Steelhands - Jaida Jones [137]
“What in bastion’s name are you doing to my door?” Adamo asked from just behind me.
I turned too fast, nearly dropping both the cups and wishing I knew how to sneak up on a person that quietly.
“What’s it look like? I was knocking,” I said, holding up his coffee. “Brought you this. On account of last time, just so you know I didn’t forget. But it’s making it real hard to get into your office.”
“Lucky for us both I wasn’t in there, then,” Adamo said after a second of staring at me like I was a dog that’d suddenly brought its master a dead bird. “Thanks.”
He took the coffee from me and unlocked the door, holding it open so I could get by. The office was exactly the same as it’d been the last time I’d dropped in, except that someone’d seen fit to tape over the hole I’d made in his chair, so I couldn’t pick at the stuffing anymore.
I took a sip of my cocoa. Since I’d waited this time, carrying it all the way through the cold streets, it didn’t even burn my tongue.
“I take it you’re not here about exams this time, either?” Adamo asked, crossing around from behind me to get to his desk. The little paper cup I’d given him was already half-empty, which I figured was as good a sign as any. I hoped it was brewed the way he liked it.
“Don’t I wish,” I said, sitting down in Old Creaky, my chair from before. “If my only problem was a bunch of exams I had to take, wouldn’t you think I had a pretty easy life?”
“And that you were complaining for no reason,” Adamo said with a shrug. “You wouldn’t believe the sob stories some of ’em come in here with, all because I didn’t give ’em a check next to their grade. Even worse is when you stick a comment or two in there that’s not all praise. You’d think I slaughtered their childhood pets or something.”
“Do they cry?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“Like babies,” Adamo said, draining the rest of his coffee with a noise of appreciation. I was starting to think he was a dragon, the way he guzzled down hot stuff like he couldn’t feel it. They could’ve called him Ironmouth.
“Toverre made one of our tutors cry once,” I confided, picking at the tape over the hole in the chair. “He corrected everything she said; she couldn’t finish a single sentence, much less teach us anything, and he kept at it until she finally lost it. Think she had a few fits and had to move back home.”
“I can imagine that,” Adamo said, a faraway look in his eyes like he imagined he was on the verge of a breakdown any day and was ready to get in a carriage and roll away. “Toverre’s that friend of yours, isn’t he? The one with all the pens?”
“My fiancé,” I corrected automatically, licking at the corner of my mouth to make sure there wasn’t chocolate there.
“Huh,” Adamo said, sitting back in his chair. For a second he looked confused—I took the engagement for granted, but it tended to surprise other people—but the moment passed quickly enough. “Are you here about the, uh, engagement?”
“What?” I asked. Now it was my turn to look confused. “Of course not. I’d like to kill him sometimes, of course, but he’s been all right lately.”
Adamo stared at me for a moment longer, then shrugged something off. “Well, since you’re not here about exams, and you didn’t bring Toverre your fiancé to pick at my grammar and make me cry, you’re gonna have to enlighten me as to why you really came.”
“Oh, that,” I said, not giving myself time to overthink anything. I’d come all the way here, hadn’t I, and I could feel the crisp edges of my latest summons digging into my side through my pocket. “It’s not … anything to do with school, actually.”
“That’s a relief,” Adamo