Havemercy (47 page)

The professor was walking up by me and Ace, like he’d taken my appeal as free license to do as he pleased. Or maybe he just thought he’d have a better chance of talking th’Esar down like he had Adamo if he were standing close by. But he knew his stuff, however pointless it’d been in the past, and I thought maybe for the first time I could see my way around to looking at his viewpoint as not entirely cracked.

Much as I hated to admit it—and I wouldn’t ever admit it out loud—some of what he’d said was even going to come in useful, this trick the professor had of manipulating folk just by learning things about them. Of course it’d backfired soon as I realized how well it worked for keeping the professor in line, too, though I doubt that’d been what he meant to accomplish when he started teaching us. Wasn’t the first time anyone had underestimated my cleverness though he was probably the first to get out without a scratch on him.

Then the servant stopped, and a second door swung open, and I had more important things to think about.

We filed into the receiving room, Adamo first ’cause he was the most impressive out of all of us, even the professor—who when it came down to it was only a ’Versity student. And, if we were saying all the what-came-down-to-whats, when it came down to it, we were Adamo’s airmen, and not th’Esar’s.

There wasn’t room on the dais for fourteen men and two more besides, but some of us were scrawnier than others, and we crowded in like schoolboys at the back room of a burlesque show, jostling and elbowing for the glimpse of a creamy thigh or better. ’Course, looking at th’Esar was none so exciting as Lady Greylace, even though his clothes cost likely near as much as hers. I thought it was a little funny, looking around, that th’Esar was built powerful, like a sensible sort of man and not the sort who’d match his clothes to the cream of the walls with their fancy gold trim, but there we were.

Then again, I supposed that was the sort of thing that happened when your parents were your cousins, and things’d been that way for generations.

Th’Esar sat in his chair—not quite a throne, but still fancy enough that I was betting no one else’d make the mistake of sitting in it. He was toying with the signet ring on his finger like he was just waiting for us to make the first move when even the dumbest kid down in Molly knew that you didn’t speak to th’Esar before he spoke to you.

Finally, after Ace had crossed and uncrossed his arms so many times that I was near to considering just throttling him right there, th’Esar cleared his throat.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of this . . . unique visit?” he asked, like he didn’t know what to call it and like he didn’t know exactly the reason why we were here in the first place. I felt my blood start to heat like boiling water, threatening to bubble over everywhere at once.

Someone put a hand on my arm and I knew that it wasn’t Ace, so it must’ve been the professor. For some fucking strange reason, instead of hitting th’Esar then and there, I checked myself. Threatening th’Esar wouldn’t be any way of helping our girls, as much fun as it might have been, and I knew the others wouldn’t have appreciated my rash behavior any. Not that I was doing it for them, or the professor’s stupid hand on my arm; I was doing it for Have, and I’d break any man’s face in that said different.

“Your Majesty,” said Adamo, only his voice had changed, got real fine like he was some ’Versity professor dictating instead of a man used to barking orders at them who listened about half as often as not. “We’re here about our dragons.”

“What about them?” said th’Esar, still studying that damn ring of his, although anyone with eyes could tell that he was listening good and proper now, his back gone rigid and his pale eyes sharp.

Adamo paused, like he was wondering how best to put it, and it was then that I knew without a doubt that Proudmouth had been flying as off as all the rest, and that he was a damn hypocrite for not filing his own report to his own damn self. “They aren’t flying properly,” Adamo said at last.

“We have considered the idea that they may be in need of maintenance,” th’Esar allowed, the fucking bastard.

“We’ve considered,” I said, speaking loud and hot before anyone could stop me, “that it might have something to do with all those magicians locked away in the Basquiat.”

It was then that th’Esar looked at me, and I guess it was supposed to be an intimidating look, but anyone could have told him that I didn’t intimidate, so he was just wasting his energy and all our time. Still, I thought I could feel it working on some of the others, ’cause they stood up straighter, and there was some sparking, snapping thread of nervous energy running through the lot like we were all of us joined into a lit fuse.

I half expected Compagnon to start giggling with the strain of it at any moment, though he was probably considering what Adamo would do to him if he did, and that was the only thing shutting him up even now.

“What do you know of the magicians in the Basquiat, Airman Rook?” Th’Esar asked his question like he really thought I knew something more than what anyone with a brain could know; that there was some serious shit going down and a crowd big enough to choke the streets surrounding.

“I know them magicians are the ones that made our dragons,” I said, since he’d addressed me and all, so I guessed Adamo and the professor would just have to get their fainting over with later. “If there’s something that’s happened to ’em, then I guess it’s not such a stretch to think that maybe it’s got something to do with the way our girls ain’t doing what they’re supposed to anymore.”

Next to me, the professor winced, like using bad grammar in front of th’Esar was an unimaginable crime. I didn’t care. I wasn’t like Adamo, couldn’t turn it on and off like a switch. Even if I could’ve, I wouldn’t’ve, because as far as I was concerned th’Esar was a man the same as anyone, and just because his great-great-granddaddy had seen to conquering a nation didn’t give him any more rights than the rest of us, ’specially me, and especially when he’d had the nerve to tell us our dragons weren’t doing what we said they were.

I’d’ve liked to see him try and fly one.

He waited a long moment, examining each of our faces like we were a room of criminals and if he could get just one of us to crack, he’d have us all. “You are all experiencing this?” he began at last, and it was the first time I’d heard him sound anything other than smug and infuriating. “ This . . . wrongness with our dragons?”

I didn’t like the way he said “our,” but I let it slide when the professor tightened his fingers on my arm.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Adamo, speaking for all of us. After a moment everyone set to nodding, like they’d all been waiting for their neighbor to go first. It was like not knowing what had happened to the girls had cut off our balls and we had to behave neat as students in case th’Esar had any information that would lead to fixing them.

A strange look passed over th’Esar’s face. He might’ve been worried, for all I knew, though it sure looked all wrong on him. He probably wasn’t much used to it.

For a second I thought he was going to kick us all out of the room. He put a hand over his face for composure, and when he removed it his expression was back to normal, the way it looked in all his portraits.

“We have faith in your ability to weather out this disobedience as best you can,” he said at last. “In addition, we will have someone sent to inspect the mechanics of the dragons should they continue to give you trouble.”

“My men,” said Adamo, straightening up—and he wasn’t that tall to begin with, but he could look fucking impressive when he wanted to, “won’t fly under these conditions.”

I felt something unfamiliar, pervasive, and kind of warm in my chest, though whether it’d come from the others or something else I didn’t know. It was a little like being proud, I’d’ve guessed if I’d been forced to name it, though I’d never had it directed at anyone besides Havemercy when she’d done really fine.

“Is that so?” asked th’Esar, though somewhere deep in the back of his expression I could tell something was shaken loose. “We regret that it has come to this.”

“We’re fighting your war,” said Adamo, and I didn’t need to look at the professor’s face to know he’d gone stupid with shock; he must’ve been figuring it was all over for us now that he’d lost his one sane ally in all this. “I think we’ve got a right to know what’s going on, and I say we ain’t—aren’t—leaving the ground until we do.”

The threat settled into the middle of the room like a flag torn from the pole. For a moment things were impossibly silent, like maybe we were all holding our breath and waiting to see whether th’Esar would snap and order us all executed for treason, or whether he’d smarten up quick and remember who it was’d been winning this war all along.

It was th’Esar that looked away first, head bent to examine the ring on his finger again, but we all knew what it meant.

Just because a man was th’Esar didn’t mean he didn’t give signs of surrender the same as all the rest.

“If any of you sees fit to spread this about the city,” he began, “we will see to it that the only place you’ll ever fly again is off of the cliffs at Howl’s End, do you understand? If there is word of this anywhere—if our Provost thinks the people have been given so much as an inkling—we will hold the lot of you personally responsible, and we will not hear otherwise on the subject.”

I thought I understood what he was saying, and it was pretty clever, because anyone could claim accidents happened, but here he was telling us right up front that even if accidents happened, it would still be our fault. That had us fucked, good and proper. Yet as much as I hated it, if he could see a way toward fixing Havemercy, then I guessed I’d have to stand it.

Leastways, I had to stand it until she was fixed, then I could think of a way to repay th’Esar for all his kindness.

Some of the others were grumbling quietly, but I knew they were all just as stuck as I was, keen to get the information th’Esar had even if it meant he’d caught us in his net.

“We understand,” said Adamo, in a tone of voice that held dark things for those of us who didn’t.

Th’Esar paused for a moment. “Who is that?” he asked finally, looking toward the tagalong. “He isn’t one of our corps.”

“Margrave Royston’s assistant, Your Majesty,” Adamo answered, so smooth it was like he’d been expecting it all along. He was smarter than his smashed-up face let him look. “If he leaves this room, then so do we.”

There could’ve been a standoff there and then, only we’d already postured long enough, and it seemed th’Esar’d grown tired of it. Good; better not to waste all our time and get the fuck on with it.

“There is a sickness,” said th’Esar. “It began shortly after you were called upon to resume your services to our realm, and it began with some of our oldest and most treasured families of great Talent. With the information that we have been able to gather to this date, we can state that the illness manifests with similarly minor symptoms across the board. All the cases began with headaches, small fevers, and an aching of the joints. This later progressed to dizziness among the subjects we observed, leading to a general state of disorientation and nausea. It is after an afflicted person’s attempt to use his or her Talent that the illness hits hardest, often disabling the patients in question almost immediately.”

It was a lot of talk to explain something that th’Esar had been keeping a secret all this time, and parts of it sounded real nasty in particular, like keeping the magicians under observation as some kind of medical experiment instead of invalids needing proper care. Considering how th’Esar did things, I wasn’t much surprised.

I took that to mean that whatever was going on with this magicians’ plague, it’d begun just after the air raids started up again. That was a long fucking time to keep us in the dark about things, though it explained why he’d been so keen on calling back them that’d wronged him bad enough to be exiled in the first place. He needed them pretty bad, since all his good little soldiers had been hit with this “sickness.” I felt anger snap through me clean like a whip, knew that I couldn’t release it ’til we’d heard the whole story—but th’Esar was going to have to see a way toward explaining why he’d kept his own counsel about something as fucking serious as whatever plague had hit the city while we fought to defend his own precious self.

No one spoke, and so he continued.

“We do not know the cause, only that it has thus far afflicted only our magicians. As you can imagine,” he added, suddenly sharp again, like he had any right to be intimidating when he was such a liar it made the rest of us look like the purest saints of Regina, “it has been a crippling blow to our efforts in the war.”

Abruptly—the way it felt when Have turned a perfect arc or we dove with the wind singing around us—everything fell into place. Why the Ke-Han had been rolling over, getting us real nice and sure of our victory. The Ke-Han’d had another move planned all along, the way Adamo always did in chess, and right when you thought you were about to take the king, he’d come in from behind and destroy everything you’d worked for. The raids had all been one hell of a distraction, and if Have’d been flying right, I’d’ve left the room to get on her right then and teach the hordes a thing or two about how much I hated feeling like I’d been tricked. They’d done us over real nice.

“There’s magic in the dragons.” That was the professor this time, and I don’t think he realized right away that he was addressing the fucking Esar because he’d got that tone in his voice, like when he argued with me even when he knew it was suicide, and hadn’t said “Your Majesty” even once. “That’s why they aren’t working. You knew there was something wrong with the magicians, it’s the simplest connection to make between them and the dragons. It’s obvious. Whatever’s attacked the magicians is also affecting the—” His voice caught on something, like maybe the realization that he was as good as telling th’Esar he’d fucked up bad. “It’s affecting the dragons,” he said quickly, with a trace of whatever iron it was he had in him that had kept him standing after the ride with Havemercy.