Sporting Chance

Chapter One

“Of course there is a minor problem,” Lady Cecelia said, as she turned to allow her maid to take her stole. A brisk wind tossed cold rain at the windows; it hissed and rattled alternately.

“Yes?” Heris Serrano eyed her employer with some suspicion. The words “minor problem” had become an all too frequent catch-phrase between them. She resented the niggling delays that prevented their departure; they should have been in space already, two days out on the voyage back to Rockhouse Major. She had begun to long for the ship, and space. Besides, the sooner they got to Rockhouse, the sooner that young troublemaker, the prince, would be off her hands, someone else’s responsibility.

“It’s our numbers again.” Lady Cecelia waved her maid away, and settled herself into a comfortable chair drawn up before a fireplace. A small fire of real wood crackled on the hearth behind an ornate fire screen. Heris settled in the chair opposite and raised her brows. “I thought we’d be fine,” Lady Cecelia went on, “since Bunny’s children wouldn’t be coming, nor Buttons’s fiancée. George is still in the hospital, mostly for legal reasons, and I thought I could leave Raffaele and Ronnie here for the rest of the season, under the circumstances.” Heris said nothing; her mind busily subtracted the volume and resources needed for those six young people and their servants, and the crew and staff she knew were quitting, and added the same for new crew and the one passenger she knew of. “But that won’t work,” Lady Cecelia said. She ran one long hand through her short hair, and left it standing up in peaks.

“Why not?” asked Heris, since it seemed called for.

“Reasons of State, so I was told. I nearly cancelled my invitation, but that might be embarrassing too, so . . . the Crown Minister insists that if I have the young—er—Mr. Smith aboard, I must have an adequate bodyguard, a cabinet-level minister, and of course the servants. And . . . Ronnie.”

“Ronnie! Why?” Someone had made a serious mistake. She wondered how that had happened. The whole point of bringing Cecelia’s nephew Ronnie here in the first place had been to keep him away from the prince.

“I’m not sure, but it was one of the points made, very firmly. When I added the numbers, it came to fifty-six. That’s over our limit, right?”

“Yes—but how many ‘bodyguards’ are we supposed to have, and who are they?”

“They want to send Royal Security—”

“Blast.” Heris suppressed the expletives she’d have liked to use.

“—And they want us to wait until they get here. On the ship, with the prince.” That went without saying, since he could not be trusted to stay out of trouble anywhere else.

“And you planned to go where?”

“Well . . . we have to go back to Rockhouse, to take him home, but after that I’d planned on Zenebra. The Wherrin Horse Trials—”

By now Heris knew enough to recognize that name. Of course her horse-crazy employer would want to be there; she had won Wherrin more times than anyone else. “Umm. And waiting for the Royal Security bodyguard would make us late for that, I’ll bet. Silly. We’ve got former Regular Space Service combat troops, and suitable arms now: we can take care of him.”

“Are you sure?”

“With Petris and Oblo? We could keep him safe in a small war.”

Cecelia shivered. “Don’t say that. It’s like saying your horse can’t possibly miss a fence.”

“Still. We’d be safer to leave now. I haven’t forgotten that smugglers were using your ship. Somewhere there’s a very unhappy criminal waiting for delivery of whatever was in the scrubber. And I’d expect the smugglers to come looking for us, eventually. It’s not as if we’d be hard to find; everyone knew where you were going from Takomin Roads, and we’ve filed the trip to Rockhouse in Bunny’s computer—and with the Crown Minister.”

“Good point. I’ll mention that to the Crown Minister, and of course he already has the names of your crew. I assume that until the courts-martial, they were all considered loyal servants of the Crown?”

“As far as I know. If they weren’t, they could have lost us some battles.”

“Fine, then. You set up our departure as you wish; I’ll deal with the political end later.”

Heris looked after her employer and shook her head. She had not expected Cecelia—who had seemed to have a one-track mind firmly aimed at horses—to be so effective politically. Of course, she came from a political family, but every family had its black sheep. Heris shivered suddenly. She was, in her own way, the black sheep of her family. Two black sheep don’t make a white, she thought, and shivered again.

In the flurry of preparation, it was hard to remember the last few days with Petris. He was now aboard, supervising the resupply, and (at Heris’s suggestion) tucking away the new weaponry before Cecelia decided they didn’t need it.

“Nothing for the ship, I notice,” he’d said to her over a secure comlink.

“No. Not stocked locally. I know; I’ve already talked to Lady Cecelia about it.”

“Um. Crew rotations?”

“Well . . . you’ll all be on your secondary specialties. We’ll have to reorganize quite a bit. Civilian regulations divide the responsibilities a bit differently. There’s a manual on it—”

“I found that one,” Petris said. She wished she could see him face-to-face, but she needed to be downside just a few hours longer. “But I haven’t had the returning crew list from Hospitality Bay yet. Sirkin’s the only one staying from the shift up here. You were right, by the way; she’s a nice girl and very competent.”

“Glad you agree,” said Heris. “About that crew list—it was supposed to have been there yesterday. I wonder what’s going on? I’ll find out.”

When she tried calling the crew hostel at Hospitality Bay, none of her crew answered. That seemed odd; she had sent word several days before that they would be leaving Sirialis shortly. Someone should have been there, ready to take any messages from her. She wished she could dump the whole lot of them and replace them with qualified people. She left an urgent message, and asked the hostel clerk when they were expected back.

“Sometime tonight, I ’spect, ma’am,” the clerk said. “They rented a cat and took it out to Shell Island.”

“Without a comunit aboard?” Heris asked.

“Well, there is one, but the charge to relay is pretty high. That Mr. Gavin said you might call, and to say they’d be back tonight.” Heris grimaced, but it wouldn’t help to yell at the hostel clerk.

“Tell Mr. Gavin to call here at once when he gets in, whatever the hour,” she said. Should she threaten? No. Wait and see what was really going on, she reminded herself.

Gavin’s call, relayed to her in the drawing room the green hunt favored, revealed a plot as spiritless as he himself. On the tiny screen of the drawing-room communications niche, he looked sunburnt and nervous.

“I’m not coming back, Captain,” he said. “You’ll have to find another chief engineer.” It sounded almost smug, but she ignored that. She didn’t need him.

“And the others?” she asked.

“They don’t want to . . . they’re not coming either. Not without Lady Cecelia changing . . . I mean, they’re not coming.” Now his expression was defiant. Heris took a long breath, conscious of the need to control her expression in a roomful of curious and intelligent observers. They couldn’t hear what was said, but they could certainly see her reactions.

“Would you care to explain, Mr. Gavin?” she asked. The edge of steel in her voice cut through his flabby resistance.

“Well, it’s just . . . we . . . they . . . we don’t want you for our captain.” That last phrase came out all in a rush. “We’re not coming back. You don’t have a crew. We want to talk to Lady Cecelia. She has to find someone else, or we won’t come back to her.” When Heris said nothing, momentarily silenced by fury, he blundered on. “It’s—you’re not fair, that’s what it is. You got poor Iklind killed, and you’re so rigid and all you do is criticize and you don’t—you don’t respect us.” It was so outrageous, so ridiculous, that Heris found herself fighting back a sudden incongruous laugh as well as a tirade. The unborn laugh moderated her tone.

“I see you don’t know the situation,” she said without even a hint of anger. That seemed to make Gavin even more nervous.

“I don’t—It doesn’t matter,” he said, almost stammering. “It doesn’t matter what happened—what you say; we’re not coming back as long as you’re the captain.”

“I see,” Heris said. “Perhaps I’d better let you speak to Lady Cecelia.” She waved her employer over, and stepped away from the comunit, out of its pickup range, for a moment. In brief phrases, she explained Gavin’s message, and watched almost amused as Lady Cecelia went white with fury and then red.

“Damn them!”

“No . . . think a moment. They’re incompetent, lazy, and we wanted to get rid of them anyway. Now they’re also in legal jeopardy—and you have the reins. They don’t know what’s happened over here—none of it. They don’t know you have a crew already. Have fun, milady!” Heris grinned, and after a last glower, Lady Cecelia grinned, too. She beckoned Heris to join her at the comunit niche.

Gavin’s self-pitying whine had scarcely begun when Lady Cecelia cut him off with a terse and almost certainly inaccurate description of his ancestry, his progeny, his intellect, and his probable destination. Heris decided that foxhunting offered unique opportunities for invective, and found her own anger draining away as Cecelia continued her tirade.

“And I shall certainly file suits for breach of contract,” she wound down, “and I daresay Lord Thornbuckle will be investigating you to see if you’re involved in this other affair.”

“But Lady Cecelia,” whined Gavin. “What other affair? And why—I mean, we’ve served you—” She cut him off, and turned to face Heris, breathing heavily.

“How was that?”

“Fine. And since we know you had one smuggler in the group, I would carry through on that threat to have them investigated.”

“I certainly will,” Cecelia said. She stalked off, her tall angularity expressing indignation with every twitch of her formal skirt. Heris excused herself early and went upstairs to contact Petris again.

“So we’re going out short-crewed,” Heris said. She was not unhappy about it. “By civilian standards, that is. And over-crewed on the house-staff side, considering Lady Cecelia’s guests this round.” The prince had his own set of servants, and Cecelia insisted on adding another cook.

“Looks adequate to me, Captain,” Petris said. He had worked up a crew rotation. “We could use two or three more, but—”

“But you’re right, this is adequate. If we don’t run into trouble, and if everyone works at Fleet efficiency. Which I expect you will. Something to consider is that we can hire replacements to fill out the list at Rockhouse Major. And we might think of hiring ex-Fleet personnel, while we’re about it.”

“Are you looking for trouble, Captain?” Petris’s dark eyes twinkled.

“No. But I expect it anyway.” A tap at her door interrupted. “Oh—that’ll be Bunny’s daughter Bubbles, I expect.” She had forgotten, thanks to Gavin, that she’d agreed to talk to Bubbles after she went up to her room. “She’s insisted on talking to me.” Petris grinned at her expression.

“What—do you think she wants to come along?”

“Yes, and I can’t let her. And I don’t like the role she’s casting me in.”

“You’ll do her no harm,” Petris said.

“That’s what her father told me,” Heris said, shaking her head. “I’ll get back to you shortly.” She closed the uplink, and turned to the door of her suite. The blonde girl she’d first seen passed out drunk on a couch in the yacht had changed beyond recognition, and although being in mortal danger changed most people, this was exceptional.

“Captain Serrano,” the young woman said. She stood stiffly, as if in a parody of military formality.

“Yes—do come in. We had a small crisis aboard, and I was just dealing with it.”

“I—if this is a bad time—” She had flushed, which made her look younger.

“Not at all. Between crises is an excellent time.” Heris led the way to a pair of overstuffed chairs beneath the long windows, and gestured as she sat in one of them. “Have a seat.”

The girl sat bolt upright, not her usual posture, and looked like a young officer at a first formal dinner. Heris wondered again what this was about. Her father had refused to give any hints; Heris’s own experience was that when young people preferred to talk to a relative stranger, the topic was usually embarrassing—at least for the youngster. But she didn’t know what, in the current state of the aristocracy, would be likely to provoke embarrassment. What “rules” could such a girl have broken—or be planning to break—when most of society’s rules didn’t affect her at all?

“I want to change my name,” the girl said, all in a rush, as if it were a great confession. Heris blinked. She would never have allowed herself to be called Bubbles in the first place, and she could understand why the girl would want to change . . . but not why anyone would object. Was this the big problem? Surely there was more.

“Bubbles doesn’t really fit you,” she said cautiously.

“No, not now.” The girl waved that off as if it were trivial—which is what Heris thought it. “My full name’s Brunnhilde Charlotte, and Raffa and I thought Brun would be a good version. But that’s not the whole problem.”

“Oh?”

“No—my parents are willing to give up Bubbles, though Mother would prefer some other variation, but it’s the other part . . .”

The other part meaning what, Heris wondered. She sat and waited; youngsters usually told you more if you did.

“It’s . . . the family name.” Aha. That would cause a row, she could see. “I haven’t told them yet, but I know they won’t like it.” They would more than “not like it” if she wanted to give up her family name; they would, Heris suspected, be furious and hurt. The girl—Brun, she tried to think of her now—went on. “It’s just that I’ve always been Bubbles, Bunny’s daughter—Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter—and not myself. I feel—different now. When we were in the cave—” Ah, thought Heris. The rapid personal maturation by danger has left behind the social immaturity. “—I realized I didn’t feel like who I was. I mean, I felt different, and it didn’t match.” She took a deep breath and rushed through the rest. “I want to change my name and go into the Regular Space Service and learn how to really do things and find out who I am.”

Heris blinked again, remembering her own impulse (quickly squashed) to change her name and apply to the Academy not as a Serrano but purely on her own merits. She had even made up a name and practiced the signature. The silly romanticism of youth—or, if you looked at it another way, the integrity and courage.

“And you thought I could help you?” she said, keeping her reactions to herself.

“Yes. You know how things work—and you could take me to someplace I could enlist.”

Now the problem was how to say no without shutting the girl off completely.

“How old are you?” Heris asked. “And what kind of background would you offer the Fleet?” She already suspected the answers. Brun was too old to enlist with the skills she could reasonably claim—having been taught marksmanship by your father didn’t count, even if he was a renowned hunter—and lacking any education the Fleet would recognize. At least, under an assumed name. “Which will get you in trouble anyway,” Heris explained. “After all, plenty of people the Fleet doesn’t want would like to get in. Falsifying one’s identity is fairly common—and nearly always detected, and when detected is always justification for rejection.”

“But I thought if I explained that I just don’t want to use my father’s privilege—”

“To whom would you explain? A recruiting officer? That would get you sent for psychiatric and legal evaluation—are you impersonating a member of your father’s family? And if not, what’s wrong with you that you don’t enjoy your privilege? No—” She held up her hand. “I see your point, and I admire you for wanting to make your own way, but you cannot sneak into the Fleet that way. Not with our methods of certifying identity. You’d do better, if you’re intent on a dangerous military career, to travel as a tourist outside the Familias Regnant and take service with some planetary ruler. Don’t try to be fancy—just say you’re running away from family problems. Someplace like Aethar’s World or the Compassionate Hand would probably hire you.”

“But Aethar’s World is all . . . those hulks, isn’t it?”

“Soldiers can’t afford prejudice,” Heris said with an internal grin. She’d thought that would get a reaction. “Aethar’s World always needs soldiers. Admittedly, that’s because the Fatherland uses them up in bloody and unnecessary battles, but they do give you a glorious funeral, I hear. And yes, they’re all big-boned and fair-haired—one reason they might hire you—and they have anachronistic ideas about warrior women—another reason they might hire you. But they do pay on time, if you survive.”

“And the . . . the Compassionate Hand?” asked Brun, her brow furrowed.

“Not an accurate name, but you don’t want to call them the Black Scratch unless you’ve got a battle group behind you. A large battle group. You may not have heard of them; the Familias discourages trade that way. We have a border incident every few years, though. They would like to control Karyas and the nearby jump points.”

“Black Scratch . . . Compassionate Hand?”

“Well, you know about protection rackets, don’t you?” Brun nodded, but still looked puzzled. “The motto of the families that settled Corus IV—a was ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’ They referred to this as being a compassionate hand—a helping hand. But the first colony they raided, on Corus V, called it the ‘black scratch.’ They now control the Corus system, with heavy influence in two nearby systems, and their official designation is ‘The Benignity of the Compassionate Hand.’ They hire offworlders for mercenary actions, often against underground groups who still call them the Black Scratch.”

“But they’re—illegal,” said Brun.

“Not by their laws, and they’re not part of our legal system. From what I read of Old Earth history, their ancestors ran the same kinds of rackets there and no one ever converted them to what we call law and order. Actually, if you’re on an official visit, it looks like a model government. I’ve known a few people who had served in their military—said it wasn’t bad, if you followed the rules exactly, but they have no tolerance for dissent.”

“You’re saying I can’t really do what I was talking about,” Brun said. “If my choices run to the barbarians of Aethar’s World or the Compassionate Hand—”

“There are others. But I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for. A military career? If so, leading to what? Coming back to your family someday, or retiring on your own independent savings? How much adventure—otherwise known as danger—do you really want? Do you have something against your family which would prevent your adventuring within its canopy?”

“Mmm.” Brun looked thoughtful; Heris was glad to see that she could calm down and think. “I suppose—I want change. Change from what I was, and from what people think of me.” She looked up at Heris, who said nothing. Let the girl work it out for herself; then she’d believe it. “Lady Cecelia crossed her family—but—she did use her own money—”

“Makes it easier,” said Heris. “And there’s no reason to do things the hard way if you don’t have to.”

“I don’t know what, really,” Brun said. “I guess I just want to serve notice to my family—to others—that I’m not the bubblehead they think—that I’m not the designated blonde sure to marry someone like the odious George.” She grinned then. “And you’re saying there are easier ways to do that than get myself killed by barbarians with blond braids or a knife in the ribs from the . . . er . . . Compassionate Hand.”

“I didn’t say it,” Heris said. “You did. I’d think you’d had enough adventure for a while . . . although . . . if you liked that, there’s training that would help you survive other . . . adventures.”

Brun’s face lit. “That’s what I’d like—what bothered me most wasn’t the danger, but not knowing what to do. But I thought you could only get that training in the military.”

“No—in fact, not everyone in the military does. There are other sources, if that’s what you want. Tell you what, I’ll give you a list of skills and places I know you can get training . . . and then you can find a use for that training. How about that?”

“I’d love it. Can’t I come to Rockhouse with you? I already know about Mr. Smith, of course.”

“No—I’m sorry. We’re overloaded, with the required escorts for Mr. Smith. But if you’re going back there, you can start to acquire some of the things I’m talking about—”

“Tell me what sorts of things,” Brun interrupted, eyes bright.

“Well . . . the more you know about all the technology we use for transportation and communication, the better. Not just classroom theory but practical stuff like being able to maintain and repair the equipment. Lady Cecelia’s taken an interest in her yacht now, and she’s finding it very helpful. I wish we had time for you to meet Brigdis Sirkin—my Nav First. She’s done it all by formal schooling, but she’s taken every opportunity to expand her skills and knowledge on the job, too.”

From the look on Brun’s face, she wanted to be Brigdis Sirkin. Heris wondered if Sirkin would return the favor, if she imagined the opulence and privilege of Brun’s background. Probably not. That very practical young woman was headed exactly where she wanted to go—perhaps a narrow goal, but one she knew she could attain. Brun had so many choices it must be hard to make them.

“Do you like space travel?” Heris asked.

“Yes—but I don’t know if I’d like to spend all my time in space.” And this was someone who had thought of joining Fleet! “What I really like—liked—was thinking up elaborate pranks, but of course there’s no place for that in the real world.”

Was there not! Heris cocked her head. “What kind of pranks?”

“Oh—you know—like when we were kids on that island, and having mock wars.” She had flushed again, clearly embarrassed to put her childhood mock wars up against the real thing, even in imagination. “I got pretty good at ambushes. And at school, my first term . . . they never did figure out who had reprogrammed the water supply so all the hot was cold and vice versa. Silly stuff. Except about Lucianne—keeping her away from her uncle when he came to visit was serious enough, but necessary.”

It really was too bad that they couldn’t take Brun along with them. She might have resources to match the prince’s—she might keep Ronnie amused—and it would be fun to find out if she really did have a knack for innovative tactics. In Heris’s experience, the people who created interesting pranks for the pranks’ sake (not just to inconvenience people) often had good luck in real-life tactical situations. They just needed to be kept busy. For a moment her mind toyed with the idea of Brun as part of her crew—of talking Cecelia into some clandestine adventure somewhere—but she pushed it away. Getting the prince back to his father in one piece, and Ronnie with him, was enough to deal with for the moment.

“Tell you what,” she said. “After we finish this mission, you might ask Lady Cecelia if she’d let you come along on a voyage or two. That’s if you’ve been working on the things I’ll list.”

“Yes!” Brun grinned broadly. “I will—and thanks.”

And what did I just get myself into? Heris asked herself. The girl’s father had asked her to give advice—it wasn’t as if she was going behind anyone’s back—but she still felt odd about it. She made a note to herself to come up with that list of skills and resources before they left.

Their final head count came to forty-nine. Heris had had to accept a couple of Bunny’s militia, and two crew from his personal yacht, to satisfy the Crown Minister that the prince would be travelling safely. When the Sweet Delight eased away from the peculiar eye-twisting space station, it had its holds stuffed with supplies enough for a year-long voyage. Heris had had plenty of time to complete her list for Brun while waiting for the last luxuries to be ferried up from Sirialis.

Once the ship was on its way out of the system, Heris released the prince from his suite. She expected a tantrum, but the young man smiled at her, and asked the way to the gym. Heris wondered why he hadn’t looked it up on his deskcomp, but perhaps princes didn’t ever look things up for themselves.

Dinner that first night surpassed anything Lady Cecelia’s cook had produced on the voyage out. Cecelia wore her amber and ivory lace; Ronnie and the prince both appeared in semiformal dress. Heris had to admit they were handsome, as decorative as young roosters. She preferred Ronnie, whose recent adventures seemed to have settled him a bit. At least he never rose to the prince’s obvious attempts to tease. The prince . . . she had not really been around him in the days of his captivity, and his brief appearance at the Hunt Dinner had given her no feel for his real personality. Now, at the dinner table, he looked the very picture of a prince, and yet she felt something missing. Not quite the same as Ronnie and George, who had been so difficult on the voyage out, but whose spoilt manners clearly overlay interesting minds. The prince, aside from a hectic energy that emerged as one stale joke after another, was . . . to put it plainly . . . boring. Heris, imagining him as a king in the future, could form only a blurry vision of someone dull and stolid, with an eye for the girls and a taste for wine and game, a stout middle-aged fellow who elbowed his cronies in the ribs but never quite got the point of stories.

Four days into the voyage back to Rockhouse, Ronnie brought up the prince’s intellectual gaps in a private conversation with Heris and Cecelia. He looked earnest and worried. “Did you know the prince was stupid?”

Heris nearly choked, and Cecelia let out an unladylike snort before she controlled herself and glared at her nephew.

“You are not going to start quarrelling with him. I forbid it.”

Ronnie waved that away. “I’m not quarrelling. It’s not like that. But I just realized—he’s really stupid.”

“Perhaps,” his aunt said, looking down her longish nose, “you would care to explain that discourteous comment.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Ronnie settled into his chair, leaning forward, hands clasped tensely. “I think something’s wrong. We have to do something.”

“That is not an explanation,” Cecelia said crisply. “Please get to it.”

“Yes. All right.” He took a deep breath, and began. “We haven’t been in the same classes or anything for years, or I’m sure I’d have noticed. He’s just not very smart.”

Heris repressed a smile. She had never expected royalty to be overburdened with brains. “Probably he never was very smart. Children can’t really tell about each other—” But a memory lifted through her mind like a bubble . . . that boy who had been so brilliant in primary: she had known that, and so had all the other kids. She herself had been smart, but he had been something far more.

“He was,” Ronnie said, with a return of his old sullenly stubborn expression. “He was, and now he’s not. If I didn’t know it was Gerel, I wouldn’t believe it was the same person.”

Cecelia sat up suddenly. “If you didn’t know—how do you know it’s the same person?”

Ronnie looked at her blankly. “Well, of course it is—how could it be anyone else? He’s too well known.”

“Now he is. But a child?”

“Gene types,” Heris said, cutting off that wild idea. “It would be impossible to switch someone else; surely he has annual physicals. And it could be checked so easily . . .”

“That’s right. He’s a Registered Embryo.” Ronnie wrinkled his nose. “And that’s odd, too. Registered Embryos are at least one sig above average IQ.” Heris looked at him; he turned red. “All right, we don’t all act it, but we have the brains, if we learn to use them. Gerel wasn’t stupid in childhood, and he’s near that now. Something’s happened to him.”

Heris had an unpleasant crawling sensation in her midsection; she recognized fear of the unknown in the ancient form. Her forebrain didn’t like it, either. Something to make princes stupid: it had been done before, and never with good intent.

“Someone must have noticed,” she said slowly, wanting it to be false. But already she believed. Despite the physical beauty, the athletic body, the energy, the prince was dull.

“Some people wouldn’t notice on principle,” Cecelia said. “But his parents, surely . . . Kemtre wasn’t that dim the last time I chatted with him. Admittedly that was ten years or so ago; I hate social functions where people expect me to be up on the latest Court gossip and I feel like a fool fresh off the farm. But we had a nice talk about the expansion of agricultural trade into the Loess Sector, and he seemed quite knowledgeable. Velosia, of course, was immersed in the gossip and wondered why I didn’t spend more time with my sisters. I could believe this meant she was a dullard, except that she and Monica played dual-triligo and were ranked in the top ten. I never could understand the rules beyond primary level, so if they’re stupid, I’m worse.”

“Ten or twelve years ago, Gerel was just starting school outside the home for the first time,” Ronnie pointed out. “What if something happened there, something that took a while to show up? We were only together for three or four years, then they shifted him to Snowbay and I stayed at Fallowhill.” The names meant nothing to Heris, but Cecelia nodded.

“Or it could’ve started at Snowbay. I remember there was some concern about sending him so far away, to such a strict headmaster. But Nadrel had gotten in all that trouble—” Heris blinked again. She knew—it had been her business to know—the names of the various members of the Royal Family, but she wasn’t used to anyone calling them by first names. Nadrel, the second son, had died when he eluded his Security protection and got himself into a brawl with someone who didn’t worry about the niceties of aristocratic duelling. Before that, he had been considerably wilder than the current prince.

“I hadn’t realized,” Ronnie said, looking at his hands. “I feel . . . bad about it. It’s sort of indecent, I mean—our quarrel, when he’s not—not like he was. Like the time George had that virus or whatever, and nearly flunked everything for a month; we started out teasing him, but it wasn’t funny.”

“It’s indecent that it happened, if you’re right. The quarrel’s beside the point, although I expect it influenced him.” Heris fought her way through Cecelia’s logic in that and by the time she had it figured out both aunt and nephew were off on another tangent. Whom to tell, and how, and when.

“Better not tell anyone,” she said, interrupting them. “It’s dangerous knowledge.” They stared back at her.

“But I must,” Cecelia said. “He’s the only surviving prince. If his father doesn’t know—”

“Then someone doesn’t want him to know. Someone who will be glad to eliminate you. His father probably does know, after all, and I doubt very much he wants it widely recognized or talked about.”

“I’m not a gossip. Everyone knows that.” Cecelia looked exasperated. “It’s not something I can ignore. If I do, and he knows, then he’ll suspect—it will be worse than telling him.”

“But it’s dangerous,” said Heris. Surely Cecelia could see that; it was like taking a light escort straight into a suspicious scanfield. They needed to know more before anyone said anything. Her mind tickled her with something Ronnie had just said about George. George had had a month of being stupid? A virus? Or the same thing that affected the prince? But Cecelia, sticking to her own main interest, was talking again.

“They need to know. Even if it’s dangerous, it’s more dangerous to have him like this, unrecognized. Dangerous to everyone, not just to me. It can’t be hidden much longer anyway; he’s getting to an age where he’ll be expected to take on some Crown functions. The sooner it’s known, the sooner we—” This time the we clearly meant those who managed things, the great families of the realm, “—can change our plans and adjust. If it’s permanent, for instance, he can’t take the throne later. Then there’s the Rejuvenant/Ageist split; this could change the balance in Council.”

“But it’ll be terribly embarrassing, Aunt Cecelia,” said Ronnie. “Maybe Captain Serrano is right—”

But Heris could tell from the stubborn set of Cecelia’s jaw that they weren’t getting anywhere. Maybe later. They were still a long way from Rockhouse. She could talk to Ronnie about George’s experience in private.

The ship itself functioned smoothly. Sirkin had looked startled the first time she heard Oblo say “Aye, sir” to Heris, but she soon got used to the preponderance of military backgrounds. Heris thought it improved the tone a lot; it seemed a comfortable compromise between military formality and civilian casualness. Bunny’s yacht crew, efficient enough, held themselves slightly aloof from Lady Cecelia’s; she didn’t mind, since they’d be going back to Bunny’s from Rockhouse.

Her relationship with Petris, however, seemed as uneven as the foxhunting fields. She had understood the prohibition of relationships between commanders and their subordinates as preventing both sexual harassment of subordinates and favoritism . . . it had not occurred to her that there was any intrinsic problem with the relationship if both desired it. She learned differently.

“I don’t know,” Petris said one late watch, when they had expected a pleasant evening in bed, and instead found themselves less interested in bed than talk. “It’s not the past, really. I’d been crazy about you for a long time, and once I found a way—but on this ship—”

“It’s the teal and lavender,” Heris said, trying to make light of it.

“No. It’s—how can I say this and not sound like a barbarian?—it’s the authority. Here, you’re in charge—you have to be. And—” Heris waited out a long silence as he worked his way through it. “When we were back on that island, you weren’t. You were hurting, and I could help. I had the choices to make.”

“Mmm. An authority block?”

“I suppose. Except I’ve never resented your authority, you know. Not with the ship. It never has bothered me who captained a ship, so long as they were good at it. I knew early on I never would . . . didn’t really want to.” That surprised her.

“Didn’t you?”

“No. Not all enlisted are lusting for command, you know. Commanders maybe, but not command itself. It’s damned scary; I can see that in your eyes. Maybe I feel that way here—it’s scary, because I’m stepping out of my role, with the commander. It didn’t bother me off the ship . . .”

“And it’s not something I can command,” Heris said. Some did; she knew that. But she couldn’t. “How about we pretend this isn’t the ship?”

“I’ll try.” It seemed to be working—Heris had felt the shifts in her own breathing that went with great pleasure long deferred—when the intercom intruded.

“Captain Serrano—there’s something on the screen—” She lunged across Petris to answer it, and he cursed.

By the time she’d been to the bridge, where the image onscreen had vanished, and gotten back to her quarters, Petris was gone. Heris didn’t call him back. Later. There would be time enough later.