Martinez felt invisible fingers tug at his ears and draw his head upward at an inquiring angle. Success in combat. That seemed encouraging.

  “But first,” Jian said, “let me deal with a matter of designation. I have assumed command of all ships in the Restoration, whether they belong to the Fourth Fleet or not. I therefore propose to name this unified force the Combined Fleet of the Restoration. Please refer to this designation in all communications and reports henceforth.”

  Jian paused to pick up a glass of water and sipped. Martinez was relieved to see this sign that Jian was human—she had delivered her briefing thus far in a deliberate monotone, with every syllable distinctly articulated, like a primary-school teacher carefully instructing her charges.

  Jian put down her glass and cleared her throat. “Experience has shown,” she said, “that the greatest chance for success will be achieved by adaptation of the Foote Formula.”

  Martinez couldn’t help but look at Lord Jeremy Foote, seated a little farther up the table. The Foote Formula was identical to the Martinez Method and Sula’s Ghost Tactics, but Foote had very little to do with it—when Martinez and Sula, far apart on different ships, had created the system, Foote had been the censor on Sula’s ship and had been able to read the correspondence. He’d subsequently promoted the system on his own, amid his higher-born friends—he’d claimed he was merely taking the Martinez and Sula names off a controversial proposal that would have got them in trouble, but Martinez felt free to assume a less noble motive.

  Annoyed, Martinez saw a familiar invisible set of fingers pull on Foote’s ears and draw his head nobly into prominence.

  “The Fourth Fleet had different designations for different formations,” Jian continued. “Squadrons, of course, and the new term division for formations made up of more than one squadron. I propose to leave these designations alone and create new Grand Divisions larger than any units heretofore.”

  Heretofore, Martinez thought. Henceforth. Wei Jian was certainly demonstrating her mastery of legalistic language. His son, Gareth the Younger, might well profit by her example.

  “There will be four Grand Divisions in total,” Jian continued, “designated van, main body, rear, and reserve. These Grand Divisions will not be uniform in size but will have the number of ships appropriate to their purpose.” She cleared her throat again. “Also bear in mind that, in action, the ships’ course may reverse so that the van may become the rear, and vice versa. Despite its altered role, the designation will not change.”

  Jian looked at Michi seated at her side. “The Grand Division of the Van will be commanded by Squadron Commander Chen,” she said. She looked down the table at Martinez. “The rear by Captain Martinez.”

  Martinez felt the invisible fingers pluck again at his ears.

  Jian looked at the squadron commander on her right. “Squadron Commander Farhang will command the main body.” Again she looked up over the heads of her audience. “I will command the reserve in person.” Her gaze dropped to the one figure at the table in the blue tunic of the Exploration Service.

  “Captain Severin will command a division in the main body, where in action he will attempt what I believe he has called the Patchwork-Quilt maneuvers. He will also attempt to teach this method to other commanders, though I understand that so far he is the only person who has successfully deployed these tactics in fleet exercises.”

  Severin’s narrow eyes widened. He looked stunned. In the last battle he had commanded a squadron, and now he would have more than one, and furthermore be expected to execute a difficult mission.

  “In combat,” Jian said, “the van and rear will accelerate or decelerate in order to attempt to draw the enemy van and rear out of formation. As the physique of Do-faq and the other Lai-own will not permit heavy accelerations, we may hope that an attenuated enemy force may be subject to swift and destructive attack. If the enemy fails to be drawn out of position, the van and rear will be in position to effectively surround the enemy and attack from multiple directions.

  “All commanders,” she added, “will also familiarize themselves with Lady Sula’s system for predicting where the Foote Formula will maneuver enemy ships. You will employ this system in action at every opportunity.”

  Her eyes turned to Martinez, and alarm shot through Martinez’s nerves. “Captain Martinez,” Jian said, “I would like you to modify our own formula somewhat. It has occurred to me that the enemy may have been thinking along lines similar to ours and may have worked out a system similar to Lady Sula’s for predicting the motions of our ships. If you can introduce another variable into our formula, it should prevent the enemy from any successful prediction.”

  A series of curses chased one another through Martinez’s skull. He should have thought of that himself.

  “Yes, Lady Fleetcom,” he said.

  Jian’s attention shifted to the officers in general.

  “You will all receive your units’ specific orders later today. Please establish contact with your immediate superiors and subordinates and begin to work together. We will begin exercises based on these new formations in a few days.”

  She paused, then gave a brief nod, as if to herself. “My lords and ladies,” she said, and gave a glance at Severin, “and gentleman,” she added. “That is all. You are dismissed.”

  Jian turned abruptly and marched toward a door leading to her private quarters. There was a rustle and the sound of chairs being pushed back as the assembled officers jumped to attention. One of Jian’s servants opened the door and the Commander of the Combined Fleet vanished from sight.

  Not the sort to call for questions, then, Martinez thought.

  The officers relaxed from their stiff braced posture and looked at one another. Severin still seemed stunned, Chandra’s anger smoldered behind her long brown eyes, and Foote affected nonchalance, his hand brushing at the cowlick on the right side of his head. Ranssu Kangas fingered the pale patch of transplanted skin on his cheek. Jian’s own officers seemed to take everything in stride: perhaps they’d had briefings like this before.

  The visiting officers began to file out of the room and make their way to the airlocks. Martinez found himself walking alongside Severin.

  “So what did you think of that?” Severin asked.

  “I’d be far more annoyed if she wasn’t adopting so many of my ideas,” Martinez said.

  He should, Martinez thought, be enjoying his triumph. He had set himself to create a system that would offer the best chance for a victory, a system backed by experience and data—a system that Wei Jian would be obliged to adopt whether she wished to or not. She had adopted the system wholesale, yet he felt no inclination to break out the champagne and celebrate.

  Because he hadn’t just created a system—he’d created an opportunity for Jian to adopt his ideas and then take credit for everything.

  “I think Lady Wei is focused on the win,” he said. “If it brings her a victory, she’s willing to use people she doesn’t know and possibly doesn’t even like.”

  “She and I are complete strangers,” Severin said. “And whether she likes me depends I suppose on how much she likes my puppetry. But suddenly I have a great deal of responsibility, and it’s more than a little intimidating.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Martinez predicted. “Your crazy quilt is going to be brilliant.”

  Severin blew out a breath. “I hope so.”

  Martinez had developed an idea of Wei Jian from the communications she’d sent to him and to Michi Chen, but now he realized that his notions were simplistic. There was more to her than was apparent from her fussy insistence on rank and subordination—he had hoped that she would prove a blank surface on which he could impose his ideas, but now it was apparent that Jian had ideas of her own.

  He didn’t know whether he liked that or not.

  Chapter 6

  Division Nine reappeared in the Colamote system as a much more impressive force than it had been during the last transit. The six Laredo ships were crewed and ready, as were the three captured cruisers and the three giant transports. Splendid and Mentor provided a cadre of veterans to support the newly crewed vessels.

  The six smaller transports were on their way to Laredo, carrying the noncombatants, the prisoners, and armed crouchbacks to guard them—mostly crouchbacks too old for the high accelerations of combat, but still young enough to keep the prisoners in line.

  One of the Laredo cruisers was now crewed exclusively by Naxid volunteers, and Naxids occupied key positions on another ship that was largely crewed by humans. If this produced resentment or friction, no report of it had so far reached Sula.

  Lord Nishkad remained in the owner’s suite on Pride of Parkhurst. Though he held no official position and was in no one’s chain of command, he nevertheless had considerable moral authority over the Naxids, and Sula consulted him regularly. Nishkad could have gone safely to Laredo with the other noncombatants, but he claimed he was curious about how the war would turn out and wanted to see the end in person.

  When Division Nine transited the Colamote system, no enemy force awaited them, and if any enemies were watching, they had no way to contact their government at Zanshaa. All the wormhole relay stations in the Colamote and Zarafan systems had now been occupied by Severin’s Exploration Service techs, along with those on the far side of each wormhole. All the relays between Laredo and Zarafan had also been occupied, and there were now uninterrupted communications from Laredo to Harzapid via Colamote or Zarafan, and also to Division Nine and what Sula understood was now called the Combined Fleet.

  The new relays allowed her to communicate with Ming Lin, the Restoration’s economics adviser, and with Lady Koridun, the young Torminel who had been appointed governor of Harzapid. Through them she learned how the economy and the civilian government of the Restoration were progressing, which was better than anyone had a right to expect. Harzapid and other worlds in the Restoration were experiencing something very close to a boom economy.

  She also received a brief text message from Lord Batur Khan-Niyaz, who commanded the dockyard on Terra. Your instructions have been faithfully carried out.

  Sula hoped that the death of Lord Peltrot Convil would be just one killing lost amid the war’s tens of thousands of deaths and would hardly be worthy of comment. Besides, the Restoration was under a form of martial law, and arbitrary actions were to be expected. No one was going to miss Peltrot Convil.

  And if her arbitrary action came back to bite her, she felt she would be able to justify it. Acted to prevent a violent criminal from causing further harm, or some other rationalization.

  Everything dies. Nothing matters. Not that this motto would constitute an appropriate legal defense . . .

  She’d worry about it if she needed to. Such reckonings were a long way off.

  Not so far off was her rendezvous with the rest of the Restoration fleet. In a little over a month, Division Nine would join Wei Jian’s command, and Sula would find her division placed in one of the Grand Divisions. Commanders for the four Grand Divisions had already been appointed, and so Sula would find herself bossed not just by Wei Jian, but by a Grand Division chief.

  Who, Sula hoped, would not be Martinez. That would put them in daily contact, the very thought of which was agony. Sula pictured the space between them littered with explosives mounting proximity fuses . . . There was no way they could avoid combustion, and the shrapnel would threaten to slice anyone nearby.

  Martinez was now regularly invading her dreams. For the last three nights her sleep had been interrupted by nightmares, and though she couldn’t remember all the details, she knew that each had ended with Martinez’s big hands closed around her throat. The derivoo she played every night hadn’t kept the nightmares away, and neither had alcohol, even when she drank to the point of passing out. Her suite’s new paint scheme—cheerful yellow and bright green—had failed to brighten her mood.

  Sula stared bleakly at the remains of her breakfast, then looked up as Gavin Macnamara entered. “More tea, my lady?” he asked.

  “Thank you, no.” Division Nine would soon take part in an exercise that would require Sula to spend several hours in her vac suit. She hated being confined to the suit, and having a full bladder would only make it worse.

  “Shall I clear?” Macnamara asked.

  “By all means.” As he cleared her breakfast away, Sula heard him softly humming a tune she recognized as a ballad titled “The Love That Never Dies.” Sula gathered that his relationship with Rigger First Class Japutra Bliss continued along its rhapsodic track.

  “The Love That Never Dies” was a saccharine, sappy ballad, one that had never failed to annoy Sula when she heard it, but now she found herself wishing that she might find herself humming such a love ballad in accompaniment to her own joy, surely preferable to waking with a shriek while derivoo wailed and sobbed in the air and a nightmare slowly faded from her perception.

  But no. Her life was not a sappy ballad, it was a derivoo song, brittle, sharp, and dangerous.

  So many around her had died that she couldn’t believe that love wouldn’t die too. In fact, she hoped that it would, and put her out of her misery.

  Martinez stretched out on his bed, sighing as his bruised muscles sank into the soft mattress. The Combined Fleet had just concluded an exercise that involved firing real missiles and jinking through space at heavy accelerations, and after that a spell on a proper bed was the height of luxury.

  His Grand Division of the Rear had done very well, better than the main body under Farhang. His command included Chandra Prasad’s division and that of Ranssu Kangas and was made up of combat veterans who outperformed Wei Jian’s crews, who—despite serving and training together for years—had never developed the confidence, dash, and elan that could be earned only by victory in combat.

  Martinez rubbed a hand over the bristle on his chin and gazed at the newly painted walls and ceiling. The redecoration of his suite had concluded with the bedroom, in which the walls were spread with verdant and ruddy pigments meant to evoke the colors of Laredo. The chief ornaments of the room, however, were portraits of his family: his daughter, Yaling, known in the family as Mei-mei; Gareth the Younger; Terza; and his parents, Lord and Lady Martinez, seated with Mei-mei and her aunt Walpurga, who had been looking after her since the war had started.

  Now that lines of communication with Laredo had been established, Martinez was receiving regular bulletins from Mei-mei and found himself perpetually astonished. They had been apart for close to a year and a half, and during that time Mei-mei had grown into a near-stranger. She was seven now and had developed from a potbellied near-infant into a genuine, curious person, with her own temperament and interests. She had developed a fascination with natural history and spent much of her time on the Martinez country estate of Rio Hondo, pursuing fauna and collecting plants. She showed him some of her cuttings, the leaves and berries and seed pods, and very seriously explained what the plants were called, and the sort of terrain they liked to live in, and what the parts of the plant were for.

  Martinez watched his daughter in some amazement. She had developed this affinity for natural history on her own, had absorbed an astounding amount of information in a short time, and was able to relate it in a coherent way.

  Gareth the Younger was not the only genius among the younger generation, he concluded.

  When he was involved with Sula, he’d taken Terza’s portrait down. Now it was back in its place, and Martinez had resolved that it would remain there.

  Yet the thought of Sula, once she crept into his mind, refused to slip away. He experienced again that bewildering, horrific moment in the Celestial Court, the white flowers tumbling from his hand at the sight of Sula with Hector Braga dead at her feet. She hadn’t offered an explanation, and Martinez hadn’t asked for one.

  Yet now he wondered why Braga was dead. There must have been a reason, even if Sula was too arrogant to disclose it.

  He knew that Sula and Braga had known each other for a long time, having met on Spannan shortly after Sula’s parents had been tortured to death for crimes against the Praxis. Spannan was famously an ill-managed world, with the Torminel Lady Distchin its patron. It had been generations since any head of the Distchin clan had visited Spannan, and they managed their interests through relations and lackeys tasked with squeezing as much money out of the place as possible, all to support the opulent lives of Lady Distchin and her immediate circle.

  Everyone agreed that the situation with Spannan and the Distchins was a disgrace, but nothing had ever been done about it, nor about any of the other worlds being plundered by their patrons. Martinez had concluded that the High City Peers quietly agreed among themselves that while it was a shame about Spannan, a sufficiently high-ranking patron had the implicit right to ransack her own worlds if she wanted to.

  The upper-upper-uppers, as Severin might call them, were a law unto themselves. At least right up to the point where they weren’t, at which point the executioners started sharpening their skinning knives.

  While Martinez knew that Braga and Sula had known each other on Spannan, he didn’t know the nature of their relationship. Perhaps they had been lovers, perhaps something else. They were sufficiently intimate to refer to each other by nicknames, Lamey for Braga and Earthgirl for Sula.

  Sula would have been quite young at the time—maybe seventeen in Shaa measure, or fifteen in the Earth years that Sula liked to employ. Martinez hoped that Sula’s youth meant they hadn’t been lovers, because if he actually thought Braga had taken advantage of a grieving, confused young girl, he might just decide that Braga deserved the two bullets that ended his life.

  Martinez’s eyes drifted to the portrait of Terza on the wall, then drifted away again.

  He realized that he had been assuming that Braga’s death had something to do with his past on Spannan, and he really knew nothing of the sort. Braga had shown up on Zanshaa as part of a delegation lobbying to get rid of the Distchins, and he had quickly attached himself to Roland Martinez as a kind of fixer and bagman, someone who handled the unsavory errands that were beneath Roland’s dignity as a member of the Convocation.