Steelhands - Jaida Jones [114]
“Are you having a staring contest with your brother up there?” Luvander asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “While the resemblance is uncanny, I would ask that you do please try to stay focused. I’m reasonably sure you’d win the match anyway, but it makes you look very peculiar, and you know how people talk. We wouldn’t want to damage Balfour’s good standing in the neighborhood.”
“If you’ve been visiting him, then it’s probably been knocked down a couple of pegs already at least,” I said, casting one last stubborn look upward. Luvander was right, though. And if Balfour was feeling poorly, then the last thing he needed was a living gargoyle pounding down his door. I took a deep breath, willing the crags in my face to smooth out.
Luvander surveyed my attempts, cringed, then shrugged.
“I’ll have you know that I happen to be universally beloved wherever I go. It’s as though a magician put a spell on me at a very young age in order to make me happy and successful for the rest of my life. Hello, my dear flower, how are you today?” Luvander directed this last not at me—thank Regina—but at a middle-aged woman in a dark green uniform, who seemed to be the concierge for Balfour’s apartment building.
I’d half been expecting him to suggest this was a stealth mission and to surprise Balfour we’d have to pick the locks, so I guessed this moment of sanity was a pleasant surprise.
“So there’s two of you this time,” the woman said, adjusting her spectacles. They were attached to her face with some kind of jeweled chain—no doubt she thought it very handsome indeed, but it made her look like a cat in a fancy collar to me.
“Two of us,” Luvander confirmed, putting on that winning smile that made him look just a little too devious for my liking—like he was about to announce that he’d found Raphael’s old books at last, after everyone’d been searching for days, and somehow I always got the feeling he’d been the one to hide them. “I hope that won’t be a problem. I just happened to pick up another concerned well-wisher on my way here. Some people bring flowers, others bring old friends. Of course, the flowers might’ve brightened up the place more, so I think at this moment I’m experiencing buyer’s remorse.”
“All right, that’s enough outta you,” I said, shrugging my shoulders uncomfortably.
“If you’re sure you want to visit him,” the woman murmured, adjusting her spectacles.
“And why wouldn’t we?” I asked.
“Haven’t you heard? They’re saying he went mad right in the middle of the bastion,” the woman said, leaning forward with an air of confidentiality, like she’d been waiting all day to get some proper chin-wagging in. “He just up and left right in the middle of something important. Guess that’s one way to show them Arlemagne cunts you mean business, isn’t it? Tell you what, though, talks’d never have gone on this long if the dragons were still around. Mark my words, they’d be pissin’ in their boots and running back to their cindy king in no time.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Luvander said carefully, eyeing me like he thought I was going to wade in and tell her what for, and he assumed he was going to have to bodily restrain me.
Like he could even if he wanted to.
Truth was, I had more important things on my plate than educating some lonely gossip. If I started in with every backward-headed civ who didn’t know their ass from their ankle, then I wouldn’t’ve had any time for teaching my actual students, not to mention all the other things I really enjoyed doing.
Luvander relaxed slightly when he didn’t see me wind up for some kind of wrestling match. “You know, it would be fascinating to see what they would do if they came to the rooms one day to find a few dragons waiting for them,” he added, getting a faraway look in his eye. “One never could outargue my dear Yesfir—she was much too clever for that, old girl—and if I recall correctly, Cassiopeia never even bothered with conversation. A little too burn-happy, if you ask