“I still think you shouldn’t have forgiven him for acting that way to you.” Tom clenched his fist around a chess piece. “I won’t forget what he did. Not ever. He would’ve done it, you know. He would’ve driven me insane. I would be crazy now, if it had been up to him.”

“He had to. He thought you committed treason.”

“He didn’t have to.” He opened his aching fist, and saw that the chess piece he’d been gripping had left red marks in his palm. “Just forget I said anything. You don’t wanna believe me, that’s up to you. Do me one favor.”

He waited until she dragged her gaze back over to meet his.

“Don’t ever talk about me around him, Wyatt. Not ever. If he asks you anything about me, don’t answer him. I don’t care how harmless the question seems. Don’t tell him anything.”

Wyatt stared at him a long moment. Then: “It’s not exactly like we sit around talking about you all the time. Not everything’s about you.”

“I know that.” And he did know it. Intellectually, at least. He knew he was all self-centered and arrogant here, but he couldn’t help thinking sometimes . . . well, ever since that first day he met Heather, really, that a great many things—perhaps a disproportionate number of things—tended to become about him. Maybe he was a bit paranoid.

“Blackburn has never even brought you up to me,” she assured him. “Except once when we were joking about writing table etiquette subroutines, and of course, you came up. Oh, and when I told him a trainee had gotten banned from all the companies and he said, ‘Let me guess. Tom Raines.’ That was it.”

Tom tossed in a last chess piece with a sigh, and changed the subject. “So, think Yuri’s murdered Vik yet?”

She smiled wickedly. “No, I think he’s making him suffer.”

And then the door to the plebe common room slid open. Tom’s gaze jolted up. It was Heather Akron.

This was trouble. He’d given Wyatt away over the thought interface and Heather had threatened her.

Heather’s smile grew voracious like a hungry predator’s at the sight of Wyatt. “Enslow!” she exclaimed, voice dripping with sweet poison. “How great to find you in here. I really want to talk with you.”

Wyatt threw an uncertain glance toward the door to Alexander Division, where Yuri and Vik had gone. Heather slinked across the room to loom right in front of Wyatt. Her eyes raked her up and down, and she said, “I hear you’ve been spreading some nasty slander about me.”

Tom kicked the chess box under the table and reared to his feet. “Heather, hold off. That stuff I was thinking—”