“Merendsen, I doubt this guy’s after a book.” Fancy Top Hat smirks at me.
I look down and realize I’m still holding the book I took from the shelves. Right, because this guy is poor, he can’t even read.
“I’m sure he was just about to go,” says the girl, fixing Top Hat with a steely glare. “And I’m pretty sure you were about to leave, too.”
They’re caught off guard by her dismissal, and I use the moment to relieve my fellow officers of their captive, keeping hold of his arm as I guide him away. She’s effectively dismissed the quartet from the salon—again her face tickles my memory, who is she that she can do that?—and I let them make their enforced escape before I gently but firmly steer my new friend toward the door.
“Anything broken?” I ask, once we’re outside. “What possessed you to go near them, and in a place like this? I half thought you were aiming to blow someone up.”
The man gazes at me for a long moment, his face already older than the people inside will ever look.
He turns to walk away without another word, shoulders bowed. I wonder just how much he had riding on this manufactured encounter with the girl in the blue dress.
I stand in the doorway, watching as people give up on the drama now that it’s done. The room slowly comes back to life, the hover trays zipping around, conversation surging, perfectly practiced laughter tinkling here and there. I’m supposed to be here at least another hour, but maybe just this once I can skip out early.
And then I see the girl again—and she’s watching me. Very slowly she’s taking off one of her gloves, pinching each finger deliberately in turn. Her gaze never leaves my face.
My heart surges up into my throat, and I know I’m staring like an idiot, but I’m damned if I can remember how my legs work. I stare a beat too long, and her lips curve to a hint of a smile. But somehow, her smile doesn’t look as though it’s mocking me, and I get it together enough to start walking.
When she lets her glove fall to the ground, I’m the one who leans down to pick it up.
I don’t want to ask her if she’s all right—she’s too collected for that. So I put the glove down on the table, then find myself with no excuse to do anything other than look at her. Blue eyes. They go with the dress. Do lashes grow that long naturally? So many perfect faces, it’s hard to tell who’s been surgically altered and who hasn’t. But surely if she’d had work done, she’d have opted for a straight, classically beautiful nose. No, she looks real.
“Are you waiting for a drink?” My voice sounds mostly even.
“For my companions,” she says, lowering the deadly lashes before peering up at me through them. “Captain?” She tilts the word upward, as though she’s taking a stab at my rank.
“Major,” I say. She knows how to read my insignia; I just saw her name the ranks of the other officers. Her sort, the society girls, they all know how. It’s a game. I might not be society, but I still know a player when I see one. “Not sure that was smart of your companions, leaving you unattended. Now you’re stuck talking to me.”
Then she smiles, and it turns out she has dimples, and it’s all over. It’s not just the way she looks—although that would do it all on its own. It’s that, despite the way she looks, despite where I found her, this girl’s willing to go against the tide. She’s not another empty-headed puppet. It’s like finding another human after days of isolation.
“Is it going to cause an intergalactic incident if I keep you company until your friends get here?”
“Not at all.” She tilts her head a little to indicate the opposite side of the booth. The bench curves around in a semicircle from where she sits. “Though I feel I should warn you that you could be here for a while. My friends aren’t really known for their punctuality.”
I laugh, and I set down the book and my drink on the table beside her glove, sinking down to sit opposite her. She’s wearing one of those enormous skirts that are in fashion these days, and the fabric brushes against my legs as I settle. She doesn’t move away. “You should have seen me as a cadet,” I say, as though that wasn’t just a year ago. “Punctuality was pretty much the only thing we were known for. Never ask how or why, just get it done fast.”
“Then we have something in common,” she says. “We aren’t encouraged to ask why, either.” Neither of us asks why we’re sitting together. We’re smart.
“I can see at least half a dozen guys watching us. Am I making any deadly enemies? Or at least, any more than I already have?”
“Would it stop you from sitting here?” she asks, finally removing the second glove and setting it down on the table.
“Not necessarily,” I reply. “Handy thing to know, though. Plenty of dark hallways on this ship, if I’m going to have rivals waiting around corners.”
“Rivals?” she asks, lifting one brow. I know she’s playing a game with me, but I don’t know the rules, and she’s got all the cards. Still, the hell with it—I just can’t find it in me to care that I’m losing. I’ll surrender right now, if she likes.
“I suppose they might imagine themselves to be,” I say eventually. “Those gentlemen over there don’t look particularly impressed.” I nod to the group in frock coats and more top hats. At home we’re a simpler people, and you take your hat off when you come inside.
“Let’s make it worse,” she says promptly. “Read to me from your book, and I’ll look rapt. And you could order me a drink, if you like.”
I glance down at the book I plucked off the shelf. Mass Casualty: A History of Failed Campaigns. I slide it a little farther away, wincing inwardly. “Perhaps the drink. I’ve been away from your bright lights for a while, so I’m a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure talking about bloody death’s not the best way to charm a girl.”
“I’ll have to content myself with champagne, then.” She continues, as I raise a hand to signal one of the hover trays. “You say ‘bright lights’ with a hint of disdain, Major. I’m from those bright lights. Do you fault me for that?”
“I could fault you for nothing.” The words somehow bypass my brain entirely. Mutiny.
She drops her eyes for the compliment, still smiling. “You say you’ve been away from civilization, Major, but your flattery’s giving you away. It can’t have been all that long.”
“We’re very civilized out on the frontier,” I say, pretending offense. “Every so often we take a break from slogging through waist-high muck or dodging bullets and issue dance invitations. My old drill sergeant used to say that nothing teaches you the quickstep like the ground giving way beneath your feet.”
“I suppose so,” she agrees as a full tray comes humming toward us in response to my summons. She selects a glass of champagne and raises it in half a toast to me before she sips. “Can you tell me your name, or is it classified?” she asks, as though she doesn’t know.
I reach for the other glass and send the tray humming off into the crowd again. “Merendsen.” Even if it’s a pretense, it’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t raving about my astounding heroics or asking for a picture with me. “Tarver Merendsen.” She’s looking at me like she doesn’t recognize me from all the newspapers and holovids.
“Major Merendsen.” She tries it out, leaning on the m’s, then nods her approval. The name passes muster, at least for now.
“I’m heading back to the bright lights for my next posting. Which one of them is your home?”
“Corinth, of course,” she replies. The brightest light of all. Of course. “Though I spend more time on ships like this than planetside. I’m most at home here on the Icarus.”
“Even you must be impressed by the Icarus. She’s bigger than any city I’ve been to.”
“She’s the biggest,” my companion replies, dropping her eyes and toying with the stem of the champagne flute. Though she hides it well, there’s a flicker through her features. Talking about the ship must bore her. Maybe it’s the spaceliner equivalent of asking about the weather.
C’mon, man, get it together. I clear my throat. “The viewing decks are the best I’ve seen. I’m used to planets with very little ambient light, but the view out here is something else.”
She meets my eyes for half a breath—then her lips quirk to the tiniest of smiles. “I don’t think I’ve taken advantage of them enough, this trip. Perhaps we—” But then she cuts herself short, glancing toward the door.
I’d forgotten we were in a crowded room. But the moment she looks away, all the music and conversation comes surging back. There’s a girl with reddish-blond hair—a relative, I’m sure, though her nose is straight and perfect—descending upon my companion, a small entourage in tow.
“Lil, there you are,” she says, scolding, and holding out her hand in a clear invitation. No surprise, I’m not included. The entourage swirls into place behind her.
“Anna,” says my companion, who now has a name. Lil. “May I present Major Merendsen?”
“Charmed.” Anna’s voice is dismissive, and I reach for my book and my drink. I know my cue.
“Please, I think I’m in your chair,” I say. “It was a pleasure.”
“Yes.” Lil ignores Anna’s hand, her fingers curling around the stem of her champagne glass as she looks across at me. I like to think that she regrets the interruption a little.
Then I rise, and with a small bow of the sort we reserve for civilians, I make my escape. The girl in the blue dress watches me go.
“You next encountered her…?”
“The day of the accident.”
“What were your intentions at that stage?”
“I had none.”
“Why not?”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Major, we aren’t here to entertain you.”
“I found out who she was. That it was over before I even said hello.”
TWO
LILAC
“DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS?” Anna tilts her head toward the major as he slips out of the salon.
“Mmm.” I try to sound noncommittal. Of course I know—the guy’s picture was plastered across every holoscreen for weeks. Major Tarver Merendsen, war hero. His pictures don’t do him justice. He looks younger in person, for one. But mostly, in his pictures, he’s always stern, frowning.
Anna’s escort of the evening, a tuxedo-clad younger man, asks us what we’d like to drink. I never bother to remember the names of Anna’s dates. Half the time she doesn’t even introduce them before handing them her fan and clutch and skittering off to dance with someone else. As he heads to the bar with Elana, Swann follows them, after a long, level look at me.
I know I’ll catch hell later for slipping my bodyguard and getting here early, but it was worth it. You have to know to look for it, nearly invisible in the lines of Swann’s skirt, but there’s a knife at one thigh and a tiny pistol set to stun in her clutch. There are jokes about how the LaRoux princess never goes anywhere without her entourage of giggling companions—that half of them could kill a man at a hundred yards is not exactly public knowledge. The President’s family doesn’t have protection like mine.