“You aren’t even going to give me a chance, sir,” I corrected. Angry tears welled in her ridiculous lilac eyes. If she’d been any other seventeen-year-old lieutenant I’d have sent her on her way to be rejected by the object of her sudden infatuation, and then let her cry—oh, the volume of baby lieutenant tears my uniforms had absorbed, when I’d been a ship—and then poured her a drink or three. But Tisarwat wasn’t any other baby lieutenant. “Go to your quarters, Lieutenant, get a hold of yourself, and wash your face.” It was early yet for drinking, but she’d need time to get herself in hand. “After lunch you have leave to go out and get as drunk as you like. Better yet, get laid. There are plenty of more appropriate partners here.” Citizen Raughd might even be interested, but I didn’t say so. “You’ve been in Citizen Basnaaid’s presence a whole five minutes.” And saying that, it was even clearer how ridiculous this was. This wasn’t about Basnaaid, not really, but that only made me more determined to keep Tisarwat away from her.

“You don’t understand!” Tisarwat cried.

I turned to Bo Nine. “Bo. Take your officer to her quarters.”

“Sir,” said Bo, and I turned and went into what served as the anteroom for our small apartments.

When I was a ship, I had thousands of bodies. Except in extreme circumstances, if one of those bodies became tired or stressed I could give it a break and use another, the way you might switch hands. If one of them was injured badly enough, or ceased to function efficiently, my medics would remove it and replace it with another one. It was remarkably convenient.

When I had been a single ancillary, one human body among thousands, part of the ship Justice of Toren, I had never been alone. I had always been surrounded by myself, and the rest of myself had always known if any particular body needed something—rest, food, touch, reassurance. An ancillary body might feel momentarily overwhelmed, or irritable, or any emotion one might think of—it was only natural, bodies felt things. But it was so very small, when it was just one segment among the others, when, even in the grip of strong emotion or physical discomfort, that segment knew it was only one of many, knew the rest of itself was there to help.