Steelhands - Jaida Jones [174]
“Margrave Royston being one of them, if I recall correctly,” Raphael added. “Sweet Mary Margrave, was it? But we’re not allowed to call him that in front of Adamo. The nostalgia is killing me.”
“See that it doesn’t,” Ghislain suggested. “I worked hard bringing you back.”
“I get seasick,” Raphael explained.
“So do I!” Toverre exclaimed suddenly. Everyone paused to look at him, and he bristled. “It’s difficult to break into the conversation,” he sniffed. “You all have your own preestablished rapport; it makes outsiders feel somewhat excluded.”
“Anyway, while my boat’s airing out,” Ghislain said, ignoring him completely, “guess it wouldn’t hurt to do something about this bad situation.”
“We have to wait for Margrave Royston,” I told him, though it nearly killed me to admit it. “He’s talking to people, gathering information, learning what we need to know about where Adamo is and maybe why he’s been taken there.”
“And here I’d been hoping it was another Arlemagne scandal.” Raphael sighed sadly. “To remind us of the good old days.”
“Hear, hear,” Luvander said.
“How can you lot joke around when Adamo’s in trouble?” I demanded, no longer able to control myself. “Wasn’t he your Chief Sergeant? Don’t any of you have any respect for him?”
“Of course we do,” Luvander said, blinking widely.
“Like he was my own father,” Ghislain agreed. “Except better. And not fired from his position as stableboy for sleeping with my mother.”
“My fear of the man is equal only to my enormous affection for him,” Raphael concluded.
“They cope with their emotions by burying them under their idea of humor,” Balfour explained gently. “They’ve always done it, and, taking everything that’s happened since the end of the war into consideration—Ghislain’s choice to become a pirate; Raphael’s stint as a Ke-Han god of fortune; Luvander and his hat shop—I doubt they’ll ever change. Does that answer things for you?”
“Guess it does,” I admitted. I supposed it wasn’t my place to judge them—not when they’d seen a lot more than I had.
“Balfour’s changed, at any rate,” Raphael said, looking him over with newfound appreciation. “Bastion—if only Rook were here. Then we’d have a real showdown.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that just yet,” Balfour admitted. “Someday. We can only hope I’ll get the chance.”
“If someone else doesn’t shut his mouth for you first,” Raphael said, indulging in a happy little sigh. “I really have missed this place. Being worshipped was nice, but I’m hoping I can get a little worship here, too. Along with some old-fashioned Volstovic cooking.”
“Coming, my dear,” Luvander said.
“If they don’t arrest you tomorrow,” Balfour added darkly, “for the crime of being alive when the Esar thought you were dead.”
“Like to see him try that with me here,” Ghislain said. He shifted his weight from one side to the other, folding his arms over his chest as he did so. I was pleased as Punch he was here, and not on somebody else’s side, either. “So we wait for Margrave Royston to show up, is that it? No wonder we needed Adamo. We’re shit at planning.”
“He should be here soon,” Luvander said. “Unless he’s been arrested, too. Which, when you think about everything we’ve burdened him with doing, is actually entirely possible.”
The heroes of the war, I thought, and the most they were capable of so far was sitting around and having a tea-party reunion. It was weird now to think of how safe I used to feel when I imagined them soaring through the clouds on their way to enemy ground.
But I didn’t have any better ideas, either.
“In the meantime, make something nice for Raphael,” Ghislain suggested. “To fill his empty stomach after he filled my boat with puke.”
“He’ll never let me live it down, I suspect,” Raphael said.
“Not until you’re healthy enough to clean it up,” Ghislain agreed.
“I think I hear something down below,” Balfour murmured. He didn’t have to speak up for us all to snap to; I was glad I was still holding that poker.
Th’Esar’s men, or someone on our side? I wondered. Soon enough, we