Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Three Weeks Later
Q uiggs paced Dean Cagney’s office, waiting for the ruling.
Today, the New Assembly voted on whether or not to exempt Quiggs from mandatory service. If exempted, he became a civilian. Free to vote, to wed, to marry. Or he could choose to remain single, free to enjoy sex in pleasure houses, bathhouses, alleys. On a desk, a rug, a park bench at night. Anywhere except in his apartment. Inviting a man for sex in his apartment was equivalent to a serious wedding proposal.
It was an open secret Max refused reciprocation.
The exemption from service was a sure thing. What had Quiggs pacing impatiently was a vote allowing men to wed without vowing reciprocation. Once it passed, Max would become the first man to invoke the new law when he wedded Quiggs in a simple ceremony this afternoon. They planned to seclude themselves in Max’s apartment for three days, where he hoped Max would finally, finally confess romantic feelings for his husband instead of hinting at them.
A sideboard held cider, crackers, and pepper jellies. Quiggs missed cheeses and custards. He missed the mugs of warm milk stirred with spices at bedtime. He missed sleeping with Max, whose formidable presence had sped up a mostly peaceful transition into a new regime.
The New Assembly consisted of thirty men and thirty women—twenty from each port city—with Max the self-appointed chairperson, whose vote was often a tiebreaker. Today was one of those tiebreakers, if all women obstinately voted to keep mandatory reciprocation in wedlock and all men defiantly voted it optional.
Members of the New Assembly called themselves legislators. During the first session, Max informed the women to stop squabbling over a proper uniform and get down to business, or he’d assign all legislators a uniform of tees and drawstring pants. The women thought he bluffed. He wasn’t. They covered their borrowed tees and pants with long coats buttoned from the ankle to the throat, while the men wore the rattiest garments they owned.
Max repealed the uniform code the following week. Women wore fitted black suits minus the annoying bustles, the men crisp white shirts and dark pants. A new government commenced.
Given a choice of joining with or fighting against soldiers, the police defected to Max’s side. Objections dwindled to a few bitter ousted Ruling Mothers.
Each day of spraying reclaimed more land from the vines. Three crops of greens won approval in the dining halls. Due next week were fingerling potatoes along with a patch of oats. Construction of the first farming village was underway, financed by Quiggs’s bounty.
A vote to end the concubine lottery lost by a wide margin. Not surprisingly, the men argued to keep it. A concubine gave them the illusion of a wife. Actually, better than a wife, considering how vicious women behaved to get their way. Rosamunde, confined to an apartment with her trial deferred until after she delivered her baby, was the worst example. In exchange for a benevolent execution, Palmer had confessed to everything. The ex-governor, William, and Cyrus were stripped of their land and assets and sentenced to twenty years of hard labor on a new penal farm in the outland. They had plotted to get their hands on the new land. Now they would.
With Max’s support, women won positive changes. Campaigning for a future seat in the assembly was based on ability, not fertility. Marriage before nineteen was encouraged, not mandatory. Debs dumped pink dresses for wide-legged pants and tunics. They burned their bonnets and cut their hair. Stefan was making a fortune off styling appointments.
The curriculum in both academies changed. Cadets gained access to the advanced studies offered to debs. Inactive cadets explored outside the Academy with a classmate. The braid was banished.
Sadly, the rite of passage snip remained.
To nurture friendships between the sexes, Dean Cagney proposed social gatherings between the two academies. What a windy debate! Max hammered his gavel for order until it was worn down to the handle.
Poor Max chafed from all the diplomacy. He wanted to sail away on his barge with Quiggs but was stuck until a new chairperson was elected. With every man voting for a man, and every woman voting for a woman, the election for a chairperson stayed deadlocked. Max refused to break this particular tie. He wanted a clear win for the next chairperson, and the Assembly clearly wanted Max.
Quiggs lived in his old apartment at the Academy, busying himself with the paperwork involved in transferring Rosamunde’s property back to him. He reopened his work tower with Witters and Meeks reinstalled. They had wept to see him alive.
An unmarried graduate, he was allowed recreational sex outside his apartment. Single men appeared nervous when Quiggs spoke to them, obviously leery of Max’s reaction to a flirtation. Women with marriageable daughters boldly approached him with invitations for meet-and-greets. Dean Cagney urged him to cultivate allies by accepting invitations, and the food served was good. Too good. He’d put on weight. The debs acted besotted with him, gushing over his heroics, his brains, his wealth. They openly discussed bearing his children. Apparently, they genuinely wanted to marry him.
Max visited him daily. They sat across the room from each other in the dean’s office with the door wide open and Dean Cagney sitting behind his desk, ignoring Quiggs’s hints to leave. Max could have said something. He didn’t.
Instead, Max greeted his former concubine with a hand over his heart and a deep bow indicating he desired wedlock. As the suitor, Max left small gifts and teasing letters. The restraint frustrated Quiggs.
Sack of shit! What was holding up the vote? Quiggs nibbled when nervous. The wedding suit Cutty tailored for him, charcoal gray with a dark blue vest over a white shirt, chafed, and he ran a finger inside the starched collar. Stefan had shushed his worries as he’d styled his hair earlier. Quiggs was the darling hero of the Triangle. Max, the reward he deserved. The law would pass with a bit of high-spirited debating to tease Max when he broke the tie.
Despite the gel Stefan applied, Quiggs’s dark hair flopped in the off-center part he remembered having when he enrolled in the Academy. He had thought the years of wearing a heavy braid would have tamed the flop. But no, it had returned along with the soft curls at his nape and ears.
The door opened, and Dean Cagney stepped inside. A smile wreathed his face, crinkling the corners of his black eyes. In his crisp pompous voice, he said, “You win. Civilian status was unanimous.”
“And the restriction removed from wedlock?”
“No. I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t Max break the tie?”
“It wasn’t a tie. Wedlock is revered, and the majority of the men voting are wedded.”
“But Max—”
“He allowed it to pass without dissenting.”
Quiggs massaged his pounding temples. How could Max not speak out? Quiggs had already moved his belongings to Max’s apartment.
Dean Cagney placed a stack of invitations on the sideboard and poured himself a cider. “These are from young men interested in a courtship. I watched each candidate grow up in the academy. Professor Hines knows their sexual quirks. Working together, we’ll narrow the list for compatibility, then proceed to the interviews. We will match you with an excellent husband.”
Quiggs stared at the cards. He’d made his choice months ago. It was Max or no one.
The dean patted his shoulder. “You deserve a respectful, reciprocated union. You’re free to visit a pleasure house. Once you’ve experienced sex with normal men, you’ll understand what the commander taught you isn’t what healthy natural sex should feel like.”
Translation: Once Quiggs fucked a man with a normal appendage, he’d never settle for Max.
Quiggs tossed the cards in a waste bin. “Not interested.”
The dean lost his smile. “Be reasonable. Max is as unable to consummate wedlock as you are to consummate marriage.”
“Oh, yes, he will.”
“You can’t figure your way out of this!”
Quiggs winked at the dean’s flushed face. “Already have.”
This was Quiggs’s second visit to Max’s military office on the third floor of the Legislative Building. Stained woven rugs covered the boot-scuffed floors in the small waiting room. It was lunch hour, and both waiting benches were empty. A no spitting sign hung on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. Max could have taken over the governor’s suite, but he complained the gilt hurt his eyes. He preferred his plain office with maps covering the boring beige walls and a glass case housing his skulls.
Quiggs’s first visit was during his fifth year with Beau and his classmates. Beau had clung to him, averting his eyes from the skulls. The cadets had taunted him that some were his relatives, and Quiggs had petted him until he calmed.
The receptionist on duty today was a lieutenant with receding blond hair. He wore a fitted brown shirt with a precisely knotted navy tie. Max would likely be wearing his formal uniform with the embroidered skulls on the cuffs after leaving the Assembly.
Quiggs planted his palms on the desk. “I’d like to see Commander Bronn, please.”
The lieutenant reached for the appointment slate without looking up. His voice was polite but firm. “State your business and schedule an appointment.”
“It’s an urgent personal matter.”
The lieutenant tapped his marker on the slate. “Be more specific if—” his voice broke off as he looked up. He sucked in a breath as he recognized Quiggs. “Mr. Fallon. Sir, I…” He glanced behind at the closed door to the office. “This is not a good time. I will send a messenger to fetch you.”
“No, thank you. I’ll wait.”
The lieutenant looked jumpy as a lizard on a hot rock. “The commander really is busy.”
A young soldier stalked from the office, tucking his brown tee inside his opened pants. He had messy dark hair, a roundish face, and was Quiggs’s height but with every inch lean with defined muscle. He left the room, fuming, without a word to either man.
Quiggs’s eyes narrowed on the tight ass, watching for signs of a waddle.
The lieutenant smiled sheepishly. “The commander’s claws bother him when he’s frustrated. His soldiers consider it a duty—excuse me—an honor to draw tiles to see who will… uh… relieve the tension.” At Quiggs’s grinding teeth, he added hastily, “It’s what they did before he won you. He’s never—not once ever—after he won you. But after today’s vote, he’s… uh… really bothered with tension. ”
Quiggs’s voice drilled through the jealous lump in his throat. “Tell the commander to pull up his pants. He has another visitor.”
“Please schedule another time,” the lieutenant pleaded.
“Never mind. I’ll announce myself.” Quiggs started for the door, humiliated Max hadn’t waited thirty damn minutes after the vote before finding someone else.
The lieutenant beat him to the door. “I’ll tell him! Take a seat. Give me a minute.”