Sev said, “There. If we survive the next hour without being blown up by Barony fighters, I’d say we have a chance at living at least, oh, say, another week.” She rose and entered the main compartment, where she began stripping off her torn and bloody clothing. Bianca averted her eyes, then thought to look at her own clothes, but her smartcloth was pristine, stain-resistant and self-cleaning. None of the blood or dirt or grease of their escape had stuck to her.

  “Where are we headed?” Bianca called.

  Sev returned to the cockpit, pulling on a plain gray sweatshirt over matching pants. “There’s a moon nearby, where wealthy visitors to the Tree of Grace stay sometimes. I’m sure I can find another ride for us there.” She pulled her messy hair back into a tight ponytail and secured it in place with an elastic band. When she was done, she still looked like someone who’d been in a couple of fights recently, but less like someone who’d lost them all.

  “Sev, I couldn’t have gotten away without you. Which isn’t to say I approve of everything you did along the way, but… thank you.”

  “Mmm. You really don’t like killing, do you, princess? That’s odd, since you have a real knack for causing mayhem.”

  “I’ll defend myself,” Bianca said. “I’ll fight for my freedom. If I had no choice, maybe I could kill. But that guard, all those guards, were just doing their jobs.”

  “Their jobs were imprisoning you. Doesn’t that make you angry?”

  “They had their orders,” Bianca said. “If you’re a Letnev, orders are all you have, and if you don’t follow them… well, you know. Look at your own situation. Now, if we’re talking about the people who gave the orders, I might not be so forgiving if I ended up in a room alone with the captain.”

  “It might surprise you to know captains have to follow orders, too,” Sev said. “So do admirals. So do the heads of the great families. The only person in the Barony who never has to take orders from anyone is the Baron. But if he declared tomorrow that the Letnev should become a pacifist nation, devoted to doing good works for the downtrodden people of the galaxy, he might find out his rule isn’t quite as absolute as he thinks it is, and we’d owe our fealty to a newly elevated Baron by the end of the week – one who supports the true Letnev way of life. We all follow someone’s orders.”

  “I don’t,” Bianca said.

  “Huh,” Sev said. “I guess you don’t. Neither do I, now. No one to answer to. No one making demands. Thinking about living that kind of life, honestly, it makes me a little dizzy.”

  “I hope we both have a lot of time to get used to it,” Bianca said. And yet… was she really as free as she claimed? There was that yearning, wasn’t there? A compulsion to visit one particular bit of the sky. Who’d given her that order, and why?

  What if she’d escaped one tether, only to discover she was at the end of another, much longer one?

  She’d just have to go and see. And if she arrived at her destination and found a hand holding the other end of that leash, she’d just have to see about biting it off.

  “Do you know where you want to go?” Bianca asked. “I mean, longer term?”

  Sev shook her head. “The only life I’ve known is the Barony military. I’ve got access to a little money, enough to keep me going in the short term. After that, I guess I’ll try to find work as a soldier-of-fortune or something. I have some useful skills.”

  “I could use some help,” Bianca said. “I think I could even make it worth your while, on the other side.”

  Sev cocked her head. “Oh? Do tell, princess.”

  There was a lot to tell – about the Mahact, about the compass in her head, about the fabled world of Ixth… but she started where it began. “I have this… Dr Archambelle called it a yearning…”

  Chapter 22

  “Are we going to steal another ship once we get to that moon?” Bianca asked.

  Severyne couldn’t tell if the idea excited or bothered the girl, so she chose a neutral response. “We’ll assess the situation when we land. We have more immediate concerns. Help me get this panel off.” Severyne pried at a part of the cockpit console that wasn’t meant to be opened from this side; even jamming in a probe as hard as she could, she couldn’t get it to flex more than a millimeter or two.

  Bianca reached over and popped off the metal square without apparent effort. “What are you doing?” She peered inside at a tangle of wire and dull metal components.

  “There’s a transponder under here. Barony tracking technology. They like to know where their ships are. The tracker is integrated with the propulsion system, so if I remove it, then the ship stops flying. I can’t do anything about that, but I think I can stop the tracker from reporting it’s been tampered with, and make sure it keeps broadcasting its location even once I remove it from the ship.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “We’ll put this tracker on another ship after we land, and send the Barony chasing after them instead of us. Should buy us a little extra time.” Severyne delicately snipped at wires. This was all theater, of course – there was a tracking chip in her body, and anyway, she wanted to be followed. But she performed the alterations as carefully and accurately as if it really mattered, because it was safest to treat Bianca as if she were omniscient and omnicognizant. It was doubtful that she could discern the workings of complex machinery from a mere glance but–

  “Not that one,” Bianca said. “That goes into the navigation system, but then it continues on to the communications array, see? You need to jump that wire instead, peel away the insulation and attach those clips here and here.”

  “I didn’t realize you had an engineering background,” Severyne said.

  “Oh, just watching my father work on machinery around the farm. But I pick things up quickly.”

  A primitive tractor on a backward colony world had as much in common with a Barony starship as a candle had with a star, but no matter. It was good to know her caution had been warranted. “There,” Severyne said. “That should buy us a little time later.”

  •••

  The luxury moon was called Glamarij, and it orbited a blackened cinder of a planet. “What happened there?”

  Severyne glanced at the dead husk of a world. “War.”

  They glided down toward the surface of the moon without being challenged, skimming over low scrub. “This moon has an atmosphere?”

  “It’s a bit thin and inhospitable, but yes. The inhabitants of that planet started a terraforming process here before they destroyed themselves. We’ll land soon.”

  “We weren’t allowed to dock at the space station without permission,” Bianca said.

  “Oh, we can’t get anywhere good without permission here, either,” Severyne said. “We can land on the surface, but the underground galleries and pleasure domes are less accessible. This is the unfashionable side of the moon, where the servants and crews congregate, so we’ll fit right in.” They crested a low mountain range, and Severyne said, “Oh, good, we can set down there.”

  She pointed to a hexagon marked out on the ground in glowing lines. Other hexagons were scattered across the greenish-gray surface of the moon, many of them occupied by ships of varying shapes and sizes. “We’re allowed to park in any open hex. The locals will impound the ship eventually, when we fail to pay our docking fees, but we don’t need this shuttle anymore anyway.” Once they were settled on the ground, Severyne deployed the ramp, then popped out the transponder they’d tampered with earlier. The ship blared an alarm, but only briefly, and then the vessel’s lights went out.

  Severyne had to suppress a gasp. In the sudden darkness, Bianca’s eyes began to glow, a faint blue that quickly faded. Was it some adaptation that helped her see in the dark? What was she?

  They walked down the ramp and stepped onto the moon’s surface. The air was breathable, if a bit astringent. “I’m so bouncy!” Bianca jumped into the air in the low gravity and did a full pirouette as she drifted back down, laughing joyously. Severyne had experienced the same joy in movement, at times… but usually those movements involved hitting people with things.

  “That ship should do.” Severyne nodded toward a vessel a few hexes over, larger than theirs, with a crew lugging cargo crates on board. “They look like they’re on the way out. Do you want to distract them, or hide this?” She held up the transponder, still blinking its little telltale light.

  Bianca frowned. “Won’t the Barony shoot them when they catch up?”

  Severyne sighed. “You’re so concerned for others. Once the Grim Countenance gets within range, they’ll realize it’s not our ship, and shooting won’t be necessary. They’ll be fine.”

  Bianca grunted. “I’ll do the distracting, then. I like meeting new people.” She turned and bounded toward the workers, shouting, “Hello, I just got here, it’s wonderful, can you tell me, is there anywhere good to eat around here?”

  Severyne tuned out the prattle, slipped around the far side of the ship, and crouched by one of the landing gears. She had a small pressurized can of sealant on her belt, sufficiently strong to bind the transponder to the gear. She sprayed, attached, and counted to ten slowly for the sealant to dry. She wiggled the device. Hmm, still a little loose. She’d better–

  Severyne sighed. She had to act like all these evasive maneuvers were real in front of Bianca, but she didn’t have to believe it was real. She gave the transponder a last squirt anyway and then sauntered around the ship. “Amina, stop bothering those people, they have work to do. Forgive my hireling. She’s new.”

  The Xxcha lugging a crate rumbled, “It’s fine. She’s charming. Enjoy your visit.”

  “They told me where to get pie,” Bianca said. Severyne led her away, toward a cluster of low domes beyond the landing zone. Bianca leaned closer and said, “Why did you call me Amina?”

  “I knew an Amina once. It’s the only name, other than Bianca, that I know for sure is plausible for a human.”

  “Secret identities! What should I call you?”

  “Whatever you like, as long as it’s a Letnev name.” Might as well indulge her.

  “Genevieve, I think,” Bianca said. “That was the name of one of the great Barony generals I read about. We’ll call you ‘Gen’ for short.”

  Severyne couldn’t help but be flattered. Genevieve Lamorte was a legendary general who’d crushed a dozen uprisings with effortless aplomb. She frowned. “You actually are charming. Where did you learn to be like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Bianca said. “It’s just… Look, I really thought you were a spy earlier. I almost left you to certain death, and I feel terrible about that. I’ve decided I’m going to treat people like they really are the way I wish they were. Sometimes I’ll be disappointed, but you know what? I bet a lot of people will rise to the occasion.”

  “You’re so… human.”

  “Tell that to Brother Errin,” Bianca said. “What’s in the domes?”

  “Places that sell various intoxicants, probably. Along with places to sleep off their effects.”

  “Yay!” Bianca said. “But I guess we aren’t getting intoxicated?”

  “We are not. We are going to find intoxicated people to take advantage of instead.”

  •••

  Heuvelt sat drinking in a corner of a bar on Glamarij. Ashont and Clec were a few tables away, playing cards with a Winnaran and a Saar. They were only betting with toothpicks taken from the bartender, but apparently the toothpicks represented the honor of their respective species, and Heuvelt did not feel capable of representing humanity in the manner his people deserved. He stared at his hand terminal, where two windows were open. One window showed their credit balance in the ship’s account Clec had opened (since accounts with Heuvelt’s name on them tended to get frozen or seized), and the other displayed a Barony of Letnev fugitive bounty database.

  The first window was very nice. The Disciplinarian had paid quite well for their delivery, with a bonus for swift completion. He paid so well that Heuvelt wondered what, exactly, they’d handed over to the twitchy little Yin scientist, but it was probably better not to know. The Show and Tell was actually operating in the black again.

  The second window was… less nice. Heuvelt was still listed as a “fugitive alien of interest” with a note to “contact Barony officials immediately if you know his whereabouts.” The Disciplinarian said that alert would be expunged, but it might take a few days for the system to update, Barony bureaucracy being what it was. The Letnev weren’t offering a reward for him anymore, so he doubted anyone would bother to turn him in – most species didn’t feel a need to do the Letnev any uncompensated favors – but the sight of those Barony vessels back at the Tree of Grace still had him twitchy and on edge.

  Which is why, when a Letnev woman strode in, glaring around the bar, he froze.

  Her eyes didn’t linger on him for very long, though, before she stomped toward the bar, moving like she wanted to kick the floor to death with every step. Then Heuvelt noticed the woman she’d come in with. Young, slender, pretty, wide-eyed and smiling, and human. Why in the galaxy would a human and a Letnev be traveling together? The species had a long and extensive history of enmity, stretching back to the collapse of the Lazax empire, if not earlier. The human ambled over to Ashont and Clec’s table and said, “Ooh, what are you playing?”

  “Where I’m from, we call it Kiss-Kill,” Ashont rumbled. “The Saar call it Song and Scream, and I don’t know what Winnu call it.”

  “By its proper name,” the Winnaran said. “Traitor’s Tongue.”

  “May I watch?” the young woman said. They assented, and she sat down, perched on the edge of her chair. She wore a red dress that should have been out of place in this working-class bar, but somehow she seemed perfectly at ease, and the motley group around her was at ease with her in return.

  Heuvelt couldn’t stop staring at the young woman. There was something strangely captivating about her, and it wasn’t just her beauty (when it came to lust, he was mostly attracted to men, though as a rich spendthrift with a taste for adventure he’d dabbled considerably more widely).

  The Letnev woman walked over to the table, looked down, and said, “Are you playing for money?”

  The other players exchanged glances. “We’re playing for honor.”

  “I don’t have any of that to spare,” the Letnev said. She put a small glass in front of the human. “You get this one, Amina. Just one. Don’t accept drinks from strangers, no matter how nice they are. If they’re nice, in fact, be especially suspicious.”

  “Good advice,” Ashont rumbled.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” the Letnev said. “Lesson one of space travel: never pass up the chance to use a toilet someone else has to clean.”

  “Yes, Gen.” The girl beamed at her. The Letnev scowled and stomped off toward the back of the bar.

  Heuvelt watched her go. Was she really just going to the bathroom, or was it a ruse? Maybe she was a fugitive hunter, setting a trap to capture him. Or maybe she was just a loyal Barony citizen, but she’d recognized him, and gone off to call the authorities to turn him in. He looked around, scanning for the exits, so he’d know where to go if heavily armed Letnev shock troopers burst into the bar–

  He shook his head and took a deep sip of his liquor. He was being paranoid.

  Heuvelt went back to watching Amina as they dealt her in for their next hand. “Oh, I think I picked up the basics from watching,” she said airily. Heuvelt doubted that. It was a twisty game, all bluff and double-bluff and cards that changed value depending on the placement of other cards around them. He’d been taught six times, and still made beginner’s mistakes. Ah well. As long as they had fun. Everyone deserved a little fun every once in a while.

  •••

  “Stop whining,” Severyne snapped. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  Richeline’s face flickered on Severyne’s stolen wrist gauntlet. The first officer – now acting captain, since she’d lived – had an immense bandage wrapped around her neck, and wires and tubes running into her body, but she was sitting upright, and she was lucid. Too lucid for Severyne’s taste, honestly. “I just didn’t expect you to stab me, captain!”

  “I had to improvise. That’s part of being a field operative – you should know that, since your dream is to run covert teams. I knew there were soldiers watching us, and that they’d send medical help as soon as I left. You were never in any danger.” Richeline had been in a great deal of danger, of course, but Severyne could lie all she wanted while talking to her.

  The woman wasn’t done venting yet, though, apparently. “Archambelle said if you’d stayed even a minute longer, I would have bled out.”

  “That’s why I didn’t spend the extra minute, Richeline. Now, please, focus. Things are going perfectly on my end. The girl actually asked me to help her find Ixth – I didn’t even have to plant the seed in her mind.” She scowled. “I am curious how she knows the name of her destination, though, and how she learned about the Mahact. She is distressingly well informed.”

  Richeline groaned. “It must have been Brother Errin. He refused to sign any confidentiality agreements, but Archambelle said we should go ahead with the meeting anyway. I knew it was a mistake.”

  “It is what it is,” Severyne said. “We can only go forward. Is my new ship ready?”

  “Yes. We contracted with the mercenaries through the intermediary you suggested. They had a team in the system, and they just landed on Glamarij. How did you get Sagasa the Disciplinarian to vouch for you? A Hacan crime lord and a Barony captain, it’s… not a connection I’d expect.”

  “Oh, I have connections everywhere,” Severyne said. That wasn’t really true, but the connections she did have were valuable. “Once we give Bianca a proper scare, we’ll flee toward the landing zone, ‘hijack’ the mercenary ship, and lock up the crew. Then we’ll escape, and Bianca can set a course for us. You just hang back and follow at a discreet distance until we get wherever it is we’re going. Once we’ve reached Archambelle’s magical wonder planet and all the locks are open, the mercenaries can throw off their chains and subdue the princess for me. Understood?”