The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher Page B

going limp in his hand.
    “Oh,” she breathed. “That’s so sad.”
    “Who are you speaking to, child?”
    “He doesn’t know I’m talking to you,” the girl said. The fingertips of her free hand rose to the crystals in the little bottle around her neck. “How can he hear me without realizing something so simple?”
    “Ah,” Grimm said, and released the girl’s wrist very slowly and carefully, as he might a fragile bird’s body. “You’re an etherealist. Forgive me, child. I didn’t realize.”
    “He thinks I’m the master,” the girl said, ducking her head and blushing. “How can he be so clever and so stupid all at once? That must hurt awfully. But perhaps it would be more polite if we didn’t say anything. He seems to mean well, the poor thing. And he’s conscious, mobile, and lucid. We should tell the master that it looks like he’ll survive.”
    With that, the girl scurried out of the room, nodding to herself, her soft litany hanging for a moment in her wake.
    Grimm shook his head. Whoever the girl was, she’d been serving her apprenticeship for a goodly while, despite her apparent youth. All etherealists were odd and became more so as they aged. Some were a good bit odder than others. The child was at least as strange as any other etherealist he’d met.
    He went to the tray and uncovered it. There was a bowl of soup and several flatbakes, along with a spoon that would have been modest had it not been made from dark, glossy wood. He tasted the soup, bracing himself for the bitter taste of most medicines, and found it surprisingly bland but pleasant.
    He fetched out a stool, sat down at the desk, and devoured the soup, along with the flatbakes and two more glasses of water. By the time he finished, he felt almost like a human being. He took note of a plain robe that had apparently been left for him, and managed to tug it on one-handed and belt it at the waist.
    No sooner had he finished than there was a heavy thump upon the door to his chamber.
    “Ow,” said a man’s voice. “Damnation to you.” The latch rattled several times and the man sighed in a tone of impatience. “Folly.”
    “He doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” said the girl in an apologetic tone. “He’s just too brilliant for you.” The door opened, and the girl stepped back hurriedly without meeting Grimm’s eyes.
    A man entered the room holding a rumpled handkerchief against his apparently bleeding nose. He was a scrawny specimen except for a small potbelly, and it made his limbs look out of proportion, almost spidery. His hair was a dirty grey mop, his face covered by sparse white stubble. He was dressed in a suit about two decades out of date, in sober shades of brown and grey, and large, soft slippers made of some kind of creature with green-and-black-striped fur. Too old to be middle-aged, too young to be elderly, the man had eyes that were a vibrant shade of blue Grimm had seen only in the autumn skies high above the mists. The man walked with the aid of a wooden cane tipped with what might have been a weapons crystal from a ship’s light cannon. It was the size of a man’s clenched fist.
    “Ah!” he said. “Aha! Captain Grimm, welcome, welcome, so good to be able to speak to you when you aren’t delirious.” He glanced aside at the girl and mumbled out of the corner of his mouth, “He’s not delirious, is he?”
    The girl shook her head with wide eyes that didn’t leave the ground. “No, master.”
    Grimm was quite unsure how to respond with courtesy to such a greeting, but he settled for bowing slightly at the waist. “We haven’t met, sir. I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.”
    “Yes, we did, tomorrow,” the old man said. “And no, you aren’t, and the last is a matter for debate, perhaps. What do you think, Folly?”
    Folly bit her lip and touched her vial of crystals. “He doesn’t realize that Captain Grimm is quite uncomfortable because he doesn’t know anyone’s