Steelhands - Jaida Jones [130]
I did remember to dry them more carefully than I would have simple flesh and skin. Feeling like a newborn child did not mean I had to act as foolishly as one.
Perhaps, if I continued to feel so hale when noontime rolled around, I would be able to go to the bastion and make my apologies. I hoped that Chanteur would look at the incident as a piece of entertainment rather than a grievous insult, and I also hoped that I hadn’t caused Auria too much suffering because of my ridiculous behavior.
I wouldn’t blame myself for it, but that didn’t mean I could avoid all culpability. With everything she had on her plate, Auria’s situation should have made anyone feel terrible. I often cringed at the idea of shouldering all her responsibilities—it seemed worse to me than piloting a dragon into the middle of a battlefield, because it was so much less straightforward yet equally dangerous.
Don’t be foolish, Balfour, I told myself. Auria already blamed me as much as she blamed all the other new diplomats who had no idea what they were doing and whose inexperience undermined her authority on a daily basis.
Rather than sit about with my thoughts plaguing me, I turned my attentions to the mess my apartment had become, gathering up dishes in one arm and blankets in the other. There was a fine layer of dust on the bookshelves, and the house smelled musty and stale, just like fever. If I cracked open a window, that would be gone soon enough, and I was finally feeling up to the task of building a fire in the fireplace.
It was invigorating to be well again; after so much lying around, the sudden energy I experienced was like a jolt of adrenaline. I wanted to go out, but Adamo would be visiting—and, just as if I’d summoned him, there was a rap on the door.
He was early—which wasn’t so unlike him—but I opened the door with more vigor than usual, almost as excited as a little child to see what he’d make of my recovery.
“Not at all suffering, like the landlady said,” Troius said, sweeping inside while I stared at him in surprise. “You look healthier than ever, Balfour. And here everyone was worrying themselves sick over you! Though I have to admit,” he added, as I shut the door and turned to face him, “if you were trying to get out of service for a few days, that was a clever little trick.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was implying, and when I did, I was filled with horror. “You don’t think I was putting all that on?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Troius replied. “You’re not nearly a good enough actor for it, are you?”
“I suppose I’m not,” I admitted.
Troius looked around the room, taking it all in curiously. “Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down or have a bite to eat?” he asked finally.
“Of course,” I said, eager to hide how his sudden appearance had thrown me off-balance. Troius had never come around before; I hadn’t even known he’d been aware of where I was living.
Perhaps I’d mentioned it when I’d first moved in and discovered I was living beneath a foreign race of people who regularly employed cinder blocks as shoes, but it had been a long time since then. I didn’t even know why I was letting that detail bother me. Since Luvander had tracked me down easily enough, it stood to reason that Troius could do the same.
He was staring at me, and I realized I hadn’t begun to make good on my offer. Instead, I was standing before him like an uncouth fool who never entertained visitors, or knew how it was done.
In some ways, that would be a correct assessment. Even some of the other airmen—though they delighted in putting bugs in one’s laundry and buckets of ice water over one’s door—had better manners than this when it came to entertaining.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked him, sweeping off a chair compulsively even though there wasn’t anything on it save for a thin layer of dust. My illness hadn’t left me much energy for cleaning, and though the general state of my apartment was still exemplary compared to the state of every room in the Airman, that wasn’t saying much.
“Honestly, I’d prefer to