52. Gifts

New Toledo, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum

December 23, 2847

Final grades for the first term posted that evening.

After returning from the range—where Cassie had, to Arc’s utter lack of surprise, cajoled Lieutenant Estrada into letting her take a brief turn in the cockpit—they’d split up to have a shower and change before dinner with the Montalban family. Iceni notified Arc while he was actually in the shower, scrubbing the short hair which now covered his scalp. Three months after the surgery, it had grown out to nearly four centimeters, at a guess, and he was actually in need of a bit of a trim around the sides and the back of his neck.

“Can you show me a summary?” Arc asked. “Along with the merits earned, and my new total?” Then, he leaned back into the spray from the shower head to let it rinse the shampoo off.

Of course, Iceni said. A moment later, lines of faintly glowing blue text appeared in Arc’s vision, set against the steam which filled the shower.

Arc let out a sigh, and with it tension in his shoulders and neck that he hadn’t even realized had been there until just that moment. Two-hundred and ten merits earned, out of a possible two-hundred and fifty, was very, very good. Especially when he was being compared to cadets who had been genetically engineered to absorb information and learn more quickly than anyone who, like him, was unmodified. Combined with a few merits earned over the course of the semester by answering questions in his history courses—which he was satisfied to see were his highest grades—that put him halfway to earning his first genetic retrovirus treatment.

He couldn’t help but actually laugh out loud, and he felt almost giddy with excitement. Arc ran his hands through his hair one more time, to make sure all the soap was gone, then turned off the shower and grabbed a towel. He scrubbed himself dry as quickly as he could, then slipped into a pair of slippers and a robe. Both were very fuzzy, and very comfortable, and not the sort of things he would ever have imagined buying for himself, but the duke—or, more likely, his wife—had made certain the guest rooms were well equipped.

Aware that there was a stupid grin on his face, and yet unable to care much about it, Arc opened the door to his rooms, crossed the hall, and knocked on Cassie’s door. He had to tell someone.

Am I not someone? Iceni asked.

You knew before I did, Arc pointed out. He bounced from one foot to the other, raised his hand to knock again, and hesitated. He didn’t want to annoy her…

The door swung open. “Sorry, I was in the shower,” Cassie said, and all thought of grades fled Arc’s mind completely. Like him, she’d thrown on a bathrobe, but she was barefoot, and the hem of the white fabric ended above her knee. She must have pulled the robe on and tied it hastily, because the two sides of the robe crossed loosely, exposing her collarbone and the upper slopes of her chest, flushed red from the heat of the shower. Arc swallowed and, with an effort, dragged his eyes back up to her face.

“Grades posted!” she exclaimed, with an eager grin. “How did you do?”

“Everything but Xenobiology was an A,” he told her, after giving himself a shake to get his mind moving again. “And that was a B+. Two-hundred and ten merits.”

“Very nice!” Her eyes twinkled. “Go ahead, ask me.”

“All A’s,” he guessed. Cassie, after all, had Enhanced NMDA receptors.

“A minus in Xenobiology,” she admitted. “Not either of our best subjects, I guess. But! We both did really well, and you’re well on your way to getting some gene-editing done. Have you decided what you want yet?”

“I have a few thoughts,” Arc admitted. “But there’s no way I can get anything done before the duel, so I’ve kind of put it out of my mind.”

“That’s true.” Cassie’s smile slipped away. “That’s another advantage he’s got over you.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, and Arc was suddenly very aware of how close they were standing, how little each of them was wearing, and that just behind her through an open door waited a bedroom.

He stepped forward, half expecting Jessica to explode out of some kind of fake panelling in the hallway wall, and reached out to put his hands on her hips. The soft, cotton terry cloth felt just the same as the robe that he was wearing. “Is Jessica going to interrupt us again?” he asked, lowering his voice so that it wouldn’t echo down the hall.

“I told her not to,” Cassie said.

They leaned closer to each other, and when their lips touched, Arc closed his eyes. He could smell the soap she’d used, and when she pressed up against him, could feel how warm her body still was from the hot water she’d been standing under.

The click of heels from the end of the highway broke them apart. Arc turned, hands suddenly and frustratingly empty, to face Duchess Nicté Lucia Montalban as she approached, already dressed for dinner.

“I’m told you both spent most of your day with our pilots,” the duchess said. Her lips curved in a subtle smile, and Arc was completely certain that she knew exactly what she’d interrupted. “I hope that it was time well spent, but I wanted to make certain that neither of you were planning anything like that for the next two days. We’ll be far too busy. Your Imperial Highness, we’d like to invite you to accompany us to a few of our holiday functions… but I’ll tell you more about that at dinner. I’ll leave the two of you to get dressed, and I’ll see you downstairs.”

The duchess turned and walked away, and Cassie buried her face in Arc’s shoulder.

“Shoot me,” she grumbled.

𝝮

“—and, of course, it doesn’t help that the single most significant economic driver on the planet was placed so far from the capital,” Alvarez Velasco Montalban complained over dinner that evening.

Arc did his best to keep his mouth shut, and the fact that his plate was occupied by a very tender cut of native leatherback went a long way toward helping him accomplish his goal. The meat tasted so much better than vat-grown beef that he didn’t think he’d ever get enough, and the marbled veins of fat practically melted on his tongue. The duke’s chef had rubbed the steaks in salt, pepper—and Arc was fairly certain there was a bit of garlic and onion powder in the mix, as well—before searing them.

“You’re really enjoying that,” Cassie teased, from her seat on his right side.

“There’s nothing like this on Zurah V,” Arc said, shaking his head. “Just about every bit of cultivated space we have is for mulberry trees, or crops that can feed a lot of people, like rice. Keeping herds of herbivores for meat isn’t something we have room for.”

“Strictly speaking, we don’t either,” Duke Alvarez said.

Arc wondered whether he was aware of just how nearly Cassie had changed the subject.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“You know we have very little cleared land,” the older man continued. “But we do have a vibrant hunting industry, particularly with tourists who come from off world. Many of them wish to keep what they kill, of course, but there’s always enough spare meat for purchase, so long as you’re willing to pay a premium. Which, of course, I am.”

“Tomorrow will be fish and shellfish,” the duchess added. “Traditional, for la Nochebuena—Christmas Eve. There would be lamb, if we had the room on this planet. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, Princess, I’d like to invite you to join us when we make our public appearance for the evening on the south balcony. You can escort her, of course, Arcturus, but once we’re actually on the balcony you should stand back.”

“You’ve been so kind to host us here,” Cassie said. “I think making an appearance with your family is the least I can do, Duchess.”

“It’s more than your father has done,” Alvarez grumbled.

“Here we go again,” Marcus Ajewọle remarked, from the other end of the table. Arc looked down the rows of plates, glasses, and cutlery to see that Esteban had reached a hand out and placed it on his husband’s forearm. It was something of the motion that Arc had seen people use to calm a nervous horse, in any number of holo-dramas.

“I am simply pointing out,” Duke Alvarez said, “that it does not seem that our requests for imperial aid are often taken seriously. I mean no offense to you, Princess Cascada; I am aware that such decisions are not thrust upon your shoulders. Nevertheless –”

“You do get quite a bit from the imperial family, though,” Arc spoke up. He could tell just how uncomfortable the duke’s complaints made Cassie, especially while she was trapped here at the dinner table. And, he knew, she wouldn’t have been there at all if it wasn’t for him. She would have returned to Terra to spend her holiday with her family.