“Property damage is insurable. Reputation damage is not. When a family name is attacked, the response is proportional to the insult, not the cost.”— Rosenfeld Holdings, High-Net-Worth Client Advisory
Cecilia stopped at my elbow.
“Mrs. Torres,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the floor tonight.”
“I had not planned to be.” Mrs. Torres’s hands had unfolded, and one of them touched the air at Cecilia’s sleeve in something that fell short of contact. “I had a very important guest tonight. She insisted on a tour. The tour reached the meditation hall, and the meditation hall, as you know, is where my tours end.” Her eyes warmed. “How is your mother, dear?”
“She is well.” Cecilia’s tone slid back. “At the executive table this evening. I believe she is hoping to speak with the Proar Biomed contingent before the second reception. I will tell her you asked.”
“Please do.” Her eyes moved instead. From Cecilia to me, from me to Cecilia, and back to me, and the second pass settled into something I did not like the look of.
“Ah,” she said.
Cecilia didn’t react.
“Forgive me.” Mrs. Torres’s smile had gentled at the corners. “I should not have lingered. The meditation hall is a popular destination for young people who have run out of corridor, and I have been a headmaster long enough to know what most of them are running out of corridor toward.” She inclined her head. “Cecilia, dear. The Proar Biomed mention was very politic. Dash. My office will be in touch.”
She turned.
“I will leave you to your moment.” She said it over her shoulder. “Please do not let me delay your kiss further.”
She walked out at Adelaide’s tempo, and the hall was, for the first time in five minutes, empty.
The heat reached my face before I had finished assembling what she had meant by moment, and by the time I had assembled it, the heat had already done most of its work. My hands were warm. My ears were warm. The base of my throat, where Sarisol’s neckpiece sat, was warm enough that I could feel the silver against my skin as a separate temperature.
I looked at Cecilia.
She was looking at the floor. The color along her cheekbones was the same I felt on my own, fainter under the makeup but unmistakable now that I was looking for it, and she did not look up for what felt like several seconds.
It suited her.
“The bench,” Cecilia said, still looking at the floor.
“The bench.”
The closest alcove held Aurelia-with-hand-at-throat. As Cecilia sat, the emerald hem arranged itself across the stone, and I sat beside her, and neither of us looked up at the goddess directly above us.
The earpiece woke.
“Instead of kissing.” Natalya’s voice. The flat, working tone had amusement in it. “Unmute yourself, Dashi, and let us talk about whether we abort. Or do not unmute, and the twins and I will hold a vote without you. I am open to either.”
“Miss Natalya,” Cecilia said.
“Cecilia.”
“He is unmuting now.”
I tapped. The click confirmed in my ear, and the channel widened around my side of it.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, Dashi. Very romantic. Now. Abort or proceed?”
“Proceed,” I said.
Cecilia turned her head toward me, her frame on the bench had been the same composed line all evening. “It is too dangerous, Dash.”
“It’s—”
“The Bishop is on the manifest. Aurelia has a netrunner on the architecture. Any of those would be a reason to walk away.”
“I can hold for thirty seconds,” I said.
“Thirty seconds is not the problem. The problem is whether Miss Natalya can open the corridor without that netrunner watching her open it.”
“I cannot.” Natalya’s voice was flat through the channel. “Read is free. Write is three seconds to flag. If I write to your route tonight, he sees it.”
“No,” Alice said. Her voice came in clean, she had clearly moved away from the heir. “We are not doing this. Ceci is right.”
I felt the heat go out of my hands and into my jaw. “What about your mom?”
“What about her?” Alice laughed. It was the brightest sound on the channel since the call had opened. “Dashi, it’s not thaaat big of a deal. We had it under control before, we will have it under control again. Mom is annoying. Mom has been annoying for years. We have practice.”
I gritted my teeth.
I knew, somewhere underneath the gritted teeth, that I was not arguing for the twins anymore. Thursday’s wall was still in my back. I had spent two days reading a coilgun book that was not the same thing as training.
Also, I realized I was sitting under a statue of a woman who had chosen not to speak, asking three women to let me do something they had already decided was not worth doing.
Cecilia was watching me. She had let the gritted-teeth pause happen, and she had not interrupted it. “Alice,” she said. “Ready? We need intervention.”
“Do I have to?”
“Dash is stubborn.”
“But you will lend me Dash for it. And after, for the tower.”
Cecilia’s eyes did not move from me. Her hand on her knee made a small adjustment I recognized from the limo.
She was thinking.
I did not know what the tower was. I did not know what Alice was committing me to. I glanced at Cecilia for a tell, and her face did not give me one. “Okay,” Cecilia said. “But I will go with you to it. Then, for the tower, he’s yours.”
“Deal!” The deal closed without me being a party to it.
“Miss Natalya,” I said instead. “Would you abort?”
“Yes. But I do not vote. You are outvoted by your clients, Dashi.”
Cecilia rose.
The emerald dress fixed itself, the hem clearing the stone bench cleanly, and she held out her hand to me.
I stood.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Trust us.”
I glanced into her eyes, and… I did.
—
The corridor we took back was not the same. Cecilia led without explaining; we passed two servers with empty trays moving toward what I assumed was the kitchen, neither of whom looked at us.
We passed a small alcove where a security officer in navy was checking something on a band; she glanced up, saw the emerald dress, and looked back down at the band.
We came out into the ballroom from a side door I had not noticed on the way in.
The orchestra was four bars into a slower piece, and the floor was less full than it had been during the first song; some pairs had retired to the perimeter tables, others had gone to the second-reception buffet at the eastern wall, and the dancers who remained were either committed to dancing or committed to being seen dancing.
Mrs. Tohra was nearer the orchestra, leather binder still in her hand, talking at a man in a Yuwen pin. Cecilia took the perimeter, past Mrs. Tohra and her Yuwen guest without acknowledging either of them, past the buffet line, and toward the raised section at the northern end of the ballroom.
The VIP section was two steps up from the main floor.
It was framed by a pair of marble columns and lit warmer than the rest of the room. A long table ran along the back wall, covered in academy navy with tens of seated guests along its length, with another handful standing at the edge. The conversation on the dais was quieter than the conversation on the floor.
Alice was waiting at the base of the steps. She was leaning against the nearer column, fire-glyphs on her dress banked again. She was working on a fresh paper cup of coffee.
She raised it in salute when she saw us.
“Dashi,” she said without her usual energy. “Let’s go.”
She straightened, set the coffee on the column base, and led us up the steps.
I had not been to a VIP table before. Mom had described them. My father had complained about them at length. Cecilia’s hand on my arm pressed once, the same press she had used in the pew before the speech, and I matched my pace to Alice’s.
The woman seated at the head of the table looked up as we approached.
She was as beautiful as her daughters were.
She was in a wine-red dress with a silver pin at her collar that matched the silver thread on Cecilia’s sleeves and the pins in Alice’s hair. The three of them shared one face, distributed across three women.
She set her glass down. Her conversation partners, two older men in different corporate pins, paused without looking annoyed.
“Mom,” Cecilia stopped close to the table. “Could we steal a moment?”
Mrs. Lunaris’s eyes moved to me first.
“Of course.”
She turned to the two men on her left. “Forgive me. My daughters need a word.” The men inclined their heads. One of them said something polite that I did not catch. Mrs. Lunaris rose, the wine-red hem settling, and stepped down from the dais without looking at any of us.
We walked her past the columns and along the perimeter to a quieter stretch of wall between the dais and the eastern buffet.
“Hi Mom!” Alice said, and her eyes flicked to the buffet, then to her own shoes, then up.
“Alice. What is wrong?”
“It will be in my next school report.” Alice’s voice was tense, as if she expected a shortcut surge to hit her. “So. Better you hear it from me. I sort of.”
She drew a breath.
“Torched a building.”
Her mom let her talk.
“A small one. Not important.”
“Why?”
Alice nodded violently. Whatever the nod was answering, it was not the question. “Claris said dad’s a cripple. So we—”
“Claris from Orion Conglomerate?”
Alice nodded again, this time at the question that had been asked.
“Did the insurance cover it?”
Alice’s nod faltered partway. The next nod was smaller and confused, the corners of her mouth pulling down. “Yes? I think? Ceci—”
Their mom glanced over her shoulder. Cecilia nodded once. “Settled cleanly. Nothing outstanding.”
Their mom turned back to Alice. “Then why are you telling me?”
Alice gaped.
It was the first time I had seen her caught off-balance. Her mouth opened and stayed open longer than I would have called dignified, and the fire-glyphs along the bodice of her dress dimmed in confusion.
“You aren’t mad?”
Their mom laughed. Two seconds ago she had been the stern mother. She lifted one hand to her mouth, recovered, and let the hand fall. “Nobody will spread those lies about our family. Alice, you defended our honor. There is nothing more important.”
A small choked sound came from Cecilia.
I glanced at her, and her composure was breaking.
The break started at the corner of her mouth, then her shoulders, and within three seconds Cecilia was laughing, not controlling herself. I had never seen this. Alice watched her sister for half a second before joining in, and her laugh was the one I knew.
“Girls.”
Both of them stopped.
The stop was instant. The only evidence that they had been laughing was the color in Alice’s cheeks and the slightly disordered angle of Cecilia’s chignon. They stationed themselves at my shoulders without speaking. Now I had a twin on each side and Mrs. Lunaris looking at me directly for the first time tonight.
“I will, however, be mad about your manners. You brought someone without warning me. Without introducing him.”
Cecilia bowed, a clean inclination of the head and shoulders. “Apologies. Dash, this is my mother, Isabella Lunaris. Mother, this is Dash Kallum.”
I inclined my head as I had been taught approximately a decade ago. “Good evening.”
Surprise traveled across Isabella’s features in the half-second after Cecilia’s introduction, registering in the eyes first. “Kallum?”
“Yes, Mother.” Cecilia’s hand came to rest on my shoulder. “He’s… a wonderful friend of ours.”
“The best!” Alice leaned onto my other shoulder with most of her weight, slid her hand down my arm, took mine, and rocked me sideways. I let her, because resisting Alice’s gravity had never been a strategy that paid out for me.
Isabella watched the rocking without intervening. Her eyes moved to my face. “And…?”
I knew what she was asking.
“Katherine is my grandma,” I said.
The composure went again.
This time it did not recover quickly. “The queen?”
“It’s complicated, but yep.”
A grin split Isabella’s face, and the lineage was suddenly obvious; Alice’s smile, twenty-five years older. “Dash, it is so wonderful to meet you. Girls! You did not tell me you knew such a dashing young man!”
She winked at them.
Alice was bouncing on the balls of her feet, which the dress had been built to discourage. She had just opened her mouth to respond when a server in Aurelia livery stepped close to her shoulder, leaned in, and whispered.
The whisper took perhaps three seconds.
“Oh. Uhm. Mom?” Her hand tightened on mine. Isabella registered the squeeze without commenting. “We kinda have to go? I mean, the tower?”
Isabella nodded.
“Dash, it was a pleasure to meet you. I hope we can meet again soon.”
“I hope so,” I said, and was already being pulled.
—
Alice pulled me out of the ballroom at a pace the mono disliked, and I was afraid it would get torn. The corridor outside was quieter than the one we had come in by; two servers with empty trays moved past us in the opposite direction without looking up, and we were three turns deep before I finally caught myself.
“Alice. You just told your mom—”
“And she wasn’t angry!” Alice’s grin was at full output, and the fire-glyphs on her dress were back to full burn. “Did you see her face? When she said the honor thing? That was preem.”
“Very preem,” said Cecilia. “I’m tending to your date, Alice.”
“Thaaaanks!” Alice grinned.
“Operation is now called off, right?” Natalya’s voice through the channel. “In that case, I’ll be logging off. Closing the coms, and I’ll send the after-report to the guild. I have a friend who needs to apologize. If not, I need another favor, Dashi.”
The line clicked.
The earpiece went to its standby hum, and the channel sat empty for the first time since the cathedral.
“I’m—”
“Silly Dash!” Alice tugged me by the wrist down a narrower hallway, the one that ran along the eastern flank of the academy complex. “I need you to see this! We’re deltaing over to the Syntavelli tower! Aurelia got saved by Syntavelli, like, so many times in the tutorial they stopped to count—so every Aurelia academy in the system has one, and the tower is always the tallest building on campus. It’s the rule. It’s preem.”
“I mean—”
“Wait until you see it.”
The hallway ended at an arched stone doorway that opened onto a spiraling staircase, cool, lit by sconces set every few meters. Alice took the first three steps two at a time.
I followed.
I followed for what felt like a long time.
I had counted to seventy steps before my breathing made itself a feature of the climb, and by step one-hundred-something I had stopped counting because counting required oxygen.
Alice was, by all evidence, fine.
She was four steps ahead of me, fire-glyphs rippling with every other step, and the only acknowledgment she gave the climb was an occasional glance back to check that I had not lost cardiac function. Attributes, probably.
“Ceci?” she said, somewhere in the upper third. “Ceci, are you on?”
The channel did not answer.
“Hm.” Alice slowed for one step, glanced at the band, and kept climbing. “Natalya took it down, right?”
“I guess so?” I said, with most of the breath I had left.
The stairs ended.
—
The top of the tower was open.
What I had taken for windows when I had looked up from the courtyard earlier were not windows at all; they were gaps between thin columns running the perimeter of the tower’s crown, and the sightline was uninterrupted in every direction. The ceiling vaulted overhead in a low dome, lit by a single lantern set into the apex.
It was almost dark outside.
Aurelia Academy stretched below in its dimmed configuration: the cathedral lit only at the western face, the colonnade lanterns reduced to glowing dots, the pavilions and lawns and outbuildings folded into pools of low ambient light. Beyond the campus wall, Tago threw its civilian glow against the underside of the cloud cover.
I had not been this high above Tago without a flying car.
It was quiet.
Alice walked past me to a stack of crates at the eastern column-gap. There were six of them, two-high in three columns, each marked with the same faded Aurelia stamp at one corner. She sat down on the lowest, pulled one knee up to her chest, and glanced at me.
I let out a long breath.
“Look, Alice.” I walked toward her, slower than the dramatic tempo my brain had ordered. “I’ve let myself be dragged tonight, because in the end I do all this for you. But I needed a win. Nothing went as planned—”
She opened her mouth.
I held up my hand.
She closed her mouth, which I had not previously known Alice capable of doing under direct instruction.
“But this needs to stop. I want to have a say in whatever we do.”
Alice nodded. She let out a long sigh. The fire-glyphs along the bodice dimmed by a fraction, and the grin she had been wearing since the dais softened at the corners.
“I must be like a child to you, right?”
“No?”
She smiled faintly. The smile reorganized into something more serious. “Ceci was always serious. Always. I admire that about her. But I learned since I was young to just say what’s on my mind, and... I act that way. Like a child. I know I act that way. I know I’m silly.”
I sat next to her on the crate, and it held both of us. Alice leaned, the bare angle of her shoulder coming to rest against the mono at the meeting of my arm and my chest.
“That’s why I’m happy when I find people like you. You just take me for what I am. I can play pretend, and I can play Ceci when we swap. Nobody can tell. Nobody. But I prefer...” She searched for the word. “I prefer to be like this. I have so much curiosity, you know? I want to explore the world. I told you that already. It’s just who I am, and I don’t hide behind corpo smiles and corpo words. I let Ceci be the clever one, because it lets me be silly.”
She lay back across the crate, dress and all, and stared at the dome.
“But I can get my act together. I aced my pyro class. That’s why we are here.”
I looked around.
“So what do we do?” I said.
Alice’s grin came back.
“Fireworks.”
—
Alice slid off the crate, popped the latches on the top of the nearest one, and lifted out a launch tube the length of my forearm. The tube was a single piece of moulded composite, with a fuse-port at the base. She handed it to me without ceremony.
“Outward-facing slot. The brackets are already installed—every column-gap has two.”
I found the brackets, a pair of curved holders set into the stone at the base of each gap between columns, sized for the tube. I slid the first tube into place, and it clicked.
Alice was already at the next crate.
We moved around the tower’s crown counter-clockwise, working from the eastern column-gap toward the south. Alice handed me tubes; I slotted them. She did the wiring herself, a thin filament of something that lit faintly blue when she trailed her fingertip along it, which I suspected was not actually electrical and was almost certainly mana, although Alice was offering no explanations.
The tubes were not all the same.
Some were short and squat. Others were as long as my forearm and a half. A handful had been painted in colors I assumed mapped to whatever they were going to do at altitude, although I did not press Alice on which one was which.
By the time we had reached the southern column-gap, the eastern, north-eastern, and northern gaps were loaded.
By the time we had reached the western gap, the entire circumference was armed.
Alice walked back to the eastern stack, where a single short tube the color of arterial blood sat separate from the others on top of one of the empty crates, and picked it up. She set it on the floor at the eastern column-gap, pointed straight out over the courtyard.
“They’ve already sent the signal,” she said. “Oupsie.”
She rose and raised her hand.
A spell flicked from her fingertips down at the tube, and the tube responded.
The signal flare went out over the courtyard in a single rising arc and broke open at altitude in a slow blue bloom that left trails behind it, hanging in the air for perhaps three seconds before fading. It was beautiful.
Alice was already pivoting to the western column-gap, her second hand drawing the same fast, un-shaped spell along the inside of the tower’s crown in a wide arc, and the spell touched fuse after fuse as it traveled.
The first firework left the western tube.
By the time it had cleared the column-gap and exploded, the second had launched, and the third, and the fourth, and the entire crown of the tower had ignited into a circle of outward-facing launches that rose over Aurelia Academy in concentric expanding sweeps.
The light on the dome above us was every color at once.
Alice stood in the center of the tower’s crown, framed by the shadows the fireworks were throwing inward through the column-gaps, dress glowing red against silhouettes that moved with every detonation.
“I love this,” she said.