Steelhands - Jaida Jones [75]
Knowing that a man like that was keeping watch helped me sleep more deeply at night. I pitied whatever poor pirates crossed paths with him and wondered if they’d be singing about those exploits in Charlotte, soon enough.
The knock at the door startled me out of any further brooding thoughts I might’ve had, and I willed my fingers to flex with such force that I heard the metal creak in protest. This appointment was coming none too soon—for me or them.
I took the gloves from my desk and struggled with getting them on before I answered the door, while my visitor knocked impatiently for the second time.
They could wait, I thought stubbornly. The last thing I needed was for my hands to be seen by anyone other than a Margrave in this state. It reflected poorly on Ginette’s work, not to mention how I felt about them personally. Not everyone needed to know my private suffering—not even when it appeared to have become a matter of state.
“Good afternoon,” said the man in the Esar’s uniform who awaited me, tipping his hat. “Sorry for making you wait. I got all turned around by the Basquiat, then couldn’t seem to straighten things out. I’ve got it now, though. All filed away in my head. Once I take a route, I know it. Like the back of my hand,” he added, showing me the hand in question. It was pink and chapped with cold, a little split around the thumb nail.
“That’s quite all right,” I said quickly, pulling on my coat and pressing my hands into the pockets. It was to keep them warm as much as it was to hide them. “Is the appointed place very far from here?”
“Won’t take us all day, if that’s what you’re asking,” the man said, glancing at me curiously. “You are him, right? Steelhands—no offense meant, that’s just what they call you in my part of town. I mean, we all heard what happened in the war, but I never … None of us up at the palace could even agree about what they’d look like, let alone how something like that’d even work.”
“They work very poorly at the moment,” I told him, being somewhat short because of how uncomfortable the question made me. Though some of my comrades in the corps had always gone out of their way to be at the center of attention at all times, such scrutiny made me twitch. The tavern songs a drunken mind composed in the dead of night were one thing, but I’d never wished to be famous in the first place, let alone for something I hadn’t even done.
“Right. Like I said, no offense meant,” the driver told me, stepping back so that I could lock the door and follow him down the stairs. He seemed appropriately sheepish, but I was too distracted even to apologize to him.
Dear Thom, I began composing mentally, as I got into the carriage and the driver hopped up on top. Today I took out my bad mood on someone who made the mistake of trying to engage me in friendly conversation. I doubt it’s a mistake he’ll be making again anytime soon, and if word spreads of my behavior, I’m sure you’ll hear tales of Balfour the Terrible—worse than any dragon—as far as you’ve traveled. Wherever that place may be.
The journey passed quickly enough, me writing my imaginary letters and the driver no doubt working out the best way to tell his friends that Balfour Steelhands was a rude little bastard.
It was possible that I was exaggerating, but the stiffness in my hands left me little room for optimism.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t follow the narrow twists and turns of the streets as we rode through Thremedon—something none of my old friends would have ever allowed—and when the carriage began slowing to a halt, I realized that we were actually back at the palace, though not at the entrance I’d taken last time. The more I looked at it, I realized I’d never seen the palace from behind, and though the shape of the building was unmistakable, I wondered at being allowed to use this entrance,