Steelhands - Jaida Jones [139]
“Instincts are there for a reason,” Adamo replied. “All this city living tells you to go against ’em a lot of the time, but sometimes they’re all you’ve got to protect you. And I say, why ignore ’em when they’re so clear?”
“Well, because they’re gonna tell my da, for one thing,” I replied, aware of how childish it sounded. “And if I get in too much trouble here, he’ll call me back home for sure. But for another, Margrave Germaine’s gonna come and get me at this point; had another note from her a few days back that said if I missed this appointment, she was gonna be real worried about my health, and she’d have to come see me in the dormitories. Felt like intimidation to me, but what do I do about it? I don’t have anywhere else to live.”
“Four this afternoon,” Adamo said, clearly thinking over something heavy. He turned the note card over in his hand one more time. “You mind if I take this?”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I sure don’t want it.”
“Guess it wouldn’t be looked on as decent if I came with you to that appointment,” Adamo said, more like thinking out loud than asking me a question.
“Not even one way,” I agreed, since it wasn’t polite not to answer someone.
“And I’m not sending you in there like a soldier for some answers, either,” Adamo added. “Felt bad enough when I had to send one of my boys on a mission like that.”
“I could go on a mission,” I told him, folding my arms over my chest. “Even if I’m not one of your boys.”
Adamo snapped out of whatever’d taken control of him, looking at me for the first time since I’d shown him Germaine’s summons. “Yeah, I guess you could,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean it sits right with me, and I’m not gonna do it that way.”
“Guess you just can’t trust someone who hasn’t been tested in the field,” I said, managing to make it only a little sulky. For a second there, I’d almost thought he was starting to think of us as equals.
“Guess I can’t,” Adamo replied. “But I got another idea for you, though. You ever heard of Yesfir? It’s a hat shop.”
ADAMO
I had a whole lot of junk in my head that needed sorting out, and for once I didn’t have any idea of where to begin.
I didn’t know when I’d become some kind of counselor, but first Balfour’d spilled his guts to me, and now I had one of my own students following suit. Both of ’em were equally mad—not in the way they thought, but because they’d decided I’d make a good listener when all signs pointed to how piss-poor I’d be at it.
The problem was that I’d picked up on a few similarities in their separate stories—things that shouldn’t and by all rights couldn’t’ve been the same, but were anyway—and I was the one putting both sides together. That is, if I could even find a way to make things fit.
I really didn’t like it. Sure, everyone at the Airman’d had their own opinions about whether or not Balfour was man enough for the job he’d inherited, but he’d handled the same shit as any of us and then some, on account of all that hazing. He was a tough little bugger underneath it all. This girl Laure I knew less about, but what I did know seemed pretty sturdy to me.
She wasn’t one of them fainting flowers, and she wasn’t the sort to make up stories for attention, either. At least that was what it seemed like to me, and I was gonna feel real blockheaded if it turned out I was wrong. But I had a few instincts of my own and they were usually good ones. She wasn’t a rotten egg. After dealing with all the nutters th’Esar sent my way for airman training, and before that working with my fair share of deserters, I knew a liar when I saw one.
I’d taken her appointment card just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, and I kept staring at it, like that would somehow help me make sense of this whole mess. Maybe I was hoping that the next time I looked at the name on the card, it’d be something different and I could unclench.
Royston would’ve said I was acting like some young schoolboy who’d snagged a trinket from an admirer, but I wasn’t going