The High Ground

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “My consequence is so low it would take a microscope to see it,” Hugo said quietly.

  Finally Tracy actually looked at Hugo. There was a shadow of unhappiness in the big man’s eyes, and he looked vulnerable. Tracy’s earlier anger against the man faded. He jerked his head toward the archway leading to the landing and they left the ballroom.

  “I take it this hasn’t been a great night for you, either?”

  “You could say that.”

  “So, what happened to you?”

  “You first,” Hugo countered.

  “I got challenged to a duel. By Cullen.”

  “You’ll need a second.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Tracy leaned back against the thin silver balustrade. “Why? Why would you do that? Aren’t you worried you’ll piss off the high and mighty Vizconde Dorado Arco?”

  “First, like I told you before—I owe you. And second, these wankers wouldn’t let me invite my mom and dad to this shindig.”

  “Huh? He’s a knight.”

  “Yeah, but not the right kind of knight. Dad lobbied like a mother for this title, and it doesn’t mean dick. The worst part was that he took this insult like a grateful Hajin, all grinning and bowing. Said he and Mom wouldn’t know how to go on at something like this, and they wouldn’t want to take away from my shine.”

  They fell silent for a moment. “Maybe your kids will be considered sufficiently well born,” Tracy offered.

  “Yeah, give it a generation to get the stink of commerce off them. So, yeah. I’ll stand up with you.”

  “I’m told I need two.”

  Hugo frowned, thinking, then a slow smile bloomed. “I’ve got a crazy-ass idea…”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Sumiko?”

  “She’s a woman,” Tracy blurted.

  “You noticed.” Hugo gave him a punch on the shoulder. “She’s also a cadet and she’s cool. She’s been tutoring me in math.”

  Tracy frowned. “I would have helped you if you’d asked.”

  “Hello.” Hugo smacked him on the forehead. Tracy decided this habit was getting pretty damn old. “Cute girl.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” Tracy sat with the idea for a moment, and began to smile. “Oh, Dios, it’ll piss them off so bad.”

  “Yeah, and won’t that be fun?”

  “Let’s do it.” Tracy clasped Hugo’s hand. “Assuming she agrees.”

  “I’ll go talk to her. You headed home?”

  “Yeah, like I said, I’ve had about all I can take of FFH hospitality.”

  * * *

  They had returned to the palace at four a.m., and Mercedes had been too keyed up to sleep. She had had a perverse reaction to seeing Tracy leave the ball. Disappointed that he was leaving, pleased that he didn’t dance with any other girl. Later she had seen her father and Sanjay’s father in close conversation, and Julieta had danced a number of times with the young cadet. Mercedes had bitten her lip and stayed silent.

  Back in her quarters Flanon, ignoring her order, had helped her out of her dress, tutted over the blisters on her toes and heels, and brushed out her hair. Mercedes shrugged into a dressing gown, a frothy creation of lace and silk, and slipped down the hall to Estella’s room. Estella’s maid was just leaving, carrying Estella’s dress and inspecting a rip in the hem.

  “I was hoping you’d come by,” her sister said.

  They settled in the bed and Mercedes pulled the covers up to her chin. “I’ll have to leave day after tomorrow, so I’m not sure I’ll find the opportunity, but could you talk to Julieta and find out how she feels about Sanjay?”

  Estella put an arm around her shoulders. “This sounds like more than just curiosity.”

  “I can say this to you. I don’t like him.” She told Estella about the sparring incident.

  “It sounds like Danica rather asked for it,” Estella offered, settling deeper into her pillows.

  “Isn’t that sort of blaming the victim?”

  “It was a sparring class. She should have expected to get hit.”

  “He lost his temper, and reacted with violence.”

  “Because he had been told to,” Estella said placidly.

  “You’re missing the point. A man who can get that angry over a few taunts—it means he is really thin-skinned. It could happen over anything.”

  “Well, you were there, and I wasn’t. Maybe I’d feel differently if I had been,” her sister murmured drowsily.

  Mercedes looked at her in frustration then sighed, kissed the top of Estella’s head and slipped out of the bed. She returned to her room, sat in the window seat, watched the dawn nibble away at the night fog billowing in the garden, and remembered the touch of men’s hands on her waist.

  18

  GO ALONG TO GET ALONG

  Tracy was embarrassed to discover he’d slept until nearly eight. He also woke with a raging erection. He flushed because the last dream he remembered had been of Mercedes. Would that qualify as sedition? Maybe Cullen was right and he did deserve a lesson in manners. A normal person wouldn’t have lustful thoughts about his future ruler.

  He hoped a chill shower would tame the rude beast. It didn’t entirely work and he was pulling jeans on over an aching hard-on. He eyed the bed and thought about taking care of the problem, but he was afraid where his fantasies might take him.

  For a moment he considered the Candy Box. His dad had taken him to the small and oddly cozy whorehouse when he’d turned sixteen. It was a standard coming-of-age ritual for League males, and Sara, the madam who owned the establishment and who Alexander occasionally visited when his own needs became too great, had picked the perfect girl for a shy and awkward teenage boy.

  Lisbet was in her mid-twenties, not overtly voluptuous, but rather freshly pretty. She had put him at ease, nurtured Tracy’s erection, endured his fumbling entrance and brought him to climax. She had even given him a second orgasm because the first time he had come so fast.

  Thinking about that experience had the desired result. Tracy took another shower and finished dressing. As he headed down the stairs he wondered about stopping by the brothel on this, his final day of leave. But if you went during the day a lot of the girls were involved with their kids in the nursery so selection was limited. He probably shouldn’t spend the money and he knew his dad would want to have dinner together.

  Tracy could hear the sound of the sewing machines busily chattering and felt guilty for sleeping in so late. He paused in the tiny kitchen, smeared peanut butter and jelly on a slice of bread, and entered the workroom.

  Bajit was bent over his machine. Alexander was at another, and a small Isanjo female was busy hand stitching elaborate embroidery onto the cuffs and collar of a dress shirt. His father looked up and gave him a fond smile.

  “You should have woken me up,” Tracy mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich.

  “You needed your rest. It was past one when you got home. And thank you for the video. Bajit, Nika and I enjoyed watching it. I made that uniform the Emperor was wearing,” Alexander added. Pride should have edged the words, instead they just sounded humble.

  “That’s why it looked so good,” Tracy said as he gave Alexander a quick hug. He moved to the Isanjo. “Hi, I’m Tracy.”

  “Very pleased to meet you, young lord.”

  “Well hardly. Hey, how’s it going, Bajit?”

  “Very well, sir, and may I say how happy I am to see you here.”

  Tracy remembered their final conversation and flushed. It probably wouldn’t do to tell the alien he had been right. Instead he swallowed the last of his makeshift breakfast and turned back to his dad.

  “Maybe after I graduate and start pulling a regular pay check we can buy a couple of stitch printers.”

  “Thanks, but no. This,” he gestured around the workroom, “is what sets us apart. Our clothing is made by hand, and our clientele wants that level of care. A machine can’t approximate wh
at we do.”

  “Yeah, because a machine can do it better than we can. Every stitch is identical, perfect. We make mistakes.”

  Alexander gave him an indulgent smile. “Haven’t you been around them long enough to realize they’re paying for those small imperfections? Those tiny differences prove the FFH and the financial class have the money and the time to rely on the labor of others. Our clothes speak to their status.”

  His father’s face was shining with pride, and Tracy realized that by sewing the clothes worn by the FFH it gave him a sense that he was part of that world, however tenuous the connection might be. Now his father’s deference to the ruling class made more sense to Tracy, and increased the pressure on Tracy to succeed at the academy.

  “I just don’t want you to have to work so hard,” Tracy said softly, but knowing this was a battle he had lost.

  “Because I’m getting so old,” Alexander teased. Tracy gulped and his dad fondly ruffled his hair. “It’s okay, I thought Granddad was a dinosaur too when I was your age.”

  Tracy could barely remember the bitter old man with the arthritis-gnarled hands. He had died only a year after their ignominious return from Reichart’s World, the Hidden World where they had lost everything.

  Tracy settled at the third sewing machine. “Well, while I’m here let me help you get a jump on the orders.”

  “Oh, no, no. You’re done with tailoring now.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Tracy muttered.

  “You should relax, spend time with your friends.”

  I don’t have any. What he said was, “I’d rather spend time with you, Dad.”

  * * *

  Mercedes hurried down the corridor, her riding boots beating a tattoo on the stone floor. She checked inside her helmet and realized that while she’d remembered her gloves she had forgotten her spurs. She turned back toward her quarters when a prick on her finger signaled a call coming in.

  Her stepmother’s face appeared in the holo of her ScoopRing. “Mercedes, would you mind stopping by my rooms before you go?” Constanza asked.

  “I’m already late. Can it—”

  “I expect they will wait. You are the Infanta.”

  The connection was broken. Mercedes tried to decide if Constanza had sounded mad. Then she realized it had been unshed tears making Constanza’s voice so harsh. She stopped by her room for her spurs then went to the other wing of the palace where her father and his current wife had their quarters.

  Mercedes tapped gently on the enamel-inlaid door. The pattern was abstract but still made her think of peacocks’ tails. Constanza had done a complete remodel of the consort’s chambers that had begun even before she and the Emperor were married. Mercedes couldn’t really blame her. It would have been awful to have returned from her honeymoon to a suite of rooms filled with tangible reminders of her predecessor.

  “Come in.”

  The words were barely audible. Mercedes pushed open the doors and entered the sitting room. Constanza was slumped in a sleekly modern chair. Her head was resting on her hand and she wore a heavy dressing gown even though the day was quite warm. She held a damp wadded handkerchief in her free hand.

  “You needed me?” Mercedes said when there was no greeting from her stepmother. She walked toward the chair.

  Constanza looked up. Her face was blotchy, her nose and eyes red and swimming with tears.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. Yet.” Her tone was doleful. “He’s going to set me aside.”

  Mercedes pulled over an ottoman and sat down in front of her stepmother. “Why do you say that? Has he given you any indication that he’s going to divorce you?”

  “He put me aside last night. He escorted you.”

  A flash of irritation shot through Mercedes’ breast. She wrestled it into submission, and said mildly, “Because he was making a point. A political point.”

  “And putting me aside would also be political. I can’t lose my baby, my Carisa. I can’t. She’s all I’ve got.” It emerged as a wail.

  “Now that’s just silly. You have Papa. You have all of us.”

  “You all hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. My sisters don’t hate you. It’s not like we haven’t been to this dance before.”

  “The twins—”

  “Were so small when Inez left that I doubt they have many memories of her. You’re the only mother they’ve ever known, and they all love you and Carisa. They play together, Carisa, Delia and Dulcinea. They’re sisters in every way that matters.”

  Constanza’s lips quivered. “Do you think he’d let me keep my baby?”

  No, he won’t because we’re pawns in the game of empire, Mercedes thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. “Constanza, my father loves you. Look, he divorced Inez before the twins were a year old. He’s been with you almost seven years. If he was going to try again he would have done it before now.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yes.”

  And then Mercedes wondered why he hadn’t. She’d never really thought about it before. The carousel of revolving wives had come to seem normal to her, but the times between divorces had gotten progressively shorter with Constanza replacing Inez almost as soon as the twins had been born.

  Mercedes looked at the woman seated across from her and once again reflected that Constanza was only six years older than herself. She had been seventeen when she had married Fernán. A mother ten months later. That thought sent a stab of regret through Mercedes. Marriage and motherhood, that had been her dream, and now it seemed destined to be only one small part of the nightmare that was her life. Yes she would marry—as a way to consolidate power. And she would have children—as a way to ensure the Arango grip on the throne. But she would also have to rule and lead and possibly fight. No woman could successfully do all those things. She would fail at one or several of those duties, and since a failure of leadership would have far worse consequences it was probably going to be as wife and mother where she would fall short.

  Constanza spoke, pulling Mercedes out of her brown study. “I don’t know why I never asked, but why doesn’t Inez come to visit the twins?” Her stepmother frowned. “You all have visits with your mothers. Why doesn’t she come?”

  “That’s not entirely true. Agatha only came to see Izzy and Tanis once, but that’s because she’s a bitch, and she’s never forgiven or forgotten. But Inez died. Freak boating accident shortly after she remarried.”

  “Do you… love your mother?” Constanza’s hand shot out and gripped Mercedes.

  “Yes.”

  Constanza caught the minute hesitation, and gave her hand a shake. “You should love her!”

  The conversation was starting to annoy and disturb Mercedes. She had a brief thought that perhaps her stepmother was drunk or drugged. She pulled her hand free and stood up.

  “Look, I do love her. I just don’t know her very well, okay? Maribel married Hector Breganza and they live on a reclaimed Hidden World. You act like Daddy’s a monster. It’s not like he kept her away from us. She’s just living a long way away, and she has her own kids… I mean new kids now.”

  “You have siblings and you don’t even know them. That’s sad and wrong!”

  “I’m sure I’ll cross paths with them sooner or later. I’ll probably end up serving with my half-brothers. Look, Constanza, I really have to go. I think you’re tired and overwrought. Why don’t you lie down, rest for a while. Daddy isn’t going to divorce you.”

  Small mournful sobs like the cooing of a sick dove filled the room. Constanza’s shoulders shook. Mercedes sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “I’ll talk to my father, okay? I’ll find out.”

  Constanza nodded mutely, gripped Mercedes’ hand again, and pressed it to her cheek. Mercedes gently pulled free and gratefully escaped.

  * * *

  Tracy settled back against the cushions of the luxurious self-fly flitter that Hugo Devris had sent an
d watched the coast pass beneath him. After his conversation about stitch printers Tracy had a better appreciation of why the FFH tended to have chauffeurs. Yes, the self-fly vehicles were more efficient, but his conversation with his dad had given Tracy a new appreciation of exactly what constituted “privilege”. A driver was another way to abundantly display it.

  The day was overcast and there were only a few people walking along the beach while dogs cavorted in the sand ahead of them. Judging by the flitter’s direction Hugo lived on the narrow peninsula that hung like a small appendix from the body of the coast. While the big houses on that spit of land had spectacular ocean views it was a swelteringly hot location, and frequently buffeted by storms, which was why it had become where a lot of families involved in “trade” had settled. But it definitely beat being in the city proper where the heat was worse and the views non-existent.

  Hugo’s call had come earlier that day. Tracy had just returned from picking up shawarma for their lunch when his ring pricked his index finger indicating an incoming call.

  Subtlety wasn’t the other cadet’s strong suit so Hugo had almost bellowed out, “Hey, I’ve got some news about the du—”

  “Shhhh,” Tracy had hissed, desperate that his father not learn about the duel. Fortunately Alexander had his head bent over his work and headphones in his ears.

  Hugo’s face swimming in the holo had looked contrite. “Oh right, the thing. Anyway, want to come to the house tonight? Come for dinner, my folks want to meet you. Afterward I’ll fill you in.”

  When Tracy had asked for his address Hugo had laughed. “If there’s one thing we’ve got it’s flitters. I’ll send one for you.”

  Tracy had hated telling his dad that they wouldn’t have a final dinner together, but he knew this duel took precedence and as usual his father was thrilled he had been invited to the home of one of his well-born classmates.

  So now Tracy found himself being delivered to the front steps of a big, pink stone house on the waterfront. There was a Hajin butler in livery so ostentatious and overblown that it wouldn’t have been out of place in an operetta. Tracy didn’t recognize it and realized that Malcomb Devris had probably had it designed once he got his knighthood.