“That’s why,” Klim said softly, and Stellan had to stop the instinctive leaning forward to listen again. “That’s why they’re talking about putting us together. On a ship. So it doesn’t happen again.”

  “If it’s a mess, then whose fault is that?”

  “Partly yours, Morton, since you were supposed to be in charge for much of that time.” Then Rickenback shook himself impatiently. “It’s our fault, of course. We were too complacent, too used to the way it was. Our whole economy runs on lines, and we were all too stupid to realize someone—something—had effectively disarmed us all. Six months’ failure to supply is bound to go close to destroying any business, no matter how important we think we are.”

  “You have no idea—”

  “The Eleven?” Solvej asked eagerly.

  “We built our ship, we have to pilot it. No one trusts us anymore to deliver. Half the nines and tens still have problems working.” Rickenback shook himself again. “Gah. I don’t know why I’m talking to you. Take time out from trying to get your old job back and find out what’s happening. And I want to talk to Rigel without you around.”

  “I’m here to ensure he gets treated fairly.”

  “And I’m here in my role as Grand Master to talk to Rigel about a linesman for whom he is causing trouble. Read the rules, Morton. The linesman has a right to a private hearing. Go away, or I’ll throw the regs at you. I’m simply doing my job.”

  “Of course it won’t be the Eleven.”

  “But they’re crewing—”

  “We’re not part of the crew,” Chantsmith said. “They would have told you that when you signed up for this mission, Solvej. We’re going back to our home fleets.”

  Paretsky didn’t move, so Rickenback took out his comms. “Record,” and held it up to the table, to take in the three of them. “Witness. This is the Grand Master of the Line Cartels, Leo Rickenback, in the case of Lambert versus Rigel, request number L258394. Linesman Lambert has requested assistance from the Grand Master. Date.” He pressed the on-screen button to record the date. “At Lambert’s request, I am attempting to discuss the issue with the former owner of Lambert’s contract, Cartel Master Rigel from House of Rigel. Linesman Paretsky, I wish to speak to Rigel alone. Please leave us.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “So where are we going then?”

  “You’re on record,” Rickenback said. “This is going back to the cartel houses. Please leave.”

  “It’s obvious,” Chantsmith said. “There’s only one place that’s got any room. Lonely ship.”

  Paretsky turned on his heel and walked away. Stellan was glad for the silence that followed, the chance to listen to a single conversation for a moment.

  “Lonely ship.” Solvej and Klim groaned in unison.

  “We’ll be miserable all the time,” Klim said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Chantsmith said. “It likes people around, that’s all. And we do a lot of training there now. Anyway, we should be getting back. My dorm has a curfew even if yours doesn’t.”

  More than the three of them were leaving. A lot of people had curfews it seemed. In the noise of their all leaving, Stellan almost missed Solvej’s grumbled, “A hundred thirty ships to choose from, and they put us on the Gruen.”

  If the trainees were stationed on the Gruen, and if, as Chantsmith had said, they sometimes trained on that ship anyway, all Stellan had to do was get onto the Gruen on a day when they were training there. Linesman Lambert was the trainer.

  The gher-wha arrived. Cold noodles in an unappetizing clear broth.

  “Would you like a drink?” Rickenback asked, making Stellan jump.

  He hoped no one had seen him do so.

  “Just don’t make it Lancian wine. I’d choke on it.”

  Stellan couldn’t see what Rickenback ordered, but he heard the weight of the glass hit the tabletop. A liquor, not a wine.

  “This one’s almost as bad,” Rigel muttered, then sighed with pleasure. “Tastes good, though.”

  “Last time Morton came to visit me, he called me a traitor for serving it,” Rickenback said. He mimicked Paretsky’s slower, heavier tones. “They’re our enemy now.” He laughed. “But he drank two glasses and hinted for more.”

  “Enemies.” Rigel was bitter. “Linesmen aren’t supposed to be affiliated. I’ve been here days. I could have had my whole house working. Good work. Do you know how many jobs I’ve turned down?”

  “You don’t have to turn them down.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Mmmh,” Rickenback said. “Abram Galenos offered to set my house up here on Haladea III. So did Jita Orsaya. I think they’re desperate for linesmen.”

  Stellan decided to eat cold soup. This he could take back to Markan.

  “But that’s not why we’re here.”

  “Lady Lyan threatened me, she threatened my linesman. I was scared. I gave in to her demands.”

  “Then waited months before you tried to do anything about it.”

  Rigel didn’t answer.

  “You can’t afford this, Rigel, any more than I could.”

  Rickenback dialed them both more drinks. “Rigel, has Ean talked to you about what he thinks will happen if he goes back to your house?”

  “Ean hasn’t talked to me at all since I saw him that first night. He refuses to answer my comms. He refuses to see me.”

  Rickenback was silent awhile, then, “Kaelea thinks Lancia will kill him if he leaves.”

  “Kaelea.” Rigel waved a dismissive hand. “She’s got some crazy idea, but Ean’s a linesman. Why would anyone kill a linesman?”

  “Why did Lancia kill Rebekah Grimes?”

  “If they killed her.” Rigel didn’t sound as confident anymore. “You don’t think . . . I mean, Ean.”

  The soup tasted as bad as it looked. Stellan forced it down.

  “You’re the Grand Master, Leo. Why don’t you ask Ean?”

  “I would if I could trust his answer,” Rickenback said. “But he’s surrounded by guards. He’ll say what they want him to say.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Exactly.” Rickenback’s tone turned grim. “So instead I asked Fergus Burns if Lancia would kill Ean if we got him back.”

  There was a pause. Stellan badly wanted to turn to see the expression on Rickenback’s face.

  “I like Fergus,” Rigel said. “He’s a good man. What did he say?”

  Another long pause.

  “He hesitated, then said it didn’t matter anyway because Ean didn’t want to go back.”

  “But—”

  “So I dropped by to see Jordan Rossi. Asked the same question.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘What do you expect? He’s been on the alien ships. He knows too much.’”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do.” Rickenback dialed more drinks. “I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death. I am going to pretend I believe Ean when he says he’s happy here, and I’m going to negotiate a settlement for you. I’m going to take Lady Lyan for every credit I can get. She won’t know what hit her. And I’ll make sure Ean gets a cut. If he is being forced to stay, then they had damn well better pay for it.”

  The conversation in the booth behind was deteriorating, both in comprehension—they had both put back a lot of those heavy little glasses of liquor in a short time—and in interest. It had reverted to general line discussion. Who had moved to which house, what the cartels were doing, who had the most promising apprentices.

  “One of my new apprentices is strong,” Rigel said. “The best I’ve had since I took on Ean.”

  “A ten?”

  Rigel laughed. “Are you kidding?”

  “When did you know Ean was a ten?”

  “I didn’t. Not for a couple of years. The trainers said he’d never amount to anything. Yet he was so determined he was a linesman. I haven’t seen anyone with that sort of determination since . . . I thought he’d be a three or a four. I thought—” Rigel broke off. “His keep and his training weren’t going to break me.”

  “Do tell. Rigel feeling sorry for someone.” Rickenback must have been drunk, for the man Stellan had listened to berate Paretsky earlier wouldn’t have said that.

  “It wasn’t sympathy,” Rigel said. “Have you ever had a dream, Leo? Have you ever wanted that dream so much you—”

  Stellan couldn’t see the gesture that went with the words.

  “Oh, I calculated everything carefully. I wasn’t going to be out of pocket for his expenses. I never expected . . . a house like mine should never have had a ten. At first even I didn’t realize what I had.”

  Stellan swiped his comms to off and stood up. He had better things to do than sit around listening to two drunk cartel masters talk about their star ex-employees. He had to find how to get onto the Gruen.

  TWENTY-THREE

  EAN LAMBERT

  AFTER HELMO’S DINNER party, Ean and Vega avoided each other. Ean had the advantage, for he knew where she was on ship, so they only came across each other when Ean was engrossed in what he was doing and hadn’t noticed she was around, or when Vega sought him out.

  Today, she’d sought him out. She’d come down to Engineering, where Ean was working with the Lancastrian Princess’s linesmen, and waited until he finished. He’d been aware of her, but the lines enjoyed their time with the crew, so he hadn’t stopped.

  “Is it true they’re going to move all the trainees to the Gruen?” Tai asked, once they were done.

  “Yes.” They should have done it from the start.

  “Me, too?”

  Tai had been working with the lines; his own lines were clear. While he understood it would be good for the trainees to be together, he didn’t want to leave his ship. His lines were here. Ean understood that.

  He glanced at Vega. “I’ll see what I can do.” Lancia would be accused of favoritism again, but they did have to shuttle Ean across every day. It wasn’t as if they weren’t going there anyway.

  “Thank you.”

  “No promises, mind,” Ean said. “You may have to go.” He turned to Vega. “Commodore.”

  “Linesman Lambert,” and she walked with him back to her office.

  Radko marched behind. Ean glanced around once. Vega acted as if she weren’t there but dismissed her at the door of the office.

  Vega indicated a chair. “Someone bugged your trainee linesmen the other night.”

  “Bugged them?” For a moment, he didn’t understand what she meant and had to check the lines to translate it. “Listened in to their conversation?” Was she accusing him? “I didn’t do it.”

  “No. They planted a bug on Solvej’s uniform. Some of us still need to do it the old-fashioned way.”

  Vega had learned a lot about Ean since Helmo’s dinner party. Probably a lot of it incorrect.

  “The lines don’t work like that,” Ean said. “I’d need line one and line five to hear through the lines, and probably other lines as well.” Maybe that was what line seven did. “And if they were on a ship I knew,” because he wasn’t convinced he could read a strange ship yet.

  “Admiral Orsaya thinks you could communicate mind to mind if you wished to. You snoop into Linesman Rossi’s mind on occasion.”

  “Only by accident.” It was true he sometimes accidentally dipped into Rossi’s lines—especially after training, when the lines were wide open—but Jordan Rossi wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone. Line business was for linesmen. Orsaya wouldn’t have admitted it either. She was fanatical about lines, but in her own way, she protected Ean. Vega had done some snooping of her own.

  Maybe he should try sending thoughts the other way. He shuddered, imagining what Rossi would say to that.

  “But you could do it if you wanted to,” Vega said.

  “The lines would have to be receptive.”

  She nodded, as if he’d confirmed something she’d suspected. “So, who would bug your trainee linesman, and why?”

  Wouldn’t that be obvious? “They want to know what training we’re doing.”

  She pushed a transcript of the three trainees’ conversation over to Ean. “Read it, it will be faster than listening to it all night.”

  Ean wasn’t a fast reader. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Read it.”

  So Ean did, carefully and thoroughly, while Vega paced the room.

  Her sighs were distracting. He had to reread some parts. He was glad to finish. “They didn’t say anything wrong.”

  “Didn’t . . .” Vega visibly pulled herself together.

  “Unless you count the bit about my being strange.”

  “They gave away their new location. They discussed the weakness of one of the linesmen.”

  Ean stood up. “Everyone needs to talk sometimes. What they talked about were things other people might know already.” Like how obsessed Hernandez was with the lines. “Or things they will know soon.” Like the fact that the linesmen were moving to the Gruen.

  “Why was someone listening that particular day?”

  “Nothing unusual happened if that’s what you’re asking.”

  She nodded. She was.

  “How do you know it was only that day?” Maybe they bugged them every day. “You must know. Otherwise, they could have been bugged every night.”

  “We’ve been listening to Cartel Master Rigel,” Vega said. “He goes to the Night Owl most nights. We think he’s going there for you.”

  “Rigel? Did he—” Ean stopped, not sure how to ask.

  “Grand Master Rickenback said he will negotiate a deal.”

  Yet no one had spoken to Ean about it.

  Vega looked at his face. “Sometimes you overthink things, Lambert.”

  Sometimes she overprotected things.

  “Rickenback will do his job. Meantime, I’m trying to do mine. If you hear anything, I want to know immediately.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SELMA KARI WANG

  THE DAYS TOOK on a routine. Exercise and physical checkup first, followed by a trip out to the Eleven, where Kari Wang wandered around the ship and tried to familiarize herself with it. She spent half the time on the bridge, trying to work out the boards. Nothing made sense. The afternoons were spent with the admirals, going over the crew, the ship plans, and line information.

  Afterward, she came back to her quarters and spent two hours doing more physical exercises.

  Fitch wanted her to spend more time on her legs—and she did half an hour of that—but she spent most of the time on the bars and balance. There was nothing wrong with her upper-body strength, and any spacer should be able to move through the whole ship using handholds.

  Fitch and Jon spent the afternoons out with her crew, running comprehensive medical and psychiatric tests one person at a time.

  “It’s amazing what level of fitness the different militaries accept,” Fitch told her.

  Kari Wang thought it was more likely they’d waive extreme fitness to get the type of recruits they wanted.

  She wasn’t sure who had arranged it so Fitch and Jon didn’t arrive back until after she had finished exercising, but she was grateful for it.

  Launching herself off the bars, twisting, using her own body strength to move from one bar to the next to get her around the room was the closest Kari Wang came to being at peace. She didn’t think about her ship then, or her crew, but the familiarity of the exercises somehow brought them closer.

  Only when the muscles in her upper body shook with fatigue did she go back to the exercises Fitch had set. The stairs, which she loathed.

  They’d found an old fire escape that wasn’t used because it bordered on one of the construction sites. When Grieve had first offered its use, Fitch had taken one look and gone so white Kari Wang had grabbed onto his shirt for fear he’d faint and fall. It was clear there had once been a building beside this one, and thus no need for a railing on the stairs.

  Even Grieve had paled. “We’ll put a barrier up, of course,” and his voice shook. “It’s a good spot because it’s private. Even the media drones can’t get around here.”

  Spacer that she was, Kari Wang had no problems with the stairs, eight flights open to the gaping hole of the building site next door. It reminded her of the vastness of space.

  “Do we have to put a barrier up?”

  “Yes,” they’d both said.

  Put up a barrier they had. A massive thing of steel and plastic that made Kari Wang feel as if she were in a cage. Sometimes all she did was hold on to the bars and look out over the building site. This was her life now. Caged. Out of her control.

  * * *

  EVERY third afternoon she had a psych session with Jon.

  He talked to her about her crew. “It’s the weirdest mix you have ever come across,” he said. “Linesmen, I understand, because you’re working on a line ship. But the others. Some of them barely make regulation. Like Mael, that old man who rescued you the day you dropped your comms, for example. They sent him out to the rim for a reason. He’s half-crazy. As for following orders, I don’t think he knows what an order is. No wonder he was demoted. I’m going to recommend he be removed from the project.”

  “I doubt anyone will listen to you.” The admirals had high hopes of Mael, for some reason. Besides, she liked someone who would rescue a stranger.

  “Because Aratoga’s so powerful.” Jon made a face. “I have never seen so much politics in my life. They’re always arguing over who’s got seniority, and why.”

  * * *