Steelhands (2011) (18 page)

Then again, if I’d had a dragon to command and call my own, there wouldn’t be
anyone
making me wait more than five minutes for anything, and definitely not in a cold little physician’s room, either.

A girl had her dreams, and I had mine. I’d heard all about how it was the dragons that did the choosing, and not th’Esar or any magicians from the Basquiat, either. So what if one of the dragons had gone and chosen a woman, just because she liked one better? Probably the only reason that none of ’em ever had was because no woman had been presented to the dragons in the first place, but sometimes when I’d closed my eyes at night back home, I’d imagined what it might be like to slip through all the nets just to get my chance to stand in front of one of those beauties and have her pick
me
out of the lot of ’em.

After all, if the dragons were girls, why couldn’t the riders be?

“Thank you for your time,” the assistant said, bobbing his head and scuttling out of the room.

I managed to keep from sticking my tongue out at him while his back was turned, but only by imagining what Toverre would say if I told him I’d done it. Sometimes, I thought, he should’ve been the lady and not me. He’d still have been ten kinds of crazy squeezed into one person, but at least he’d’ve had all the right airs, not to mention all the right clothes. And if I got to be the boy of the two of us, Da’d be happier, and I would be, too, because of it.

I swung my feet back and forth, trying not to feel too antsy. I was almost
grateful when the door opened again—and I never thought I’d end up in a position where I’d be looking forward to a little bloodletting, but that was what Thremedon had done to me.

My physician was a stout woman—something I wasn’t expecting at all, to be honest—with black hair and sturdy, square-shaped hands that would’ve been aces at soothing horses if she’d been born on a farm. I guessed she was aces at soothing patients, because the sight of her even relaxed
me
a little. That put my good sense at about the same level as a horse’s, apparently.

“Sorry to make you wait so long,” she said, looking over the chart her assistant had left behind before she glanced up at me. “I’m Germaine, and I’ll be your attending physician for the next half hour or so. We got a lot of you country folk in today, as you can probably imagine. Preliminary check says you’re fit as a fiddle, so that’s good news. We’re just going to draw a vial of blood for some more advanced testing, then we’ll get you out of here, Miss … Laurence, isn’t it?”

“It’s Laure, actually,” I told her, hoping I wouldn’t have to get into the whole explanation.

“I see,” Germaine said, checking something off on the chart, though she probably wasn’t striking through the
nce
at the end of my name. Didn’t strike me as professional. “That’s good to know. I didn’t want to be looking at the wrong chart after I’ve gone and given you a clean bill of health.”

“That
would
be awkward,” I agreed. Anything to get this over with more quickly.

“Is there anything you want to ask me about?” Germaine asked, folding the chart against her chest and giving me what amounted to a kindly look. Or at least, the closest thing to it that it seemed she could manage. “I know that it can be difficult, being away from home, and Thremedon’s certainly an acquired taste. At your age, you probably have most of the basics figured out, but if you have any questions about your body and what’s good for it, then now’s your time to ask.”

“Nothing that comes to mind,” I answered—too quickly, I realized, since I could see the disappointment in her face. She probably thought I was lying, or maybe too dirt-stupid to ask the important questions, but I knew most of the things she wanted to talk to me about already. All the natural things, at least, that I could see happening with the horses just by being with them all day. Lying with a man led to having
babies; I’d been getting my monthlies for years and they were the same pain in my ass as ever. And unless there was a potion they’d invented in Thremedon to shrink the size of my chest down to something more sensible, then I was sure there was nothing this woman could do to help me. Even if she really wanted to.

“You seem certain enough,” Germaine said; there was some questioning in that, too.

“I’m betrothed,” I told her, putting an end to the discussion. She didn’t need to know that my fiancé was Toverre, and that he was about as inclined to do things to my naked body as I was to his, these days.

“I see,” Germaine said, ticking something else off on the chart. It was maddening to know that there were strangers writing down all these things about me to keep as long as they liked—worse still that I wasn’t allowed to read what any of it said—but at least she’d gone for my bluff. “Well, if you ever change your mind, I’m here from noon to eight on weekdays. It might take time to schedule an appointment in the next few weeks, but after the start of term rush is over, it should get easier.”

“Thank you,” I said, not wanting to seem like
too
much of an ungrateful boor right off the bat. The poor woman was just trying to do her job, and I wasn’t making it any easier by acting like a particularly sullen cow. “I’ll be sure and remember that.
If
I need anything.”

“Well,” said Germaine, with a little sigh, “I suppose you’re anxious to get out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, before realizing it’d probably been one of those rhetorical questions.

Lucky for me, she didn’t seem to mind that I’d gone and answered anyway though she did gesture for me to scoot back up in my seat. I leaned back, staring up at the whorls on the wooden ceiling, and noticed a place where there must’ve been a leak, because the plank was warped and stained. A little bit of tar would solve that problem, easy. Didn’t these city folk know
anything?

“Roll up your sleeve,” Germaine said, setting my chart down. “I’ll be right back.”

I did as she’d told me, biting down on my tongue. She didn’t leave the way she’d come in but instead went through a door I hadn’t noticed at the back of the examining room—probably because it was painted white, the same as the walls. She’d put the chart facedown on the
counter, so I couldn’t even try to sneak a glance while she was gone, and I didn’t know if she’d be out of the way long enough for me to hop down off the table and scamper across the room to check it out. It’d be just like me to get caught with my hand in the cookie jar, and seeing as how I didn’t know what the punishment for peeking at your files would be in Thremedon, I decided to be a good little girl and wait for my bloodletting like everyone else. Even though I shouldn’t have to be cautious when it came to my own files, but all Toverre’s obsessive behavior was starting to rub off on me.

Curiosity was liable to kill me if I kept focusing on it, so I turned my sights to something else, instead.

Germaine had left the door slightly ajar when she’d gone through it, I realized, because it left a long sliver of dark against all that boring, white wall. That was probably where they kept the really mean-looking instruments they didn’t want anyone seeing until they stuck you with them. We did the same with the horses at the stables, and even though Da never bothered to brand our cows, Toverre’s parents had a separate room for that kind of stuff that smelled of burning hide, so they had to keep the doors locked at all times. If I leaned back, I could even see all sorts of weird, silvery equipment that I didn’t recognize, and the tools I
did
recognize were ones I’d never seen in a physician’s office before. Shears and pliers and all sorts of cogs, big and small, littered the slice of desk, illumined by bright lamplight. It looked more like a clockmaker’s desk than anything. I didn’t like the idea of
that
one bit, because if she was a clockmaker, then
I
felt like the clock, but I was probably getting ahead of myself. Maybe it was a hobby she kept on the side. You never could tell with these Thremedon folk.

Also, I was getting a crick in my neck from leaning so far back on the table.

The door creaked and I heard footsteps, so I straightened up, tugging at a piece of my hair and trying not to look like I’d been sneaking a look at something that didn’t concern me. This Germaine woman seemed pretty passive as far as physicians went, and I was a head taller than she was besides, but they were all pretty big on the rules here. I didn’t want her to decide she didn’t like me right before she was about to stick me with a needle, either, which was just plain common sense.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting again,” Germaine said. She sounded a little out of breath, like she’d been climbing stairs or something. It
made me wonder how big the space behind the examining room really was, or why they kept the bloodletting equipment so far away from everything else they needed, but it was probably top secret physician stuff, and none of my civilian business. I clenched my jaw and refused to look at the needle she was holding. That was the only way to do it so you didn’t spook yourself.

“It’s fine,” I said, because what else was there to say really? My arm was getting cold, and my heart was racing.

She rubbed the soft crook of my elbow with something that made it colder, then snapped her fingers to one side to get my attention.

I
always
fell for that stupid trick, even if it was for babies.

The actual needle never hurt as much as all the waiting leading up to it, and this time was no exception. It was like a pinprick, and I’d had worse than that during my forays into mending clothes, despite how many times I’d tried to explain that I just
wasn’t
made for it. Hurt more to take the needles out of my fingers, too, or when I forgot a pin somewhere and stepped on it.

This wasn’t so bad. I’d been acting like a big baby, imagining all kinds of things that weren’t there, and all over a simple blood testing.

It was my head that needed testing, I thought, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you could joke about with a physician.

Germaine offered me a tight smile and checked her watch—a pretty little thing made of gold, or at least colored to look like it was. On the face were all these foreign symbols—things I’d never seen on a watch before, not even in the history books I’d
finally
cracked open late the night before, which talked all about how magicians of Volstov had once told time by the sun and the moon. It had two hands like a watch did, though, and a third little one that went ticking in a circle though not in any kind of recognizable rhythm.

I’d ask Toverre about it later. Maybe it was the newest fashion in Thremedon to wear a watch that didn’t actually tell time.

“All done,” Germaine said at last, which was my cue to look away so she could pull the needle out again. Blood didn’t bother me, not my own or anyone else’s, but it hurt more when I looked at it, and I was brave, not
stupid
. I’d forget all about it if I just put it out of my mind. “Very good. No squirming or anything; a few of the boys before you fainted when they stood up.”

“Got all the squirming out of the way in advance,” I told her. “And I’ve never fainted in my life.”

“You’re a very sensible girl,” Germaine said, tying a clean bandage tight around my arm and sliding her funny watch back into her pocket. The vial of my blood was sitting on a little tray between us, clearly labeled with my name and date of birth. It was much darker than it ever looked when I bloodied my nose or scraped my knee, and there was something creepy about it. Fascinating, too.

Then, just as I was about to ask what came next, Germaine plucked the vial up and whisked it out of my sight. Maybe she didn’t want it to become homesick, so far away from the rest of me.

“We’ll let you know the results in about a week,” she told me, offering me another one of those tight smiles of hers. “Keep the bandage on for at least an hour, don’t wash tonight, and check to make sure there’s no infection. But there shouldn’t be.”

“Good to know,” I said, remembering one of Da’s stableboys who’d died because of a needle that wasn’t clean. That sort of thing made me shudder, though I wasn’t about to let it happen to me.

“Thank you
so
much for your time,” Germaine said, lingering at her secret doorway. She wasn’t going to step inside, not while I was still hanging around. It piqued my interest, sure, but the whole thing left a bad, metallic taste in my mouth, like sucking on a ha’penny. I wasn’t too keen on sticking around.

I rolled down my sleeve over the bandage, stretching my arm out and making sure all the blood didn’t rush to my head when I stood up.

It didn’t.

Only an idiot would faint after something like this
, I thought.
An idiot who didn’t know not to look at the needle while it was going into ’em
.

“You, too,” I said, even though we both knew we were just doing our jobs.

Luvander had always said, to anyone who’d listen to him and even to those who weren’t listening at all, that when he made it out of this war he was going to open up a hat shop on the Rue d’St. Difference, and no amount of the boys’ jeering was ever going to stop him.