Steelhands - Jaida Jones [0]
STEELHANDS
DRAGON SOUL
SHADOW MAGIC
HAVEMERCY
Steelhands is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spectra,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Jones, Jaida.
Steelhands / Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52637-3
I. Bennett, Danielle. II. Title.
PS3610.O6256S74 2011
813′.6—dc22 2010054151
www.ballantinebooks.com
Map by Neil Gower
Jacket illustration: Paul Youll
v3.1
To Aunt Roberta and Uncle Michael,
for showing me the world outside Victoria
—Dani
For the one and only curator of the Secret Museum of the Air
—Jaida
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, we have to thank our fabulous and tireless editor at Spectra, Anne Groell, who has always given us more care than any one person (with a new baby!) should have time to give, and our agent, Tamar Rydzinski—same deal! We’re also incredibly grateful to our assistant editor, David Pomerico, and copy editor, Sara Schwager, without whom this book would be little more than a very heavy manuscript with so many errors. Once again, we have to thank ruthless Mom—who remains ruthless, and possibly even gets more ruthless with age; Uncle David, for ferrying us around in that glorious clown car; Grandma Fay and Grandpa Terry, who offer songs and jokes and stories; Nick, who makes the best pad thai ever; Bob, for occasionally using his indoor voice; Toni, for making sure we look fashionable whenever we have to leave the house; Taid, for not complaining too much about the typo; Marjorie, for the delicious fruit bread; Matthew, for always being on our side; Jonah, for the sound track to our lives; Andrew, for pretending we’re cool enough to hang out with him; and, of course, everyone at Thremedon, whose enthusiasm and creativity far surpass our own and remind us of why we love to write in the first place. Here’s looking at you, kids.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
About the Authors
ONE
ADAMO
The way I saw it—and probably would ’til the day I died—was that both times the rug was pulled out from underneath my boots, it was somehow because of that whelp. Not even the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble. It was the brother of the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble.
I’d never asked to be anybody’s pen pal, since I’d never been much for writing letters in the first place and all the people I’d ever cared to know lived in the same city as I did. The end of the war had fractured some things though, sent little pieces skittering all over, and one of those pieces just happened to have a brother with a real sick sense of humor, at least by my understanding.
Dear Adamo, the letter began—no Chief Sergeant or nothing, which was technically correct, but seemed oddly personal to me.
It is my sincerest wish that this letter finds you well, that its contents are not despoiled before you’ve had a chance to read them, and most of all that this information doesn’t bring you trouble.
I will jump straight to the sticking point and hope that you can forgive me: While in the desert, Rook and I very nearly saw the resurrection of a dragon. Havemercy, specifically. A pair of magicians from Xi’an had