Steelhands - Jaida Jones [12]
It was comforting, in its own way.
“Troius,” I said, smiling this time not because I was thinking of—or like—my old comrades in arms, but rather because of some more present emotion.
“You still remember my name,” Troius said. “That’s an excellent sign. Quick! To the kitchens, before we lose our minds to starvation.”
“Were I truly experiencing starvation, I don’t think my first concern would be my mind,” I confessed, falling into step with him despite my better judgment.
The men from Arlemagne didn’t like to see too many of us conferring together at once. It made them feel plotted against, or so Troius had informed me on our third day of talks when I’d asked him why he didn’t see fit to take his meals with the rest of us. Personally, while I understood the need for diplomacy now more than ever—the war effort was over for the present, but one never knew what the future might hold—I didn’t particularly enjoy all the conceding to Arlemagne comfort.
But then, I supposed, that was why I had been given this task and not Adamo. I was better bred for it, and my nature was such that—outwardly, at least—I seemed more eager to please.
I could think of thirteen other men who would never have bothered, though of course it was because of one of them that we had to be so bastion-blasted cautious with the Arlemagne all the time.
That, and the business with the Arlemagne prince. As far as our foreign friends were concerned—and I use “friends” in the loosest sense of the word—Volstov was the equivalent of a pretty whore and Thremedon what lay beneath her layered skirts. They were humoring us with the talks, perhaps, but they showed no signs of truly respecting us.
Nor would they send us their royalty again, but that was a different matter. On that front I supposed I didn’t blame them.
I had learned to live without respect before, and certainly my life would continue without it in the future. Of all the airmen, I was the only one who could count himself a member of the second generation. My brother had died in an air raid against the Ke-Han, brought down somewhere in the skies over Lapis, and it had been all the others could do just to get his dragon back in one piece. That was how they’d explained it to my parents, and again in a letter from the Esar himself—with a painful lack of detail. No body had ever been recovered. It simply wasn’t worth the risk to the other dragons and their riders to try to find him.
Indeed, Chanteur’s rudeness paled in comparison to the arsenal of hazing leveled against me once before by the other airmen—vicious, personal reminders that I was not my brother and never would be, as though I hadn’t enough of those on my own. It had been in some ways easier to deal with than the simple grief I’d seen on my parents’ faces, quiet and resigned every time that they remembered I was Balfour, and not someone else entirely.
By comparison, a blue handprint on the face didn’t seem all that bad. But I wouldn’t miss all the piss in my boots. A man had to have some standards.
“You look like the dog’s breakfast,” Troius said, steering me through the seemingly endless halls. “Don’t worry, things are bound to look up sooner or later. They can call us a corrupting influence all they like, but their men visit the ’Fans often enough, don’t they? Nothing says hospitality like satin sheets and low lighting. We’ll welcome them into our beds and eventually find places in their hearts.”
“If that’s the case, then I imagine they’ll want to do some redecorating at the bastion,” I said, trying and failing not to picture it. I had to suppress a curious giggle that did not sound quite like me.
Diplomatic venues were largely the same in every country, I imagined; all around us were soothing neutral colors and no decorations that could be considered offensive to anyone, no matter