“It’s okay,” she said, smiling at him. “Let’s get in line before West catches us and lobs us back in that unappetizing fifteen-foot square.”
West didn’t send them into the square, but another two cadets who charged and grappled and grunted their way through a bout to the enthusiastic yells of their comrades. It ended the way arena fights were supposed to end: with one student bloody-nosed and the other smugly strutting until West ripped their egos to the dirt dissecting their performance. Chastened but still high on adrenaline, the two students rejoined the others, and West sent them out to do one-on-one sparring.
Alysha found herself enjoying the exercise. Her partner for the first two rounds danced her around their circle with enviable grace, and she learned a great deal from the looseness of his body and movements. At the switch-chime, she saluted him with a grin and jogged off to get a drink of water.
“Any hotter and I’ll fry!” Baner said from behind her.
“I don’t find it that bad,” Alysha said, lifting her head from the water fountain’s spray. “Besides, it looks like rain.”
“Not the weather, woman! The girl I was sparring with! What a body!”
Alysha rolled her eyes and pulled back from the fountain. “Baner, really—”
A few seniors were jogging past on their way to the track, shadows muted by the clouds obscuring the sun. One of them stopped to re-tie a shoe, and something about his posture struck off memories in her mind.
“Alysha?”
She ignored the Harat-Shar and trotted toward the other student. The closer she came, the more the resemblance solidified. A tendril of anger uncurled in her and she broke into a jog. “Excuse me!”
The cadet glanced back at her; she was still too far to see him well as he turned and ran.
“Hey, wait!” Alysha called. She dashed after him as the sky rumbled.
“Alysha! What are you doing?”
“Stop!” Alysha called. The senior looked over his shoulder at her again, and this time she saw them: purple eyes, set in a face straight out of memory. The cadet slinking through the corridors . . . and he recognized her.
“Thief!” The word rang from her before she could stop it.
“Alysha!” Baner was close enough to reach for her now, but she was closer still to the senior. She grabbed his arm and they all tumbled into a heap on the ground.
“Thief!” Alysha said again. “Give Laelkii back her picture!”
“What are you talking about?” the man said, gasping. “Get the hell off me, sophie!”
“You! You’re the marauder!” Alysha said. “Don’t add lying to the bill with stealing!”
A drop of rain splashed to the ground beside them as the senior pushed away from them, scrambling to his feet. “I don’t have to answer to any sophie. Go snivel to your friends.”
Baner glanced from her to the senior. “Alysha . . . ”
“He’s the marauder,” Alysha said, never lifting her eyes from the man. “Don’t you have anything better to do than to steal in your free time?” she asked, tail lashing. “Or did all the ethics classes roll completely through your empty ears?”
A few of the seniors and sophomores had drifted toward them as the clouds sprinkled, dotting the ground with darker splotches.
“I don’t have to take talk like that from underclassmen,” the senior said, stepping toward her.
“Fine officer you’ll make,” Alysha hissed. “Stealing, lying, and now threatening your juniors? People will fall on their swords rather than serve someone like you! Admit it! You’re the marauder! Give back the things you stole!”
“So I took the damn things!” the man yelled back at her. “The world’s not fair, sophie! Who you gonna cry to when the universe slaps you one in the big bad out-there? Huh?”
Alysha bared her teeth, gathering her anger. Her fur stood on end, muscles tense as the rain hardened. “There’s the universe . . . and then there are your brothers. At least I don’t stab my brothers in the back and call it a learning experience.”
“Bitch!” He leapt for her.
“Alysha, don’t!”
She met him, claws out. They hit the ground, spattering mud. He grabbed for her neck and she wrapped her hand around his wrist, digging her claws into his flesh. He screamed and jerked away. There was never a contest between muscles and breathnache. Her claws peeled back his skin and snapped the connective tissue between wrist and elbow.
The man stumbled away and made the mistake of grabbing the injury. When his fingers skidded across slick bone, he screamed again and fainted.
“What is going on here!” The bellow scattered the watching cadets, leaving Commander West enough room to plow into the middle of the blood and rain. “Jesus Christ on a toaster!”
Alysha didn’t move, still on her hands and knees. She couldn’t bring herself to rise. She’d never tried to hurt anyone with her new claws. The feeling of ligaments and tendons bouncing back from her fingers as she raked them . . . she shuddered. The bones would have come apart like butter had she tried for them. She wanted to vomit.
“Forrest, what the hell just happened here?”
“Sir!” Baner stepped between them. “I saw the whole thing, sir!”
“I didn’t ask you what happened, Ajasiin. Get out of my way!”
“Sir, he attacked her first!”
“What part of ‘get out of my way’ didn’t you understand? Stand down, or I’ll knock you there!”
Baner grimaced and stepped aside.
Alysha looked up at West. Her hair fell over her shoulders to tangle in the mud. “The senior cadet is the marauder responsible for stealing everyone’s things, sir. I called him a thief. We had a philosophical disagreement.”
“And since the man disagreed with your point of view, you took it upon yourself to tear his wrist to the bone?” He stared into her eyes, and something about his expression mystified Alysha. The anger was there, but it was almost as if he wanted her to say something, something specific.
“I . . . yes, sir.”
“Is that all you have to say, Forrest?”
She looked down. The blood on her hands sent a shiver down her spine. “Yes, sir.”
“Dammit, Forrest,” he said, almost too low for her to hear over the rain. Louder, “You and you, get that boy to the Medplex before he loses his fingers. The rest of you, what are you staring at? Get back to work! Except you, Mr. Ajasiin. I want you to run me five laps. Maybe that’ll tire that flippant tongue of yours. As for you . . . ” He looked down at her again as the others dispersed. “You know I’m going to have to report this, Cadet.”
“Yes, sir,” she said softly. The rain pattered around them.
West growled. “Go clean yourself up. The commandant will want to see you shortly.”
“The commandant?” Alysha repeated, choking back a tiny sound. She’d known her punishment would be harsh, but severe enough to be meted out by the commandant? When West did not reply, she ducked her head. “Aye, sir.”
He left her in the rain. She tucked herself into a ball and pressed her forehead to her knees, struggling for composure. She could still smell the blood, feel the flesh parting, and her revulsion gagged her. But she could not, just could not regret the encounter. The senior was wrong. The universe was harsh enough without betraying the trust of the people beneath you. If he hadn’t known that, what were they teaching at the Academe?
A somber freshman was waiting for her when she stepped, freshly showered and dressed, out of the gym locker room. She’d used the time in the rain to gather a stillness to her soul, and it set in her as she followed the cadet beneath the leaden gray sky to the administration buildings across campus. He left her at the steps. Alysha glanced at the thick clouds and drew in a breath. She entered alone.
A few passing administrators glanced at her, their collar tabs gleaming with ranks that seemed as distant as stars. Alysha stopped on the threshold. The inside of the building had been built of cold gray marble, but designed
with lines so austere it defied awe. There were no plants to break the chill. Even the wooden furniture had been stained a gray-brown.
“Cadet Forrest?” An admin-assist, a slender foxine with a gentle face, addressed her from behind a dark desk.
“Yes, Lady,” Alysha said, noting her civilian tunic.
The aide indicated the stairs leading to the overhanging balcony and the single door just visible there. “Captain Brighthaven is waiting for you.”
Alysha glanced at the stairs, ears nicking outward. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice, and started up them. She paused on the threshold at the closed door: made of wood, not of metal, with a real handle of brass. She rested her hand on it, took a breath, and entered.
The human man sitting at the desk was younger than she’d expected: lean, tall with a strong jaw and a tanned face beneath oak-brown hair streaked here and there with gray. He sat with both elbows on the desk, fingers laced together at his chin.
She met his eyes: steel-green, sharper than pain. She flinched, stood to attention and stared out the window behind his head. She hadn’t known what to expect of the commandant of the Academe at Selnor. She’d been prepared for presence, for command. Not for those eyes.
“Be seated, Cadet.”
Alysha complied, unwilling to look at him again. If she did he would peel away all her secrets and leave her naked. He would figure everything out. She was certain of it.
“You almost took Zennir’s hand, you know, Cadet.”
Alysha shivered. She’d thought the wound grave, but hadn’t allowed herself to wonder how grave.
“The healers wondered if you were packing claw-knives.”
“Sir!” Alysha exclaimed. “I would not!” Even if personal weapons had been allowed on campus, she would never have chosen that particular one—claw-knives were widely regarded as street weapons, and outlawed in some cities . . . Terracentrus included.
“It had to be something, Cadet,” Brighthaven said, studying her with unreadable eyes. “Those were amazingly clean wounds.”
“Claws, sir,” she said softly.
“Claws?” One brow lifted. “Quite an accomplishment for natural claws.”
Alysha paused. One secret led to another. Relinquishing her hold on the first whispered to her of disaster. Yet, she could not withhold it from the intensity of the man’s gaze. “I don’t have natural claws, sir.”
The other brow lifted.
She rested her hands on his desk and pushed them out: glittering black, top edge lined with matte resin to mitigate some of the insult to the claw-beds.
“Breathnache?” His baritone clipped the end of the word.
“They were a gift,” she whispered. “Sir.” And they were: from Nathan, who’d known she couldn’t pay for them, and from Laelkii, who’d known she needed them.
“Is there any reason you had your claws replaced with a clathrate hard enough to scrape bulkheads?” Brighthaven asked. “Not exactly the most sensible choice for a would-be Fleet officer.”
She couldn’t tell him, so she remained silent.
Brighthaven sighed. “Things will go much easier on you if you talk to me, Cadet.”
Alysha hesitated. She wanted to trust him, but she couldn’t say anything more. Too much had happened in the last day: Laelkii’s grief, Angel’s release, the senior’s callousness, the attack, West’s strange behavior.
The man stood and stared out the window. “It would be a serious waste of resources to expel you, Forrest . . . even though you have a cavalier attitude about staying on campus during the night, you fall asleep in class more often than not, and you’re displaying a dangerously violent streak. A serious waste, but I wouldn’t be out of line for doing it.” He turned back to look at her. “You understand that, don’t you, Cadet?”
Alysha’s hands clamped the edges of her chair. She had expected punishment . . . but expulsion from the Academe was so far beyond the realm of her expectations that she couldn’t breathe. The Academe was her life, her path to the stars, her dream. Without it, nothing would excuse the nights at Phantasies . . . nothing would polish the stain from her soul. She could stand anything as long as she had a chance at Fleet. Without it, she was just another Selina Forrest, crushed by the weight of her means.
“Yes, sir,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“Do I have to expel you, Cadet?”
“Please, sir . . . no,” Alysha said.
He leaned forward over the desk, hands braced against it. The heat of his stare unnerved her even as it trapped her. “Give me a good reason not to, Forrest.”
Alysha couldn’t breathe, almost couldn’t speak. The answer inched out of her dry throat, into the silence separating them. “Because I want to be here, sir.”
He held her there for a few heart-beats longer, then straightened slowly. “You’ll stand on the pedestal for two days during break and lunch, and two hours in the evening.”
That would eliminate most of her sleep-time, but she would do it. Two days wasn’t very long. She had to do it.
“And you’ll pay for the medical services rendered to Cadet Zennir.”
“Sir?”
“One thousand fin, Forrest.”
She was out of her chair before he’d finished her name. “I can’t!”
Brighthaven’s brows lifted. “I didn’t hear you, Cadet.”
“The money, sir,” Alysha said, unable to stop herself even as his gaze hardened, cooled. “I can’t . . . I don’t know how. . . . ”
“I suppose you’ll have to find a way, then, won’t you?” Brighthaven said, watching her.
“Please!”
“Forrest,” he said, each word very clear, “Fleet officers do not beg.”
The words slapped her, spun a distance between them colder than space. Alysha straightened, lifted her chin, directed her gaze out the window.
Brighthaven nodded. “Report to the auditorium in the morning.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and left the office.
Alysha had only half an hour after her audience with the commandant to compose herself before leaving campus for Phantasies . . . hardly enough time to brace herself for the inevitable. A leaden-gray afternoon had evolved into a damp, dark night, and she didn’t even notice the soft drizzle when it started halfway to the club.
Once she reached Phantasies, she padded silently to the manager’s office and stared inside at Tiell. The manager was so engrossed in his figures that he didn’t hear the drip of the rain off her body. His thin back reminded her of Brighthaven’s by its contrast. Alysha drew in a breath. “Tiell.”
The gaunt Asanii turned. His ears flattened when he saw her. “What do you want, Steel?”
She had been preparing for these words, but half an hour wasn’t long enough. Half a year wasn’t. “Book me solid tonight.”
A sneer of avarice began to ride Tiell’s mouth. “All night? Rhack, girl, whatever you want. What color?”
He wanted her to say blue. She wanted to disappoint him, but she couldn’t. She licked her lips and said, “Black.”
Tiell stared at her. “Black? You want me to sell your black key tonight? When?”
“The entire night.”
“The . . . what?”
“Tiell,” Alysha said, baring her teeth, “I am going to say this one more time. One more time only. Book my black key all night tonight. And before you start drooling,” she curled a hand into a fist and took one step into the room, “I want all the proceeds. Every last coin.”
The manager flinched, and his eyes thinned. She could smell the hatred on him, but knew he would do it. As much as he feared her, he wouldn’t keep the money from her . . . but he would enjoy selling her to the worst he could find. Her battered body, not “permanently damaged”, would be his reward. Alysha ducked out of the room, sickened, and went to the main room to dress.
She stood in the center of the room. Honey and the Harem Rose were in the back rooms. Cinnamon was on stage. But there were no white stars
left in Phantasies to die; no innocents left to destroy. Angel and Rispa were safe. This much she had done.
Alysha sank to her knees in the middle of the room, a sob choking her throat. It had been so long since she’d felt one that she hardly recognized it when it welled from her lips. She pressed a hand to her mouth, brows tightly drawn toward her nose as she shook in silence.
She would not beg. She would not ask for help. She would not rail at the universe for its unfairness.
And yet, alone in the middle of a room finally deserted by the last of the girls she could save, Alysha wished powerfully, beyond reason, that someone would come for her.
Alysha balanced on the top of the wall, stopping to bite down the small cry halfway up her throat. The pallor of the sky had well advanced; reveille had already come and gone while she struggled through the alleys, but she couldn’t go much faster. It hurt to walk, to move, to breathe, and she couldn’t remember half the hours that had dealt her the blows. Tiell had claimed his revenge for the humiliation of fearing her; his gloating sneer when he’d handed her the money hung in her mind as she pushed herself over the wall, stumbling.
She lay in the puddle on the other side with the sun on her torn back, breathing heavily. When she opened her eyes, the light glinted off one of the glass gems on her armband. Alysha frowned. She’d forgotten to dress in her sweatsuit, yet she barely had the energy to stand again, much less trek all the way back to the club to pick up her clothing.
Did it matter anymore? Brighthaven had said they knew she left campus at night. She was already late. What did it matter anymore?
Alysha pulled herself to her feet and staggered the rest of the way to the front gates. She straightened, slowly and deliberately, and walked the final few feet to the gates with her head high, the light wind touching her hair. The guards at the gate gave her no contest. One of them stepped toward her, hand lifted. She turned her face from him. She would not ask. He did not give. They let her pass, a wraith dressed in a whore’s clothes.
The sun had dispelled the last of the evening’s clouds, leaving only a few bright puddles to mark the rain. Alysha limped silently to the center of campus and the auditorium where she’d first heard the commandant speak during orientation. She stopped at the entrance to catch her breath against the fire in her chest; whatever her condition, she could not look on the holographic splendor of the stars pricked out on the walls of the antechamber without awe. Without longing. This was what she wanted. Why couldn’t she touch it? Would she ever?
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