Steelhands - Jaida Jones [169]
That wasn’t exactly fair of me—better they come up with some sort of a plan than charge in and make an already bad situation ten times worse—not to mention we didn’t know whether Adamo was being kept in the regular prison or, more likely, somewhere else. But I was feeling so mixed up that being fair was the least of my worries. I was spitting mad, sure, but there was something else going on that made my chest feel tight—and for once it wasn’t an old bodice I’d squeezed myself into. Every man there was feeling turned on his head, but I could tell from a glance around the room that none of ’em was feeling like I was. It was part responsible and part awful, and another part I wasn’t willing to examine too closely just yet. It was gonna mean a heap of trouble once the dust’d gone and settled, but it looked like I wasn’t going to have to worry about that for a long time yet. I didn’t even have it in me to stop Toverre from polishing all the spoons in Luvander’s kitchen, though I’d stopped him short of starting on the cupboard handles.
“Now isn’t the time,” I told him a little too sharply.
“It won’t take long,” he hissed back, but he did drop his hands. After that, with nothing to do, he looked like a wilted marsh reed.
But if he got started, I was afraid I’d join him. It was getting that bad, just sitting crammed in Luvander’s upstairs apartment, which was at least more comfortable than waiting in the stockroom of the hat shop. Only none of us deserved to be feeling comfortable.
I felt like a traitor and a deserter—like we’d all abandoned our captain in the middle of wartime. And he’d taken the heat for us while we sat around polishing spoons and drinking hot cups of tea and talking about the weather.
“It shouldn’t be too long now,” Balfour’d said, but that’d been two hours ago, going by the shrieking clock downstairs. I was keeping count.
With every hour that passed, I felt more and more hopeless.
It was an hour and a half past sunset. If Germaine had sent anyone looking for me at the dorms, then they were shit out of luck since I was spending tonight with my fiancé and what remained of the Dragon Corps. Now, there was something to write home to Da about. I was lucky I was already engaged since no man would marry me if he heard about a night like this one.
It certainly sounded a lot like a dream Toverre’d once had. I could tell he was excited, but he was doing his best to tone it down for my benefit.
I wasn’t made for waiting around while somebody else did all the work. Some people got so caught up in worrying about what consequences their actions might have that they never did anything at all, but that wasn’t how Da’d taught me to be, even if he had wanted to teach those skills to a son, not a daughter. My personality made it so that I had trouble sitting still, especially when someone I cared about was in trouble.
I could tell the others were starting to get worried about my mood from the way they all kept looking at me like I was a kettle about to boil at any second. But nobody said anything, not wanting to set me off.
The problem was, we couldn’t do anything until Royston came back. To me, it seemed like the regular dungeons weren’t good enough for Adamo, and even if he was there, did I really believe it’d be that easy to get to him? We had to get some information first. The cover of night would be good, too; less conspicuous moving around with a big group in the dark, especially if it turned out our companion Balfour was next on the list of wrongfully arrested.
So it was real nice of Adamo’s friend to help us and all, but I was starting to think he was talking to everyone in the city with how long he was taking.
And if anything happened to Adamo because he’d needed to tell every story starting from the date of his birth and what the weather was like that night, I was probably going to hit under the belt, whether he was a Margrave or not.
The clock downstairs shrieked for seven seconds, then cut off.
“I’d say it’s time for dinner,” Luvander suggested, clasping his hands together. “I’ll