Steelhands (2011) (56 page)

“Try this,” I said, handing it over so that Balfour—our key man—might do the honors.

He took it, looking mildly baffled, the metal making a dull sound against his metal fingers beneath the fabric of his gloves and a slight magnetic pull causing the other keys in the rings to be drawn toward his palm. Then he set the key into the lock. I held my breath as he turned it, and sighed with relief when the tumblers shifted, the lock falling open with a
click
.

“Thank you,” Balfour said, straightening up and returning the key rings to his pocket.

“We’re
sure
this one’s not a
velikaia?
” Ghislain asked, peering at me skeptically.

“You would be the first to know,” I assured him, quite cheekily for me, but I was privately rather elated with my small success—no doubt the only assistance I would be able to offer for the rest of the night.

The door swung open with a gentle creak, and the six of us stepped inside. Next to me, Laure gasped, and Balfour stopped dead, as though he’d been transformed into his statue—or at least a smaller version of it.

It appeared to me that we had stumbled upon some kind of enormous workroom. Set throughout the room were long, rectangular tables made of stone and framed in wood. They were surrounded by tall stools, likely for whatever workers frequented this factory to sit upon. Against the far wall was the largest assortment of tools I’d ever seen in
one place. The sight would’ve made a man like my father very happy—he imagined himself to be a talented tinkerer—but I couldn’t even begin to name half of them. I recognized dozens of pairs of pliers in a variety of sizes, as well as a hammer for sheeting metal and some kind of hacksaw. One of the tables had a dreadful mess on it, large silver and gold machine cogs littered across its surface and a long twisting pipe that looked as though it’d been bent nearly in two.

“This … This is the kind of stuff that Germaine woman had in her spare room,” Laure said, sounding weak. Slowly, she lowered her hands from her mouth, looking as though she expected the woman in question to leap from the shadows and drag her off to her offices. As if a simple physician was all we had to worry about now. “I knew I was getting a bad feeling from her, I just never …”

“I’ve
been
here,” Balfour said, whiter even than Raphael now, which was a feat in and of itself. “I thought it looked familiar before, but I was so distracted—I must’ve come in a different way, but this room … I’ve been in this room before. It’s where Margrave Germaine worked on my hands. Somehow, I’d thought it was part of the palace. But they must have moved me.”

Unaffected by our companions’ commentary, Luvander strode over to the table with the pieces lying on it, picking up one of the cogs and tracing his fingers thoughtfully over its sharp edges.

“Hard to tell what’s what in all this,” he said quietly. “I feel as though I’ve walked in on Yesfir naked.”

“It’s more than just material for my hands,” Balfour admitted.

“Unless the Margrave planned on making you a very
large
pair,” Luvander agreed. “With wings.”

He held up a finely hammered sheet of metal, about the span of my forearm, which curved in the middle into a sharp hook of metal, reminding me of a talon. The edges were filigreed, and there was a sort of frame to it as well of fine, thin steel, like thick rope wire.

“Should I feel like a proud uncle?” Luvander asked, face red with emotion. It wasn’t joy, I realized, but mottled anger. “So many little ones to be.”

“It doesn’t make any sense for them to be this size,” Balfour added. “Does it?”

“Would anyone mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s clear,” Ghislain said flatly. “The Dragon Corps is being rebuilt.”

“And th’Esar clearly wishes to play dollhouse with them,” Luvander concluded. “He’s had them all made in miniature. Isn’t that sweet?”

Even I was hit hard enough by this latest discovery to fall gravely silent; I couldn’t imagine how these men were feeling, observing what had once been their lives turned into scrap metal upon the table.

But for what purpose was all this gathered here?
I wondered, glancing over the collection of gleaming metal parts. Some were clearly recognizable, like Luvander’s wing: a claw here, a jaw there, even a curved, ridged tail. The rest was just guts and scrap, I could only assume, thousands of cogs and gears—the human equivalent would be a patient sliced open upon the autopsy table. I shuddered.

“We shouldn’t be in here,” Laure said. When I turned to look at her—grateful to have something else to focus on other than the grisly sight before me—I saw that there was a faraway look in her eyes. It seemed that she, too, was hearing what Balfour had, earlier in the hallway. “We can’t get distracted. We’ve gotta find Adamo before those bastards upstairs wake up and come looking for who clobbered ’em.”

“They won’t wake up for a long time,” Raphael said cheerfully.

“But,” Ghislain added, “I take your meaning.”

He left the room quickly—and I had to wonder if it was practicality that impelled him to leave or some deeper compulsion. Balfour was still staring around in horror, and Luvander’s face had been transformed by serious emotion. He hadn’t yet put the wing down.

“Come on,” Raphael said almost gently. “We’ll come back later.”

“Adamo will know what to do,” Balfour agreed, more like he was trying to convince himself than reassure his companions.

Laure touched a rounded piece of metal on the table, then jerked back as though she’d been burned. “Come on,” she agreed, and stormed out of the room.

I was forced to scurry after her, the other men somehow able to extricate themselves in order to follow me. Ghislain closed the big door behind us without a sound. “Another stairway out here,” he said, knocking gently at the wall in front of him. There was a groaning sound, like stone scraping against stone, and what had appeared moments earlier to be a solid wall swung away from us, revealing an even smaller, darker staircase. “Same formation,” Ghislain added.

He had to crouch in order to fit; moments later, he disappeared into the darkness. Balfour moved after him, white around the mouth but
with unwavering purpose. Laure looked more than ever like she belonged with them—a stalwart soldier heading off to battle—and I reached out to grab hold of her, wishing she could transfer some of her strength to me.

We left the comforting light behind us and were swallowed up by the cool, deep dark. The sound of dripping water was growing louder—perhaps that was what Balfour and Laure had heard?—and I felt something drop onto the top of my head, causing my stomach to turn over like an omelet in the skillet.

There would be no bath in the world long or cleansing enough to rid me of the crawling feeling all over my skin.

At least the staircase was a short one. I missed my footing, so sure of another step to follow the last one, and Laure steadied me but also clamped a hand over my mouth.

I could hear voices now, though not clearly. They were muffled—coming from around the corner—but the harder I listened, the more clearly I recognized them.

One was the unforgettable bass of Professor ex–Chief Sergeant Owen Adamo, though he was doing his best to speak quietly. The other had a country accent better suited to softer tones, and my eyes widened like teatime saucers. Though I hadn’t heard that voice in weeks, I was still able to identify it. Somewhere close by, in this twisted prison compound, was the missing ’Versity student whose mystery had haunted my waking hours.

It was, without question, our friend Gaeth.

Leaving a man to stew with his own thoughts and no one else to talk to was a common tactic in prisons everywhere. Troius probably thought he’d invented it, and wherever he was—having tea parties with his big metal dollies, no doubt—he was probably congratulating himself for a job well done.

What he didn’t bank on was the cut on the back of my neck, the scab just now congealing, and my conversational partner in one of the cells a ways down from mine. All that was proving to be a real good distraction.

 … blood … again …
Antoinette’s voice whispered, faint as the wind howling outside a window, only the ghostly noise was right between my ears.

It took me a moment to realize what she wanted, but less time to do her bidding. When someone knew what they were talking about, you didn’t stop to ask them stupid questions.

That’s better
, Antoinette said, once there was blood all over my neck again.
You’re much cleverer than Royston would have had me believe
.

He likes to talk me down
, I explained.
Doesn’t want to raise anyone’s expectations
.

Enough small talk
, Antoinette replied.
I’ve done my best to bring a rescue party. Is there anything in your cell you might use as a weapon?

I glanced around but without high hopes. Troius respected me—though his respect wasn’t worth the dirt on the back of a ha’penny—too much to leave me with anything I could use as tool for my own escape. But he’d given me that little chair to sit on. While I wouldn’t be able to break any doors down with it, I could sure as shit get a few good blows before the wood splintered.

Not ideal, but I’ve got something
, I told her.

I have a chair as well
, Antoinette said.
How inglorious this will be
.

Ain’t about the glory
, I said, recalling just how often I’d given that same speech to my boys, and a couple of the less practical ones in particular.

How true
, Antoinette said. Something about her voice gave me the idea that she might’ve been smiling.
There is very little glory in being taken captive by someone you once considered an ally. Even worse when it’s a friend
.

I sure would’ve liked to ask her more about
that
one, maybe ascertain whether all that shit Royston’d told me about Antoinette and th’Esar was really true. I wasn’t exactly one for gossip, but if she’d been his lover before, something told me
that
relationship was about to get colder than the Cobalts’ highest peak. There weren’t enough flowers and chocolates and even fine jewelry to make a woman forgive you after this kind of betrayal. But before I could get another thought-word in, I heard footsteps approaching down the hall.

Someone’s coming
, I told her.
Think that might be your rescue party?

No
, Antoinette said.
It isn’t them. All I can sense is the stink of that
woman’s
magic
.

I stilled, waiting for Troius to present himself—maybe with his dragon, this time, just to impress upon me one more time who was who in these negotiations. He was probably coming back to see if I’d made my choice yet, thinking he could lean on me a little bit. As if there was any real choice to make. A man needed to be decisive in order to be a good soldier, but that didn’t mean his decisions didn’t trouble him at all.

I was so focused on Troius and how much I disliked him—and whether or not I could get away with clanging him on the head with my chair straightaway—that I didn’t realize until the last second that it
wasn’t
Troius coming for me.

Instead, it was some kid I didn’t recognize, closer to Laure’s age than Troius’s. He was tall and a little vacant-looking—and there was just something familiar about his face that I couldn’t
quite
peg down. It niggled at me, the way so many things were doing lately, distracting me.

They had the boy dressed all in green like the rest of these Dragon Guard piss-buckets, and I figured maybe that was what was messing with my perception, since the uniform didn’t suit him at all.

“Professor Adamo?” he whispered.

All at once, it hit me like shrapnel kicked up during one of Ghislain’s crusher-runs. This was one of
my
kids—maybe even the one Laure’d told me was missing. So I’d been wrong about them being shirkers—they hadn’t been going out with the fever at all. They’d been “disappearing” and landing in prison, same as I had.

I stood up, getting as close to the cell door as I could without leaving my shackled leg behind.

“Don’t suppose you could come in here?” I asked. “Might be more comfortable for the two of us.”

“They don’t give the likes of us keys to important things,” the boy said, shaking his straw-colored head. When he turned back to me a funny light passed over his eyes, too quick for me to study. “I … Well, to be blunt, Professor Adamo, I’ve gotta admit that
I
came to
you
for help. My name’s Gaeth. Don’t know if you remember me, but I sat in on some of your classes—at least, before I got the fever. They were my favorite, on account of how there wasn’t any reading or writing involved.”

This time, I didn’t have to dig deep into the dried-up, near-senile grounds of my poor mind to place a memory to the name. It
was
the
one Laure’d given me, what felt like ages ago now, when we’d met in my office and she’d trusted me to help her. Since I hadn’t seen any of my boys around the place, I had to hope I hadn’t sent her straight from one trap into another.

Still, now that I knew they were poaching country folk brought to the city under false pretenses, it was anyone’s guess what th’Esar would stoop to.

“Sure, I remember you,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. I remembered Laure talking about him, which was different. But it didn’t matter, since it was what he wanted to hear, and if I was judging him right, he looked comforted. I just had to hope that this wasn’t a trap, but that didn’t seem like Troius’s style at all. If he was gonna use subterfuge, then he’d want to be the one to do it, for the bragging rights—and he’d never send this kid from the country, reminding me in his quiet way of Balfour, though not nearly as well spoken. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed—and I’m sorry to be the one telling you this—but I’m not in much of a position to be helping anyone at the minute.”

“I know,” Gaeth said, concern flashing over his simple features. “It’s awful rude of me—my mam always said you shouldn’t ask no one for nothing, ‘specially if he’s worse off than you, and I’ve tried to abide by it, even here in the city. But I heard that man talking about how they had you here and I had to come and see you.”