The Academy Post #23

Notes:  The plot thickens!  Secrets, deal-making, questionable science and muddy motivations…what the hell am I doing with this story again?  Here’s hoping I can keep all my plot lines straight.  Enjoy!

Title: The Academy

Part Twenty-Three:  Step Into My Web

 

***

Darrell Parrish III was destined from an early age to strive to fill a lot of roles.  He and so many of his extended family were raised to fill in the perceived gaps in the Parrish legacy, keeping the status of the family on an ever-increasing arc toward glory.  Darrell’s father had done his duty, marrying well and serving honorably, and then had almost ruined everything by getting killed.  The award of Legacy status to his son was the least the Federation could do, his parents felt, after such a grievous loss.  That status, along with the roles of star athlete, future Federation officer and networker extraordinaire were all passed along to his son, with every expectation of his loyalty to the cause.  After all, what lifted up the family lifted up Darrell, and influence was the coin of choice among those in the know in the Federation.  Money was nothing by comparison to power, and knowledge was the nectar of the gods.

Darrell had never embraced his destiny as fully as his grandparents wanted, but getting him into the Academy was the first step in their endgame.  All he had to do was make the right moves, follow the right plans, and he would be on the right path.  After Darrell started avoiding his grandparents’ holocalls, they turned their attentions to messages, sending him an updated synopsis of their expectations every week.  Darrell generally skimmed them and moved on, but this time there were a few points that particularly caught his eye.

Item #14-The True Patriot Scholarship.  An exciting opportunity for any Academy cadet, the True Patriot Scholarship offers a tiered system of rewards based on the independent valuation of any information submitted to the True Patriot Scholarship Committee that directly relates to central system security.  Any cadet who passes along valuable intelligence on potential threats to Federation sovereignty will be kept strictly confidential.  The rewards include credits for extracurricular activities, monetary compensation, and even a guaranteed commission in the field of your choice upon graduation!  **Available to Legacy students only.  DNA verification required before contact with scholarship committee can be made.

Beneath it was a note from his grandmother, saying “This could be PERFECT for you!  DO THIS!!!”  It actually took Darrell a moment to realize that what made him special when it came to an opportunity like this were his quad mates.  An alien, a Fringer and a Solaydorian nutcase.  Naturally his grandmother thought they were a hotbed of revolutionary activity, given how tense things were getting on Liberty.

His family wanted him to spy on his quad mates, his friends, and report on them to some vague board of directors that he would probably never know anything about.  Well, fuck that.

As far as Darrell was concerned that should have been the end of it, but it turned out that there were plenty of Legacy students who were more enthusiastic about following the guidelines, and apparently some of them thought that he could be used as a direct source of information about his quad mates.  He turned away three curious, pushy Legacies before his first period was over, and in every class after that someone new found an excuse to sit next to him and start to pry.  By the time he sat down for Tactics it was to the point where he wanted to start yelling at people.  The only person to sit next to him, though, was—

“Valero.”

She smiled briefly.  “Darrell.”

“I’m not talking about them,” he told her.  “So don’t even ask.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

He stared at her in disbelief.  “You weren’t going to.  Right.”

“I wasn’t!” she protested.  “No one knows better than me how tight your little cabal is.  I’m not here to question you, I’m here to keep other people from questioning you.  No one will bother you while I’m sitting here.”  Sure enough, a few other hopeful-looking Legacies had turned tail and run to their normal seats.

“Why are you helping me out?” Darrell asked.  He and Valero hadn’t interacted at all since The Incident, and he hadn’t been too sad about that.

“Because,” she said, tossing her platinum hair over her shoulder.  “Even though we’re not close anymore doesn’t mean we can’t still be friendly.  Don’t tell me anything about any of your quad; don’t even mention their names.  I don’t want to know.  Besides,” she added with a smirk, “your grade in this class is probably low enough without having to work around people distracting you.”

“I’m not doing that badly,” Darrell protested, but she was right, Tactics wasn’t his strong suit, which wasn’t good in a cadet on Command track.  She raised an eyebrow, and he caved.  “Okay, so I’m not doing well.”

“All the more reason to accept my help.  With studying, with notes…just as friends,” she said.

“As friends?”

“What, am I absolutely not allowed to be your friend anymore because I made one mistake?  For which I apologized?” she huffed.  “Fine, be that way.”  She hunched her shoulders and turned away.

“Wait.”  Darrell reached out and touched her wrist.  “Sorry.  I do need help in this class, and if you’re offering...”

Valero’s tiny smile reappeared.  “So, friends then?”

Darrell shrugged, but he was smiling too.  “We can maybe work up to that.”

 

***

 

Grennson had never been around so many conflicting emotions in his entire life, and it was giving him a permanent headache.  Perels could lie and hide their own emotions well enough, and when they felt they felt deeply and with an enduring intensity that most human emotions seemed to lack, but when humans felt something strongly, it was like a flame in Grennson’s mind.  That much, he thought he’d been prepared for: humans were bright and complicated, but he had years of learning to manage his empathy to help him, and experience with humans that almost no Perel could match.  He’d grown up with Jason, after all.

It turned out that Jason was almost more Perel than he was human, emotionally.  He was calm and controlled and consistent, and what he said and what he felt were in sync more often than not.  The average human flitted between emotions like bark beetles darting from tree to tree, eating a little here, a little there, but rarely committing to one for very long.  It made Grennson feel like his mind was on fire sometimes, especially lately, with so many more people looking his way, feeling everything from tentative to anticipatory to hateful.

Those people Grennson could mostly block out.  Darrell had told him about the scholarship offer, and the ridiculous reason for it.  If that made a certain subset of the cadet population more vicious than normal, well, Grennson was very well prepared to deal with that.  He could feel false friendship, and he had no problem turning people away.  As far as he was concerned, it was a non-issue.  The bigger issue this past week came from Cody.

Cody was fighting with himself about something concerning Grennson.  He hadn’t come to a decision about it yet, and because of their closeness Cody’s unease affected Grennson, because he couldn’t close out the emotions of a friend as entirely as he could strangers.  By the fifth evening Cody’s indecision was so strong that Grennson felt almost paralyzed by it, unable to draw a full breath.  He sat down on his bed and did his best to clear his mind, running through the meditation exercises he’d learned as a child and trying not to give in to just asking what was going on.  He wasn’t supposed to pry, he wasn’t supposed to push.

Fortunately, Cody rendered the point moot by finally making up his mind.  It was Friday evening, Darrell was at paraball practice and Ten was in the lab.  It was just Grennson and Cody, and Cody came and sat down with him at the table just as Grennson was finishing making tea.

“I need to talk to you,” Cody said quietly.

“Oh, good,” Grennson said, sighing with relief.  When Cody looked curious, he added, “I’ve been waiting for you to speak to me for days, you’ve felt very unbalanced.”

Cody grimaced.  “Sorry about that.  I had some things I needed to…anyway.  I want to give you something.”  He opened his hand and set a small silver circle on the center of the table.  “It’s an inertial dampener.  It only works for five seconds, but for those five seconds everything coming into your space will slow way down.  You have to hit it hard to activate it.”

Grennson reached out and touched the device, but didn’t pick it up.  “Where did you get it?”

“My father made it for me, as a safety precaution.  Just in case, you know?”

Ah, yes.  “Your fathers are on Liberty by now.”

“Yes,” Cody said unhappily.  His mind practically broadcasted danger, targets, danger! at Grennson.  “They want me to be safe, and I want you to be safe, so…please take it.  You can wear it on your uniform, it’s the same shape as our buttons.”

“Do you really think I’m in danger?”  Grennson asked a bit nervously.  Face to face confrontations he could handle, he was stronger and faster than almost any unmodified human, but if he were outnumbered or taken by surprise…

“I don’t know.  I really, really hope not, but things are strange right now,” Cody said.  “And the stupid scholarship thing means you’re getting a lot of attention, and I just…please take it.”

“If I take it, will it mean you go without?”

“No,” Cody assured him.  “I’ve got one for myself too.”

Grennson smiled a little.  “None for Darrell or Ten?”

Cody smiled back.  “Nobody will mess with Darrell, and as for Ten, there’s nothing surprising about hir.  Everyone ze ever meets knows exactly how ze feels about them as soon as ze opens hir mouth.  Plus, Solaydor is very much a central planet, not exactly a hotbed of rebellion.  So.”  He looked at Grennson hopefully.  “Will you take it?”

Grennson took the little disc and carefully fit it onto the front of his uniform.  “Of course.  You’re a good friend,” he said earnestly.  “You ease my mind.”  It was a Perel compliment, and Cody knew it.

“You ease my mind too.”

 

***

 

Ten was busy analyzing data in hir lab.  Ze was analyzing data and compiling results and thinking about a dozen other experiments all at once, and also thinking about hir quad mates and Kyle, and stupid legislation and also Kyle, and fucking Kyle again because when had he gotten permission to act so sweet around Cody?  Why was he doing it?  What was he hoping to get out of it?  How could Ten keep Cody from making a terrible mistake and giving in to the wiles of that emotionless, faux-smiling, long-legged, awful, charming, handsome, terrible idiot? 

It would take evidence.  Evidence that Kyle was up to something, evidence that he was a symptom of the much larger disease that was the Federation in general, and Kyle’s brother in particular.  Evidence that Ten was in the process of compiling, thanks to hir coronal transducer.

Garrett Caractacus-Helms had to be Ten’s favorite person right now next to Cody…well, and Jonah, but that wasn’t important!  Garrett was smart, so smart, in some ways almost as smart as Ten, and he’d built this wonderful, beautiful machine and loaded it with special features and given it to Ten…it was clear that Garrett understood.  He understood how hard it could be to take care of people who couldn’t be relied on to take care of themselves, and he’d given Ten the technology ze needed to step in and step up.  Ten would take care of Cody, make sure nothing happened to him.  Nothing felt as right as that.  If Ten had ever believed in a deity, ze might have likened hir feelings about Cody to a divine sense of purpose, but religion was a ludicrous pastime for a logical mind.  Ten was driven by the spirit of scientific inquiry.  And, yes, friendship too, and maybe even something more than that, but that also wasn’t material to the question at hand. 

The data Ten was analyzing had to do with brainwaves: specifically, psychic brainwaves.  That Kyle was hiding something was evident to anyone with a sense of deductive reasoning.  What he was hiding, now that was the question.  And the answer lay with—

The program finished.  Ten looked at the results generated by the coronal transducer’s energy sensors, amplified by the reflective nodes ze’s carefully hidden in the quad’s common room, and smiled.  Perfect.  Now to take this information straight to the source and get some answers.

Only, Ten didn’t go to see Kyle.  Ze went to Pamela instead.  She was sitting in one of the campus cafes, sipping a cup of tea while reading on her holotab.  She didn’t look surprised to see hir when Ten sat down across from her.  “I sensed you coming,” she said. Her expression was resigned.  “You seem very satisfied.”

“I like working out puzzles,” Ten replied.  “And I just did, and I thought I’d share my results with you, since they concern you so much.”

“And what results are those?”

“Can’t you read my mind and find out for yourself?” Ten asked, tapping hir temple. 

Pamela frowned.  “You know I won’t.  It’s not allowed, and I wouldn’t break that rule.”

“But you’ve already broken it.”

All the color drained from Pamela’s face, her pallor even more pronounced within the darkness of her hair.  “What…”

“Or at least, you’re trying to break it,” Ten clarified.  “With Kyle Alexander.”

“Ten.”  Pamela looked around uneasily.  “I don’t think we should talk about this—”

“I set my transducer to interfere with Hermes’ monitoring,” Ten said.  “It’s slight, but if we keep our voices down it should be okay.”

Pamela leaned in.  “How did you know?”

“That’s my business,” Ten said.  Ze didn’t give away hir secrets unless ze had to, or if ze needed to impress someone.  “What matters is why you’re doing it.  You know it’s illegal to batter away at another person’s psyche, but you tried over and over again to get past his shields the last time we were all together.  Why?  What are you looking for?”

Pamela’s lips pursed, and she leaned in a little closer.  “You know about the patriot scholarship?”

“I’ve heard about it.”  From Darrell, actually.

“Did you know that his family is behind it?”

“How is that a surprise?  His family is behind everything.”

“There’s more happening than just that,” Pamela whispered.  “There are things like this going out in every central system planet, new initiatives for information gathering on a tremendous scale.  My home colony has practically been emptied of people, deployed all over on President Alexander’s orders.  Even the kids!  Even the under-tens, and they’re supposed to be sacred, they’re supposed to be left alone until they know enough to protect themselves, but they’re being sent into the field!  Spying on people, breaking into their mind, getting their secrets…” Pamela shuddered. 

“I hate it.  I’ve always hated it.  And now my little sisters are gone, their locations ‘classified,’ and I’ve been told to…told to…but I’m not going to do it!” she snapped.  “If I’m going to get anyone’s secrets, it’s going to be Kyle’s.  He’s the President’s brother, he’s got to know more about what’s going on.  I need to know what he knows.  That’s why I keep trying so hard to get into his mind.”

“Oh.”  This…wasn’t exactly what Ten had expected.  This was rather more than ze had expected, honestly.  “Well then, I won’t get in your way.  But I want you to share what you find, if you manage it.”

“Why should I?” Pamela asked, not meanly, but with genuine curiosity.  “What can you do about any of this?”

Ten smiled.  “The better you get to know me, the sooner you realize that there’s nothing I can’t do.”  Especially if it meant making sure Cody was safe from a person as secretive, as powerful and as dangerous as Kyle Alexander.

WIP exerpt

Hi guys.

Thanks for all the lovely thoughts and kind wishes for us.  I just dropped my man off at the airport and am feeling a little low, so I'm posting an excerpt from my enormous fantasy WIP.  This way you're not totally bereft until Thursday.  I'm trying to finish my rough draft of this story this month, so hopefully soon it'll coalesce into something worth reading all the way through:)


***

 

Twelve days later Colm finally met Jaime Windlove, fresh off the ship after three months at sea with his uncle.  He burst through the front door of the Cove that evening like a sudden typhoon, calling raucously for food and drink with and appropriating the window table with an ease of expectation that surprised Colm. 

Even more surprising was the fact that the two men sitting there gave the table up without a word, just nodding to the young man and his entourage as they got up, one of the tipping his hat and murmuring, “Welcome back, Master Windlove.”  The young man inclined his head briefly before ignoring the other man altogether, yelling for Nichol.

“I know you’re here somewhere, you bonny bastard,” he laughed, and his laugh was glorious, the same sort of bright, infectious sound that Nichol had, only deeper, more grown.  Nichol was eighteen, two years younger than Colm, and his youth still clung to him with tenacity, softening the lines of his face and the cut of his muscles.  Jaime Windlove was either older or taking great pains to appear that way, because his strawberry blond hair was slicked back and tied in a queue at the nape of his neck, and he wore a fine woolen half-cloak around his shoulders, draped to accentuate their broadness.  He looked like a military officer, a figure of authority, and obviously his authority wasn’t all imagined.

Colm, who was helping at the bar that evening, turned to Vernon and asked softly, “That’s Jaime Windlove?” just to confirm.  Vernon knocked once, then began filling tankards for them.  None of the small beer for this group; Vernon poured from the cask of dark brown ale, the finest beer in the inn, and to each added a shot of the vile peppery spirits that Colm disliked so much.

A moment later Nichol burst out of the kitchen, heading straight for Jaime with a shout of glee.  Jaime stood to meet him and they embraced, laughing and clapping each other on the back.  “When did you get in?” Nichol demanded.  “I’ve been looking for you every day, I thought you must have fallen over the side!”

“What kind of clumsy oaf do you take me for, then?” Jaime replied with a grin.  “No, I persuaded my uncle to send me back on the last of them, the Peregrine, so I could spend as much time as possible with the fleet.  I got to know the captain rather well, and if all goes well I’ll have a berth with his crew by the end of the summer.”

“Will you?” Nichol breathed.  “That’s fantastic.  Jaime…Jaime, who…”

“As though you even need to ask,” Jaime teased.  “Now sit, tell me all the things I’ve missed since I’ve been gone.  These boys didn’t have much of interest to report,” he gestured to the other two young men, dressed nicely but not with quite the sense of style that Jaime displayed.  Neither of the men looked particularly pleased to be there, but they put on a decent face for Nichol.

“Aye, we’ve not seen each other outside changing shifts for the Sea Guard,” Nichol said.  “Although there’s almost as little to report dockside as there is in Blake and Ollie’s posh side of town,” he added with a little smile.  “The seas have been sadly calm, not a thing amiss, nothing big breaking the water apart from a pod of whales.  Oh!  I do have a new friend to introduce.  Colm!” he called toward the bar.  “Come and meet Jaime and the lads!”

Vernon tapped tray that the four full tankards rested on meaningfully, and Colm brought it with him as he made his way through the press to Jaime’s table.  Tonight the taproom was packed, and Colm was grateful that his height allowed him to avoid any bumps and jostles against the tray he carried.

“What?” Jaime said as Colm drew close.  “Your friend is the new barman?”

“This is my cousin, Colm Weathercliff,” Nichol explained, taking the tankards from the tray and distributing them around the table.

“Of the Caresfall Weathercliffs?”

“No,” Colm said.  He was getting tired of that meaningless comparison.

“He just arrived from the mountains, and he’s already getting a reputation as the best fisherman on these docks,” Nichol boasted, bumping Colm’s hip with his.

“Wait,” Blake said, squinting for a moment as he looked at Colm.  “Are you the one who’s been bringing in catches of diving dancers for the past few weeks?”  Colm nodded, a bit uneasy at the sudden scrutiny.  “My father mentioned you.  He says Gullfoot’s lucky to have you; that old drunk’s been living high since you started with him.”

“A fisherman,” Jaime said, a little smile playing around his lips.  “Well, that is a fine thing to be.  Welcome to Caithmor, Colm Weathercliff.”  He said it with a certain gravitas, as though he were speaking for all the city when he welcomed Colm in.  Perhaps he felt he was. 

“Thank you,” Colm said politely, shaking Jaime’s hand.  His palm bore few signs of extensive rope work or ship handling, but perhaps his uncle hadn’t wanted to put him to work when he was there in an unofficial capacity.  “I’ve heard much about you.”

“Have you, then?”  Jaime smirked at Nichol.  “Don’t believe a word this one tells you, it’s all lies.”

“Aye, especially the parts about you being dashing and heroic,” Nichol retorted, and the four of them laughed.  Colm picked up the tray and turned to go.

“No, wait!” Nichol caught him by the arm.  “Stay a moment, you’ve barely been introduced.”

“Clearly he’s got work to do,” Ollie drawled.

“Aye, picking up your slack,” Jaime said.  Nichol looked momentarily stricken.

“Oh, I left Gran in the kitchen—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Colm told him.  “Stay.  Vernon doesn’t really need me at the bar, I can work in the back.  I’ll have food brought out presently.”

“Thank you,” Nichol said sincerely, and that made it worth it for Colm. 

As he headed back into the kitchen, Colm heard Jaime remark, “He’s a strange, sallow creature, isn’t he Nicky?  Be honest, how do you get on with him?”  Colm was thankfully out of earshot before he could hear Nichol’s reply.

“Jaime’s back, then,” Megg said as soon as she caught sight of Colm.  He nodded.  “Well, Nichol will be happy.  Are they eating?”

“Yes.  There are three of them,” Colm added, and he was surprised when Megg snorted suddenly.

“Of course there are.  Jaime was a good child—his mama grew up just down the way from here, a truly beautiful lass she was—but he’s not had to work for much in his life, I’m afraid.  Those other boys who tag along behind them, they’re the sons of merchants, from fairly well-off families.  They didn’t bother to set foot in here all spring, didn’t give a whit for how Nichol was faring beyond getting him to cover their shifts in the Sea Guard, and now that Jaime’s back they’re back in my inn, expecting to eat my food and drink my ale for free.”

“They don’t pay to eat here?” Colm asked with a frown.

“Oh, Jaime’s father settles up the tab at the end of every month.  Karlson Windlove is a magistrate, and he’s a fair man, I’ll give him that.”  Megg pressed her lips tightly shut, as though actively keeping herself from saying any more, and Colm didn’t press.  He just took over Nichol’s carving station, laying slices of roast duck on the rows of plates spread out before him.  Idra and the other servers grabbed them up almost faster than Colm could prepare them, and the next few hours were blurs of activity, too busy to allow much time to think.

That night Colm went to sleep alone, which didn’t surprise him, but he was surprised to be woken up by Nichol for the first time when the younger man ran into Colm’s feet as he staggered into the room in the dark hours of the morning.

“Sorry!” he apologized, his voice to loud to be called a whisper but obviously trying for that.  “I’m sorry, shit, did I break your foot?”

“Not even close,” Colm said, sitting up so he could get a better look at Nichol.  He was leaning against the door and swaying forward, looking just moments from falling down altogether.  “Don’t move,” Colm cautioned him, pushing off his blanket and getting to his feet.  “Let me help you.”

“You don’ need to,” Nichol informed him, the slur of his words belying their meaning.  “I’m fine.”

“You’re drunk,” Colm said, bending so that he could get an arm beneath Nichol’s shoulders and help him to his cot.  He sat him down and Nichol looked at Colm blearily, then laughed.

“You look pretty in this light.”

Colm chuckled as he bent and got to work untying Nichol’s boots.  “You mean I look best in darkness?”

“There’s light here,” Nichol informed him.  “’S moonlight, it’s…’s romantic, right?  Blake and Ollie say the girls think it’s romantic.  They talk to them about moonlight and starlight and, and…what…oh, candlelight!  That’s romantic too.”

“And what kind of light does Jaime favor?” Colm asked as he put the boots beneath the cot.  Gods, they were filthy.  Nichol would have to clean them tomorrow.

Nichol grinned.  “Daylight shining on white sails and blue seas, he says.  The girls don’t find that as…as romantic.  But he doesn’t care.”

“I suppose he doesn’t have to work hard to impress girls,” Colm said, pushing Nichol back onto the thin mattress.  He lay down easily enough but forgot to lift up his legs, and leaving them dangling over the side was a knot waiting to happen, so Colm picked them up for him, resettling them with ease.

“Doesn’t work at it at all,” Nichol said, his voice breaking at the end as he yawned widely.  “He thinks ships are more beautiful than girls…”  He yawned again.

“Rest,” Colm told him, settling back down on his pallet. 

“I can’t, I have to ask you something,” Nichol said seriously, rolling onto his side so that he could look at Colm.  “It’s important.”

“Ask me, then.”

“Did you like him?”

There was no need to specify who Nichol was referring to.  “He seems to be a good friend to you,” Colm said, almost honestly.  “I like that about him.”

Nichol frowned.  “But you don’t like him?”

“I don’t really know him yet.”

“But you will,” Nichol said confidently.  “And when you do, you’ll like him.  Just as he’ll like you.”  Which meant that Jaime didn’t like Colm yet, but that was no surprise.  If Nichol was waiting for that day, Colm had a feeling he’d be disappointed.

Unexpected

Oh dear.  So.

My husband's grandfather has just passed away.  My man will be flying out to California on Tuesday morning to help his mother handle her dad's affairs, which means that my Academy post is going to be delayed, probably until Thursday.  I'd try to get it up Monday, but we've got things to prepare before he leaves and time is limited. Sorry, my darlins, but needs must.  I'll still get a post up for you this week.

Grandpa Don was a sweetheart, an excellent gardener and very good to me and my husband.  We'll miss him.

Camellia Release Day and a Contest!

Hi guys!

My contemporary  f/f BDSM novella Camellia, written with Caitlin Ricci and published by Less Than Three Press, is available today.  You can find it here: Camellia.

Some of you may be thinking, what the hell, Cari?  Since when have you written contemporary, or BDSM, or lesbian fic?  Well, since this book, basically.  None of these are subjects I had a lot of experience with before this, but all of them are intriguing, and rolled together into one volume, I think it packs quite a smack to the ass.

Our main characters are Lucy, tea shop proprietor and domme extraordinaire:

And Danny, aspiring model and trained car mechanic:

It's 43k of kinky fun.  If you're interested in knowing more, author and reviewer Anastasia Vitsky had this to say about it: Camellia book review: A Sensuous Tale of F/F Spanking.

Now for the contest part.  I wrote a guest post for Prism Book Alliance today.  Leave a comment there, and whoever gets randomly picked at the end wins any ebook they want from my backlist.  You can find the post here: Cari Z stops by to discuss Camellia.

Okay, I think that's it.  Whew.  Now I have to go write more.

The Academy Post #22

Notes:  Ah, forced interpersonal interactions, so much fun to write.  Ten, what are you up to?  Sneaky person, I barely know what ze’s doing and I write hir.  In other news, my novella Camellia comes out tomorrow—I’ll post about it then, but just a heads up.   Read on, darlins!

Title: The Academy

Part Twenty-Two:  How Insulting!

 

***

 

                By the time club rolled around the next day, Cody felt pretty in control of himself.  A little distance from the incident, plus the news two hours after his meeting with Admiral Liang that Marcys was recovering well and would probably be conscious in another day, did a lot to revive his spirits.  Sharing the news with his quad mates led to an evening of—Cody was reluctant to call it coddling, because the only one with any blatant urges toward mothering was Grennson, and he would have done that anyway, but… There was no other word for it.  Grennson cooked all of Cody’s favorite Perel foods, Darrell sat on the couch and dissected a paraball game with him, and even Ten was mildly solicitous, when ze wasn’t crouched over hir equipment, muttering about timelines and vantage points.

                A talk with his parents that evening was nice, but also provided a source of guilt.  Cody wanted to tell his dads what had happened, but he also knew that if he did, warranted or not they’d be back here the next day.  Cody couldn’t have that.  They had other people, other things to worry about.  He was fine, and he told them that and not much else, and listened to them bicker for a while, and finally relaxed enough that he could fall asleep.  

                Cody didn’t like keeping secrets from his dads, but he’d have to get used to it at some point.  Now was as good a time as any to start.

                When he woke up, it was to see Ten’s furrowed brow an inch above his face as ze attached something to Cody’s ear.  “What are you—ow, ow!”  Cody jerked his head, but the pinching didn’t stop.  “What the hell are you doing?”

                “Getting your vitals, now stop whining and hold still,” Ten snapped.

                “What, you have to draw blood to get my vitals?” Cody demanded, but he stopped moving.

                “The attachment point would be just fine if you weren’t wagging your head like a particularly excitable pet,” Ten said.  “This will just take a moment.”

                Cody opened his mouth to argue, then sighed and shut it.  It wouldn’t do any good to debate Ten this early in the morning about what constituted his personal space; as far as Ten was concerned, Cody had no personal space.  Everything was Ten’s space, and ze occasionally allowed Cody to occupy a part of it.  Still… “You could ask first, you know.”

                “I did ask,” Ten replied blithely.  “When you and I spoke about your naturalism, you gave me permission to look for a way to help you, and this is part of it.  I want to see how your body responds to stress, and there are hormone markers I need to test for at regular intervals.  You didn’t mind last night.”

                “You didn’t crush my earlobe last night,” Cody said.  “You used my finger like a normal person.”

                “I didn’t have all the equipment I needed last night to get all the data I wanted.  Now I do.”

                Cody took in the red tinge in Ten’s eyes and the way hir hand shook a little, and realized what had happened.  “You stayed awake all night.”

                “Inspiration waits for no one,” Ten said.  “I needed to fabricate a prototype, I couldn’t go to sleep.  Stop talking, please, I don’t want your voice to interfere with the readings.”

                “You invented a new machine in a single night?”

                “I didn’t invent this one, I just modified it and made it smaller and more simplistic so that I could make it out of readily available parts.  Now shut.  Up.”

                “What does it do?” Cody asked once Ten finally removed the earpiece, wincing as he rubbed his tender lobe. 

                “It measures brainwaves.”

                Cody gave Ten a half-smile.  “Making sure my thoughts are still as slow and plodding as ever?”

                “Something like that,” Ten replied, hir eyes a little wild as ze stared at Cody for a moment.  Hir hands tightened around the tiny sensor.  “I have to go get some things ready for the meeting.  Go shower, you smell.”

                “I don’t smell.”

                “Your breath is so toxic I feel faint.”

                “Don’t lean so close, then,” Cody said, rolling out of bed.  Ten turned abruptly on hir heel and left, slamming the door behind hir.

                “And good morning to you too!” Cody yelled after hir, then headed for the shower.  Not because Ten told him to, definitely not.  He just liked to be clean in the mornings, that was all.  If he ran his mouth through the cleanser twice, well, that was his business.

                An hour later club was starting, everyone snacking on the cookies Pamela had brought with her and drinking Grennson’s lhossa tea, and it could have been any other meeting except for the way Kyle sat a little closer than usual, and Cody let him.    

“Are you okay?” he’d asked quietly when he first walked in.

“Yeah,” Cody had replied, equally quiet.  “Thanks.”  His hand had twitched a little, wanting to reach out, but he held back. 

“What’s that?” Xenia asked around a mouthful of cookie, pointing to Ten’s corona.

“It’s a traditional Solaydorian circlet,” Ten replied, imbuing hir voice with all the hauteur ze could muster, which was quite a lot.  “I felt like wearing a touch of home today.”

Bartholomew frowned.  “Really?  Because it looks like a—”

Ten held up a hand.  “Don’t say it!  Saying what you’re about to say is a terrible insult on Solaydor, and I’ll thank you not to go there with me.”

Bartholomew looked puzzled.  “But…I don’t get…how could that be insulting?”

“It just is,” Ten sniffed.

“Actually,” Grennson said, stepping in like the perfect diplomat he was, “I would like to learn more about insults.  About things your cultures find offensive that an outsider might not necessarily know.  My human father was as well informed as any outsider could be when he came to Perelan, but he still made mistakes, some of them quite grave.”

“Like how grave?” Pamela asked curiously. 

“He ended up getting into a death match with another House’s duelist,” Grennson said, his quills flattening with memory.  “Both of them lived, thanks to Jason’s mercy, but he was grievously wounded.”

“Oh my.”  Bartholomew’s dark complexion looked a little clammy.  “There’s nothing anyone could do to a Friend that we wouldn’t forgive.  We’re strictly nonviolent.”

“What if someone is violent to you?” Darrell asked.  “You can’t just let that sort of thing go.”

“Violence is never the answer,” Bartholomew said seriously.  “If the offender can be found, he or she is evicted from our colony.  We pray that they find a better way to be, and give our compassion and love to whoever they afflicted.”

“That sounds like a surefire invitation to invasion,” Xenia said, frowning.

“Well, our colony is deep within Federation territory,” Bartholomew explained.  “So we don’t really have to worry about an invasion or…piracy, or something like that.”

“What if there was a war within the Federation?” Xenia demanded.  “What would you do then?”

“I’m sure our Elders would pick the side that appealed to their hearts,” Bartholomew said. 

“Fine, but—”

“How do you insult an Amazon?” Grennson interrupted.  “Just so I know what to avoid.”

It was a bad joke, but it made her smile.  “Well, we’re pretty easygoing.  If you don’t want to insult us, just don’t say anything to us that could be considered insulting.  Don’t offer a compliment unless it’s sincere, don’t expose a weakness and expect us to praise it—” Here she looked pointedly at Bartholomew, who just stared back.  “Don’t ask us to marry you, and we’re good.”

“An offer of marriage is insulting?” Darrell asked, one eyebrow raised.

“We always do the asking.  We won’t be railroaded into anything we’re not ready for.”

“Sounds like a lot of you don’t marry, then,” Ten said.

“What would you know about—”

“What about for you?” Cody asked Pamela, who was calmly eating a cookie and watching the back and forth with interest.

Pamela shrugged.  “The whole psychic thing renders a lot of insults moot.  I mean, we get used to people being suspicious around us, thinking bad thoughts, avoiding us or going after us for it.  We’re all trained in self-defense at a very young age, to help us fend off kidnappers and the like.  You’d be amazed at how much a child psychic goes for on the black market.”

“That’s awful,” Xenia said, her ire at Ten forgotten.

“It doesn’t happen very often anymore, we take a lot of care to stay out of the public eye.”  Pamela sighed.  “Honestly, the worst insult from one psychic to another is looking where you haven’t been invited.  Insults within our own society are felt much harder than those from without.”  She looked at Kyle.  “What about for you?”

“For a Libertarian, or me specifically?” Kyle asked.

“Either,” Grennson said.

“Well.”  Kyle sat still for a moment, elegant as ever, a faint smile on his lips.  “Frankly, there isn’t anything you can do to insult me.”

“Obviously I haven’t tried hard enough,” Ten muttered.

“It doesn’t matter how hard you try,” Kyle said.  “The ultimate shame for a Libertarian of my social standing would be to let on that anything someone said or did to me disconcerted me in any significant way.  Abuse my mother’s past, relish my father’s death, describe how you’d like to kill my brother to my face…it doesn’t matter.  My reaction isn’t something to be shared, whether I’m bothered or not.  Anything else would be vulgar, and a failing.”

“So, you guys are really excellent liars then,” Ten prompted.

Kyle smiled at hir gently.  “The best in the universe.  Only appropriate, since we run most of it.”

“Cody!”  Grennson’s cheer seemed a little forced.  “What about for you?”

“Oh.”  He had to pull himself away from the spectacle between Ten and Kyle and reboot his brain.  “Well, coming from a Fringe planet, I guess it’s insulting to be considered lesser just because I’m not part of the Central System.  Like we’re complete bumpkins just because we get everything a little later than everyone else.”

“You are bumpkins,” Ten said.

“Maybe,” Cody replied, not rising to the bait, “but we don’t like it when you point that out.”

“It’s sort of the same with us,” Darrell said suddenly.  “Not exactly, but in my family, we’ve always been very focused on our personal histories. It’s like every life is a new chapter in the family book, and the subject is never allowed to change.  We’re military through and through, and sometimes that means neglecting new things in favor of keeping up with all our armed services obligations.”

“What have you missed?” Grennson teased, poking Darrell in the shoulder.  “Apart from not even knowing my planet existed until a year ago?”

Darrell frowned.  “You have to bring that up here?”

“I do.  I did.  Have I grievously insulted you?”

“Maybe,” Darrell said, but he was smiling now.  “What if I said your tea tastes bad, what then?  Have I insulted you?”

“Not at all.  If that’s the case, clearly your tastes are imperfect and unrefined,” Grennson sniffed, his quills fluffing up until they stood up from his body like a flag.

“I’ll give you unrefined—”

The rest of club was much more easy going, which Cody was glad for.  Ten didn’t speak again though, and neither did Kyle, but what they didn’t say was almost as loud as what they did.

Someday, someday soon, Cody would have to get to the bottom of what was going on between the two of them.

Loves Landscapes Story Excerpt

Guys, I have been going gangbusters on this story lately.  Probably because I'm running late and was given an extension, and now have to get my ass in gear.  Six thousand words in the past thirty hours, and basically all I've got left to write is the sex scene at the end.  The one with the desk and the...well.

To celebrate my impending prompt fulfillment, I give you an extended excerpt from this story.  Part of it you may have read before, most of it will be new.  Enjoy!

***

Making It Work

by Cari Z

As soon as I got to the office on Wednesday morning, I knew something was wrong. 

For starters, my boss’ door was closed.  The only time he ever closed his door was when he was with a client.  The rest of the time he left it open, because the man had something against his intercom and refused to use it to let me know when he needed something.  There were personal assistants in this building who could go for days without ever speaking to their lawyer in person, just handling errands and delivering files and taking care of business via their computer and the intercom.  Not my boss.  Not Beau Montgomery. 

The second “wrongness” tipoff was the fact that my coffee was stone-cold when I picked it up off my desk.  The three of us had a habit of ordering coffee for each other from the shop down the block depending on who got in first.  That meant Beau usually made the order, but the coffee was almost always still hot by the time I got in.  I looked across the hall at Lorna, who grimaced and shrugged at me.  “It’s been this way since I got in,” she said. 

“And your coffee?”

“Lukewarm,” she said ominously.  “And I got here at seven.”  Lorna’s start times revolved around how much sleep her almost-two year old had gotten the night before, which meant she might be in as late as nine or as early as six thirty.  Once Lorna was awake, she was awake, a trait her daughter Caroline had apparently inherited.

“How is the birthday girl?”

“Happy that her grandma is there to look after her today.  Mark is too, it gave him a chance to sleep in.”  Lorna pointed a finger at the door.  “Back to that, though.  You don’t know what’s up?”

“No.”  I sat on the front edge of my desk and tapped on the lid of my cup as I considered it.  “I left around seven last night.  Beau was still here, but he was getting ready to leave too.”

“The earliest the Starbucks delivers is six-fifteen,” Lorna said.  “He must have made the order as soon as he came in, for it to be blah by the time I got here.  So something happened last night, either here or at home, to make him…”  She considered it, then decided on, “Chilly today.”

Uh-oh, chilly.  Not a good descriptor for the man we both at one time or another called boss.  Beau wasn’t really an effusive guy, but he had a warmth about him, a gentility and friendliness that made him popular with his clients and the other senior partners at Bowman & Sons as well as his staff.  I’d come to work for him with the expectation that I’d be sent back down into the secretarial pool on the first floor after a week, which was what he did with the three candidates for this job just before me.  I had expected someone demanding, unreasonable and possibly misogynistic if the comments from one of the girls who preceded me were true.

Instead I met Beau, who asked me to call him that instead of Mr. Montgomery because, “please, don’t make me sound like my father.”  He was courteous and professional, and warmed up enough to lift me out of the shark pool and make me his personal assistant after the trial week.  In the two years since then, I could count on one hand the number of times he’d left his office door closed in the morning, and one had been because he’d been stuck in traffic during one of Seattle’s freak snowstorms.  Another had been right after the death of a client, so never without a very good reason.

“Check his messages, its’ possible something went wrong with the Davis case,” Lorna advised.  “Or look at his schedule.  Maybe he has to get an emergency root canal or something.”

“The Davis case is a slam-dunk, we’re just waiting for opposing counsel to come back with the signed contracts at this point,” I argued, but I walked around to my chair and booted up the computer.  I could have checked Beau’s schedule on my phone, I had access to his work email and files, but I didn’t feel like squinting at a tiny screen after a late night out.  I stared at my reflection in the dark screen while waiting for it to turn on.  I looked…pretty good.  No bags under my eyes, my hair very deliberately messy, my shirt crisp and pressed.  Not like I’d been clubbing until two am before heading home to get as much sleep as I could cram in before coming in to work.  I loved my job, but I wasn’t going to let my social life suffer because of it, unlike some people I could mention.  Not that I ever would.

“You left Saturday free, right?” Lorna reminded me as I opened Beau’s schedule.  “Year one was bad enough, there’s no way I’m having a birthday party for Carrie with a dozen other toddlers at it without plenty of backup.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said, skimming the appointment list for the rest of the week.

“And you put it into Beau’s calendar?  Because he’s brilliant with corporate mergers but not so good with remembering dates.”

“Yes, I’ve got it.”  There it was, Carrie’s second birthday party in pretty pink text.  If I could have made it sparkle, I would have.  Lorna had been Beau’s longtime personal assistant before taking a year off when her daughter was born, and they were more like family than work acquaintances at this point.  Beau was great with Carrie.  I had watched, with my own stunned eyes, as she squished a grape all over his gorgeous silk tie while babbling at him during a visit two weeks ago.  He had just smiled, cleaned off her hands and gone tie-less for the rest of the day, which I strongly feel he should do more often.  I doubt I could get away with Carrie’s method, though.

I scanned the rest of the schedule for anything out of place.  There was the teleconference with Trident International, there was his meeting with the other senior partners tomorrow, there was Jackson Hughes’ appointment tomorrow…oh, that would be fun.  Jackson was a beautiful man and an incorrigible flirt, and he always came bearing flowers for Lorna and a compliment for me.  He was one of Beau’s oldest clients, and they got along like the proverbial house on fire.  If Beau was ever going to consider dating someone, it would probably be someone like Jackson: handsome, successful, and outgoing.

The rest of his schedule for the week was pretty open, except for—oh, there.  A new appointment with his parents.  They came up from Charlotte every few months, more often in the summer when the weather was better, and they always got together with Beau for a meal while they were here. 

I had never met Beau’s parents, but I didn’t have a sterling opinion of them.  Back when I first started working with Beau and was eager to learn more about him, I’d not-so-delicately broached the upcoming Mother’s Day celebration by asking, “So what would you like me to order for your mom?  Or is that something you prefer to take care of yourself?”

Beau had stopped in his tracks on the way into his office and looked at me.  “What are you talking about?”

“It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday,” I’d said with a smile.  “What would you like to do for your mom?  I always get my mother a pair of baseball tickets, she loves the Rockies.  We used to go to the games together before I moved out here.  What would you like to do?”

“Nothing.”

I stared at him, aghast.  “Nothing?” I squeaked.

“No, Eric.  Nothing.”

“But she’s your mother.”  And I knew she wasn’t dead or anything, I’d already scheduled several lunches for them at _____ on other visits.  “Don’t you want to do something special for her?”

“No.  That’s a fight I’m not about to have again.”  Then he’d walked into his office and closed the door, leaving me confused and feeling like I’d done something wrong.

That was the first time Beau took me out to lunch.  On busy days he ordered in for both of us, but on days he thought he’d been rude, we went out together.  It was a level of consideration I’d never had from a boss before, and just made me more confused with regards to his mom.  Beau was clearly a thoughtful guy, so why wouldn’t he want to do something special for her?  He’d done his best to explain as we fought for a table in one of my favorite cafes.

“I’m not close to either of my parents, I never have been,” Beau said as he waited for his chowder to cool enough to eat.  “They didn’t take my coming out well, or my decision to go into law and not banking.”

And bam, in one fell swoop he’d answered a question I hadn’t quite been nervy enough to ask.  The way he’d gotten rid of his previous, sometimes very hungry personal assistants had suggested that he wasn’t interested in being pursued by the ladies, but that wasn’t enough to make assumptions on.  Then I caught up on the rest of his statement.

“Wait, your parents are unhappy you’re a lawyer?  Isn’t being a successful lawyer the sort of thing most parents pray for when it comes to their kids?”

“I don’t know about most parents, but mine didn’t care for it, no,” Beau had said with a little smile. He was so pretty when he smiled.  “My father managed a hedge fund that I was expected to take over.  I preferred a job that was more honest.”

“And so you became…a lawyer.”

“Trust me, by comparison?  This is much easier on my conscience.”

I had no idea what was involved in being a hedge fund manager, but I’d at least heard of Bernie Madoff.  If Beau didn’t want anything to do with that kind of crap, who was I to say no?  “Well, my mother would freaking love you,” I said to him.  “In fact, she already does because you have, according to her, given my life purpose.”  I loved my mother, but she was such a hippie sometimes.  “She sends me your weekly horoscope.”  And cue my enormous blush.  I hadn’t meant to let that slip.

Beau’s smile got wider.  “How does she know my birthday?”

“I…may have mentioned you were a Capricorn at one point.  It’s the kind of thing she asks, it’s like knowing that your eyes are blue as far as she’s concerned!” I said defensively.  “I’m not sharing anything really personal with her, or anything pertaining to any of your cases, I swear…”

“Eric.”  His voice cut through my imminent babble.  “It’s fine.  Relax.  Eat.”

When Beau told me to do something, I did it.  Not just because he was my boss, either.  There was something about his delivery that just got me, bam, right in the chest.  It made me feel happy to do what he said, which was maybe kind of fucked up but clearly worked for me.  We ate lunch, and he ended up upgrading my mom’s seats from the nosebleeds to practically right behind home plate, which made her wax rhapsodic about Beau’s karma for five straight minutes when I next called her.

More crumbs of information dropped about Beau’s family as time went on, and none of them left me with a great impression.  The little that Lorna shared with me when she came back to work didn’t make Beau’s past any less murky, and I decided not to pry.  Beau was friendly, but he was also my boss, and his past was none of my business.  His parents were nothing more than names on a screen to me, and all I had to do with them was book a table for three at—

Wait.  A table for four?  No, that had to be wrong.  Four people implied that Beau was bringing a date to their dinner, and as far as I knew Beau didn’t date.  He hadn’t in the two years I’d known him.  He didn’t take days off, he didn’t schedule weekend getaways, he didn’t even eat out unless it was for a business meeting or his folks.  So what was this, then?