Steelhands (2011) (55 page)

After Raphael’s brief attempt at conversation, no one else said anything at all. The mood was somber—as though we were heading to a funeral. I didn’t know whether it was the sudden realization of the important mission now facing us or simply because no one wanted to get a mouthful of snow. Whatever the reason, I soon lost track of how long we’d been walking, concentrating instead on the heavy rhythm of Ghislain’s footfalls in front of me as I hopped from boot print to boot print like a snow rabbit.

“We’re nearly there now,” Royston said, drawing us down a corner and off the road proper.

Indeed, I could see the shadowed outline of a building up ahead. It looked too small to be a prison, but I remembered what Royston had said about the true facilities lying underground. This, then, was in all likelihood some sort of guardhouse, not to mention part of the cover-up. A modest, simple building housing nefarious deeds done in the deep. This was hardly the city of my dreams.

In any case, that was where we’d be launching our invasion once Margrave Royston began his diversion. I felt a ripple of anxiety run through me and did my best to quell it.

“I suppose it’s up to me to go first,” Royston said. “I
hate
that. I’ll wait for you to get closer—perhaps the building next to it?—so you can see when they vacate the area and make your move.”

“I’ll go in first,” Ghislain said, a certain relish in his voice that made me wonder anew about his character. “Crack some heads to clear the way for team reconnaissance.”

“This is just like the old days,” Luvander said, breathing on his hands. “Only on the ground, and without Ivory around to set fire to everything in sight.”

“It’d come in handy here though, you must admit,” Raphael said. To me—because I was standing so close to him and had made such a careful study of him early, in case he should slip again—it seemed to pain him more than the others to talk about his comrade. One of the ones who did not make it back from the final battle, I thought, and bowed my head just briefly in hopes we did not follow him this evening.
“Nothing creates a diversion like a whole mess of things bursting into flame. You don’t even
need
a dragon for that. Just a match.”

“I will go first,” Royston confirmed. “And I’ll do my best not to catch anything on fire, myself.”

“Then me,” Ghislain said. “When it’s clear on the first level, I’ll give a signal.”

“How will we know what it is?” I asked, nervously polishing one of my buttons with the fingers of my glove.

“You’ll know,” Ghislain said.

“And then the rest of us slip in,” Laure agreed, rounding on the group. “Are you lot going to be quiet once we’re in there? Or am I going to be the one who’s gotta explain to Adamo we got pinched because someone wouldn’t shut up about his fish-god dick or how much eggplant stew he was gonna eat when he got home?”

“I hardly think that’s necessary,” Luvander said.

“We
are
trained professionals,” Raphael pointed out.

“And professional blabbermouths, too,” Laure said, as Luvander made a stitching motion over his lips, then pretended to throw away his invisible needle. “Anything new from Antoinette?”

“Nothing,” Royston confirmed. “It’s just the same sense of anger, only much louder here. We’re in the right place.”

“All right,” Laure concluded. “Margrave, it’s your turn.”

“I am so distressed,” Royston said, echoing my sentiments exactly. But, unlike me, he was able to square his shoulders and leave the comfort of our company, slipping off into the night. The snow soon obscured him as we slipped silently through the fall to stand in shadows closer to our target.

I hoped that all the snow wouldn’t prove a distraction to
our
distraction. Would it be possible to see the explosion Margrave Royston engineered when it was falling so heavily?

If I’d waited but a moment, I wouldn’t have had to ask.

I felt it under my feet, the reverberations of the shock rippling over the cobblestones, even though they were buried under so much snow. The noise itself came later—loud enough it nearly knocked me off my feet—and I could see the flash of something bright in the distance. I wondered what Royston had done and whether or not he was all right.

Then I turned my thoughts to myself. I was going to need them.

“Cue mass panic,” Raphael murmured, so quiet that I might have
been the only one to hear him. Everyone else was too busy focusing on the door to the building in question—as lights came on in the windows, and the door itself opened an instant later, a few men running out into the night.

That, however, was followed immediately by all the lights going on in the building in whose shadows we’d previously been obscured—and all the other buildings nearby, too. With the staggered effect of a row of dominos, all the lights in the city were coming on, while the people on the lower floors of buildings began to flood the streets.

In the commotion, I realized, no one would notice another group of citizens.

With the crowd as his cover, Ghislain slipped away from us. He didn’t blend in because of his height and breadth, but he soon disappeared into a doorway, and no one seemed to notice.

I felt momentarily guilty that our actions had disturbed all those people, who wanted no more than I did, when you came right down to it—just to live out their lives in peace and quiet, without being interrupted during their mealtimes. Some weren’t even wearing coats.

It seemed that
we
were going to be the cause of more harm to the city than the Esar. We’d certainly be responsible for more fevers in the coming days.

Then Laure grabbed my arm, practically dragging me through the snow, and I realized that the light on the bottom floor of the building we were meant to enter had been snuffed out.

“If that’s not our sign,” Laure muttered, “then I’ll eat my scarf.”

We left the uproar in the streets behind—and all that snow, which I was only too glad to see the back end of—and slipped unnoticed into the warm building, just as Ghislain had done earlier. Behind me, I heard Raphael lock the door—those who’d run out probably hadn’t thought to take their keys. It would provide a momentary setback, in any case.

“This way,” I heard Ghislain whisper in the dark.

We followed him.

I very nearly tripped over something that was not a piece of furniture—it gave too much, and groaned when I kicked it—and I was suddenly grateful Ghislain had not lit a lamp again. First of all, our shadows would be visible from the streets, framed by the windows; second of all, I did not want to see the corpses of our enemies strewn
across the floor. At least I didn’t step on anyone else, clinging to the back of Laure’s jacket in the dark so as not to become lost.

“Watch the stairs,” Ghislain said, and I tightened my hold.

“You’re gonna knock us both over if you’re not careful,” Laure muttered, but she didn’t shake me off.

The six of us crept slowly down the stairs, Ghislain and Balfour in front this time, presumably because the latter was small enough to get out of the way of the former if we ran into any trouble. Laure was right behind them in the narrow pass, which meant
I
was considerably nearer to the front than I might’ve liked, with Luvander and Raphael bringing up the rear. They were guarding us, I realized, keeping the two civilians who certainly didn’t belong in this kind of operation well flanked on either side. It was very thoughtful of them, but it did little to soothe my nerves.

At least I no longer had to worry about the Dragon Corps’s most infirm member slipping on any stray patches of ice. And if there were any troubles on the rickety steps, I had a feeling that Luvander would help him, if only for the sake of his second-favorite jacket.

As we came to the end of the narrow stairwell, Ghislain halted, nearly causing a pileup when Laure didn’t take the hint and almost crashed into Balfour, nearly bowling him over like a ninepin. Up ahead, I could see a well-lit hallway with iron doors set into the white walls. The lights lining the ceiling flickered every so often, which gave the impression of candlelight. At least there was some light to see by, though when I glanced down at my fingertips to see how much dust had come away on my hands, I was very nearly ill. Not only was there dust, but there was
grime
, as well, and a slimy streak on my thumb from where I had been forced to guide myself along the uneven wall.

Being too deep underground was one of my private nightmares—I couldn’t imagine being buried in all that awful dirt—but I wasn’t about to cause a fuss for personal reasons. At least we were in some semblance of a building, no matter how things dripped and dropped in the distant dark. I laid my hand against one of the stones, and it seemed sturdy enough; then I quickly drew my hand away.

I was secretly, guiltily grateful that Margrave Royston hadn’t come along with us. After seeing his work firsthand, I knew that I did not want to be anywhere underground with him at my side. It was nothing
to do with the man personally, and not a comment on his control over his Talent. I merely had no wish to end up accidentally buried alive should something startle him and force him to cause a cave-in.

After giving us a chance enough to take stock of our surroundings, Ghislain began to move. Balfour, however, had turned his face to the side, squinting, as though trying to hear something. I strained to listen but heard nothing at all.

“Something the matter, Balfour?” Luvander asked, in a bare whisper.

“Pardon?” Balfour asked, shaking his head. “No, I’m fine. It’s nothing … Just this place; it seems …”

“It’s
quite
eerie,” Raphael cut in. “Though I’m man enough not to be affected, I for one plan on spending as little time as possible here.”

“I agree,” Balfour said, though he kept peering around Ghislain, as though he was still searching.

“Things could get messy, here,” Ghislain said, pitching his voice low, so that I had to crane over Laure’s shoulder to hear it. “Helped myself to a few different key rings while I was up there, but I’m not sure what goes where, not to mention none of us knows where we’re going yet, so it might take some time. If we run into any guards, I plan on disposing of them. If anyone here’s got a problem with that, you can go upstairs and slip out while everyone’s still watching Mary Margrave’s fireworks display. Got it?”

“Now that you
mention
it, I do love fireworks,” Luvander said, tapping his chin, then breaking character immediately when everyone rounded on him. “Honestly, it was just a joke. Pardon
me
for attempting to lighten our spirits before they leave this mortal earth entirely. See if I do you any more favors.”

“We’d all be real grateful if you wouldn’t,” Ghislain said, but he wasn’t wearing a frightening expression, so I figured he couldn’t be all that upset about it. His sharp features were merely grim and exaggerated by the shadows—looking much like the beastly mask in the back room of the Yesfir hat shop. He reached into his coat pocket, pulling out three separate rings of keys. “Someone take these. I’m gonna want my hands free for other things.”

“He means removing heads from bodies,” Raphael confided.

“I’ll do it,” Balfour said, reaching up with gloved hands. He glanced
over at Laure, who’d made an impatient move for the keys herself, and offered her a small smile. “Perhaps you can aid Ghislain in giving me cover?”

“Yes, that sounds
much
more dangerous than trying keys in cell doors,” I said, patting her arm. “You should absolutely accept.”

“Don’t have to patronize me,” Laure said, shaking me off.

Since the hallway was well lit, and I didn’t see myself tripping over the last few steps in the dark, I allowed her to do it.

“Weird place,” Ghislain said. “Seems like all the guards were upstairs. Now, why would that be?”

Then, without waiting for the rest of us—not even bothering with a rousing promise of our soon-to-be victory—he rose like the terrifying specter of every bad dream I’d ever had about pirates along the coast or bandits on the main roads and marched deeper into the hall.

Though I’d been holding my breath for some terrific event—another of Margrave Royston’s fearsome explosions, perhaps—none came. Ghislain looked left, then right, then back at us, shrugging his big shoulders. Another one of his signs, I supposed.

Laure, Balfour, and I scurried after him; Luvander and Raphael were only seconds behind.

“I don’t see any cells,” Laure hissed, looking deeply suspicious. “Are you certain we’re in the right place?”

“Nope,” Ghislain said, heading arbitrarily to the right. “Wish the only man who knew a lick about the blueprints in this place hadn’t run off like that.
Hate
flying blind.”

“We needed him for our grand distraction,” Luvander pointed out. “I
offered
to don a dress and one of my best hats, but no one seemed to like that idea very much.”

I found myself giggling—the sort of humor a man embraced before heading to the gallows, I supposed—and did my best to suppress the sound, so that I merely sounded as though I had a bad case of fear hiccups.

We passed by several doors, all of them uniform and perfect—made of iron, with no decorative scrollwork or designs of any kind. I saw Laure peering at a few of them curiously, but when the keys didn’t work in their locks, Ghislain hadn’t stopped to examine them: nor had he attempted to bust them down with one of his large shoulders, and so we kept moving. It was probably better to do reconnaissance this
way—make sure there were no threats lurking nearby before we allowed ourselves to become too engrossed in any one thing.

The largest door was at the end of the hall, crisscrossed with broad strips of steel and fitted with a knob in the center. There was a keyhole beneath it, and Balfour set to work once more, examining the size and shape of the hole in the door, then comparing it against the keys on the three separate rings.

I bent down to help him with them, this kind of detail being something I was drawn to instinctively. Keys were filthy instruments of disease, and I’d spent a great deal of time cleaning them for my father, and Laure’s father, and the town’s banker—whether they asked me to or not. Rather quickly—for me, at least—I turned up a silver key with the appropriate foot and what seemed like the correct number of wards shaped into it to bypass the lock.