Steelhands - Jaida Jones [135]
But there was no way on Regina’s green earth that I was telling Toverre.
It was strange not to share everything with him—we always did, and this problem marked the first I hadn’t run to him with at the very start. First of all, he’d be no good with it. He’d want to write Da, or go to the Provost, or go with me to the appointment. The first would make Da upset; the second would have all of Thremedon thinking Toverre was crazy; and the third was just plain pointless. What did Toverre plan on doing to protect me—talk a few ears off until Germaine and her assistant begged for mercy?
As funny as the image was, the whole thing was too serious to joke around about. And I wasn’t letting Toverre get himself involved. I didn’t want him getting into trouble just because I wasn’t able to handle it.
But I couldn’t go back, I told myself, shoving the note card in my pocket with a feeling of dread. No matter which way I looked at it, I felt like the fever’d been Germaine’s doing in the first place.
And I never wanted to hear that voice whispering to me again.
“I see you have a letter of some kind,” Toverre said, doing his best not to snoop.
“Nothing worth mentioning,” I replied. The look on his face told me he hadn’t already read it over my shoulder, and I was glad for it, if a little guilty, too.
It wasn’t something I could talk to Toverre about because I could tell how much it upset him. It was like a big blotch of mud that he couldn’t wipe away, and if there was nothing he could do to help, then why get him all worked up in the first place? Maybe it wasn’t altogether fair of me to have decided that for him, but it was a chance I was going to have to take. It was my job to take care of him, and that meant not burdening him with stuff that was bound to make him crazier than he already was.
I felt bad about it because I could tell I was hurting his feelings not letting him in on everything like I always did, but we’d get past that soon enough. He’d been the one who always talked about how things were going to change once we got to the city, and now he’d got what he wanted. Just came in a different package than he was expecting.
The way things’d shaken down for me so far in the city, there was only one person I could really talk to about any of this horseshit. I also knew he wasn’t going to like it, so I was gonna have to be sneaky and butter him up some first, just so he wouldn’t think I was going to make a habit of running to him every time I got a hangnail.
Part of me was pretty disappointed, since I was pretty sure ex–Chief Sergeant Professor Owen Adamo almost thought well of me. And now I was gonna go and make him think I was one wheel short of a carriage—or one wing shy of a dragon, you might say.
No getting around that, though. Someone with problems too big for her to tackle on her own couldn’t afford to be too proud to ask for help. As much as I wanted to prove to everyone that I could handle myself just fine in Thremedon without a man to lend a hand, all I wanted was someone to talk to. Someone like a friend, only smarter and more important than the friends I already had.
Maybe if the ’Versity’d had any female professors teaching us first-years, I might’ve gone to one of them instead. But if they were lurking around in the woodwork, I’d never had ’em for any of my classes, and I didn’t want to speak to some stranger who didn’t know I had a good head on my shoulders before I told ’em it was coming loose.
My mind made up, I made my excuses to Toverre and bundled my scarf around my neck, checking to make sure I had a little money in my pockets before I stepped out into the cold. I hadn’t memorized the ex–Chief Sergeant Professor’s schedule or anything like that—I wasn’t Toverre, and I wasn’t going to stalk him after hours through the streets of Thremedon—but the bell for class was about to ring, and I knew that he usually only taught half a day’s worth of lectures before retreating to his offices like a bear in hibernation. I guess once he’d figured out where they