Steelhands - Jaida Jones [76]
They’d built walls to cordon off the area for a reason—to keep almost everyone out—and I marveled at how the gilding around the minarets was faded from the salty wind, and the colors of the turrets seemed somehow less bright.
“Not much to look at, is it?” my driver asked in a low whisper. “That’s ’cause the good parts face the rest of the city; but in the back here, it’s all shadow.”
I’d have to tell Thom about this, I thought, if I could ever manage to write a decent letter again.
There was a woman waiting for me at the door, so that I couldn’t very well hang back and ask the driver where in bastion’s name he’d taken me. I’d already made enough bad first impressions for one day, surely.
“Good day to you,” the driver called after me, taking his hands off the reins to give me a wave-off. “Good luck with them hands. Do wish I’d got a chance to see ’em, though!”
“Perhaps next time,” I told him, left with a strange feeling of abandonment as he rode off around the side of the palace, the carriage soon obscured by the wall and a group of ornamental trees.
There was nothing left but to approach the woman, who looked more like a physician than a magician to me, but then, I was hardly an expert. She had a kindly look about her though her attitude was brusque, and she was holding a clipboard with various notes and pieces of paper pinned to it. A pair of spectacles perched on her nose, dwarfed almost comically by her broad face.
“Hello,” she said, not holding out her hand—a small fact for which I was incredibly grateful. “My apologies if any of this runaround is an inconvenience for you, but I don’t have the same private collection of supplies as my predecessor, and all the best materials are here at the palace.”
“I’m Balfour. Balfour Vallet,” I told her, bowing just slightly. “And I’m glad to meet wherever you feel most comfortable working.”
She smiled at that, approval plain on her face. “I’m so glad to hear that, Balfour,” she said, stepping aside to welcome me in. “Please, follow me.”
SIX
LAURE
When I finally awoke, I felt like I’d been dragged behind my da’s plow for a full day during harvest. All my muscles were aching, and my eyes didn’t much appreciate all the sudden light, but it was still better than the way I’d felt the day before, because at least I felt like myself—mashed or no.
The worst part had been that voice I was hearing. I couldn’t tell Toverre about it because he’d’ve assumed I’d gone crazy, and I’d wake up after the fever’d passed in some kind of institution, arms bound up so I couldn’t hurt myself. But the voice had definitely been there, seeming more real than just a simple hallucination. It sounded like a low whisper, sliding right between my temples—the kind of voice you’d expect a cat would have. And there was a part of it that made me think of fire and metal, too—a distant clang like those that came from the blacksmith’s workshop back home.
Thinking about it, while I lay in bed and waited for my head to stop pounding, sure did make me feel crazy. Maybe I deserved to be in an institution, after all.
Must’ve been a bad fever, in any case; I was sweating like a racehorse now that I was awake. The sweat was cold and sticky, and I was tangled up in so many blankets I thought I was going to melt.
It took a lot of concentration, but I finally got my limbs to move. In a burst of inspiration, I shoved all the covers off me and onto the floor, though one was tangled around my leg and it almost took me down with it.
“Oh, how marvelous,” Toverre said beside me, his voice a little too loud for my headache to bear. “In thanks for my hospitality, you throw all my covers onto the floor. Well, I suppose I’d have needed to wash them anyway. Still, Laure, I …”
He paused, and I wished I could open my eyes just a crack so I could get a peek at him. But I wasn’t ready yet—maybe in a minute—so I just turned my face toward the sound of his voice, hoping it looked like I was paying attention. “Huh?” I asked, quite elegantly.
“I see you are feeling