Steelhands - Jaida Jones [66]
“So what did he want?” Luvander asked, leaning so far forward in his chair that I was sure he’d topple out of it at any moment.
“He wanted to talk to me about my hands,” Balfour said, staring at the table. I expected that was because he found it easier than staring at either of us. “He just … wanted to talk. He asked if they obeyed me, or if I’d been having any trouble with them. I told him that the most trouble I’d had was the attending magician up and vanishing, the same as I told you only more polite, and he told me he’d assign a replacement. After that he had nothing further to say, and so I was sent home.”
“Sounds like there’s something you’re not telling us. No, that’s not how I want to put it,” I corrected myself, before Balfour’s face could seize up in hurt. “It sounds like there’s a missing piece to the story that maybe you don’t know even though you were there. When you think about it, getting the Esarina involved, that’s a whole lot of secrecy to talk about something that might just as well be common knowledge for everyone in Thremedon. You’ve got those hands. Nothing to be ashamed of, anyway.”
Balfour caught himself before he pulled them off the table and folded them, awkward and stiff, one on top of the other.
“They sing songs about you in lower Charlotte, you know,” Luvander said, scratching behind his ear. He probably thought that was going to be comforting. “ ‘Balfour Steelhands,’ they call you. You wouldn’t know, what with being so busy you never visit, but they do. Though sometimes, in the verses, it’s not your hands that are made of steel. But I assure you, all versions are extremely complimentary to your manhood.”
Balfour colored up to his ears. “I don’t know what to say,” he murmured.
“Don’t have to say anything,” Luvander replied. “But if you did come to visit, you’d never be lonely. That I can tell you.”
“Luvander,” I warned. I could look out for the runt of the litter now because this wasn’t wartime and he wouldn’t get it even worse from the boys once I turned my back.
Balfour rubbed his thumb against the tabletop. “I suppose my visit with the Esar might have coincided with his receiving news about what happened with Rook and Thom,” he said, still not looking at all comforted by the idea that someone out there might or might not’ve been composing a ditty to his balls. “My hands are made with the same principles in mind as the dragons, I’m told, even if they’re not precisely the same materials. I suppose in some ways it was an experiment, since to my knowledge it was the first time they’d ever attempted to create something on this scale, hands being so much smaller, after all. I don’t even know how they work,” he added, with a faint little smile. “Trust Thom to figure it out, though.”
“I don’t like it,” I said, reaching down to take a sip of my tea, mostly lukewarm by now, and all the leaves swirling around in the bottom like a bad omen. “Sounds to me like someone’s trying to squeeze all the information outta one end without giving anything back, like he thinks he can get our help, then just shut us out of whatever he’s planning.”
“We don’t know he’s planning anything,” Luvander pointed out, his finger tracing over the pattern on his cup, gold leaf and green. It looked like the kind of thing that might’ve found its way to Thremedon on a pirate ship, maybe one captained by a mutual acquaintance, but I wasn