Alek and Gabriella took a slow turn around the yard, enjoying the frozen tableaus. The passed by a pair of ballroom dancers; the man wearing a frosted uniform and saber, bowing low to his lady in a formal gown and a necklace of faceted diamonds. They walked among crystalline swans and a forest of ice-captured pines. Deer stood proudly on glacier cliffs, their delicate antlers glittering like starlight.
Gabriella wore Alek’s suit jacket over her shoulders for what thin warmth it offered against the night’s chill. As the couple drifted further away from the lights and sounds of the reception, they also drifted closer together. Passing through a small alpine village, each building carved at one-fourth scale, Alek’s arm stole around Gabriella and pulled her close.
They found themselves on a small patio, overlooking a short flight of steps leading down into the gardens. Alek wasn’t sure what made him stop there. A hesitation in Gabriella’s step? A squeeze of her hand on his arm? Whatever the reason, he paused and she swung around to face him. Her eyes were wide and frightened, and also warm and inviting.
“Gabriella, I—” She hushed him with a finger held up to his lips.
What had he been about to say? An apology? Her slow smile echoed his thoughts. Neither one was sure. Neither one was willing to back away. She stepped into him, chin tilting up, and Alek caught her hands in his, holding them at their waist.
Then a new pair of hands gripped him on the shoulders, yanked him back.
“Now they are your problems,” Elias Luvon whispered in his ear. And the cadet chopped Alek hard on the back of his neck, sending him to the ground with a violent shove.
• • •
His neck on fire with pain Alek stumbled forward, heading for a tumble down the short flight of snow-swept stairs. Behind him, Gabriella called out a short, sharp, “Alek!”
Elias Luvon laughed.
Dragging his right foot Alek pitched himself to one side. He lost one of his dress shoes, but managed to catch the stone obelisk that began the courtyard wall at the top of the steps. One edge sliced skin off his right temple, scraped down the side of his face with a dry, sandpaper rasp, and chipped against his collarbone. Alek exhaled sharply.
Rough hands grabbed at him again, a pair to each arm, and yanked him away from the obelisk. Two cadets, among Elias’s best friends and the ones who had been waiting on the ballroom floor as Elias asked Gabriella for a dance. They hauled him around to face Elias. A fourth cadet held Gabriella from behind, one hand clasped around either arm. Alek recognized him as well, from earlier at the refreshment table.
Gabriella’s soft brown eyes were wide and her arms puckered into gooseflesh from the evening cold. She had lost Alek’s coat, which lay at her feet in a dark rumple. A lock of hair had pulled loose from her coif and lay down across her face. “Alek?”
He’d be all right. Probably. He felt the soft trickle of blood oozing down his face, dripping from his jaw. Bright red teardrops splashed down the right breast of his tux shirt, spreading into a stain.
“You’re done, Alek.” Elias’s eyes were dark, and cold as any of the ice sculptures Alek and Gabriella had looked upon. “You couldn’t even be a gracious winner this evening. Well, we’re all tired of your Terran-elitist attitude. Your lack of respect.”
“I can’t understand it either.” Alek shrugged one shoulder up to his jaw to blot the blood from it. “I mean, given my warm reception and—”
Elias skipped forward, saber jangling at his side as he brought a knee up to plant squarely into Alek’s midsection. Breath rushed out in a violent exhale and Alek sagged toward the ground. Only strong hands kept him off his knees, holding him above the frozen courtyard. A second blow was not as well-aimed, and Alek felt a rib snap with a bright thunderbolt of pain. He gasped for air, barely able to breathe.
“Hobnobbing with the Archon’s brother.” Elias paced back to his original spot. “Insulting the Nagelring. Insulting the Commonwealth.” His list of Alek’s wrongs, real or imagined, had obviously condemned Alek already in his eyes. “Thinking that you were even worth her time,” he said, staring at Gabriella.
“Worth my time?” Gabriella’s tears were angry, not frightened. She struggled in the grip of Elias’s crony. The dark-haired cadet glanced about warily, but held her fast. “I’d take Alek over some puffed-shirt ‘Mech-head any day of the week, Elias Luvon.”
Glancing back over his shoulder, Elias nodded sharply to the two holding Alek. One of them put a foot out in front of Alek, who struggled to regain his feet, and they both gave him a brutal shove. Alek sprawled forward over the courtyard flagstone, barely catching himself, grinding frozen gravel and ice into his hands. His left side spasmed as ends of his broken rib grated together.
“But he’s so clumsy,” Elias whined in mock incredulity. To his friends, he said, “Help him up.”
They did so, one with a knee into his kidney and the other wrenching an arm behind his back until his shoulder screamed. Alek grunted, refusing to shout in pain. Through clenched teeth he managed, “Can’t imagine…what’s come over me.” Faith is the force by which we live, Alek reminded himself. And not all of him was dust.
“If he’s so clumsy,” Gabriella tossed back, all but shouting, “so undesirable, why did your commander offer him a position in the Nagelring?”
He felt a slight hesitation in the loose grips of Elias’s friends. The cadet
