Steelhands - Jaida Jones [181]
But I had to do this, to stand beside Laure during this important hour. Even if I was not directly involved, she was, for a variety of reasons. I would never be able to live with myself afterward if I didn’t fight with her despite the fact that I could hardly consider myself an asset to the cause.
For the most part, we didn’t talk; the silence was heavier than the snowfall. Yet I knew, given my company, it could hardly last. And, soon enough, I was proven right.
“Let me guess: You’re wondering why my statue’s so much better-looking than I am,” Raphael said.
I hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort—for once—but I didn’t feel that explaining myself would make it any better. I didn’t want my concern to seem like pity, and my lips felt half-frozen in place, too cold for a real protest.
“I much prefer real features to granite ones,” I said, with a sniff to keep my nose from running. I cursed my own foolishness in not remembering to bring my handkerchief—I’d left it in Luvander’s back room, I realized, after polishing all his silverware. This was the first and only time I’d ever allowed myself to be so careless.
“How very gallant of you to say so,” Raphael said. “Though perhaps it’s just that you haven’t met the right feature made of granite, if you don’t mind my saying.”
I was about to ask him what he meant by that when he slipped in a patch of black ice and I was forced to catch him by the arm to prevent him from falling.
The fact that I was able to catch him at all, not to mention support his weight, was a clearer indication than anything else that he could have used a few solid meals—and that we should have eaten some supper before we embarked on our trek across the city.
“All right there?” Luvander asked, looking over his shoulder. “Don’t tear my spare jacket, Raphael. It’s my second-favorite, and I like it so much better than I like you.”
“I had no idea it was such a precious garment,” Raphael said, taking care to brush the snow off his shoulders. “Never you mind, everything’s fine. Thank you, by the way.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said, releasing him carefully but resolving to keep a closer watch on him.
Laure would certainly be cross with me if I allowed a member of her rescue party to become injured. And considering her mood at present, I wasn’t about to do anything to draw her wrath nor lose a member of a group that would soon be devoted to looking after our well-being.
We must’ve looked like a strange procession to anyone who might’ve been spying out their window. The seven of us had very little in common—even the airmen, as I’d been surprised to discover, who were as ragtag a group of different personalities as I’d ever seen—but we were just the right amount of foolish to go wading through a snowstorm in the middle of the night to break one man out of a royal jail hidden below the city.
After Raphael’s brief attempt at conversation, no one else said anything at all. The mood was somber—as though we were heading to a funeral. I didn’t know whether it was the sudden realization of the important mission now facing us or simply because no one wanted to get a mouthful of snow. Whatever the reason, I soon lost track of how long we’d been walking, concentrating instead on the heavy rhythm of Ghislain’s footfalls in front of me as I hopped from boot print to boot print like a snow rabbit.
“We’re nearly there now,” Royston said, drawing us down a corner and off the road proper.
Indeed, I could see the shadowed outline of a building up ahead. It looked too small to be a prison, but I remembered what Royston had said about the true facilities lying underground. This, then, was in all likelihood some sort of guardhouse, not to mention part of the cover-up. A modest, simple building housing nefarious deeds done in the deep. This was hardly the city of my dreams.
In any case, that was where we’d be launching our invasion once Margrave Royston began his diversion. I felt a ripple of