Xioxang raised an eyebrow. “At least one of you knows how to work.” He plucked a plaque off a nearby shelf and thrust it into Dane’s hands. “Get busy, Madousin. I’ll be back in two hours.”
Stomach clenched, Dane remained motionless, staring at the dingy photo on the old award. Then, discarding the plaque, he squared his shoulders and peered up at the figure balanced on the ladder. He might not mind this punishment, but the mandate that Aerin had received it as well bit into his conscience.
She did not deserve to be here. The moment when the principal had asked her who was to blame came back to him. Aerin must have known he was guilty. He had left a trail like a blazing meteor. But she had not turned him in, and, in the process, she had obliterated his whole concept of bravery.
“Listen—” His voice scraped over the word. What could he tell her? That he’d let his desire for revenge take precedence over everything else, including her reputation. Of course, he had never meant to involve her, but he might have realized the possibility if he had taken the time to think. After his father’s accusation, nothing else had entered Dane’s mind. He couldn’t tell her that. Or explain. Could manage nothing more than the wholly inadequate, “I’m sorry.”
The only response was the unforgiving sound of water dripping into a bucket.
For Aerin, the first five weeks of work crew were defined by silence. She intended to punish Dane. For dragging her into his stupid prank, for risking her future, and for failing even to attempt an explanation. His stilted apology in the trophy room that first day had displayed little more than a vague regret. He had no idea of the horror she had experienced in that empty basement room or what he had almost cost her. And she could not tell him. So she punished him, refusing to speak to him outside of class.
Back on Vizhan, silence had been her refuge, a place she could go where no one could defeat her, but something had changed. Her involvement in the crime, as the other students now referred to the tech lab incident, had placed her squarely at the center of the school’s gossip mill. The other students all watched her now with wary stares. Yvonne and her close-knit clique stepped off paths and curved around Aerin in giant semicircles. At meals, they convinced others to avoid her table. The barrier Aerin had built to protect herself had expanded beyond her control, and the whispers and smothered laughter hurt.
It took her a week to admit that she cared.
It took another four before she realized that punishing Dane was making matters worse. The two hours she spent every day beside him—scrubbing, dusting, painting, pruning, and doing three times the amount of work he accomplished—had become sheer torture. Her refusal to speak seemed not to disturb him at all. Or to dissuade him from talking. On and on, he yammered, complaining about everything: the floor was too hard, the paint too thin, the pruning scissors too rusted. He never stopped.
Still, she clung to the security of silence. Until the day Xioxang ordered Dane and Aerin to wash the outer windows of the Great Hall. Buckets in hand, they headed with caution around the front of the building toward the south side. Usually this section of the lawn cleared out after classes, but with fall exams looming, the shooting hours for upper class-men had been lengthened. Targets scattered the field, and a number of older students gathered nearby, choosing lasers.
The slight breeze turned to frost in Aerin’s chest as she spotted the gleaming compact firearms. Every nerve in her body reacted to those weapons, and the barrels that had tracked her every move in the fields on Vizhan.
In front of her, a boy raised his laser as if it were part of his hand, aimed at a target, and fired. Pow!
The sound pierced Aerin’s flesh. She jumped.
Someone touched her elbow, and she jerked away, swinging an instinctive backhand.
Dane dodged, dropping his bucket and sending her a strange look. Then he shrugged as if giving up on understanding her and proceeded forward.
Aerin followed him, pinning her gaze between his shoulder blades. She tried to block out the sound of the shots as she made her way along the edge of the practice field.
Her focus worked, perhaps too well, for when Dane stopped and she allowed herself to look elsewhere, the massive structure overhead took her by surprise. She felt her jaw drop as she gazed up at the scaffolding of thin boards and rusted pipes stretching along the building’s stone side like an unwanted fungus.
Her shocked stare must have given away her apprehension.
Dane took another step, clutched one of the corner poles, and gave it a shake. A shower of paint and dirt chips drifted down.
Lines furrowed his brow. “Ludicrous,” he muttered, then ignoring both his own assessment and the built-in ladder, he wrapped his hands around the pole and began to scale it. He literally pulled his body thirty feet in the air, then dropped catlike onto the highest platform. “I suppose if we die,” he called down, “we won’t have to finish washing the windows.”
Aerin felt a certain amount of envy. Dane’s coolness in the face of danger put her own attempts at subterfuge to shame. Her glint of admiration quickly faded, though, when she noticed he did not have his bucket.
She turned and peered back around the corner. The old metal pail waited, abandoned, on the far side of the practice field.
Pow! Pow! Pow!A new hail of laser shots fired.
Aerin gripped the pole at her side. Forget the extra water. Mine is enough. She was shaking.
“Afraid of heights?” The question came from above. Dane lay on his stomach, his chest and shoulders hanging over the platform’s edge.
Idiot. She gathered her self-control, hefted her own bucket, and began climbing the ladder as quickly as possible. Reaching the top, she heaved her pail onto the platform with a resounding thud.
“Watch it!” Dane warned, then added, “You might want to stay on the sides. The center seems weak.”
She took the creaking of the wood as confirmation and set to work without a word. All five windows at this level were covered with thick dirt. It washed off, but not without arm and shoulder muscle.
Dipping a rag into the same bucket, Dane also began to scrub, launching into a string of complaints against the Allied government for allowing the school to fall into such neglect. “Education, the backbone of the Alliance, my ass,” he grumbled, mocking the line Aerin had first heard the captain of the Envoy say and since learned was a popular political quote. “If the government really valued education, do you think we’d be risking our lives to wash a few windows?”
Dane was nothing if not dramatic, she thought.
“Honestly,” he continued, “if they’d redirect half the funds wasted on Wyan-Ot, none of the academies would have to choose between good teachers and a cleaning staff.” He plunged his rag into the bucket and splashed the precious water over the platform.
Speaking of waste. Aerin glared at Dane. How could he complain about funding while he stood before her dressed from head to toe in his free school uniform?
She tried to tune him out, but the laser fire from below kept shredding her concentration, dragging her where she did not want to go, into memories she did not want to have, had never wanted to have, and had never truly managed to banish: the child she had seen shot for dropping a sack of grain, the woman who had outworked men half her age and been killed on her seventieth birthday, the guard who had pressed the barrel of his own laser to Aerin’s head and ordered her to say when.
She was cold. The breeze up here was stronger than on the ground, and the whistling along the pipes evoked that of distant screams. Her bare hands were chilled, and though she dipped them back in the warm water, they were shaking.
And then a volley of laser fire sent her entire body into a spasm.
“Damn it!” Dane shouted, his voice jerking her into the present. Water covered the platform and streamed off through the cracks.
Dimly, Aerin noted the fallen pail. She must have knocked it over. Embarrassment surged through her body, then exploded in a defensive attack. “Well, go retrieve y
our bucket!” she snapped.
He stared at her, eyes glittering. “It speaks,” he said.
Only then did she realize she had just broken her silence. “It,” she replied, “is sick of doing your share of the work.” The sudden possibility of an argument channeled her energy and allowed her to focus on something other than the target practice below.
“Well, you certainly do more than your share of making a mess.”
She sputtered, then let loose with a stream of swear words. “I wouldn’t even be here without the mess you’ve put me in. You are a lazy, selfish, stubborn snob!”
“I’m stubborn? You’re the one who’s been scrubbing in silence for weeks. One wonders if you’re even human.”
“You!” She added a descriptive term and hurled her rag at him.
He sidestepped it.
Both of them watched the blue cloth sail thirty feet through the air to land in the grass. They breathed without words for a minute. Then a sound rumbled from his throat. For a second she thought he might roar at her, but instead the tone changed. It bubbled up, then erupted in unexpected laughter.
It made no sense. He had no right to be laughing at her.
Well . . . she had chosen rather an odd time to explode at him, seeing as she was the one who had knocked over the bucket. And it was rather childish to throw the rag. And . . . actually . . .
He had every right to laugh at her.
She slouched against a window, not certain how to respond.
He slumped down in a corner, lifted his own rag, and gave it a halfhearted toss in her direction. It missed. This produced a new wave of laughter, and he required another minute to control himself. Then, wiping a tear from his eye, he said, “I think I’ve been called a lot of things, but not a selfish snob.”
She noticed he left out the term stubborn.
“Well, you are,” came her response. “You’re always arguing against the Alliance and the Council, your own father. You have no right.”
“Excuse me?” The laughter slid from his face.
“You have everything: looks, money, freedom, a chance at a good education.”
“How do you—”
She pushed off the wall, not about to listen to his excuses. “Do you have any idea how many people in this universe don’t share those luxuries? No one threatens you. No one questions your right to exist. You have a future and the chance to learn at the best school in the universe.” The passion was ringing in her voice now. “And you don’t care! You don’t care about anything!”
“That’s not—”
“You risked it all, your future and mine, for nothing but a stupid prank!”
She stopped, her chest heaving.
Only then did she take in the effect of her words. Emotion swept Dane’s face: surprise, defensiveness, anger. And something else, something that did not belong.
“What do you know about me, Aerin?” he said, his voice low. Then he stepped close. “You’re not even from the Alliance . . . are you?”
The words were like a meteor shard plunging into her heart. Her life here, her place at the school, everything relied upon the myth that she was a citizen. And despite herself, she had begun to think she might succeed. The energy drained from her chest, her limbs. A sharp tingling began in her fingers, and she couldn’t stay there, couldn’t face the accusation that had just annihilated her dreams.
So she did what she always did, without thought or contemplation. She headed for the ladder, then over the edge, and down, her blood pounding in her ears. She needed escape. Nothing else mattered in the blur of the world. Nothing else existed.
Until the laser fire.
Pow! The sound ripped through her chest.
Her foot slipped. She lost her balance, and her fingers began peeling off the rungs.
But a tight, fierce grip suddenly clenched her left hand. She looked up at the fingers wrapped around her own, the white knuckles, cracked skin, and blue veins.
He didn’t say anything, just waited for her to regain her footing. Then let her go.
Chapter Ten
AT RISK
SHE FLED, OF COURSE. ALL HER RESOLUTIONS TO STOP running had come apart, unraveling into a tangle as fine as shredded wire. Her thoughts were at war with themselves. How had he found out she was from outside the boundary, despite her secrets and silence, and after all this time? He could not have known before because he would have used it to threaten her.
Or would he? If he had been threatening her just now on the scaffolding, why had he caught her when she slipped? No one on Vizhan would have done that. The guards would have laughed at her own fallibility, and none of the other slaves would have risked it. To show empathy or love was to give the guards power over you.
This is the Alliance. Any decent human being—
But she had not thought of Dane as decent, not since that first day in the cafeteria when he had become her nemesis. She had not thought about that day in ages. She had just moved on, her focus on the future and facing down Dane.
Because of something Yvonne had said.
About his making fun of Aerin during debate. In fact, the gist of Yvonne’s argument had been that he could not have meant what he said because he would never really criticize the Alliance with his father on the Council.
What nonsense!Dane had been by far the most outspoken critic of the Alliance all term. Less than half an hour ago, Aerin, herself, had accused him of failing to value the freedom he had here.
She slowed her steps, then pressed her head against the rough bark of a tree at the garden’s edge. That first day of classes she had been a pawn, afraid of everything, and based on one conversation, she had made a snap judgment about a young man she really knew nothing about. Hadn’t that also been part of today’s discussion? Dane telling her she knew nothing about him. Yes, just before he threatened her.
And tried to save her life.
Even now she could feel the intensity of Dane’s grip. If she had fallen, that grip would have stopped her. It had been that tight, that fierce. It had not been warm, or polite, or halfhearted in any way. It had squeezed her knuckles together in almost bone-cracking pain, and it would have held her up.
Maybe he had not meant to threaten her.
Or maybe he had. Maybe she should pack her bags right now and try to catch the first flight off the planet.
But she had nowhere to go. And no longer any desire to run.
Dane knew he had blown it. He could picture Aerin when she had left the scaffolding half an hour before, her face as drained of color as a snowbird in the moonlight. She had started talking! Five weeks he had worked at her side without so much as a “Please pass the water bucket,” and now she had run off, her contradictory nature rushing to the forefront. One moment she was all fire, the next flight.
He could not regret his urge to laugh at her accusation. So she thought he was a good-looking spoiled snob. That was almost as rich as the fact that she was unafraid to say it to his face. But he had not meant to frighten her. He had only blurted out his realization of her foreign origin without thinking. Stupid.
Of course she would not want anyone to know. If she was here illegally, her place at the school would be in danger. Not that he would ever tell. But she didn’t know that.
Devoid of water, Dane left off washing the windows and fetched plywood to repair the platform instead. He was on his knees, pounding the wood onto the scaffolding, and kicking himself mentally, when a shadow stretched over him. Dropping the hammer, he winced at the thud. “Aerin,” he said.
“You didn’t mean to blame me for the tech lab incident, did you?” Her response startled him.
He twisted around.
She looked worn, shadows rimming her dusky brown eyes. Her lips were cracked, and she was shivering. He had a strange desire to comfort her, but he knew better than to make any sudden movements.
“No, I—” Dane started to answer.
“And you didn’t come to the lab that morning to threaten me
?”
“Of course not.”
She ran a hand against the peeled molding of a windowsill. “And you didn’t intend to threaten me . . . that first day we were sparring in physical combat?”
Where was this going? He shook his head, now completely off balance, and lifted a knee off the plywood. “Why would I do that?”
“I’m not sure.” Her voice vibrated just a bit. “I’m not sure why you would do those things. Or why you would make fun of me in class—”
What?
“—when you barely knew me. Or why you would break into a computer lab without taking the least trouble to cover your tracks.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?” Her words fell like glass splinters onto clean boards.
To argue would negate the truth of his other denials. His right hand flexed, reaching blindly for the hammer. Not there. Dimly he remembered that he had dropped the tool on his other side.
“Why?” She asked the question he had prided himself on avoiding.
“Why what?”
“Why try to get caught?”
He stood up, hoping the movement would give him confidence. It failed utterly. Sliding his hands into his pockets, he shrugged, providing no answer.
She was undeterred. “You must have assumed I would be blamed. You’re not stupid.”
Right. “Look, Aerin, sometimes when I’m angry, I don’t think.” How many times had Pete warned Dane against that exact failing?
“Why were you angry?”
He was not going to answer that, not for anyone. He had assumed his father would pull him from the school. The entire point of the break-in had been to preempt that fact and attract enough attention to embarrass the General. But the press had never gotten hold of the story, and, for some unfathomable reason, Dane was still here.
He and Aerin stood for a while, each looking at the other without really seeing. For Dane, the face in front of him, the pipes, the boards, even the massive stone building and the sweeping school grounds disappeared. His thoughts wandered around inside himself, careening down hidden passages and bumping into corners.
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