Havemercy Page 26

  I took my leave to visit the bathroom sometime later on, when various members of the Basquiat and Royston started in on a discussion about the war. No one else seemed to think it strange, their having won so abruptly when as far as I knew the raids had only just begun again. Once or twice Royston frowned, as though he didn’t entirely like the direction the conversation was taking, but since he was quite capable of turning the tides of an entire discussion on his own, I didn’t think he would miss me. I could be brave in the kind of way that got me through a fancy city ball, I thought, and I could be brave in a way that allowed me to accept the eventuality of Royston going away to war—if indeed it lasted that long—but I could not be the two kinds of brave at once.

  As soon as I’d resigned myself to this, my newest problem was trying to avoid becoming hopelessly lost once I’d left the ballroom. It was not as difficult as I’d feared, as there seemed to be many servants scattered throughout the halls for specifically this purpose. That they didn’t seem all that keen on speaking to me was only a small detail, but I was nevertheless very grateful when I finally opened the correct door.

  “Oh,” said someone, who was quite unexpectedly seated on the marble counter into which the porcelain washing-sink was inlaid.

  It was the man in green.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as he slid to the floor, smoothing the creases in his trousers. “I didn’t realize there was anyone, ah, using the room.”

  “Oh,” he said again, straightening up at once. “Well you see, I’m—I’m not so much using the room as I am hiding. In the room.”

  This seemed to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as it had been my plan exactly. He was braver than I, however, for being able to reveal his motives freely.

  “I think that may also be why I’m here,” I admitted. “I’m glad to see I’ve come to the right place.”

  His smile indicated he’d been starved for basic kindness for a very long time, and my heart went out to him immediately. From what little I’d heard about the Dragon Corps—and if he was indeed the ’Versity student who’d been set to the task of rehabilitating them for proper society—then his life couldn’t have been very easy of late. And now he found himself here, in this terrifying place, as foreign as if it weren’t the center of our own Volstov capital. I didn’t envy him his position.

  “I haven’t been here long,” he said cautiously, as if he expected to be caught out and ridiculed at any moment. “In fact, I was just leaving—”

  “You needn’t, not on my account,” I assured him. “I think it may be much more preferable to hide in the bathroom with someone than by myself. On my own it has a . . . more desperate air. Don’t you agree?”

  He laughed hesitantly, but when he’d finished laughing the smile remained in his eyes, lighting up his entire face. “Yes,” he agreed at length. “I suppose it does. Do you mind my asking—it may be presumptuous of me—but your accent seems to indicate—”

  “I’m from county Nevers,” I told him. In truth, I was glad to have the secret out. It was so obvious from the moment I opened my mouth that I might as well have been wearing a sign pronouncing my country origins to the entire room.

  “I thought so,” the man in green admitted. “There’s a certain—That is, one of my professors was a specialist in the dialects.”

  “Was he?” I asked. “What did you study with him?”

  “The provinces, mostly, and the regional influences of the old Ramanthe,” the man in green replied, a dreamy expression on his face. “We barely touched upon Nevers—it’s unorthodox teaching to go so far as the river—but in any case, this is probably all overwhelmingly dull for you, isn’t it?”

  It wasn’t, and I let him know it in no uncertain terms. “I’ve always wanted to study at the ’Versity,” I added, almost shyly. It wasn’t a dream I shared with many, but the man in green, I felt, would understand this desire. “ I’m too old now, of course, but—Was there really a class like that?”

  “Countless classes,” the man in green replied. “Marius—Marius is my thesis advisor—often had to chastise me about spreading myself too thin by signing up for too many of them.”

  “Of course you did,” I replied. “Attending the ’Versity is the only chance you’ll get to learn such things.”

  “Exactly,” the man in green said. There was a momentary silence between us—not entirely uncomfortable—and then a sudden flush of embarrassment came over him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Thom. I’m here with the, ah, corps. Their reputation precedes them.”

  “I’m Hal,” I replied. “It’s rather a relief to meet you.”

  “You’re here with Mar—The Margrave,” Thom said quickly. There was a new blush on his cheeks, but I had to confess I was at a loss as to why. “Margrave . . .Royston. Yes, Margrave Royston. I saw you at his table.”

  It was my turn to blush. “Yes,” I said. “He—You know, I’m sure, the—”

  “The circumstances for his sojourn in the countryside?” Thom supplied for me kindly.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “Well. I was to be the tutor at Castle Nevers.”

  “And now you’re not.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly that.”

  Thom leaned back against the marble wall, toying idly with his collar. It made me feel much better about the stiffness at my own throat, and I took this as my chance to loosen the clasp there somewhat and breathe deeply and properly for the first time in what felt like years. “It’s been a dramatic year,” Thom said at last. “Hasn’t it?”

  “It seems it has,” I replied. “I’m not entirely . . . up on my Thremedon gossip, however.”

  “My friend,” Thom informed me, “I believe you are in the midst of that about which everyone is gossiping.”

  “I’m not sure that’s preferable,” I confided.

  “No,” he agreed. “Nor am I.”

  “Are you the instructor to the Dragon Corps?” I began.

  Thom nodded. “I have some manner or other of a title, at this point,” he said. “But all it means is that I’m supposed to teach the Dragon Corps to be respectful of others and to refrain from harassing every woman they meet, whether she’s a common Nellie or a diplomat’s wife. I admit that it’s a thankless job.”

  I couldn’t help myself, and asked impulsively, “But have you seen them? The dragons?”

  Something strange and unrecognizable passed over Thom’s face; it made him look rather more mysterious, darkening his eyes to the color of twin bruises. Rather than intimating some divine secret about the Dragon Corps, however, he simply said, “Yes. Once. Not very close, though.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That was . . . rude of me, wasn’t it? I’m sorry. I’m from Nevers, and—”

  “Bastion,” Thom swore wearily. “Goodness, please don’t apologize. You’re the first person who’s actually talked to me—I mean really talked to me, rather than cursed at me or told me I had a giant blue handprint on my face or beetles still in my hair—in months. It seems more like years, to be honest with you. I’m grateful for it.”

  I paused for a moment to consider this, and found I had to loosen my high, tight collar a second time. “Is it really that awful?” I asked companionably. “I’m sorry. I’d no idea it could be that bad. After all, I’ve only ever read about the Dragon Corps. Naturally,” I added, blushing again, “since I’ve been in Thremedon no more than two days.”

  “It’s an experience,” Thom said dryly. “One I’m sure I’ll be grateful to have had one day in the very, very distant future, once I have fully recovered from all this experiencing.”

  We laughed together for a moment, a more friendly sound than the sparkling, tittering noises the noblesse made behind their lacy fans.

  “Surely it isn’t all bad,” I said presumptuously. “I even thought perhaps—But, no, that’s rather stupid of me. And silly.”

  “What?” Thom inquired, suddenly curious.

  “Never mind,” I insisted. “It
really is unfounded. I don’t know what I could possibly have been thinking to bring it up.”

  “Come,” Thom encouraged, “let’s try to be honest with each other, shall we? I’m in need of some honesty. What was it you were going to say?”

  I struggled for a moment with the right way to phrase what I had in mind. At last, I formed my tentative words with the utmost care, certain that this was presuming too much familiarity. “I only thought—from the way he was looking at you—the man in blue, with the braids—I only thought you might have been particular friends—”

  Thom’s expression closed itself off to me at once, and I knew I’d committed a fatal blunder in our tentative acquaintanceship. “Why,” he said, voice a little too hard; I thought for a moment he might even have been on the verge of laughter, but it was a dreadful laugh that stifled itself in his throat, and one which made my stomach feel ice-cold. “Why would you even think that?”

  I felt awful. I didn’t know what it was that I’d said that had so offended him. If I’d known which way to turn once I made my escape, I would have fled the bathroom then and there, but it was necessary I right my own wrong and patch up the damage as best as I could. “I’m so sorry,” I assured him. “Perhaps I was mistaken? I only thought I saw . . . but of course I didn’t. Do you have . . . particular trouble with him? Was that why he was watching you?”

  There was a long and awkward silence, bristling unpleasantly between us. “Has he put you up to this?” Thom asked at last. “I wouldn’t blame you; he’s quite intimidating, and if he caught you while you were on your way here . . .”

  I realized at once that whatever Thom had been put through during his time with the Dragon Corps, it was beyond my ability to imagine. The man with the gold-and-blue braids certainly made a striking impression; the intensity I’d mistakenly thought of as collegiality might have been something much more sinister. I wondered if there was something—anything—I could do for Thom, but we were no more than strangers exchanging our personal social ineptitudes in the bathroom of the Esar’s palace. We didn’t know each other at all beyond the barest of details and a kinship born of mutual anxiety.

  I was a complete idiot.

  “I haven’t spoken to him at all,” I said, hoping he’d believe me. “I’m not any good at lying—you can ask Royston, if you’d like. He’ll tell you just how awful at it I really am.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Thom said, his expression softening only somewhat. “You really—You really thought you saw him, as you say, looking at me?”

  Perhaps it would have been better to lie about it, to assuage his worries, but as I’d already told him, I was dreadful at lying and he would have seen through my attempts immediately. “I must have been mistaken. I’ve never—”

  “Please,” Thom said, voice polite but clipped, “don’t feel the need to excuse yourself. Whatever you saw or didn’t see, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Doubtless he has something planned, and was keeping an eye on me to ensure his—Bastion! If you’ll excuse me, I really must be—Good-bye.”

  Before I could apologize for my mistake, he’d left the room, the bathroom door closing loudly behind him. I winced at the sound it made, the echoes through the marble room, and sank back against one of the countless, floor-length mirrors. I began to realize just how naive I was, and to understand that I was no longer in the country, where a look meant nothing more than the obvious.

  My first palace offense, I thought wretchedly, and I wished it had been someone who better deserved it.

  ROOK

  All night long I was surrounded by ladies and their perfumes and their polished nails and their powdered breasts, some of them looking good enough to eat, decked out in their finest and all of them tripping over one another to dance with me. But I was too busy thinking about something else, against all better instincts and real stupid, and the more I thought about it the angrier I got—especially seeing as how about fifteen minutes after we all arrived the crazy professor disappeared, and nobody seemed to notice he was missing. My guess was that he’d been called to report on us, or maybe he’d gone to drown himself in the bathroom before he had to admit to th’Esar that he had no idea in the world what in bastion’s name he was doing. Either way, there was no reason to torture him by being rude on purpose to the women surrounding me like sharks scenting blood in the water if he wasn’t there to see it and sweat about it, even if they were the reason I lost sight of him in the first place. After that business with Have, I was bursting with an excuse to give him trouble. Without him around to witness everyone seeing how he’d failed, I wasn’t even in the mood to find some poor bastard’s brand-new wife and get her dancing in front of all the noblesse in all their gossiping finery.

  When the dancing finally started up for real about an hour later, I saw him again. He was one of the only people wearing green—blue being in fashion these days and all because of our uniforms, despite th’Esar’s colors being red—and so it was easy to spot him through the crowd, even though he stuck to the shadows.

  And there I was with my ideas of revenge banging around, and the women pressing close to me asking me to sign their cards for more dances than I’d signed away to the lady before. Even though I liked dancing—and I did like it, not in the same way court dandies liked it for its stiff formality, but because when the music got wild, the women got breathless—I wasn’t in the mood.

  It was because of what Have’d said about me and the professor being like two peas in a pod. I wasn’t forgetting that anytime soon.

  It was this nagging sensation that’d chased me around ever since we’d gone up in the air together, like the tail end of a dream I could only half remember and needed the whole of for my own peace of mind. I guess it had something to do with how I really shouldn’t’ve taken the professor along with me for a raid, how what me and Have did was private between the two of us, and how I couldn’t fly a night afterward without thinking of him cursing like a gutter whore right in my ear, and me whooping up a storm and burning the Ke-Han as they scattered across the desert in the night. But most of all, I couldn’t forget Have’s reaction to him. She didn’t have any loyalty to anyone but me. But then I’d never gone riding with anyone else alongside neither. Whatever it was I’d done—whatever my role in this horseshit was—I didn’t like it. And I knew who was going to pay for it, too, soon as I knew right where he was and I knew that he could see me.

  My whole evening was just spent waiting for a chance to embarrass him.

  But you couldn’t explain something like that to a lady, especially not the ravenous sort who frequented these balls. I figured it was because they’d married noble husbands and had to wait for just such an event to dance—or better—with a real man that they got so desperate. In any case, with the music going and my dance card full, I lost sight of the professor, skulking about in the shadows the way he was, like he knew he didn’t belong here, neither.

  In that way, I guess Have was right. I guess we were some kind of the same. The difference was in how we acted about it, and that was where I came out on top.

  When I looked back he’d disappeared again, and just when I’d got it into my head what I was going to do with the redhead waving her lace handkerchief at me like a welcoming flag, too.

  That was it, what sent my blood fizzing nice and warm and got my limbs all loose and hot like they were ready to hit someone or worse. I didn’t much care about what the professor did one way or the other, but he’d spent all his time at our bunker loitering around like he thought he was too good to mix in proper with people, and now he was doing it here, too.

  Some people didn’t have any fucking idea about good manners.

  I spun sharp with a pretty brunette who’d been batting her eyelashes at me since I arrived. She was small enough so I could see right over the top of her head, and right on the dip, there was the thin green silhouette of the professor disappearing behind the fancy curtains. I knew personal-like how th’Esar had rigged those curtains
up special to hang over the entrances to the balconies for when his honored guests got a little too hot and bothered for being in the public eye. I also knew, just as personal-like, that this particular brunette was the daughter of one of th’Esar’s favorites, some stuffed pigeon from the bastion who kept her trimmed like a cake in a bakery window but wouldn’t let anyone inside the shop.

  The professor had a kind of talent for hiding, if nothing else. When the music ended I took the brunette round the waist a little tighter even than when we were dancing, and she followed me just like that. We cut easy through the crowd with none of that sidling off to one side that most people did. If you were slow enough to trip up dancing couples, then you didn’t deserve to be on the floor at all was my way of thinking, and I weaved in and out a bit, bobbing like it was a real good fight that demanded all my attention. Sometimes navigating the dance floor was pretty close to how it was flying Have.

  Then, we were out. Back inside, the musicians kicked into a popular tune that usually made me want to smash someone’s head in, so it was just as well.

  It was too late at night for the sky to be anything but perfect black, mottled with streaks of starlight here and there, and the filmy gray clouds that meant it’d have been a perfect night for flying.

  I could see the professor out of the corner of my eye like a shadow nobody wanted, hiding behind one of the long red curtains. He must’ve snuck back there when he realized we were heading straight for him, and if he was gonna be no better than a coward, then my revenge was clear as day. It was easier than picking out the Ke-Han towers, and almost as satisfying.

  “So,” I said. “Magritte.”

  “Isobel,” the brunette corrected me.

  “Right,” I said. “Isobel.”

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, toying with her glove and pressing back against the railing. “They’re very similar.”

  They weren’t, and I figured, if anything, that kind of thing would piss the professor off more than anything else. I took one of Isobel- Magritte’s tight brown ringlets in one hand, curling it around a finger, but she didn’t look up at me, just kept toying with her glove like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. I hated it when women did that, but liked it a little, too. They did it on purpose, but only the right kind of lady could pull it off.