25. Calle Infierno

The Valley, San Teodoro, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum
September 28, 2847

Hard Burn had taken up the first six weeks of Arc’s time at the academy, and following the final fourteen days in the jungle, he and the other cadets had immediately undergone surgery, which took place on a Monday. Three days of recovery in the infirmary left them with only a single day of classes before the weekend. Arc had a suspicion that even that had been carefully timed by the faculty: it left two days for the cadets to report any delayed side effects following their first connection with a simulation pod, before they were due for another session with Lieutenant Commander Libby.

It also meant that, far sooner than he really felt prepared for, Arc was accompanying Cassie downhill along the sidewalk of Camino del Soldado, which ran through the apartment complexes housing the academy’s faculty on the north slope of Academy Hill, with a garment bag slung over his left shoulder. It was a quiet street, shaded from Vidako’s twin suns by overhanging boughs of black-leaved, genetically engineered strains of live oak. The trees grew tall and spread wide, with limbs that dipped down low, almost to the point of brushing the heads of those walking beneath them, and had been planted to either side of the street, between the apartment buildings and the sidewalks.

Cadets who were given liberty to go out into the city were required to wear their uniforms, including their caps, which Arc and Cassie had balanced very carefully on top of their bandaged heads. He, like his classmates, had an appointment at the infirmary on Sunday to see how his incisions were healing up, though he felt somewhat ambiguous about the prospect of getting the bandages off. On the one hand, his scalp was beginning to itch, where hair must already be growing back; on the other, he wasn’t looking forward to getting a look at where his skull had been cut open.

Cassie must have noticed him touching his bandages with his free hand, where they were visible along the side of his head just above his ear, because halfway down the hill she spoke up. “I know that in a few years I’m going to look somewhat normal,” she said. “All I have to do is look at the upperclassmen. Their hair has all grown back in nicely, which means mine will, too. You can’t even see the scars. But it’s still nervewracking. Especially the prospect of going as a guest to one of the duke’s dinners bald.”

“I can’t stop touching it,” Arc admitted. “It itches. I think I’ve got fuzz growing under the bandages.”

“Here, do something else with your hand,” Cassie chided him. She reached out, took his hand in hers, and then held it as they walked.

All thought of his irritated scalp immediately fled Arc’s mind. He felt, suddenly, short of breath, and all too conscious of the feel of Cassie’s hand in his, as if the nerves in the rest of his body had been dialed back, like the volume on a speaker. The feeling was electric. He forced himself to breathe and couldn’t help but check to see whether the occasional upperclassman or professor passing them on the sidewalk was staring. He certainly felt as if someone was watching them.

“Have you thought about wearing some kind of hat?” Arc forced himself to ask, though the effort of maintaining something approaching a normal conversation seemed herculean. “I don’t have the slightest idea what sort of hats are in fashion here…”

“A sunhat would pass, during the day,” Cassie told him. “But we’ll be attending a dinner party, and yes, we’re expected to be bare-headed for it, once we get inside. You can get away with your academy dress whites, so long as they’re actually well-fitted. I haven’t got a great deal of faith in that, which was why I had you bring them. I presume you’ve never tried them on?”

“Not yet,” Arc admitted. “There hasn’t really been time, or an occasion. But shouldn’t you be able to wear your uniform, too?”

“Technically yes, practically, no,” Cassie explained. “If Duke Montalban wanted a cadet, he could have invited his pick of upperclassmen. People like Ireti Ọlatẹru, who are on track to be up-and-coming officers, or even my cousin Bhaskar.”

Arc noticed that she frowned at that, but he refrained from saying anything.

“He didn’t,” Cassie went on. “He invited a princess imperial, and that’s what he expects to get. Commandant Marlowe has made it clear that she wants me to keep him happy. A happy duke makes for a happy academy, and so I need to give him what he wants. That means an evening dress. And even if I wore some kind of sunhat on our way in, I’d have to take it off once we went inside. I have thought about a wig, though.”

Arc couldn’t help but glance at her, after she said that. “A wig? Really? Don’t they look kind of…fake?”

“If it’s a bad wig, of course it looks fake,” Cassie said. “But I’ve worn extensions before, and unless you knew what you were looking for you’d never be able to tell. Anyway. We’re going to a tailor first, to have you measured, and so we can leave your dress uniform for adjustments. Then I’m going to drag you all over The Valley while I try on dresses. Somewhere in there, we’ll get lunch, and once we’ve finished, we’ll pick your uniform up on our way back.”

The prospect should have been painful: Arc had accompanied his mother and his sister, and even his friend Rashmi, on more than one interminably long shopping expedition during which his role had essentially boiled down to ‘holder of all the bags.’ But somehow, with Cassie, he found that he didn’t mind. The chance to spend time with her outside of the academy, and away from their friends, was too thrilling to pass up.

The tailor was an old man with a white mustache who used a measuring tape, rather than a modern biometric scanner, to check Arc over while Cassie watched. The shop was, like so many of the other businesses in The Valley, in one of the lower floors of the four or five story mixed-use brick buildings which lined the Camino del Soldado. The road ran all the way down to the beach, crossed by half a dozen intersecting streets, with names such as Calle Perla or Calle Bahía. Stairs led down to recessed storefronts set just beneath the street in the basements, or up to the first floor, and there were awnings and signs everywhere. In the case of Manuel’s Fitting and Tailoring, a selection of mannequins had been posed in the windows to display fashionable and expensive menswear.

“Not terrible, but we can do better,” Manuel muttered, as he tugged at the waistband of Arc’s dress pants, which were uncomfortably tight. “You’ve put muscle on your frame since they issued you this uniform, that’s obvious. I’ll let the shoulders out, and adjust the waist. You can take it off, now.”

“You can have it finished by this afternoon?” Cassie asked, from the chair she was perched in.

“For your Imperial Highness, I’ll have it done by lunch,” Manuel promised.

Arc hesitated at the entrance to the little dressing room built into one side of the shop. He was certain that Cassie had been hoping not to be recognized, but if she was upset, she hid it well. She must have had a lifetime of training in how to manage her expressions, of course, so she just smiled kindly.

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“Would you like a picture for your wall?” she asked. “It’s almost like advertising.”

Once he was dressed again, they set off on a haphazard, back and forth route that took them from one side street to the next, then back onto the Camino del Soldado, as they made their way slowly in the direction of Valley Beach Park. The heat of the two suns beat down upon them, and in between shops, they stopped to get cups of iced coffee from a café. Everywhere, in the late Saturday morning, there were people: eating outside of small restaurants, at tables which had been set up beneath large parasols for shade, moving in and out of the shops, walking in groups down to the beach.

Arc was surprised how many older cadets were visible, though from the rank insignia on their uniforms he saw that they were nearly all second or first class. It wasn’t just pilot candidates, either: he recognized the enlisted uniforms of the tech program students, as well, and in greater numbers. For the most part, the two groups did not mix, though occasionally he caught sight of a single piloting cadet engaged in conversation with one or two techs. Their repair crew, he surmised.