I hated it. Didn’t care for Ms. Ferra, and she sure as fuck didn’t care for me either, given the way she loved to bring up examples of Crow atrocities as models of unethical behavior. Because first-years really needed her expert instruction to understand that attacking someone with zombie rats was bad.
Even when the conversation wasn’t Crow-related, Ethics class sucked. I’d never spent much time thinking about the subject growing up. Dad killing Mom was bad. Older kids picking on the little ones at Mama Rawlins? Also bad. Most everything else was a big fucking grey area and I was more than happy to leave it that way.
Turned out Ethics was all about digging into that grey area and carefully classifying it as good or bad, something that seemed to me to depend entirely on the situation, the people involved, and the end result. By the end of that first class, I had Her Majesty’s words rattling around in my brain:
Capes tend to have a black and white view of the world. Don’t take kindly to those of us who see it otherwise.
I was starting to think she might be right.
CHAPTER 23
On Saturday, while most of the class was sleeping in, I was up and heading to meet again with my tutors. By the time I made it back to the dorm, with a massive headache and a half-dozen new assignments to reinforce my regular schoolwork, Jeremiah was dressed to head out for the night. His dark pants and green button-down were a far cry from the sweats I was yet again wearing.
My roommate and I had barely spoken since that first night, but as I settled onto the bed with my Glass, a stylus, and way too much shit to do, he paused at the doorway. I thought for just a moment he was going to break the streak. Instead, he shook his head and then he and his beard both went out into the hall.
I didn’t hear him come back that night, but he was hungover and miserable when I woke up on Sunday. Not sure if that made me feel better or not. I’d slept like shit, so it’s not like I was feeling great either. I’d heard a few of my classmates complain about having to share rooms instead of having space to themselves, but I had the opposite problem. At Mama Rawlins’ all the boys had slept in one room, and all the girls in another. Having only a single roommate, even one as oversized as mine, was weirdly hard to adjust to.
The persistent silence didn’t help much either.
As a special treat, I swapped out Saturday’s sweatshirt for one of my only remaining tees. Then I dumped the armful of dirty sweats into the basket we’d each been provided, and set out to look for the laundry room. I eventually found it on the far side of the same building that housed the cafeteria. Seemed kind of unsanitary to me, but what the hell did I know?
The campus was dead-quiet, with only a few people—most of them older students—out and about. I made it to the laundry building without anyone screaming or running in terror, pushed open the door, and came to a halt. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
There were two people inside, folding clothes at one of the tables separating the giant rows of washing machines and dyers. The first was a slightly older Indian guy I’d never met… as big as my roommate and a shit-ton more muscular. But the second? Matthew-mother-fucking-Strich. Guy being my arch-nemesis was bad enough, but it felt like I was tripping over the asshole everywhere I went. And why would he have to do laundry anyway? Way most people treated him, even his shit smelled like roses… I couldn’t imagine his sweat was any worse.
Both of them turned to the door, and Matthew’s smile gave way to an immediate frown. The other guy looked at me and then back to Matthew. “Who’s this?”
“Damian Banach,” said Paladin, biting the words off. “Class of 76. Crow.”
The other guy whistled. “You’re the Crow? I’ve wondered where you were.”
“Just been trying to get a handle on my homework.”
“I wish I could say it gets easier,” he said, “but easy isn’t what this place is about.” He clasped his hands in front of him and offered an odd little bow. “I’m a third-year. High-Three Stalwart. Call me WarChild.”
“Damian. Low-Three devil spawn, looking for a better codename than Baron Boner.”
WarChild winced. “Definitely keep looking.”
“What the hell are you wearing that for?” That was Paladin, stomping all over what was only the second borderline-friendly conversation I’d had all week. He was pointing at my shirt.
“You’ve got something against t-shirts, Matthew?” I shot back.
“That one, I do.”
I frowned for a moment, looking down at the logo and image of a Cape kicking Black Hat ass before it all clicked. “Right. Crow like me doesn’t get to wear Cape merchandise, is that it? Or is it this particular Cape that bugs you? You have a problem with the real Paladin? Because I’m telling you, that fucker’s three times the hero you could ever be, and you have no fucking right to steal his name.”
The third-year winced again for some reason, and Matthew went quiet. When he spoke, his words were cold and sharp. “That fucker is my father. And it’s his choice to gift me the name, not yours.”
“Oh.” Dominion was, without question, the strongest Cape in the Free States, but Paladin had once been my favorite. It wasn’t until I hit puberty and started noticing women that he’d been nudged down to second place by Tempest. How had someone like that given birth to Matthew? “Well… your father’s way cooler than mine,” I finally managed.
“Whatever.” He piled his folded laundry back into his own basket and turned to WarChild. “Thanks for the chat and the advice, Vikram.
