Havemercy Read online

  Silence was my only reply, and the sound of the wind against the glass walls. I saw Balfour look nervously about at his fellow airmen, as if he wanted to volunteer but knew he couldn’t. And then at last, as if it were being drawn out of him by the screws, Adamo cleared his throat.

  “Thank you,” I said, and meant it with all my heart.

  “Tell us how it’s done,” Adamo said, a little grudgingly, as if he knew as well as I did that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing; that I was green as the grass, and that I was going to mess all of this up.

  I licked my lower lip. “We’re going to say our names, which dragon we fly—well, that’s not for me to say, obviously, but for the rest of you—and something the others have never known about you.”

  “Something private?” said the giggler.

  “How private?” Balfour asked nervously.

  “It can be anything,” I said. “Anything at all.”

  “Right,” said Chief Sergeant Adamo. “Well, I’m Chief Sergeant Adamo. Proudmouth’s my girl, and if another one of you little shits brings up ‘Mary’ Margrave again, it’s dog rations for you for a month afterward.”

  Another silence followed. The giggler was gaping; Balfour had pulled off both his gloves and was worrying them in his fingers as if he sought to tear them to shreds. Rook’s smile had turned outright nasty, twisted down at the corner.

  “I’m not sure that entirely constitutes a private detail,” I said at length.

  “Doesn’t it?” Adamo asked, lifting one heavy brow at me.

  “You’re not some fucking pillow-biter,” Rook said sullenly, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I don’t believe that’s exactly what I said,” Adamo said, like any Margrave or professor I’d ever met for diction, but with an edge to it, and showing more teeth than was necessary. “He’s an acquaintance of mine.”

  “I’m just saying,” Rook began, but before this came to blows, I knew I had to cut him off.

  “Thank you for volunteering to go second, Rook,” I said.

  He turned his eyes to me, colder than glass but more indifferent than ice, blue and sharp in his lean face. On the whole, he was simply a sharp-looking man, and admittedly almost painfully handsome, but it was a statue’s beauty he possessed, a bit roughed up around the edges—for his nose was broken, and there was a scar along his left cheekbone like a half-moon, crescented, just under his eye. And, like some artists’ portrayals of beauty, there was too much spite and malice in him; one could hardly bear to look at him for long.

  “You already know my name,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  He said it like a challenge; I knew I couldn’t back down, though I felt cornered and trapped and on the verge of complete humiliation.

  “For the others, then,” I said patiently.

  “They know my name, too.”

  “Yes,” said the giggler. “It’s Rook.”

  “The other part,” I insisted, refusing to be bested.

  “I fly Havemercy,” Rook said. “She’s pretty famous. You might even have heard of her.”

  “And the last?” I prompted. It wouldn’t do to let him get away with anything, no matter how minor.

  “Oh, that.” Rook bit his thumbnail, looking up at the ceiling, putting on an excellent show of being in deep thought. Finally, he said, “I sure like fucking women.”

  “That’s not exactly news,” Balfour said, somewhat darkly.

  “Yeah, well, it’s true,” Rook went on, relishing every second of it. “I like to grab ’em around the waist and shove their legs wide open and make ’em beg for it, ’cause you know—”

  “My name’s Balfour,” Balfour said very quickly. “I fly Anastasia. We met in the hallway. I . . . I’m very fond of certain philosophical treatises.”

  At that moment, I was more grateful to Balfour than to anyone else in my entire life. I couldn’t show favoritism, but I knew my expression revealed the wealth of my gratitude, for he responded with a halfway sort of grin—as if it were no trouble at all, and he was in fact glad for the excuse to get the better of his fellow airman.

  “You know, a lot of fucking pillow-biters like philosophy,” Rook said.

  “Oh, yes,” said the giggler, giggling again. “And d’you know where they like it?” Adamo gave him a look then like melting steel, and he cleared his throat. “By which I mean to say, I’m Compagnon. I ride Spiridon, and I own the most thorough collection of indecent imprints in the entire city.”

  “It’s true,” said a swarthy man with a hook nose and impossibly white teeth. He sighed fondly.

  “And your name, please?” I asked.

  He shrugged broad, graceful shoulders. “Ghislain,” he said. “Compassus. My great-great-grandfather died for th’Ramanthe.”

  I was surprised, though I knew I shouldn’t have been. Many families had originated as Ramanthe supporters, as once there had been no one else to support. Ghislain had the dark eyes and the burnt-sugar coloring of someone from an old Ramanthine family—one that had declined to interbreed with the Volstovic invaders from the west. It was a rare thing to see in a man of our generation, unless he was a part of the nobility.

  Not even Rook could think of a clever way to make what he had said into an insult, though, so I put my curiosity aside and took the opportunity to move along down the line.

  There was a man with a chin sharp and pointed as an arrow seated next to Ghislain. He looked bored, his legs stretched out in front of him, and paused midway through a yawn when he realized I was looking at him.

  “I think you’re up.” Ghislain elbowed him harder than seemed necessary, and he straightened in the chair.

  “I’m Ace.” He had bright red hair and a sleep-thick voice, as though he’d only just woken up. “Thoushalt’s mine. When I was little my mam caught me tryin’ to take a swan dive off our terrace; ever since I’ve wanted to be up in the air.”

  “That’s a load of horseshit,” said Rook. “What is that, a fucking poem? You sound like Raphael.”

  “Yes, and I so love it when you insult me where I can hear you, Rook.”

  There were so many of them, screamed a panicky voice in my head. I quelled it quickly, gaze flicking over to a man with black, curly hair. He’d leaned halfway out of his chair to shout down the line.

  “You must be Raphael,” I said bravely, attempting to regain the thread of what I’d started.

  He looked at me as though he’d forgotten I was in the room at all. I nodded encouragingly.

  “Oh,” he leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs with a fluid motion. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we’d reached my place in line yet.”

  I couldn’t tell from his tone whether that was meant as a jibe at me or an honest apology. My money was on the former, but before I could decide, he was speaking again.

  “I am Raphael,” he said with an illustrative wave of his hand. “I’ve been blessed with flying Natalia, the beauty. Truth be told, I was getting very bored with the monotony of our days with hardly any battles to fight. Perhaps this will prove interesting.”

  “Thank you, Raphael,” I said quickly, over a loud and disbelieving sound from Rook down at the far end. I was beginning, I felt, to get the hang of this. The key was to speak quickly, before Rook could get his comments in and set off the others. “Next,” I said, a little too sharply and a little too closely to the way one of my least favorite professors had, but I couldn’t afford to wince.

  Mercifully, there was only a short silence this time, as those who’d introduced themselves glared at the stragglers.

  “I’m Jeannot,” said another man with the dark hair and eyes of a Ramanthine, which meant that his family too must have been very old or very inbred. His nose was thin, like the blade of a knife. “I’m on Al Atan, and I’ve never seen the ocean at anything closer than a dragon’s height.”

  “Oh,” said Balfour, from whom I hadn’t expected an outburst. He looked as though he’d just heard something very sad. “Sorry,” he sa
id, by way of realizing he’d interrupted. “Only, I didn’t know that.”

  “I told you he was a girl,” said Rook with savage triumph. “Got feminine parts between his legs, airman’s honor.”

  I bit my tongue and counted slowly to five. Balfour put his gloves back on and stared down at his hands.

  “Merritt, I swear by the bastion, if you don’t sit still I am going to lynch you in the showers.”

  At the opposite end of the line, a man entirely too freckly for his own good scowled in hurt dignity. His companion, the one who’d spoken, turned in his chair to face me.

  “This training, will it make Merritt less irritating?”

  “Well,” I began.

  “Fuck off, Evariste.” The freckled one crossed his arms across his chest, then his legs at the ankle, like a sullen child who’d been scolded.

  “Ah,” I tried again. “It’s not exactly—why don’t the pair of you tell us something about yourselves.” This was progress, I told myself. Real progress.

  And if not, it would make for excellent research material once I’d picked the shattered fragments of my dignity up from off the black-and-white floor.

  The one who’d complained—Evariste—chewed at his lip. His hair stood at ends, like he’d often tugged at it in thought. “I fly Illarion. What about me, what about me . . . oh yes! Once I ate a pound of butter.”

  The giggler—Compagnon; I drilled it into my memory—started up again.

  I had a feeling I didn’t want to ask after the story that went with that anecdote. If anything, I could save it for a later exercise.

  Merritt’s cheeks were stained bright red with either anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell which, though it made me wonder how many of the airmen were happy being tied together in such an intimate way. Several of them seemed as though they’d function best as individuals and not smaller parts of a greater whole.

  “I’m Merritt,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got Vachir. My sister got married last month.”

  “And you didn’t invite us to the wedding?” A man who’d turned his chair the wrong way around, seemingly for the sole purpose of leaning his arms across the back, turned his head to leer at Merritt. “Might have liked the opportunity of seeing your sister again.”

  Adamo cleared his throat from the center of the room, as though he was growing short of patience. I was grateful, even if his impatience was sure to be directed toward me in due time.

  “Oops,” said the man in the backward chair. His mouth would have looked distinctly feminine on anyone else, round and full as it was. He flashed a careless smile. “Niall. I fly Erdeni. I’ve found the perfect place to nap in th’Esar’s orchard, and I’m not telling a man of you where it is.”

  “Fuck, Magoughin told us that joke last week,” Rook pounded his fist against the chair. Then, he smiled like a cat having helped himself not only to the canary, but to the entire Esarian aviary of birds. “It’s th’Esarina’s lap.”

  Someone laughed, broad-faced and friendly. He waved his one enormous shovel-pan hand in the air like a child at school eager for recognition.

  “Magoughin?” I asked, even though I was fairly certain of the response.

  “Chastity’s mine. And I collect jokes, of a sort,” he replied.

  I nodded, though presumably this was not a private piece of information. I would have to bend a little, I’d realized, in order to get anywhere successfully with the Dragon Corps. They no longer seemed as one, a wall of intimidation stark against me, but rather like a mob of jackdaws, pecking at each other, and cawing, and preening their own feathers. I could manage this. I would.

  “He’s Ivory,” Magoughin added helpfully, nodding to the man at his left, so blond and pale that he looked almost unreal.

  “They call me that because I’m good at the piano,” he said, in a voice as dry as sandpaper. “Not because of my skin, so don’t even bother asking. Oh, and I ride Cassiopeia.”

  “I—I wasn’t going to,” I assured him, quickly stifling the sudden, insistent notion that I should and could have been taking notes this entire time. They may have seemed like trivial bits of information, but anything additional I could learn about this merry band of lunatics might very well help me in the future. You never knew what was going to be important, as Marius was often fond of pointing out when my patience with studies had worn thin. Jokes, the piano, the giggling—even Merritt’s tapping and Balfour’s gloves—there was something to be gleaned from all of this, if I were to treat them as individuals.

  Divide and conquer—it was an old adage.

  “Luvander,” the final voice piped up, and I forced myself to acknowledge him politely instead of slumping to the floor with relief. He wore dark hair tied back from his face, and his coat was unbuttoned. “I fly Yesfir, though I like to think it’s more as how she deigns to let me hop on once in a while. In any case, I really hate going last.”

  “Ah,” I said, most cleverly. And then, when no one jumped in immediately to comment, I straightened my shoulders and allowed the success of the moment to buoy my spirits, however briefly. “Well. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate the . . . enthusiasm some of you exhibited in sharing.”

  “Whoa there just a second, ’Versity boy.” Rook had leaned forward in his chair again, eyes like twin chips of bright ice. “Where’s your introduction?”

  Ah, yes, I thought. I’d forgotten that. I’d prepared something in advance—something clever and noncommittal, something which wouldn’t prove fuel for the fires—but at the moment my energy was sapped, my nerves jangling, Rook’s eyes skewering me like I was the board in a game of darts. I knew immediately that I’d forgotten all of it—my introduction and my speech, my purpose in neat and precise order; everything I’d prepared and memorized.

  I looked out over the group, all fourteen of them against the one of me. They were only men, I thought; they flew great steel beasts that were quirky and capricious, but these were only men, and all men had some human tenderness.

  “Well, as you may already know,” I said, hating myself for the uncertainty in my voice, “my name is Thom, and I—” I remembered it out of the blue, like a thunderclap. “I’ve never actually seen a dragon up close.”

  HAL

  I was supposed to meet the Margrave for our daily walk. I don’t know how it became a ritual but it did. And, after a few days, I couldn’t imagine my life without the ambling path we took every noontime along the Locque Nevers, occasionally speaking, but most often not. It was awkward at times, and once I stumbled so that I almost took a dive into the water, but I think it did the chatelain’s brother some good to be out and about. Fresh air was the cure for all ills, or so said Cooke, the chatelain’s stableboy, with a laugh and a toss of his head much like a horse. And the Mme said it as well, though she never took fresh air for herself, claiming it made her dizzy.

  The first time I’d thought it would be worse than it was, the two of us walking not quite side by side, and the Margrave’s profile very sharp and lean against the sunlight.

  “Well,” I said.

  I’d said “Well” three times now. It seemed only fair that I continue to fish for conversation like any other man would for—well, fish, I supposed—casting the line out into the dark, quiet waters and waiting each time hopefully, though I was granted no answering bite. The Margrave didn’t enjoy talking, which was funny, since he seemed as if he might have been the sort of man who had enjoyed it. Once.

  His unhappiness had begun to poison him, though I wasn’t sure exactly how. I’d never seen someone so unhappy in my life. I wanted to reach out to him with something more than a Well, halting and inadequate.

  This time, however—the fourth time—the Margrave stopped by the edge of the river.

  “What fish,” he said, “do you suppose frequent these waters?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  That was the extent of our first conversation. From the sigh of disappointment he heaved, I assumed I’d let him down somehow, but it
wasn’t my job to teach William or Alexander about the Locque Nevers, which meant I’d never been given cause to teach myself this unexpectedly necessary information.

  I asked Cooke that evening, and he said there weren’t any fish at all in Locque Nevers, though in some places there were tadpoles and newts and bullfrogs.

  “Interesting,” the Margrave said, when I relayed this knowledge.

  That was the extent of our second conversation.

  The third was longer, and seemed to make him almost happy before it made him much more unhappy. He spoke to me about the city—his own inspiration, though I felt guilty nonetheless.

  “What sort of man you are depends on the bar you frequent,” he explained to me, quite patiently, while I listened wide-eyed as a child—and to him, I suppose, I was one. “And I don’t mean bar as in your provincial equivalent—a roof and a few stools and a great sweating hulk of a man slamming out dreadful, diseased drink for fools who don’t know the difference. No. Pantheon Bar, for example, is a great cobbled stretch right by the Amazement, which is the entertainment district, though I’m sure you’ve heard of that. Men from the Basquiat tend to prefer Pantheon over Reliquary, which I’d say is something of a more . . . old-school feel, for those who still claim loyalty, for whatever reason, to the spirit of the Ramanthe, while the students at the ’Versity are all for Chapel, which is cheaper, you see, and caters to the flashier sensibilities of the young.”

  I soaked it all in like a wet stone soaks in sunlight. “Oh,” I said happily, but I couldn’t imagine it.

  Then, all at once, the Margrave’s eyes shuttered and closed completely. I could see pain etch itself deeply around his eyes and mouth, so that it was hard for me to believe that he was a good many years younger than the chatelain himself.