It took a few minutes of winding through the hills around the Academy before they entered Central proper, while Alex tried to remember the last time he had been in a motor vehicle of any kind. Only a matter of weeks, but it felt l
The Academy was set two-thirds of the way up the peak of a massive hill, and Central sat in a partial ring around it, about halfway down the slope. Below the city, at the base of the hill, there was only a great grey space, the vastness of the Ether stretching out like an endless lake in all directions, Central rising out of it like an island. After a few minutes of descending down the windy road, they crossed an invisible line and the sun disappeared behind the pea soup-thick fog that covered the town. Emily told him that the skies here never cleared, unlike the Academy, which was set high enough on the hill that the fog broke. Central itself started as a series of low grey buildings, no more than two stories tall, each set slightly apart and surrounded by small, neat yards and clusters of elm and oak trees.
“We think they were probably houses to begin with, though the proportions are a little strange,” Emily commented, leaning over his shoulder. “Some people still like to live in them for the privacy, but they get wretchedly cold in the winter.”
The road curved to follow along the bank of a moderately large, fast-moving creek, both sides of the road surrounded by the individual stone homes. Electric lines and various utility cables had been added to the structures, he realized, rather haphazardly in some cases, and he wondered again at the difficulty and logistics of transporting materials here. For that matter, he wondered, where did the electricity come from? He hadn’t seen anything that looked like a power plant.
After a while, the structures gradually got larger, and then started to fuse together. At first they grew closer to each other, but they rapidly started to include points of interconnection, and by the time they descended into the city proper, the buildings began to meld into gigantic structures. They grew taller as well, some five or six stories tall, though Alex was starting to notice the proportions issue that Emily had mentioned – the stories appear to be a bit too tall, as did the windows and the stairs.
“People live here in apartments they carved out for themselves,” Emily explained. “They knock out walls and put in dividers and create some sort of congruent living space, then build in kitchens and bathrooms. Even though the walls are old, it takes some effort to bore through them so you can install chimneys, plumbing, and the like. But the advantage of the big buildings is that they have central heating and a sewer system to plug into. If you live in the outlying areas, you’re on your own, so to speak.”
The buildings they passed continued to grow larger and denser, with more ornate detail work and filigree appearing on the buildings as they drew closer to the city center. The road was no longer singular; a number of different roadways, all paved in the same ubiquitous grey stone, intersected and then separated again in what Alex could only describe as a downtown. Their own route was circuitous, passing by buildings which were now almost level with each other at around ten stories, forming solid urban walls that the road wound around and through, sometimes in the form of brief mossy tunnels, at other times using crude breaches in the structures that clearly had been created with explosives.
Alex found the whole scene oppressive – the monotony of the stone, the lack of sun in between the walls of buildings, damp and cold under the weak light that filtered through the fog. If he hadn’t had Emily with him to point out the sights, Alex wasn’t sure he would have known that there were any, every structure appeared so monolithically uniform. They passed the main business offices for Central, set on a rare open plaza, each great building surrounded by an interconnected warren of smaller sub-buildings. It was bleak, under the perpetual fog, and Alex found himself unsure of this strange city and of his own place in it, amongst the great grey stone buildings that seemed so foreign to anything human. It appeared to have been built to hold hundreds of thousands, maybe more, but he barely saw anyone at all.
But then, as they passed through the center of town and on to the western tip of the crescent that Central described, he discovered that people did in fact live there. It started with a few lone pedestrians, and gradually expanded until there were crowds of people, and even rudimentary traffic made up of bicycles and motorcycles. The area had been selected for inhabitation by the first cartels to arrive in Central, and as Emily explained, it remained the choicest and most exclusive area. Only those connected to the larger and more powerful cartels could afford to keep offices and accommodations in this neighborhood, locally referred to as the Ring, for the circular edifice that towered over the rest of the neighborhood, almost a third higher than any other structure in the area.
The bus ground to a halt just outside the Ring, and Emily led him out on to the street besides the giant round building. Up close, it was almost impossible to tell how large it was, as it simply appeared to be a gradually curving exterior wall, encompassing whole blocks in its bulk. It’s most striking feature was not its size, however, but rather that it had been painted – a white lacquer had been applied to the surface of the stone in a thick, moderately uniform coat, and in contrast to the grey buildings that they had passed, it practically gleamed. The buildings that surrounded the Ring on the three sides that Alex could see were similarly coated in varying shades of cream and brown, as well as a scattering of more brilliant blues and greens. The scene was practically cheerful in contrast to the depressing monotone vastness of the rest of Central, and Alex had little trouble understanding why anyone who could afford to lived here.
“This way,” Emily said, taking his hand gently in her own and leading him along, around part of the Ring and then a few blocks further west, down a side street where the buildings had been subdivided into smaller living quarters, each painted a different Easter egg pastel.
“I know,” Emily said, seeing his look, “it isn’t exactly the most tasteful street. But, we are – I mean to say, that the Raleigh cartel – well, it’s just that,” Emily gestured haphazardly, and blushed furiously, paused on the lower steps of a baby-blue staircase, “we aren’t exactly wealthy. Not anymore.”
“Seems like you’re doing okay.”
“Well, I suppose it’s all relative. Never mind. Why don’t you come up?”
Alex followed her up the stairs, which seemed unreasonably steep and high to Alex. The ironwork that bordered the stairs was a later addition and clearly handmade. The apartment door was made from a red wood that Alex did not recognize, with tarnished brass fixtures and knobs that looked ancient to him. Emily fished in her purse briefly, then used a bulky set of keys to open the door, ushering Alex through and then closing it behind him. This left them almost face-to-face in the cramped quarters of the entry, under a flickering light, surrounded by a jumble of coats and umbrellas. For an instant, looking at her freckled cheeks and small, coy smile, he was certain that their faces did not actually need to be so close together, that the space was not as small as that. Then she stood up on her tiptoes to tap the light bulb, fixing the lighting and ending the moment. She hung up her sweater and he found a hook for his hoodie, full of regret and confusion.
Following her up the stairs into the apartment, Alex couldn’t help but watch her perfectly shaped calves flex underneath the fringe of her white dress – and then, for some reason, he remembered what Rebecca had told him about how he would be received here. He somehow managed to be simultaneously hopeful and embarrassed.
“So, you live here?” he asked, as they emerged into what was clearly the living room, a fairly large space with white stucco walls and an unusually high ceiling. The room was crowded with a table and a number of wooden chairs, a couple of couches, a large entertainment center, and a number of bookshelves. It looked homey and oddly approachable to Alex, like he hadn’t really expected for Cartel families to have books lying all over the kitchen table, or half-dead houseplants, or a sink filled with unwashed dishes. “I mean, I know you live at the Academy rig
ht now, but this is where you grew up, right?”
“Mostly,” Emily said, as if she was admitting to something, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the disarray. “Right now, only my sister lives here full-time. Which explains the mess, I suppose.”
Emily sighed and marched toward the kitchen.
“Go ahead and grab a seat, Alex. I just want to straighten up a bit. It won’t take a minute.”
Alex glanced around skeptically, thinking that it might take quite a bit longer than a minute, then looked around for some place to sit, eventually settling on an uncomfortably high chair, set on the other side of the long kitchen counter, opposite the sink. On the other side, Emily made a face at the accumulated dishes, then turned on the hot water and reached for the dish soap. It took Alex a moment to realize that she was furious.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a few minutes later, after she’d managed to clear enough room to get to work. “My sister can be quite… inconsiderate. She’s lived here a long time now while the rest of us haven’t been around quite as much as she’s made herself very much,” Emily grimaced, “at home. As you can see.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex reassured. “I lived in a damn trailer, my standards aren’t that high. Um, so, I was wondering… not to be rude or anything, but why did you invite me here?”
Emily glanced up at him momentarily. Alex wasn’t certain, but he thought she might have been annoyed with him.
“Well, you hadn’t seen anything of Central outside of the Academy for one, and clearly no one was going to make time to take you,” Emily said over the clatter of washing dishes. Alex had to admit that what she said was true – they had been so busy trying to get him into fighting shape that they had pretty much neglected to cover any of the fundamentals. He’d had to hit Vivik up for help finding the laundry room, earlier in the day, and he still hadn’t figured out who to talk to about getting his hair cut. “And, I thought I might make you dinner, since you’ve eaten at the cafeteria pretty much every meal since you got here. I cook, you know.”
“I didn’t know that. Well, I mean, I did, because of the lunches, you know, but…”
Emily laughed.
“Well, I do. Actually, I was raised with the full suite of domestic skills – something my parents seem to have neglected when it came to my sister,” Emily said, her arms elbow deep in soapy water. “Different children have different functions, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
Alex folded his arms on the counter and then leaned his chin on them, staring over at the girl washing dishes, totally puzzled.
“Why would they treat you differently from her?”
“They would have told you about me, I’m certain,” Emily said plainly, her smile rueful, her eyes vague and faraway. “The Academy staff, I mean. Someone would have, before we ever met.”
“Yeah.” Alex nodded, feeling slightly guilty. “They warned me about everyone.”
“Of course. Still, because of my… circumstances,” Emily said, blushing, “they would have warned you about me, specifically. Because it was so obvious I that I would have to approach you. Because I’m an empath, but an exceptionally weak one, and because my family is part of the Hegemony. It’s a bit embarrassing, honestly, to have it be public knowledge.”
Alex didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Emily didn’t seem to require a response from him. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even seem like she was talking to him specifically. She continued to dry the plates with a hand towel, and then set them carefully in the drying rack.
“My father is a powerful man, and my family has been among the elite in the Raleigh Cartel since it was founded, though the cartel itself has seen better days. My mother is a diplomat and a powerful empath. My older sister graduated from the Academy with honors, and now handles the cartel’s representation in Central. Which is why she’s always here, not cleaning.”
Emily spoke without a trace of bitterness, her smile fixed and brittle.
“The old families – and the Muir family is very old – still use marriages to establish alliances. It’s very feudal, like medieval Europe,” she joked mirthlessly. “To a man like my father, there’s only one possible use for a daughter who is such a weak empath – my talents aren’t good for much, Alex, but I’d make some important man a very satisfying wife, wouldn’t I? Don’t you think I’m pretty, Alex?”
Alex nodded slowly, his mind reeling. He’d assumed, when he met her, that Emily would be one of the popular girls at the Academy. She was obviously upper crust, and yes, pretty – but this…
“That’s good, because that’s what I was raised to be. I talked my mother into letting me come to the Academy,” Emily continued sadly. “I told her I wanted the chance to develop my abilities, to learn useful skills that could aid me in my marriage later on. I think that she felt sorry for me more than anything, but she talked my father into it anyway.”
Emily smiled at Alex, but the smile was painful.
“Do you know why I wanted to come to the Academy, Alex?” she asked, continuing on before Alex could have even attempted an answer, had he any. “I wanted some time, before I had to become a bargaining chip for my father, before I got bartered off to someone. A few years before that happened, to be myself.”
She was so accustomed to counterfeiting it that her smile hardly even looked false.
“I actually got to the point where I thought I’d accepted it,” she said lightly. “It didn’t bother me that much anymore. And then, a few days before the start of second session, I get a message from my father, and I have to go rushing back home to learn all about you.”
Alex could only stare at her in shock.
“Do you know how weird it is, Alex, when you’ve only seen your father at family events, to have him suddenly pulling you into his office for little chats with the cartel advisors? When they act like you’ve always been there with them, as if you’ve always been important?” Emily paused, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was more composed. “But, I’m not saying it was all bad.”
She put the dish down in the rack with more force than she intended, and the clattering made Alex jump.
“All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, my father is taking an interest in me.” Emily laughed as if it were funny, sponging off the water on the countertop. “Now I have my mother doing my hair, and confiding with me about whether to seduce you, or to try and make you feel sorry for me, or both.”
Alex felt numb. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It doesn’t really matter how I feel about you, or how I’d feel about doing something like that, or how you’d feel about it. Not to my parents. That’s the world I was raised in.” Emily shook her head sadly. “None of that really bothers me. But, because you showed up Alex, now everything is different for me. I thought I had at least a few years, here at the Academy.”
The bottom fell out of Alex’s stomach. He hadn’t realized until now, but it was obvious – Emily had come to the Academy to put off her inevitable arranged marriage. But, she hadn’t even gotten a full year of school before he’d arrived, and…
“I’m really sorry, Emily,” Alex said quietly, ashamed.
“That’s sweet,” Emily said brightly. “But, what do you have to be sorry about? It’s not like you had any choice in the matter. You’re like me, Alex, do you realize that? We’re both pieces in a game that someone else is playing. Maybe I’m only a pawn, and maybe you’re something more useful. But we won’t ever get to make our own moves.”
Alex looked around at the living room around him, not sure what to say. Emily looked up at him expectantly a few times, but after he failed to meet her eyes or respond, she went back to finishing up the kitchen. After a moment, she leaned across the counter and handed Alex a half-full watering can.
“Can you water the plants for me, Alex?
He nodded and took the can gratefully, heading across the living room to the first bunch of
very dry houseplants. In the cluster, he was fairly certain that the two nearer unidentifiable brown plants had given up the ghost, but he watered them anyway, gratefully to be doing something. The rubber plant and the ferns behind them appeared to be in somewhat better shape, and he gave them a more generous drink to reward their tenacity. He was still leaning over the last plant, tugging off some of the dead leaves, when he heard the front door open, and saw Emily go stiff as a board, her hands full of trash, hovering just over the garbage can.
“Emily?” The voice that drifted up from the entry way was unmistakably similar to Emily’s, but there was an edge to it that Emily’s voice never had. “Did you come home today?”
“I’m in the kitchen,” Emily called out to her, “and we have a guest, Therese.”
“Who’s that?”
The woman who emerged from the entryway stairwell was a bit older than he expected, probably somewhere in her late twenties. She had the same blonde hair as Emily, but she cut it short and had it tied back in a rather severe pony tail. She wore glasses and a well-tailored pant suit, and looked very much as if she might have just come from working in an office somewhere. Alex couldn’t help but find her appearance incongruous with their surroundings.
“This is Alex Warner, from my class. I told you about him. Alex, this is my sister, Therese,” Emily said, standing beside Alex and drying her hands with a kitchen towel. “Who, I might add, has abandoned all pretenses of housekeeping.”
“Nice to meet you,” Alex said, offering his hand and getting a polite handshake and a terse smile in return.
“And you too. You haven’t been at the Academy long, right? How do you like it?” Therese wandered into the kitchen, ignoring Emily’s work, and started digging through the refrigerator.
The Academy Page 21
