“SMYTHE’S DEAD,” I SAID to Bassander’s unasked question when the Schiavona’s ramp had closed. “Crossflane, too—and that centurion.”

“How many did we save?” Valka asked, looking round at the shattered remnant of the escort force that had marched to the Garden and our meeting mere hours before.

Tor Varro swept his eyes over the collection, subitizing, taking in everyone with the ease with which you or I might count a handful of dropped coins. “Seventy-three, not counting these.” He indicated Ren, Suzuha, and Nobuta, who lay on the black floor at his feet. “Someone needs to get them to medica. I don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

I managed to stand, leaning heavily on Valka, glad of her support. “There’s nothing wrong.” Everyone looked at me. “They started like this the minute you killed Kharn Sagara.” I directed my words to Bassander Lin, who sat cradling his head on a supply crate against one wall. “I’d wager this is exactly what’s meant to happen.”

Valka—who alone of all those assembled knew as much about Vorgossos as me—paled. “You don’t mean . . . ?”

“Kharn’s survived so long as he has by possessing the bodies of his children.”

“Surely that would require some procedure?” Tor Varro asked.

“Not necessarily,” Valka interjected. “It could be done remotely. I’ve no idea what sort of implants either Sagara or the children might have.”

“And you’d know, witch,” Bassander said, glowering.

Pushing past Varro and Jinan, I pointed a finger in the captain’s face. “Back off, Lin! None of this would be happening if you hadn’t interfered.” It was all I could do not to seize him by the lapels, by the throat, to throttle him with my own two hands. “We’re here because of you! All those men are dead because of you! Smythe is dead because of you!” I was shouting by the end, stooped so that I was hardly two feet from his face where he sat recovering.

The Mandari captain did not rise to my provocation. He did not rise at all. At that precise moment five soldiers dressed in the darker-than-black of Legion officers stormed into the hall followed by perhaps three decades of ship’s security. Bassander’s dead eyes slipped sideways to regard these newcomers. “Lieutenant Cartier, are we able to leave?”

Lieutenant Cartier, a tall, pale woman with golden hair cut in precise bangs across her low forehead—very like Lieutenant Greenlaw—answered at once. “No sir, there’s no emergency override on the hangar doors and we can’t disengage from the service umbilical either. Their system’s dead.” Only then did the lieutenant realize the awful facts of our situation. “Where’s the knight-tribune?” No one spoke. Outside, the sounds of scuffling as the Cielcin did Earth-only-knew what to the hull. “And Sir William?”

The captain shook his head.

“Dead?” Lieutenant Cartier’s voice broke.

“Along with the prime and second-string centurions and about eighty men,” Bassander said. To his credit, he was steady as new clockwork. “How long will the shields hold?”

“We’ll run out of fuel first,” Cartier said, “unless they’ve brought something heavier than small arms. We’re safe enough. Hull’s an inch and a half of solid adamant. They’d need heavy artillery.”

“They’ll find a way in,” Jinan said. “They always do.”

The ship rocked, dull thunder sounding from below. I could hear the sound of muffled shouting from without. Harsh voices, sharp as windows breaking. An empty space encircled Bassander Lin, as though the silence within his chest leaked outward. “We’ve three hundred left aboard the ship?” he asked.

“Plus the ship crew,” Cartier said.

Jinan stepped forward, looking a little the worse for wear. There was blood on her cheek, but whether it was her blood or the blood of some fellow I couldn’t say. I felt certain I looked as bad, but tried not to dwell upon it as she said, “It would be suicide to go charging down the ramp again. We’d be moving right into their line of fire. Even shielded we’d be mowed down.”

“What about ship’s weapons?”

Cartier shook her head. “Nothing we could use without risking the ship.”

“The Mistral!” I exclaimed. “Can we get word to the Mistral? The Red Company! Captain Corvo has three hundred soldiers—and they’re not far. With the Cielcin focused on us we might be able to catch them unawares!”

The lieutenant could only shake her head again. “No, no we can’t. Our internal comms are still working but we can’t get a message out. We tried raising the Obdurate the moment the lights went out, but . . .” The ship rocked again. I had a sudden, vivid image of the Cielcin prowling about beneath us, hurling their small explosives while some of them went off in search of cutting equipment. I realized then how little I knew of war, how little of the enemy. Their tactics, their capabilities. Could they cut their way inside? For all the talk of our ship’s adamant hull, even adamant can be shattered with enough force. I didn’t know, and knew again the sensation of swimming atop deep waters, ignorant of their depth and certain that at any moment some dread leviathan would emerge from the deeps to swallow me whole.

Valka rounded on Lieutenant Cartier. “You said the service umbilical was still attached?” I recalled the open hatch in the Schiavona’s highest level, the ladder rising up into shadow. I’d not climbed that way myself, but I knew it ascended to the maintenance catwalks that ran along the top of the Schiavona. We might escape through there, back into the endless, fractal corridors of the Demiurge with their mad turns and impossible directions. At length, the lieutenant nodded, and Valka looked round at me. “We should go. Someone has to.”

I opened my mouth to speak, surprised but not upset to be so volunteered. I was about to volunteer myself, and smiled at her, even through that tense and dreadful moment. I had known there was steel in her, knew also that she had served a time in her homeworld’s Orbital Guard. She’d had her pains, but they’d not bent her. She returned my smile, and I loved her then and said, “A couple of us might get by unnoticed. If we can get the Red Company, we’ll outnumber the Pale.”

“We can trap them between us,” Tor Varro said, seeing what I intended, “take them unawares.”

“Precisely!” I said. “They’re already out of fugue and ready. Smythe—” My words stumbled over the name, and I heard the awful crash of the explosion that had felled her, had hurled me bodily across the hall. The stench of blood and burning wool filled my nose again, and I shuddered, pushing the memory aside. Smythe had planned for this, I realized. Exactly for this, to trap the Cielcin between the Schiavona’s men and the Mistral’s. That was why she’d ordered the retreat from the Garden the instant Hauptmann’s fleet engaged the enemy. That was why she’d stressed to me that Corvo should keep her mercenaries at the ready. Had she known the Empire was going to make its move? Was that why she’d sold so many thousand human serfs to Kharn Sagara? As bait? Had she and Hauptmann cooked all this up between them? A plot to catch and kill a prince of the Cielcin?

I didn’t know.

“Smythe ordered the Red Company out of fugue and ready,” I said at last, forcing the words out, eyes tight shut.

“No.”

That lonely word fell like the White Sword, and silence with it. Eyes tight shut, I knew who had said it, and without opening them I turned to face Bassander Lin. Fists tightened, too, would have tightened on his neck—his treasonous, patriotic neck—but for the warning in my heart and the knowledge that dozens of soldiers would have peeled me off of him and pummeled me for my trouble.

As blade for blade, I met him word for word. “Why?” Only then did I open my eyes, sure that I would find his on me, and the line of fire drawn between us.

I was wrong.

Bassander Lin stood, eyes downcast, shoulders hunched. The brass pipes and the black walls and ceiling of the hold seemed to retreat from him as fast as stars red-shift behind a ship at warp, so that he seemed a solitary figure carved on a hill of his own making. A solitary monument. What must he have felt, then? He who had caused the death of his mistress? Of his men? Of peace itself? Flickering, a solitary spark of pity caught in me for the Mandari captain. It caught against my will and better judgment.

Presently he spoke, taking in a long and rattling breath. “With Smythe gone and . . . Crossflane, I am the ranking officer on board this ship. I am in charge here, Lord Marlowe.”

The flame died, the pity with it. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words would not come past the sudden numbness in my chest, that pause in feeling that is the retreat of the tide before fury’s wave.

Into that pause, Bassander spoke. “So I’ll go.”

The wave died, too. “What?”

“It’s my responsibility,” he said. “Lieutenant Cartier, inform Commander Sciarra that he will retain control of the Schiavona. I’ll take a dozen men out the service umbilical and make for the Mistral. Tell him he is to hold here until I return.” No sooner had he said this than he began shrugging out of his coat.

I stepped forward, reaching out a hand to take Bassander by the shoulder. “You’re the ranking officer now, Lin. You can’t go—”

“I am the ranking officer, Marlowe,” Lin’s voice snapped like a broken harp string, “so shut your mouth.” He spoke with such force that I stood stunned. Not long, just long enough to allow Bassander to vault onto the stacked supply crates so that he stood up above the heads of the eighty or so men and women in the hold. He raised his hands for silence—not noticing or caring that, but for the noise of the Cielcin outside, silence had already come. “We’re pinned down here!” he said, planting one booted foot on the next crate up. “I’m going to the Mistral for reinforcements. I need volunteers.” The silence stayed unbroken. Bassander pointed to the ramp. “There are four hundred Cielcin outside that door and they are coming in.” His eyes surveyed the crowd, but for all the force in his voice the light of the ceiling lamps might have fallen on spheres of glass for all the good it did Bassander. His seemed the eyes of a dead fish surveying us. “There are three hundred Norman mercenaries sealed on that ship by Smythe’s orders. I mean to bring them back here and catch the Cielcin unawares. It’s bloody work and dangerous with those beasts out there, and I don’t want anyone going who doesn’t have the stomach for it.”

To my relief, Valka did not step forward to offer herself.

“We’ll do it!” said a triaster with his helmet off, moon face shining in the stark light. He clapped his partners on the shoulders. “Won’t we, lads?” His subordinates were still suited, and what they might have felt I could only guess. Slowly, painfully slowly, four others moved to join Captain Lin, standing in his shadow where he stood upon the crates. It was perhaps the least inspiring speech I had ever witnessed, and so I was hardly surprised when it did not attract a torrent of supporters, but at last a decade and more stood by Captain Lin, leaning on lances or adjusting suit seals beneath their red tabards. Apparently satisfied, Bassander leaped down.

“I’ll go, too!” Jinan said, stepping forward, striped blue and orange silks fluttering over chrome armor.

Lin half-turned. “Very good. Everyone with me. Greenlaw, my kit.” He paused, as if expecting a reply. A snapped Yes, sir and a salute.

None came.

I felt the memory—or was it the realization?—slide into Lin’s mind like a poison. It was as if the air around him grew darker. Lieutenant Greenlaw was dead, lost in the Garden. He hadn’t known, or else he had buried it in the chaos of the chase. The way he stood there has never left me. His posture did not change: no folding or bending. His only movement was to close his mouth. But he collapsed all the same, collapsed in a way no man could really see but which all men understand. Collapsed inward. Slowly, he nodded to himself. “Everybody follow me.”

“Captain!” I said, unable to stop myself. “What should I do?”

He did not stop his swift exit, but waved a hand. “Talk to them. It’s the only thing you’re good for.”