Steelhands - Jaida Jones [83]
“Could I really?” I asked, momentarily in too good a mood to even feel irritated about Radomir acting like my brain worked too slowly to figure things out for itself. “I wouldn’t be interrupting important business or anything?”
“If I had important business, I wouldn’t be there,” Adamo said. He looked surprised I wanted to take him up on his offer, and maybe even a little pleased that I’d shown some interest, which was a new one for me. Usually the only looks I got from professors were more in the range of resigned disappointment. My tutor back home had quit fifteen times before he finally left the countryside altogether. “Come by sometime next week, and if I can find the place, I’ll be in it.”
“It’s Cathery 306,” I told him. “Just ask Radomir; he knows all about it.”
“And maybe wear a hat the next time you go out,” Adamo said, as a parting shot. “Scarf, too. Pair of gloves. A little common sense keeps a soldier from getting sick.”
I decided to let him have the final word. He seemed like a good sort, and he was probably just trying to look out for me in his own way.
Toverre came scrambling down at me like a human avalanche as I passed the staircase, his face red and mottled. He probably thought he was the one who’d just had to talk it out with a professor. But, I thought, I’d been pretty convincing. At least I’d managed to end things on an up note, and I hadn’t been kicked out of the ’Versity.
Seemed like I was good at being diplomatic after all—despite what everyone said about me.
“Now, Toverre, that wasn’t so bad,” I told him, feeling victorious. I’d held my ground pretty well with a master tactician, even though my own strategy had consisted of nothing more than just telling the truth over and over again until it stuck. The simple tactics were always the best, or so ex–Chief Sergeant Professor Adamo was always reminding us.
“ ‘Wasn’t so bad?’ ” Toverre repeated, like I’d just started jabbering in foreign tongues and he was trying to piece together what I was saying. Poor thing needed a little more sleep to be in a better mood. “Not bad? I thought he was going to start breathing fire himself when you said that about not liking his tone! And it’s not as though you can repel fire—I certainly didn’t buy you that kind of dress. Do you have a death wish, Laure, or are you simply confusing brave with stupid?” He paused to draw in a deep breath, and I braced myself for round two. “Do you know, I think he actually likes you?”
I’d been expecting everything except that last bit, and it threw me for a loop as surely as if I’d been riding a dragon myself. Of course, I supposed that if I had been riding a dragon, I’d have been looking to make the Chief Sergeant proud of me. I’d just never really thought about it in those terms before. If you were gonna dream about something, it made sense to dream about the big beauties rather than the men that rode them.
Wish I could’ve been, I thought wistfully. It was probably way better than riding a horse, and that was one of the things I loved most in the world.
“He’d like anyone who told him what they were thinking up front like that,” I insisted, feeling a little warm all of a sudden. It was because of the damn heat they pumped into these buildings, so that a girl couldn’t bundle up for the weather outside without shedding her layers like a wet, newborn butterfly when she came in from the cold. Was it any wonder all of us were getting fevers? “He’s a simple man who likes some honesty, that’s all.”
“I’m sure that’s what he likes,” Toverre said, with one of those all-knowing looks that really got on my nerves.
This was the sort of thing Toverre liked to read too much into; I knew that from his own affairs. He’d turn a simple glance or turn of phrase into something more meaningful, just like magic.
“Come on,” I said, taking him by the arm. This time, it was my turn to drag him out the door. “If we hurry, we can still make Professor Fuss-budget’s special what’d you call ’em? ‘Consultation hours.’ Then we gotta look for Gaeth.”
By the sound of things, he