Steelhands - Jaida Jones [92]
There was an addition at the bottom that had been crossed out, and I brought my nose nearly up to the page in order to be able to read it.
I think I hav been heering a voyse in my head, but it does not sound like mine.
“Laure,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “Would you please come and read this?”
She pulled herself out of the chimney where she’d been examining the flue and—rather blackened, ash smudging her pert little nose—came over to take the letter from me. I sat down on Gaeth’s bed, not even mustering the will to be properly horrified at Laure covered in chimney soot. My mind was too occupied with what I’d read.
It took Laure a longer time to read than it had taken me, and as I waited I looked around the room for any clearer signs of Gaeth’s mind slowly unraveling. The trouble was, everything else seemed to be very much in order—at least, in as much order as someone could expect from someone like Gaeth. There were no curses written on the walls in ink or blood—which was the first marker for insanity that anyone could expect if the stories were to be believed—and there weren’t any diagrams or secret messages or blasphemous calendars, either. I nudged the round rug in the center of the room with my toe, and saw only dust beneath, not demented symbols. The most outrageous thing about that room was the sandwich—and, of course, that madman’s letter.
And he had seemed so wholesome, I thought. What a tragedy.
“Well what in bastion’s name is this last bit?” Laure asked, in a tone like she wasn’t at all certain she wanted the answer.
“He heard a voice,” I told her. “A voice in his head, apparently, sounding like a ‘macheen’—though I’m willing to bet that perhaps it was just someone from the room over. I hope the explanation is this simple: that, in his delirium from the fever, he assumed it was coming from within, as opposed to without.”
Laure studied the letter again. She looked somewhat green around the edges, and I didn’t blame her. All of this was very disturbing—especially when I considered that we could be living in a building alongside all kinds of madmen and -women. Clearly the ’Versity bureaucracy had no psychological screenings in place, doubtless because they didn’t care to, and no protection for their students, save for locks that were easily kicked in, should the paranoia of one of our fellows turn suddenly violent.
“I think,” Laure began slowly, so that I could see her mentally girding her loins, “and don’t take this the wrong way, Toverre, because I know you already believe this is crazy, but … But I thought that I heard a voice, too, when the fever was bad. It came to me right as I was drifting out. After I was sick, remember? Didn’t think much of it until now—guess I just shrugged it off—but reading this, it all came back to me. He describes it exactly. Like having someone else crammed right inside your head, whispering things to you, in a voice like—well, exactly like it’s coming from the blacksmithy.”
I didn’t want to hear that, and I opened my mouth to tell her so.
“What on earth do you two think you’re doing here?” demanded a voice I didn’t recognize, from just outside the doorway.
Laure spun around, and I leapt up from the bed as though I’d met the business end of a cattle brand. We’d both been caught, I thought dramatically, and perhaps we’d meet a fate worse than the business end of a cattle brand because of it.
There was a man standing at the door—older than us, but not by a considerable amount. He was wearing silver-rimmed spectacles and looking at us like a cook who’d discovered rats in her larder.
Back home, my father always had the cooks club the rats with the flat side of a shovel. I swallowed, wondering how Laure and I could have been so stupid as to sit in Gaeth’s room, just waiting to be caught.
“I …” Laure said, but she trailed off. There really was no excuse, I thought, and had no words with which to aid her.
How ironic that, when