arrived and I promised him a . . . a dance.” She awkwardly managed to extract her hair from Roshian’s hand. “Sorry.”
She hurried toward Cassian, fighting the urge to wipe her hair where Roshian had touched it. Cassian, dressed in a charcoal suit with the jacket slung over one elbow, looked perplexed at her sudden enthusiasm to see him, particularly when she rested her hands on his shoulders.
“Dance with me,” she hissed.
His expression grew even more perplexed, but he set down his jacket and stepped closer. Canned music pumped out of the speakers behind the bar, something with a clarinet and a woman’s languorous voice.
“I had to get away from Roshian,” she whispered. “He seriously creeps me out. Honestly, this whole place does. It’s—”
“Wait.” He nodded toward the nearest pair of dancers, who were only two tables away, and then pressed a hand to the small of her back, guiding her in the dance closer to the billowing curtains of the veranda, until they were well out of earshot.
“It’s freezing at night,” Cora continued. “There isn’t enough food. And these guests treat us like slaves, unless they like us, and then it’s even worse.”
Cassian raised an eyebrow. “I told you this place would give you much to consider. Have you changed your mind, then?”
She went silent as the dance continued, their feet quietly chasing each other’s, his hand warm against her back. Her plan with Mali and Lucky was still fresh in her mind, as was Mali’s warning that running the Gauntlet puzzles could make her go insane. No, she would prove humanity’s intelligence in a safer way—her way—by cheating. But in order to do that, she still needed Cassian to get her in front of the Gauntlet testers.
“Cora?” he prompted.
They were in the open on the veranda now. Alone. She tried to calm her heartbeat. It unnerved her to see him like this, in human clothes, with almost-normal eyes, and such fluid movements as he guided her around the veranda.
“Maybe,” she said slowly. “Tell me what the perceptive training would involve.”
“Sessions between you and me here in the lodge, and practice on your own.” He was so close that just a whisper brushed her ear. “In the past, the Gauntlet’s perceptive puzzles have primarily tested candidates on telekinesis, such as rearranging floor tiles to spell words with only one’s mind, or making objects levitate into a basket. If you can achieve levitation of a medium-sized object twelve inches in the air for thirty sustained seconds, I believe you will have a chance of passing whichever test they give you. I can teach you to do that. But, as time is limited, we will have to work diligently and, of course, secretly.”
He nodded toward the guests visible through the veranda doors. “There are Council members in there even as we speak. They cannot learn of what we are doing.”
Her palms were sweating, leaving dark marks on his shirt. “Why do they even care? I thought the Gauntlet’s whole purpose was to give lesser species a chance to prove our intelligence. You even said humans have run it before.”
“Some have, yes.”
“And did their participation have to be so secretive?”
“No.” He swung her around, so her back was to the lodge. “The difference is, no previous human candidates had a chance of succeeding until now. The Council is not interested in stopping humans from running the Gauntlet. But they are interested in stopping humans from beating it.”
“What are they so afraid of?” she asked.
“The Council has a vested interest in keeping humanity a lesser species. Their official stance is that humans are lesser because you primarily act on emotions, not logic. You expend your resources unsustainably. You incite war. If you were to gain intelligent status, you might damage the delicate system of universal governance we currently have.”
“And unofficially?”
He glanced toward the veranda doors. “If you had kept a species caged for centuries, and then suddenly gave them the key, along with access to lawmaking and transportation and weaponry, wouldn’t you fear what they would do?”
He let her go, abruptly, and reached into his pocket. He took out a pair of dice, holding them up to the sunlight. “That is why they cannot know what you are capable of. Not yet.”
Her palms felt empty without the solidity of his shoulders beneath them. The dice looked different from the others that were scattered around the lodge. The dots on these dice glowed with a faint blue light.
“I have fitted these dice with amplifiers