Steelhands - Jaida Jones [3]
“Boy who wrote that’s the opposite of any good-luck charm I’ve ever had,” I explained, backward country as it sounded. “Some men carry around a rabbit’s foot or a lock of their true love’s hair or what have yous. Well, the way I figure it is, I’m not carrying around anything he touched.”
“You know what this means?” Roy said.
I shrugged.
“It means if I’m caught with this information on me before I—before we—decide what to do with it, the Esar will be very, very displeased.” This was just one more reason that sending all these words in a letter was more than just bad luck; it was suicidal stupidity. “He already doesn’t like me, though I’m sure his feelings about you are much more complicated. I might even be exiled again. Once is painful enough; twice just seems excessive, don’t you agree?”
“Well, look on the bright side, anyway,” I replied. “Maybe you’ll find yourself another …”
“One of these days, Owen,” Roy told me, in a tone I really didn’t like, “you’re going to find yourself falling in love. And I can only hope it will be the most outlandish—the most wildly inappropriate—coupling that Thremedon has ever seen.”
“Considering that rumor with Margrave Holt and his greyhounds—” I began.
“I think you need a good walk to clear your head,” Royston suggested. “And, for that matter, so do I.”
I wasn’t inclined to take Roy’s advice any more often than I had to. Listening to a man like him when he told you what was best for you would only give him the hot air he required to fill his own head. And as much as I teased him about his nose—great honking detail that it was—the size of his head as it was remained quite tolerable. For the time being, in any case.
But he was right about the walk, as he was right about so many other things that he had no business knowing, let alone sharing.
That was the problem with old friends—and magicians, to boot. Putting both attributes in the same man was like committing yourself to a life sentence, though I’d never actually give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that.
The point was, I did need a good walk to clear my head. And I intended to take it, but I needed some time on my own—if Roy would allow it. Which he usually didn’t.
“Along the ’Versity Stretch perhaps?” Royston suggested, already out of his chair and straightening his waistcoat—some gold and black brocade fashion that looked like it cost about as much as the entire coffee shop. I’d seen everyone wearing the sort recently; leave it to Royston to lead the trend. “You might become inspired for your next lecture.”
“Head’s not gonna get much clearer if you come along,” I pointed out, dropping a few coins on the table for politeness’s sake. “When you talk, I can’t hear myself think.”
“Who said I expected you to be able to?” Royston asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, putting on my coat. “Little someone by the name of Mistress Common Courtesy?”
“I can assure you that were I ever to take a mistress, it would not be her,” Royston said, tying his scarf in a fussy kind of knot before heading for the door.
Wind hit us both square in the face, cold as frozen steel and just about as sharp when we stepped out into the street. Just like always, my muscles tensed all over—though not from the cold, because who would I be if I couldn’t handle a little of that? No, it was more like the memory of what wind on my face had meant once and how hard it was to teach your brain something once the rest of you’d gone and figured it out already. All I had was my two boots firmly on the ground, and they weren’t going anywhere but down the road. Maybe toward the Rue around where they’d erected those fool statues of me and the boys.
Small miracle no one’d knocked a piece off or written anything vulgar on ’em yet, but that’d come with time. Hell, if some of the boys had been boys still and not just statues, they’d probably have done it themselves—or at least the ones that could write, with messages to each other about the night before, what kinds of women they’d been with and