Steelhands - Jaida Jones [201]
“Don’t worry,” I heard Gaeth tell Toverre, as Toverre did his best not to be thrown down onto the dirty floor. “That’s just Cornflower.”
The second dragon was on our side, I realized. Or, at least that’s what I thought Gaeth was saying.
Everyone scrambled to get out of her way as she clawed up from the ground like she thought she was a groundhog. There were parts of her that were silver, too, and parts that were another metal with kind of a blue sheen to it. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d’ve assumed that was what’d given Gaeth the idea to name her Cornflower. As she oriented herself in the tunnel, facing our attacker, I could see that all the exposed gears under her belly and her arm and leg joints were bronze, and she had a sharper snout than Ironjaw, with the same enormous nostrils and rows of glittering silver teeth.
Then she lunged forward with a shriek that sounded like metal scraping on rock—or maybe she wasn’t screaming, and what we were hearing was just her claws tearing through stone. Gaeth shouted, and Adamo pushed the group by using Ghislain as a shield, moving us clear back through the tunnel while I scrambled to see what was going on.
Cornflower, like any loyal animal worth her salt, had thrown herself in the way of danger, not letting anyone or anything threaten her master. I could see her tail whipping around, scraping at the tunnel walls and sending little showers of sparks and rock down around her. Ironjaw let out a growl and slashed out at her with those mean-looking claws, but Cornflower dodged the blow and held her ground. Likewise, Adamo was holding our ground, moving us just out of range of those razor-sharp tails as they whipped back and forth, driving the guards in green back same as us.
The lucky thing about the dragons being between us was it meant that slimy snake Troius couldn’t get any closer to us than we could to him. We were trapped on either side of the dragon battle, and I could only hope that man’s nose was hurting him something fierce.
Sparks showered up like fireworks around the tunnel as Ironjaw lunged at Cornflower, trying to dart past her. For the second time, Cornflower knocked her back, jaws snapping as she kept her opponent at bay. In a way—though I’d never say this to Toverre, since I could feel him trembling next to me—there was something beautiful about the way they fought, neither one giving quarter but both surging up at once, claws flying and metal gleaming.
Ironjaw rose up on her hind legs and Cornflower sprang at her throat, jaws seizing around the gears there and tugging at one of the cog pieces.
“Attagirl,” I heard Adamo mutter, just ahead of me.
But the battle wasn’t won, not by a long shot. Ironjaw was slapping at Cornflower with the sharp end of her tail, and it seemed to me like they were pretty much evenly matched, capable of tearing each other to pieces before the fight ended in a draw. I didn’t know how much it must’ve cost to build ’em, but I knew how much of a loss it’d be if they destroyed one another. It didn’t seem right to me to be pleased about it, just because of how ticked off th’Esar would be, after all the things he’d sacrificed—his honor chief among them—to build them in the first place.
I heard something else then, real close by, over the clang of metal meeting metal and Toverre’s whimpering beside me. It was a funny whispering sound, the likes of which I’d heard before, but I’d never welcomed it. Balfour wasn’t even with us anymore, so I couldn’t sneak a glance sideways to see if he was twitching around like he was hearing things, too.
“Everyone get back,” Gaeth said suddenly in a firm voice I’d never heard him use before. He’d already taken Toverre by the arm and started pulling—assuming rightly that he’d gone catatonic on us now that there was so much danger and dirt around. The rock dust was especially thick in