Steelhands - Jaida Jones [165]
“I’ve been looking forward to your reaction for a long time,” Troius said, stopping short in front of this new door to remove one of his gloves. I saw a flash of metal against the palm of his hand—probably a key—but he just wrapped his fingers around the steel knob, palm flat against it. I heard the turning of heavy gears, the sound of them grinding as some mechanism was unlocked, then the door swung open.
We were standing on the threshold of a large room with high ceilings and fine tiles, with a few other young men—and women, too—dressed in the same style as Troius, wearing all black like they were attending Thremedon’s funeral.
But I wasn’t looking at them, not after the first moment. Not with the dragon in the room.
She was little, looking like barely more than a baby, and built with all streamlined silver metals. Her eyes were smoky and pale. There were smaller differences between her and the girls I was used to seeing, but the most important one was size. There was no way a grown man could ride her; she was only about the height of a grown man herself, with a narrower wingspan and no carved place for a harness and saddle.
The moment Troius stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, she came forward with her talons scraping the floor, stinking the way the old girls used to, of forges and fire on metal.
“Very handy to have an army you don’t need to feed, isn’t it?” Troius asked. “Although the cost of making just one could feed an army itself. A good thing the Ke-Han Empire needed to pay us so much tribute. And a good thing we had so much scrap metal left over from the first round.”
So this was one of ours, I realized, melted down and re-formed. It would’ve felt as wrong as if I’d seen a baby made out of Roy’s and Luvander’s and Balfour’s body parts all sewn together, but Troius had achieved his life’s dream and I was rendered speechless.
“Adamo, meet Ironjaw,” Troius said, holding his hand out for the dragon to press her sharp muzzle directly into it, like a dog rooting around for a treat. I could see there was a round piece of metal actually implanted in the center of his palm; there was a jewel the color of blood right in the middle. “She was the first, and I was a suitable match for her. Can you imagine? Just when I thought I’d never have my chance to be a member of the Dragon Corps—a new Dragon Guard was built, and I the premier member.”
I didn’t ask the obvious question—the one he clearly wanted me to ask, about whether or not he was king of Dragonland, and all that horseshit. “ ‘A suitable match?’ ” I repeated instead.
“A great deal of blood was tested,” Troius explained, momentarily disappointed by what’d piqued my interest. “The Esar couldn’t have anyone from the city join these ranks, not with their biases. They could be too easily manipulated by members of the Basquiat, you see. But as it turned out, there were more Talentless bastards in the countryside than in the city anyway, so he brought them all in, myself included. A few were tested before me; Ironjaw rejected all the other potential matches. The fever even killed two of them. But not me.”
“How many did she go through?” I asked. Troius would probably like answering that.
“Ten,” he replied proudly.
“And what about the others she rejected? The ones that didn’t die?” I pressed.
Ironjaw was coming closer to me—though I, despite everything, had been trying to keep my distance. The floor was all cut up with talon marks, just from her taking her daily walks, and her metal-lined nostrils were enormous, bigger than Proudmouth’s had been. She was scenting me out, I realized, and I held still.
If there was anything of Proudmouth