Steelhands (2011) (4 page)

I fought the urge to hold my nose, but the effort it took not to leap back by at least a block was incredibly trying. This man was dirtier than Father’s pigs, and he was standing so near to us. My skin crawled, and Laure stepped closer.

“New here, ain’t you?” the man asked, apparently not bothered by the fact that neither I nor my robust fiancée had engaged him in conversation.
“I can tell by the bags and all.
Real
sharp, Old Drake is. Thought I might ask as to your final destination, me with a hansom cab and all to spare, and the weather turning sour the way she’s bound to do past midday.”

“We’ll manage, I think,” Laure said, with a sniff of her own that probably
did
have more to do with the cold than anything else. Her sensibilities had never been delicate. I, however, was gagging. “Thank you for the offer.”

“Well, now, no need to answer right away,” Old Drake said, licking his false tooth thoughtfully. He reached for the nearest bag—one of Laure’s, borrowed from her mother for the trip—and hefted it up as though to test its weight. “Just that this seems like an awfully heavy load for a pretty young lady such as yourself to be carrying
any
distance, no matter where you’re going.”

“I do have some help,” Laure said, “not that you’d
know
it,” she added in a quieter tone, for my own benefit. This was followed by a
look
—one of her finest—which clearly stated this was one of many situations wherein she would welcome the aid of a knight in shining armor. A
real
fiancé, so to speak—perhaps one of those large, statuesque men we’d seen upon arriving, the heroes of the war, with broad shoulders and square chins.

Unfortunately, all she had was me, and I wasn’t about to get any closer to that man than I was already standing at present. I reached up to adjust my scarf, pulling it over my mouth and nose to keep out the smell.

“Skinny little weed like that won’t be much help at all,” Old Drake tsked. He still hadn’t put down Laure’s bag, and I was beginning to wish I’d learned how to recognize a Provost man when I saw one in the street. Did they wear uniforms, I wondered, or were they merely meant to appear in a time of need, like children’s guardian magicians? If one were to rescue us now, it would be very noble indeed. “No,
my lady
, I’m afraid I
am
going to have to insist you come along with me. ’Twouldn’t be chivalized otherwise.”

“I
think
you mean chivalrous,” I said, so that at least Laure wouldn’t be able to say I’d done nothing when we were making our claim to the Provost.

I supposed one couldn’t expect
every
city adventure to be a pleasant one.

“Excuse me,” said another stranger, and my heart positively leapt into my throat. If this was one of Old Drake’s counterparts or cronies, we were absolutely sunk. I was of no use at all in a fistfight, and Laure could only handle one grown man at best,
perhaps
two, but the latter was only if she had a weapon of some sort. There was nothing available save for me and a few hats, and all the beautiful passersby I had been admiring were ignoring us as though we were invisible. It was possible this kind of shakedown occurred all the time.

In short, we were royally fucked—a delicious and outrageous phrase I’d heard upon our arrival in the city though not one I could see myself
uttering
anytime soon.

I squinted into the sharp wind, prepared for the very worst. But what I saw was not at
all
what I’d been expecting. When I described it later in my journal—and I surely would, with a colorful flourish here and there to make sure I never forgot
exactly
how it all happened—I would have to express how
remarkably
it seemed to be one of the statues from the square come to life. The terror of the Cobalts, a real-live member of Thremedon’s Dragon Corps, arriving on the scene to rescue us from being taken for a ride like your average pair of country bumpkins.

Then the wind forced me to blink and I realized it wasn’t a statue, but rather a man of flesh and blood. He was young and blond and rather large, which explained my earlier mistake. And, it seemed, he was staring at me with an expression of quiet puzzlement.

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to Laure, “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I only saw the pair of you standing here and I thought I’d come over.”

“No harm done,” said Old Drake, setting Laure’s bag back down at her feet. However tempting a catch we might’ve been before—a deceptively peaceful young woman and myself, posing no real physical threat—this newcomer was clearly a discouragement to whatever Old Drake had planned for us. “Welcome to the three ladies, and here’s hoping your visit’s a prosperous one.”

He offered a funny little bow and a tip of his hat—the threads at the top had come undone and it flapped like an ugly, open mouth—and melted back into the crowd. At last, I felt the ice in my chest begin to thaw, even if the rest of me was still
quite
chilled.

“Are you heading toward the ’Versity?” asked our savior, pushing his
hair from his eyes. He was wearing thick woolen gloves of an unassuming gray that matched his eyes, and his winter coat had clearly seen better days, but he was also divinely handsome.
He
could have comfortably worn anything in the milliner’s shop and still carried it off marvelously.

Some people simply had such complexions.

“We are,” Laure said, shooting a look toward me that suggested she knew exactly what I was thinking. If only she had not always been quite so discerning! “Thank you. Your timing is … particularly apt.”

“Oh, that,” said the young man, ducking his head. “Well, I didn’t want to say anything in front of him, but it seemed like you might need some help if that’s not too presumptuous. I’m Gaeth, by the way. Heading to the ’Versity meself.”

“Laurence,” said Laure, holding out her hand instead of dropping a curtsy the way I’d expressly shown her. “And this is Toverre. We thought we’d do some looking around the city, but I think perhaps we should take that as a sign to move on.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Gaeth said, shaking her hand. “And your friend. Is … is everything all right with him?”

I realized I’d been caught staring and promptly changed strategies, busying myself with my own suitcases to make sure everything was in order, and also since it was evident that Gaeth would want to help Laure with hers. It was a clumsy tactic, at best, but the tips of my fingers and toes were beginning to go numb from the cold and I wasn’t operating at my best. Here I’d thought we might have a
few
days of being equally alone and unappreciated in the city. That showed how little I knew.

“Here, I can take that,” Gaeth said, appearing before me to tug the leather case from my hands.

“That’s not necessary,” I said quickly, voice snapping. It wasn’t at
all
the handsome rejoinder I’d had planned. Perhaps I was smarting slightly from the implication that I was Laure’s “simple” companion—though I supposed that was what I got for not responding in the first place. “Surely you have your own bags to tend to.”

“Got them sent ahead to my room,” Gaeth said, hefting my bag over one shoulder as though it were filled with nothing more substantial than straw. “ ’Course, I haven’t been to my room yet, so I’ve got to hope they’re there at all.”

“That was smart of you,” Laure piped up, handing over one of her own bags gladly before she picked up the other. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

“My mam arranged it all,” Gaeth said, starting off down the street with Laure and leaving me to struggle after them. At least he’d taken the heavier of my bags. In the city, one could be grateful for saviors and small miracles.

Thick clouds had begun to form in the sky above us. Despite Old Drake’s more nefarious intentions, perhaps he hadn’t been lying about the weather. I was looking forward to spending the winter months in something warmer and finer than an old barn converted to extra housing. No matter how Father insisted it had been properly insulated—and that a real man should have no trouble with it even if it were not—there were terrible drafts from all corners, and the bathroom always smelled stubbornly of horse no matter how many hours I spent cleaning it.

Here in Thremedon, I would have my own space, and I could give it a smell of my choosing. Exotic incense from a merchant bartering in Ke-Han goods would be
quite
daring, I thought. It might even make me the talk of the dormitories, though I hadn’t yet decided what sort of reputation I wished to cultivate among my peers. Something remarkable, of course, and one that had nothing to do with dragging my suitcases along the cobblestones after my fiancée and someone who looked like an artist’s dream. Were he chiseled from marble, surely, the craftsman would throw down his tools and cease to work ever again. He represented the absolute pinnacle of someone’s ideal, and I was not about to allow Laurence to scare him away as she did all the others, with her peculiar cleverness or with her fists, depending on the sort of mood she was in that day.

“It
is
a boy’s name,” she was saying, as I drew nearer. “If you think that’s bad, you should’ve seen me before my father let me dress myself. Nothing but cotton shirts and trousers my entire life. This is the longest my hair’s ever been, too. Just lucky the notice came when it did, or else I’d’ve looked a fine fool among all these
fancy
ladies.”

“I’m sure that isn’t the case,” Gaeth said. He seemed just slightly uncomfortable. It was inevitable, of course. Laure brought people together, regardless of class or age, in that they were all to some degree put off by her candid nature.

“Toverre told me so,” she confirmed most traitorously.

“Well,” Gaeth said, stopping in front of a simple doorway. “Here we are.”

The bottommost step was crumbling, and all the paint worn off the knob. The window lowest to the ground was dirty inside, and all cluttered with plants and books. For a moment I had no idea what our newfound savior could possibly be talking about.

“Here we are where?” I asked, feeling my nose twitch. A marvel, considering how very
cold
it was.

“ ’Versity housing for first-years,” Gaeth replied. He fished an envelope from his coat pocket and from it procured a simple key. How magical it all seemed, yet also, how very mundane. “I assume you’ll have to get sorted with your schedules and your rooms, but I can help you with your bags, if you need me.”

“Seeing as how we almost lost them, that’d be nice,” Laure said. No doubt he would find it charming that she had not thanked him.

I could have done so myself, except that I was too busy staring in abject horror at the state of the carpet inside the dormitory building, just past the doorway, where Gaeth was still standing. Boot marks and stains everywhere, and even something that looked like a mess made by a house cat.

Surely there had to have been some mistake.

“Are you
certain
this is the place?” I asked, grateful for the thin, more fashionable gloves I was wearing; they would shield me from whatever lingered on the banister and the doorknob even if they didn’t do their job in the cold.

“Seems it must be,” Gaeth replied. “You’ve … never been to Thremedon before, have you?”

“I think it’s more than all right,” Laure said, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “We’ll just have to get used to it, that’s all.”

Used to it
, I thought in terror, but I could not allow my comrades to see me balk at the idea. It would take all my courage and a day of scrubbing—if my room was in any similar state—but I would be able to manage it. Perhaps there was a common room of some sort that would be in better repair, regularly cleaned if I was lucky. And a little adversity would harden me into the man I intended to become.

“Used to it,” I repeated, gathering my wits and my breath and my
scarf around me before I stepped inside my home for the next full tutoring year.

I was beginning to hate the Arlemagne people more than I’d ever hated the Ke-Han. Yet dirty, strange, and traitorous thought that it was, I continued to harbor it. I was just lucky there was no one around to read it on my face.

At least my first week in the Airman had taught me how to hide my emotions more than adequately for a collection of mere diplomats—although someone would have easily been able to tell what I was thinking had I been sitting with my fellow airmen in the common room. They’d have sensed it even playing darts or exchanging stories of conquest, and suddenly I would have heard my name,
Balfour!
from Rook or Compagnon or Ace, most likely. Then it would have been
Hang his trousers from the window!
or perhaps
Let’s see what will happen if we set fire to his socks!
and all the giggling that usually followed such delightful experiments. Not to mention my need to write home for another pair of socks
and
trousers. It was always so difficult to explain to Mother.

I missed it like hell and burning, and I supposed I likely would forever. I was always reminded of them somehow, just as I was of the little scars at my wrist where my skin ended and metal began.

One of the magicians who’d fitted me for my prosthetics had told me I was suffering from phantom limb—and he was right, though I was also suffering from phantom airmen alongside it.

Only at present I was suffering from all-too-tangible Arlemagne diplomats more than anything else, and not even rubbing at my wrists under the table could distract me from the gaping despair I suddenly felt. It was hopeless. After all we’d done to Arlemagne, they would never really forgive us.

At that, I thought of what Rook would have done in my situation—found someone to call a Cindy, insulted a wife or two, and insinuated he had slept with them all and could ride their horses better, too, making everything far worse but at least far more entertaining—and then I
smiled from the fond memories it brought because quite obviously I was going insane.

“Well,” Diplomat Chanteur, a large man with a red nose who had once spat on me by accident while speaking of the troubles involving one of our Margraves and their own Crown Prince, “I am famished from all this talking. Despite what little your people have to offer by means of food, perhaps it is time for us all to lunch?”