Thrice Uncharmed (Wynne d’Arzon) (2 page)

Bridge sniffed. "They can't make you take a Partner until Triad. That's twelve more years. I'll be ancient."

It was Wynne's turn to roll her eyes. "That's when they make everybody take a Partner, because it's an optimum age for childbearing and rearing. But they
can
make you take a Partner sooner, just like they make everybody get the base gene treatments. It's under the 'for the colony's wellbeing' proviso of the charter. Look it up."

Hands on her hips, Bridge turned on her heel to scoff in Wynne's face. "What, so all of a sudden you're a Lawuman?"

She sighed. "No, I'm—"

"That's right. We're
Layumen
, not Lawumen, and if I want to know some 'legal implications of my behavior,' I'll ask a spaced Lawuman!"

"Bridge—"

"
Bye
, Cuz." Bridge signed 'talk to the hand' and strutted off toward Matthias and Hector — the former of whom paled and quickly scurried away, so Hector had obviously been more successful in his talking-to than she had.

Hector nonchalantly studied Bridge, even when she got in his face and started giving him attitude, if her posture was anything to go by. Wynne sighed and figured her cousin was
her
responsibility, so she'd better go rescue the governor's son before he got offended. Despite being the reason everyone called him an unflattering nickname, Wynne had never seen him lose his equanimity, and she didn't want her cousin to change that.

But as she approached, Hector smiled slightly and shook his head, raising a finger to tell her to wait a minute. Maybe he was used to this kind of behavior from the governmental meetings he regularly sat in and advised.

He lowered his hand. "Your point, Miss Layuman?"

"My
point
is that you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do!"

Hector adjusted his glasses. "Ah. And would that be familial antigovernment sentiments or personal teenage rebellion speaking?"

Wynne went cold. He'd just obliquely accused Bridge of treasonous inclinations — a dangerous, dangerous thing, in a colony as young as theirs — and her cousin was too dumb to notice.

In fact, Bridge snickered and mocked him for all his big words, a sure sign that she hadn't even understood him.

Making fun of the
governor's son and heir
. What level of stupidity would Bridge drop to next?

Wynne lurched the last meter or so to be at her cousin's side. "I'm sure she's just—"
Just what?
"She doesn't mean to be insulting you. She's just — just—"

"Her blood sugar's dropping, and it's going to her head?" he suggested, with a little smile.

"Yes," Wynne said desperately, grateful for any excuse that would let him overlook her cousin's atrocious behavior, as Bridge got indignant and started using some of the words that nobody in the family was allowed to say.

Hector nodded and beckoned a woman in the uniform of the cinema's Secumen, the family line in charge of colony security. "Please see Miss Bridge Layuman out. I believe she's forgotten to eat dinner."

The security woman's eyes widened slightly upon recognizing
Hector Primuman the Fourth
— or maybe upon realizing the abuse that Miss Layuman was heaping upon Master Primuman — but she caught Bridge by the arm and escorted her out, with the threat that charges of disorderly conduct could and would be applied if she didn't cooperate.

Wynne didn't think she'd ever been more embarrassed in her life, though her accidental dubbing Hector with that atrocious nickname made a close second. "I'm so sorry—"

He shook his head, warding off her apology, then nodded at a nearby poster for the epic fantasy movie she'd been eyeing earlier. "Want to see it?"

She blinked. Was he asking her on a date? "Um." They'd come to the cinema as chaperones for cousins who had now left — separately — and Wynne wasn't sure she wanted to risk giving him the wrong idea, but she didn't exactly want to risk offending him, either. "Um. When?"

Hector shrugged. "We're both here now." He glanced at the screen that displayed the showtimes for all the movies. "And it starts in twenty minutes."

Wynne was tempted. To get to see the movie
before
anybody spoiled it for her, to even see it on the big screen?

He pressed a credit chip in her hand and indicated the snacks bar. "Get what you like — and water for me, please. I'll go get the tickets."

She blinked and stared after him as he slipped through the crowd toward the ticket booth. He didn't seem to
expect
anyone to recognize him and get out of his way, but when they did, he took advantage of it. What would he do if the movie was sold out already?

Hector Primuman the Fourth
, she remembered. If the movie were sold out, they'd probably knock a pair of Servumen or maybe a couple from tier five families into the next available showing.

He'd even given her a credit chip, so she'd be spending
his
allotted resources for her snack, not hers. With her metabolism, she had a larger resource allotment than other tier threes her age, and her tier two paterline meant she got a slight bonus there, too, so she could readily pay for her own snack, if she chose.

But he was offering to pay. She thought he might be offended if she refused.

Or so she tried to convince herself, because she
really
wanted to try the gummy spaceships, and her mother would've pitched a fit if Wynne spent so many resource credits on something so unfilling. Using Hector's resource credits meant the purchase would show on his records, not hers.

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 hadn'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.