Steelhands - Jaida Jones [153]
I was very nearly knocked off my perch again, though this time by the young lady Laure, who’d surged to her feet and strode right over to Margrave Royston as though she thought he’d been the one to do the arresting personally.
“What d’you mean, ‘arrested’?” she demanded.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Margrave Royston replied—without any of the witticisms for which he was so notorious among the diplomatic circles.
“What for?” Laure persisted. I couldn’t blame her for leaping into action at once, after all. She hadn’t been trained to deal with this kind of situation—she was a student, and not an airman, retired though we were. It was always nice to have someone so forceful among our numbers, unafraid of asking the difficult questions. Before, we’d been gifted with rather a surplus of forceful personalities, so that neither Luvander nor I was used to speaking up. Usually that someone was Adamo; but obviously, under these circumstances, someone else needed to step up and take his place.
“That is a very good question,” Royston said, “one which I find I cannot answer officially. I have my suspicions, though, if you’ll hear them.”
Laure didn’t seem impressed by the diplomatic answer. I folded my hands to keep them steady while privately wondering whether the young woman had ever been told it was bad luck to behead the messenger. “What kind of city is this, anyhow, where you can go around arresting people like that—just willy-nilly?” Laure demanded. “And what sort of friend are you that you didn’t stop ’em?”
It was a great deal to absorb all at once. The girl’s companion—young Toverre, who’d been clinging to a napkin through the entire thing as though it were a life raft—practically leapt up from his seat to try to calm her, elbows and knees everywhere, while I myself glanced to Luvander to see what he made of this mess. While my responsibility toward him was considerably different from that of a fiancé, I’d spent quite enough time hiding in the bastion, away from old friends. Now, more than ever, it was important to show solidarity—especially if what Royston said was true.
He was sitting very still, hair falling tousled over his knitted brow, and he hadn’t even reacted to the revelation of Adamo’s first name, which I myself hadn’t been aware of until just then.
Surely I must have known it at one point—perhaps when I’d first joined the corps, during a whirlwind of preparations and paperwork—but that was feeling as distant a memory as my early childhood. Adamo had always been Adamo to us, just as we’d known each other by single names. It evened us out when we entered the Airman, where no one was a country lord or a petty thief. We were all just Dragon Corps.
“Young woman, please restrain yourself before you do both of us physical harm,” Margrave Royston said. He looked troubled, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Adamo was untouchable, or so I’d always thought; I couldn’t imagine him allowing this, nor could anyone else in the room, it seemed. Even the war had never managed to faze him. We were all shaken. “Trust me when I assure you—I attempted to do the very thing you have suggested, and I was informed that this was no happenstance arrest but rather was being carried out on the orders of the Esar himself. I don’t know how much comprehension you have of Thremedon’s particular politics, but a magician trying to argue against the Esar has almost no chance at all of overturning his ruling. In fact, if he became aware that I was making a fuss over things, he might just make things worse for Owen in order to make a point. He likes magicians very little, but he likes me even less. The quieter I was, the less messy things would become.”
“That’s horrible!” Laure said. Her face was turning red the same way Merritt’s always did when he inevitably discovered the latest indignity to be visited upon his poor boots.
Toverre was standing beside her, attempting to calm her down, though he seemed reluctant to actually touch her, thereby risking the full force of her wrath turning in his direction. A wise move, I thought,