Steelhands - Jaida Jones [63]
The back room of Luvander’s shop was crammed full of fancy white boxes, rolls of ribbon, and all sorts of other packing and shipping supplies that I didn’t know anything about, and that didn’t interest me besides. There was a round wooden table with some chairs scattered around it, a little oven in the corner, and some kind of countertop with mugs and tins of tea littered across it. The kettle on the stove was shooting out steam.
“Do you live down here?” Balfour asked, peering around. I was just waiting until he caught sight of what I had: some kind of wooden mask about the size of half a man, carved in the image of some poor bastard’s worst nightmare, with its features all twisted and its mouth wry and snarling. It was hanging on the wall above the table, so he was bound to see it eventually. It looked to me like the damn thing wanted to eat us. Why Luvander’d chosen to put it on display over his sweet little dining set was beyond me.
One of the weirdest of the whole bunch, I always said.
“I live upstairs, actually,” Luvander said, busying himself with pouring the tea. “This is just where I take my meals so I can stay in the shop at lunchtime.”
“Very efficient,” Balfour said, before he startled suddenly and grabbed at my arm. “Bastion! What on earth is that?”
“Oh, Martine?” Luvander asked, shooting a glance toward the mask. “Ghislain found her on one of his expeditions and decided to bring her back for me. Well, for the shop, really. Like a housewarming gift. Or should that be shopwarming? He said she’s supposed to be good luck, but I think she’d scare the customers if I left her out front. So I leave her back here, and I haven’t left anything burning on the stove yet. I think she’s working.”
“It’s … She’s … Hideous,” Balfour said, not bothering to try for good manners on that one.
“Ghislain not around much these days?” I asked, making it sound casual.
“You know how he is,” Luvander said, setting the teapot down on the table and gesturing for us to come over. “Once he sets his mind to doing something, he won’t hear a word against it. He’s got balls of pure dragonsteel. Of course, he won’t tell me what he’s set his mind to, but one does recognize the behavior all the same.”
“You’re still in touch with Ghislain?” Balfour asked, reaching out to his cup and not warming his fingers over it, the way I’d done. I guessed he didn’t have to, but it was a sobering detail to take in all the same.
“We write now and then,” Luvander explained, “and he drops off letters. Sometimes by pigeon. He’s training them on his boat, you see.”
“His boat?” I asked, at about the same time Balfour asked the same.
“Of course,” Luvander replied, blinking owlishly. “He used his stipend to buy one, as you both know.”
“Thought that was for …” I began, then shrugged. “Well, I can’t say what I thought that was for, actually.”
“I think he thought it was the closest thing he’d get to flying again,” Luvander said, blowing on his tea to cool it. “Wind in his hair, surrounded by a great expanse of open blue all around, you know. Or maybe he always wanted to be a sailor when he was little; I didn’t think to ask. Although I’d wager a lot of what he’s doing—if Martine is any evidence to go by—is less like sailoring and more like pirating. Where do you even suppose they have faces like that?”
“Not where anyone’s named Martine,” I said.
Luvander laughed, and Balfour even smiled; I watched the latter as he touched the side of his teacup and lifted it to his mouth, the motions only a little awkward. Not to sound soft, but it made my heart ache to see him like that, and if he wasn’t getting the best care th’Esar had, I’d be speaking to the man myself, crown or no.
“So, that’s it, unfortunately,” Luvander concluded. He gestured to a map pinned up above his sink, where a few pins had been stuck in haphazardly. “He’s somewhere down by Ekklesias, by my calculations. Then again, I know absolutely nothing about how to calculate these things. It’s very possible I’m wrong.”
“How helpful of you,” I said.
“Lucky that Yesfir didn’t travel by sea,