Chapter 12: Holiday Fuss, Part Three

Pulling the data off the camera was a piece of cake. There were probably easier ways, Aly admitted, than balancing a laptop in a tree, but she didn't need to be seen skulking outside Josiane's room too much. And given that it would take some minutes to download the video and wipe the camera remotely, she really didn't need to be seen on an upperclassman floor. Not that hanging out in a tree in the middle of winter was really that great either, which was why she was doing this at five in the morning when even the jocks were sleeping, not at a sane time.

She blew on her fingers, poking out through her handwarmers, and pulled her coat closer around her, swearing lightly. It was colder here than in Corus, and she still felt the chill through her light down jacket. It had snowed last night, a light layer of only a couple centimetres, but enough to soak through her pants. At least her laptop wouldn't be overheating, she supposed, though her monitor was dark and sluggish.

She looked out across the campus. The buildings were a nice mix of ancient and modern. The Cloisters were the oldest part of campus, with parts of the building dating back almost five hundred years, to the chapel that used to sit in the same location. To the right was Redpath Hall, the newer residence, but its architect had clearly aimed to make it fit on an old campus. Redpath Hall was all red stone, the kind with the sort of handholds and grips that Aly itched to try to climb.

To her left was the academic building, a hulking building set across sprawling grounds. It was an absurdly large building, especially considering the school only had something like six hundred students, but she supposed that the small class sizes and sheer variety of classes warranted it. The gym, too, was set across the grounds, away from both the residences and the academic building. Students usually just called it the gym, which Aly privately thought was grossly inadequate. It was actually a whole athletic complex, with a large gym (used by the dance groups and the archery team), and a split level with two small martial arts rooms (one with tatami mats for the martial artists and one with sprung hardwood floors for the kendo and naginata team), under a state of the art fencing salle. Attached were locker rooms, showers, a sauna, weight room, a small track… yes, whatever one could say, Crown was very much an athlete's school.

All told, she wasn't unhappy to be here. It certainly was more interesting than school in Corus would have been.

She glanced down at her laptop, and grinned. With the download completed, it was the work of seconds for her to wipe the camera's internal memory. She would retrieve the actual item later, but it was useless to anyone who found it now.

In her room, she plugged in her laptop and took a moment to make herself a coffee. Kettles were technically contraband, but given some of the other contraband that other students had, Aly wasn't worried. And anyway, who heard of an office without coffee? She had hours of skimming through useless video footage to look forward to, so she may as well get comfortable.

The first couple hours were useless, but she had expected that, fast-forwarding until Josiane got home from her exam. It didn't look like she had spent much time in her room, though – she just changed into nicer clothes, grabbed an Italian textbook, and headed out the door. There were another four or five hours of empty footage, followed by Josiane returning home, dropping her books off, and heading out again. Dinner, Aly supposed. When did this girl check her email? Aly could barely go six hours without flipping on her computer. All she needed was for Josiane to log onto her computer and log into a particular website.

It was three hours and a second coffee after that Aly finally hit jackpot. She stopped the fast-forward, then rewound the video to the point where Josiane logged onto her computer. She watched as Josiane checked her school email, then three, four, fashion blogs, the Hotmail account that Aly had broken into a week before and really had nothing except occasional friendly emails from old friends and coupons for her favourite store, and then, finally, finally…

Josiane let out a large, dramatic sigh, and clicked onto the Rittevon Industries webpage.

Aly hit a few keys on her keyboard, slowing it down to catch the blond girl's fingers as she typed. She didn't type properly, with her hands on the appropriate keys at all times, but neither was she a one-finger typer. Aly grabbed a notepad and started scribbling.

Username: that was an email address, josie .

Password: That was an O – P – H – E – L – I – A – underscore. Five, four, one. Ophelia_541.

She had it, but held by some kind of curiosity, she let the video keep playing a little longer. Whatever Josiane found in her Rittevon Industries account, it wasn't good. On screen, the blonde senior read something, sighed, and dropped her head onto her hands.

Aly whipped through a couple virtual private networks, pulled up the Rittevon Industries page, logged in using Josiane's credentials and found herself in an inbox filled by emails from the famously unstable Oron Rittevon. Hundreds of emails, but a quick glance told her that all she needed was the last six months – six months of orders for Josiane to pump information from Jon about the Conte Group, six months of increasingly insane orders for the kind of information that Aly soon realized that Jon probably didn't even have, and in the last two or three months, threats.

Well, that certainly threw a wrench in things, didn't it?

XXX

It took another three days of snooping for Aly to come up with a plan. That was a part of her job – professional problem solving, at its best. It would have only taken a couple days, but it happened she had to write a couple exams, so … three days it was. It wasn't interesting snooping, in any case; the hardest thing she had had to hack was a bank, and she had managed to crack bank security while still in primary school.

The key, useful facts?

First, Josiane really liked theatre. She liked theatre more than Rittevon Industries, and she had had almost no involvement with the family business other than necessary. She had applied for a number of prestigious theatre programs, mainly in America and a few in Italy and England, and based on her application and video auditions, Aly thought she had a fighting chance of getting in.

Second, Josiane had a trust fund. Somehow, that was more surprising than it should have been – even though it seemed like most of her classmates were wealthy, it seemed like they received allowances rather than interest from a fund. Then again, it's not as though Aly made a habit of breaking into banks to find out what financial resources her potential clients had. Maybe they all had trust funds that just hadn't kicked into effect yet. Josiane's trust fund would kick in on her first day of university. Convenient, that.

Third, Oron's insanity had been understated by the press. He was usually described as "unstable", but "volatile" would be a little more accurate. On one hand, Oron would absolutely stab, shoot, or strangle his family members; on the other, he was so volatile that every day control of Rittevon Industries had quietly passed to his eldest daughter, Imajane. Although she was young, profiles suggested that Imajane was a micromanager par excellence, and that practically no decisions were made at the company without crossing her desk. Oddly, very few other members of the Rittevon family even sat on the Board, and Aly had dug up a few old interviews from family members suggesting that they had been driven off the company.

Aly liked that. It made Imajane predictable, and predictable was good.

She considered, briefly, confronting Josiane herself and offering to solve the girl's problems. On one hand, then she could feasibly charge her a fee for getting her out of it, and since solving Jon's problems would necessarily also involve solving Josiane's problems (unless Jon was heartless enough to simply dump her, come what may, which Aly found improbable), and it would be nice to be paid. On the other, the chances that Josiane would end up talking to Jon, that they would take issue with Aly double-charging, as it were, and that she wouldn't get paid at all… well, the main problem with running a shady business was that you couldn't exactly resort to legal methods for enforcing your fees, so she would rather not take the risk.

She paused, thinking. She was acting like there were only two options, and there were rarely ever only two options.

Jon was rich enough. She ran the numbers for what she would have charged Josiane for solving her problems and threw an extra hundred euros on his final bill. He could afford to pay Josiane's fees. She grabbed her mobile and sent him a text.

Have something interesting. Too sensitive for text. When are you free?

XXX

Since Jon was, famously, the sole heir and pampered prince of the Conte Group, Aly had expected something … more from his dorm room. Josiane had certainly imprinted her personality through her room, Aly had turned hers into a business, and Jon? He had put up a few posters and things – a pennant in support of the fencing team, at artistic rendering of the old Palace in Corus, that sort of thing. There was a small armchair that didn't appear school-issue (it looked Ikea-issue, if anything), but otherwise?

A royal blue coverlet lay over the twin bed, lined against one wall, with matching, lighter blue pillows, on top. Aly would have bet that his sheets matched too. His desk was clean, with his work neatly stacked, and his textbooks lined the tall bookshelf along one wall. Aside from the textbooks, his books ranged between history and economics.

Aly had no idea what Alanna must have seen in him. Frankly, other than the heir-to-the-Conte-Group thing, the boy – man, now – was positively dull.

"Sit," Jon said, gesturing to his armchair. "Your text said you had found something?"

Aly ignored his hand and plopped down on the bed beside him, pulling her laptop from her messenger bag as she did so. "You'll want to see this," she said bluntly, pulling up the files she had downloaded from the Rittevon site. Even going through a few VPN servers, she didn't want to chance breaking onto the site again – they shouldn't have been able to trace her entry and exit, but then … well, given it was Rittevon Industries, it was more likely to result in her being dead than anything else if they did.

"It's rather complicated; would you like a summary?"

Jon looked at her, then down at the laptop she was offering to him. He sighed. "I can see this will take some time. Give me the summary while I skim these files."

"Summary: Josiane Rittevon was ordered by her father, Oron Rittevon, to enter into a relationship with you in an act of corporate espionage. Oron Rittevon was hoping that she would be able to pry company secrets out of you –"

"I'm eighteen," Jon spluttered, evidently listening although his eyes were skimming down the emails, back and forth, quickly. "I might be the heir to the Conte Group, but I have nothing to do with the business right now."

"Oron Rittevon relies heavily on his children in running the business," Aly replied brusquely. "Most daily business decisions are either made by, or at least heavily influenced by, Imajane Rittevon. In any case, I wouldn't rush to blame Josiane – it's clear from the rest of the emails that she didn't have much choice. Oron is notoriously unstable, even by the media's standards, and based on the emails coming through, I'd go as far as saying that's an understatement."

She leaned back, stretching, and waited for him to finish reading.

"Well," he murmured finally. "I don't want to hurt her more than I have to. If breaking up with her means that Oron will," he cleared his throat and read off screen, "garrotte her with barbed wire and watch while she bleeds out, then draw and quarter her remains to be fed to his ferrets … I'm not so sure that I want to."

Aly snorted. As if the sole remaining option to saving Josiane's life rested on Jon continuing to date her. What an idiot. "Don't be ridiculous – this complicates things, but you should still dump her if that's what you want to do. In fact, I think she'd even like the result.

"The key fact to glean from all of this is that Josiane herself is not personally invested in spying on you – if anything, based on what I've seen in her room, she wants to study theatre and has no real interest in the family business. Given a way out, she'll probably take it. The other advantage you have is that she's been put under a lot of pressure, is being threatened, and you have the money and power to do something about it to solve both of your problems.

"So here's what you're going to do. You're going to invite her home to your place over the holidays. It'll look good for Oron, and he won't want to see her if she's with you. Call your lawyer and break it off with her quietly over the holidays. She won't announce it over the holidays, she's too smart for that, and you'll want to be in Corus with your lawyers fixing the rest of the arrangements.

"The break up will go public after you come back to school, at the same time that Conte Group and whatever subsidiaries and affiliates you can convince break off their contracts with Rittevon Industries for corporate espionage. There is a risk from Oron and the rest of her family, but Josiane won't really be at any risk because she'll be at school. The loss of the Conte Group contracts, along with whatever subsidiaries or affiliates you can get, means that Rittevon will be hemorrhaging money, and will be scrambling to get funds together for legal fees for the inevitable lawsuits for corporate espionage. Since Imajane controls the everyday finances at Rittevon, she's highly unlikely to pay anything for vengeance because she'll busy doing damage control – and based on the business profiles for her, she's more likely to be angry at Oron, not Josiane. She wants control of Rittevon Industries as a whole, and the way she'll see it, Josiane won't be competing for that with her. And since she controls the purse strings, Oron won't have the personal funds for a hitman either, and it will snow in June before he shows up in person in Blue Harbour.

"Tuition, room and board is paid for the year, but Josiane will need funds to leave the country right away afterwards and for basic expenses. She is applying mainly to international schools, and she has a trust fund from her grandparents that will kick in to cover her expenses from that point on, so there's no worry there. If you give her that out, I suspect she'll sign whatever documents you need, and hand over whatever documents from her account, too."

Jon blinked, once, twice, and passed her back her laptop. "That's… complicated. Are you sure it will work?"

"If it doesn't," Aly smirked, "I'll give you a full refund. Just send these emails – I took the liberty of loading them onto your computer for you in a zip file – to your lawyers at Conte Group."

"Well," Jon replied, uncertain. "Thanks?"

"That's what I get paid for," Aly said, standing up and tucking her laptop back into her messenger bag. "And, once everything works out, here's your final bill. Don't worry, I deducted the advance."

She handed him an envelope, turned on her heels, and walked out. Another three hundred euros were already jingling in her mind.

XXX

Kel brushed her hair for the umpteenth time that night – every time she turned away, she swore that it went out of place. She, Linn and Margarry had gone shopping last weekend, where it looked as though every Crown Academy student had turned out in search for the perfect dress or suit. Despite Margarry's pickiness, and Linn's incessant whining after two hours regarding the same, eventually they did each have a dress that suited the occasion. Kel's was a deep burgundy A-line that the others swore emphasized her curves. Margarry had also talked her into getting a pair of strappy black T-strap heels, which weren't really very high, but made Kel feel self-conscious nonetheless. She felt like she was tottering around on her toes.

Rounding out her ensemble were an artsy, chunky bead necklace in red and a matching bracelet. They had, again, been Margarry's choices.

There was a knock at the door, then another one – impatient, whoever it was, which meant it was either Owen or Neal in a panic. She gave up on her hair, resolving not to look in the mirror again, and went to open her door.

"Reporting for inspection, sir!" Owen said, snapping a mock salute. Kel raised her eyebrows, looking into the hallway – Neal stood behind him, as did Merric, Seaver, Prosper, and her two remaining girls from naginata, Fianola and Sorcha, though the latter two were giggling and seemed to just be tagging along for a lark.

"Why me?" she asked, amused. "You realize that Margarry told me last week, and I am quoting, 'You are utterly hopeless, now let me dress you?'"

Neal shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. "Margarry said she was busy, Alinna hadn't even started dressing yet, and Maura rolled her eyes at us and shut her door."

"And you two?" Kel raised an eyebrow at Fianola and Sorcha.

Sorcha grinned cheekily. "We ran into them on their way to your room and tagged along to help you, of course. You can't possibly inspect this lot and make it to the pre-drink in time."

Kel sighed. The pre-drink – apparently, kendo never celebrated anything without a drink. They drank before the tournament, they drank after the tournament, they drank before the Halloween Hop, they drank for birthdays… according to Dom, alongside the most improved player and most valuable player awards at the end of the year was an award for "the fish", the one who could drink the most. He had, however, been somewhat inebriated when he mentioned it, so perhaps he was joking. Kel rarely took more than one, and none at all when she attended as part of the naginata team rather than a member of the kendo team.

She opened her doors wide and waved the crowd in, grabbing her comb once again. While Sorcha and Fianola worked on Prosper and Merric, she forced Neal to sit in a chair and went about fixing his hair. He had put some sort of product in it, that much was certain, but evidently too much, and she used the comb to pull out the excess.

"Kendo's certainly happy to have the naginata team back," Neal commented quietly, eyeing the way that Fianola, rolling her eyes, showed Merric how to tie a proper tie and Sorcha fixed Prosper's collar.

"They are friendly, I suppose, since we are a fellow budo team," Kel replied.

"There's that," Neal agreed nonchalantly, "but they're also happy because it gives them a bigger pool of people whom it would be socially acceptable to date, too."

Kel leaned back, examining her work, then shook her head and went back at it. She wasn't much of a stylist, but she was pretty sure the birds' nest look was not what Neal wanted. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Just that, before, members of the kendo team didn't have many girls that it was socially acceptable for them to date. Fencers date mainly other fencers, archers or non-athletes, and archers the same. But it would be harder for someone in kendo to date someone in archery – different social status, different circles and all. Mainly, kendo players dated each other or no one at all – having naginata, since you have the same approximate social status, opens up their options a lot. There are some other factors that come in too, like wealth and family status, too, but since most of the kendo crowd are typical in terms of wealth and from immigrant families, that doesn't help."

"I'm not sure I understand, but that is rather preposterous," Kel replied, a hint of derision in her tone. "I don't see why people can't just date whoever they want."

"You can," Neal replied diplomatically, "but it's more that people talk about it. That matters for some people. So, looking forward to your date?"

Kel set her comb down, looking at her work critically. It gave her an excuse to think about her answer, anyway – to be fully honest, she didn't know what to think of her date. She liked Cleon, sure – he was good-looking, friendly, and in practice he was cheerful and brought out the best in others. She was certainly flattered that he had asked her to the Ball, and she wasn't opposed to going to the Ball with him, but if she were to be fully honest with herself, she also wasn't excited by the prospect of it.

"Yes, I suppose so," she replied instead. "What do you think of that?"

Neal looked in the mirror, considering. All Kel had done was comb out the extraneous gel he had used, so it was a simple enough matter for him to tweak his hair into the right combination. "Thanks, Kel."

XXX

Daine didn't even want to go to the Ball.

It was just going to be such a waste of time. First, there were the hours she had had to put into getting dressed and putting on make-up and taming her hair. She had a dress, fortunately – another one of Miri's. Miri, one of Daine's first friends at Crown, had been horrified by Daine's lack of clothing and had promptly written home and had a selection of her dresses at home delivered to school. She had tried to give them outright to Daine, but Daine had refused, so instead there were simply a number of dresses in Daine's closet on long-term loan. Miri insisted the dresses were nothing special, and compared to some of the dresses the other girls got for the Balls, she was even right, but still…

In any case, wearing one of Miri's sky-blue tea-dresses, Daine felt like she had to go through the terrible rigmarole of makeup and hair. She had managed, with much effort, to slick her unruly curls into something like a knot at the back of her neck, and had put on light eyeliner and lip gloss. Good enough, she figured, and even that was a good couple hours wasted.

Then there were the hours she would spend actually at the Ball, standing at the edge of the party and listening to terrible music being played far too loudly – certainly too loudly for her to be able to have a reasonable conversation with anyone. And while her friends would be there, most of them had dates, and would be focused on those. Those that didn't would just … mingle.

Daine hated mingling.

The problem was that she couldn't really find a reason not to attend. What would she say? I hate Balls? She had tried that one, first year, without luck – Miri had pouted, and had roped Evin into making her go, and then she had tried the excuse of not having anything to wear, which just resulted in the long-term loan of clothing, and then she had tried excusing herself on the basis of her extra-credit assignments to pull her grades up, but Miri had protested that it was just one night and she would have a whole month to complete her assignments after that, and while she could try excusing herself on the grounds of not having a date, the truth (as Miri was well aware), was that Daine turned down multiple dates every Ball. If it was just a matter of a date, Daine had a selection of them.

The problem was, it wasn't just a matter of a date, and Daine couldn't see herself dating anyone who had ever come to ask her, anyway.

So – Daine hated Balls, and she still somehow ended at every single one.

She surveyed the room. It was early, but people were beginning to fill the room already. She spotted Miri and Evin, who had already claimed a spot for themselves on the dance floor. She knew from previous experience they would be there for awhile, though they would come and chat every now and then. Most of the other archers, too, would stop by and talk to their captain, as would others, but…

She would still rather be in her sweatpants in her dorm room.

"Brooding already?" Numair murmured, appearing from the shadows beside her.

"I hate Balls," Daine replied, taking a sip of the punch.

He laughed dryly. "You're only in high school once," he said, motioning his head towards the crowd on the dance floor. "You should enjoy yourself more, especially on a night like tonight."

"I don't want to," Daine replied bluntly. She didn't even want to go to the Ball with anyone on that floor – letting any one of them actually touch her? Particularly as the night wore on, monitors got tired, and people started getting all over each other? Eugh.

"Well, you should," Numair replied, letting his voice drift off as he eyed the crowd. He coughed slightly, and tilted his head in the direction of a group of students who were not-so-subtly sliding over to the punch bowl and giggling. "I should get back to my duties."

Daine nodded noncommittally. What else was she supposed to say to that?

Instead, she looked back out over the dance floor, smirking slightly when she caught Flynn Whiteford and … was that Mackenzie Seabeth? Good god, it was not late enough for that amount of tongue involved. She felt embarrassed just watching them.

She heard a slight cough, and turned slightly to see a tall, green-eyed boy beside her. His hair was probably a lighter brown than it was presently – it seemed like there are been much gel mussed into it at some point. He had the lean body that Daine had since associated with fencers. She knew a lot of the fencers, mainly the ones close to Alanna, but she didn't recognize this one. Still, she was not surprised that he recognized her – almost everyone did, since she was the archery captain.

"Um, Daine," the youth started, blushing.

"Who are you?" she asked bluntly. So it was a little rude, but she was at a Ball, and she was in no mood to humour an underclassman's sorry little crush.

Oddly, that seemed to settle the boy, and he grinned. "Neal Quinn-Cohen, at your service," he said, sweeping a ridiculous-looking bow. "Pleasure to formally make your acquaintance."

She rolled her eyes, holding out her hand reluctantly. "Daine Sarrasdottir."

Rather than shaking it, he leaned over it like a medieval player, planting a kiss on it.

Oh, he didn't.

She knew, intellectually, that it was really rather charming, and that he couldn't have known that Daine didn't like to be touched. She didn't have any particular reason for not liking to be touched, she didn't think, but she really, really didn't like being touched. Especially by people she didn't know. There were some exceptions, like Miri and Evin and, of course, Numair, but exceptions came with time and really, she hated being touched. Sure, there were casual touches that she didn't mind so much, like in class when someone tapped her on the shoulder or something but a kiss, even on her hand? She was not okay with that.

"Would you care to dance?" he asked, oblivious.

"Not in a million years," she replied, turning away and staunchly ignoring the hurt expression on his face. "Have a good evening."

It was time to seek out a new stretch of wall to haunt.

XXX

Aly stood to one side of the Ballroom, watching the dance floor with interest. Dances were always so entertaining. So far, she had made note of approximately thirty potential alliances made, six almost-scandals, and a lot of embarrassment to go around. She took particular note of the raucous festivities surrounding Alanna Trebond and George Cooper – easily one of the more interesting couples on the floor, and if that was a sign of things to come, then it was good to know.

The kendo team had, as usual, been partaking a little much – that Dom Masbolle had attempted a caterwauling courtier song at one of the archers, who was looking more uncomfortable by the second, and eventually slunk off into a group of fencers. His off-beat cousin, Neal, had apparently been shot down by the archery captain, and while she would have expected him to be more dramatic in his disappointment, he seemed to be enjoying a group dance with some of the first and second years Aly recognized as being part of the naginata team. The dance team had taken a fairly large chunk of the floor for an impromptu skills competition, which was being loudly cheered on by a number of other students, athletes and non-athletes alike. The band, one of the several bands at school that had earlier battled out the honour of playing the Winter Ball, was humouring them with a serious of fast beat-heavy songs designed to help the dancers show off.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Aly kept the wrinkle of distaste from her face. Zahir ibn Alhaz – a second-year fencer, on the epee team, had somehow taken offence to her very existence. Something about her business model, she thought, but he was also friendly with Joren Montague, she thought, which was really quite odd given that their parents were, politically speaking, at odds. While Joren's father was the head of the extreme Tortallan nationalist party, Zahir's father was a prominent member of Party Bazhir, a party devoted to advancing the rights and position of the southern ethnic minority.

"I am, ibn Alhaz," she replied coolly. "What do you want?"

"For you to shut down your ridiculous shop and keep your nose out of your social betters' business, mostly," he grinned, a flash of white against his dark skin. "But right now, I just want to talk."

"So, talk."

"Joren has it out for you – he wants assurance that Ainsley isn't going to go to the media to wreck his reputation."

Aly snorted. "Joren has a high opinion of himself. What reputation?"

Zahir shrugged, a fluid movement. "A scandal would hurt his family's political interests."

Aly rolled her eyes. "The Heritage Party is already famous for being racist, sexist, and any number of things. Tell him that it's not worth Ainsley's while to go to the media. Is that everything?"

"No, unfortunately," Zahir replied, looking down at her. "I'm also here to warn you. Be careful – especially tonight."

And with that cryptic remark, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Oh, fuck. Aly looked around – it was unlikely that anything would happen here, because there were simply too many people, and the monitors were watching the punch bowl carefully. There wouldn't be anything here. But if not here, then what about her room – she had tightened up security in her room, sure, but there was only so much she could do without the staff noticing, and it was good, but not impenetrable. And the cost of her computer equipment, as well as the information on her hard drive… well, that was worth an early night to secure.

She set her glass of punch down firmly on the closest table, grabbed her shawl, and headed out across the dark campus.

In retrospect, she really should have wondered if Zahir's warning, in and of itself, was a trap.

XXX

The date hadn't gone that badly, Kel thought. She had met Cleon at the traditional budo pre-drink in the captain's room, made all the more crowded by the presence of a few of the more eager first years. Hae was already well on her way to "inebriated", though admitted it didn't take very much to bring the girl to that point. A few of the others, including Cleon, were looking decidedly flushed.

Kel had taken one drink, and nursed it cautiously until the teams had collectively decided that really, they ought to actually attend the Ball, and she had indeed taken Cleon's hand on the way there. He was drunk, but not excessively so - certainly he wasn't staggering or loud, though Kel thought he was probably more uninhibited than usual.

"You look beautiful, Kel, you know?" he said at one point, when they were crossing the school grounds, slightly ahead of the raucous group of kendo and naginata team members going stag. Most of the other couples, including Midori, who had gone with one of the other fourth-years, and Alice, had gone ahead long before. "That dress, it's really... Um... Pretty."

"Thank you, I think," she had smiled up at him. Here was one advantage of going with Cleon Kennan - he was tall. And he was good-looking, in a crisp black suit and tie. She supposed that, with his fiery hair, he had worried about other colours clashing. "You look very nice as well."

At the Ball, he had asked her to dance, and it turned out that neither of them were particularly good dancers. Though certainly Kel wasn't particularly fussed about that, it turned out that he was more flustered about that than he should have been, and kept trying to pull her out onto the floor again and again to try and show her otherwise. Overall, it was really quite tiring.

Therefore, while it hadn't been a bad date, per se... Kel wasn't entirely sure she had actually enjoyed herself. Certainly she liked Cleon - in some ways, his flustered expression was really quite endearing, and he certainly seemed to like her, and she knew from studying with him that he was funny, and sweet, and interesting. But tonight?

She didn't know what she was expecting, because it was a perfectly fine date. In fact, looking out on the dance floor, she spotted other couples doing similar things - dancing, badly or not, smiling, laughing, and a few more courageous couples were far more demonstrative with their affection than Kel would ever have dared. Even Neal, who hadn't asked anyone to come with him, seemed to be having a good time with a number of girls on the dance floor.

Still, she couldn't really say in good conscience that she had been thrilled with the evening, it having passed largely with her feeling ill at ease and rather lost in a sea of unfamiliar customs. So when Cleon offered to walk her back to her dorm early, she gratefully accepted. She took his offered hand and let him lead her across the dimly lit campus, in silence.

"Sorry, Kel," he finally said, as they finally entered her dormitory and stepped into the inviting common room. The cold air seemed to have done him good, and he was certainly much more together than he had been the whole night. "I know you didn't have a lot of fun there."

"It isn't your fault," Kel replied, letting a small smile sneak out. Really, it wasn't. He had given her a perfectly acceptable date, hadn't he? There was a dance. He took her to it. He danced with her, they had talked. It was really a perfectly normal date. "I haven't been to a dance before - we didn't have them like this in Japan. So maybe I simply don't like dances."

"Still," he replied. "I should have done more to make you feel comfortable. I am sorry, for that. Your room is...?"

"Second floor," she reminded him. "But it's fine if you leave me here - I can make it upstairs by myself."

"Sure, if that's what you want." He paused, and turned to face her. She looked up at him curiously, noticing that his gray eyes were apologetic. He was still holding her hand - his hand was large, warm, and his thumb was tracing nervous circles on the back of hers. He hesitated, then leaned down and pressed warm lips against hers.

Oh, was all she could think.

It was a gentle kiss, a careful kiss, warm and sweet, and Kel could taste the faint lingering alcohol on his breath. Yet somehow, that kiss was more than she had expected, especially after a night like tonight, and it was so considerate... It was nothing like the kisses she had seen on the dance floor that night, nothing so tawdry or as demonstrative. It was a slight kiss, like an open-ended question - it wasn't a kiss that put pressure on her to reciprocate, a kiss that she wasn't comfortable with, but a kiss that really... She liked.

"Have a good night, Kel," he said. He was blushing fiercely, now. He turned to head to his own rooms, through a separate door than the girls' rooms.

He was halfway across the common room when she called out to him.

"Cleon?"

"Yeah?"

She took a deep breath. "Would you like to come with me to Blue Harbour sometime after we are back from the holidays? We could go to the museum, or walk around the downtown, or..." She fidgeted.

He looked over his shoulder, a genuine smile lighting his face. "Yeah, I'd like that," he replied.

Kel went to bed, thinking that really, that date had probably gone quite well.

XXX

AN: Thanks for reading! It took while to complete this chapter because while I knew what happened to Kel and Daine, I had a really hard time figuring out what to do with Aly. Alanna doesn't appear in this one (except as a note in Aly's POV) because she just has a lot of fun. We'll go back to her over winter break, anyway.