Steelhands - Jaida Jones [163]
“Depends on what they’re supposed to be,” I said, standing up. It felt good not to be shackled to that chair anymore, but I wasn’t about to admit to how grateful I was. “You been hoping to make an army? Because I got news for you; the Esar already has an army and they wear red, not green.”
Troius looked smug again, and I instantly knew I’d brought up something he’d been trying to goad me into saying. Playing right into his hands—or so he thought—and even if it rankled my pride, I guessed I had to keep letting him think that was exactly what I was doing.
“I want to show you something,” he said, affecting a little bow that made me want to knock him over like a ninepin so he’d learn some humility. He started out of the cell again, then paused by the door. “If you’re thinking of doing anything foolish, I really would counsel you against it—I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I made your case single-handedly. It wouldn’t be very … strategic, shall we say, to attack your only ally in this place.”
“Duly noted,” I grunted, since that seemed to be what he wanted to hear. But if he thought we were allies, then not only was he conceited, but he was as mired in dreams of shit as a dung beetle.
“Excellent,” Troius said, turning smartly on his heel and—I guessed—expecting me to follow.
It was real hilarious to have a guy like this thinking he belonged in the same sentence as Balfour. None of my boys would’ve ever turned their backs on a prisoner, even one who’d promised nice and mild not to pull anything stupid. Apparently he thought my word meant something to him, but I never gave it to someone I didn’t respect.
Maybe he was just expecting, because he had all the power and I had none, that I’d have to admire him. The poor thing really did believe whatever his doting mother had told him all his life: that he was a special, precious boy.
The hallway was lit up with flickering track lights, same as the Airman had been, though that was about the only similarity. The prison was much quieter, for starters, no boys whooping it up from behind closed doors.
Since Troius had turned his back on me, I took my chance to look around. There were fewer guards than I’d expected roaming around—just enough to keep me from making a move—and the cell next to mine was empty, despite Troius’s insinuations that there were others in my position.
I just hoped he hadn’t laid a hand on one of my boys. I’d have to kill him for that.
The next cell, however, housed a redheaded woman in a blue dress. I almost panicked at the color before I realized she was older than Laure; her hair was cut shorter and her face was all wrong. I knew her from somewhere, though. She was sitting on a sagging bed, hands folded in her lap, looking utterly hopeless. Though she wasn’t a soldier and didn’t have my training, I could still tell by her air of defeat that she’d been there for a long time. She kind of reminded me of the look Rook’s brother’d got when he felt he was making progress, only to wake up the next morning with beetles in his hair.
Strangely enough, it was thinking about that cracked-nut professor that gave my brain the jump start it needed. I was nearly past her cell entirely before I realized that I’d met her working on Balfour’s hands in the common room—a couple weeks before we’d all moved out of the Airman for good and into our own places, so day in and day out we weren’t forced to look at each other.
So Margrave Ginette wasn’t dead after all. She’d been scooped up, whisper-quiet, the same as me. That didn’t exactly bode well for my own situation, seeing as how she’d been missing for weeks, and nobody I’d talked to had guessed to look in prison.
I wondered what she’d done to get hauled in. If she was anything like me, then the answer was “next to nothing.”
Up ahead and around a bend in the hall, there was another woman, shouting blue murder in Ramanthine. My cell had been far