A lie. I wanted to look toward Sword of Atagaris, standing stiff and silent beside Kalr Five. But I would never catch, from an ancillary, any subtle reaction to its captain’s lie. And the glance itself would betray my thoughts. That I recognized the lie for what it was. Instead I looked over toward the bathhouse. Raughd Denche came striding out, back the way she’d come, a grim set to her expression that boded ill for any servant who might come across her path. I almost looked around to see where her personal attendant was, and realized, with surprise, that she hadn’t followed Raughd into the bathhouse.

Captain Hetnys also noticed Raughd. She blinked, and frowned, and then shook her head slightly, dismissal, I thought. Of Raughd’s obvious anger, or of me, I couldn’t tell. “Fleet Captain,” she said, glancing toward the bathhouse, “with your indulgent permission. It’s very warm today.”

“Of course, Captain,” I replied, and remained sitting as she rose, and bowed, and walked away across the mossy stones, angling toward the bathhouse. Sword of Atagaris fell quickly in behind her.

She had walked about halfway across the shaded green and gray yard, was directly in front of that curving end of the bathhouse window, when the bomb went off.

It had been twenty-five years since I’d seen combat. Or at least the sort of combat where bombs were likely to go off. Still, I had been a ship filled with bodies for fighting. So it was due to two-thousand-year-old habit that without any sort of effort at all, nearly the instant I saw the flash in the bathhouse window, and almost (but not quite) instantaneously saw the window shatter and its pieces fly outward, I was on my feet and my armor was fully extended.

I suspected Sword of Atagaris had never seen ground combat, but it reacted almost as quickly as I had, extending its armor and moving with inhuman speed to put itself between the flying glass and its unarmored captain. The front of glittering, jagged glass swept out from the window, tearing leaves and branches from the trees shading the stones, reached the ancillary, knocked it to the ground, Captain Hetnys beneath it. The barest moment later a scatter of small bits of glass and leaves and twigs reached me and bounced harmlessly off my armor. A quick thought told me that although Kalr Five had only just finished raising her armor, she was quite safe. “Give me your medkit,” I said to her. And when she’d done that, I sent her to call for Medical, and for Planetary Security, and then went to see if Captain Hetnys had survived.