Havemercy (33 page)

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.

I could feel the professor watching me, green eyes burning disapproval into the back of my neck, but my hide was thicker than Have’s metal scales, and, since he was a ’Versity student and all, he should have known that kind of thing wouldn’t make one speck of difference with me.

Isobel was breathing a little quickly—guess it had to do with her tight bodice and how fast I’d been spinning her out on the floor—and I dropped my hand without any warning, letting it hover above one of the fancy laces holding her bodice up that were in fashion this year, which made taking someone out on one of the balconies at th’Esar’s celebrations pretty fucking complicated. By the time you got to anything, people were already gossiping about you behind their fans.

It’d’ve been even better if I could give the professor some kind of signal—like I knew he was there, like I was doing it all for him, just ’cause I could—but I didn’t fancy getting slapped for all my troubles. This would have to do for now, and anyway, I could always let him know later I’d seen him there all along, make the look on his face even sweeter when I finally got to see it.

Isobel-Magritte had already turned her face up toward mine when I started kissing her good and deep and fierce, and I was just getting into it when the curtains shifted and the sound cut us off pretty quick. Stupid Nellie, I thought, and nearly swore, except Isobel-Magritte was scrabbling at me to get away because of her honor being compromised and all, and then the professor must have realized his game was up and decided to cut his losses before I knifed him for a spy.

Once all the smoke had cleared, and Isobel had cleared off for good, I was even angrier than before. My plan had all but backfired, except for the wary look in the professor’s eyes and the flush on his cheeks, and I wasn’t in the mood for taking any prisoners. I’d get even with him now or throw him over the fucking railing, no two ways about it.

“Couldn’t take the show?” I asked, undoing the top button on my collar.

The professor took a step away from me, disgust and something else mingling in his expression, and I guessed I could count that, at least, as a triumph that night. There was something in his eyes that I recognized—I guess it was kind of a look you got to be familiar with, growing up in Molly where you had to be stubborn and fierce just so no one took the idea that they could fleece you. It didn’t look at all strange on his face, either, and suddenly what Have had been talking about hit me but hard. The little snot was a Mollyrat, same as me, defensive as he was about doing things right and knowing all them curse words besides. I had him figured out. He looked so prim and proper, I wanted to smack the ’Versity out of him, only he was too stubborn for that, too. Just as quick as I’d figured him out, my plans for revenge changed.

“You’re disgusting,” he said. “Do you realize who she is? And she’s barely of age!”

I shrugged, dangling my arms over the edge of the railing, all the while keeping a close watch. I was ready for him. He wasn’t so smart as all that, and I was going to be the one to show him just how stupid he was.

“Figured you’d be hiding away and pissing yourself in the bathroom or something,” I said.

“I tried that,” he admitted bitterly, stiffening. “But I was . . . interrupted.”

I knew there was some kind of an insult in there somewhere, and I knew it was for me, but I was already too caught up and angry over everything that had already happened to go getting mad over something else altogether. Instead, I laughed, because the way he said it was just so offended. Interrupted: like it was another one of his fiddly rules of etiquette. Maybe he should’ve hung up a sign that read, “Please refrain from using the bathrooms in which the fucking crazies are hiding.”

I was surprised he hadn’t tried to tack on a whole extra course in fancy court learning before we’d all gone rushing out the door, but then I remembered what I’d figured out—that he was an urchin from the Mollyedge, probably no better than a Mollyrat and no better than me, and didn’t know any better than us even if he’d wanted to.

All the balconies overlooked th’Esar’s gardens, probably because it got the ladies all wet to stand outside in the moonlight with the smell of climbing jasmine in the air. Bastion, it’d almost worked for me until the professor interrupted things with that way he had of twisting everything around no matter where he was or what he was doing.

I leaned closer to him, mainly because I liked the twitchy look he got at the corner of his eye that meant he was trying to watch me and trying not to look like he was watching me all at the same time. It only made him look jittery as a rabbit, or worse, like he couldn’t make up his fucking mind. I just stretched my arms, letting him know I was comfortable as anything and perfectly happy to stay there all night until he had some kind of a fit right then and there and in front of me, even though deep down, I was bristling with fire.

Predictably, it was him who cracked first.

“I’d have thought,” he said, voice clipped and cool, like he obviously thought he could fool me into thinking he was the same, “that my presence here wouldn’t have stopped you from pursuing your acquaintance . Magritte, I believe it was? Or was that Isobel?”