James Axler – The Mars Arena

The door opened, and Dean’s heart leaped to the back of his throat.

Phaedra Lemon stepped into the outer office, wearing the light-colored blouse and denim skirt that were the school’s uniform for its female students.

Dean’s jaw almost dropped. He hadn’t expected her there.

“My dear,” Nicholas Brody said in that officious way of his, “I certainly appreciate your willingness to involve yourself in reporting this case of scandalous behavior on the part of these young men. Rest assured, then, that I will do my utmost to resolve these conflicts straightaway.”

Phaedra started to say something.

Brody shushed her with an uplifted hand. “My dear, really. I’ve troubled you for enough of your time.”

“Yes, sir.” Phaedra dropped a short curtsy, then turned on her heel and walked to Dean. “I did my best to explain to Mr. Brody that you were only returning an earring of a friend’s that I’d lost. I told him I thought it was a most gallant thing to do.”

“Uh, okay.” Dean gazed at her and blinked. Suddenly hot, he pulled at his shirt collar, thinking it had to have shrunk since he’d put it on that morning. He glanced at Brody.

The headmaster stood in the doorway, hands locked behind his back in a familiar pose. His broad face was unreadable.

Phaedra left without another word, her vanilla scent lingering after her.

“Mr. Cawdor,” Brody said. “If you would, please.” He stepped aside and waved inside his office.

Dean pushed himself out of the chair and swallowed hard. Muties or stickies, he thought, a dozen of them or two dozen, and him armed only with a pea shooter, that would be better than walking into that room.

But he went.

Chapter Fourteen

“Tracks,” Ryan told J.B.

The Armorer walked forward, automatically unslinging the Samp;W M-4000 scattergun. Behind the round lenses, his hawk-sharp eyes surveyed the broken terrain. The sun blazed down, growing hotter and melting the snow even more rapidly.

Ryan touched the indentation of a boot that had slipped off a shelf of rock and made a J-shape in the soft earth. Then he pointed out the muddy impressions the boot had made along the rocky trail they were following.

“Fresh,” J.B. said.

“Yeah.” Ryan ran his fingers through the smear of mud. It was still damp. “Mebbe less than an hour old.”

“We could find another way. Down there looks like mebbe we could cross without getting mired too bad.”

Ryan studied the bowl-shaped valley nearly a hundred yards below. “That’s a pretty wide stretch. If the brushwooders come up on us suddenly, we could get royally fucked.”

“We’ve got to be leaving them behind,” J.B. said. “They’d have to be flat traveling to match the pace we’ve set.”

Ryan flicked his eye over the rocky shelf. Here and there were other mud smears. “Whoever it was, he wasn’t alone.”

“No, but there couldn’t be many of them.”

“We’ll keep on going the way we were.” Ryan decided that partly because staying with the rise of stone seemed safest and the least traceable, and partly because he was curious. “Pass the word.”

J.B. nodded and went back along the trail.

Carrion eaters circled lazily in the blue sky, their wings dead still. Ryan chose not to view that as an omen, because he wasn’t a superstitious man.

“HAVE A SEAT, Mr. Cawdor.” Nicholas Brody indicated one of the three straight-backed chairs in front of his desk.

“Yes, sir.” Dean sat, dropping his hands into his lap.

Brody’s brows drew together. “I await elucidation, Mr. Cawdor, with a calm demeanor yet a certain sense of purpose.”

“Yes, sir.” Dean had learned early on that when an instructor at the school spoke, it usually meant kitchen duty or mucking out the stables for not being prompt with an answer.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Yes, sir.” Dean let out his breath, maintaining eye contact with the older man with difficulty. “I’m sorry.” He was bastard sorry he’d gotten caught.

“Your feelings in this regard are both noted and appreciated. But that in no way begins to clarify how you came to be on that structure.”

“I climbed, sir.”

“Of course you climbed,” Brody snapped. “I know very well that you’re incapable of sprouting wings like some Icarus. What I endeavor to comprehend is what motivated you to go up there in the first place.”