"… Won't accept any of it. He's getting way too trusting in his old age." Hayden recognized Farming's voice, which he had only ever heard from behind closed doors. Was the admiral talking to only one person, or was there a full-blown staff meeting going on in there? Hayden couldn't find an angle where he could look around the door without being seen.

"But our orders are clear," said another man. "We're to take the Second Fleet into Mavery and deal with them now."

"We don't need the Second Fleet to eradicate Mavery," said Fanning contemptuously. "And the old man knows that. He's afraid that the First Families are going to side with me and order the fleet to investigate this buildup of ships in the sargasso. If he moves us all into Mavery we can't do that."

"He doesn't believe the sargasso fleet's a threat?"

"He doesn't believe it's real." Hayden heard papers shuffling. "So. Here are your orders."

There was a pause, then Hayden heard a sharp intake of breath from the other man. "You can't mean this!"

"I can. We'll deal with Mavery, like the old man wants. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit in the air occupying a second-rate province while somebody else moves in full force against Rush."

"But—but by the rime we do this—"

"The sargasso fleet's not ready. That's clear from the photos. And we won't be able to put Mavery down right away; it'll take a minimum of two months before we're inextricably engaged with them, and whoever's behind this knows to wait for that to happen. We have the time."

The other muttered under his bream, then seemed to catch himself. "Sir. It's audacious, Admiral, but… I can see the logic of it."

"Good. Well, go to it, Captain. I'll join you when I've completed preparations here."

Hayden just had time to close the door of the linen closet as a captain of the navy in full dress attire strode out of Fanning's office and down the stairs.

As soon as he was gone, Hayden was out and sidling up to the door to the office. There was no one but Fanning in there now, he was sure of it. His mouth was dry, and his pulse pounding in his ears as he steeled himself for what he had to do. In all likelihood he wouldn't survive the night, but he had a debt to pay.

Taking a deep breath, he reached for the doorknob.

"There you are!"

He snatched his hand back as if it had been burned, and turned to find Venera Fanning standing at the head of me stairs. She had a hand on one cocked hip, and was glaring at him in her usual withering way. She was dressed in traveling attire, complete with trousers and a backpack thrown over her shoulder.

"I'm going to need a good driver," she said as she stalked up to him. "You're the only one I know who can handle himself outside of an air carriage."

"Uh—thank you, ma'am?"

"Wait here." She swept past him and into the office, leaving the door wide open. This gave Hayden his first glimpse of Farming's office; it was not what he'd expected. The place was a mess. All four walls were crammed with bookshelves of differing pedigree. Books swelled out of the shelves and sheets of paper stuck out between the volumes like the white leaves of some literary ivy. More papers stood in precarious stacks on the floor, all leaning left to accommodate the Coriolis tilt of the town's artificial gravity. The admiral himself was leaning back in his chair, one foot propped up next to the table's only lamp. He scowled up at Venera as she walked in.

"This is low even for you," he said as he tossed a sheaf of papers onto the desk. He looked older in person than in the photos Hayden had seen, with crow's-feet around his eyes, and his hair was starting to recede. Whipcord thin, he non-the-less moved gracefully under gravity, unlike people who spent most of their time in freefall.

"Oh, come now,"Venera was saying. "I'm just asserting my prerogative as a wife, to be with her husband."

"Wives don't travel on ships of the line, especially when they're going into battle!" As if to emphasize his words, a flash of lightning lit the sky outside the office's one narrow window.

"I admit I underestimated you, Venera," continued Fanning. "No—actually, I misunderstood you.This intelligence network you created, it's…" He shook his head. "Beyond the pale. Why? What'$ it for? And why are you so insistent on joining the expeditionary force that you're willing to blackmail your own husband to guarantee that I'll say yes?"

"I did it all for us," she said sweetly as she came around the desk to lean over him. Venera smoothed the hair away from Farming's forehead. "For our advantage. It's the way we do things back home, that's all."

"But why come along? This will be dangerous, and you'll be leaving the capital just when it would be most advantageous for you to remain here as my eyes and ears. It's a contradiction, Venera."

"I know you hate mysteries," she said. "That's what makes you good at your job. But I'm afraid this particular mystery will have to remain unsolved for a while. You'll see—if all works out as I hope. For now, you'll just have to trust me."

He laughed. "That's the funniest thing you've said in a long time. Well, all right men, pack your things and get down to the docks. We'll be sailing tonight."

"Under cover of darkness?" She smiled. "You do some of your best work then, you know."

Fanning just sighed and shook his head.

Venera returned to the hallway, and taking Hay den's arm, drew him away from the office and toward the stairs. He let her do it. "I'm going to send a man around to your flat," she said to Hayden. "Tell him what to collect for you. You're not to leave the house today; wait for me by the main doors at six o'clock tonight, or your contract is terminated. Is that understood?"

"But what's—"

She waved a hand imperiously, indicating that he should retreat down the stairs.

She stood between him and the man he'd come to murder.

"Well?" she said. Venera seemed to see him for the first time; a muscle in her jaw flexed, causing the star-shaped scar there to squirm. "What are you waiting for?"

Hayden took a step down. He'd been planning this moment for years. In his mind it had always been clear: the traitor revealing his cowardice at the end, Hayden making some pronouncement—different every time—of just vengeance for his people's loss. An execution, clean and final.

But in order to get at the admiral now, he would have to leave Venera Fanning bleeding out her own life in the hallway.

He took another step down.

Something came over Venera's face. Softness? Some subtle giving-in to an interpretation of his actions that he didn't understand? "It will all be made clear tonight," she said in as soothing a tone as she was likely capable of.

He could have retreated around a corner, waited for her to leave. He might have staked out Farming's office for the rest of the night. Instead he found his feet take another step and another, and then he was turning and clattering down the steps as though he actually had some other place to go. Somehow he ended up passing the photograph of Fanning posing with a graduating class. He stopped and stared at the date written on it until a hand descended on his shoulder and someone spoke his name.

He pushed past the other manservant as the world spun around him—and when he came to himself again he was kneeling in one of the servant's washrooms vomiting wretchedly into the privy.