Steelhands - Jaida Jones [196]
“He always does,” I replied.
FOURTEEN
LAURE
Toverre was wrapped up enough with making sure Gaeth was all right, and that left me free to cast glances at Adamo in the dark—just to make sure he wasn’t trying to pull one over on us, telling everybody he was feeling okay when he wasn’t. I wasn’t the sort to pull a sneaky maneuver like trying to keep an eye on someone without him knowing it, but then I wasn’t the sort to go inviting men to dinner, either. I imagined Toverre would have a thing or two to say about that once we were out of here, but for once it didn’t matter to me what he thought. Or what anyone else thought, really.
For the time being, I was content enough to keep an eye on Adamo. There was being strong-willed, then there was getting your troops into trouble because of your stubbornness, and while I shouldn’t’ve been thinking I needed to tell him how to do his job, I still had to make sure he was feeling all right.
At least he didn’t seem to be limping or anything like that. The most I could pick out was that there was a cut on the back of his neck, real shallow, like he’d accidentally broken skin while scratching. If that was the extent of his injuries, then I guessed he was gonna make it, and I could turn my attention back to more important things—like focusing on where I was going, and maybe also what I was gonna do once we got there.
And I wasn’t hearing anything anymore, so I could thank whoever was listening for the small favors they were finally granting me.
It’d started out quiet enough, back when we’d first come down the stairs. I’d heard the voice before, too, though now that it’d disappeared, I wondered if I hadn’t been overthinking things, spooked because of how creepy that workroom was, with all those scattered pieces.
It made me feel stupid once I realized what those metal parts’d been for—like I maybe should’ve thought of it earlier, only how could I have known? It wasn’t like the Dragon Corps did parades through the countryside; everyone knew what the dragons were, but I’d never seen one up close, and definitely not enough to know what one would look like broken down into doll-size pieces.
Still, if I’d been smart enough to figure it out right away, then maybe I could’ve told Adamo sooner, and a big chunk of the mess we’d got into might’ve been outright avoided.
I hated feeling useless more than anything. It wriggled in deep under my skin and stuck there like milk thistles in cotton.
But if it made me mad, then I figured that was barely scraping the surface of what Adamo and the others must’ve felt like. I’d tried to come up with some kind of comparison, but the only one that even came close was if someone’d gone and dug up White Star, my first pony, from behind the barn. Most people would’ve told me the comparison was crazy—Toverre, for one—but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to fit.
She’d been an old girl, but sweet as sugar and gentle as mother’s milk when I’d first been learning to ride, and she’d been a fast racing horse in her day. The way I saw it, the only thing harder than saying good-bye to her in the first place would be if some rich neighbor who thought everything in the world belonged to him, including my da’s property and everything on it, took it into his head to bring her back, just to ride her for fun.
Something like that was impossible, of course, and that was the difference between a beast made of machinery and one made of flesh and bone. But at the same time, I didn’t think the two were as separate as most people would’ve liked to think. The dragons had definitely been alive to them that’d ridden them—I could tell by the way Luvander had gone all silent, not to mention the way Adamo looked gut-punched whenever he talked about the new ones.
Compared to that kind of suffering, thinking I’d heard a few whispers seemed like a minor concern. Guess I felt a little silly worrying about myself when the others had just as much riding on what happened, and maybe more. I only wished I could’ve had