Thrice Uncharmed (Wynne d’Arzon)

by Lee, Cara

  And the gummies did look as if they might taste delicious.

  Wynne headed for the snacks bar and didn't let herself feel guilty about it.

  Take Three

  "Romeo was an idiot," Wynne scoffed, two years later. The script had been assigned at the end of the class before recess, and now she sat in the marvelously quiet gray section for recess. After years of putting up with the sound of playing kids while she tried to do schoolwork, she'd figured out how to fix the sound sockets herself. The school admins had seemed grateful, if a bit unnerved, since fourteen was still too young to be apprenticed, and she was a Layuman, not an Imaguman.

  "Seriously?" she continued, when Hector didn't join her rant. "'Oh, I love what's-her-face. Wait, no, let's marry Juliet now before I see someone prettier'? What?"

  Hector Primuman the Fourth adjusted his glasses, and he tapped his own tablet to turn the page. "Juliet wasn't much better," he commented dryly.

  "I know!" Wynne shook her tablet, tempted to throw it in frustration, but she couldn't justify what it would cost in resources to replace it. "I can't believe our Culture Studies instructor picked this play."

  He shrugged. "It's a classic."

  "It's idiotic!"

  He shrugged again.

  Wynne sighed heavily. "Why couldn't I be Rosalind or whatever her name is? Then I wouldn't have to be through this entire morass."

  Hector seemed to catch himself before he shrugged again. "I can't say the prospect of playing Romeo appeals to me, either."

  A small laugh escaped her. "I still can't believe our instructor put us together. I mean, really? As the stupid romantic couple? Why would they do that?"

  "Rather predictable, actually," he said idly, tapping his tablet to turn another page.

  A chill ran over Wynne. It was bad enough when their classmates and cousins were trying to set them up together. But for the instructors to be in on it? "What?"

  He pointedly glanced up, fixing his glasses again, and Wynne tried to be surreptitious about following his motion to spot whatever he was referencing. All she could see was the security camera, which was only activated in case of emergency or when problems happened, so admin and parents could have an objective witness. It was kept off the rest of the time.

  Wasn't it?

  Cold all over, she stared at Hector.

  He seemed to know what she was thinking, for he gave a little smile and nod — again, hiding the motion by adjusting his glasses.

  She'd seen him long enough in school to know he needed those owl-rimmed, old-people glasses, but if she hadn't known that, she might've guessed he wore them on purpose, so he could take advantage of them to hide what, exactly, he was up to. "Are you allowed to tell me that?"

  He snorted, still smiling, but his raised eyebrow said, 'You know the answer to that.'

  No, then. Wynne swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Am I allowed to know that?"

  Hector shrugged easily and picked up his tablet. "You would've noticed eventually."

  He moved further down the row, behind another niche in the soundfield, where he could work without listening to her, leaving her alone in her fear and worry about what might be done to her if anyone realized what she now knew.

  And for the first time, she felt a teensy bit scared of Hector Primuman the Fourth for himself and not for who he'd someday end up.

  ****

  Thanks to their leading parts on the play and their diligence as students, they ended up together in the study annex after classes that day to go over their lines for the first time. Wynne might've worried about the gossip fodder if not for the detail that they were the top two in just about every class but math, wherein Wynne kept flip-flopping into third and was on her way into dropping to fourth or fifth once they hit full calculus. Class seating was determined by class placement, for reasons she still couldn't fathom, though Hector's attitude meant she should've been able to puzzle it out — though after the earlier revelation about the security cameras, she wasn't sure she wanted to — so their classmates wouldn't think anything of the two of them working together on some school project.

  "'O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?'" Wynne read, frowning. "What does that even mean?"

  Hector seemed to hide a smile behind his tablet, then lowered it. "I believe 'wherefore' means 'why,' in that context, and if you notice the following lines, she's fretting over how one of them will need to denounce their family for them to Partner together, because their families are in a feud."

  Wynne gave him a sour glare. "I figured that out. But this language was archaic centuries ago. Most people won't even understand what we're saying." Including most of the classmates in the play, she thought. She scowled at her tablet.

  He was definitely smiling now, if his eyes were any indicator. He kept the precise curve to his lips hidden behind his tablet — as if he didn't want her to know she could make him smile, or maybe he just didn't want people in general to know he smiled. "You know," he commented, "we could… translate… the play."

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Yes, he did seem to mean that the way she was thinking. "Translate," she said.

  He shrugged, mischief glimmering in his eyes.

  Wynne turned her tablet longways, splitting the screen to be half play and half fresh document. "I like how you think."

  Hector let her see that smile. "Thank you."

  ****

  Between their prompt tackling of their homework and their quick wits — the latter of which were, to be honest, skewed in Hector's favor — by their next Culture Studies class, they had a revised play to offer their classmates. Wynne had fun pinging it to everybody's tablets without the instructor noticing, though she wasn't sure how necessary the precautions were, considering she had Hector Primuman the Fourth on her side.

  In the middle of the next Culture Studies class, everybody else was still working through reading the play for the first time. The bewildered ones were doubtless reading the original play, and the gigglers and gawkers were likely substituting the new one.

  "You know," Wynne commented while surreptitiously revising the costume orders via her tablet. "We could probably prank the entire colony and get away with it."

  Hector froze.

  She abruptly remembered how he'd obliquely accused her cousin of treason two years before. "In a harmless way, of course," she quickly clarified. "Something like… painting all the light switches bright yellow-orange."

  He frowned, but something about his poise told her that he was trying to consider her words in the spirit they were meant, but he was getting stuck on the logistics. "That would still be a waste of resources. Or were you thinking of something… other than paint?"

  Wynne followed what he was thinking and giggled. "No, no! Turmeric, not…" She giggled again, imagining other Layumen's reaction to getting orders to stain something with their own urine. Her mother would doubtless just use turmeric, regardless, but Auntie Sea…

  He gave a weak, relieved smile. "Turmeric." He tapped his tablet and adjusted his glasses again, glancing the instructor's way. "That… has potential."

  Now she wasn't tracking the conversation. "Huh?"

  He shook his head.

  "Miss Layuman," said their instructor, a man with a monotone voice, an even more boring appearance, and an offworlder name that she never could remember. "Have you something to share with the class?"

  She gave the sign for "It's nothing that matters" before remembering the instructor had also been mostly raised by his offworld father. The man was very good at his topic — Culture Studies, which exposed them to offworld culture — but missed on some of the vagaries of d'Arzon culture, itself. "No, sir."

  The instructor frowned. "Miss Layuman—"

  "We were practicing some of our lines," Hector lied, tone firm as if he disliked the instructor and put up with him only to be polite. "But if you take objection to that, by all means, harass her."

  The instructor scowled and backed away, and Wynne frowned. He h
adn't been harassing her. He'd been justifiably concerned about the behavior of a student in his class. If he didn't want them to chat amongst themselves — well, it was his classroom. His right to demand silence from his students while his class was in session, even if it made it difficult to study their lines for the play.

  Hector glanced her way and adjusted his glasses again, expression serious.

  He definitely didn't like their Culture Studies instructor.

  And Wynne was definitely going to find out why.

  ****

  As the first step in her plan, she skipped lunch. That was… risky, with her metabolism, but all Layumen carried snack bars with them so they could readily have an emergency meal when necessary, without disrupting others.

  She then used that lunch halfie to approach her Culture Studies instructor directly. He sat at his desk in his office, eating a mush that smelled like vegetables and reading something on his tablet.

  Wynne knocked lightly on his entryway.

  He started, glanced her way, and scowled, though his posture changed into something stiff, uncomfortable. "Yes?"

  She indicated with her tablet. "May I ping you the revised script, sir?"

  His eyes narrowed. "The what?"

  She shrugged, reminding herself that it had been Hector's idea, and the governor's son certainly ranked their instructor. To her surprise, her hands didn't shake as she tapped the order to send him a copy of the new script. "Primuman decided to revise the play for the modern audience, sir."

  Her instructor looked even more dour, which she wouldn't have thought possible. "And you have a complaint about how he cast you."

  Wynne blinked. "Um. No, sir."

  "Then what are you bothering me for?"

  He looks angry, she thought, with his glare and the muscles working in his jaw. But why?

  "Take the play. Do as he likes with it. Nothing I can do about it, unless it enters M-class."

  M-class? At first, Wynne thought he meant planets, but she quickly realized he meant content rating on the galaxal scale, which wasn't used in the Arzon colony. Her cheeks burned. "Oh, no, sir. We kept it…" What were the galaxal ratings? "T?" The Arzon 'T' was the galaxal 'M', so her memory could've been off.

  Her instructor studied her, and his glare seemed to soften a little. He let out a sigh. "Ping me a copy. Might as well know what Primuman's up to."

  "Sir," Wynne said hesitantly. "You and Hector seem to dislike each other."

  He snorted. "That boy's an example of everything that's wrong with this colony."

  That didn't help her understand, though she felt that his comment held a significant clue. "Sir?"

  He shook his head. "Worth my life to tell you, Layuman."

  She parsed those words to mean her instructor could be executed for telling her, which he seemed to give her enough credit to figure out, but the only crimes that warranted the death penalty were ones that could be construed as treason. "Oh."

  That seemed an… unpromising note to leave the meeting on, and the first rule of dishing out negativity was to sandwich it between… less negative things. Wynne took a breath and, poised to type out the answer on her tablet, admitted something embarrassing: "Sir, I'm sorry, but I never seem to be able to remember your name."

  "S-M-I-T-H," he said promptly. "Like the apple."

  She frowned. "What's an apple?"

  Instructor Smith just shook his head.

  ****

  As the second step in her plan to figure out what in Arzon was causing the bad blood between Instructor Smith and Hector Primuman the Fourth, she skipped the first class after lunch and headed for the library, eating her emergency meal bar. The instructor would notice her absence, but she figured she was a good enough student that she'd get a verbal reprimand, at most.

  While she was thinking of it, she looked up smith apples, and she wondered why anyone would like a tart fruit. Fruit was supposed to be sweet.

  The name, though, was incredibly common, both as a matername and a patername, which confused her until she remembered that galaxal naming systems didn't necessarily indicate job positions — and anyway, smithing had been a job, centuries ago. Wynne stuck the name on the desktop of her tablet, so she'd keep seeing it and hopefully remember it.

  "Studying?"

  Wynne jumped and jerked her tablet towards her, hiding the screen. She stared at Hector, who watched her calmly and adjusted his glasses.

  Silence followed, implicitly pressing her to answer the question.

  She resented the manipulation, but she couldn't help breaking it first. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

  "Shouldn't you?" he returned, and she caught a wariness in the way he watched her.

  Remembering the danger that could be found even in mere comments about treason and death, Wynne determinedly set her tablet back down and quickly tapped open her copy of the colony's charter, which she'd annotated with jargon translations and case references, through the years. She would not feel guilty. She had nothing to feel guilty about. "Yes?"

  He smiled briefly, and it softened the angles in his face. "Are you asking me if you should be in class?"

  She re-thought through the conversation, and her cheeks heated. "I'm doing research."

  His gaze stayed on hers. "Planning on switching families to be a Lawuman?"

  The heat fled from her face, cold replacing it. When did he check my tablet screen? He was good. She hadn't spotted his glance, and she'd been watching him except for a few glances of her own at her tablet. "No. If anything, I'll join my paterline."

  Cheer brightened his expression for a moment, then vanished, leaving a steady expression that reminded Wynne frighteningly of the time two years prior, when her cousin Bridge had been cussing him out. She swallowed hard, remembering yet again that Hector was the governor's heir and could easily bear a grudge for the Four-Eyes thing, which still persisted among the more foolish of their classmates — which was most of them.

  There would be poetic symmetry in revenge enacted four years after inflicting a detestable 'four' nickname on a man.

  "You'd be an Imaguman?" His tone sounded interested, not censoring, but it brought to her attention how presumptuous her claim was. Layumen were tier three families, and Imagumen were tier two.

  Her face warmed. "If they took me, of course. I mean—"

  "I'm sure they would." He fiddled with his glasses. "You have the intelligence for it." He paused. "Not saying Layumen aren't intelligent — you have to be, to construct things well — but Imagumen…"

  Imagumen were the inventors, the ones who created the new things and processes and techniques that would be used by the colony.

  Hector settled his glasses on his face once more, and she realized he'd been taking that motion to hide his check of their surroundings. He took a seat beside her — too close for her comfort, but his expression stayed focused on their surroundings, so she assumed there was good reason for it.

  She just hoped that reason wasn't anything she'd later regret.

  "If I may be presumptuous…" His breath was warm on her ear, and she feared to look at him. "Dobbs vs. Smith, d'Arzon."

  She jerked away and stared at him. That sounded like a court reference, but she couldn't imagine about what. "What?"

  He smiled, pulled away a little, and continued quietly — as if repeating something he'd already said — "I think you could be whatever you wanted to be."

  "Even a Primuman?" Wynne tried to joke, feeling self-conscious about his comments — particularly with all the care he was taking to hide them.

  She'd meant her question as a joke, but the sharp stare Hector seared her with was anything but amused.

  And he didn't say anything.

  'That boy's an example of everything that's wrong with this colony,' Instructor Smith had said, and he'd been raised elsewhere, by his offworld father.

  But if Instructor Smith hates the Arzon colony so much, why is he even here? Why does he stay?

  Hector moved away from her.
"I can't say I'd recommend a coup," he said, tone light. "You would not like my job. I suspect you'd like bearing Primuman children even less."

  Wynne stared at him for several seconds. The first answers that came to mind were too dangerous to say aloud, if his caution in having the conversation was any indicator — and the ones that followed were so risqué, it made her blush to think them.

  Finally, she thought of an appropriate response: "So you're saying I wouldn't be able to handle super-smart children able to run circles around my intelligence?"

  He snorted, fiddling with his glasses as he kept an eye on the room. "It's not that," he said quietly. "You keep up with me." He paused and reluctantly amended, "Sort of."

  "Thanks," she said dryly, not sure if she should feel more flattered or insulted.

  "It's true," Hector said frankly, which didn't help his case. "It's just, if you had Primuman kids, you'd have to—"

  His body jerked and his eyes lolled back, his knees buckling.

  Wynne gasped as he hit the floor and started shaking.

  A seizure, Wynne finally recognized from the classic literature she'd read.

  She stared at the shaking governor-to-be for a long moment.

  By the time she remembered enough about seizures to try to help, he stopped jerking and glowered at the ceiling. His glasses had stayed on, but he had to adjust their position on his nose as he angrily hauled himself to his feet.

  Hector looked furious. "I know. Curse it all to a black hole. I know what I can't say." He whirled on the nearest security camera and yelled, "I know!"

  Wynne flinched.

  Her eyes were surely wide as she watched Hector take his tablet, smash it against the table, drop it, and storm out.

  She swallowed uncomfortably, staring at the remains of his tablet. She wouldn't have thought him strong enough to break it, but she supposed he could be stronger than he looked. Or maybe his seizure had released an adrenaline rush.

  Well, now she could say she'd seen Hector Primuman the Fourth lose his equanimity. Not that she understood what had caused the fit of temper.