SWITCH MET US AS we landed in the bustling cargo bay. About us, the final trio of shuttles were making ready to depart with the last of the Norman auxiliaries, supervised by Bassander’s legionnaires—bald-headed and in black fatigues. I wore my long coat slung over my shoulders, and beneath it fingered the catch that would activate my body shield.

“These mine?” I asked, indicating a footlocker and a couple of bags stacked against the fueling console for one of the Sparrowhawk lighters bracketed into the ceiling above. Without waiting for an answer, I added, “And did you find that mantle?”

The red-haired lictor seized the smallest packet from the pile and tossed it to me without looking. “Yeah.” I turned the cloak over in my hands. Far from a perfect disguise, but it might save us an odd glance or two when we returned this way with the towering xenobite in tow.

That loading bay crouched at the rear of the Balmung, beneath the primary drive cluster, and its massive doors opened out the rear. It stretched for nearly two hundred yards, and was nearly fifty deep, with a full wing of lightercraft accessible by gantries above, and room enough for several shuttles to alight upon the gleaming black deck.

Turning to the young pilot officer and gesturing at the crates Switch had left upon a depowered float palette, I said, “You get these on board.” I glanced round at my companions. At Valka, cold and comfortable—her strange eyes far away; at Crim and Siran in matching Red Company fatigues; at Doctor Okoyo fidgeting with her medical kit; at the two other soldiers Captain Corvo had given me, brimming with nervous tension. “You”—I pointed to one of them, a pale girl with a heavy jaw and serious eyes—“stay with the pilot, keep the engines primed. Get everything loaded.” I turned my eyes on the other. “You go with Siran and the lieutenant.” And to Siran and Crim I asked, “Know where you’re going?”

“Way ahead of you,” Siran replied.

“Go on then,” then more loudly, to be sure those nearby heard, “get the rest of what’s going with the Normans and get it on board.” Siran saluted and she and the others hurried toward the square door and the open airlock that led into the longitudinal hall.

Valka stepped forward and, placing a hand on my arm, said, “I’m going to get what’s left of my things from my cabin.” And she moved off, following Siran and Crim into the hall, leaving me with Switch and the doctor. What Valka was doing she could do from anywhere, with that Tavrosi computer lurking at the bottom of her skull. Better to split up, divide attention, dilute suspicion. We were all friends here.

“Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” I said to myself in the Classical English, thinking of my mother’s family.

“What?” Switch asked.

“Nothing,” I replied shortly. “Careful with that!” I called to the pilot officer, making a show of our presence so as not to be too quiet.

The woman blurted an apology, and I smiled to soften the words.

The dock master, a gray plebeian with thinning hair, hurried over. “Lord Marlowe! What’s all this?” He gestured at the crates containing my effects, eyes darting from myself to Switch. “You’re not going with the Normans, to be sure?”

“To be sure, officer,” I said, clapping the man jovially on the shoulder. “I’m returning my effects to the Pharaoh before we make the jump to Coritani. Just making a stop over on the Mistral; some of my myrmidons are leaving us.”

The man’s watery eyes widened, and to Switch he said, “Not you, William? Or the old centurion?” I was always startled to hear Switch’s right name, but the officers all used it. Only those of us who came out of the Colosso on Emesh—and a few latter-day friends—yet called him Switch.

Switch shook his head. “Not me, Brux. And you’d have to throw Pallino out the airlock to get him to quit again.”

“That’s good, then,” the junior officer said. “Did Captain Azhar sign off on the manifest? I’ll need to approve it before I can clear you for departure.”

Over the man’s shoulder, I could see a group of black-garbed legionnaires helping a group of more wildly dressed Normans load the next shuttle over. How quickly the Red Company uniforms had vanished, as if the whole thing had been some dream. A holiday. And now it was over, the costumes and decorations packed away as if they had never been. Still, they laughed with one another, trading the hollow jokes that friends share at their final parting.

“Not yet,” I said, shaking myself. “But it’s me, so I’m doing things a little out of order. I’m off to see Jinan now, to . . . to say goodnight.”

“That how it is,” Brux said with a sly grin. “I hear you, Lord. I do. On your way, then.”

If he recognized the good doctor at my elbow, he said nothing, and went about his business. So we went about ours. Leaving the pilot officer with her guard, the three of us left by the starboard door and hurried along the hall, past the odd legionnaire going about her duties or the technician at his work. I kept the heavy mantle bundled under my arm, beneath my coat. Switch and Okoyo followed hard on my heels, so that I felt myself the leader of a phalanx—an effect amplified by the rattle of our bootheels, though they were not in step.

The outer wall angled in slightly, supported by ribs of black metal. Camera eyes lurked between them, and I had to trust that Valka had done her job. She must have done, for Crim and Siran certainly had made it to the cubiculum by that time, and nothing I saw in the faces of our fellow soldiers suggested that there was any trouble. The cubiculum itself was not far from the docking bay, though it was up several floors by way of a tight lift which might fit a dozen or so men without discomfort. It hummed gently as we ascended, and the curved doors hissed open.

The Balmung was smaller than the Pharaoh, a mere sixteen hundred meters to the flagship’s more than two-mile length. We had only to proceed along a quarter of that length, and so pass the alcove where I had spoken to Valka so recently after my own awakening. But for a pair of turnings that would take us from this distal hall toward the center of the ship, it was as straight a shot as could be managed. I could feel the tension in my companions the way a minstrel knows his strings, for I felt it in myself. Not the sickness one feels before a trial, but a sensation like the veins in me had gone to hard plastic or to glass, or else were stretched wide as the nostrils are by effort—and my blood would not slow down. Still, I held myself to calm, invoking Gibson’s teachings.

Fear is a poison.

It was like the old bastard was there, walking beside me.

Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined, though calm. Who was it said that? It drifted to me then, and I mastered my breathing, rounding with my companions the last corner that would bring us to the cubiculum.

“Hadrian!”

No bullet could have pierced me so strongly as my name did then, and in that voice of all voices. I had, like the jilting lover of so many bad Eudoran masques, planned to leave without seeing her. She would never agree to come with me, would try to stop me if she could. Love her though I did, I could trust her no more.

Turning, I bowed my head and caught Switch by the arm. “You and the doctor go on,” I murmured, and stepping past him said, “Jinan! Hello!”

“Back from the Mistral?” she asked, referring to a conversation I’d had with her that morning—before I’d gone to see Otavia. “Did you convince Siran to stay with us?” She was still in her Red Company uniform: the belted tunic jacket, flared trousers, and high boots.

Wordless, I shook my head, and glancing over my shoulder saw Switch and Okoyo vanish around the bend. “No. After Ghen, she . . .” I trailed off, made a weak gesture with my left hand. The right stayed firmly beneath my coat, bundled round the mantle meant for Tanaran. I tried to quiet my suddenly galloping heart, but all of Gibson’s stoic aphorisms were useless in that moment, for she was not alone.

“Was that Doctor Okoyo?” Bassander asked, cocking his head to one side. “I sent her to the Mistral not three hours ago.”

“Overseeing the transfer of the last few Norman fugue patients,” I said quickly. “Otavia sent her with me since I was coming over. I’ll drop her off before I ferry over to the Pharaoh for the freeze.”

This seemed to satisfy Bassander, who shrugged his lips and straightened his wide uniform belt—from which hung the hilt of Admiral Whent’s old sword along with the Commodore’s customary sidearm. Or, the captain’s sidearm, that was. He’d donned his blacks again, like the legionnaires in the bay, and so our martial dream was ended, or would end soon.

“But what are you here for, Bassander?” I asked, trying to gather crucial information. He should have been safely away on the Pharaoh, not just down the hall from where my friends labored to steal away his prized prisoner.

The captain let out a long sigh. “Came to oversee the last round of shuttles separating the Normans from the rest of us. It seemed the proper thing to do.”

Jinan cut in, “Alessandro told me you had Switch take away your things?” She touched my arm, moving close enough that she eclipsed Bassander. It was a question, asked as if she could not quite believe it was so.

“Yes,” I breathed, looking up at her. “I was just on my way to grab a couple things he missed. Um . . .” The tallness of her was like the last glass of wine in a lonely bottle. I drank her in and might have cried, were it not for the hard captain with his flint-eyed gaze. “We’re separating, aren’t we? Once we return to Coritani?” I directed the question over her shoulder to where Bassander stood.

His blacks matched the black of the hall. He might have been a piece of hardware and not a man at all. “We’ll have to parley with the Jaddian satrap, but I imagine so, yes. Unless we receive orders concerning the intelligence we recovered from The Painted Man.” He kept his attentions fixed on a point firmly over my shoulder as he spoke. Was it embarrassment?

No. Frowning, I peered round Jinan’s shoulder at the Mandari legionnaire. It was shame. Whatever else he was, Bassander was not blind. He knew the consequences of his choice, knew what he had done to Jinan and myself and what love there was between us. My eyes flickered to Jinan’s, found her watching me intently. I knew that face, knew the light in those eyes moved as much for pity as mine moved to scorn. And a piece of me broke and was ashamed. Ashamed for how I had acted in council: with anger and disgust at these people who would not hear me. And ashamed for what I was about to do.

“It’s all right, Bassander,” I said, words slow to come. “You only did—you’re doing what you think is right.” Saying this, I focused all my soul on Jinan and said, “That’s all any of us can ever do.”

Did she know I was saying good-bye?

“I appreciate your saying that, Lord Marlowe,” he said, sounding much much older than I—which indeed he was. “I will keep my word, I’ll do all I can to see you’re not returned to Emesh and the . . . ah . . .” He glanced at Jinan and—I swear it by all the Memory of Earth—a flush crept up his neck. Stammering, he finished, “The Mataro girl. Though . . . do you really think she’s still waiting for you? It’s been decades.”

“I’d rather not risk it.” Eyes shut against the embarrassment that ran down my neck, I said, “Do what you must.” Then, “Thank you.” I opened my eyes again. Jinan was looking at me with a strange expression on her face, lips raised and pressed together, as if bemused and troubled all at once to find us so agreeable. To her I said, “We’ll have to talk at Coritani?” I made it a question so it was not a lie.

“Yes,” she said, and the word was more breath than sound. Her fingers tightened on my arm. I kissed her, and kissing her . . . betrayed her, for it was the last kiss we ever shared—though it promised more. We broke apart, and she said, “Love you, mia qal.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” I said, echoing her. I couldn’t say that I loved her, too. It felt too much like lying, after that treasonous kiss. Mustering a little bravura to cover the screaming in my heart, I swaggered back. “Dream of me while you’re frozen, my captain,” I said.

She made a face, and grinning said, “I never do.”

If we exchanged more words, I cannot recall them. In my mind, I simply turn and enter the cubiculum. I have no memory of the long walk up the hall, nor of the cares I must have taken to ensure I was not followed. Strange what the mind abridges, strange what it retains, and stranger still what it invents. Mythologizes. I feel sure that I did not look back at Jinan and the captain where they stood in that hall. I remember being afraid to do so, fearing that some shadow in my face might betray me as I betrayed them. And yet clearly I can see my captain standing there, tall and noble as a Chantry bronze—still wearing her reds, our reds. It is one of the peculiarities of my soul that when I think of Jinan it is to that moment I must go first, and so work either backward through our bliss and our toils . . . or forward to the heartache beyond our end.