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  “It’s a considered risk,” Abram said. “Her Royal Highness needs some time to herself. This is New Alliance territory, protected by warships,” while the Lancastrian Princess smugly showed Ean the forty-millimeter laser cannon, the Pandora field diffuser, the expensive shielding on the shuttle, and three lockers primed to open at Michelle’s touch. One locker contained a blaster, one a Taser, and the third a knife. Ship thought Michelle was safe even if Vega didn’t.

  “We are at war,” Vega pointed out. “She would be a valuable hit. The mothership deployed twice to incidents as I came in.”

  There were always ships trying to get closer to the alien fleet. Most of them were journalists and thrill-seekers, who thought a military no-go zone didn’t apply to them although there had been three actual enemy attacks. None of them had gotten closer than the outer perimeter.

  Those ships were small problems in the scheme of things. Manageable.

  No one talked about the bigger worry. That a ship would jump right into the middle of the fleet and destroy it. Jumping one ship into another ship’s space caused an explosion that could destroy a world. Admiral Katida of Balian had told Ean that half their resources right now were occupied with calculations that randomly moved the ships in the fleet, to make it harder for the enemy to work out where a ship would be at any given moment in time, theoretically making it harder to jump into one of them.

  Ean had heard her lines, vibrating with a worry she didn’t articulate. That same worry was a constant hum from the Lancastrian Princess and the Wendell.

  “It’s a considered risk,” Abram said again of Michelle’s shuttle.

  After the shuttle had cleared, Vega got a guided tour of the Lancastrian Princess. There were places Ean hadn’t seen before. Vega looked at him once or twice, as if wondering what a linesman was doing tagging along. Ean wondered, too. He wasn’t senior staff on the Lancastrian Princess.

  The ship lines were subdued.

  That made him remember that Helmo had used the lines to call him over earlier. While Abram was describing the refresher training each crew member undertook every six months, Ean moved up beside Helmo. “How did you know I would hear you earlier?”

  “I didn’t,” Helmo said. “I hoped you would. Ship response is changing the longer you remain on board.”

  He made it sound like Ean was subverting the Lancastrian Princess.

  Helmo smiled. “I foresee some interesting things we may be able to do with the lines in the future.”

  The Lancastrian Princess was only the second ship Ean had ever spent time on other than when he was mending the lines. The first was the one he’d traveled on to Ashery to begin line training, and he’d only been on that ship a day. He’d done line repairs that had taken longer. If Ean was subverting any ship, this was the one he was doing it on.

  “Not subverting,” the lines said into Ean’s head. “Fixing.”

  Sometimes Ean and the lines didn’t understand each other. The ship had taken his thoughts and changed “subverting” to mean a broken line. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

  “And Captain Helmo doesn’t mind?” The first time Ean had fixed a line, Helmo had told him to stay away from the ship lines.

  “Ship is content.”

  Ean hadn’t yet found a way to differentiate when the lines talked about the ship or when they talked about its captain. When he was on other ships, talking about Helmo, he used the same song that he did to talk about the Lancastrian Princess.

  Vega turned, with a frown, at Ean’s singing.

  “Lambert singing is normal, Commodore.” Lin’s voice was caustic. “It’s how he communicates.”

  Ean hadn’t meant to start singing.

  They arrived on level five. “One of Her Royal Highness’s offices,” Abram said, of the workroom he and Michelle had shared. “This is where she does most of her work.”

  Ean looked around the workroom with fresh eyes. He’d spent a lot of time here, and Abram and Michelle practically lived here when they were on ship. Large screens on the wall, two workstations at one end. Three couches at the other. Ean’s couch—or the one he used—was actually the interview couch, where Michelle did all her interviews. It was unsettling to think that Vega would come here to work.

  They moved on. “Her Highness’s other office.” This was more formal, with a desk and chairs locked into the floor, and an outer office with screens on the wall and a workstation built into the desktop. Ean had never seen it before.

  “When I’m on ship, this is where you will find me,” Lin said.

  Ean had never seen Lin in Abram and Michelle’s workroom.

  They moved on to the sleeping quarters. Lin’s apartment was at the far end, close to the office he worked in. Michelle’s at the other side of the floor.

  “Her Royal Highness’s suite.”

  Did Abram find it as strange as Ean did to keep referring to Michelle as Her Royal Highness? Abram normally called her Michelle and, on occasion, Misha.

  Ean’s rooms were down from Michelle’s. “Linesman Lambert’s quarters.”

  Vega gave Ean a sharp look. “Are they sleeping together?”

  “No,” Abram said.

  “So why is he—?”

  “He is here,” Ean said. If Vega wanted to ask questions like that, why didn’t she direct them to him?

  “Linesman Lambert is a member of Michelle’s personal staff,” Abram said. “This is the logical floor to house him on.”

  “Crown Princess Michelle has a personal staff of twenty on ship.” Did Ean imagine the emphasis on the title? “No one else sleeps on this floor. They have their own quarters.”

  Something in her tone made Ean determined to dig in. “Lin does.” Not that he’d known that until today.

  “Lin is the Crown Princess’s personal assistant. He needs to be close.”

  “Lambert is our top-level linesman,” Abram said.

  Vega didn’t say anything else, but Ean knew his days on level five were numbered. Lin looked happy, at least. Abram looked . . . like Abram normally looked, which was inscrutable, except his eyes creased slightly at the corners. That normally indicated a smile, not a frown. “I will leave you to sort that out with Her Royal Highness.”

  Abram’s cabin—now Vega’s—was on level four. Ean hadn’t known that. Or that Abram had a two-room office on that level, too, down from Helmo’s. The crates the crew had unloaded from the shuttle were stacked on the floor.

  The tour went on. There were cargo holds and weapons bays on every level. Ean knew the ship had weapons—after all, he’d been there when they’d been fired—but so many.

  “We could fight a war with this ship alone,” he said, to no one in particular.

  “With you on board or off?” Helmo asked.

  Michelle had always referred to Ean as a weapon. Katida did, too. Maybe Helmo was picking that up from the ship.

  “On.” For after all, wasn’t he part of the crew, and he would be more so when Vega moved him up to crew quarters on levels eight and nine.

  “Well then, of course we could.”

  This time it was Helmo who got the look.

  He was as straight-faced as Abram, but Helmo was easy to read through line one, which held a touch of amusement right now.

  When Ean had first come on ship, he’d never have believed Helmo had a sense of humor, and he definitely wouldn’t have shown it in Ean’s presence. They were long past the “Don’t touch my ship,” of those early days.

  The VIPs were housed on levels six and seven. “We have forty guests at present,” Abram said. “At its busiest, we had 186.” The guests had come to observe the Eleven. “Many of them moved over to Confluence Station when it became available, but space is at a premium there.”

  It was rumored Governor Jade, of Aratoga, had ordered a new station and that those who stayed were hoping for space on that when it arrived. It was a good time to be in favor with Aratoga.

  “Thirty of those remaining are military.” Vega had done her homework. “Each world has to provide one warship for the New Alliance. Some of those ships are already here. Why haven’t the guests moved out to their own warships?”

  She could only be talking about Admiral Katida, of Balian, whose warship had arrived even before the New Alliance had been ratified. Ean might warn Katida that her time on the Lancastrian Princess was limited.

  Abram smiled faintly. “Admiral Katida likes to be where the action is,” so he hadn’t missed the reference either. “I’d be worried if she did want to move off ship. It would mean we’re in trouble.”

  The grand tour finished in one of the smaller meeting rooms. “Captain Helmo can answer most of your questions,” Abram said. “Of course, you are welcome to call me at any time. I will be on Confluence Station until we determine the New Alliance headquarters, then on whatever world that is.”

  “Are they close to deciding on a world?” Vega asked now. “The escalation of the war makes us vulnerable on the edges of space like this, with no planets close by.”

  “We’re making progress,” Abram said.

  The council was moving about as fast as a generation ship seeking new worlds. Based on the parliamentary sittings Ean had attended, Abram would be ready to retire before they decided. There was only one thing sixty-nine of the worlds agreed on. Headquarters couldn’t be on Lancia. Lancia had too much power already.

  “It’s unfair really,” Ean had said to Katida over a breakfast earlier in the week. “Michelle and Abram have done so much of the work getting the New Alliance together. People should at least acknowledge that.” Not that he, personally, w
anted headquarters on Lancia. Lancastrian himself, he’d sworn when he left Lancia he was never going to return. He still had no plans to do so. But Michelle and Abram had been instrumental in the creation of the new political entity.

  “Lancia scares people,” Katida said. “And Emperor Yu and Lancia without Lady Lyan as the intermediary is a scary thing.”

  Katida was Balian. Sometimes she came across as pro-Lancian, sometimes she warned him against them.

  “The luckiest thing Emperor Yu ever did for Lancia was place Abram Galenos in charge of Lady Lyan’s safety,” Katida said. “Galenos has been a tempering influence and can take more credit for Michelle’s being the way she is than Yu ever could.”

  “Like a father figure?” Ean had asked. Michelle and Abram were friends. He didn’t act like a father. Surely, he’d be more protective if he was. Then, who was Ean to say how a father should or shouldn’t act. His own father had beaten him. They’d never be friends, not like Michelle and Abram were.

  “Ean, no one would dare suggest that Crown Princess Michelle had any parent except Yu. I’d never mention that aloud again if I were you.”

  “What about her mother?” He tried to remember what he knew about Michelle’s mother. Not much. The media on Lancia had been full of tales of Emperor Yu and Michelle’s grandmother, Empress Jai. No one had ever talked about Yu’s wife. “Is she still alive?”

  She’d had six children, one of whom was dead. He remembered that from when he was a child. The oldest boy, who’d had a penchant for racing Girraween Storm lizards, had broken his neck. Yu had executed everyone in the stable for allowing him to race in the first place.

  “Empress Ning is alive,” Katida had said. “She lives in the hills behind Baoshan,” the capital of Lancia. “With a staff of a thousand servants, or so the rumor goes. Personally, I think it’s more like a hundred. She’s never seen in public.”

  Ean forced his thoughts back to the present, to the deck where Abram and Vega were still discussing the new headquarters.

  Abram looked at him and raised a brow slightly, almost as if he could tell what Ean was thinking. “No progress on a permanent home,” he said. “But we have made progress elsewhere. The line committee has agreed to allow a small group of linesmen to begin training with you, Ean. You are to start tomorrow.”

  At last.

  “Her Royal Highness has made a team available to work with Linesman Lambert,” Abram told Vega. “Bhaksir’s team will accompany you, Ean. I’m sure you have things to prepare.”

  Which was a dismissal. Ean bowed and left.

  * * *

  VEGA waited until Ean was out of earshot to ask, but Ean heard her through the lines anyway. “Do you mean he will be escorted by royal guards from this ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “He is a linesman working with the alien ships. Surely your department would supply an escort if he needs one.”

  “Linesman Lambert goes nowhere without a bodyguard,” Helmo said, while Abram added, “Lambert is a member of the Crown Princess’s personal staff and is accorded the same privileges and protection as her other staff.”

  Was that why Ean had to tag along on the tour? So Vega knew he was part of Michelle’s staff? Because Ean couldn’t see a single other reason for Abram’s inviting him. His contract was with Michelle, not with Lancia, and even Ean understood his contract would never be handed over to the Lancastrian military, let alone the New Alliance.

  Owning Ean’s contract gave Michelle a powerful lever in negotiations with other worlds. They needed linesmen—Ean especially—to communicate with the lines on the alien ships. If Michelle had had more time that first day, when she had come to House of Rigel to avenge her dead linesman, she would have signed Ean up on a generic Imperial contract rather than a personal Imperial contract, and all those people who trusted him now because he did work for Michelle would have mistrusted him because he’d be working for Yu instead.

  * * *

  ON the days when they were both on ship, Ean had a personal training session with Fergus Burns after Gospetto’s lesson. He found Fergus in the VIP lounge, the large public area that doubled as a function center and meeting room for the politicians and high-level military who currently resided on the Lancastrian Princess. He and Katida were watching the news.

  Lancia owned Fergus’s contract. Officially, he worked out of Abram Galenos’s office. In reality, he worked with Ean and was stationed on the Lancastrian Princess. He had a cabin in the VIP area. No doubt Commodore Vega would have something to say about that as well.

  They’d been working for months on the line-training plan.

  “I take it the grand tour is over,” Katida said.

  “Grand tour?” Should she even know about it?

  “Big shoes to fill, Ean. She’ll be trying hard.”

  She probably had been trying hard; it wasn’t Ean’s place to say if she was or wasn’t. He looked at the screens on the wall, so he didn’t have to answer. Today, the sound was turned up on the Galactic News feed. Reporter Coral Zabi had the Confluence fleet on-screen behind her.

  “As the war between Gate Union and the New Alliance drags on,” Zabi said, “the New Alliance refuses to use the one weapon at its disposal that would give it the edge in this war. The alien ships.”

  “How can they say that?” The ships didn’t have crew; many of them needed repair. Zabi knew that. She’d had her own guided tour of some of the ships.

  Katida glanced at the screen. “No news,” she said. “So they’re making their own.”

  “They’re supposed to be our official reporters.” Blue Sky Media and Galactic News had signed contracts ensuring their ships could stay with the New Alliance as official media.

  “That doesn’t mean they’re pro–New Alliance,” Katida said. “And Zabi wants out. I suspect she’s hoping that if she favors Gate Union, we’ll kick her out eventually.”

  That wasn’t going to happen, for the two media ships were accidental additions to the Eleven’s fleet. Not that either media group knew that.

  “More likely,” Katida said, “their lawyers will finally realize the contract is worded so only the ship has to stay, not the reporter. They’re taking their time about it. Sometimes I feel like giving them a helpful push.”

  The fact she hadn’t done so meant that Zabi wasn’t a problem yet. People like Katida—and Abram and Michelle—didn’t let problems sit. They dealt with them.

  Ean looked away from the screen. It was time for some good news. “We start training tomorrow,” he told Fergus.

  Katida would already know, for she was on the committee that had chosen the trainees. Ean had overheard most of the debate around who would participate, for the debate had been held on the Lancastrian Princess. Twenty linesmen had been chosen; a careful maneuvering of alliances and favors owed. Ean would have preferred people who wanted to train.

  “Finally,” Fergus said.

  The linesmen came under stringent conditions. They had to be part of, and known to be loyal to, the military of their world. They had to sign and abide by a strict secrecy agreement. They also had to be open to new ideas and be willing to work outside accepted line practices.

  He’d already begun teaching the linesmen on the Lancastrian Princess, along with Jordan Rossi and single-line Fergus. That was going well, even with Rossi, who claimed that his lines were, “Just fine, thank you,” but hadn’t missed a day’s training yet.

  Starting tomorrow, Ean would be teaching strangers.

  “Speaking of training,” Fergus said. “We have a lesson.” He stood up and nodded to Katida. “Admiral.”

  Katida nodded at him and smiled at Ean as he turned to follow. “You’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve a nice, strong linesman for you. You’ll like her.”

  “Thank you.” He could feel all eight of her lines reassuring him. As he followed Fergus out, he wondered how deliberate that had been. Normally, he picked up her lines when she was worried or anxious, but this—it felt deliberate. Maybe Helmo wasn’t the only one learning to use lines differently.

  * * *

  SINCE Fergus had never worked as a linesman, he’d learned, but never used, the push method of working with the lines. Ean didn’t have to teach him to unlearn old ways. All he had to do was teach him how to listen to lines and how to sing them true when they were off tone.