Class assignment took place in a lecture hall not unlike an amphitheater, with hard arcs of stone for seating. There was a far greater density of students than had taken Lin's tour: at least a few hundred girls packing the benches, the air noticeably degrading with the perspiration from their walk.

  "We're more punctual than my mom was." Mica grinned, twirling her Athame on its lanyard. "And I got my knife back!"

  Io still didn't understand why the bully had just given it to her. Was it just because she was a Tian Lung...?

  President Lin was already calling out names when Io and Mica arrived, her voice hoarse despite regular sips of water from a carafe held by her dutiful maid Akira. The clipboard in her hand was dog-eared and colorful with pasted notes.

  —"Nausicaa Vogel. House Benetnasch. 1-Epiphyllum."

  —"V...Vineta Yellowknife. House Vesta. 1-Calla."

  The sleepy, betiara'd girl from the War Room was leaning alone against an emergency exit. At the sound of her name, Vineta flashed Lin a mocking thumbs up, as if to say 'Hooray. You said it.'

  Io and Mica stayed low as they crept down the steps. Io took comfort in the idea that she hadn't met most of these students yet, and thus they couldn't possibly be her enemies already—although she ducked, her pulse accelerating, when she saw Diane and her cronies playing board games in a corner far from the stage.

  —"Diane Levenger. House Vesta. 1-Rhododenron."

  A single contrived "Whoooo!" flew from that corner, answered by a crushing silence that Lin seemed to deliberately prolong in a rare display of cruelty.

  In the lull, Io spotted the student she was looking for, standing by herself in the front row. A chubby girl in a boy's uniform... there really wasn't any other.

  "Y... You!!" Io grabbed the collar of Ema's sportcoat—not really knowing what to say next, but hoping her indignation came through in her voice. "Ema! You set me up!"

  "Wh... wha...?" Ema babbled, her dark eyes wide at the assault. Something like recognition passed over her features, but her eyes quickly hardened.

  "I just thought you needed a push. How was I supposed to know what you'd do with it?" She swatted Io's hands away and huffed, disabused of any cheer from before. "Where did you even learn to say something like that to a person you just met?"

  Io gritted her teeth. "That was clearly entrapment. Diane's crooks almost—"

  —"Mica Pallas Malvern. House Tian Lung. 1-Epiphyllum."

  —"Io Temperance Harmony Zebulon. No House. 1-Heliotrope."

  —"Emeline Arius Exarcheia. House Cairnbrae. 1-Heliotrope."

  “W… what…?” Mica tugged Io's sleeve and turned to her with a knit brow, her face totally pale. Her shoulders shook as if the temperature had plummeted in the room. “Io…”

  Io could feel the other students' eyes on her; those in the corners stood up from their seats and gawked. Even Vineta looked, although she pretended not to. The chattering that was once a whisper rose to a fever pitch.

  Io’s breath hitched in her throat. “Wait. What’s wrong? I thought you knew I was a—”

  “…Not you,” Mica stopped her. She gestured to Ema with her eyes. Sweat poured from her brow in ribbons, like she was afraid to even finish the thought.

  Both of them turned to Ema, who wasn't facing them. She raised her hands and waved to Lin vacantly. They were close enough to the stage that Lin could not have avoided noticing this.

  "...shouldn't be here..." Somebody whispered.

  The President coughed lightly into her microphone, fingering the next page of the clipboard.

  “I didn't stutter,” she said.

  Io had been assigned to class 1-Heliotrope, a word that meant nothing to her until she took a much-needed shower in her dorm—and from then on would mean "ice cold water, makeshift, awful."

  She wrapped herself in a towel and sat shivering in the pantry beneath the hydroponics rack, which was an earthy-smelling shock of green in what had generally proven to be an artificial environment. An electric kettle whined with the boiling water she'd need to make Tallulah's tea. She sipped the warming brew anxiously as she absorbed her living situation.

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  Looking around, the dorm had likely once been a parts closet with partitions erected for bedrooms. There must've been about 30 girls here in all, some already retired to their pipe beds. Successive generations of Heliotrope engineers had erected improvised amenities such as the shower she'd just used, but this was so obviously the worst-appointed dormitory.

  It was at this point she caught sight of Ema walking past the pantry in pyjamas, lugging what seemed to be a plush, life-sized automaton, or least an antiquated vision of one: corrugated tubes for arms, light-up teeth. Irritated by her ease, Io banged on the shower door to get her attention.

  "Ema, this is hazing." She gestured at the corrugated plating that passed as a door. "That freezing cold thing is not a shower. This is not a dorm."

  Ema shuffled around. Before she could reply, a shock of pink spread across her cheeks. "T...Those are not clothes." Ema pointed at Io with all the graces of a toddler. After a second she realized she'd been staring and clutched the robot to her chest defensively, trying to make herself small behind it—although she was too wide for it to work.

  Did this girl have... a prudish streak?

  Well, okay. Io ran for a change of clothes. She could see the relief in Ema's expression when she returned. Ema and her robot were curled into a ripped ottoman she'd apparently dragged all the way from 1-Gladiolus for some extra comfort, her feet propped on a repurposed rover tire.

  "We should tell Lin," Io insisted.

  "She knows," Ema grumbled. "Give up."

  "Yeah, I wouldn't," one of the other students concurred; a bespectacled girl in overalls who sat bow-legged on the floor, cleaning out the pipes in the hydroponics rack with a bottlebrush. She adjusted her glasses as glasses-wearers do before lecturing someone, then continued:

  "Historically, Heliotrope is where the Academy has concentrated the less respected Houses. I can understand wanting to quarantine degenerates like Ema, of course—although I personally am from House Jura, and I resent the idea that we are undesirables."

  Ema groaned and kicked her legs against her plushie. "Face it, Fredda. You're just as hosed as the rest of us. Why do you wanna be an Imperial scholar anyways?"

  Fredda puffed out her chest and set her tools in a bucket full of dirty water. She was remarkably unafraid of Ema—maybe camaraderie in being at the bottom of the pecking order.

  "We Jura can be found wherever the pursuit of knowledge takes us. Imperial, technical, or—Emperor forbid," she held a finger to her collarbone and winked, "Both."

  A double degree? The thought made Io's head hurt, but there was a sense of relief too: at least she knew whose homework she'd be copying when classes started in a couple days.

  "Why do you wanna be an officer cadet?" Fredda shot back. "Do you have a death wish?"

  Ema hesitated for a moment, seemingly caught off guard by the question. Her eyes darted left and right and settled on Io's as if pleading for a time out. "Io?"

  "Diplomacy," Io answered, smiling flatly. "I'm supposed to 'make inroads', but I've been flying an interceptor for most of my life and that's the only thing I can do. Next?"

  Ema sighed, and hid behind her robot again. "...Because President Lin told me to."

  "She said it would be good for my future." She gulped. Her eyes wandered off to the side, something wavering in her voice. "I didn't think much of it back then, because I'd been flying an Arrowhead for a few years. So I said okay."

  It explained the way she stood in front during the class assignment. Something in the 'back then', however, told Io that Ema did not precisely admire Lin—more that she was upholding some kind of obligation.

  That was understandable. Io's mind wandered to the maid Akira who'd delivered her luggage. Nobody really good had a maid.

  "M... Makes sense," Fredda broke the silence.

  Resenting the dismissal from Fredda, the large girl stirred and climbed to her feet.

  "To your proposal, Io. The President has a lot of work on her hands. I don't think we should hassle her any more." She exhaled deeply, looking to the corrugated door. "Free showers are really nice, you know. You can take one every day. Sometimes I'd shell out for it, but it was usually better to eat."

  "Wait," Io said. "What do you mean—"

  Io followed Ema a little too far towards her room. The girl cringed away, her shoulders slumped. It didn't seem like she wanted to talk anymore.

  It was hard to sleep. Io's first day kept replaying behind her eyelids as she shuffled on the pipe bed, curling beneath a yellowed blanket she'd brought from home. Class 1-Epiphyllum's dorm wasn't too far, and there wasn't a curfew that she knew of. So she made the trip across the hall, shivering a little in her white casual tunic.

  She found herself outside their common room, where an inviting flower arrangement capped a dinner table bathed in warm light. The students chatting inside hailed largely from House Benetnasch, whose 'uniform' consisted of tiny puffer jackets that looked like they'd shrunk in the wash.

  Mica's attitude towards Io had noticeably cooled. She struggled to meet her eyes, instead lowering her head and clicking her Athame open and shut as if it were a toy.

  "I... told you I was from a merchant branch family," Mica said. "This is important for me."

  Io's voice wavered. "Where is this going, Mica...?"

  "I'm sorry, Io. I can't be seen with you or that..." She shuddered. "Cairnbrae. Ema. Not in person, anyway."

  "You'd have starved to death without me," Io snapped.

  "I... I know that." Mica rubbed her eyes. "But my family's future is on the line. Everyone knows I don't deserve to be here. I'm going to make so many mis-steps, but I'd at least like to avoid the most obvious."

  Mica met Io's gaze and tried to smile, one of her eyes squeezing shut from the effort of collecting herself.

  "Let's just say I owe you one, okay?"

  She turned away, but not before reaching into her pocket and handing her a handwritten note with a Benetnasch constellation letterhead.

  "Cordially invited to join us for the morning flyover," it read. "Nausicaa Vogel, class 1-E."

  It had been a long first day. Maybe Lin was right that blood was a troublesome thing. Vesta, Tian Lung, Benetnasch, Jura, and perhaps the lowest of them all: Cairnbrae.

  Io closed the pillow over her head as if to block the intrusive feelings. She couldn't help but wonder if this was all some kind of punishment on the part of Tallulah. It felt like Io had stepped on every possible rake; as if the old lady had she'd designed this situation in a lab to make her feel small and lose any friends she tried to make. The thought made her angry enough to cry.

  She clenched her teeth. The ship would be landing in a neutral system in couple of days, and that invitation was burning a hole in her pocket. She'd show them, she'd show Diane, and she'd show that old crone.

  She didn't know what, but she'd show them all.