Steelhands - Jaida Jones [100]
“Have a nice evening, Laure,” Barn Owl told me.
“You, too,” I said, as she turned and went back in the direction she’d come from. With her gliding off through the mess hall, I got the impression she was about to hunt down and feast on some helpless mice.
That thought made me grin, at least, before I turned my attentions back to the card in my hand.
I felt the same way about it as Toverre would’ve felt about a dead roach. I wished I could just will it out of existence by wishing hard enough.
After everything that’d happened to Gaeth, I didn’t want to go back. It was all too eerie, and I didn’t want to know any more about it just as much as I didn’t want to be a part of it. It didn’t make sense to keep seeing a doctor who made you sick, not better. Besides which, I was just plain spooked.
That was the truth of it, and I couldn’t hide that from myself, let alone anyone else. I might’ve had fevers before, but I’d never heard voices—clanking, whispery things that murmured to me in my dreams, right before I woke up. Despite how skeptical he was, I felt certain even Toverre would’ve heard voices if he’d been called in for a checkup like the rest of us. Whether or not he’d’ve been able to sort them out from all the other voices in his head—telling him to pick this up and scrub that stain and make sure those matched—was another matter entirely.
Maybe Margrave Germaine had learned from someone that Toverre’s head was too crowded for another talker, and that was why they hadn’t even bothered calling him in past the first screening.
Like he knew I was thinking about him, Toverre decided to take that exact moment to show up, right before I could drive myself too crazy thinking in circles. Sometimes it just helped to talk to someone—or, in Toverre’s case, to listen to someone else talk. His was one voice I recognized, and as annoying as it sometimes was, it comforted me because it reminded me of home.
Toverre was carrying a tray that had all my favorites: meat and bread and cheese, and he looked a little squirrelly around the eyes, so I could tell he was gearing up to apologize. He was the good kind of sorry—as far as Toverre being sorry went, anyway, coming to say so before he circled back around to being awful again.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the tray at me and looking uncomfortable.
I took a piece of cheese, popping it in my mouth and chewing thoughtfully. “All right,” I said, accepting the offering. “You can sit down.”
He tugged a napkin out of somewhere to clean off the seat across from me, then sat down in it very neatly. “Oh good,” he said. “I thought you were going to be in a snit. I thought maybe you had—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned him.
Quickly, Toverre switched tactics. “What’s that in your hand?” he asked. “I hope you aren’t soliciting men vis-à-vis their business cards?”
Because that sounded so much like me. Sometimes I didn’t know where Toverre got his wild ideas from. “Got a summons for another checkup,” I told him. No point in mincing words, and making Toverre grovel at my feet for forgiveness had never really been my style to begin with.
Toverre turned white—whiter than usual—leaning closer over the table.
“You aren’t serious,” he said in a grave whisper.
“Think I’d joke about something like this?” I asked him, shoving the card in his direction. “See for yourself.”
“Oh dear,” Toverre said, reaching for it, then drawing back quickly, not even willing to touch it. He probably thought he could catch the fever from it, or at least catch himself his own appointment. “Oh, Laure, no! I can’t have you going. We don’t know what … what those awful physicians might do to you this time. After the state you returned in from your last visit … Not to mention whatever’s happened to Gaeth …”
“Do you think I don’t know all that?” I asked.
“Well then, you mustn’t,” Toverre replied.
“I can’t just not go,” I said,