Chapter II

ANNUAL GAMES ORDINANCE, AUC 2750

Assessment Schedule — Ground Record

The certified record shall include conduct observed in assigned duty, lawful initiative, cooperation within the army, and preservation of strength. An edited public account may omit protected methods and information; it shall not replace the ground record used for assessment.

II

Beyond the eastern gate, Camilla takes the first open return station and I take the next. While the reader matches my wrist Tessera to my face, her station clears and she joins the cadets moving deeper into the academy. Beneath my name, IN TRANSIT changes to REPORTED. I lower my hand and turn toward the final-year rooms.

The route returns before the distances do. My feet choose each turn without the signs, but a month away has stretched the courts between them.

The southern ground appears in narrow sections between the older buildings. A temporary roof kicks in the wind while cadets pull its far edge down. Behind them, a standard rises halfway, catches, and sinks again among the equipment. Beyond that wall, the ground is filling with formations from my private list. If my name is called tomorrow, the first choice I make will begin there.

I nearly pass the opening to my corridor.

Evander is beside my door, watching the stairwell. He straightens before the wheels of my case cross the last seam in the floor.

“You been here long?”

“At the academy? Since nine.” He glances at the door. “Here? Five minutes this time.”

“You checked before.”

“Twice.”

I touch my Tessera to the lock. Evander sees me trying not to smile and gives up first.

The room has been cleaned during leave. Solvent catches at the back of my throat, and the chair is tucked squarely beneath the desk at an angle I never use. I put my tabula on the desk and lift the case onto the bed.

Evander pulls out the chair, turns it around, and sits with his arms folded across the back. He sat that way in every room we shared. Six years of academy furniture have not persuaded him to use any of it correctly.

Academy gray moves from the case to the drawer until one shirt opens differently against my hands. The crease runs from collar to hem instead of across the chest.

My mother refolded it after I packed. She stood beside my bed with the shirt over one arm and flattened the new crease with her palm.

“Do you expect them to choose you as one of the commanders?”

“Expectation has nothing to do with it.”

“Well, I expect them to. They would be foolish not to.”

The room settles around me again.

Evander has turned toward the window. There is nothing beyond it he needs to study.

I fold the shirt along the crease she made. It does not lie like the others. I place it on top anyway.

“How full was the southern ground when you crossed?”

“At ten?” Evander turns back. “The western row was still taking equipment. A transport column had the path, so I went around. It looked close to full behind them.”

“Senior command?”

“Already walking the outer route. Enough of them to change how the nearest camps were standing.”

“Anyone missing from the notices?”

“Not that I saw.”

The light through the window has shifted off the desk. I look at the open case, then at the strip of southern ground visible past Evander’s shoulder.

He rises. “Londinium?”

“Yes.”

I leave the rest of the case where it is, take my tabula from the desk, and follow Evander into the corridor.

The route board puts the Sixth Londinium Engineers near the far side of the southern ground. Their standard is visible above the encampments, but the marked circuit bends away from it, around incoming equipment and the low boundaries between camps. I take the circuit.

Heat has settled beneath the temporary roofs. Canvas snaps overhead. Somewhere inside the nearest camp, metal strikes metal in an uneven rhythm, followed by a voice calling for the same tool twice. Dust works over the tops of my shoes.

A long-bodied vehicle turns across the route before the first bend. Its crew lowers support plates beneath the wheels, and we wait with the other foot traffic. One cadet is half inside the forward housing. Another sits against an equipment case with his eyes closed until a teammate nudges a water flask against his boot. He drinks without opening them.

I unfold the tabula.

The order of my private list felt exact on the shuttle. Beyond the screen, the cadet lowers the flask and rests his head against the case again. His teammate takes it back without speaking.

I close the tabula when the vehicle moves.

The path carries us beside an encampment still being assembled. Four cadets draw a shelter line tight while two others fit connections beneath a bank of equipment. Their movements are quick until a senior command party enters the route.

The change reaches the camp before the officers do. Voices drop. The cadet nearest the boundary straightens. One of the four on the shelter line shifts his grip to face the route, and the canvas pulls loose above him. Wind catches it hard enough to snap. His partner drags it down, and they begin the same section again.

The command party passes without turning.

I open a note beneath the formation’s name, then close it without writing. Whatever I saw changed when the senior uniforms entered the path.

Evander says nothing. He has spent six years letting me discard an answer before asking what it was.

We continue around the circuit.

The engine noise thins as arriving vehicles settle into place. Ratchets, brief calls, and the hard closing of equipment cases take over. Shadows from the academy wall reach the first row of shelters and climb across the route. At first I slow whenever I recognize a standard from the Trial records. By the third turn, I stop trying to make a whole formation from the slice the path permits.

Londinium’s standard disappears behind a communications mast, then returns farther along the curve.

I have spent a month making a first choice before anyone has given me the right to make one. The closer we get, the less I can pretend I made it only to be useful in someone else’s army.

Evander looks at the folded tabula in my hand, but not at me.

The Londinium marker stands just beyond the last turn.

Their enclosure is narrower than it appeared in the Mars recording. A tracked repair unit rests open beneath a strip of shade, its side panels laid on padded cloth. Warm sealant sharpens the air. Cadets pass tools across the exposed housing, and each one returns to a frame before another hand reaches for it. The central lane stays clear without anyone calling for it.

Nothing in the first view asks me to defend the name at the top of my list. I notice the relief because my grip loosens around the tabula.

The commander from the recording stands near the far work area, listening while a cadet traces a connection across an open panel. She waits until he finishes, touches two points on the panel, and sends him back to the unit. He leaves at a run. She does not.

Nearer the route, four cadets seat the final protective panel on a compact power unit. One tests the latch, leans his weight against it, and reaches for the handle of the next case.

A second cadet says something I cannot hear.

The hand comes off the case.

All four look toward their commander. She is still at the far panel. For several seconds, no one moves beyond checking the latch they have already checked.

She looks up. Her attention crosses the enclosure, finds them, and settles on the case. She points.

The case is open before she turns back.

The pause is short. She sees it before anyone has to call. The formation around it never loses its shape.

“He knew,” Evander says.

I keep watching the work area. “Who?”

“The one nearest the case. His hand was on it before he looked for her.”

“He may have been wrong.”

“He may have been.”

Evander leaves the words there.

The open case holds a set of fitted tools. The cadet who reached for it selects the first one without searching and passes it behind him before the others ask. His hands do not hesitate while the task is in front of him.

I watch him instead of the commander.

I can build the defense without looking away. Their equipment arrived today. The work order may have changed. Their commander may be holding a sequence the route cannot show me.

The reasons are all possible. The hand still came off the case.

The pause costs almost nothing because she sees it. That is the kind of attention that put Londinium first.

I unfold the tabula and leave Londinium where it is.

The evening bell sounds at eighteen hundred. Its note travels through the open repair unit and hums in the panels laid beside it. At the southern entrance, the arrival lane is empty; inside the boundary, tools keep moving.

Who sees the failure when their commander does not?