ADAMO

I didn’t have much time to worry about the hell I was going to catch from Roy next time I saw him. A mind like his could turn any innocent encounter into a whole lot more than it actually was, and I knew he’d been waiting for his opportunity to have a go at me ever since he brought Hal back to the city. Probably since even before then. I’d been twitting him all his life about his love life—if it could even be called that—since good old Professor Lingual, and now here he’d gone and gotten the impression I suddenly had one of my own. It’d be open season no matter what the truth actually was, and I’d been going out of my way for the past few days to avoid him at all the usual spots.

He had to know by that point I was avoiding him, which would only make it worse when he finally caught me. But all of that seemed like petty, peacetime thinking to me when Luvander showed up in my office.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got a problem with the exam, too,” I said. It’d been a mistake passing my office hours around in case anyone needed consulting—because it turned out everybody did. Even more of a mistake had been letting the eager students—the ones with eyes like starved animals, begging for approval and grades instead of scraps—take the damned thing home early when they’d asked. It was that question that didn’t have an answer that had ’em all in such a tizzy, assuming they’d failed the class, a few of ’em even bursting into tears right in front of me.

“No, it’s Balfour,” Luvander replied, not even bothering to make a joke at my expense. That was how I knew it was serious.

I reached for my coat, putting it on without a word. We could talk while we walked and get wherever we needed to be twice as fast.

“It’s only a rumor,” Luvander explained, as we pushed past a gaggle of students at the front door of Cathery and into the cold afternoon air, “but I heard it from multiple sources—and you say gossip never helped anyone!—that the ex–airman diplomat named Balfour had a bit of a … moment during the talks with Arlemagne yesterday. It’s all hush-hush, which means everyone’s talking about it, and I knew you’d want to hear immediately in case there’s something actually wrong.”

“Your gossip any more specific?” I asked. If there was, then I’d consider amending my feelings on how useless wagging tongues were, but not before.

“That’s the problem, of course,” Luvander replied. “In my own personal opinion, he must have been feeling stifled by such endless tedium—the talks aren’t going very well, according to my sources, and they’ve been at it for days trying to work out all the little details—and some are saying our good friend left in the middle of a vote on Arlemagne’s dealings with Verruges pirates. Just stood up in the middle of the talks and ran out of the room, then dropped like a lead weight. Fainted or something. Can you imagine the scene?”

“Doesn’t sound like our good friend Balfour,” I said. “If he didn’t run from you lot, I don’t think a few diplomats’d give him that much trouble. Where’s he now?”

“I assumed we would check his apartment first,” Luvander said. “And might I suggest you do your best to intimidate his ghastly upstairs neighbors into being a little more quiet? No wonder the poor thing’s feeling worked to the bone if he can barely get any sleep at night without them stomping around. Most days I have trouble making it to lunchtime on a full eight hours!”

“Been to visit him a lot, have you?” I asked, privately thinking that the same rule as with his ability to weather diplomats applied. Balfour’d lasted years on less sleep and more noise than he was currently dealing with. Despite giving the impression that he’d blow over in a stiff wind, he could be a tough little bugger when he set his mind to it.

I’d’ve been less worried if he was prone to running out of the room and fainting like a noblewoman. Then I’d know not to pay this embarrassing incident any mind one way or the other.

“Only once,” Luvander admitted. “I’m working him up to accepting the company.”

Sounded a little like torture to me, I thought, privately glad Luvander hadn’t decided I needed the company. Once again, Balfour was a sacrificial lamb, but if he wanted to keep Luvander out, all he had to do was pretend he wasn’t home. He was a smart one; he’d figure it out.

I let Luvander lead me away from the main thoroughfare of ’Versity Stretch, loping through the crowds on his long legs and not stopping to shoot the shit with anyone we passed, which was how I could tell he was looking to take us there in a hurry.

At least neither of us had to worry about bypassing the crowds at our statues, since it was quickest to go around it altogether, taking the Whitstone Road to the Basquiat, then crossing the square to the bastion and the small apartments around it. Apparently Balfour was living close by to where he was working these days, which sounded pretty convenient to me. If I’d had a chevronet for every time I cursed making the long walk from middle Charlotte to Miranda first thing in the morning, I’d’ve had enough money to buy my own damn place by the ’Versity and eliminate the problem.

Probably for the best that I didn’t since I was spending enough time in Miranda as is, and I didn’t want to turn into a stuffed shirt on top of being a crankpot.

Besides, the walk was good for me. Kept the old bones moving.

Streets were always crowded this time of day, but for once, I wasn’t letting all the gawkers and the millers and the slow movers bother me. I didn’t even settle for making angry faces at the backs of the chuckleheads who stopped right in the middle of the street and nearly tripped me up. Royston could say whatever he wanted about me being a mother hen and not knowing when to quit, but the point was I’d been in charge of keeping my boys alive for a long time. That kind of responsibility didn’t just pack up and leave easy.

The last time I’d seen Balfour he could barely move his hands, and now this’d happened. I didn’t like it and worst of all I didn’t understand any of it, which wasn’t doing wonders for my mood.

“Thought you said he was doing better,” I grunted at Luvander finally, needing someone to direct my thoughts at. Maybe someone to direct my frustration at, too; Luvander’d regret coming to me for help soon enough.

“He was,” Luvander said, neatly sidestepping a man carrying a whole stack of packages tied up with twine. “I was ready to go about singing the praises of Margrave Germaine through the streets after I saw him. Send the woman a complimentary hat, maybe, though that’s an expensive gift.”

“Something must’ve happened,” I said, just missing putting my boot down in a big pile of slush.

“I do wish he wasn’t so secretive,” Luvander said with a little sigh. “It’s all very sweet and coy, I suppose, and I’m sure it drives the women mad, but it makes it absolutely awful trying to get anything out of him.”

“Guess I can’t make fun of you for stalking him down like a rabbit in tall grass, now can I?” I asked. If it weren’t for Luvander, after all, I didn’t even know when I’d’ve caught wind of all this gossip. Looking Balfour up, finding out where he was living these days, would’ve been difficult, too.

I’d probably have started at the bastion, asking everyone I met and causing an international incident just by being there. Balfour might’ve been the safe, declawed version of an airman that made the Arlemagnes feel more at home—he certainly wasn’t the sort who looked like he was going to slap any asses—and after everything that’d happened with Rook back in the day, I guessed that made them feel appeased. But I was a different kind. Just looking at me was bound to remind people of the war.

Especially at present. Part of my ease in getting through the streets was that people were clearing out of my way left and right, without me even asking. It was handy; I’d have to remember the expression I was wearing for later, when I was late for appointments and couldn’t afford anyone slowing me down.

“It’s just a little farther this way,” Luvander said, steering west of the bastion toward a tall clump of apartment houses, all grouped together and built with the same gray stone. The architect had done his best to spruce ’em up with some fancy design work up around the rooftops, but the masonry was starting to crumble. One of these days an unlucky bastard was gonna catch a gargoyle right in the head; I was keeping my eyes up, just to make sure that unlucky bastard wasn’t me.

“Are you having a staring contest with your brother up there?” Luvander asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “While the resemblance is uncanny, I would ask that you do please try to stay focused. I’m reasonably sure you’d win the match anyway, but it makes you look very peculiar, and you know how people talk. We wouldn’t want to damage Balfour’s good standing in the neighborhood.”

“If you’ve been visiting him, then it’s probably been knocked down a couple of pegs already at least,” I said, casting one last stubborn look upward. Luvander was right, though. And if Balfour was feeling poorly, then the last thing he needed was a living gargoyle pounding down his door. I took a deep breath, willing the crags in my face to smooth out.

Luvander surveyed my attempts, cringed, then shrugged.

“I’ll have you know that I happen to be universally beloved wherever I go. It’s as though a magician put a spell on me at a very young age in order to make me happy and successful for the rest of my life. Hello, my dear flower, how are you today?” Luvander directed this last not at me—thank Regina—but at a middle-aged woman in a dark green uniform, who seemed to be the concierge for Balfour’s apartment building.

I’d half been expecting him to suggest this was a stealth mission and to surprise Balfour we’d have to pick the locks, so I guessed this moment of sanity was a pleasant surprise.

“So there’s two of you this time,” the woman said, adjusting her spectacles. They were attached to her face with some kind of jeweled chain—no doubt she thought it very handsome indeed, but it made her look like a cat in a fancy collar to me.

“Two of us,” Luvander confirmed, putting on that winning smile that made him look just a little too devious for my liking—like he was about to announce that he’d found Raphael’s old books at last, after everyone’d been searching for days, and somehow I always got the feeling he’d been the one to hide them. “I hope that won’t be a problem. I just happened to pick up another concerned well-wisher on my way here. Some people bring flowers, others bring old friends. Of course, the flowers might’ve brightened up the place more, so I think at this moment I’m experiencing buyer’s remorse.”

“All right, that’s enough outta you,” I said, shrugging my shoulders uncomfortably.

“If you’re sure you want to visit him,” the woman murmured, adjusting her spectacles.

“And why wouldn’t we?” I asked.

“Haven’t you heard? They’re saying he went mad right in the middle of the bastion,” the woman said, leaning forward with an air of confidentiality, like she’d been waiting all day to get some proper chin-wagging in. “He just up and left right in the middle of something important. Guess that’s one way to show them Arlemagne cunts you mean business, isn’t it? Tell you what, though, talks’d never have gone on this long if the dragons were still around. Mark my words, they’d be pissin’ in their boots and running back to their cindy king in no time.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Luvander said carefully, eyeing me like he thought I was going to wade in and tell her what for, and he assumed he was going to have to bodily restrain me.

Like he could even if he wanted to.

Truth was, I had more important things on my plate than educating some lonely gossip. If I started in with every backward-headed civ who didn’t know their ass from their ankle, then I wouldn’t’ve had any time for teaching my actual students, not to mention all the other things I really enjoyed doing.

Luvander relaxed slightly when he didn’t see me wind up for some kind of wrestling match. “You know, it would be fascinating to see what they would do if they came to the rooms one day to find a few dragons waiting for them,” he added, getting a faraway look in his eye. “One never could outargue my dear Yesfir—she was much too clever for that, old girl—and if I recall correctly, Cassiopeia never even bothered with conversation. A little too burn-happy, if you ask me, but that certainly would make those talks interesting, wouldn’t it? They’d end because there’d really be no one left to talk to!”

“Before my friend’s swept away by nostalgia,” I said, “do we have permission to visit Balfour, or not?”

“You two head on in,” the woman said, pausing to polish one of her spectacle lenses. Fortunately, Luvander’s wild little story had blown right past her. “I ain’t seen him today, but that don’t mean much. He’s a real quiet fellow, keeps to himself mostly. Last person I’d expect to cause a scene in the middle of the bastion, but it just goes to show I ain’t got the sense given a mouse.”

“You ain’t kidding,” I muttered, and Luvander gave me a little shove in the back, just to show me he’d heard and I should’ve been sweeter-tongued while talking to a lady.

It was more than a few flights up, which I guessed was all right for exercise, but I had to wonder how Balfour’d managed it when his hands were troubling him. By the time we finally reached his floor, even I was a little winded. I let Luvander knock, seeing as how he never ran out of breath, and then we both stood there, the strangest get-well party I’d ever been a part of. Also, we were probably the first.

“Perhaps I should have brought flowers,” Luvander said regretfully, “but I think he was allergic to the pollen … Do you remember that one time Compagnon collected all those stamens—”

I didn’t have time to ask if he’d cracked his head on one of the low-hanging beams coming in, because Balfour was there opening the door.

To put it frankly, he looked like shit.

The thing with someone like Balfour was that he was always so damned tidy and put-together. The minute he didn’t bother with it, he ended up looking like he was about to drop dead. He was pale, probably clammy, and his hair looked like something for birds to nest in. There was a neat little pattern of wrinkles on his cheek from a pillow, and when he saw us he looked like he wanted to sink through the floor and disappear.

That, at least, was a familiar look.

“Oh,” he said, fidgeting with the doorknob. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, but fuck me if I was going to stare and draw attention to something that made him uncomfortable. I focused on his face instead, even if I was curious. “I didn’t realize you were coming. I didn’t realize anyone was coming …”

“We thought we’d surprise you,” Luvander said, inviting himself in. He pushed past Balfour into the sitting room and made a noise of despair. “In the nick of time, by the looks of it. Let’s get some sunlight in here, shall we?”

That left me and Balfour staring at one another at the door. He wanted us to be elsewhere, and I definitely wanted us to be elsewhere, but neither of us was gonna get what we wanted just by wishing it and staring at each other.

“You eaten yet today?” I asked, giving him my look. If he said no, he was going to regret being so careless, and I’d know if he was lying. That was the look I’d perfected.

Too bad it didn’t seem to work with students and their homework. They just didn’t have the right amount of shame or common sense for self-preservation.

“A … little,” Balfour said carefully, glancing over his shoulder as Luvander started making some kind of infernal racket with the window shade. “I suppose you’d better come in.”

“Before Luvander gets you slapped with room-destruction charges?” I asked.

It was an okay little place, if sparse, with barely any color on the walls. Either Balfour’d just moved in or he hadn’t seen the point in adding something personal to the place. No posters on the walls; no paintings or portraits. There was a settee on the far side of the room and a table with a few chairs in the middle of it; the room opened up into a kitchen the size of a closet, and I noticed the water closet and the bedroom next to it. Sure would’ve depressed me to live in an empty little place like this, I thought, especially coming from someplace so distinctive.

But maybe, after everything the boys’d put him through, he’d felt like he needed some peace and quiet.

There could be too much of that, though, so much that you didn’t notice yourself getting so lonely until it was too late. I cursed myself for not checking up on him sooner and was grateful Luvander had been nosy enough to do it for me.

“I suppose you’ve heard about the little incident, and that’s why you’re here?” Balfour asked, sinking down into one of the wooden chairs by the table. “Troius said it wasn’t as humiliating as I seemed to believe, but I take it he was lying to spare my feelings?”

“Who’s Troius?” Luvander asked from the window. I glanced over to see that he’d managed to get himself tangled in the curtains, and I had to wonder if he was acting like a clown on purpose, so that Balfour would crack a smile or something. If that was his intent, then it wasn’t working.

Even though it wasn’t my style, I had a moment of appreciating Luvander’s intentions. Not the way he wouldn’t shut up when everyone was sick of hearing him talking, but his heart was in the right place, even if his head was up in the clouds.

“One of my … friends, another diplomat,” Balfour replied. He hesitated before the word “friends,” then looked guilty after he used it, like he didn’t believe he even had friends.

Well, that was where he was wrong, for starters.

“So we’re not the first to visit you?” Luvander asked, finally managing to pull one of the drapes aside. Balfour shied away from the shaft of sunlight that flooded the room, shielding his eyes. Bright light glinted off metal, even blinding me for a moment.

I cleared my throat and looked away so he’d feel more comfortable. “Wanted to hear what happened, in your own words,” I said, keeping it businesslike. “But before that, wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m all right,” Balfour replied, like a physician’d tapped his knee with a little mallet and the response was pure reflex. “Thank you for coming. It’s very kind.”

“Of course we’d come,” Luvander huffed, stalking over to the other window. “Do you think we’re criminals? Ivory might have been,” he added, “but we certainly weren’t.”

“Sit down, Luvander,” I said.

“Just trying to liven up the place,” Luvander protested.

If I’d been at the top of my game, he wouldn’t’ve had the balls to protest at all. I tried again. “Luvander, sit down.”

“Oh, all right,” Luvander acquiesced, pulling up the third chair and draping himself into it backward.

“Now you’re gonna stop talking,” I explained, “and Balfour here’s gonna start. Whenever he’s ready, though; he can take his time.”

“Well …” Balfour said. “There isn’t much to say, really. I’m sure that whatever you’ve heard, it was right. ‘Mad Airman Ruins Diplomatic Proceedings; Runs Wild through Bastion Hallways.’ Does that sound about right?”

“There was some fainting in there somewhere, too,” Luvander said lightly. “Was that also a part of it?”

“Oh, yes,” Balfour replied. “How could I forget?”

I didn’t like his entire demeanor, I thought; it was pale, like his face, and the dark circles under his eyes made him look like a ghost. He needed a mother of some kind to bring him soup and blankets, in my professional opinion, but the last thing he needed was me telling him that.

“I believe what Adamo is trying to ask, in his own way,” Luvander said, gentling as he leaned forward across the table, “is what exactly happened on your end of things.”

“Like if I had some kind of reason, or if I just went mad?” Balfour asked.

“Exactly,” Luvander agreed.

Balfour folded his hands onto his lap, hiding them under the table. It still seemed like the sunlight was bothering him, and every now and then I caught him twitching, head jerking around like he thought he heard something. “I …” he began, licking his lips.

“You want something to drink?” I asked.

“No, it’s all right,” Balfour said. “I’m merely trying to see if there is a way to say this without seeming as if I did just go mad that day. It’s quite possible there isn’t any, because I might well have … And yet it does seem embarrassing to admit to it, doesn’t it?”

“Saying it helps,” I said. “Makes you feel better.”

“People’ve called me mad before, not to mention,” Luvander added, trying to be supportive. “And I’ve gotten by just fine, haven’t I?”

Balfour caught my eye, and I figured he couldn’t’ve been feeling that bad if he was still up for poking a little fun at Luvander’s expense.

“I see how it is,” Luvander began, about to embark on a meandering tale of sorrow.

“Shut it,” I told him. I must’ve gotten some of my magic back, because this time, he listened right away and did as he was told without protest.

When you were dealing with someone whose natural inclination was to be quiet—like Balfour—it was necessary not to scare him away from talking. You had to make him feel comfortable, let him know it was his turn. Someone like Luvander abhorred a vacuum, and maybe he thought he was helping Balfour by filling up the silence so no one had to be uncomfortable, but in truth, he wasn’t doing the man any favors by taking control.

“I began to hear things, on the day of the meeting,” Balfour said slowly. I could almost imagine him pulling at his gloves as he worked up the courage to gain some momentum—just like the old days—except that he wasn’t wearing any. “At first I thought it was simply my mind growing bored with the proceedings and finding something else with which to occupy itself. I shouldn’t say this—I have no real cause to complain—but being a diplomat really is unbearable some days. I consider myself a rather patient person, but no one there ever wants to listen to anything but the sound of their own voices and their own solutions. It can be very disheartening, at times. Especially when, day in and day out, the same matters are addressed over and over again, and we never really get anywhere.”

“On the bright side, you do get all the best gossip first,” Luvander said, and I realized he was doing his best to be comforting.

“Either that, or you end up a part of it yourself,” Balfour agreed somewhat reluctantly.

“So you started hearing things,” I said. It wasn’t the kind of thing any man wanted to hear repeated, so I figured I’d be the one to do it and get it out of the way real fast. And we had to be sure, when it came to stuff like this.

“The way you say it, I can’t tell if I was overreacting or not,” Balfour said, looking sheepish. “Sometimes I think it was just the product of an idle brain. It’s certainly never happened before, anyway. As far as I know, there’s no history of such things in my family—not that I could write home to Mother and ask, you understand. The question would worry her.”

“No accounts of relatives going screaming out of boring parties?” Luvander asked. When Balfour shook his head, he sighed. “What a pity.”

“Don’t remember Amery ever doing it,” I said, steering us back to topic as best I could. Bastion knew Luvander was trying to be caring in his own mad way, and it was probably helping Balfour to have something to laugh at every now and again, but someone had to keep us focused.

“Perhaps my brother died before it came to that,” Balfour pointed out. It was a moment of straightforward grimness I wasn’t used to seeing him display, and he quickly looked away.

“Go on,” Luvander said softly.

Balfour chewed on a particularly dry part of his lip, hesitating before he spoke again.

“I didn’t realize what it was at first,” he said at last, in a fearful way that I could tell meant we were coming close to the heart of the matter. “It sounded like metal. Just metal working, machines going, gears grinding up against one another, that kind of thing. And it was quite loud. At first I thought they were doing some kind of repair labors in the street until I realized that no one else was reacting to the sudden noise. Then I assumed they were merely hiding their discomfort—being professional, as it were—but I asked one of my fellow diplomats and he indicated he didn’t hear anything.”

“You told someone else you were hearing things first?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Balfour said, with a miserable little twist to his mouth. “I was as subtle as I could manage without betraying any of the specifics. I simply asked him if he happened to hear anything strange at all, and when he realized that meant I was, he attempted to call off the proceedings. He also bore witness to my subsequent exit, so I suppose there was no point in being coy about it, after all. And now that everyone knows something’s the matter …” Balfour shook his head again. The only color in his cheeks was a flush of embarrassment. I’d’ve been uncomfortable, too, if I knew the whole city was talking about me like that. “I didn’t tell my friend the details of what I’d heard, though—I didn’t really get the chance.”

“So it sounded like metal, then,” Luvander said, resting his arms against the table. “That’s not so bad, really, Balfour. I’m sure there are worse things it could be. If Rook were here, he’d begin naming them all in order: beginning and ending, I’m sure, with one of the illustrious workers over at the ’Fans claiming you’d knocked her up. Now that’d be something I’d run away from.”

Balfour huffed a quiet laugh and I sat back in my chair, hoping the damned little thing wouldn’t turn into a pile of kindling under my weight. I didn’t like it—not one bit—but I wasn’t a physician, either, and it wasn’t my place to make any diagnosis. Stress did funny things to people, and for all I knew, this was just another simple case. It didn’t make much sense to me that it’d turn up now of all times, considering the kind of stress Balfour’d managed to weather before the war ended, but that was luck for you.

“Yes, but there’s more,” Balfour said quietly, staring hard at a knot in the tabletop. Whatever it was, I knew we probably weren’t going to like it.

“Out with it,” Luvander said, reaching across the table to put his hand where Balfour’s would’ve been if he hadn’t been hiding them under the table. “It’s only us, after all. At least half the men at the Airman could’ve outdone you with stories of the things their minds conjured up when they weren’t paying attention. You know that. What’s more, despite my penchant for gossip, I’ll have you know that I am extremely good at keeping secrets. Once you tell me something, it’s gone forever. Locked away like that story about the Margrave’s daughter in the tower, only somewhat less gruesome at the end, I hope. Also, you needn’t worry about Adamo saying anything because he hasn’t any friends to speak of. Just look at him.”

“If I did,” I said, “meaning if I did say something, it’d be because I want an expert’s opinion and not just my own to go on.”

I wasn’t going to tell a lie for anyone’s comfort, and I had a feeling Roy might’ve been helpful with this one. He wasn’t a velikaia, but he knew his fair share of them. Besides that, he was smart as a whip and spent so much time learning about everything I was certain he’d have an answer or two about all this.

Maybe Balfour would be able to listen to him since he didn’t seem able to trust me just yet.

“I realize what this is going to sound like,” Balfour said, looking up from the table at last. There was a look of resolve on his face I’d seen only a handful of times, and usually right before he was about to do something stupid, like marching into the belly of the beast to get his favorite pair of gloves back. “Just so you know—before you have me committed to an institution, I suppose. But after a while, I began to recognize the noise. I thought I must have been mistaken, or perhaps that I really had taken leave of my senses and this was the form it had chosen, but I refuse to accept that now. I am not mad. I know what I heard, and it sounded exactly like a dragon.”

Balfour paused, letting that sink in, but not so long that the silence would get too out of hand, forcing Luvander to start talking again.

“It’s simply unmistakable,” Balfour continued. “I’m sure either of you, or even Ghislain, would have recognized the sound straightaway. It’s only that I’ve spent so much time telling myself not to think about it that … well, I suppose I’d made myself resistant toward that particular conclusion. Yet I’ve heard it in my dreams enough times that I can’t pretend for the sake of avoidance. I knew that if I at least told you two, you’d have a better chance of understanding than anyone else. I’m beginning to form a theory of my own, but considering the rumors on just how sound a state of mind I’m in at present, I’d at least like a second opinion.”

“You heard a dragon?” Luvander asked, his voice hushed.

“In your head?” I added, just to clarify.

“Well, I am reasonably certain it hadn’t landed in the square, if that’s what you’re asking,” Balfour said with the hint of a smile. “The funny thing is, I almost … I suppose if I have come this far, now I have to tell you the rest. It wasn’t just the scraping and the banging or the turning of gears; I also heard a voice, in the barest of whispers at first, and then more clearly just before I fell unconscious. Or fainted, if that’s what you wish to call it. It knew who I was; it said my name.”

Luvander drew in a sharp breath as quietly as he could manage, and I forced my mind to take stock of things one at a time, instead of shooting in a hundred directions all at once. There was a chance Balfour’d been having a real bad day. Of the survivors, he’d suffered harder than most, and that had to wear on him day in and day out. There was no reason to jump to conclusions or to be thinking about Thom’s letter, for example—the one that’d said all kinds of things about bringing a dead dragon back to life.

There was no reason to do it, and yet I was pretty damn sure Luvander and I already were.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Balfour said, before either of us could gather our wits fast enough to say something—desperate for it to be the right thing, yet without too much hope for that. “I know I have been in and out with fever ever since; I think that it’s likely what caused me to faint in the first place. But I didn’t feel at all strange when it first started happening. The voice came when I was at my most lucid—triggering the fever, perhaps. What I mean to say is, it wasn’t the product of delirium. It wasn’t a feverish hallucination. When I’m ill, I don’t hear it at all. And shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

A real unwelcome thought occurred to me, and I wrestled with it for a moment before letting it out into the open.

“Are you hearing things right now?” I asked. It made sense, and it’d explain that awful twitching, Balfour’s head jerking around from time to time like he thought someone was calling his name somewhere in the distance.

“It comes and goes,” Balfour admitted. “I haven’t been back to work simply because I’m never certain when it’s going to start up again. I even tried making a kind of chart, writing down the times of day it returned, but there’s no real pattern. I would say it’s driving me mad, but I think that’s a rather unfortunate hyperbole given the circumstances, don’t you think? Unless it turns out to be true, in which case …”

“Fevers make everyone a little funny in the head,” Luvander said slowly, looking to me for support. “I had an uncle once who marched down to the lake and threw himself in because he thought my aunt had drawn him a very large bath. It took all us cousins to haul him out again, and all the time him screaming that we should give him his privacy in the lav. The whole town came out to watch, in the end. My second cousin Levent almost drowned, actually, and it’s why I have a very personal rule never to visit my relatives in the country ever again.”

“Now, let’s nobody leap to any conclusions just yet,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as either of them. “Fever’s going around the ’Versity like wildfire right now, or so I’ve heard. Stands to reason there’d be a bit of it in the bastion, too. If that’s what’s making you hear things, then it ought to pass as soon as the bug’s out of you.”

“That is what I was hoping,” Balfour admitted, twisting his hands in his lap. They looked like little dragon claws from this distance, overhung by the shadow of the table. If he was staring at them every day, I thought, didn’t it make sense he’d be hearing dragons not only in his sleep but during waking hours, too? I closed my eyes for a moment to listen—to see if I could hear anything, or if it was some of the whirring and clicking from those hands—but they were completely silent, and all I heard was the three of us breathing and a sudden gust of wind howling outside the building.

“Might be best to wait it out,” I said finally.

“And not tell anyone about it, either,” Luvander added, very practically.

“It doesn’t sound so foolish when you say it,” Balfour admitted. He almost looked relieved he’d told us, which I guessed meant we’d done our job all right.

“But you’re going to have to be very forthright about how you’re feeling,” Luvander added, tapping his fingers against the table. “No long-suffering silences from you, young man, and I’ll show up here with soup if I have to just to make sure you’re getting well again. If you prove stubborn, I’ll have to send another letter by pigeon to Ghislain telling him to return at once, and believe me, the last thing you want is him showing up here with his old Ramanthine remedies, not to mention whatever he’s picked up on the open seas. He’ll have you drinking chicken’s blood out of a hollowed-out Ke-Han skull, and you’ll do it because, well … Because your alternative would be saying no to Ghislain.”

Balfour shuddered. “No need to make me worse with talk of things like that. I’ll do whatever I can. I’d prefer not to feel this way, myself.”

“We’ll check up on you,” I said. It wasn’t a suggestion, and fortunately, nobody spoke up with their idea of a better plan. “I can do mornings, and Luvander can come at nighttime. How’s that sound?”

“A little like I’m an outpatient,” Balfour replied.

“But you suppose you’ll accept it,” Luvander said for him.

“However did you know?” Balfour asked.

“Then it’s settled,” I said firmly. “And, if you don’t mind, I’m requesting permission to share your experiences with a friend of mine at the Basquiat who knows a sight more about everything than I do.”

“A friend of yours?” Luvander asked, with a look of pure shock. “No—I can’t believe it.”

Balfour, on the other hand, looked momentarily reluctant, then allowed his shoulders to fall in a shrug of acceptance. “I don’t suppose it matters much now one way or another who knows,” he admitted quietly. “As long as all this doesn’t make its way back to my mother. I wouldn’t want to worry her for no reason.”

“Despite how much my friend likes to talk,” I said, “almost as much as Luvander here, he can keep a secret, too, and at least he has common sense for matters that should be kept private. Leastways when those matters don’t involve him.”

“It offends me that you are intimate with such a fascinating person,” Luvander said, “and you haven’t introduced us.”

“The world’d end,” I told him, “with both of you in the same room together. You’d both be trying to outtalk each other so hard your tongues’d fall out. Actually, he’d probably end up blasting you from here to Nevers, now that I think about it. You free Sunday?”

“Unfortunately, I’m busy bringing soup to my old friend Balfour, who isn’t feeling well at the moment,” Luvander replied. “But perhaps I could get a rain check on the introduction?”

Balfour’s laughter at that served to make us all feel better, I suspected, and somehow Luvander and I managed to join in. But it was a serious matter—one that was going to demand a whole lot more thinking and not something a simple chuckle’d be able to solve. When I left Balfour’s apartment it was with a heavy heart, and I wasn’t looking forward to any answers I could possibly get. None of ’em made for a promising future for any of us.