Steelhands (2011) (5 page)

“What a wonderful idea,” I said. “I commend you for your sharp thinking.”

Privately, I thought to myself that such sharp thinking would have been better appreciated almost two hours ago—about the point at which my stomach finally gave up growling.

In the Airman, one could have meals at any time one wished to, provided one was also prepared to share one’s meal at least three ways, depending on who was awake at the time. Then there were the boys complaining that there wasn’t enough, that it tasted like pig’s shit, that they’d chipped a tooth and how did I intend to pay for it? Despite all the talk, the bastion could also be silent on occasion; not so with the Airman. So it was not that I preferred providing breakfast and lunch and dinner for men just as picky about their food as the Arlemagne were—and the Arlemagne loathed Volstovic fare, especially Volstovic attempts to serve traditional Arlemagne dishes. Nostalgia hadn’t taken hold of me quite so badly, at least not yet.

“Don’t commend me,” Chanteur suggested. He stood in his chair; it creaked almost as loudly as his back. “Commend some better chefs, that’s what I say.”

“My lord,” I told Chanteur, bowing stiffly as he brushed past me on his way out. “It has been a pleasure, as always.”

What an excellent liar I was.

The diplomats all filed out after their leader. They were dressed fashionably, a few of them absolutely reeking of perfume. Those who didn’t smelled distressingly of other things—a sharp body odor that reminded me of myself after a particularly grueling flight, only with less oil and more human sweat. I cleared my throat, keeping my head down and my thoughts to myself. When they’d arrived in Thremedon, they’d been expecting a cold winter. What they hadn’t been expecting was a hot room in a bastion tower, and I didn’t envy them their brocade coats and stiff ruffles.

How I ever managed to be given this position, I had no idea. It was because I wasn’t as slippery as Luvander, who’d managed to wriggle free of all obligations, or as intimidating as Ghislain, who’d said he planned on heading out to sea, and no one, it seemed, felt like arguing with him. Adamo and I had unfortunately been caught up in some bizarre, terrible system of being rewarded as living heroes.

And as for Rook … I had been informed of his progress here and there by Thom, who seemed to be weathering those troubles with his usual distress and stubbornness.

“Lost in thought, I see?” a familiar voice said beside me. “Or is it simply that your stomach has digested itself? I’d personally eat a bale of oats right now, fine cooking aside.”

Now that Thom was gone for parts unknown, fighting his way through the desert and dealing with the discomfort of sand in his trousers, there were few people left in Thremedon I could consider my friends. The man standing in front of me was one of them, I supposed, partly because we’d known each other in school when we were younger, and partly because he’d managed to adopt me diplomatically on my first day of talks. In class, we’d always conducted a particular rivalry for top marks, but in the practice of diplomacy I was at last willing to concede my defeat; his years of experience in the field were more suited for this than my own.

Even if I sometimes
wished
I might have conducted the talks from atop Anastasia—then I surely would have had an advantage. At the very least, it might have hurried the pace along.

Still, in the absence of my dragon, I was glad to have a childhood companion at my side. We’d fallen out of touch when I’d moved to Thremedon and into the Airman and he’d remained in the country, but the years between us didn’t seem to have made things too abruptly awkward. He’d even asked me how I was with only the barest of glances at my hands and never shied away from shaking when we met.

It was comforting, in its own way.

“Troius,” I said, smiling this time not because I was thinking of—or like—my old comrades in arms, but rather because of some more present emotion.

“You still remember my name,” Troius said. “That’s an
excellent
sign. Quick! To the kitchens, before we lose our minds to starvation.”

“Were I truly experiencing starvation, I don’t think my first concern
would be my mind,” I confessed, falling into step with him despite my better judgment.

The men from Arlemagne didn’t like to see too many of us conferring together at once. It made them feel plotted against, or so Troius had informed me on our third day of talks when I’d asked him why he didn’t see fit to take his meals with the rest of us. Personally, while I understood the need for diplomacy now more than ever—the war effort was over for the present, but one never knew what the future might hold—I didn’t particularly enjoy all the conceding to Arlemagne comfort.

But then, I supposed, that was why I had been given this task and not Adamo. I was better bred for it, and my nature was such that—outwardly, at least—I seemed more eager to please.

I could think of thirteen other men who would never have bothered, though of course it was because of one of them that we had to be so bastion-blasted cautious with the Arlemagne all the time.

That, and the business with the Arlemagne prince. As far as our foreign friends were concerned—and I use “friends” in the loosest sense of the word—Volstov was the equivalent of a pretty whore and Thremedon what lay beneath her layered skirts. They were humoring us with the talks, perhaps, but they showed no signs of truly respecting us.

Nor would they send us their royalty again, but that was a different matter. On that front I supposed I didn’t blame them.

I had learned to live without respect before, and certainly my life would continue without it in the future. Of all the airmen, I was the only one who could count himself a member of the
second
generation. My brother had died in an air raid against the Ke-Han, brought down somewhere in the skies over Lapis, and it had been all the others could do just to get his dragon back in one piece. That was how they’d explained it to my parents, and again in a letter from the Esar himself—with a painful lack of detail. No body had ever been recovered. It simply wasn’t worth the risk to the other dragons and their riders to try to find him.

Indeed, Chanteur’s rudeness paled in comparison to the arsenal of hazing leveled against me once before by the other airmen—vicious, personal reminders that I was not my brother and never would be, as though I hadn’t enough of those on my own. It had been in some ways easier to deal with than the simple grief I’d seen on my parents’ faces,
quiet and resigned every time that they remembered I
was
Balfour, and not someone else entirely.

By comparison, a blue handprint on the face didn’t seem all that bad. But I
wouldn’t
miss all the piss in my boots. A man had to have some standards.

“You look like the dog’s breakfast,” Troius said, steering me through the seemingly endless halls. “Don’t worry, things are bound to look up sooner or later. They can call us a corrupting influence all they like, but their men visit the ’Fans often enough, don’t they? Nothing says hospitality like satin sheets and low lighting. We’ll welcome them into our beds and eventually find places in their hearts.”

“If that’s the case, then I imagine they’ll want to do some redecorating at the bastion,” I said, trying and failing not to picture it. I had to suppress a curious giggle that did not sound quite like me.

Diplomatic venues were largely the same in every country, I imagined; all around us were soothing neutral colors and no decorations that could be considered offensive to anyone, no matter what their heritage might be. I’d considered it a privilege when the talks had first started—no one I knew could lay claim to ever having entered the bastion for anything other than criminal charges—and I’d even written a letter to Thom proclaiming as much.

He was very interested in the procedures, if distracted somewhat by his own diplomatic proceedings with Rook.

Now all I could really think was that it was
much
different from a building decorated with naughty portraitures that looked as though they’d been drawn by someone with either very little understanding of anatomy or a generous overestimation of the weight a woman’s back could support. Not to mention, there was no Madeline here. The Airman’s own personal mascot had started out as a papier-mâché bust of someone’s ideal woman but had gradually grown to a full-size mannequin. When the boys had run out of materials, they’d started using Raphael’s books, which I’d always felt lent her a dignified air. There was ancient poetry on her breasts, and a line of translation from the Old Ramanthe over her upper lip that Ghislain always said looked just like a healthy mustache.

The closest thing to any kind of mascot in the bastion was a marble carving of a lion, whose creator had had no flair for humor or personality. The stone beast practically scowled.

Troius laughed as we rounded the next corner and a symphony of smells assaulted me. All at once, I felt my mouth begin to water. No matter what Chanteur said about our food, I found the chefs at the bastion dining hall to be quite satisfactory. I was even managing to put on a little weight, which my physician said would serve me well after all that I had been through.

“Diplomats
are
whores, in a sense,” Troius said, taking a tray from the clean stack in the corner. “We make concessions and do our best to wheedle and flatter our way into a better position. Plus, we negotiate the price before we’ll get into bed with anyone. It’s just common sense, really—but don’t tell anyone I ever said something like that.”

“I’m beginning to regret my career in politics,” I said, eyeing the bean stew and a basket of freshly made crusty white rolls.

“It’s not
so
bad,” Troius reasoned, serving himself some of the sliced ham from another tray. “Look on the bright side: You could’ve been sent out with that envoy to the Ke-Han. That didn’t turn out so well for them, did it? Though I suppose making it back all in one piece says something. Although I
did
hear Margrave Josette came back with a little souvenir of her own.”

“Don’t gossip,” I said, spooning up my much-belated lunch even as I cast an eye about for empty tables. “She could be here.”

“It’s only the truth,” Troius reasoned. “Though her souvenir could likely snap my neck like a toothpick, so you’re probably right. Discretion it is. Lunch is on me, by the way.”

“Thank you,” I said, too surprised to do anything but take him up on the offer.

Privately, I couldn’t help but disagree with his statement, even if I knew exactly how foolish it sounded, even in my own head. The danger in Ke-Han had been quite real, and to desire
that
was the mark of a certified lunatic, with papers to attest to his condition. Still, the idea of facing down a mad emperor in a foreign land that was struggling to rebuild itself sounded slightly more interesting than staring across the table at Chanteur’s red face day in and day out, while he feigned forgiveness for all our political transgressions like a country lord dangling a carrot in front of his mount’s depressed nose.

I’d been raised—or at least I’d been made a man—on a steady regimen of simply not knowing when my life would be forfeit. At any moment,
any one of us airmen could have died. In the end many of us had, and I hadn’t yet gotten the opportunity to ask those yet living how they coped without a steady diet of adrenaline on a daily basis.

We never saw each other all that much—I suspected it was because it was a little too painful for us.

I was in some ways a recovering addict—an analogy I disliked immensely but one I seemed resigned to making all the same. I
would
consult the others one day, and perhaps thereby learn the key to living a normal life.

Chief Sergeant—now just Adamo—would certainly have the answers if no one else did.

The eatery was crowded, though not so crowded as it would’ve been hours ago at a proper time for lunch. There were long tables set out for groups, if they wished to continue chewing at their problems at the same time as their lunch, and the smaller tables for what I viewed as much saner folk—those who wished to take their meals alone or with a friend, forgetting all about politics in the meantime.

Perhaps that meant my limitations were showing, but I didn’t know how else to get through the day. Truly, if I didn’t have meals to break up the monotony of diplomacy, I would surely lose my mind.

That was how I’d word my next letter to Thom, I decided. It sounded suitably dramatic, and I hoped it would make him laugh as his letters did for me, describing in great detail his trials and his own peace talks with a single man instead of a nation.

I couldn’t imagine brokering any kind of personal treaties with Rook, but then, Thom had blood on his side. If anyone was stubborn enough to accomplish it, he was.

“I have a question for you,” Troius announced after we’d seated ourselves, and once I’d struggled somewhat setting out my napkin on my lap. Unfortunately, it was at the precise moment when I’d taken too large a bite of my stew. I managed not to choke, however, and instead chewed carefully before I swallowed, eyes watering from how hot it was.

“Ask away,” I said, thinking the better of reaching for some water. It was possible I would knock the glass over; my fingers worked poorly when my mind was otherwise engaged.

“Well, let me preface it by saying I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,”
Troius said, instantly rendering me uncomfortable already. “You know that. And certainly don’t feel as if you have to answer or anything, I’m just curious, and what with the cold snap hitting and all … How
are
your hands feeling?”

I clenched them involuntarily, though the gesture was a natural one and not an accident, the way it had been when I’d first gotten them. They responded in the same way my old hands had, but they didn’t
feel
the same. I’d set up several mental blocks about them straightaway. There had been magicians to help me out of that bad habit, of course, but Troius was right. The cold
did
make a difference. They ached at the scars some nights, and if I accidentally touched my face after walking through the streets at night I got a frightful shock, even
with
the gloves, but it wasn’t so bad as to be intolerable.