Page 41 of Nemesis Mine
“Can you?” said Maximillian without looking up. Cyrus grinned at the barb. Perhaps he was a bad influence.
Balthazar’s mouth tightened. He turned on his heel, leaving the door ajar behind him. Probably on purpose.No doubt he loathed the idea of leaving Maximillian alone with Cyrus for even a second.
Cyrus’s eyes slid to the champion. He was still examining the seating plan.
“Why d’you bother with him?”
Maximillian glanced up. “Bal? He’s... well, he’s been with me for a long time now.” His mouth twitched, rueful. There was the dimple again. Cyrus was getting used to seeing it; he no longer felt the need to quash a physical recoil of disgust every time Maximillian smiled. And he smiled a lot.
“Anyway, he’s got his uses.” At Cyrus’s doubtful expression, he grinned and pushed the parchment away, stretching and turning to face him. Their legs almost touched. Cyrus tried not to be so aware of it.
“He does, truly,” he confided. “There’s so much to do when you’re elected champion of somewhere like Heliarth. A lot of it is so dull. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork.”
“Balthazar does love being dull,” Cyrus agreed.
Maximillian tried not to smile and failed. “He’s good at what he does. He just gets a bit...”
“Annoying,” said Cyrus. “Like a bug.”
“I was going to say fussy, but—”
“A bug that you want to splat.”
Maximillian laughed quietly. “You would say that.” Did he soundfond? Cyrus couldn’t tell. He also couldn’t tell how he felt about it. “Well, the fact that he does all the paperwork means I don’t have to bother. I’d put up with any amount of fussing from him if he’ll spare me from the most boring side of being a champion.”
Cyrus couldn’t help but think of Maximillian’s words in theAthaca Newsinterview, the frustration he admitted to. Then in the woodland clearing, when they practised their fight, he spoke of wanting to get away from it all. For the first time, Cyrus wondered if Maximillian really had, at any point, dreamed of escaping the champion life. Whether he would admit it, if such a dream existed.
Maximillian’s head was down again, scratching out something on their plan, but he looked up as Cyrus’s silence stretched out.
“What?”
“Didn’t say anything.”
Maximillian made an impatient noise. “I know. I’m asking what you’re thinking. I can see you’re thinking, you have that face on.”
“I don’t have athinkingface.”
“You do. It’s—” Maximillian stopped. Cyrus got the feeling he’d been about to spill out a word he might regret. Curiosity swelled, but he wasn’t about to ask.
Maximillian was busy doing an impression anyway, a frowny little pout that looked nothing like any expression Cyrus had ever worn. “Like this.”
“I’m going to need you to stop doing that,” Cyrus said, “before I’m forced to destroy you and put a premature end to our agreement.”
Maximillian did stop, but he was grinning. “Well, that’s what you were doing. Come on, tell me what you were thinking about.” He sidled closer on the couch. Cyrus stared down at the lack of space between them, wondering how he had ever found himself in a situation where achampion knew he could elbow him and not immediately lose a limb as a result.
“I was just thinking about what you said, about Balthazar sparing you from the most boring aspects of being a champion. I was wondering what the most boring parts are.”
“Well, the paperwork—”
“Yeah, I got that,” Cyrus interrupted. He felt restless in a way he couldn’t properly place, like he was tiptoeing around something that kept slinking out of reach before he could dig into it. “I mean, I was thinking about... whether it’s worth it. Whether it ever gets... too much.”
Maximillian didn’t answer. He’d gone still; Cyrus could feel it with their arms still touching. His words seemed to hover in the air between them, almost solid. Cyrus half wanted to take them back, to shy away from the conversation. It felt too much like straying into vulnerable territory, like Maximillian might think he could ask questions of his own.
After a few long seconds, Maximillian sighed, casting around for the right words. “I mean... it’s like I said when I suggested this. Wrongdoers aren’t...constrained, are you? You do what you like, when you like it. Being a champion, working for the Federation... it’s not like that.”
Not constrained in the same way as a champion, no, but Cyrus was starting to think that their situations were not so very different. “You feel... trapped,” he estimated.
“No,” said Maximillian, too quickly. “I don’t mean—it’s just how it is. It’s just the way. There’s a lot of good too, all the money and the respect and the freebies—and helping people, of course.” That was hastily added, not convincingin the slightest, and Cyrus found himself fighting back a sudden, foolish urge to smile.
