The High Ground Read Online Free Page A

sisters. They all had the same dark brown hair and brown eyes. Julieta had taken after their mother. She was tiny and vivacious with a mischievous smile. Estella was the avowed beauty of the first three imperial daughters. She had skin like old ivory and her eyes were the color of caramel. Mercedes, the eldest, was the least attractive; she had taken after her imperial father and had a rather jutting blade of a nose. Many of her attendants assumed she resented it, but she actually didn’t. She loved her sisters and took great pride in their beauty, vivacity and accomplishments.
    “We’ve brought chocolate and a vid,” Julieta said.
    Mercedes slipped her arms around her youngest sibling’s shoulders. “That’s sweet, but I don’t think that’s the cure for this.”
    “Papa hasn’t come to see you?” Estella asked. Mercedes shook her head. For a long moment they just looked at each other. “I don’t think he’s going to back down, Mer,” she said.
    The muscles in Mercedes’ jaw tightened. “And neither am I.”

3
MEETING BY CHANCE
    Three weeks passed. Tracy refused to attend his graduation. His dad made sad eyes, but Tracy pointed out it was just high school.
“Wait until I graduate with honors from SolTech, or New Oxford or Caladonia. That’ll be worth attending.”
    Tracy was in the back sewing a cuff on a jacket when he heard the bell chime. He and Bajit were both working shirtless in the sweltering workshop. They could only afford to run the air conditioning in the front of the shop and the fitting rooms. The workshop and the small apartment upstairs were torturous in the summer months. The Hajin’s sweat had a sharp, almost medicinal smell. It mingled with the rank smell of Tracy’s sweat in a really unpleasant way. He hoped the stink wasn’t working its way into the bolts of cloth that lined the walls.
    Tracy pulled on a shirt, the material clinging uncomfortably to his damp skin. Walking to the back door dislodged a bead of sweat that ran into his left eye, stinging as it landed. He opened the door to find a deliveryman holding a long white box and a tap-pad.
    “Thracius Belmanor?”
    “Yeah.” The tap-pad was shoved out for his signature. “What is it?” he asked as he scrawled his name.
    The man shrugged. “It’s from the Admiralty.”
    Tracy shoved the box back at him. “I don’t want it.”
    “Too bad, you signed for it.” The man returned to his flitter.
    The dumpster across the alley beckoned, but he was curious now. Tracy carried it back into the shop. His father came into the workshop, muttering to himself as he stared at his tap-pad.
    “Outrageous. The cost of spider silk.
Everything’s
gotten so expensive. And what the bank is charging for my loan—What’s that?”
    Tracy held out the box. Alexander carried it over to a table, sliced through the static tape and lifted away the lid. There was a cadet’s uniform inside. Tracy watched his father’s eyes slide to the bolts of the shop’s stock of spider silk, their color a deep midnight blue. The uniform in the box was pale blue, constructed from cheap synthetic material, and the low-grade silver piping was beginning to flake, leaving metallic dandruff across the cloth. There was a letter lying on the uniform.
    Tracy lifted it out, unfolded the paper, scanned it. After the usual salutations he read:
    While it is normally required that all recruits at The High Ground possess a dress uniform as well as an undress uniform an exception has been made for our scholarship students. They may wear this undress blue at all times.
    He thrust the letter at his father and turned away. He tried to return to his work, but his hands were shaking too hard to set a stitch.
    “I suppose the deserving poor are only
so
deserving.” Tracy jammed the needle through the material. “And like this wouldn’t have set me apart from all the others.” He then hastened to add, “If I were going. Which I’m not.”
    “Though your tailoring relation