BALFOUR

One of these days, I was going to make it down that last little block of the Rue, all the way to the statues, where Luvander had set up his hat shop.

It wasn’t that I was worried anyone would recognize me in the flesh from my stonier counterpart. That was never an issue since he was far more proud-looking than I, not to mention so tall it would have been impossible to compare the details of our faces. If I kept my hands shoved into my pockets and my collar turned up, I would look like any other citizen, and no one idling near the memorial and reading the plaques would ever be the wiser that an ex-member of the Dragon Corps was walking among them. The better for them. It really wouldn’t live up to what they must have thought.

That was what had taken Ghislain out of the city, I expected, since a larger man would have had trouble hiding in plain sight the way I did, and he was nearly the size of his own statue—a sight people were much more likely to recognize. It made me wonder if he’d seen the shop, or indeed if he’d anchored in Thremedon at all since leaving.

I wasn’t at all certain that I would, given the opportunity to leave in the first place.

In any case, I had promised Luvander I’d visit the establishment, and I didn’t intend to go back on my word. It was just that—what with one thing and another, and also my own private reticence—I never quite seemed to make it there.

Some days, I was too busy with my own work even to contemplate the trip. But on others, I really had no excuse. I took long walks to clear my mind yet managed to bring myself around in circles rather than stop at the designated place.

It was for the best, surely; this was what I told myself. There was little sense in showing up at such a place before I was ready, with no idea what I would say or what to expect. It would be doing a disservice to Luvander, not to mention if I happened to come at a particularly busy time of day I’d be interrupting his business with my staring. He might feel obligated to entertain me, and it was possible he’d tell his customers who I was—that would be the worst of all, especially with all the handshakes.

If Luvander had only chosen some more private line of business, perhaps it would have been easier. But it was none of my business what anyone chose to do with his life. Rather, it was more that I’d never pegged any of my fellow airmen as aspiring milliners.

Then again, there was a lot we hadn’t known about one another. With so many things the others hadn’t ever learned about me, I supposed it would have been foolish indeed to assume I’d learned everything about them.

But all that was conjecture. Time to focus instead on the business at hand—literally the business at hands.

Before me was a far smaller task than marching through the city until I came to the Rue. It was almost so mundane as to be entirely insignificant, though it troubled me more than I was willing to admit to anyone but myself—and even then sometimes I had difficulty with it. I’d somewhat lost track of the days because of my current routine of lively debates with the representatives from Arlemagne; but one that was marked upon my calendar, in no uncertain terms, was my monthly checkup and overhaul. I could have called it my day for polishing if I’d had anyone to joke with about it. Nonetheless, if I wished to have hands that didn’t work in the slightest as opposed to making do with what I had now in order to keep up the pretense of being somehow more normal, by all means, I could avoid the appointment.

But I would not—especially because I feared the retribution from the magician in charge of my prosthetics.

Magicians—at least the ones I’d met—seemed to enjoy being rude almost more than the airmen had, though a magician’s rudeness was more about being sly and less about dangling you by the ankles out a window.

Admittedly, my hands were a less startling sight than they’d been to me in the beginning, but there were still nights when I woke from dreams of flesh and bone only to wonder with a violent start what beastly metal nightmares had attached themselves to my wrists. There were those who might have found them beautiful—I had no doubts about this, since they represented a rather pleasing triumph of machinery and craftsmanship—but to their owner, they only signified a replacement that fell considerably short of the original.

Also, painfully enough, they reminded me of Anastasia. They were even made of the same metal.

My fingers were silver in color, though the rest was not, since I supposed all the tarnishing would have made that impractical. When I’d asked, I’d been told that the materials were closer to steel—something my body was less likely to reject—and sensibly sturdy as well. They wouldn’t rust, so long as I made sure to dry them carefully should they ever get wet, and they shone brightly in the light—alien and eerily beautiful—even if I felt no particular affection for them one way or another. The palms of both hands were smooth and cold to the touch, as well as the fingertips, and there were even little grooves where each piece fit together that a fortune-teller might still read my fate by.

It was the backs of my hands—the part I was supposed to know better than anything else, or so the saying went—that everyone seemed to find the most interesting. There was no steel plate to be found there, but a series of minute, interlocking gears and pulleys that turned as I moved and made the softest of clicking sounds whenever I did something as simple as drumming my fingers against the table. Somewhere inside that, past what looked like the workings of the most intricate clock I’d ever seen, there was a vial of concentrated magic that was worth more than my weight in gold. Worth more than my statue’s weight in gold, in fact. And I hadn’t the faintest idea how it worked.

It was the same way Anastasia had worked, after all, and I hadn’t needed to understand what was inside her in order to know how well she flew.

I’d had to commission gloves of a sturdier fabric once it became apparent that the gears were going to tear right through all my best pairs, and it simply wouldn’t be possible to go without. The diplomats from Arlemagne would stare, not to mention everyone else, and I would be worn down from answering the same questions day in and day out. My hands looked strange; I would be the first to admit it. And I had memory enough of what I’d once been—what parts of me I was missing—without everyone else knowing about it, too, the instant they laid eyes on me.

The construct itself was a less exact science than the dragons had been, chiefly because the dragons were created as their own separate entities whereas these hands had had to be made specifically to tailor to the rest of my body—a part of me that was at once integral yet utterly unnatural.

One day, I’d been told, or at least “ideally,” they would be able to fit a panel onto the back and cover things up once and for all, leaving me with smooth metal skin and, I supposed, the freedom to wear more delicate gloves again. But that final piece of the puzzle couldn’t be put into place until after years of fine-tuning, and the magician couldn’t make adjustments without turning me loose in the world to see what problems I ran up against. “Trial and error,” I believe was the term, and I was growing rather weary of it. Especially when my right hand stopped working completely during my very first postwar bath—at least, the first I was allowed to take on my own, without nurses and healers watching over me.

Still, I had no right to feel ungrateful. I’d lost my hands, but I’d kept my life, and that was more than so many of my fellows could say. Without any further delay, I tugged my gloves on—extra thick to keep the chill from getting into the metal, which in turn made my wrists ache—did up the buttons of my coat, and left.

After the end of the war, once the Esar’s plans for me had become apparent, I’d thought it prudent to rent my own quarters in the city rather than returning to my parents’ estates. It made for a much shorter commute between home and the bastion every day, and I had a very lovely view of the Basquiat from my window. In fact, I lived close enough that I could take the Whitstone Road to cut across the Rue and be in upper Charlotte—and therefore, the Crescents—before the sun set.

The days were growing so short in winter and the early dark played havoc with my moods.

It would have been more convenient for me if the magician tending to my follow-up appointments had been operating out of the Basquiat instead of her own home, but the Esar had his own way of doing things, keeping magicians and politicians separate. If the rumors I’d heard were true—as much as I hated listening to idle gossip, more often than not there was truth to be found in it—then he didn’t trust the magicians at the Basquiat as much as he once had.

That was a tense area that could’ve used a little diplomatic intervention, I thought, and it made me wonder why we were bothering so with the Arlemagne when there were matters within Volstov that needed tending to, but I was no ruler. It wasn’t my place to suggest these things. The problem would be resolved in its own time, and certainly without any help from someone like me.

There had always been a struggle between members of the bastion, the Esar’s handpicked favorites, and the Basquiat, whom magic herself had picked. And the Esar, I suspected, did not like being reminded of forces more powerful than he. Since he was no magician, it was all something of a sore spot.

The air was bitter and still as I made my way down the road, thankful for the absence of the sharp winds that had attempted to flay the skin from my bones earlier. If I kept to this path I would eventually come to the ’Versity Stretch—as I already had, more than once—where Adamo had long since finished giving his lectures for the day. I had no idea at all where he was currently staying—whether he had a place in the city, too, or if he was taking advantage of the professors’ quarters, now that he was one. It didn’t seem like information I should want to know, and yet I’d spent a good portion of my life knowing every small detail about men I now seemed to go out of my way to avoid. Even though we hadn’t liked each other, we had lived with each other. I knew when each of them liked to take their showers, when they slept—when they did not sleep—and what kind of woman each one preferred. At the time, I’d been desperate to escape and live on my own, exactly as I was now.

Yet my private quarters were too private. If the upstairs neighbors weren’t at home, all was too quiet, save for the wind howling outside the window on the colder nights, or the sound of the dog above shuffling around his favorite bone.

It didn’t make sense. Perhaps if Thom had been there, he might’ve explained it to me, but he wasn’t, and he had troubles enough of his own. I wasn’t about to write to him with mine.

I always knew when I was getting close to the Crescents, because abruptly the city planning and even the buildings themselves ceased to make any kind of logical sense. They rose up around me like abstract paintings—a chimney here, a steeple there, and now and then a large round room supported by a twisted scaffolding structure that didn’t look as though it could possibly bear the weight. It was difficult not to feel like you were about to become part of an architectural accident in the Crescents, the way the houses all leaned toward the streets like they couldn’t wait to be the first one to topple over and crush you.

The houses never did fall of course, but I couldn’t help being glad the wind had died down, all the same.

The sun was just beginning to set, bruising the sky a lovely gray-purple, when I made my way to Crescent Number 27—a tall, crooked affair made of polished white stone, with a set of silver chimes hanging in the entranceway to ward off evil spirits. There was a light on in the tower but none at ground level, which wasn’t so unusual. The tower was her workspace, and she’d probably gone up there to prepare her instruments beforehand, or something of that nature.

For someone so intimately involved in the proceedings, I had very little understanding of how they worked. I tended to look away when the gears were out. I supposed they disturbed me more than I was ready to admit to myself.

I knocked—rather loudly, just to be sure she’d hear it from upstairs—the sound rattling the gears in my knuckles. It was an uncomfortable sensation, like grinding your teeth in the night. I rocked between my heels and the balls of my feet, glancing up and down the street out of idle curiosity. It wasn’t as crowded as it had been up near the Basquiat, but then I had come around dinnertime. Most people were either inside with hot meals on the stove or still hard at work, I imagined, with little crossover between the two. I hesitated, then knocked at the door again.

The problem with magicians—aside from getting around their quirks, which often translated to sheer rudeness—was that if they were working on something, it was nearly impossible to get their attention. I’d let myself in once before—after knocking and waiting in the streets in the heat of summer for nearly half an hour—only for her to demand why I’d come so late.

I wasn’t about to make that mistake again, and the light was on in her workroom. Yet even though I’d taken up with ruffians, breaking and entering wasn’t something I wished to add to my list of “unexpected things I’d done because of the strange crowd I spent my time with.” Sighing, I tried the door before I could talk myself out of the idea and found it unlocked.

Perhaps we’d both learned something from that little incident, then.

There was a gray cat in the entranceway, as well as several pairs of women’s shoes on the floor and matching coats hung up along the wall, but the house was otherwise silent. The cat wound around blue satin boots, rubbing its face against the toe, then yowled enigmatically at me.

Almost on instinct, I reached down to let it sniff my fingers. It did so just as one of my metal knuckles let out a hiss and a creak, and the cat’s ears folded backward, the fur over his spine prickling up in mistrust.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, glad no one was around to see me offend, then attempt to rationalize with, a simple house cat. “It startles me, too, you know.”

The cat sniffed and turned its back on me, bolting deeper into the house.

I should have expected something like that, I thought, and shut the door behind me so as not to let in too much cold air.

“Hello?” I called, just so I wouldn’t seem too much like a burglar in the night. Or a madman who spoke only to cats. “It’s Balfour, you remember … I don’t think I’m late this time, unless I got the date wrong, in which case I’m terribly sorry.”

There was no reply. Whatever she was working on must have been incredibly engrossing, and it wasn’t something I wanted to interrupt, either. I knew that from experience, even if the rest of what I knew about her was very perfunctory indeed, though we’d been acquainted for many months.

Her name was Ginette, and I’d heard her refer to the cat once or twice as Kerchief, though I wasn’t sure if that was his full name or just a pet name she had for him. She kept her house neater than I’d been led to believe most Margraves did—they were usually too busy with their spells or their books for cleaning. Or maybe she kept a maid.

I peered past one door—the kitchen, it seemed from the shadowy shapes of pots and pans hanging from the wall—but no lamp was lit. It would be strange indeed for anyone, even magicians, to conduct experiments in the kitchen in the dark, rather than in their studies or their workrooms, and so I passed the silent kitchen by.

The hallway twisted away from the foyer and circled past the kitchen in a clockwise direction. I almost tripped on a few small steps before I found myself passing her private rooms. I cleared my throat outside each doorway, and even knocked on one, but there was still no answer.

I felt more and more like an intruder with each step, but I made it to her workroom without the Provost and his men suddenly appearing to arrest me.

This was eerie, to be sure, but I’d been an airman of the famed Dragon Corps. Presumably, I didn’t spook easily—although I was beginning to wish I’d gone to see Luvander’s hat shop instead and ignored my appointment. There were so many times being that kind of man served you better than doing things right ever did, or so I’d learned from living with my fellow airmen: those good old days when I was punished routinely for bringing up what we ought to have done, and they had a jolly time ignoring just that for a night of rowdy fun.

The door to Ginette’s workroom was half-open, and a light was on in the room, though I knew instinctively there was no one inside. No sounds at all came from within, not the usual tinkering clatter of metal on metal or the creak of the floorboards as she moved from spot to spot at her long wooden tables. I hesitated, wondering if I should be the one to call the Provost and his men, then gently nudged the door open.

The light in the window, I saw now, was coming from a lamp on one of her worktables, which had all but completely burned through its oil. It was giving off its last dramatic, guttering sparks now; if I’d come a little later, I would have assumed she wasn’t home at all.

By the dying light, I could see the signs of unfinished work on one of her tables—a small black bowl full of little cogs next to a glass jar filled with some clear liquid, containing an assortment of long, lean metal tools. One large cog and an empty vial were placed between those items; all her other tools were in their proper places, or at least what I could assume were their proper places from my cursory assessment. I’d spent a great deal of time staring at her tool wall—a collection of hammers and tweezers, pincers and wrenches, ranging from very large to so small they looked like toys for a doll—while she operated on me. I knew what went where practically by heart.

It looked to me as though she’d been suddenly called away in the middle of an experiment. Judging by how much oil a lamp such as the one she’d been using usually held and how much had burned down, it must have been some time before the hour of my appointment. It was possible she’d thought she’d be back in time.

I did hope everything was all right. She’d never mentioned family, but then, neither had I. Our conversations were limited to discussing how my hands felt that day, and why there were bread crumbs caught in the gears—that sort of thing. But I had to assume she had someone, and I wondered if said someone had suddenly fallen ill. It wasn’t like her to miss an appointment. That much I did know about her.

The cat—Kerchief—appeared at my feet again, winding around my ankles. I didn’t reach down to pet him, and managed not to trip over him, though he followed me all the way from the empty workroom and down the winding halls, yowling at me when I let myself out.