Steelhands (2011) Read Online Free PDF Page A

simply had such complexions.
    “We are,” Laure said, shooting a look toward me that suggested she knew exactly what I was thinking. If only she had not always been quite so discerning! “Thank you. Your timing is … particularly apt.”
    “Oh, that,” said the young man, ducking his head. “Well, I didn’t want to say anything in front of him, but it seemed like you might need some help if that’s not too presumptuous. I’m Gaeth, by the way. Heading to the ’Versity meself.”
    “Laurence,” said Laure, holding out her hand instead of dropping a curtsy the way I’d expressly shown her. “And this is Toverre. We thought we’d do some looking around the city, but I think perhaps we should take that as a sign to move on.”
    “Pleased to meet you,” Gaeth said, shaking her hand. “And your friend. Is … is everything all right with him?”
    I realized I’d been caught staring and promptly changed strategies, busying myself with my own suitcases to make sure everything was in order, and also since it was evident that Gaeth would want to help Laure with hers. It was a clumsy tactic, at best, but the tips of my fingers and toes were beginning to go numb from the cold and I wasn’t operating at my best. Here I’d thought we might have a
few
days of being equally alone and unappreciated in the city. That showed how little I knew.
    “Here, I can take that,” Gaeth said, appearing before me to tug the leather case from my hands.
    “That’s not necessary,” I said quickly, voice snapping. It wasn’t at
all
the handsome rejoinder I’d had planned. Perhaps I was smarting slightly from the implication that I was Laure’s “simple” companion—though I supposed that was what I got for not responding in the first place. “Surely you have your own bags to tend to.”
    “Got them sent ahead to my room,” Gaeth said, hefting my bag over one shoulder as though it were filled with nothing more substantial than straw. “ ’Course, I haven’t been to my room yet, so I’ve got to hope they’re there at all.”
    “That was smart of you,” Laure piped up, handing over one of her own bags gladly before she picked up the other. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
    “My mam arranged it all,” Gaeth said, starting off down the street with Laure and leaving me to struggle after them. At least he’d taken the heavier of my bags. In the city, one could be grateful for saviors and small miracles.
    Thick clouds had begun to form in the sky above us. Despite Old Drake’s more nefarious intentions, perhaps he hadn’t been lying about the weather. I was looking forward to spending the winter months in something warmer and finer than an old barn converted to extra housing. No matter how Father insisted it had been properly insulated—and that a real man should have no trouble with it even if it were not—there were terrible drafts from all corners, and the bathroom always smelled stubbornly of horse no matter how many hours I spent cleaning it.
    Here in Thremedon, I would have my own space, and I could give it a smell of my choosing. Exotic incense from a merchant bartering in Ke-Han goods would be
quite
daring, I thought. It might even make me the talk of the dormitories, though I hadn’t yet decided what sort of reputation I wished to cultivate among my peers. Something remarkable, of course, and one that had nothing to do with dragging my suitcases along the cobblestones after my fiancée and someone who looked like an artist’s dream. Were he chiseled from marble, surely, the craftsman would throw down his tools and cease to work ever again. He represented the absolute pinnacle of someone’s ideal, and I was not about to allow Laurence to scare him away as she did all the others, with her peculiar cleverness or with her fists, depending on the sort of mood she was in that day.
    “It
is
a boy’s name,” she was saying, as I drew nearer. “If you think that’s bad, you should’ve seen me before my