Steelhands - Jaida Jones [186]
“Should I feel like a proud uncle?” Luvander asked, face red with emotion. It wasn’t joy, I realized, but mottled anger. “So many little ones to be.”
“It doesn’t make any sense for them to be this size,” Balfour added. “Does it?”
“Would anyone mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.
“It’s clear,” Ghislain said flatly. “The Dragon Corps is being rebuilt.”
“And th’Esar clearly wishes to play dollhouse with them,” Luvander concluded. “He’s had them all made in miniature. Isn’t that sweet?”
Even I was hit hard enough by this latest discovery to fall gravely silent; I couldn’t imagine how these men were feeling, observing what had once been their lives turned into scrap metal upon the table.
But for what purpose was all this gathered here? I wondered, glancing over the collection of gleaming metal parts. Some were clearly recognizable, like Luvander’s wing: a claw here, a jaw there, even a curved, ridged tail. The rest was just guts and scrap, I could only assume, thousands of cogs and gears—the human equivalent would be a patient sliced open upon the autopsy table. I shuddered.
“We shouldn’t be in here,” Laure said. When I turned to look at her—grateful to have something else to focus on other than the grisly sight before me—I saw that there was a faraway look in her eyes. It seemed that she, too, was hearing what Balfour had, earlier in the hallway. “We can’t get distracted. We’ve gotta find Adamo before those bastards upstairs wake up and come looking for who clobbered ’em.”
“They won’t wake up for a long time,” Raphael said cheerfully.
“But,” Ghislain added, “I take your meaning.”
He left the room quickly—and I had to wonder if it was practicality that impelled him to leave or some deeper compulsion. Balfour was still staring around in horror, and Luvander’s face had been transformed by serious emotion. He hadn’t yet put the wing down.
“Come on,” Raphael said almost gently. “We’ll come back later.”
“Adamo will know what to do,” Balfour agreed, more like he was trying to convince himself than reassure his companions.
Laure touched a rounded piece of metal on the table, then jerked back as though she’d been burned. “Come on,” she agreed, and stormed out of the room.
I was forced to scurry after her, the other men somehow able to extricate themselves in order to follow me. Ghislain closed the big door behind us without a sound. “Another stairway out here,” he said, knocking gently at the wall in front of him. There was a groaning sound, like stone scraping against stone, and what had appeared moments earlier to be a solid wall swung away from us, revealing an even smaller, darker staircase. “Same formation,” Ghislain added.
He had to crouch in order to fit; moments later, he disappeared into the darkness. Balfour moved after him, white around the mouth but with unwavering purpose. Laure looked more than ever like she belonged with them—a stalwart soldier heading off to battle—and I reached out to grab hold of her, wishing she could transfer some of her strength to me.
We left the comforting light behind us and were swallowed up by the cool, deep dark. The sound of dripping water was growing louder—perhaps that was what Balfour and Laure had heard?—and I felt something drop onto the top of my head, causing my stomach to turn over like an omelet in the skillet.
There would be no bath in the world long or cleansing enough to rid me of the crawling feeling all over my skin.
At least the staircase was a short one. I missed my footing, so sure of another step to follow the last one, and Laure steadied me but also clamped a hand over my mouth.
I could hear voices now, though not clearly. They were muffled—coming from around the corner—but the harder I listened, the more clearly I recognized them.
One was the unforgettable bass of Professor ex–Chief Sergeant Owen Adamo, though