Steelhands - Jaida Jones [215]
“Nice one,” Laure muttered to me under her breath—just like she thought we were whispering together in class.
“Thanks,” Gaeth added, scratching the back of his head. “Don’t want to go crazy. Not any more’n I already have, anyway.”
“Well then,” Antoinette said, and I felt singled out, like a cutup during a lecture. “What do you suggest we do, little man?”
Adamo snorted—I realized it was to cover up a laugh—and with everyone staring at me, and me looking dirtier than one of my father’s pigs, I felt very miserable indeed. It wasn’t my place to decide these things, I thought. But then again, someone had to do it.
“We’ll just have to keep ’em secret, I guess,” Laure said, speaking up in my place and rescuing me, as always. “If killing ’em’s so bad and we can’t let anybody know about ’em either, then that’s the only way.”
“That won’t be easy,” Antoinette said.
“With all those guards acting as witness?” Adamo asked. “I don’t like our odds. It’ll leak, and sooner than later, by my thinking.”
“Well,” Antoinette murmured very demurely. “I would of course be able to take care of them.”
The Esarina stopped her pacing, and we were all drawn to her without her even needing to clear her throat for our attention. Though she was a slim, pale woman, there was something about her that to me indicated vast reserves of strength. “Toying with the minds of others?” she asked. “Erasing information because to us it is inconvenient? This sounds more and more like my husband’s reign. And if he is unable to rule after this—and if I am indeed to take his place—that is not the way I would wish to begin. Just because someone else would be doing the dirty work for me, I would not find it easy to turn a blind eye. His Highness used many of his subjects as pawns during the war—Caius Greylace, for example—and I was always distraught that he would play so casually with the lives of others.”
“It would be but one memory,” Antoinette said, I suspected more gently than she was wont to be. “I would turn it into a shared dream. I would not hurt them, nor would I drive them mad. And the little Greylace now lives quite comfortably in the country, I’m told. More comfortably than us, at present.”
The Esarina pursed her lips. “And what of this merry band?” she asked finally, with a hint of humor so faint it nearly passed over all our heads.
“I rather enjoyed this experience,” Raphael admitted. “I would prefer it if I was allowed to keep the memory.”
“The ex-airmen have always been trustworthy,” Antoinette said. “Despite how they may behave. And the girl and the boy attached to the dragons can’t very well forget about this, now can they?”
That just left me, I thought with a gulp, glancing around as everyone’s eyes were drawn to me. Once again, it was Laure to my rescue, as both she and Gaeth stepped closer—as though they were my private Dragon Guard.
“I’ll see what I am able to do,” Antoinette conceded at last. “There may be something I can manage, allowing you to retain your memories yet rendering you unable to speak of this to anyone outside this room. How does that sound?”
“Just great,” Adamo replied, in a tone of voice that made it very clear he meant the opposite. It was, however, our best option. As though we were hammering out the terms of our own private treaty, we were forced to make compromises. I was merely glad not to be singled out as the only useless—and expendable—fool there. “Guess it’ll be good for my friend Troius over here,” Adamo added, after a moment’s thought. “ ’Cause even though I’m planning on watching him day and night ’til one of us dies of old age, I’m also planning on getting some shut-eye, some of the time.”
“And what of the dragons?” the Esarina asked shrewdly.
“We wouldn’t let the dragons rust,” Antoinette replied carefully.
“And you’d likely need someone to be Chief Sergeant,” Luvander added, glancing at Professor Adamo. “I don’t think he enjoys the kind of teaching with which he’s currently saddled. But I also don’t think.”
“Did I ask