” I said, feeling extremely indignant. “I’ll … I’ll write to your father at once.”

“Bastion, Toverre, don’t do that,” Laure replied. “I don’t want him worrying for nothing, or thinking I can’t take care of myself.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “This is hardly nothing.”

“Just felt a little dizzy, that’s all,” Laure insisted. “Bet I don’t even have a fever.”

With great care, I peeled my gloves off my hands and dropped them into the bucket, along with the rest of the mess I’d managed to clean up. It was all garbage now; I could never look at them again, much less wear them, without being reminded of this awful event. I crossed the room to open the window by the bed just a bare inch, then sat down on the mattress beside Laure, hesitating before I peeled the blanket back.