Fletcher stroked the pumps with white-gloved fingers, found them clean, and then returned to the engine control room so that his questions might be heard. Thuc followed the captain in docile silence, his muscular body looming over Fletcher’s shoulder except when he darted forward to open a hatch or a locker door.

“You’ve changed the filters on the main pump recently?”

“Just after Protipanu, my lord,” Thuc said. “We aren’t due for another change for two months.”

“Very good. And the pump itself?”

“We’ll swap it out in another…” Thuc considered his answer, his eyes focused somewhere above the captain’s left shoulder. “…thirty-eight days, my lord.”

“Very well.” The captain tugged his white gloves over his wrists and smoothed the fine kidskin over his fingers. “I’ll just inspect your crew then.”

He marched down the line of engine crew, stopping to make an occasional comment about dress or deportment. At the end of the line he encountered Thuc again, marched about him, then nodded.

“Very good, Thuc,” he said. “Excellent marks, as always.”

“Thank you, Lord Captain.” A hint of a smile touched his lips.

When Fletcher moved, he was so fast that Martinez failed to see it properly and could only reconstruct the action later, out of fragments of memory. The sickle-shaped blade sang from the sheath, whistled through the air, and buried itself in Thuc’s throat. A crescent of arterial blood splattered the mural behind Thuc’s head.

Thuc was too large a man to fall all at once. First his shoulders dropped, and then his knees gave way. His barrel chest sank, his stomach sagged, and then—as Fletcher’s knife cleared his throat—Thuc’s head lolled down. It was only then that he fell like a tower of wooden blocks kicked by a careless child.

Martinez’s heart began to beat again, roaring in his ears. He looked at Fletcher in shock.

Fletcher looked expressionlessly at the body with his ice-blue eyes, and took a step away from the spreading pool of red. He flicked scarlet from his blade with a movement of his wrist.

The smell of blood hit Martinez’s senses, and he bit down hard on the stomach that was trying to quease its way past his throat.

“Marsden,” Fletcher said, “call the doctor to examine the body, and have him bring a stretcher party to carry it away. Cho,” to a staring petty officer, “you are now in charge of the engineering department. Once the doctor is done, call the off-duty watch to help you police this…untidiness. In the meantime, I’d appreciate a cleaning cloth.”

Cho nearly ran to one of the storage lockers, returned with a cloth, and handed it with bloodless fingers to the captain. Fletcher used it to clean the knife blade and mop some of the red off his tunic, then threw the cloth to the deck.

A pale-faced young recruit swayed, then toppled to the floor in a dead faint. Fletcher ignored him and turned again to Cho.

“Cho,” he said, “I trust you will maintain Engineer Thuc’s high standards.” He nodded to the control room crew, then turned and made his way out.

Martinez followed, his nerves leaping. He wanted to flee Fletcher’s company, to barricade himself in his quarters with a pistol and several bottles of brandy, the first for protection and the second for comfort.

He looked left and right at Marsden and Mersenne, and saw their expressions mirroring his own thoughts.

“Captain Martinez,” Fletcher said. The words made Martinez start.

“Yes, Lord Captain?” He was moderately surprised that he managed three whole words without stumbling, screaming, or falling into dumb silence.

Fletcher reached the companionway that led to the deck above and turned to Martinez.

“Do you know why I invited you along this morning?”

“No, my lord.”

He had managed another three words. He was making real progress. Soon he might be walking on his own and tying his own shoelaces.

Martinez found himself very aware of the captain’s right hand, the hand that would reach across his body to draw the knife. He found his own hands ready to lurch forward and seize Fletcher’s forearm if the hand approached the hilt.

He hoped that Fletcher did not see that he was so aware of his right hand. He tried not to stare at it.

“I asked you along so that you could report to Squadron Commander Chen,” Fletcher said, “and tell her exactly what just occurred.”

“Yes, Lord Captain.”

“I don’t want her hearing a rumor, or getting a distorted version.”

Distorted version.As if there was a version that would make this at all understandable.

Martinez searched his numbed mind and found a question, but the question required more than three words and he took a second or two to organize his thoughts.

“My lord,” he asked, “do you wish me to give Lady Michi the reason for your…your action?”

The captain straightened slightly. A superior smile touched his lips.

“Only that it was my privilege,” he said.

A chill shimmered up Martinez’s spine.

“Very good, Lord Captain,” he said.

Fletcher turned and led up the companionway. At the top he met the ship’s doctor, Lord Yuntai Xi, who was going down, followed by his assistant carrying his bag.

“The engine control room, Lord Doctor,” Fletcher said. “A fatality.”

The doctor gave him a curious look and nodded.

“Thank you, Lord Captain. Can you tell me—”

“Best you see for yourself, Lord Doctor. I won’t detain you.”

Xi stroked his little white beard, then nodded and began his descent. Fletcher led the party up three decks, to the deck he shared with the squadron commander, then turned to face the two lieutenants. “Thank you, my lords,” he said. “I won’t be needing you any further.” He turned to his secretary. “Marsden, I’ll need you to enter the death in the log.”

Martinez walked with Mersenne to the squadcom’s door. He felt a tingling in his back, as if he were expecting the captain to draw his knife and lunge at him. He didn’t quite dare look at the lieutenant, and he had a feeling that Mersenne wasn’t looking at him either.

He came to the squadcom’s door, and without saying anything to Lord Mersenne, stopped and knocked.

Lady Michi’s orderly, Vandervalk, opened the door, and Martinez asked to see the squadcom. Vandervalk said she’d check and left him waiting, then returned a few minutes later to say that the lady squadcom would meet Martinez in her office.

Lady Michi arrived a few minutes later, carrying her morning tea in a gold-rimmed cup with the Chen family crest. Martinez jumped from his chair and braced. The breath of air on his exposed throat gave him a sudden shiver.

“As you were,” Michi said. Her tone was abstracted, her gaze focused on papers that waited on her desk. She sat in her straight-backed chair.

“How can I help you, Captain?”

“Lord Captain Fletcher—” Martinez began, and then his voice failed him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Lord Captain Fletcher asked that I inform you that he’s just executed Master Engineer Thuc.”

Suddenly he had the squadcom’s full attention. She placed her cup very carefully on a felt coaster, then looked up. “Executed? How?”

“With his top-trimmer. During an inspection. It was…very sudden.”

He realized now that Fletcher must have rehearsed the move. You couldn’t cut a throat that efficiently unless you practiced.

He imagined Fletcher alone in his cabin, drawing the knife over and over as he slashed an imaginary throat, the cold blue eyes glittering, the superior smile on his lips.

Michi’s gaze intensified. Her fingers drummed thoughtfully on the desktop. “Did Captain Fletcher give a reason?”

“No, my lady. He said only that it was his privilege.”

Michi softly drew in her breath. “I see,” she said.

Fletcher was technically correct: any officer had the authority to execute any subordinate at any time, for any reason. There were practical reasons why this didn’t happen very often, including lawsuits in civil court from the victim’s patron clan; and usually when such a thing happened, the officer produced an elaborate justification.