“He’s not your officer anymore,” Michi said flatly. “He’s a walking dead man. And frankly, I don’t think he’s going to welcome your presence.” She looked at him, and her look softened. “You have a ship to run, Captain.”

“Yes, my lady.” Martinez braced.

He and Marsden spent the rest of the day in his office dealing with the minutiae of command. Marsden was silent and hostile, and Martinez’s mind kept running into blind alleys instead of concentrating on his work.

He supped alone, drank half a bottle of wine, and went in search of the doctor.

As he approached the pharmacy, he encountered Lady Juliette Corbigny leaving. She was pale and her eyes were wider than ever.

“Beg pardon, Lord Captain,” she said, and sped away, almost in flight. Martinez looked after her, then walked into the pharmacy, where he found Xi slumped over a table, his chin on one fist as he contemplated a beaker half filled with a clear liquid. The sharp scent of grain alcohol was heavy on his breath.

“I’m afraid Lieutenant Corbigny isn’t well,” Xi said. “I had to give her something to settle her tummy. Partway into the interrogation she threw up all over the floor.” He raised the beaker and looked at it solemnly. “I fear she isn’t cut out for police work.”

Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. “Didanything go well?” he asked.

“The interrogation wasn’t a success, particularly,” Xi said. “Phillips said he hadn’t killed the captain and didn’t know who did. He said he doesn’t belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way, the story can’t be confirmed because she’s dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens.”

Xi slumped over his table and took a drink from the beaker.

“When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny—when she wasn’t spewing—tried to keep him on the subject of the captain’s death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe they were different chants. It was hard to tell.”

“What was he chanting?”

“I don’t know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word’Narayanguru‘ all right, so it’s a cult ritual language, and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they’ll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips. And if the I.S. is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end ofthem, because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am and are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent.” He looked at the beaker again, then raised his head to look at Martinez.

“Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough already. And you’re going to have a hell of a hangover.”

Xi gave a weary grin. “No, I’m not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man.” His face fell. “And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn’t hurt anybody, if you ask me—which nobody did—but who’s going to die anyway, and I wish I’d kept my damn mouth shut about the captain’s injuries.” He poured more alcohol into his beaker. “I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly, I wish I could throw up like Corbigny.”

“Keep this up and you will,” Martinez said.

“I shall do my best,” Xi said, and raised his glass. “Bottoms up.”

The bitter taste of defeat soured Martinez’s tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he’d keep it to himself.

Acall from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. “There was a guard here all night, Lord Captain,” Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. “There’s no way anyone could have got to him.”

Martinez walked to Lord Phillips’s cell, looked inside and wished he hadn’t.

Sometime over the course of the night, Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.

Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated in the air like motes of dust.

Dr. Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.

“He knew he’d crack,” Michi said after she arrived. “He knew he’d give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought he had the nerve for it.”

Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.

“We’re still no better off than we were!” Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.

Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery 1 and the riggers’ stores, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

Lord Chen’s comm unit began to make an urgent squeak. “Pardon me, Loopy,” he said. He put down his cocktail and reached into the pocket of his jacket.

He stood on the seaside terrace of his friend Lord Stanley Loo, known since his school days as “Loopy.” A Cree orchestra played festive music from a bandstand that looked as if it had been designed by a lacemaker. The sea breeze carried over the terrace the refreshing scent of salt and iodine, and the roar of the waves on the rocks sometimes drowned out the band. Antopone’s red sky gave the waves a lurid cast.

“Chen,” he said, raising his unit to his ear.

“My lord. Lord Tork requires your immediate presence aboardGalactic.”

Lord Chen recognized the careful diction of Lord Convocate Mondi, one of the members of the Fleet Control Board, a Torminel who took special care not to lisp around his fangs.

“The meeting’s not for another three days,” Chen said. He reached for his cocktail with his free hand and raised it to his lips.

“My lord,” Mondi said, “is this communication secure?”

A cold hand touched Chen’s spine. He put down his drink and turned away from the group on the terrace. “I suppose so,” he said. “No one’s within listening distance.”

There was a slight hesitation, and then Mondi spoke again. “The Naxids are moving from Zanshaa,” he said. “It looks like they’re heading for Zarafan under high acceleration.”

And from Zarafan, Lord Chen knew, they could go straight on to Laredo, where the Convocation were taking up residence.

Where his daughter would land any day.

“Yes,” he said, “I understand. I’ll be there as soon as I can arrange transport.”

And then, as the surf boomed below, he put his hand comm away and returned to the party.

“Something’s come up, Loopy,” he said. “Can you have someone arrange my return to the skyhook?”

“General quarters! Now general quarters! This is not a drill!”

From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew from the first word this wasn’t a drill. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.