Steelhands (2011) (40 page)

In some ways, that would be a correct assessment. Even some of the
other airmen—though they delighted in putting bugs in one’s laundry and buckets of ice water over one’s door—had better manners than this when it came to entertaining.

“
Would
you like to sit down?” I asked him, sweeping off a chair compulsively even though there wasn’t anything on it save for a thin layer of dust. My illness hadn’t left me much energy for cleaning, and though the general state of my apartment was still exemplary compared to the state of
every
room in the Airman, that wasn’t saying much.

“Honestly, I’d prefer to be in bed, at this hour,” Troius said, but he took the seat gladly, throwing his boots up on the couch-side table. He was, I noticed, wearing gloves, though whether it had to do with the cold or a misplaced sense of fellowship, I wasn’t yet certain. “I don’t think I’m cut out for all these morning sessions. If you want my opinion, I think the Arlemagne are waging some kind of psychological warfare on us, booking up all the earliest slots, then talking circles around us while we yawn into our sleeves and try to pretend we’re not falling back asleep. How are we supposed to argue a point when we’re barely conscious? Between that and Auria yapping in my ear, it’s enough to make a man feel like he’s landed in a proper nightmare. If I
wanted
to work on Arlemagne time, I’d move to damned Chastenay and have done with it.”

“I rather like it, actually,” I admitted, drawing aside the shades to let in the faint morning light. The sun glinted off my hands, and I realized once again that I hadn’t put on my gloves. It hadn’t occurred to me, because I’d thought it was Adamo at the door, and he’d already seen me at my worst—not just lately, but also during my time at the Airman. He didn’t question it, and for that reason alone I’d allowed myself to let down my guard a little. “Doesn’t it give you a little satisfaction to be finished with work just as some people are
beginning
their day?”

“Why, Balfour, that’s positively vindictive of you,” Troius said, leaning in his chair so that it tipped back onto two legs. It creaked dangerously, one of the old pieces I’d taken from the Airman before it was cleaned out; it was the chair Ivory used to sit in at the piano, but it had seen better days. “Though to answer your question, I have no room for satisfaction once the talks start dragging on well past the point of lunch. Bastion, your hands are a sight, aren’t they?”

I clenched them into fists, fighting the urge to slide them into my
sleeves. Such behavior was very childish, and—as I’d insisted to my mother when she’d begged me to come home after the war—I was no longer a child, now twenty years of age and perfectly capable of taking care of myself. There came a point in a man’s life where he was forced to confront his anxieties head-on, so I held up my hands, spreading my fingers wide.

“I suppose you haven’t seen them since I’ve had them repaired,” I said, flexing them for show. “They’re a much neater job now; at least, I think so. There wasn’t any paneling over the back before at all, if you remember that mess of cogs and gears, and little pieces of dust and lint were always getting caught up in the works. They look a great deal more finished now, not to mention far more serviceable.”

Troius stared, even dragging his chair across the floor to peer at them more closely. I found myself wishing however irrationally for my old room in the Airman—equipped with a chute in the floor for a quick escape. Perhaps I’d have one installed here, but I’d have to get to know my downstairs neighbors much better before I started dropping into their apartment unexpectedly whenever some awkward situation arose.

“Not stiff like your old ones, are they?” Troius asked, thankfully not trying to touch them. That was still beyond my zone of comfort. “I remember you complaining about that. Well, not complaining, because it’s you, but the equivalent.”

“They haven’t been, thus far,” I said. It was the smallest of details, perhaps, but the one I was most grateful for. Even when my own body let me down or grew weak, as it had during the fever, my hands remained in perfect working condition. The stark silver outline of them was almost a comfort, something I could focus on, and I stared at them so I wouldn’t have to think about Troius’s scrutiny.

“Sorry to catch you off guard,” Troius said, picking up on my discomfort too late for anyone’s benefit. “Funny, me talking about Auria’s big mouth when I’ve got my own to contend with. I didn’t mean anything by it, Balfour—just never seen anything like them before. Most people haven’t. You
do
know what they’re calling you down in Charlotte, don’t you?”

“Certain variations, yes,” I admitted, taking the distraction as an excuse to hide my hands behind my back, where the sunlight warmed them.

“They really
are
a keen piece of work, though,” Troius said, stretching his arms over his head with a yawn. “Guess that’s what the dragoneers are doing with their time, now that there’s no more use for them
actually
building dragons.”

“I really have no idea,” I told him, crossing into the kitchen to see if I had anything to present as a snack. Perhaps some food would distract him—fill his mouth for a time—and not offering anything just seemed like bad manners. “Margrave Ginette, the woman first assigned to work on my hands, never really worked on any dragons, as far as I know. She was trained in the theory of it, but her experience was chiefly mechanical. Originally a clockmaker, I think. I didn’t ask that many questions at first, but it was my understanding that whatever makes the hands ‘come alive,’ so to speak, came from somewhere else, and she knew as much about it as I did—which is to say, very little.”

“Maybe that’s why you were having so much trouble with them,” Troius suggested. “Sounds like she didn’t
really
know what she was doing.”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” I said, in absent Ginette’s defense.

“All that aside,” Troius said, waving his hand, “you
are
coming back into the Arlemagne fray with me, aren’t you? I mean, you do look well. Not like you’re about to go tearing out of the room and fainting again.”

“I feel much better,” I said a little too rigidly.

There was cheese and bread in the larder, and that would have to do. I’d gotten into the bad habit of not keeping my rooms well stocked once Luvander had started bringing food by. I was going to have to work on that since it hardly seemed logical to expect someone who didn’t even live with me to provide my daily sustenance—even if what Luvander brought by was regularly mouthwatering and at a discounted price from the bakery.

“You can’t blame a man for asking,” Troius said, in the same tone he used to placate Chanteur. “It’s been lonely. No one to pass notes with. I tried with Auria, but that vein in her head nearly burst.” He sighed before his voice turned somewhat keener. “You
were
behaving awfully strangely, you have to admit. Didn’t you say you were hearing things?”

“Did I?” I asked, slicing the cheese as neatly as I could manage, cutting out a spot that appeared to have gone green. Despite my distress, my hands remained blessedly steady, further proof that they weren’t
really a part of me. If they’d been more natural, they would have been trembling just slightly with the effort it took to be deceiving. Yet, now that I’d told Adamo and Luvander the truth about what had happened to me—what I’d really heard—I knew that I didn’t want to be discussing it with Troius. In fact, I didn’t want to be discussing it with anyone.

The fewer people gossiping about Balfour Steelhands and his imaginary voices, the better.

“Yes, you did,” Troius said, leaning forward in his chair. “I assumed later it was just the fever, of course. Was it?”

“I must have been delirious,” I told him in true diplomatic form.

“Oh, good,” Troius said. When I turned around, I could see that he even looked relieved. Perhaps he really had been worried about me, and my own defensiveness over the subject had me acting irrationally suspicious. “Because if you
were
experiencing something more serious, as your friend, I’d have to—”

A knock at the door interrupted him, sending him twisting around in surprise. I set the bread and sliced cheese down on my table and went to answer it, brushing the crumbs off my palms. This, surely, had to be Adamo. I was only sorry we wouldn’t be able to speak as candidly as he might have liked—especially in light of my recovery.

“Sorry I’m late,” Adamo grunted, as soon as I’d opened the door. “Got caught battling the beast that guards your lair again. Damned doorkeeper wanted to know about the weather, and how we managed with all this cold when we were up in the sky. She’s got a mouth on her that could’ve replaced the raid bells, and no mistake. We’d all be running to the girls just to get away from her yabbering.”

“Did you tell her about the time Niall went through a storm cloud?” I asked, ushering him in.

“Told her he came out the other end crackling like a live wire,” Adamo confirmed, with the ghost of a chuckle. “Not to mention Erdeni smelling like a broken bulb for weeks afterward. He’s damned lucky he didn’t lose part of her to melting or worse.”

“Goodness,” Troius said from the kitchen, halfway into a cheese sandwich. “That sounds awfully uncomfortable. Is something wrong with this cheese?”

Adamo stiffened, glancing at me after he’d taken in the sight of Troius. Adamo had a keen eye and never missed a detail; just then I
could almost tell exactly what he was thinking about this ruffian, who was speaking with his mouth full and spraying pieces of cheese onto the floor with every word. Troius saved all his good manners for the diplomats—and, under regular circumstances, I was always relieved to find him so relaxed with me.

This was different. He had no idea what kind of trouble bad manners could get him into, in front of a stickler like ex–Chief Sergeant Adamo.

“The cheese
is
a little old,” I said, in an attempt to defuse the situation. “I haven’t been able to go out much lately.”

“So who’s this?” Adamo grunted, folding his arms over his chest. That was pure Adamo for making it clear he didn’t like someone. Sometimes, depending on the person, he’d actually state it out loud. No one ever tried to argue with him.

“I was going to ask the same thing,” Troius replied, “but the cheese distracted me. The name’s Troius, son of Lyosha. Might have heard of my father, actually, he’s a little famous for the original treaty with Arlemagne. No? Well, in any case, it’s a pleasure to meet you, ah …”

Troius trailed off, proffering his left hand for a shake; his right was still holding on to the sandwich he’d made. Adamo stared at him like he thought he was a weasel, and I decided to do the honors of introducing my two friends to each other, all while hoping they never had cause to meet again.

“This is Adamo,” I told Troius, standing between them like no more than a messenger. “He’s—he
was
—the Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps, which is obviously how I know him. Adamo, Troius is another member of Auria’s group; we’ve been working on the Arlemagne matter together.”

“Take it you haven’t been as lucky as your father,” Adamo replied.

If Troius was wounded by the comment—as Adamo no doubt intended—he gave no indication of it. Instead, he shrugged. “What can I say? Those Arlemagnes drive a difficult bargain.”

“Feh,” Adamo said.
“Arlemagne.”

“There’s something we can agree on, at least,” Troius said cheerfully, retracting his hand at last and wiping a few crumbs off on the front of his waistcoat.

Adamo grunted again—not even willing to muster so much as a “feh” that time—and turned to me. “Take it you’re feeling better?” he
asked. “Color’s back in your face. Don’t look so much like a ghost anymore, either.”

“It’s like he was never sick at all,” Troius added. “I’m trying to convince him to come back to the bastion with me today. Getting out of the house might do him some good. What do you say, Chief Sergeant?”

Tension crackled in the air like lightning, and I was reminded again of Niall’s brush with death during the thunderstorm and the static electricity that had clung to him for weeks afterward, making his hair stand on end when he dragged himself from bed to have lunch with the rest of us.

“Would you like something to eat, Adamo?” I asked.

“Yes, would you?” Troius added. “There’s some ancient cheese that might kill you, and some stale bread.”

“Luvander’ll be by with something this afternoon,” Adamo said, voice clipped, as though he were doling out working orders. He was already on his way to the door. “I should get going. I don’t have time for dawdling, much less eating someone else’s food, then insulting it. But maybe I’ll stop by when Luvander does to talk more about how you’re feeling. Good to see you up again, Balfour.”

He was leaving, I realized, so that he would not commit some kind of criminal offense in my apartment. Of all the types of people in the world, flippant ones like Troius were Adamo’s least favorite, and I knew how he felt wasting his time on people he thought were idiots.

Troius was a lucky man—though from the expression on his face, he had no idea about the terrible fate he’d just dodged.

I locked Adamo out, with appropriate thanks, then turned to face my remaining guest.

“Wow,” Troius said, letting out a low whistle. “Would you believe it?
The
Adamo. Chief Sergeant of the Dragon Corps, the big statue himself. He’s about the same size as his memorial, unlike you. Pretty impressive. Does he stop by often?”

“Because of the fever,” I explained, moving to stand by him, so I could try some of the bread for myself. Troius was right; it was so stale I nearly chipped a tooth.

“Looking after you, just like a mother,” Troius said. “Isn’t that thoughtful? He doesn’t seem the type. Did he say Luvander was coming, too?”

“Another of my fellow airmen,” I said.

“Of course,” Troius replied. “Naturally. You all get together regularly, then? I suppose they were worried about you, and those voices you were hearing.
I
would be, anyway, if I were them.”