“I guess we can keep ’em in the freezer awhile longer,” the man said. He sighed, heavily, and stood up. “Son, you’re going to have to talk sometime, to someone. Are you sure there’s nothing more we can do to help? We’re not your enemies, you know.”

“I know,” Toby said. His voice rasped; it wanted to shake, and only by sounding angry could he control it at all.

The guard left. The smell of food permeated the cell; it made him sick, yet his hunger gnawed at him. Could he eat any of it? Two bites of bread, and he wanted to throw up. He lay back on the bunk, covering his face with his arm. When the guard came back to remove the tray, Toby had curled to face the wall, with the blanket pulled over his head.

Stella Maria Celeste Vatta Constantin looked around Allray with wary interest. Thanks to the mess that had made her the laughingstock of the family and the bad example held up to youngsters, she had never taken the usual apprentice voyage offplanet. She had traveled, of course, but when she was older, and always with a mission in view. Allray might have looked exotic when she was fourteen, but not now she was thirty. It looked scuffed and tawdry instead; she was too old to mistake scuffed and tawdry for exotic. Traveling under her married name, as she was, she raised no comment in the Customs line. It was one of the things she enjoyed about traveling: no one associated the given name Stella with idiot stupid enough to give family access codes to her first lover.

The captain of the ISC courier had given her the bad news about Ellis Fabery as soon as they downjumped into Allray space, but he had no details. Stella’s own implant did not have a complete crew list; the Ellis had changed out crew at the beginning of the standard year, and the old list would not be accurate.

She made her way to the station police. They would surely know who had been killed on the ship.

“You’re a relative?” the desk clerk said. Stella smiled.

“I need to speak to the officer in charge,” she said. “I carry credentials from the family, permission to arrange for disposition of remains.”

“But what about the boy?”

“Boy?”

“The kid—someone needs to take him.”

“I was not informed of any boy,” Stella said, rummaging rapidly through her implant’s file of Vatta younglings. Apprentice age… Keth? Preston? Toby? Gio? “How old is he?”

“He’s fourteen. The only one left. Toby, he says his name is. I guess, if you’re the family’s representative, you’ll have to take him.”

All she needed was a fourteen-year-old boy tagging along on this mission. She couldn’t say that, though, not to a desk clerk.

“Your officer in charge?” she said again.

“Ah. Right. I’ll get him.”

The shape under the blanket looked too small to be a fourteen-year-old.

“He hasn’t been eating well,” the guard said. Stella glanced at the tray, which looked untouched, cold, and unappetizing.

“I can see that.”

“We’ve tried—I’ve tried myself—but he won’t open up at all.”

And no wonder, Stella thought. “Toby,” she said softly. “Toby, wake up.”

The blanket twitched, then stilled. “Toby,” Stella said again. “Time to go…”

The blanket twitched, then he poked out a thin face, eyes dangerously intense. “Who… who are you?”

“Stella Constantin. I’ve come to settle things here. You can come with me.”

Suspicion hardened his expression. “How’d I know you’re not one of them?”

“She’s not, lad. We checked,” the guard said. But Toby’s eyes never left hers.

Stella sighed. “Toby, did you ever hear of Stavros’ idiot daughter Stella, the idiot who gave the family codes to her lover?”

His brows went up. “You’re—?”

“That Stella, yes. But even I didn’t stay an idiot forever. Let’s get you out of here, shall we?”

He unrolled the blanket and sat up unsteadily. “I—I don’t feel well.”

“You haven’t eaten enough to keep a mouse alive, is what I hear—and what that tray looks like. Don’t faint on me, Toby; we don’t have time for that.”

“Ma’am,” the guard said, in a worried voice.

“You can eat the roll,” Stella said, ignoring the guard. “Here—” She broke it in half, spread jam on it, and handed it to Toby. “Eat it.”

He stared at her for a moment, then took the roll and bit into it.

“Toby, I want to get you off this station before someone finds both of us. I have taken care of everything else—” She saw his jaw stop moving as he took that in, and then resume chewing. “I have your personal belongings, and I brought you something to wear other than jail garb or Vatta uniform. You’ll travel as my son.”

“I—you aren’t old enough!”

“I will look old enough, don’t worry. Finish that roll, and another.” She turned to the guard. “Can you get us a couple of hot sandwiches, maybe?”

“Of course,” he said.

When he was gone, Toby said, “Where are we going?”

Stella raised her brows. He had not said Where are you taking me… he was starting to engage. Promising. “I don’t want to tell you here,” she said. “These people have done a good thing in protecting you, but I’m not sure their records are as secure as they think.”

He had wolfed down another roll already and was looking at the rest of the tray, despite the layer of congealed fat on the blob that might be meat.

“Don’t,” Stella said. “If you haven’t been eating, let your stomach get used to the rolls first.”

“But you asked for hot sandwiches.”

“I asked for time alone, but in different words,” Stella said.

He looked at her curiously. “You’re—not like… like the captain.”

“No. I’m not. I’m not a spacer. I’m administration—” When she was anything. When she was not just “that idiot Stella,” the permanent example of what could go wrong. The petty little position she’d held until her pregnancy was only “administration” to someone aboard a ship. What she’d done since, no one knew about.

“But to lie…”

“Misdirect,” Stella said. “Similar, but different.”

“I don’t think it’s right to lie,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s right to end up dead just because it’s convenient for someone else,” Stella said. “Now—can you stand up yet?”

He could, just, though he wavered a bit. Stella handed him the sack. “Put those on. I’ll turn my back.”

“You’re not going to leave?”

That terrified modesty—she remembered that, from her own adolescence. “No,” she said, turning her back. “I’m not. I’m also not interested in your skinny little body, except in keeping it alive. Change.”

Behind her, the indignant rustles of an annoyed teen. Good. It would keep him from fainting, if he was angry enough with her. She focused her attention outward. The guard should be back by now. Why wasn’t he? Why wasn’t anyone coming? Why wasn’t she hearing the routine noises that she had hardly noticed coming in? She queried her implant just as it pinged her, warning of chemical contamination. She held her breath, reached into her pocket, slapped a full-face membrane onto herself, then pulled out another and whirled to see Toby opening his mouth to gasp.

“No!” she said, and tossed the mask. Thank all the gods, the boy had been properly trained—he knew what it was, didn’t breathe until he had it on. His new outfit—the one-piece gray suit—was half fastened. He fumbled at the closure, and then picked up the jacket, eyes wide.

“Can you use a weapon?” Stella asked. He shook his head. “Stay behind me then,” she said. She drew her own. For all the good that would do if their enemies had the weapons she suspected.

Out in the corridor, nothing stirred. She saw, just at the corner, the guard who should have brought sandwiches—and there were the sandwiches, on the floor beside his outstretched hand. The other way… deeper into the jail… she paused a moment to slip a highly illegal dataprobe into the ’port on the wall, at the guard’s duty station, and suck out the plans for the police station. Every space on a station had at least two exits. This one had four: the main one to the passage, two rear entrances, and one to the side, through a smaller office.