Steelhands - Jaida Jones [10]
“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.
BALFOUR
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