Page 16 of Coldwire
I resume moving forward.
Our headmaster doesn’t have an assistant to facilitate his meetings. He wants to be readily available for the student body, which means that when I come right up to his door and knock gently, he doesn’t actually hear me past the radio he’s playing in his office.
“… Atahua is often cast in a negative light during global negotiations for having started what is now termed a cold war with Medaluo. Our intent to protect our self-interests is perceived as hostile. It’s easy, folks—we just want to keep Atahuan products at home….”
I knock again, harder, figuring Headmaster Murray didn’t hear me. This time, he switches the radio off and calls, “Come in.”
I step into his office.
“Hello, sir.”
It’s practically a squeak, but Headmaster Murray doesn’t remark on it when he looks up from his computer screen. Kieren’s dad freaks me out. He’s a mountain of a man, his shoulders square and his neck always very red. He’s nothing like Kieren, who appears lanky until he takes his shirt off to spar in PE. Undoubtedly a tactic on his part to distract me. Which onlyoccasionallyworks. And anyway, who isn’t flustered by the prospect of having to touch a naked torso?
I don’t really have a reason for quaking like a duck anytime I’m in Headmaster Murray’s presence, but if I had to choose one, it’s because he was once the head of security at NileCorp. He only left to take the headmaster role at Nile Military Academy when his two oldest children started here, and with every second I spend in his office, I’m convinced that I could say something wrong, do something wrong, and he could call up hisold contacts at NileCorp to directly report that I’m useless.
“Lia, I’ve been expecting you.” Headmaster Murray gestures to the seat. “Please.”
There are three chairs facing his desk. I shuffle to the one on the very left, sitting delicately. Kieren’s already been through. I can tell because the chair on the right is skewed at an angle, the rug underneath pushed from the brusque movement of someone storming out.
“I have to admit,” I start, “I wasn’t aware that a joint posting was a possibility.”
Cadets team up frequently, sure. If a group of us are posted to Medaluo, then chances are high that many will be located in the same city at the same time. We can share hotel rooms. We can combine efforts to hit a place together with different goals. Some cadets are told to acquire information. Others are ordered to survey new developments in certain industries or regions. Collaboration can be a useful tool.
But I’ve never heard of two cadets with the same directive.
“Things have been changing lately, Lia.” Headmaster Murray clicks his mouse, closing something on the screen in front of him. Computers are an unnecessary object to render in virtual, but a common one, like the watch Coach Chelsea wears. We can access everything on the internet by blinking open our display, but working for hours on end using our avatar’s eye movements gets tiring.
“The academy gauges our needs with the changing geopolitical landscape,” he continues. “That’s why we’re sending everyone in a week early. Less chance of Medaluo blocking us when they know it’s exam season.”
“I understand,” I say. It makes me nervous to even appear like I’m arguing, so I buffer around my words: “But… and not to question the decision or anything—it just feels, to me, that perhaps a special joint posting maybe shouldn’t… be me and Kieren?”
Headmaster Murray turns away from his computer. He laces his hands together, leaning back in his chair. There are pictures of his threechildren on his desk: Kieren and Hailey side by side, then twelve-year-old Weston. Next to the photo frames is a golden penholder. I recognize the specific brand of fountain pens because Kieren uses them in class. Most of our classmates pull open a virtual keyboard and take notes for their personal files. Kieren prefers pen and paper. Who knows what he does with the notes once he retires to his dorm since he can digitize them in a blink anyway. Maybe he eats them.
“Is there any trouble?” he asks.
“No! Of course not.”
Headmaster Murray gives me a look. “I thought you two were friends. The board thought such a collaborative task would require cadets who were already very well acquainted.”
How do I even begin to explain the relationship that I have with Kieren? We’re… notnotfriends, I suppose. We’ve known each other for years, since the first night of New Cadet Orientation. We’d gone about our daytime activities separately, ignorant of the colossal threat walking the campus, only coalescing when we ended up at the same party that the upperclassmen hosted. It was exactly as I’d expected for a military academy rager: cadets screaming, drinking, and throwing themselves off the roof of the club house to see if StrangeLoom would have them bounce off the bushes—truly testing the limits of upcountry’s restrictions on serious injuries. I found myself in a quieter room, trailing behind Natalie Ward, who I’d befriended earlier in the day. Everyone who joined the circle on the carpet was offered a cold silver can with no identifying information printed on the surface. The only person who’d declined like I did was Kieren Murray.
I immediately sat next to him. I figured we had something in common. Before the year formally started, the academy always overlooked drinking on campus. It would be a different matter once classes were underway, but it was too hard to crack down now when all cadets partook. Except for us, I suppose.
“Not to your liking?” I asked.
“I prefer hard drugs,” he returned.
I reached into my pocket and offered up the scrunched-up tissue paper I had. Kieren looked down slowly, then at me.
“I was joking.”
“So was I,” I returned. “The only gold dust in here is my snot.”
It surprised Kieren that I had met him at his level. I could tell when his manner shifted and his scowl relaxed. His eyes smoothed out, widened to warmer brown. Hailey poked her head into the room a few minutes later, clearly to check whether he was still moping, and Kieren was quick to introduce her, then hurry her off.
That first exchange earned his quick friendship. We hung out together the entire party. We liked the same obscure historical events, shared the same opinions on Atahuan politics. I was already envisioning bringing my every thought to him over the next four years so we could debate back and forth until we were blue in the face.
I turned out to be mostly right, with some deviation. The second time I met him at his level, he didn’t like that so much, and Kieren Murray changed his tune on our burgeoning camaraderie after the academy declined to break our first-rank tie. It’s a shame, because I really do still enjoy debating him.
