The High Ground (17 page)

“Well, I’m only getting Cs.”

“As long as you’re not failing. I don’t need you to be at the top of your class. I wasn’t either. I did, however, do very well at the
prueba
.”

“Oh God, the
prueba
. What is it? No one will tell us anything,” she cried.

“That’s because it changes every year. I can tell you this much. It will evaluate how you all respond under pressure.”

“Like that’s any different,” she muttered.

“Oh, it will be different,” her father said. A smile quirked his lips. He drew a hand across his mouth. “I was disappointed to see you wearing a dress on the news. Why weren’t you in your uniform?”

Mercedes licked her suddenly dry lips. “Well… um… I don’t exactly have it… the old one… the first one… I mean… any more…” She looked up. Her father’s gaze was dark and implacable. “What they gave us was completely impractical. It was a costume not a uniform—” She broke off and gave him an accusing look. “Wait a minute. If you’ve been getting reports from Zeng and Markov then you know all this. So why ask me?” He said nothing. “Oh. You wanted me to realize I was being a coward. If I can’t handle the reaction to this…”

Her father braced his hands on the desk and pushed to his feet. “So what are you going to do about it?” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head as he walked past. “It’s nice to have you home even for a few days.”

Mercedes stared at the now empty doorway. She thought about calling the other girls and ordering them to change, but realized that would be another act of cowardice. None of them mattered. They, like the first uniforms, were mere set dressing. What mattered was her.

* * *

The house had seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a formal dining room, a breakfast/morning room, a ladies’ salon, a library, and a game room with a pool table. The expanse of green baize invited a game. After an aged butler with a grey mane and eyebrows had led him and Donnel to a bedroom, Tracy had headed back downstairs in search of his host, leaving Donnel to unpack. That so far fruitless search had led him ultimately to this room.

“We’ll have a game after dinner.” Jasper Talion’s voice came from the doorway.

Tracy spun to face him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snoop. I…”

Talion waved away the apology. “Feel free. I thought we’d just eat dinner in the breakfast room. Keep old Nicca from having to polish all the flatware and haul out Mum’s rather hideous epergne.” Tracy wondered what the hell an
ee-
pern might be as he nodded in agreement. “Anything you particularly hate, Tracy?” Talion asked as he led them out of the game room.

“No. Pretty much eat everything.” Tracy decided to test the parameters of this new, odd relationship that might actually prove to be a friendship, so he added, “Jasper.”

There was no objection, instead Talion just said, “Probably a good plan for a soldier.”

“Is that what we are? Really?” Tracy asked.

Talion glanced back over his shoulder and gave a crooked grin. “Some of us will be. Once we jettison the deadwood.”

“I take it I don’t fall into that category,” Tracy said, falling into step with his host.

“Oh, Christ no. You wouldn’t be here if I thought that. I’m going to need people like you,” he added.

Tracy’s footsteps stuttered for an instant.
You’re proud… but you need to… well, hide it better.
He struggled between wanting to respond and just giving a rueful head shake. He settled for the shake. “There, Mercedes, I’m taking your advice,” he muttered under his breath.

“What?” Jasper asked.

“Nothing.” Tracy took a deep breath, forced a smile and caught up with his host.

Jasper’s hope to eat in the small breakfast room was dashed when the greying Hajin butler led them into the formal dining room. Eyeing the length of the table Tracy was glad the butler didn’t seat him at the opposite end from his host. He would have needed a megaphone to hold a conversation.

Despite what Talion described as a skeleton staff they sat down to a very good dinner. Cold beet salad, spicy chicken, rice pilaf and a chilled raspberry soufflé for dessert, followed by a cheese platter and port. They discussed courses and professors, which of the recruit commanders they liked, but by the time coffee laced with liqueur was served the conversation was flagging. They had nothing in common beyond the academy.

Tracy nervously spun his cup and eyed the enormous silver affair sporting rearing horses and crossed swords and rifles that incongruously held a large bouquet of chrysanthemums. The clearing of his throat seemed loud in the room.

“So… is that thing a… an… epergne?”

“Yes. Horrible, isn’t it?”

“I can’t comment without either criticizing your mother’s taste, or disagreeing with my host,” Tracy said with a smile.

“Good point. I suppose it can’t be easy for you.”

Tracy shrugged. “It’s okay. It certainly is a first-class education.”

“Mmm.” The conversation lagged again.

Jasper seemed to realize it might be his turn to lob the conversation ball. “I’m really looking forward to my brother Chris arriving. Let the hazing begin.” He grinned. Tracy couldn’t think of a response to that.

“So how many siblings do you have?”

“Eight. Five boys, three girls.” Jasper asked. “So, are there more of you at home who we can expect to win a place at the academy?”

“I’m… I’m an only child,” Tracy admitted.

The tall, elaborately carved chair gave a creak as Talion threw himself against the back. “No shit? I’ve never met an only before. Did something happen to your dad that he couldn’t—”

“No.” It emerged more sharply than Tracy had intended. “He just didn’t remarry.”

“Oh, a love match.”

Memory flashed into his mind. His father’s face twisted with grief, tears streaming down his face, his skin blotched red trying to get his shoulder beneath the casket that held his wife’s remains. Tracy set aside his fork. “We don’t arrange marriages in my class,” he said quietly.

“I suppose you wouldn’t.”

The silence returned. Tracy tried another topic, hopefully one less fraught. “So… Nephilim.”

Talion’s grey brows twitched together. “What about it?” He sounded annoyed.

“Just that I don’t know much about it,” Tracy hastened to say.

Talion visibly relaxed and took a sip of his coffee. “It’s a shit hole—but unless you live there you don’t get to say that,” Jasper warned.

“Got it.”

“Cold. Rocky. We have to farm under domes. Bad radiation from the sun. It causes mutations.” Jasper fingered his hair.

“So why—”

“Settle it?” Jasper interrupted. “Mineral resources. Primarily lithium. It’s not all that common, and we have a shit load of it.”

Tracy considered how much of the complex technology that powered the League relied upon lithium and nodded. “Ah, I see.”

“So you’d think the League would value us more, wouldn’t you?” Talion asked.

“I take it they don’t.”

“We’re not exactly a hot vacation spot for the FFH who live on the central worlds.” Talion jerked a shoulder in a sharp shrug. “They think we’re hillbillies. If you’re finished…”

Tracy scrambled to his feet. “Yes. Let’s.”

Jasper grabbed a bottle of port and they carried their glasses back to the game room. Tracy measured cues while his host refilled their glasses. Silence reigned once more.

“So… you did make it into the Sabers,” Tracy said as he applied chalk to his cue.

“Yes.”

“Then Gelb was wrong.”

“As he so often is,” Jasper said, and his lips quirked in amusement. The billiard balls clicked loudly as he stacked them in the rack. Tracy laughed and wondered if it was too loud and too long. He felt ill at ease, out of his element and excited to be here all at the same time.

Jasper lifted away the rack, grabbed the cue ball and moved to the far end of the table. He positioned the ball, sighted down his cue and shot. There was a sharp crack and the balls scattered like startled birds. No ball entered a pocket.

“Shit,” Jasper grumbled. “Your shot.”

Tracy circled the table analyzing the lay of the balls, calculating trajectories. Orbital mechanics reduced to a ten by five foot dimension. He took his shot, banking the number four deep purple solid ball off the side and end bumpers and dropping it neatly in the pocket on the other long side.

Jasper leaned against the wall as Tracy took his next shot. “If you want to know how I pulled it off—it’s because I’m the best swordsman in our class. Kunst thinks he is but he’s not and at some point we’ll settle the question.”

Tracy looked up from pocketing his third ball. “Sorry to be dense, but…” He gestured at his own cheek not wanting to bluntly say
but you’re scarred and Kunst isn’t
.

Jasper grinned. “Smooth skin doesn’t mean you’re good. It usually means you’re cautious or lucky or careful to pick weaker opponents.” Jasper’s fingers went to his scarred cheek. “My dad gave me these.”

“Jesus!” Tracy looked up startled.

“No, it was good. I was getting cocky. It made me focus.” Jasper laughed. “And how else would we know they loved us?”

By not hurting us?
Tracy thought, remembering the slap.

His father had sacrificed his relationship with Tracy in exchange for what he believed would be a brighter future for his son. Was that love? Or manipulation? Tracy shook his head, lined up another shot and missed, his concentration blown by his confused and chaotic thoughts.

* * *

The boxes were opened and squeals of delight ensued. Mercedes glanced over to where Estella and Julieta sat on the bed now busily placing the jeweled pins in each other’s hair. She hoped the gifts she had brought for the younger girls would be as well received.

Julieta hopped off the bed and rushed over to the dressing table to examine the pins in the mirror. “I’m going to wear them tomorrow night at the Conde de Vargas’s ball.”

Mercedes was startled by this news. “Papa’s allowing you to go?”

“Uh huh. He said it wasn’t fair for you and Essie to go, and for me to have to stay home.”

“Hmm, he wouldn’t let me go to a formal ball until I was seventeen,” Mercedes grumbled.

Estella slipped off the bed and gave her a hug. “Parents are always harder on the first child. The rest of us get to be spoiled.”

“True that,” Mercedes said.

“I guess that means the little girls will be going at fourteen. Lucky things,” Julieta said with a playful pout.

Estella, her expression suddenly sober, looked at her sibling. “Or it means he no longer cares what they do.” She glanced at Mercedes. “Truthfully, Mer, I think the only one of us that matters now is you.”

A hand seemed to clench down hard on her chest. She had heard truth and hated it. Mercedes couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that. Instead she heard herself hurriedly saying,

“Oh don’t be silly. He loves us all.” She whirled and offered her back to Estella. “Unzip me? I don’t want to send for Flanon. She’ll fuss and fiddle and I want it to be just us. I’ve missed you so much. Three months seemed like forever.”

Estella obliged and Mercedes slipped the dress off her shoulders. Julieta gave a squeak and then a giggle. “Good Lord, look at your arms.”

“What?”

Estella gripped her upper arm and squeezed. “Muscles.”

“You look like a stevedore,” Julieta giggled.

“They have us lift weights, and run three miles every day. You ought to see Sumiko. She’s lost inches,” Mercedes said.

“Well, I hope I don’t have to go,” Julieta said. “I don’t want to look like a boy.”

Estella caught Mercedes wince. “What?” her far too astute sister asked.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“Let’s just say you’ll see tomorrow at the game,” Mercedes muttered.

“You’re going? But you hate soccer,” Estella said.

“No, I
love
soccer, particularly when The High Ground is playing.”

Estella nodded, “Oh, I get it. It’s required that the cadets show support.” Mercedes made a gun with her finger.

“But you’re the Infanta. How can they make you go if you don’t want to?” Julieta asked.

“Because I’m not the Infanta. I’m a cadet. No, scratch that, I’m a worm.”

And she proceeded to tell them about Chief Deal, and his constant repetition of the phrase Big Damn Heroes, and she found herself making it funny instead of horrible. Because she suspected that if she failed her father might just try again with the next daughter. She wanted to save her sisters from that.

As they ran onto the field there was a growing roar from the stands. It sounded less like humans and more like the growl of a particularly angry beast. Which probably wasn’t wrong. There were going to be a lot more Caladonia fans than there were spectators affiliated with The High Ground.

The ground was softer than the field on the
cosmódromo
, and Tracy felt his cleats dig into the grass and soil. He tried to gauge his traction then told himself not to be an idiot. He wasn’t going to be playing. He scanned the stands and was startled to see that the focus was not on the entering players. Everyone was staring at the large box at midfield.

The portly figure of Rohan Aubrey, the Conde de Vargas was settling into a seat. A taller, trimmer, older man, easily recognizable, was acknowledging the crowd with an upraised hand. The Emperor. And at his side—Mercedes, dressed in her
Orden de la Estrella
dress uniform. There were other people in the box; guards who were looking decidedly nervous at the crowd’s reaction, and several older human women who were tending to a gaggle of little girls. There were also a number of Hajin, Tiponi and Isanjo servants arranging food and beverages on a table.

Mercedes turned to her father and snapped off a perfect salute. She then did the same to the Conde de Vargas. Finally she scanned the crowd in the stadium, and gave them a smile and a wave. The sound became more confused with both cheers and outraged yells blending and mixing.

“Well, nobody’s going to give a tinker’s fart what we do,” Hugo muttered as he began to stretch out his muscles.

“Wonder what the news feeds are saying,” Wilson added.