in the side. A moment later my ankles frame his neck. All I had to do was lock position and tumble. Best case scenario: he would be unconscious. More likely, he would be dead.
“I win,” I say, panting, grinning in excitement.
“Hmmm...” Instead of admitting defeat, he grabs my legs and yanks, sending me to the floor in a rough tumble. I feel his body on top of me, his legs trapping mine, his hands pinning mine to the ground. “It’s only victory if you can make the other person accept that, understand? Victory happens in the mind first.”
I glare at him. “How typical. You can’t stand the idea I might actually win, can you?”
“Stop thinking of this as a game, Mallory. There are no winners or losers. There are only living and dead. Because you thought of this as a ‘game,’ you lowered your defenses once you had decided the game was over. That was foolish.”
I sulk. “You’re just mad I finally got past your defenses.”
He snickers, his expression turning affectionate. “Oh yes, that must be it. I’m not teaching you skills that will one day save your life.”
It is my turn to scoff. “Why should you? None of the other teachers give a damn.”
“They don’t know...” He stops.
“They don’t know what?”
He gazes down at me. The side of his mouth twitched. Zach had incredible blue eyes; like the heart of a gas fire.
The last few years have been hard. Zacharei has taught certain classes for me since he’d arrived at the school. In the beginning, the other students had whispered about my ‘special’ treatment. They stopped the envious whispers when they saw how often I ended up in the hospital with injuries only nanites could fix. While Duncan had proved to be better at teaching martial arts and secretly, a bit of heresy, Zach’s emphasis had always been on the stiletto in the dark, the ruthless follow-through, the killing blow. If Duncan was crafting us into living weapons, Zach was sharpening the edge and poisoning the blade.
For years, I’d been convinced Zacharei hated me for some inexplicable reason, that he’d only saved my life to watch me writhe in pain. In the months since Zach had started reading the Enuma Elish to me, I’d become unsure of that. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the quiet hours he spent reading to me, and there was no malice in his voice. As I began to suspect that he might not hate me, I began to notice things about him: the way the sweat beaded up on his forehead when he was concentrating, the sweet-musky tang of his body after training, those intense blue eyes. He had become dangerous and distracting for entirely different reasons than before.
I can feel his body pressed down on top of me, and for the first time that I could remember, it evoked a reaction other than fear and frustration. I feel warm, my heart racing inside me, my skin suddenly hyper aware of all the minute points of contact between his body and mine. I’d never realized our practice clothes were so thin.
“They don’t...” He hesitates. “They don’t know how special you are.” Zach stares down at me, his expression intrigued, as if he might comprehend something vital about me if he could only look closely enough.
I reach up and kiss him on the lips.
He moves fast, faster than I’d ever seen. I am only barely aware of the feel of his lips against mine before I am free, and Zach has rolled off me to sit on his knees. I feel dismay that he’s been holding back in our fights. He looks startled, maybe a little scared. I’m not surprised: if anyone had walked in and seen us like that, it’s unlikely they’d have accepted that he wasn’t the aggressor. He is upset that he’d let a student get the better of him. My mouth twists in bitterness.
For once, he is speechless.
“Never mind. My mistake.” I stand up and pick up a towel, begin to dry off my face. My heartbeat is a fast drum and my hands were shaking. I’ve never felt so stupid.
I feel his hands on my shoulders, tentative, apologetic. “Mallory, it’s not your fault. It’s me. I can’t.”
I shrug off his touch. “Fine. I shouldn’t have anyway. I know the rules. I know it’s forbidden.”
He shakes his head. “You’re too young.”
I glare at him with a hard, hateful expression. “And if I wasn’t?”
Zach smiles ruefully. “Ask me again when you’re older.”
ggg
“This is Keepers’ Island flight control. You have entered restricted airspace. Leave immediately or be fired upon.” The voice sounded Sarcodinay and male, also irritated and weary. What he didn’t sound was bored; rather, he had the sharp, angry tone of a man who had been expecting trouble for so long that he decided he wanted trouble to show up so he could give it a piece of his mind.
I opened up the link. “Keepers’ Island Flight control, this is Seris-MacLain Mallory of the Aegis, Solar Independence League vessel #168935-A, along with Gala-Lee Vanessa. Gala-Rhodes Alexander is expecting us. Please route to his office for priority clearance confirmation.”
“This is flight control. Did you just say Seris-MacLain?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Is there a problem with that?”
“Seris-Kamala Tavan is already here.”
“Great, I’ll say hello when I arrive. We can catch up on old times. First you need to give me clearance to land.”
“Negative, Aegis. Keepers’ Island is on security alert. No unauthorized vessels are allowed to land.”
“Keepers’ Island Flight Control, we have authorization. Please confirm with Gala-Rhodes.” I paused. “If he’s unavailable, contact Maia-Leia.”
The control officer hesitated before answering. “Very well. Circle the island until we have confirmed clearance. If you attempt to land, we will open fire.”
“Understood. Aegis out.” I leaned back in the chair and exhaled.
“Very gutsy, Weaver. But it probably did get their attention.”
“Oh I guarantee you, someone’s telling Maia-Leia about us right now,” I said.
“Seris-MacLain?” Vanessa said. “Isn’t Seris the High Guard caste name?”
I nodded as I fingered the edges of my caste-mark, scholar at that moment. I’d have to change it to match.
“Are you out of your mind?” Vanessa leaned forward. “I know about Kaimer, but that does not make you a High Guard!”
“You’re only saying that because I’m a High Guard school dropout. Right now, Keepers’ Island is set to turn everyone away. Using that caste name got us noticed.”
“That’s not necessarily a good thing!”
I tapped a fingernail against my lower lip. “Does Keepers’ Hospital use Ministry of Justice for their security? Maybe we can use that to gain authorization.”
“Technically yes, but Maia-Leia Shana switched over to her own in-house security 64 years ago.”
I stared at the dome. The treaty deadline was looming. Keepers’ Hospital needed to be evacuated. They were running out of time to remove over a century’s worth of research and technology. And yet—the hospital was on alert. No one was landing. No one was leaving.
“She knows he’s coming,” I said. “She’s waiting for him.
“I would agree, Mallory. They are clearly expecting some sort of attack.”
“You mean Zach or Zaladin or whatever his real name is?” Vanessa said.
“Yeah.” I scratched the palms of my hands and tried not think about the itchy, tight feeling in my stomach.
“I’ve never heard of a Sarcodinay not using his real name.”
“That’s because they don’t.”
Medusa said, “I am worried that she may assume you are an ally of Zaladin’s. And what if Maia-Leia Shana is under orders from Tirris Vahn, just as Shaniran was, to kill you?”
“She won’t do it. If Shaniran was right, she won’t kill me. Not if I intrigue her enough with the idea of what might have become of her little science project.”
“You’re taking a large chance.”
“I know.” I looked back at Vanessa. “You heard Medusa: we have no guarantee we’re not walking into a death trap down there.”
/>
“You are not leaving me out of this,” she said with a quick shake of her head. “Besides, why would they have any interest in me? I’m only a friend of Gala-Rhodes and he’s not going to be much bothered by their security, not if he’s as important as Paul made him sound.” She attempted a faint smile. “We have more pressing matters to discuss.”
“We do?”
“Of course. What are you going to wear?”
“Vanessa, I don’t—” I shut my mouth when I realized she was neither joking nor indulging in a bit of insouciant dress up. I sighed.
“It matters,” she pressed. “You just told them you are a High Guard. You’re going to need to throw them off balance if you want to even have a chance of pulling that off.”
I thought about it. “Something black, some variant of the High Guard jumpsuit.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “For you, perhaps. You can make that color, with all its connotations, work for you. I should wear something brighter, no matter how I’m feeling just now.”
I gestured towards the back cabin. “Several of my dresses should fit you with minor adjusting.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You own dresses?”
I snickered, but didn’t further dignify the remark. I pointed back to the bedroom and told her to go look for herself. There was a large inventory to check. With the real possibility that I would never return, everything that I owned, once stored on the colony world Liberty, was now in the back, tucked into storage boxes. I had not had a chance to move any of it into the apartment—for which I was now grateful.
She returned a while later to haggle over what the two of