Steelhands - Jaida Jones [194]
Stranger things had happened before, I thought, but it was time for me to intervene. “She’s his dragon,” I explained. “I guess we’re just gonna have to take his word for it that he’s gonna help us get out of here. You wouldn’t go back on your word, now, would you, Gaeth?”
“No, sir,” Gaeth said. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Just don’t be rash,” the cricket hissed. “First Laure, now you … I’m surrounded by foolhardy lunatics!”
“Is that Balfour?” asked another woman, standing just behind Antoinette. It was the one I’d seen in her cell earlier—Margrave Ginette. Under the bright lights she looked sickly, too pale. But then again, by my count, she’d been down there far longer than any of the rest of us. “I’m sorry I missed our appointment. I hope it didn’t prove too detrimental. How are you feeling?”
“I should ask you the same question,” Balfour said, under his breath, like he knew Antoinette and I weren’t gonna approve of small talk.
Heavy footsteps sounded along the hall, and I turned around to see Ghislain and three others making their way toward us. One of them was the Wildgrave Ozanne, and one the Margrave Cirse, who I recognized from a few parties Royston had thrown over the years. The third, of course, was the notorious Margrave Holt, who enjoyed breeding greyhounds—some said he enjoyed breeding them a little too much—but he looked normal enough.
Guess it was the normal-looking ones that always got you. Troius himself looked real respectable, right up until the minute he opened his fat yap and started blithering about his ambitions and dreams and sitting next to th’Esar on his throne so the two of them could play dragons all day long with their thumbs up their asses.
I was gonna enjoy spiking those plans, sure enough.
“Getting to be a regular army,” Ghislain said, sliding the key rings onto his belt. “That’s all of ’em. Where to next?”
“I need to speak with the Esarina,” Antoinette said, once the newly freed captives had all come within earshot. “I’m told that Nico’s scholarship students were a ruse, and that in reality, he’s been using them to re-create his lost army of dragons. I’m not sure how he got the idea—someone must have given it to him; it’s hardly his style to be so clever on his own—but he’s violated the provisions that allowed him to build the dragons in the first place.”
“You can’t be serious,” Wildgrave Ozanne said. “Surely he knows the Basquiat would never agree to such measures—and we have treaties in place with the Ke-Han, not to mention! Treaties we went to great pains to hammer out. If they learn we’ve done this behind their backs … Well, I’m not going back there for a second round!”
“We’ve seen the dragons,” Luvander said. “Well, pieces of them, anyway. They’re in a workroom upstairs, all laid out like clockwork.”
“I’ve seen one completed,” I told them. “And I was told there were three more finished up. Might as well get that detail out of the way first. They’re little bigger than one of your hounds, Margrave Holt, and smaller than a full-grown man like Ghislain—but I’d say they’re real enough. Although I haven’t heard ’em talking out loud, and it seems like they’ve been bound to individuals somehow. That kind of magic’s out of my league for explaining. I only know what I saw.”
“There’s Cornflower—she’s mine,” Gaeth said, sounding troubled. “And Ironjaw, who belongs to Troius. And then there are two more, but they haven’t found masters yet. I heard from Cornflower that there’s been trouble with the fourth. She picked someone, but they’re trying to rewire her so she chooses somebody else. It ain’t going so well, from the sounds of it.”
“Cornflower,” Luvander murmured. “How times have changed.”
“It will hardly fit into rousing song,” Raphael agreed.
“Hush,” Antoinette told them. And, bless her, they actually listened.
“They approached me to help them,” Ginette admitted. “I couldn’t, in all good conscience—which is how I ended up here. They wouldn’t tell me enough of their plan for me to be of any use, I’m