THUS THE BREAKING OF our company was set in motion, and between the three ships went shuttle after shuttle as Norman mercenaries were separated from Imperial legionnaires and Jaddian aljanhi alike. Between the distances and the time required for the unloading of gear and baggage the whole process was projected to take more than two days.

I made discreet effort to spirit away those of my possessions I would not be parted with: my clothes and combat armor, the red glasses that had survived all the way out of Emesh, the dinted myrmidon’s helmet, and the washing basin Jinan had given me. And my journals, of course. There were five by then, ranging in size from a folio more than a cubit high to a pocketbook no larger than the palm of my hand. Other leaves there were stuffed between their pages, depicting charcoal sketches and ink of men and cities and other things I’d drawn. They were my proudest possessions, save perhaps only my sword.

But I had no guarantee that there was a place for them on the Mistral, and so under the pretense of an inspection of the exchange I rode in the back of a shuttle carrying some dozen of the frozen mercenaries over from the Pharaoh to their new berths on the smaller Uhran-built ship.

I went alone, leaving Switch to other devices, and once the flight officers had cleared our docking I climbed up the umbilicus and followed the hall past the gallery where I’d met with Siran. The hall beyond was round as the tubes of the Quiet ruins on Emesh, though white where that strange place was black, with padded rings every few feet and brackets to assist in the event the suppression fields were turned off. I had to push past boxes left stacked in the hall, and acknowledged those as stopped to greet me. But I did not stay.

I’d foregone the crimson Red Company uniform—judging it a mistake in that moment, for my purposes, though I kept the high black boots. The rest of my kit was black, such as I had worn down to the planet, and I wore my shield-belt and Olorin’s sword openly about my hips above the short tunic. My old coat I wore over all. Very dark gray it was, a gift from the household of Count Mataro when I’d left their capital after my disastrous duel. It trailed after me, flapping about my calves as I went.

“Ho, boss!” Crim’s voice called from a side passage.

Stopping, I turned and saw the foederatus emerge from a room behind me. The shadow of weariness darkened the pits of his eyes, but he smiled and smoothed his unruly hair as best he could. In a quiet voice he asked, “Why are you here?”

I’d no reason to lie, not here. “I’m looking for the captain.”

“She’s in the ready room with Doctor Onderra,” Crim said at once. “Is it true we’re parting ways? You’ve been recalled?”

I ignored the question, asking instead, “Valka is here?”

“She means to stay with us,” Crim said, his smile widening just a little. “Something about being done with barbarians and . . . I’m not going to try and repeat her words, sir.”

“Valka’s leaving?” I said, stunned. It made sense. She was no soldier and had no love for the Empire, and had only held on for the promise of a meeting with the xenobites and an answer to her mysteries. An odd pit like an ulcer grew at once in my stomach, and I nodded my slow understanding. A moment later it was gone, banished by need and the next thought. “Where did you say they were?”

“Ready room, lord.”

“Very good.” And so I hurried off without another word.

The ready room lay just off an annex that accessed the bridge and the primary airlock far to the bow. It opened at my handprint and I stepped through the circular door to a small, low-ceilinged room whose roof arced away with the curve of the hull. Valka and the captain turned as I entered, and I took it as a compliment when both their eyes widened in surprise. Before either of them could speak, I said, “Captain, I wish to hire you.”

Otavia Corvo—dressed only in exercise gear, her golden hair pulled back from her teak face—frowned darkly as she said, “What?”

I waited for the heavy bulkhead door to hiss shut behind me before I said, “I want to go to March Station.”

The silence that followed might have out-sat eternity if Valka had not said, “What about Bassander’s orders?”

“Damn the orders. Damn Bassander,” I spat back, feeling hot all at once. I planted my legs apart and faced Otavia square across the low metal console table. “And damn the Empire if they get in my way.” Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Valka compress her lips and nod ever so slightly.

But I focused on Otavia, who settled into a low armchair bolted to the floor opposite me. As I myself was wont to do she tossed a leg over the arm of that chair, emanating a casual strength from every Olympian curve. She watched me a long moment, eyes gone narrow. At last she asked, “What else?”

Valka laughed, and I said, “I’m sorry?”

“What else do you need?” Otavia asked, brushing a crooked strand of her bleached hair from her face. “Not just a taxi service, I’m sure.”

I spoke without hesitation. “I need help taking the Cielcin from the Balmung. Today.”

“Today?” the captain repeated, incredulous. “Are you insane? We’d never get on board.”

I shook my head, took the seat opposite her with a sidelong glance at Valka, who remained standing by the far wall, arms crossed, as if deep in thought. “There are shuttles passing between all three ships right now, if we sent three of the larger ones over to the Balmung, we might be able to come away with . . . six? Seven of the fugue units? You have hookups in the hold here. There’s room.”

“And how do you expect to carry out six of those fugue pods without your girl noticing?” Otavia asked. Stopping, she raised her eyebrows. “Come to think on it, why aren’t you having this conversation with Jinan?”

A part of me crumpled then as if Otavia had taken an ax to it. I averted my eyes. “You heard her at the meeting. Do you really think she’d listen to me?” I’d turned the wrong way. Valka was staring at me. Those relentless gold eyes peeled the skin from me. I looked away again. “I tried speaking to her. Many times. She won’t listen.” Something dry and hairy crouched at the back of my mouth, and I swallowed. “Jinan and I are done. She’ll have to return to her people when we return to the fleet.”

“Done?” Valka said, speaking up. “Does Jinan know this?”

“Jinan did this,” I said, surprised by the venom in my voice. I did not have to look at her to see the sad smile on Valka’s face, the concern for a friend in pain.

Otavia offered no condolence or commiseration. “It won’t work. Even if I could get three cargo shuttles over to the Balmung without putting your girl’s hackles up or alerting that cocksucking Mandari friend of yours, there’s no way we could make off with those huge pods. Not if we had two shifts and a guarantee of privacy.”

“One then,” I said at once. I’d planned for this, but had wanted to start big. “Just the nobile, Tanaran.”

A thin line formed between Otavia’s brows, and, irritable, she ran fingers through her floating hair. “That might do . . .” I could have grinned. I’d counted on her refusing to make off with multiple Cielcin. I’d started big, needed her to think she’d talked me down. I knew the way she thought. Otavia might have looked like a champion weightlifter, but she had a mind like a Rothsbank logothete and a Legion signifer all at once.

“We’d only need one shuttle.”

“We’d still have a hell of a time explaining to those lovely Jaddians why it is we’re walking off with one of their prisoners.” Hands still in her hair, she slung her leg down and propped herself against the table. “Why am I even listening to this? I should be prepping my people for fugue and the jump out-system . . .” Her words trailed off, and she looked wistfully away past where Valka stood, as if through some window only she could see. “Find honest work to do. Sure there’s got to be some little colony that wants protecting, times like they are. A nice security gig, a bit of guard duty.”

“You don’t mean that,” I chided, attempting a smile. “Guard duty? Orbital defense? You’d be bored inside a fortnight.”

Otavia snorted, crossed her arms. “Might do. But tell me this, Empire-man. How is it you’re expecting to pay for all this? I know where my payout was coming from, and it’s not you.”

It was all I could do not to bite my lip. The money had come from the Legion coffers, dispensed to our Norman auxiliaries via Bassander’s signifer. I had nothing. Whatever assets had been mine as a scion of House Marlowe were gone, stripped from me by my father when he dowered me to House Mataro. Whatever entitlements I’d possessed were either stripped or granted the Count of Emesh as my future father-in-law. I never bothered to discover which it was. In any case . . .

“You’re right,” I said honestly. Leaning in, I flattened one hand against the tabletop. “I’m not the money, but I’m not asking you to take me to Vorgossos. Just as far as backspace. To March Station or wherever we’re going.”

“And to storm an Imperial destroyer for some hare-brained heist that’s sure to get us killed.”

“No one said anything about storming anything,” I said. “I was thinking infiltrate. I’m at home on the Balmung, Switch is there. Send me with Siran and Crim—a couple others—I’ll be in and out with Tanaran before Jinan even notices.”

“What about the others?” Otavia asked, and there was a note of kindness in her voice I did not expect.

“What?”

“Old Pallino and the others you brought with you from Emesh.”

The words choked off before I could find them. And like I’d done with Jinan already, I let them go in my heart. “They’ll be happier on some other road,” I said, more to assuage the guilt in my heart than out of any felt truth, though I would prove right in the end. “They can stay with Bassander. The worst he’ll do is cut them loose, leave them on Coritani or some world along the way.”

The Norman woman eyed me from under furrowed brows. “You’re good with that?”

I bobbed my head. “Switch is coming, and Siran’s here . . . a few of the others. Pallino deserves peace. He’s lived long enough.”

“I’m not sure he’d agree.”

That pulled a rough laugh from me, and I agreed. I did not mention that Switch had already gone to the trouble of getting those of my effects I would not be parted from off of the Pharaoh—his old lover Etienne had helped with that—and that they were even now sitting unlooked for in the Balmung’s docking bay among the ammunition and the ration bars and the spare seedstock for the hydroponics station.

I don’t like it, Switch had said on the Balmung. Leaving Jinan and the rest behind. Don’t feel right, Had. I hadn’t liked it either, and Switch only relented after I wore him down. Don’t feel right, he’d said again, turning on our folk.

“Hadrian?” Otavia asked. “Are you listening?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I asked how you planned on pulling off this miracle,” she repeated. “Those pods weigh a good half ton. You’re not going to get Switch to carry it for you, and I think someone will notice if you turn off the suppression fields and try to float it out.”

Valka took a half step forward, folded posture loosening slightly. “You’re going to wake it up.”

Otavia’s face blanched. “What?”

Innocent, I spread my hands. “We’ll move a lot faster.”

The Norman captain’s face contorted into a look of the utmost horror and disgust. “You want to wake up that . . . that thing? On my ship?” she spluttered, looking to Valka for support, but none was forthcoming, not from the xenologist. “For free?”

“I can’t promise money. Not right now,” I said. “But I need your help, Otavia. Please.” She looked away, and I could see the beads of an abacus flickering in deep eyes as she chewed the inside of her cheek. “Have we not been friends?”

That stirred her, and she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, we’re friends, Marlowe, but I can’t fuel the Mistral with friendship.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. When we were in council you said it was your worlds that were taking the brunt of this war. Norman worlds. I still think I can stop it, but I need that xenobite on the Balmung, and I need a ship, and right now you’re the one who can give me that.” The captain thought this over, face downcast, fingers picking at some spot on the console I could not see. It was my turn to jog a response from her. “Would you do it for me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you calling in our debt?”

I did not like to phrase it that way.

“I told you,” I replied, “after Bordelon. You don’t owe me anything. I am asking for your help. If you can’t give it, I understand.” I was entitled to nothing. I’d learned that in Borosevo. Everything we receive is a kind of gift, if we do not take it for ourselves. I had rid Captain Corvo of her monstrous commander and spared her life at Pharos. Were I still the boy I’d been, I would have said she owed me for my mercy. But mercy that expects repayment is no mercy at all, nor is a friendship truly a friendship that stands on debt and gratitude.

So I hoped, and ignored the stoic whispering in my soul: Hope is a cloud.

It is well that the human mind sees only a little of the world, and better that it is bounded by our petty senses. Had Otavia known the weight and number of the souls that hung on her words—truly hung on them—she might have bitten off her own tongue. Had I known what I asked, I would have done. Yet there were but the three of us in the close space, and so she took a deep breath. “All right. Who do you need?”

“From here? Siran, Crim—Ilex if you can spare her.”

“Both of my lieutenants?”

“Just the first two, then. Them and a pilot officer and this ship ready to go the minute our shuttle clamps in. I don’t think Bassander’d use the Pharaoh’s artillery but I’m not going to risk it any longer than I have to.” I called a hand to my forehead. “And a medtech. I think I can run a thaw on the pod but I want to be sure. Has Okoyo transferred over here?”

“No.” But Otavia was nodding, chewing on her cheek again. “You have to wait until my people are all secure on the Mistral.”

“If we do, we’ll lose any benefit the chaos might give us.”

“I don’t care,” she said, “I’m not stranding anyone with that stiff-necked cockatrice of a captain.”

Ducking my head, I said I understood.

“And I don’t like letting that . . . that alien aboard.”

“You haven’t met it,” I said, defensive. Otavia didn’t look convinced. “If we have to confine it to a cabin, we will.”

She made a small noise of assent, and I did not press her further.

It had gone as well as I’d hoped. Now I had to see it through. We agreed on a time, set forth some few details. We would launch with the last wave of shuttles from the Mistral, arriving with those few Legion and Jaddian troops transferring back to their proper ships before those same shuttles took the last few frozen Normans back to the Mistral. Thence I would make for the cubiculum and with Okoyo’s help thaw out the Cielcin, Tanaran. I could see it in my mind’s eye already: the violet suspension fluid running out, the black blood and life restored to the Pale creature amid the frost and the dimness.

“You’ve overlooked the cameras,” Valka said. I almost jumped clean out of my skin. She’d gone so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there. Noticing this, she smiled, baring her teeth in that wicked way she had. “Ship’s security will be on you in minutes once they see what you’re up to.”

“That’s why I wanted Ilex,” I said, “but Crim will be a bit more use if it comes to blows, so . . .”

Valka brushed her fringe back behind her ear and said, “I’ll go.” I froze, caught as a moving image is between frames. Valka was a difficulty, a spot in the human universe that lensed my effort and perception as a star bends light, by which I mean I was afraid to ask her—so afraid I’d not even considered the possibility that I might ask her. “I can knock out the cameras from the shuttle, I think.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. The doctor’s face drew into the makings of a scowl. She made an unconscious gesture for the implanted micro-computer hidden at the base of her skull, and I raised a defensive hand. “I’m not questioning your abilities, I’m just . . . I thought you were leaving?” I gestured at the room around us, indicating her presence aboard the Mistral and not on either of the ships bound for the fleet.

She settled herself into one of the chairs between Otavia and myself, her sharp face breaking into a bloody smile. “What was it you said? Damn the Empire? Besides,” and here she folded her hands upon the tabletop, “’twill get me my time with the Cielcin. So I’m in.”

I drew in a long, ramifying breath and felt myself strengthened by each atom of it. “Right!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands. “This is going to be fun!” I had to smile, to try to make myself feel something other than the quiet, crashing panic of the necessity for action.

The faces of both women darkened, and the captain said, “You call this fun?”

“Hadrian has a strange idea of fun,” Valka put in, and from the way her eyes narrowed, I wondered if she was remembering my duel in Borosevo, or when she had helped me with Uvanari and the Cielcin.

Setting my jaw, I forced myself to smile. “Oh no,” I said, “it’s going to be fun.”