Danielle Bennett - Steelhands

BY JAIDA JONES AND DANIELLE BENNETT

STEELHANDS

DRAGON SOUL

SHADOW MAGIC

HAVEMERCY

Steelhands is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spectra,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

S PECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed s are
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Jones, Jaida.
Steelhands / Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52637-3
I. Bennett, Danielle. II. Title.
PS3610.O6256S74 2011
813.6dc22 2010054151

www.ballantinebooks.com

Map by Neil Gower

Jacket illustration: Paul Youll

v3.1

To Aunt Roberta and Uncle Michael,
for showing me the world outside Victoria

Dani

For the one and only curator of the Secret Museum of the Air

Jaida

As always, we have to thank our fabulous and tireless editor at Spectra, Anne Groell, who has always given us more care than any one person (with a new baby!) should have time to give, and our agent, Tamar Rydzinskisame deal! Were also incredibly grateful to our assistant editor, David Pomerico, and copy editor, Sara Schwager, without whom this book would be little more than a very heavy manuscript with so many errors. Once again, we have to thank ruthless Momwho remains ruthless, and possibly even gets more ruthless with age; Uncle David, for ferrying us around in that glorious clown car; Grandma Fay and Grandpa Terry, who offer songs and jokes and stories; Nick, who makes the best pad thai ever; Bob, for occasionally using his indoor voice; Toni, for making sure we look fashionable whenever we have to leave the house; Taid, for not complaining too much about the typo; Marjorie, for the delicious fruit bread; Matthew, for always being on our side; Jonah, for the sound track to our lives; Andrew, for pretending were cool enough to hang out with him; and, of course, everyone at Thremedon, whose enthusiasm and creativity far surpass our own and remind us of why we love to write in the first place. Heres looking at you, kids.

The way I saw itand probably would til the day I diedwas that both times the rug was pulled out from underneath my boots, it was somehow because of that whelp. Not even the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble. It was the brother of the whoreson who usually gave me all my trouble.

Id never asked to be anybodys pen pal, since Id never been much for writing letters in the first place and all the people Id ever cared to know lived in the same city as I did. The end of the war had fractured some things though, sent little pieces skittering all over, and one of those pieces just happened to have a brother with a real sick sense of humor, at least by my understanding.

Dear Adamo, the letter beganno Chief Sergeant or nothing, which was technically correct, but seemed oddly personal to me.

It is my sincerest wish that this letter finds you well, that its contents are not despoiled before youve had a chance to read them, and most of all that this information doesnt bring you trouble.

I will jump straight to the sticking point and hope that you can forgive me: While in the desert, Rook and I very nearly saw the resurrection of a dragon. Havemercy, specifically. A pair of magicians from Xian had pieced her together from old, found parts and somehow managed to get a hold on her soul as well. Please dont mistake me for a philosopher; the soul is a device both magical and mechanical, with the essence of a powerful magician inside to give the creation life. These men had planned on using a woman to house the dragons soula decidedly unmechanical vessel, but one that perhaps seemed easier to control. I tell you all this because Rook and I were not alone when we made this discovery. There was an agent of the Esar present, and what she learned she has no doubt already passed on to her master.

I know that the Esar is a secretive man, one who guards his possessions jealously. In light of that, I considered the possibility that he might never share this story with you and thus felt duty-bound to impart it myself. The dragons belonged to more than just one man, however powerful that man might be.

I have no counsel for what you might do with this information, my own strengths lying largely in the theoretical and analytical fields. I merely felt that it was the right thing to pass it along and hope that you do not find yourself too at odds with my assumption.

That was itthe vital parts anyway. Id squeezed out a lot of the hand-wringing that came afterward and there were three more long paragraphs all about how Rook had taken to the desert like a camel and nearly became prince of the nomads, but that wasnt the shit that was going to get me arrested.

Hed wrapped up the whole thing with Best wishes. After crafting a letter that read like Thom was putting every ounce of that enormous brain into getting me arrested, he ended it with best wishes.

Id met some cracked little teacups in my time, but he had to be the absolute worst.

So the thrust of the matter, I concluded, myself, is he says you need a living, breathing human being to bind their soul to, and he thinks the ethical implications of something like that would be devastating. Not just for Volstov, but for everywhere else. I reached for the letter to get the proper phrase, the one hed used thatd made me laugh out my breakfast, although it wasnt for pure humor. Oh, yeah. Just devastating. He feels compelled, because of our time together, ysee, and because of his brother being one of us, to make sure Im aware of a situation that, as far as Im concerned, could probably take my head off my body a damned sight easier than flying.

And that, as anybody knew, was dangerous enough. Commanding the members of the Dragon Corps from Proudmouths back wasnt exactly the job a sane soldier volunteered for, was it? Even if the truth was Id never really volunteered for it in the first placeI was just a whole lot better than most people at holding back all the shit I wanted to say when somebody more important was doling out the steaming heaps.

Bitter, my good friend Royston mightve called it, but it wasnt really that. It was just practical thinking. My theory was, the less you got involved, the less chance there was of someone important taking exception to your head and the way it sat on your shoulders.

Which was why I didnt appreciate getting this crazy letter from a man I already knew thought more of the ethical implications of something than he did of the personal ones. In other words, me holding this letter, getting it over breakfast and breaking the seal and reading it with my buttered rolls, wouldve had more implications in thEsars eyes than just ethical ones.