* * *

  BY rights, he should have gone to his own quarters, but until Vega officially stopped him, he would spend time where he always had. Michelle and Abram’s workroom.

  Michelle looked up and smiled as Ean entered. “Hello.”

  The shadows under her eyes were cleverly hidden with makeup, but Ean was looking.

  “What?”

  Ean was aware he’d stared too long. He shrugged.

  “What?” Michelle asked again.

  “Your makeup is very well done.”

  Michelle laughed aloud. “That’s a backhanded compliment.” She poured him a glass of tea.

  Ean took the tea. “Have you seen Abram lately?” And if she hadn’t, he was going to make sure that she did. Even if he had to drag Abram here on a manufactured excuse about line ships.

  “Hmm. I can hear some determination in the lines there.”

  She hadn’t answered his question. Ean didn’t push it.

  “So Leo Rickenback’s visiting,” Michelle said.

  Ean was surprised she knew.

  “He called Lin, who told him to call Vega. I told Vega to invite him here, that you weren’t going off ship to see him.”

  Vega hadn’t told Ean that. “I can meet him elsewhere.”

  “Ean, people try to kill you when you’re elsewhere.” It was followed by a red-mint-cinnamon spurt of amusement.

  “People try to kill you all the time,” Ean said. Radko had told him that once when he’d asked why they needed a whole ship to protect Michelle. Six or seven times a year, she’d said. Half the ship was devoted to intelligence gathering, trying to work out who and why and when.

  Even Ean wasn’t naïve enough to think the intelligence gathering stopped with Michelle’s safety. Katida had hinted as much once when they’d been talking about covert operations, and she’d said, “If Lancia wanted a decent covert operations team, they’d have put Galenos in charge of it.”

  It had been the same morning they had spoken about fathers and mothers, and Katida had implied—although she’d said the opposite—that Abram was more Michelle’s family than anyone else.

  “Do you see the rest of your family much?” Ean asked Michelle now, thinking of that morning.

  Emperor Yu had taken part in the signing of the deed for the formation of the New Alliance, which had been held in a modified cargo hold on Confluence Station. It had taken four weeks to set up.

  And six weeks to take down.

  Michelle’s brothers and sisters had been there. They hadn’t looked comfortable with their older sibling. None of them had visited the Lancastrian Princess.

  Michelle shrugged.

  “I don’t see my family, either,” Ean said. He hadn’t seen his father in ten years. He might even be dead by now. Juice itself didn’t normally kill you, but you forgot to eat, and it made you violent. Pick on the wrong person, like another juice addict, while you were high—or worse, coming down from the high—and they’d kill you. A lot of people stole to feed their habit. That was dangerous enough on its own.

  “Do you want to?”

  Ean shook his head. Abram and Michelle would have researched Herman Lambert when they’d looked up Ean’s records, back when they’d realized he was Lancastrian. They probably knew more about Ean’s father than he did. A concerned hum from the lines made him realize he’d hunched over instinctively. He straightened, self-conscious.

  “My family wasn’t that bad,” Michelle said.

  “Strangers?”

  She shrugged and rubbed her eyes. “The Lancastrian Princess is my home now.”

  Except it wasn’t a home any longer. It was empty and lonely.

  * * *

  EAN asked Radko if it was acceptable to offer the Grand Master a glass of tea on a nonsocial visit.

  “I’ll organize some,” Radko said. “Leave it to me.”

  Ean was glad to, for Rigel’s lessons had been emphatic on treatment of the Grand Master. You always offered him a drink. And refreshments. He wasn’t sure how he could have provided tea anyway. When it was for Michelle or Abram, he could call up the galley and someone would bring it up for them. When it was for himself he went down to the mess and got a glass from there.

  Fergus joined Ean as he went down to meet Rickenback’s shuttle.

  “I hope it’s okay, but I’d like to say hello to Leo.”

  “Why don’t you join us?” Ean said. There was nothing he had to say that Fergus couldn’t hear.

  “Surely you would rather talk privately?”

  “I’d be grateful if you came.”

  Fergus looked doubtful.

  “I mean that,” for Fergus was a good barrier between the old cartels who’d thought nothing of Ean, and the New Alliance. Although he probably shouldn’t rely on him like that.

  Fergus grinned. “Since you put it that way.” Every line seven came in as a chorus as part of the answer. He winced. “I’ll get the hang of it one day. I will.”

  They waited while Vega subjected Rickenback to the most exhaustive security check he’d probably ever known.

  “I bet you don’t get that at Gate Union,” Fergus said, when Vega finally announced the Grand Master clean and fit to pass onto the ship. He came over to shake Rickenback’s hand, but it was half a hug, really.

  “It’s almost as bad,” Rickenback said, smiling as broadly as Fergus. “You can’t move nowadays without being checked for weapons.” He turned to Ean and shook hands. “Linesman Lambert.”

  “Grand Master.”

  “Leo, please.”

  Morton Paretsky had never told Ean to call him Morton. At least, not that first time they’d met. Or even the second.

  “And I’m Ean.” He glanced at Vega, who was glaring at them as if they were cluttering up the shuttle bay. She looked meaningfully in the direction of the lifts. “Let’s find somewhere quiet to talk.”

  A quartet of guards followed. Bhaksir’s people.

  “I bet you don’t get that either,” Fergus said. He glanced around. “Where’s Radko?”

  Getting some tea, Ean hoped. “She’s around.” Radko didn’t spend all her time on ship babysitting Ean.

  They made small talk as they waited for the lift. After months of talking to admirals and politicians, Ean was getting better at it. Fergus, of course, was a master.

  Rickenback looked around with interest. “Not many linesmen get onto the Lancastrian Princess. House of Sandhurst services their higher lines.” He glanced at Ean, and amended, “Serviced.”

  Fergus laughed. “I’ll bet Iwo Hurst is annoyed they don’t do it still. It would have been a job to boast about.”

  Given the sanctions, and the fact that the cartels weren’t servicing any New Alliance ships at present, House of Sandhurst couldn’t have serviced the ship even if it had been asked to. Although Gate Union might have asked them to, even with the sanctions, for who better than a linesman to pass on information about an enemy ship.

  Radko followed them into the meeting room with glasses, a pot of tea, and some pastries, then moved to stand against the wall, one boot flat against the wall in her characteristic working stance.

  “Thank you,” Ean said. He hesitated and looked at the empty seat at the table. Radko shook her head. A tiny shake but a definite no.

  “So. Rigel,” Rickenback said, while Ean poured tea. “What exactly is the problem?”

  It was good that he was direct. It was better than skirting around the issue.

  Ean knew too much about the alien fleet and line eleven for the New Alliance to ever let him go back to Gate Union. Even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. But he couldn’t tell Rickenback that, for the Grand Master’s job was to protect linesman. Supposedly, anyway.

  He had asked Rickenback to come because he wanted the matter sorted; he wanted Rigel and Paretsky off his back. The cartel houses were constrained by the cartels, so if the Grand Master told them to back off, they’d have to. However, he needed Rickenback to trust him before Rickenback would tell them to back off, and if the Grand Master learned Ean had kept something back, that trust would evaporate. Therefore, he couldn’t lie to him because Rigel would tell what had happened the night Michelle had visited the cartel house.

  He thought about that now as he picked through what he was going to say. No surprises. Which meant the truth.

  “Rigel and Paretsky claim my contract is illegal and that I will have to go back to House of Rigel. I don’t want to do that.”

  “Why are they claiming your contract is illegal?”

  Start at the beginning. Ean took a deep breath. “I need to talk about Vicki Singh first. I don’t know if you knew her?”

  Rickenback shook his head.

  “She was a five. A strong five. She was at House of Rigel.”

  Rickenback nodded.

  “Michelle bought a contract for a linesman level six. Rigel gave her Vicki.”

  “He does oversell occasionally,” Rickenback said, and Ean was surprised that anyone outside Rigel’s house knew he did.

  “They got her to fix the Bose engine.” Because Tai had been busy on something else, and because she was there. She wasn’t a soldier. She’d only been on ship because they were using the time they transferred her to Lancia to explain the job in detail.

  “The engine spiked. She had a heart attack.” He still hadn’t worked out how a line she supposedly couldn’t hear had induced such a response in her. “A real heart attack I mean, not a—” Line-induced one, he’d been going to say, which wasn’t a heart attack at all, it was the body trying to force itself into a different rhythm.

  Rickenback blinked, but he didn’t ask what a nonreal heart attack was. Fergus nodded.

  A regular myocardial infarction. The medic had been insistent. Pain in the chest, nausea, vomiting, sweating, shortness of breath. Engineer Tai had been slowly fixing Vicki’s damage to line six. It had still been slightly off true when Ean had joined the Lancastrian Princess.

  Ean paused. “How much do you know about Lancastrians?”

  “Only what I’ve seen on the vids, and that’s probably half-wrong.”

  “They have a strong revenge culture. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You kill one of my people, I kill one of yours.”

  Rickenback nodded although a faint frown appeared. “What’s this to do—?”

  “Because Vicki was part of Michelle’s staff, Michelle had to avenge her.” Ean rolled the glass around in his hands. This was difficult to explain. “A linesman for a linesman, and she knew what would hurt Rigel most.”

  He had their undivided attention. The combined gaze was more unnerving than being interrogated by a full parliament.

  “So rather than try to kill someone, she took Rigel’s ten,” Rickenback said.

  Ean winced. Paretsky would tell it, even if Rigel didn’t, because you could get anything out of Rigel if you bullied or flattered enough, and Paretsky would have done either, or both. Or paid him.

  “A linesman for a linesman. She tried to kill me.”

  Rickenback moved back.

  Even Fergus looked horrified and faintly nauseated. “It was only for show. I mean, she didn’t kill you.”

  Ean wanted to let them believe that lie, but it would come out. “She used a disruptor.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still alive.”

  “I am a ten.” A ten was the only human who could turn back a disruptor because a disruptor was made with a full set of lines.

  Fergus twitched at that. Radko put her foot down. Fergus put up his hands, Rossi-style. “Sorry,” he said to Radko.

  Radko changed legs and put the flat of her boot of the leg she had been standing on back against the wall.

  “That’s Radko, by the way,” Fergus said to Rickenback, who looked as if he had no idea what was going on.

  “Hello, Radko,” and Ean knew that like Fergus, Leo Rickenback would never forget her name from now on.

  Radko nodded but didn’t speak. Rickenback took his cues from her and turned back to Ean. “So she tried to kill you.”

  A disruptor cost as much as a small shuttle because it was made with lines. Ten of them. Ean supposed, when he’d destroyed the disruptor, he’d effectively murdered the lines. How did lines feel about being part of a disruptor? Were they like the stations, lonely and crying out to be heard?

  “But you were strong enough to turn the lines,” Rickenback said.

  Ean nodded. “So Michelle said she’d take my contract instead.”

  “She tried to kill you and still took your contract.”

  “Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gotten her revenge, would she?”

  “I don’t understand how that was revenge,” Rickenback said. Then, “No, actually. I do. Take away Rigel’s only level-ten linesman, and you’ve taken away half his income. And you were the only ten working at that time.” He looked momentarily haunted. “So she threatened Rigel and made him hand over your contract.”

  “She didn’t threaten Rigel,” Ean said. Rickenback had to understand this. “She said she’d buy my contract. And he signed the papers.”

  “I call firing on someone with a disruptor a major threat,” Rickenback said.

  “There was no threat to anyone except me. I had already destroyed the disruptor. She didn’t have another weapon.” Not that he and Rigel had seen.

  “It was a mighty big assumption that you would destroy it. A dangerous one.”

  Ean didn’t correct the misapprehension. He’d told the truth. If Rickenback chose to believe that Michelle expected Ean to survive, he wasn’t going to say otherwise.

  Rickenback sat back in his chair. He ran a hand through his hair, glanced at Radko, then at Fergus, and ran his hand through his hair again. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it with a snap.

  “Michelle took me in. She looked after me. She gave me a job I love.” She’d given him the lines, but while Ean was prepared to tell Rickenback about Michelle and Rigel, he wasn’t going to tell him about the lines. He looked directly into Rickenback’s eyes. “I’m right where I want to be, Grand Master. I’m staying here.”

  Rickenback stared back, as if trying to see into Ean’s soul. It was a pity he didn’t have lines. The lines would have told him Ean was telling the truth.

  “For what it’s worth,” Fergus said quietly, “Ean does love working with the lines here.”

  “Thank you,” Ean said.

  “What about Lady Lyan?” Rickenback asked. “She tried to kill you once. What if she tries again?”

  If she tried again, she would succeed. And she would kill him if he became a threat to Lancia.

  Michelle had kicked off her shoes and was sitting with her feet curled up on the couch. She didn’t relax often. Her head was against the back of the couch. She was smiling. The feeling coming through line one was affection.

  “She’d do it to my face. And she’d have a good reason.” Ean looked around the room for the camera. There had to be at least one. He couldn’t see any, and he knew if he asked Radko where it was, Rickenback—and Fergus, too—would shy away like they had before. Instead, he sang under his breath softly to line five. There. And there. And there. He looked toward the nearest camera and smiled.

  He got a spurt of cinnamon–red-mint amusement in return.

  Rickenback glanced at him, then at Fergus. “Let’s assume you want to stay contracted to Lady Lyan. Rigel seems to have a fair case.”

  “She didn’t threaten Rigel.”

  “Maybe, but if it goes to court, it could be argued that she did.”

  “I’ve never heard of line business like this actually getting to courts,” Fergus said.

  “No.” Rickenback agreed. “That’s what the Grand Master is for.”

  You would want the Grand Master to be on the side of the linesman, then. Would Morton Paretsky have been on Ean’s side? No. So a single linesman was powerless really. It was stupid to feel so disillusioned since he knew that Paretsky would have failed his certification if he’d been given the opportunity.

  “We’re at war,” Ean said. “The New Alliance courts won’t recognize Gate Union courts and vice versa. Neither Michelle nor I plan on attending a Gate Union court.” It would be like walking into a trap. “No one, not even you, could guarantee our safety.”

  “Linesmen are supposed to be neutral.”

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you believe that.”

  Rickenback’s mouth twisted down momentarily. “Point taken.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Rigel might agree to a payoff.”

  Rigel was going to ask a lot of money. “I’ll talk to Michelle.” It wasn’t Rigel they had to worry about. It was Morton Paretsky. “You know that Paretsky is using this to get back in as grand master.”

  “I understand that.” Rickenback almost smiled. “It might be a relief, actually.” He said it as much to Fergus as he did to Ean. “But while I am in this position, I will do what I was elected to do. If you want to stay here, then I will facilitate that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rickenback stood up. “I’ll talk to Rigel, see what I can arrange.”

  TWENTY

  EAN LAMBERT

  MICHELLE JOINED THEM on the shuttle deck.

  “Grand Master Rickenback,” she said, and sounded almost surprised to run into him. She glanced at Ean. “Is it line business that brings you on board?”

  Ean was sure he’d never have been able to say it with such a straight face.

  “Lady Lyan.” Rickenback shook hands. He, too, glanced at Ean. “Yes, it is. It’s about one of your contracted linesmen actually. Are you aware Cartel Master Rigel claims the contract with Linesman Lambert is illegal?”

  Ean expected her to smile, but the lines were serious, and so was she. “Lin, my assistant, mentioned that.” She glanced at Ean again. “Understand that we’re very happy with Lambert’s work.”