Chapter Five
COMBAT
AERIN TRIED TO BLOCK OUT THE DEAFENING NOISE OF the cafeteria: utensils banging onto plates, plates onto trays, trays onto tables. Chairs scraped across floor tiles. Machines beeped at the entrance. And over it all came the jarring clash of a hundred voices talking about the first morning’s classes.
She wanted out. Needed out.
But if she left, someone might notice. Instead, she retreated inside her head, bringing up the vision of the Code of Conduct, its list of three rules spinning on the backs of her eyelids. Question. Commit. Strive.She clung to the words. For six years her only code had been survival.
Here survival was different, the pitfalls invisible to the naked eye, obscured by the unknown. She had been on edge all morning, certain she would make a mistake.
“You know you made a fool of yourself today.” A sharp voice confirmed her own fears. Painted-green fingernails brushed against the side of Aerin’s tray, and an olive-brown hand propped itself on the table’s edge. Yvonne leaned forward, balancing a salad plate on her left palm. “You can’t possibly not know who he is,” she said, biting into a hot chili pepper, then waving her hand as if to cool the taste.
Who who is? Aerin chose not to respond. One lesson she had learned on Vizhan was never to confirm another’s accusation.
“You really don’t, do you?” Yvonne’s voice glinted with astonishment. Bending across the table, she whispered the name, “Dane Madousin,” then pulled back, searching for some type of reaction.
None came. Aerin scrambled through her mental database, but the name meant nothing.
The girl gestured toward a young man lifting a gooey pastry from the dessert table. His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, a white scar on his lower arm marring the brown-ness of his tan. Pale shadows traced the slight hollows of his cheeks and the rim of his jaw. His black hair curled halfway down his neck, and Aerin recognized the way he surveyed the room, his eyes searching without appearing to do so.
It was the boy from the tech lab, the one who had offered to help, then given her a strange look when she had asked how to start the machine. As if he knew there was something wrong. That she did not belong.
“He’s the son of General Madousin.” Yvonne’s words came slowly, with heavy emphasis. “The Council member. And the head of the Allied military.”
An ominous twinge pricked Aerin’s stomach.
Yvonne went on, “During debate you criticized the Alliance for not saving some slaves or something, and he actually argued on your side.”
Aerin’s spoon tightened in her hand. The events from debate came flooding back. She had not meant to argue with the teacher, but he had rejected her first answer. And she could not afford to fail. He had made her so angry, hedging around her question, then dismissing all those people on X-level planets, all those victims, as if they were nothing. And then it had turned out the teacher was only testing her to see if she would stand up for her views. Well, she had. Precious little good it would do the people she had left behind.
Yvonne was still talking about Dane. “He even pretended to criticize the Wyan-Ot mission when everyone knows his father is in charge of it.”
“Pretended?” The question slipped. Aerin vaguely remembered someone joining in her side of the argument, but by then she had been too upset to pay heed.
“Of course. You didn’t think he was serious, did you?”
Aerin blinked, her cheeks flaming. He had been making fun of her then, perhaps all morning.
Yvonne lifted a hand to wave at a group of girls across the room, then shifted her plate and stood erect. “I just thought you should know.” Her hips swayed as she walked away, and the backs of the green-painted fingernails on her right hand grazed against the arm of the young man she had been discussing.
Aerin cringed and stared down at her bowl. The cheese had congealed at the top of her soup, and the smell of garlic now turned her stomach. All month she had spent studying, but it had taken her less than a day to betray her own ignorance and become a target.
“Mind if I sit?”
She looked up.
Into the deep brown eyes of Dane Madousin.
“I was just leaving.” She lurched to her feet but banged the table with her knee. Her tray jolted, and the milk glass tumbled sideways, spraying liquid all over the front of his uniform.
He stood there, frozen, his tray still in his hands, milk dripping down the black folds of his shirt and pants.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped, then cursed herself. Why apologize when he had destroyed her entire morning? Flushed, she brushed past him, trying to ignore the burning stares of the other students. Run! Get away! her head screamed, but she made herself walk calmly. Somehow she dumped her tray onto the conveyer belt and strode through the swinging doors before breaking into a sprint.
Her feet pounded across the path. She burst through the outer fringe of the garden and continued on, deeper and deeper into the tangled core. At first she was just running, heeding neither where she was going nor the scratching branches. Then a small trickle of blood oozed into her eye and brought her to a stop.
She wiped a finger across the scrape, decided it was nothing serious, and moved on at a slower pace, pausing now to avoid raised roots and low-hanging limbs. A flash of white glinted through the trees, and for a moment she thought she might have circled back to the path, but as she listened, a sustained whisper reached her ears.
A chill slid along her neck. Another ten steps and she found herself standing on the edge of a white paved circle, ten feet wide. At the circle’s center rose a plume of clear water, arcing up and outward, then tumbling in a fine spray.
The fountain acted as a trigger, releasing tension. Aerin’s feet gave out from under her, and her body slumped to the ground just beyond the water’s reach. She pulled her knees close to her chest and dropped her head.
Was this what she had become? A coward hiding within an even tighter circle than the Wall. She could not, could not live like this. And what was she running from? The rude behavior of one young man?
Nothing at the school truly frightened her. It was not this place, but the thought of it as being temporary. Of being sent back.
She closed her eyes and tried to force away the images of the beatings she had seen given to captured runaways. The slow, painful deaths on display for other slaves who might consider the same course of action. The blood. And the screams.
Yet she had chosen to run that risk. And she was not about to let one small mistake, or one person, interfere with her chance at a future.
Rising to her feet, Aerin brushed herself off. She would be a fool to think she could flip some switch and change the natural course of her feelings, but she would have to try. Facing down one challenge at a time. Beginning with Dane Madousin.
Dane turned out to be a greater challenge then Aerin had anticipated. The afternoon instructor, Miss Maya, who was in charge of physical fitness and combat training, ran all the first-years through a rigorous set of fitness tests at the south end of the lawn. Tests of speed, strength, and agility: running at a short distance, running at a long one, throwing weights, climbing nets, and jumping pits. Competitions for the most pull-ups in five minutes, the most sit-ups in ten. Timed rope climbs and an obstacle course.
Without exception, Aerin came second in every single test—right behind Dane. By midafternoon break, she no longer cared about conquering her fears. She just wanted to thrash him at something.
“Enough,” Miss Maya called, clapping her hands and blowing on a silver whistle. “Huddle up.” The teacher’s youthful face and petite body made her look almost as young as the students, but her tight fitness suit revealed the toned muscles of a trained fighter. No one disobeyed her orders.
“All right,” she said, “you have all seen enough to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your classmates. Find a combat partner with a similar build and fitness level.”
The huddle splintered, and Aerin tried to back away from the throng, but a tight grip clamped down on her shoulder. “Your partner is right here, Miss Renning.” The teacher steered her in front of Dane.
He cocked a black eyebrow and held out a hand for Aerin to shake.
She declined, then frowned at the grin that spread across the width of his face. He must think he could easily defeat her.
Within minutes the class had split into pairs. Again Miss Maya blew her whistle. “The person you are standing across from may or may not be your partner at the close of today. We’ll start with some basic challenges, and I will reshuffle you as you work. Your cohort at day’s end will be your partner for the rest of term.
“This is physical combat,” she continued. “You may use only your body and your environment. Spread out, ladies and gentlemen, and try to topple your partner to the ground.
“Without causing serious injury,” she added belatedly.
Aerin felt nerves zip like static over her skin as she followed Dane to the outer edge of the group. It’s only a training session, she reminded herself.
They faced off, his slender frame a mere four feet from hers. His hands rested at his sides; his shoulders slumped, relaxed.
But she had learned too much in the fitness tests to underestimate him.
Moving to the left, Aerin tried to feel the ground beneath her feet. The slick grass nullified the traction on her boots, and she longed to undo the laces and slip free the leather weights.
Her opponent, however, moved with ease, also circling left. She staggered her steps to see if he would adjust. He did. In his own time, without shuffling or losing flow. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said, breaking the silence between them.
Trying to break my concentration.She switched direction, wanting to see him react.
His face remained calm as he shifted the other way, keeping his center squarely across from hers, not letting her deter him from talking. “About what you did in the lab.”
Without warning, he spun in a quick turn, aiming a kick at her side. She stepped close to lessen his power and thrust his leg away with her hands. He smiled, leaping back out of reach. “In Zaniels’s class,” he continued, “that was something: the way you avoided the password. I’ve never seen anyone break through security like that.”
Horror trickled down her shoulders like sweat. She had thought of sidestepping the password as only a shortcut, not as breaking the rules. Was he threatening to turn her in?
Instead of gauging her reaction, his eyes watched her body, their depths flashing from dark to light as he circled into the sun’s path. When he did meet her gaze, they held only a strange look of curiosity. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share where you learned that trick?”
She whirled left, moving in for a hit.
He blocked with his right arm. “Guess not.” His mouth twitched with humor.
What was this? His way of entertaining himself? She backed off, forcing him to make the next move.
It came once again without setup. He stepped in for a sideways blow to her chest. This time she countered, curving around and jabbing her elbow toward his abdomen. He danced away.
But she had learned what she needed to know. All his moves were predictable: blocks, hits, kicks—all things she had learned from her father when she was young. Before Vizhan. Before she’d had to fight for every meal and learned that creative violence was the only defense against starvation.
Once again she waited for Dane to attack. He took his time, choosing instead to waste his breath with more speech. “You had a point this morning, in debate.”
Hadn’t he derived enough pleasure from that episode without using it here? Aerin reined in her temper. He’s trying to goad you into moving first, she told herself.
Then it came. A quick rotation and a kick toward her hip.
She dropped low to the ground, used her right foot as a pivot, and swung her left leg under his feet. To his credit, he reacted with speed, jumping over the leg. But she had him anyway. His jump was all defense with no counter.
He was barely out of the air when she hooked his knee with the inside of her elbow and pulled forward. Hard. Down he fell. His leg came out from under him, and his back hit the ground with a solid thud.
Aerin waited, crouched at his side until she saw the first rise and fall of his chest. The maddening smile was gone, replaced by something she could not read. She straightened, a single fist clenched in triumph.