Page 31 of Winterveil

“I understand why hard work is such a foreign concept to you,” she said. “We don’t all scorch the earth behind us in pursuit of a better ranking.”

Uncharacteristically, Carter seemed to brush off the slight. A slow smile spread across his face.

“Haven’t you heard the rumors? There’s a new student here who might snatch your crown.”

Klaudia said nothing. It was a bluff.

“Come on,” Carter said, when she remained silent. “You’ve been eating with him for the past week. That Back Bay brat. Julian Joyce-Young the Third.”

Something else notable about Carter was the legendary chip on his shoulder. His family was firmly middle-class, and he had grown up in some irrelevant Boston suburb. He and Mikhail were probably the closest Valeran had to scholarship students, but while Mikhail had no such hang-ups, Carter was unabashedly concerned with his humble background and extraordinarily sensitive to anything that brought it to the surface.

Undoubtedly this also contributed to his resentment of Klaudia. She may have been Soviet by birth, but she had been raised in a luxury Manhattan penthouse.

Julian’s arrival must have been even more galling. But, oddly, Carter’s voice held no bitterness. Only gloating.

“He’s climbed more than halfway up the ranking board in just under a week,” Carter went on. “That’s practically unheard of.”

As she regarded Carter, Klaudia realized that while he certainly didn’t like Julian, Julian was the lesser of two evils. Better to be shown up by the closest thing America had to an aristocracy than by a Russian girl.

And despite his pettiness and ego, Carter was a competent strategist. He knew how to pick a winner. If he couldn’t beat Klaudia himself, he would throw all his support behind someone who could.

“Well,” Klaudia said, bending over to gather her books and pick up her satchel, “I do hope your new hero doesn’t disappoint you.”

Carter’s face flushed as red as his hair. “You really think you’re untouchable?”

“My ranking hasn’t slipped in three years. I’ve earned everything that I have.”

“So have I,” Carter shot back.

“Yes, you’ve certainly earned your place beneath me,” said Klaudia. “Truly, Carter—you deserve it.”

She turned and hurriedly exited the reading room before she could hear Carter’s outraged rejoinder. Klaudia reassured herself that he was mostly bark and little bite. For all his bluster, Carter had never truly threatened her place at Valeran.

But as she returned to her dorm, his words nagged at her. Carter was no real challenger, but what about Julian? He had already proven himself intelligent and capable. It took considerable skill to improve one’s ranking so drastically in such a short period of time. And it was impressive, winning a major election at eighteen, even if it had ended in humiliation and scandal. Money and privilege did not account for everything. Plenty of billionaires twice his age couldn’t even buy themselves a Senate seat.

He’s weak, Klaudia tried to assure herself. She had seen him crying. It might have been an asset in the real world, but here at Valeran, his privileged background was also his soft underbelly. Once exposed, it could be exploited.

Back in her room, she pulled out her tablet and checked the rankings board. She scrolled down until she found Julian’s ranking. Twenty-eight. Far from first—but maybe not far enough.

Klaudia scrolled back up to the top of the list. Seeing her own name there at number one eased her mind. The list would refresh at midnight, and at the end of the week, if she remained at first, Dr. Iver would offer his usual array of rewards. The most sought-after reward was a weekend furlough, which Dr. Iver only granted to the student at rank one.

Klaudia had never taken it. It was hard enough to keep her father from her thoughts, from her nightmares. The mere idea of going back to New York turned her blood cold. Instead, she took the more trivial rewards: an allowance for otherwise prohibited items and small luxuries, like makeup and hair clips. She ordered shoes and jewelry for Jane, shampoo and skincare products that made the other girls in the bathroom eye them with envy. Arranged neatly on Klaudia’s bureau were tubes of red lipstick, as much proof of her superiority as the rankings list itself.

Her tablet pinged with a message from Mikhail. Game’s afoot, it read. Let me know what you think.

Included was a file, which Klaudia swiftly downloaded. The app materialized on her home screen and then launched something called THYMOS.exe.

When it opened, she was able to see the other users who had logged on chronologically. Jane Lin, of course, and below it, Julian Joyce-Young III. Mikhail had sent it to them in precisely that order. Jane first, then Julian, and then her.

Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, Klaudia opened the plain text with Mikhail’s instructions. It was thousands of words long. On the side of the screen, a green check mark pulsed, indicating that Julian was also online.

Klaudia took out a notebook and a pen. She scrolled through the file, taking assiduous notes, working until her hand ached. Mikhail had built a truly impressive product, with what Klaudia swiftly determined were dozens of strategic considerations that had thousands of potential outcomes. It drew obvious inspirations from chess and other turn-based strategy games but was far more complex.

After more than an hour had passed, an hour of note-taking and mental equations, Klaudia put down her pen and shook out her fingers, wincing.

Her father was left-handed, too. When they’d come to America, he’d switched his wedding ring from his right hand to his left. But he always took it off before he did what he had to do. He was always careful not to leave any marks.

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