Steelhands - Jaida Jones [58]
“It’s fine,” I said, because what else was there to say really? My arm was getting cold, and my heart was racing.
She rubbed the soft crook of my elbow with something that made it colder, then snapped her fingers to one side to get my attention.
I always fell for that stupid trick, even if it was for babies.
The actual needle never hurt as much as all the waiting leading up to it, and this time was no exception. It was like a pinprick, and I’d had worse than that during my forays into mending clothes, despite how many times I’d tried to explain that I just wasn’t made for it. Hurt more to take the needles out of my fingers, too, or when I forgot a pin somewhere and stepped on it.
This wasn’t so bad. I’d been acting like a big baby, imagining all kinds of things that weren’t there, and all over a simple blood testing.
It was my head that needed testing, I thought, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you could joke about with a physician.
Germaine offered me a tight smile and checked her watch—a pretty little thing made of gold, or at least colored to look like it was. On the face were all these foreign symbols—things I’d never seen on a watch before, not even in the history books I’d finally cracked open late the night before, which talked all about how magicians of Volstov had once told time by the sun and the moon. It had two hands like a watch did, though, and a third little one that went ticking in a circle though not in any kind of recognizable rhythm.
I’d ask Toverre about it later. Maybe it was the newest fashion in Thremedon to wear a watch that didn’t actually tell time.
“All done,” Germaine said at last, which was my cue to look away so she could pull the needle out again. Blood didn’t bother me, not my own or anyone else’s, but it hurt more when I looked at it, and I was brave, not stupid. I’d forget all about it if I just put it out of my mind. “Very good. No squirming or anything; a few of the boys before you fainted when they stood up.”
“Got all the squirming out of the way in advance,” I told her. “And I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“You’re a very sensible girl,” Germaine said, tying a clean bandage tight around my arm and sliding her funny watch back into her pocket. The vial of my blood was sitting on a little tray between us, clearly labeled with my name and date of birth. It was much darker than it ever looked when I bloodied my nose or scraped my knee, and there was something creepy about it. Fascinating, too.
Then, just as I was about to ask what came next, Germaine plucked the vial up and whisked it out of my sight. Maybe she didn’t want it to become homesick, so far away from the rest of me.
“We’ll let you know the results in about a week,” she told me, offering me another one of those tight smiles of hers. “Keep the bandage on for at least an hour, don’t wash tonight, and check to make sure there’s no infection. But there shouldn’t be.”
“Good to know,” I said, remembering one of Da’s stableboys who’d died because of a needle that wasn’t clean. That sort of thing made me shudder, though I wasn’t about to let it happen to me.
“Thank you so much for your time,” Germaine said, lingering at her secret doorway. She wasn’t going to step inside, not while I was still hanging around. It piqued my interest, sure, but the whole thing left a bad, metallic taste in my mouth, like sucking on a ha’penny. I wasn’t too keen on sticking around.
I rolled down my sleeve over the bandage, stretching my arm out and making sure all the blood didn’t rush to my head when I stood up.
It didn’t.
Only an idiot would faint after something like this, I thought. An idiot who didn’t know not to look at the needle while it was going into ’em.
“You, too,” I said, even though we both knew we were just doing our jobs.
FIVE
ADAMO