CHAPTER TWELVE

HAL

The Airman was quieter than I’d expected, and there was no decoration on the walls. It was perhaps a strange thing to notice, and yet, since my arrival in town, I’d felt continually overwhelmed by what I’d privately come to view as the city’s insatiable desire for opulence. This was true of Miranda at least, the most elevated of the maidens and the one I’d explored most extensively at Royston’s behest.

Thinking of Royston enshrouded me in a quiet, solitary despair. It was as though I was cut off from all the world—or as though, by losing Royston, I had somehow lost my touchstone to the city. I was cut adrift.

I missed him terribly, and if I allowed myself to think of it, I would surely start to cry again.

Instead, I focused on my more immediate surroundings. I was not so unaware of them that I couldn’t recall Royston telling me everything he knew about the dragons and their unusual pilots. He said that very few civilians ever got to see the inside of the Airman because the corps wouldn’t allow it. The way he’d described them was something like a very primitive, very xenophobic tribe of warriors who held themselves so high in their own esteem that they became quite separate from the common people.

So I was both curious and anxious about meeting these airmen, who were in many ways the heroes of the country and yet whom no one seemed to like very much at all when you came right down to it. Royston had been speaking at length with their Chief Sergeant on the night of the ball before I’d slipped away, and I assumed that the rest must—they must—have friends of a sort somewhere or other. But it was still rather an interesting paradox and one I felt very lucky to view for myself.

I heard a shout from down the hall, and someone went storming past the open door of the common room; I recognized him as the man with a harem of women surrounding him the night of the ball. He had long, blue-streaked blond hair tied back in intricate braids and a purposeful look about him, as though anyone who got in his way would be very sorry, indeed. I found myself quite glad that he didn’t spare me so much as a second glance but went on barreling along to bang on a door much farther down.

“Ghislain,” I heard him say, “you’d better wake the fuck up, seeing as how we’re hauling ass to the palace. Right fucking now.”

I couldn’t hear a reply, but there must have been one because the next thing I heard was a bark of laughter, and an enormous crashing sound, as though the braided airman had kicked the door down.

It was while I was listening to this that Thom reappeared, observing the scene in the hall with an inscrutable expression. I stood immediately, eager to find out what had been decided, though admittedly I’d been unable to stop my heart from leaping wildly up into my throat at the airman’s mention of the palace.

“Rook is . . . quite forcefully decisive,” said Thom rather apologetically as he approached me. There was something about his face that made me wonder, however much it was none of my business, what sort of connection had been forged between these two seemingly so different men.

An enormous man came tramping into the hallway, looking as though he’d just rolled out of bed; he was followed closely behind by the airman Thom had identified as Rook.

“Rallying the troops, are we?” The enormous man’s voice was like falling rock. “I wondered how long it would take you to crack.”

“It ain’t me that’s cracked,” said Rook, but he didn’t elaborate further than that.

Ghislain—for that, I remembered, had been what Rook called him before kicking down his door—appeared to take this as explanation enough, for he nodded and set off down the hall in the opposite direction, where I could see doors set sporadically, small and cramped into the walls.

I stood unnoticed with Thom in the doorway, and while I watched I couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration at the seamless way the members of the corps worked without having to pause for any kind of apparent communication. Between the two of them, Ghislain and Rook set about rousing the remaining airmen with a synchronicity that clearly mirrored what they exhibited in the air. Surely it was showing my country manner all too plainly to stare at them so, but I found I couldn’t quite help myself.

“I managed to convince him,” said Thom, as though he needed to hear the words in order to believe it. “Rook is rather like the ringleader. Once you’ve got him convinced, the others will follow.”

“Did it take a very long time to figure that out?” I asked, remembering what he’d been charged with and how he’d been made to live like a foreigner among the Dragon Corps.

“Not as long as you’d expect, no.” He offered me a smile, familiar, as though we were friends. “Not that, anyway.”

I didn’t feel adequately equipped to guess after his meaning, but he’d been kind to me of his own volition, without any reason for it, and I was grateful. “Well, you can’t learn everything all at once.”

“I suppose not,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over an indignant cry demanding to know what kind of rat bastard entered someone’s room unannounced.

“You can’t,” I said, sure of myself in at least this. Royston had said as much to me when we’d first come to the city, and I was glad to have some opportunity to share my newfound wisdom. It was nice not to be the most uncertain person in the room for once.

“Well,” he said, and went rather quiet and pink.

“Who’s this?” A young man—young because he seemed closer in age to Thom than the others, and somehow less hard—came up to where we stood waiting in the hall. He had a wide-awake look about him, as though he was the only one of all the twelve remaining airmen who hadn’t been sleeping when Rook and Ghislain began their systematic rousing of the corps. He wore the high-collared blue uniform I recognized vaguely from the ball, though there were a few differences. There was a burn mark on his shoulder for starters, and both epaulettes were missing.

“Oh,” said Thom, turning about at once. “You’re awake. That’s good. Rook—I believe—is going to ask th’Esar what is happening to the dragons.”

“Is he?” asked the airman. “We’re all going? Because Anastasia’s been—” He looked at me again, with fleeting mistrust before lowering his voice. “Anyway, she’s acting a little strange.”

I wasn’t at all interested in learning the secrets of the Dragon Corps, but I saw this privacy as a reflection of my own intrusion, as though I’d been noticed and caught out at last for not belonging here.

Thom nodded, looking concerned. “I believe they intend to find an answer, or more likely they intend to demand one.” He laughed weakly, as though the very idea of anyone demanding an answer from th’Esar was a distressing one, indeed.

I didn’t care about the imposition. However foolish it was of me, I resented any man who would tell me where Royston was, then declare I wasn’t allowed to go to him.

There was a pause, punctuated by the sound of men tumbling from their beds and the pacing of booted feet against the floor.

“I’m Hal,” I said, awkwardly. It was only then that I remembered what Thom had told me about keeping silent, and that perhaps that was the only reason why he’d kept from introducing me until now.

“Are you?” The airman gave me an appraising look. He didn’t respond in kind, with his own name. “I suppose you’re a friend of Thom’s?”

“Yes,” I said, hoping I wasn’t assuming too much. Thom didn’t speak out immediately to correct me, though, and I felt marginally better about my own impulsive answer.

The airman didn’t introduce himself, though. Instead, he only looked at Thom as though expecting to hear more of an explanation as to why he’d brought a stranger with him inside the Airman. It was much akin to either the most exclusive of small country villages or, the thought entered my head unbidden, a prison, wherein everyone knew one another’s business, and distrusted all outside matters. Perhaps one day, if I didn’t say anything to offend him again, I would be able to ask Thom how he’d managed to live under such conditions all this time.

My room at the chatelain’s house had been small, but there had at least been a bed, and not a couch.

“Balfour,” someone hollered from down the length of the wide corridor.

“Good, you’re up.”

When I turned, I rather thought I’d been plunged into a roman, or that my life had taken some strange fantastical change. Ranged together in the hall were twelve men in matching uniforms but of such dissimilar appearance as to be completely—individually and separately—the most striking people I’d ever had the opportunity to see up close. When I’d first met the Margrave Royston, I’d been captivated by some impalpable quality he possessed, the innate ability to capture the attentions of a room without speaking so much as a word. Each of these men here had the same power—and when they stood together the effect left me breathless. I’d seen them at the ball, but now I was in their midst.

“Who’s the kid?”

Rather abruptly, I was torn out of the reverie, as I remembered the talk of the coarse manners of the airmen. Twelve pairs of eyes pinned me into place, and from behind me I was certain Balfour was doing the same. I cleared my throat, mouth suddenly dry.

“He isn’t—” Thom hesitated, then changed whatever it was he’d been about to say. “He’s a friend of mine.”

The handsome one I’d seen at the ball—Rook—gave me a look that was equal parts amusement and malevolence. He seemed about to say something when the redhead standing next to him elbowed him sharply in the ribs and indicated something over our heads.

I turned, helpless in my curiosity, and not wanting to stand out against any uniform motion that might underscore my position as an outsider. Standing opposite us was the fourteenth and final member of the Dragon Corps. He stood with his arms crossed, and his bearing was that of a man who knew full well that crossing his arms would be discouragement enough against any kind of insurrection. I recognized the Chief Sergeant of the airmen from Royston’s table at the night of the ball although he now had a beard and there were exhausted bags under his eyes.

I realized all at once that this was a coup. I was partially the cause of it, and I felt my cheeks and ears grow hot.

“And just where do you all think you’re going?” The Chief Sergeant didn’t appear pleased.

The men were momentarily very quiet, reminding me somewhat of a large passel of children who’d been caught worrying the chickens. Then Airman Rook stepped forward, crossing his arms just as neatly over his own chest, and I moved quickly out of the way, so that I wasn’t caught in their gaze as it met, straight and fierce as a path of fire.

“We’re going to see th’Esar,” Rook said. There wasn’t any room for a please or may I in his tone.

“Oh?” the Chief Sergeant asked. “Is that so? I don’t believe I signed the necessary paperwork for that.”

“You can take that paperwork . . .” Rook began.

Thom cleared his throat and stepped forward to join him. “You may already be aware of this,” he said, more gently, in what I assumed was an attempt to placate the Chief Sergeant, “but we are on the verge of something quite terrible. Inside the Basquiat at this very moment is some untold collection of magicians who are being kept there indefinitely for a reason it seems no one but th’Esar himself and those closest to him are privy to. Family and friends crowd outside the building, yet no one is being admitted entrance. Likewise, I believe that most—if not all—of your men are experiencing some manner of difficulty with their dragons.”

“So we’re thinking,” Rook cut in, “that if there’s something wrong with the magicians, and magicians made our girls, then knowing what’s wrong with the magicians might maybe explain what’s wrong with our girls.”

Thom colored just slightly—I believed I was the only one who’d caught the change—when the airman Rook used the word “we.” It was another interesting detail, but one I was ultimately too miserable to make very much of.

“So you’re going to meet with the Esar,” the Chief Sergeant said, “because you fancy yourselves a group of bastion-blessed diplomats.”

There was another long silence, as everyone was left to consider the Chief Sergeant’s words, rumbling and dark and strong as a physical blow.

Rook tossed his braids over one shoulder; I felt reminded of the stamping and posturing of a thoroughbred horse. “Th’Esar doesn’t give us some fucking answers,” he said, “then we ain’t gonna give him a fucking Dragon Corps.”

“The way we see it,” Thom translated quietly, “is that it’s impossible for him to expect the men to fly under such conditions. If he won’t listen to the reason of one man, then he must surely listen to the reason of his fourteen airmen, without whom his war might never be won.”

“I see,” said the Chief Sergeant. “And what, if you care to enlighten me, brought this pretty piece of inspiration on?”

I swallowed thickly as I heard Thom clear his throat again as he glanced toward me. Then, as surely as if Thom had pointed in my direction, fourteen pairs of eyes were drawn to me and fixed me soundly in place. More than anything, I wished I could have disappeared, quickly as a shadow, hiding myself along the wall or at their feet.

“This,” Thom said into the uncomfortable quiet, “is Hal.”

The Chief Sergeant cocked his head and looked at me. “I know you,” he said, unexpectedly, and I breathed an infinitesimal sigh of relief. “ You’re Royston’s . . . apprentice. Aren’t you?”

I nodded faintly, trying to work up the courage to speak. “His assistant,” I confirmed, when I could at last find the words. “He introduced us at the ball.”

“I remember,” the Chief Sergeant said gruffly. “Said a few other things about you, too. Like how you’re clever as a whip and sharp as tacking.”

This time, when I blushed, it was under such intense scrutiny that I wished more than anything for a Talent that might allow me to disappear entirely. This, however, would give me no aid in finding Royston.

“I received a letter,” I informed the Chief Sergeant miserably. “It said the Margrave Royston had returned from the front and was at this very moment inside the Basquiat, and that—per his request—I was to be informed of his whereabouts. But I wasn’t to be allowed admittance. I’ve been waiting outside the Basquiat all morning—you should see the crowds; family and friends, and no one knows anything—” I broke off, fists clenched so tightly at my sides that I could barely feel my palms where my nails bit into them. Thom reached out and put his arm around me, and over the sound of someone’s uncomfortable giggling behind us, I thought I heard the Chief Sergeant sigh.

“Royston’s a friend,” the Chief Sergeant said slowly, “and the corps is my business. I take care of you lot. Have you forgotten it?”

The silence that followed his question seemed to indicate that, even if they had forgotten it before, everyone was certainly reminded of the fact and once again quite impressed by it.

“So?” Rook asked darkly, the only man not even slightly impressed by the sheer force of will in the Chief Sergeant’s words. “You take care of us. What’re you gonna fucking do about it?”

“The Esar won’t listen to you if you storm his door like angry children,” the Chief Sergeant countered smoothly. “Why in bastion’s name don’t I have thirteen reports filed from you about the problems you’ve been having up in the air? Is it because you’re all too fucking proud to see straight?”

“It sort of . . . built up on us, sir,” said Balfour quietly. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped with shame, and I saw him toying with his gloves, tugging the fingertips loose from his fingers.

“Didn’t seem as how we knew we were all experiencing the same thing,” Ghislain added.

“Fuck you all at your mother’s tit,” the Chief Sergeant snarled. “Don’t a single one of you move until I get back here in five.”

“What happens in five?” an impossibly pale man asked from the back. The man next to him burst once more into uncomfortable giggles.

“We call us some carriages,” the Chief Sergeant said. “Gets us to the palace much quicker than walking, doesn’t it?”

 

ROOK

So there we were—all fourteen of us and the professor, and the tagalong he’d managed to pick up out front of the Basquiat—waiting in th’Esar’s foyer nice as punch for His Majesty to grace us all with his imperial sun-blessed presence. I thought that if it’d do any of us a lick of good, I’d have gone for the throat right there, but like the professor said, more than anything we needed to know what the fuck was going on before we did anything. Most people are stupid ’cause they allow themselves to stay stupid, and I didn’t manage to get out of Molly by staying stupid for long.

So anyway; there we were, no matter what we were all thinking about, sitting in chairs or standing and ranging around because the waiting was starting to piss us off, like me for example, and Ace too, because we both knew how bad things must be if our girls weren’t listening to us proper. We were all sort of mad at ourselves, too, even though Adamo’d been a little over the top earlier because of whatever soft spot he had for that Mary Margrave of his, because this was halfway our own fault and we knew it. We hadn’t been looking after our girls properly, and fuck the damn paperwork; we should have brought it up to Adamo the first time it happened instead of letting it get so bad while we tried to ignore it.

Meanwhile, the professor had one arm around his tagalong’s shoulders and I could see Compagnon watching them all sidelong and trying not to giggle, which, if I hadn’t been so pissed myself, would’ve set me to giggling, too. Instead, I was just mad, and if teasing Balfour wasn’t going to make me feel better, then there wasn’t nothing that was going to work. I wanted to get something done, I wanted to march right into th’Esar’s fancy meeting hall and give him a piece of my mind, and maybe doing that’d distract me long enough from the guilt worrying at me, like maybe if I’d done something for Have sooner, then things wouldn’t have got to this state at all.

“Shit,” Ace said to me, drawing me aside all private-like. “They’re just doing this to make us sweat.”

“We’ll make ’em sweat before it’s through,” I promised. “I figure we gotta have a plan for it. Like when we’re flying.”

“Oh?” Ace asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m no fucking good at plans.”

Basically, there was one idiot in this entire room who knew people better than the rest of us, or did in theory anyway, and who could work these things out on the back of his hand or Balfour’s gloves if you gave him the pen for it. He was sitting there saying into his tagalong’s ear whatever soothing horseshit he had stored up from a lifetime of horse-shit memorization.

“All right,” I said, whistling sharp, and he looked up quick as that, which made me more pleased than I’d like to admit. “Yeah,” I confirmed, “you. Leave your boyfriend alone and get the fuck over here. Th’Esar’s making us wait, so we might as well use it against him, right?”

Everyone was watching me now, which meant I was the only one who saw the professor’s tagalong go red as a tomato all the way to the tops of his ears. It was like a circus sideshow.

“Ah,” the professor said, giving his tagalong a squeeze before he stood. “How do you propose we do that?”

“We gotta go to him like a team,” I said, spitting his own words straight back at him. “Right? We gotta use our strengths and his weaknesses against him. It’s your own theory.”

“Well,” said the professor, looking at me with his doe eyes, like I’d given him a present and making me real uncomfortable, “in a manner of speaking, I suppose it is a . . . bastardization.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “Who the fuck’re you calling a bastard?”

“I believe,” said Jeannot smoothly, “that he’s calling your ideas the bastards.”

“Shit,” I said, ’cause that much was more than halfway true. “Well, that’s all right, then.”

“Well?” Thom spread his hands before him. “What did you have in mind?”

“I figure it this way,” I said. “We’ve got a man here who—Esar or fucking not—needs a whole lot of convincing. We’ve gotta mix it so there’s no way he can’t tell us what we need to know.”

“You want to bargain with him,” said the professor. “You want to bargain with th’Esar.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Blackmail him. Whatever it’s called. But we’ve all got to do it together, because if one of us calls foul and the rest don’t back him up, we’re all screwed cheap as a Hapenny. You get that?” Compagnon started giggling, but all the boys were with me, even Adamo, whom I’d never thought of as one of the boys and still didn’t. The tagalong was watching us as if it were the best fucking theatre he’d ever seen, which in a way I guess it was. “All right,” I went on, turning to the professor. “So how do we do it? How do we make him do what we want?”

“Well,” the professor said, real slow like I hate, but I could see he was thinking it over properly, and I forced myself to be a little patient. “I suppose the best bargaining tool you have is what you do for him. What you’ve already done.”

“So we threaten to take it away,” I said.

“In a manner of speaking,” the professor agreed. “Yes. Only—I don’t think you can phrase it as such, in as many words. You have to be more subtle—”

And then, before we’d had time to talk it out good and proper, the door in the far corner swung open and one of th’Esar’s worm-mouthed servants made himself known to us with a stiff bow and a whining, “His Esteemed Majesty the Esar is waiting for you in his royal conference room.”

“Right,” Adamo growled out. “Step to it, men.”

We all fell into line for the first time in our lives. There wasn’t one in our number who wanted us to lose face in front of th’Esar, not when we knew we were cornered. What he hadn’t counted on was how every man fought like a dog when his back was pressed up against a wall like ours were right now, and we were fighting for more than just ourselves, too. We had our girls to think about.

I hated the royal conference room, ’cause it was a bitch to get to, and worse than that it made me feel all turned around, like I was flying sideways and didn’t know which way was up. Raphael’d said once that he read a book that explained why everything was built all winding and confused as shit in the palace. Actually, the way Raphael put it was “a very subtle intimidation tactic,” but what that meant in real talk was that it made everyone except th’Esar feel out of place, and when people felt out of place they made dumb mistakes like getting nervous, and that was right where th’Esar wanted to put people. Nervous people needed a leader; nervous people did exactly as they were told. ’Course that wasn’t taking into account how nervous often preceded panicky, and there wasn’t nothing you could keep panicky people from doing once they got it into their heads to do it.

Get enough people together like that and it wouldn’t matter what th’Esar said: They’d tear the Basquiat down to the ground to get at what they wanted. Part of that was caring, I guessed, from what the tagalong had said about it being all family and loved ones down there—and I knew I didn’t need to ask which he was, since we were talking about that Mary Margrave—and even me with no heart to speak of knew it plain as day that people aren’t ever crazier than when they’ve got caring mucking up their brains on top of everything else.

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.

Maybe he was also realizing what it meant to be standing with us when th’Esar had marked him out real private as his own spy. That part of my plan, at least, had gone over without a hitch. It was easy to see what side the professor was really on, and whatever satisfaction I felt over it was just because I’d planned things exactly that way.

“We had hoped that it would not come to this,” said th’Esar, neither acknowledging nor discounting what the professor had said. I thought he might faint with relief, but he went on standing. He was stubborn like that. “The corps is our best hope in the war to come, and with the magicians—disabled, as it were—perhaps the corps is our only hope.”

Big fucking surprise there, I thought, but I only sneered a little.

“Your Majesty,” Adamo started again, real placating like. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what sort of a help we can be with things going wrong the way they are all over.”

Th’Esar lifted his head, serene as you please, like he hadn’t spent the last months lying to us, like we wouldn’t have all got killed for no proper reason if we’d been a bit unluckier and not so good at our jobs.

“We are greatly in need of time,” he said. “Time to figure out what we can do to counteract this ailment, that we might beat our enemies across the border for good.”

“You want us to keep them occupied,” said Adamo, and it wasn’t a question so much as something he’d only just figured out.

“Yes, Chief Sergeant. That is exactly what we are asking of you.”

“Flying our dragons the way they are now,” said Adamo, careful and clear, “is simple madness. If it isn’t suicide yet, it soon will be.” He left out the part I knew he wanted to add: that it was something th’Esar couldn’t ask us to do, ’cause nothing got a man riled up like telling him what he couldn’t do, and Adamo knew it. There was no sense in provoking him—he was a man already on the edge of something too big for him to handle and something he had to handle nonetheless.

Much as I hated th’Esar right then, I didn’t fancy being in his boots, either, and not just ’cause of the color of them.

“Your Majesty,” Jeannot spoke up, stepping past Ace and Ghislain and making his way to the front to stand by me, “allow me to presume so much as to see if I am completely clear as to your royal plan.”

There was something snide in the way he said it, but it was perfectly politic. Jeannot was fucking clever, make no mistake. Th’Esar nodded and waved his hand in a gesture that seemed to indicate he was done wasting words on us and just wanted us to get all our cards on the table at once. Maybe then he’d sweep us from underneath. Maybe not.

“The reason we weren’t informed of the present situation was that we would continue to keep the Ke-Han busy at the pass,” Jeannot explained, neat and simple as you’d like, “during which period the corps could buy vital time for some . . . cure to be discovered.”

Th’Esar’s mouth went a little white and his cheeks a little red, since his complexion was the sort that betrayed too much emotion—not enough of the old Ramanthe in him any way you cut it. “In a manner of speaking,” he said at length, “that was indeed our plan. We hope, Airman Jeannot, that you are not insinuating your displeasure for this plan?”

“I hope I’m not insinuating anything at all, Your Majesty,” Jeannot replied, and melted back into the crowd, having made his point loud and clear enough even for the deaf, dumb, and blind.

We were all silent for a while, mulling that one over, since it was pretty obvious to all of us by now that we’d been used as bait, flying targets, a forlorn fucking hope they called it in romans or in melodramatic theatre, and I was so mad right then seven shades of red had come down over my eyes. It was only the professor’s fingers digging into my elbow that kept me locked into place, and even that wasn’t going to be enough real soon.

“I take it that no cure has yet been found,” the tagalong suddenly said. We all must’ve forgotten he was even there because suddenly everyone in the room was looking at him, even me, and we could all see clear as day that he was crying.

“The illness is a peculiar one,” th’Esar said, not out of pity for him, just stating the facts. “It seems to have affected first and most seriously those of purest Talent, and has worked onward from there to those with Talents more and more diluted.”

“So basically,” I said, “for the first time, you’re lucky if you’re a mutt.”

The left corner of th’Esar’s mouth twisted, sort of like a mirroring of my own sneer. “I suppose that is one way of phrasing it,” he conceded at last.

“Your Majesty will beg my pardon,” Adamo said, in a voice that didn’t sound as how that was what he wanted th’Esar to be begging for in particular. “But I can’t let my men fly under such circumstances. At this point—with the rate of deterioration—flying any one of the dragons out to the Cobalts and back would be enough of a risk, much less trying to use them for battle.”

“We have no other recourse,” th’Esar replied.

“Then we’re going to be overrun by the Ke-Han,” Adamo said, squaring his jaw. “Without anything but the Cobalts standing between us and them.”

Now there was real trouble. To be honest? I thought th’Esar was going to sentence Adamo to death right away, and his face turned purple like a dragon’d set his head on fire. It was ludicrous enough to be funny, only there wasn’t a single man jack of us who could see their way around to laughing—not even Compagnon. We weren’t the only poor fucks who were screwed seven ways, both up and down. Everyone in Volstov was going to be smoking opium and having twelve wives pretty soon, that is if the Ke-Han didn’t just decide to fucking kill us all. It was only a matter of time—which was why th’Esar’d been so careful with it—before the Ke-Han rode on over here across the plains and took what they’d been wanting since it had belonged to the Ramanthines, because we didn’t have a way to defend it.

It was a sobering thought. It made a man feel helpless, and if there was one thing I hated more than anything else, it was knowing someone’d tied my hands behind my back. But no matter which way I turned the problem to the light, I couldn’t see my way clear toward solving it. The whole thing blew like a Hapenny whore.

“Are you refusing to do your duty, Chief Sergeant Adamo?” th’Esar asked.

Adamo didn’t back down for even a second. “The way I see my duty, Your Majesty, is this,” he said. “We signed up to die for our country. In the past, some of us have done exactly that. But part of our code is to protect our dragons before anything else—and if we fly them as you wish us to, there’s no doubt in my mind that they will be destroyed. If that’s what you’re thinking is best for our country—to let them fall into the Ke-Han’s hands, to let the Ke-Han have at what they want so badly—then I’m ready, as a soldier and as a man loyal to my country, to hear your reasoning.”

Th’Esar made another one of those bird-wing motions with his hands. “We are working tirelessly even now to find a cure for the illness,” he said. “Yet we must have time to think—to incorporate into our actions this troubling new knowledge you have brought before us. It changes a great many things.” Adamo nodded once, curt, like the fucking perfect soldier he was. “We will call for you this evening, once we have considered the evidence before us, and, hopefully, have come to an arrangement that is more agreeable for all of us. But understand this, Chief Sergeant Adamo—if I say that the dragons must be sacrificed, then they must be sacrificed.”

There was this terrible silence, and I felt it deep down as my bones and blood and even further. Right then, if I’d been allowed to keep my knives on me before stepping foot inside the palace, I would’ve split His Majesty apart before he had a chance to spew out platitudes and horseshit as fucked up as all that. He might’ve paid for her, but Have was mine, and I’d’ve staked my life on how the other boys felt pretty damn close to the way I did.

Adamo just nodded; and then he bowed, stiff and formal, like we’d all been dismissed without us noticing, and turned to leave.

“Your Majesty,” the professor said, clearing his throat, and I had to give him points for how brave he was—even though it didn’t matter much for how stupid he was at the same time as that. “There is one other matter, if I may presume to address it.”

Th’Esar lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve presumed many things today,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. Then, against all fucking odds, he nodded. “Be quick. Our time is quite precious, as you are well aware.”

The professor swallowed and came forward. “As for the situation with the magicians being kept in confinement at the Basquiat,” he said, “since this young apprentice has already learned of this private matter—and as the reason for the magicians’ confinement is not, in fact, due to the quarantine of disease but rather to prevent the spread of panic alone—then I should think there is little reason at present for this young man to be kept from his mentor. It may also prove somewhat useful—though of course Your Highness is far better versed in these matters than I could ever hope to be—to allow a fresh young mind to work on the problem in tandem with a man I believe to be one of Your Majesty’s most talented magicians.”

“The Margrave Royston,” th’Esar said. He obviously thought it was worse than being bled to death, being given a good idea he hadn’t thought of himself, but he wasn’t a fool, and I could see right away he liked it. “Very well,” he said after a long pause. “The young man shall be taken to the Basquiat. The rest of you, however, must return to the Airman and await our summons.”

Things happened after that sort of all at once: Adamo barking out orders, and the tagalong thanking the professor as though he was some kind of saint or something, and then there were servants being let in, some to show us out and the rest, I figured, there to show the tagalong the secret way of getting inside the Basquiat. I almost wanted to go with him, to get some answer about how to fix Have, but that wouldn’t’ve done anyone a lick of good. Besides that, I was too busy watching the strange look that came over the professor and made him glow all over, almost like he’d stepped into a shaft of sunlight—only we were deep inside the palace, and so he couldn’t have done.

I guess it must have been pride or maybe even happiness, but in any case it wasn’t the sort of expression I’d ever seen the professor wear before that minute. Not during all his time at the Airman. Not even once.