When Kaoren came to my rooms after his meeting, there was a red line, a cut, following the line of his jaw. The everyday danger the Setari face wasn’t something I enjoyed being reminded of, and I reached up and touched the thin mark.
"Is that my fault?" I asked. "Because you not concentrating?"
He ran his thumb along the cut, as if he’d forgotten it was there. "Flying Leaves space. You went through it with First. The population increase there has made it exceptionally difficult. And the effort of not thinking of you has been far more distracting than–"
I kissed him, effectively putting off any chat till this morning, and then we were nearly late for our respective training sessions. I think neither of us wanted to talk about how much harder the spaces are getting, or how much easier Flying Leaves space would have been if Lohn had been able to create a Light wall with me. Or maybe we just didn’t want to talk at all, to try and frame words around the transition we’ve gone through. We’ve skipped stages I know how to label – first dates and movies and working up to going steady – straight into an undefined state of together.
I guess together will do as a word.
During our bout of stretching/yoga torture, Mara pretended Zee hadn’t told her anything, having great fun at my expense asking if I had had any nightmares, and whether I was moving stiffly because I wasn’t getting enough training. But eventually she stopped, and gave me a hug.
"It’s too fun making you blush. You should have seen Lohn’s reaction. He kept saying: With Ruuel? Are you sure? Then he asked Maze if he felt like a father whose little girl had grown up."
I smiled at that – it was just what I’d expect Lohn to say. But I had something more serious it had occurred to me to worry about. "Unsure Fourth Squad reaction," I said. "Fourth Squad with Kaoren bit like First Squad with Maze – respect him and protective of him – but don’t tease him the same way. And they’ve been good to me. I think might be uncomfortable about this."
"Probably at first," Mara agreed, with the blunt honesty which lets me ask her questions like that. "Every squad, even First, places their captain into a special category. The authority captains have over their squad, and the need to trust their orders in situations of extreme danger, makes it very difficult to treat them as a peer. In many ways it’s better not to. Captain training is difficult to pass, and balancing a squad around a captain is usually the main reason for delay in forming new squads. Ninth showed you where even a competent captain can fail to cope with a squad member wrong for her type.
"Ruuel is an excellent captain, a very strong personality, but distant. It works well with Fourth. They are proud of him, strive to live up to him. I know that if he was my captain, I would find it difficult if a friend of mine became his lover. If you are close to them, and he is not distant with you, it changes their relationship with their captain. Don’t be too surprised if their initial reaction is a little more than surprise. They’ll adapt."
"If they don’t?"
Mara gave me a wry smile. "Then they won’t be living up to their captain. If nothing else, this should remove some of the pressure they’ve been under because of The Hidden War. If you are happily bedding Ruuel, there can’t be much basis to this villainous Lastier." But she went on more seriously. "Don’t underestimate the situation generally, however. Maze was very concerned – he hadn’t suspected at all – and since Ruuel is such a strong personality, he was worried about how much of this is really what you want." She snorted. "Zee pointed out that you’re the girl who gave him a lecture on how annoying our transparently manipulative psychological tactics were. You’re not an aggressive person, but whenever we’ve come up against things you care about strongly, you’ve grown unexpectedly firm."
I felt my face burn, and looked away, but said: "Liked Kaoren since he brought back from Earth near-space. He has tried very hard discourage me."
She tousled my hair. "Can’t say I’d want to get into bed with a piece of living history either. Now with this next set of stretches, stop bending your knee."
I had medical for the afternoon, so Mara gave me an early break for lunch and of course I ran straight into Mori, who grabbed my hand and dragged me into a corner of the canteen. "I’m feeling very uninformed, Caszandra. Tell me if the rumours are true."
"Which rumour?" I asked, wishing I’d been sensible and eaten in my room.
"The Els Haral and Caszandra Devlin spending lots of time together rumour. We saw you the day we came back from Muina, but no-one bothered till now to let me know there was more to it."
I tried not to look too relieved. "Els chatted to me couple of times at lunch, and gave me very good idea for making projections from memories rather than visualisations."
"There’s more to it than that, I bet. I hear he’s not hiding his interest."
"Not going to happen," I said, firmly.
She looked tempted to press me more, but Glade, Par and Halla had found us, so Mori settled for murmuring wickedly: "After all, we have it on record that the Third Squad captain is the best looking."
Fortunately Glade was more interested in talking about the various squad pairings, letting me play coward and put off changing the way they treat me. They seemed pretty pleased with how yesterday’s rotation went, and no longer quite so worried about being junior squad. First, of course, are easy to work with and Glade was super happy that Mara had complimented him on the way he’d taken down one of the Ionoth. From that conversation I finally learned that Maze and Mara are considered the best hand-to-hand fighters among the Taren Setari, with Kaoren’s Sight Sight believed to give him a mild advantage over pure technique.
How Mara puts up with training me I don’t know, but I am exceptionally pleased that she and Zee think I’m not a complete pushover, despite my combat failures. I don’t think I’ve ever had a nicer compliment.
I’m in medical now, having the usual scans and another round of cosmetic work on my legs. Fleshy blue bandages for the next few days. And Kaoren wants me to come to his room after the medics are done. He says the door will open to me.
Tuesday, July 15
Cheer Squad
Kaoren was still training when I was let loose from medical, so I footled about for a while, changing clothes and brushing my hair a lot and looking doubtfully at the small amount of makeup I’d been given by Nenna. When I’ve been out in the city with Zee and Mara and Ketzaren and Alay they’ve sometimes worn a little makeup, but it’s not practical for their day-to-day work. I’ve been following their lead, but felt like, I don’t know, marking the transition I’ve made, I guess.
Although briefly tempted to see how Kaoren would react to Cass the Goth, I settled for a touch of lip gloss and felt tremendously conspicuous walking down the corridor on Third and Fourth’s floor, for all I knew perfectly well both squads were elsewhere. And even though he said he’d added me to his apartment’s permissions, I still felt weirdly convinced Kaoren’s door wouldn’t open to me, until it did.
Kaoren didn’t have any active images in the public space of his apartment. Instead he had pictures on the walls, real pictures in deep frames like glassed-in boxes. Inside were little landscapes, cities, forests, all cut out of what looked like stiff white paper, some parts outlined in black or delicate colours but most just white on white. Incredibly complex and beautiful and amazing, with so much detail that you’d need hours to look at a single picture properly. He had four of them and in one, which reminded me a lot of High Forest space, I saw some miniature figures which I realised were Setari.