“Such as?” Severyne said.

  Archambelle shifted in her chair, unable to find a comfortable position, by design. No one in Severyne’s presence should be too relaxed. The doctor said, “What if Bianca is developing mental powers in addition to physical ones? We know there are species who can read minds, project thoughts, even dominate the wills of others. What if the Mahact seeded those abilities in her? Perhaps she beats Voyou when they play spiralstone, not because of her superior tactical skill, but because she can sense, perhaps unconsciously, what’s in his mind, and knows what moves he plans to make in advance?”

  “That’s certainly something new to worry about,” Severyne said. “Though her tactical acumen is obviously impressive, for a farm girl. She bested a first officer, an undercommandant, a ship’s doctor, and three marines in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “We didn’t think she posed a threat!” Richeline said. “We’ll be much more careful going forward, you can believe me–”

  “Going forward where? We’ve already established that any attempt to compel obedience could backfire. Archambelle says the girl’s genome and volatile brain chemistry mean our usual drugs to weaken human wills are unlikely to do any good.”

  “We keep having to switch sedatives,” the doctor said glumly. “The gas that knocked her out the first time didn’t work the next time, and the anesthetic we used instead failed the time after that. Her body is learning to shrug off everything we use against her. It won’t be long before we’re reduced to bashing her in the back of the head with a rock if we want her to stay unconscious, and obviously that has certain inherent dangers.”

  Severyne nodded. “This girl was designed by the Mahact, or whomever, to operate with independence and reach her destination. We spent all this time poking and prodding and trying to decipher her secrets, when Brother Errin has it right: we should have just asked her where she wanted to go, and gone along with her. We’ve spoiled any chance of that now, thanks to you two babbling fools.”

  “So what, then?” Archambelle demanded. “Are you saying the mission is a failure?”

  “Of course not.” Severyne rolled her head around on her neck, limbering up for what was likely to be a very strenuous few days. “I’m saying it’s up to me to fix things, as usual. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  •••

  Bianca woke up with a groan, her head all fuzzy and her eyes all blurry, but two blinks later she felt sharp and in focus again. She was stretched out on the floor in a bare, dimly lit room with some sort of flickering energy field in the place of one wall. The brig, then. And she wasn’t alone.

  The person she wasn’t alone with was Letnev, but her hair was loose and messy around her face, a level of disarray Bianca had never witnessed in the crew before. The woman had a split lip, still a little bloody, and her close-fitting black uniform was askew, one sleeve torn. The woman sat on the floor, back against the wall, legs folded up so her knees were close to her chin. She frowned at Bianca, and spoke in the trading tongue. “What did you do to get locked up, princess?”

  Bianca had no intention of talking to any Letnev in any language ever again, so she took a personal inventory instead. She was wearing her smartcloth dress, and she still had on her silver ring, so that was a surprise they wouldn’t be prepared for if need be. They’d taken her shoes away for some reason, but she’d grown up running barefoot across rocky fields, so that was hardly debilitating. Otherwise, she had… well, just what she took with her everywhere. Strength and speed that wouldn’t surprise her captors as much next time, and her mind. Those advantages would have to suffice.

  The brig didn’t have beds, just niches in the wall that were slightly more padded than the floor. Nothing she could wrench free to use as a weapon. Otherwise, the space was entirely bare. So bare, in fact, that, huh…

  “You’re wondering where you’re supposed to shit?” the woman said. “That sleeping cubby in the middle isn’t a sleeping cubby. You can tell by the smell. There’s a hole, and suction. Crawl in there if you need to do your business. I’ll avert my eyes from your aristocratic nethers, my lady.” She cackled.

  Bianca carefully examined the walls, looking for a seam she could pry open – she only had her bare hands, but they were strong, and her nails seemed to be unbreakable lately. There was nothing, just smooth metal. She growled in frustration.

  The other prisoner was amused. “My people are apex jailers, and this is the cell where they keep enemy combatants, princess. We are secure. You aren’t going to find a handy ventilation duct to crawl through. That’s storybook stuff.”

  Bianca dropped down to the floor, thinking furiously, but her mind was like a vehicle stuck in the mud: the wheels spun, but there was nothing for them to dig into, so none of her thoughts got any purchase or took her anywhere. She cursed, elaborately, in Letnev, a combination of oaths she’d picked up from listening in on the cargo bay workers.

  Her cellmate cackled again. “You swear like a toddler. You can’t use eshin as a verb, that would be like saying, hmm, ‘you assholing scum,’ ha.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Bianca said. “I know you’re just a spy here to watch me.”

  “Watch you do what? Sit here and pout? My report back to my superiors is going to be scintillating.” She worked her jaw, winced, and spat a tooth out onto the floor. “Seriously, princess, why are you locked up in here? What crime could you have possibly committed? A grievous breach of aristocratic etiquette? Did you use the wrong spoon at dinner with the captain?”

  Bianca let her annoyance bubble up. “I’ve never even met the captain.”

  “Lucky break there. She’s the worst. So what, then? Did you drop a stitch in your embroidery?”

  She ground her teeth. “No. I assaulted three guards, a doctor, an undercommandant, and the ship’s first officer, and tried to steal a shuttle.”

  The woman whistled. “Why did you do that? Was the thread count on your sheets too low for your tastes? Why would a princess like you–”

  “I’m not a princess!” Bianca roared. “I’m a prisoner, and I was a prisoner before, but once I realized I was a prisoner and tried to get away, they made me a real prisoner.”

  The woman was silent for a long moment. “Oh. I see. You mean to tell me the officers lied to us about the aristocrat in our midst? Barony officials, bending the truth?” She smirked. “Truly unprecedented. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. You’ve shattered my worldview and dashed my illusions to splinters. Or shards. Whatever illusions break up into. I’m sad to hear you aren’t a princess, though. I thought I must be pretty important if they put me in here with the likes of you.”

  “Why are you here?” Bianca said. “I know you’re a spy, but I assume you have some elaborate cover story, and I could use the entertainment.”

  “Oh, yes, I really commit to my role. That’s why I had to spit out a tooth just now, for verisimilitude. Listen to you – you think you’re so important. They have cameras and microphones. Why would they need to punch me in the face and put me in here to listen to you whine? You’re not the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, princess – not everything revolves around you.” The woman leaned her head back against the wall and appeared to go to sleep.

  So what if she was a spy. That didn’t necessarily mean Bianca shouldn’t talk to her – maybe she could get her to let something slip, some piece of information that could help Bianca out of this situation. It wasn’t like she had a lot of other avenues to pursue just now. If the woman tried to pump her for information about which way her yearning wanted them to go, Bianca simply wouldn’t give her any. I’ll secretly and expertly interrogate you, she thought. “All right,” she said. “You’re right. I’ve had a difficult day. I apologize. My name is Bianca. What’s yours.”

  The woman cracked open one eyelid. “You can call me Sev, princess.” Then she closed her eye again, and a moment later started to snore.

  Chapter 20

  It was difficult to convincingly pretend to sleep – faking the right kind of breathing was famously tricky – so Severyne didn’t pretend; she actually went to sleep. She’d slept in worse circumstances, after all, and in more dangerous company.

  Severyne woke up, not too much later, and smacked her dry lips. “Water!” she shouted. “Do you idiots want me to die before you get the chance to execute me?” She looked over at Bianca, who was sitting against the far wall hugging her knees to her chest, but didn’t say anything to her. People didn’t appreciate things that came too easily.

  So far, Sev thought she’d done a good job with the girl. She didn’t know if Archambelle’s speculations about Bianca’s possible psychic abilities were plausible or not, but for all they knew the girl could detect minute changes in breathing and heartbeat and blood pressure too, and might be able to sense when people were lying to her. Severyne had learned long ago that you could lie a lot without actually lying; you just said carefully chosen true things, and let people draw the conclusions you’d led them toward. You could even say some of your deep dark secrets straight out, and as long as you used a sarcastic tone, people would believe you meant the opposite. Avoiding outright lies while speaking to Bianca might not be necessary, but it couldn’t hurt, and the challenge kept Severyne’s mind focused.

  “Will they bring us water?” Bianca said in a small voice.

  Severyne yawned. “Oh, probably, eventually. As a rule, Barony officials don’t let people they’re planning to execute die of thirst. Why give their prisoners the easy way out? They must want to keep you alive too, if they kidnapped you and made up a whole elaborate story. Do you know why they really want you?”

  Bianca ignored that. “Why are they going to execute you? What did you do?”

  “Oh, lots of things.” Severyne walked to the forcefield wall separating them from the corridor, and freedom, or at least, relative freedom; even if they escaped the cell, they’d still be on a Barony warship, after all. Though maybe not for much longer. “I got my start working in security – not standing by a door with a pulse rifle, my scores were too high for that, but managing teams of guards in a secure facility. Everything was going well, and my career was on the rise, when there was a regrettable incident and we lost a high-value asset. In the aftermath, I was reassigned to the Grim Countenance.” All that was true. It was just that, in reality, she’d turned that regrettable incident to her own advantage, and the reassignment had been a promotion to captain of her own ship. “Once I got here, I kept clashing with high-ranking officers, especially first officer Richeline. We had a lot of disagreements and, well, today I called her a babbling fool.” All true. “Do you know how the Letnev feel about insubordination?”

  Bianca nodded. “Section nineteen-c, paragraph g, of Barony military code says the penalty for willful insubordination is confinement to quarters, docking one cycle’s pay, and a level-three formal public apology.”

  Severyne blinked at her with unfeigned surprise. “You memorized the military codes?”

  She shrugged. “I get bored easily. The codes were one of the only things I was allowed to read in my room that didn’t have any redactions. Lately, when I read things, they sort of stick in my mind.”

  “Huh. Do you remember what it says about striking a superior officer?”

  Bianca laughed. “Detention, court martial, execution. Is that what you did?”

  Severyne spread out her hands. “You see me standing here in this cell, don’t you?”

  Bianca nearly smiled. “It looks like Richeline got a couple of hits in herself.”

  That she had. Richeline had definitely seemed to enjoy hitting Severyne to complete her “fellow prisoner” disguise. The captain hadn’t expected to be hit hard enough to loosen a tooth, but she could get it replaced later, and it did help sell the whole story. Severyne had refused painkillers, because as a real prisoner she wouldn’t have received any, and she wanted to be as convincing as possible. A little pain – all right, a medium amount of pain – was a small price to pay to win Bianca’s trust and complete the mission. “Richeline is trained in combat, and it shows. I understand why she was in such a bad mood when we had our little interaction now, if you roughed her up earlier.”

  “I guess we’re both here for the same reason, in a way,” Bianca said. “Except I don’t think they plan to execute me. They want something from me.” She paused, and it was such a deliberate pause that Severyne knew it was a trap. If she started probing about what the Letnev wanted from her, Bianca would suspect her even more of being a spy.

  But Severyne’s plan didn’t rely on Bianca telling her anything, really, so she ignored the bait, and dangled a little bait of her own instead. “Screw them,” Severyne said. “Why should you give them anything they want? I used to think the Barony was a true meritocracy, but I’ve been forced to serve under enough fools to know it’s not that simple.” She sat down next to Bianca, leaned in close, and whispered, “I have absolutely no intention of being tried and executed. I’m getting out of here.”

  “I thought you people were apex jailers?”

  “Oh, we are. Nobody has better prisons. But do you know the weakest part of any system?”

  “People,” Bianca said.

  “That’s right. We can’t break the walls, but we can break the people. Like I said, I worked in security, so I have some insight into these operations. I’m familiar with the duty rosters and shift changes and security procedures down here, too. I should be. I drew them up myself.”

  “Wait – you were in charge of the same brig they put you in?”

  Severyne shrugged. “I oversaw security for the whole ship, yeah.” As captain, that was true; the real security chief reported to her, after all. “This is the most secure brig they’ve got. It’s not like the guards would set me free just because they used to work for me – personal loyalty only goes so far, and once you get locked up and scheduled for execution, you tend to lose your influence.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  Severyne looked away. “I, ah, well, I, you see, I…” She didn’t have to pretend to be uncomfortable. Talking about this really did bring up all sorts of complex feelings, including but not limited to guilt and shame. “I have a sort of history. With humans. Human women. A human woman. I was on a mission once, with a woman from the Federation of Sol, and we… became close. I know, we’re ancestral enemies and all that, but we had a common interest that forced us to work together for a time, and professional respect grew into something more. That sort of thing is frowned upon in the Barony. It’s seen as perversion. Worse, a violation of Barony values. It’s like fraternization with the enemy, but more repulsive.”

  “There’s no regulation against interspecies intimacy in the military codes,” Bianca whispered.

  “There’s not a specific regulation against chopping up your mother and making her into soup, either, because there doesn’t need to be – everyone knows it’s simply not done.”

  “So, what? You want to fraternize with me? This is a very elaborate way to be creepy, Sev, and I don’t like it.”

  Severyne wrinkled her nose. “You are far too young for me, princess, among other drawbacks too numerous to list. But I know the camera angles, and we can make it look like we’re getting intimate without the necessity of actual contact. Believe me, the guards will come in with stun batons to break things up quickly if they think we’re kissing. Witnessing a grotesque perversion of Letnev purity will probably make them a little careless – both guards on duty tonight are especially straitlaced.”

  Bianca laughed. “Why not? Say we lure them in. What then?”

  “We beat them up. I wouldn’t rate our chances high in a fair fight, but you say you took out three guards, so maybe you’ll impress me. If it doesn’t work…” She shrugged. “I’m already going to be tried and executed. It’s not like I can get in more trouble for trying to escape.”

  “Say we do defeat the guards. Then what?”

  “Then we hope Richeline hasn’t gotten around to changing my security codes yet, so I can cancel any alarms and open the security doors and get to the shuttle bay.”

  “What if she has changed your codes?”

  “Then I’ll use Richeline’s officer-level codes.” Severyne grinned. “The security officer is the one who generates those codes. Sure, you’re not supposed to look at them, let alone memorize them, but who knows what people get up to when no one else is watching?”

  “It sounds pretty risky.”

  “My other plan is to fake a seizure, and try to escape when the medical team comes.”

  “I’ve read about that kind of thing in stories,” Bianca said. “Actually, lots of stories.”

  Sev scowled. “Some things are classics for a reason, princess. Anyway, I like the first idea better, because I’d only have to punch guards instead of guards and medics, and you’ll help with the punching, but like I said: when you’re going to die anyway, every risk is an acceptable risk. If you’re so valuable, they won’t hurt you even if we fail. But maybe you’d prefer to stay, negotiate with the captain, try to make a deal–”

  “They don’t honor deals anyway.” Bianca’s voice shook with bitterness. Severyne felt a tiny bit bad about that. This all could have been handled differently. It had simply never crossed Severyne’s mind to deal with the girl fairly, on an open, even-handed basis; the stakes were too high, the path too uncertain, and, after all, Bianca was just some human farm girl from a worthless mudball, not worthy of any real consideration. By the time Severyne started to respect the girl and understand her true capabilities, they’d gone too far down the road of deception, and well, here they were. But this road, however twisty, could still lead them to their destination. “Let’s do it. At least this way I’ll get to hit someone.”