“It would be morally bad to deep-read my way through the whole station,” he said to Surit, in the spirit of testing out the theorem, one morning while they were both cramming down breakfast and hastily dressing.

“It depends on why,” Surit said. He was distracted by trying to read two screens and find a lost sock at the same time. Then he seemed to realize what they were talking about and broke off to look at Tennal. “If you knew you were going to be handed back to Cavalry and synced, or if you thought every bystander on the station was complicit…”

“All right, all right,” Tennal said. It was theoretical, since he didn’t have the strength to read people on that scale, but he’d known going for bystanders probably wasn’t ethical even by his own low standards. He didn’t have any leads on who could issue passes. He had gone a few layers deep on Oma’s other aides, even if he didn’t dare read Oma herself, and had gotten nothing but internal Archer politics. “You should hire out your moral consulting services. Get a logo.”

“I’ll consider it,” Surit said gravely. The dignity of the moment was somewhat spoiled by his one bare foot.

Tennal had slipped back into the habit of always having Surit there—when he went to sleep, when they woke up, every day at work—as easily as diving into water. Whenever he thought about it, it gave him a mild jolt of surprise. Tennal had thought his miserable claustrophobia back on the Note had been partly because he’d been forced together with Surit. But apparently the problem had been everything else.

Tennal had never been easy to live with. His record with a partner was two weeks, and he’d been sleeping with that guy. But Surit didn’t pressure him or bother him. Surit was just … there.

Occasionally Tennal caught himself speculating about whether he still had a chance with Surit. Not when Surit came out of the shower or stripped down to his underwear to sleep—Tennal knew what a set of good abs looked like; he could find those anywhere—but when Surit absently passed him the water jug at breakfast, hair askew on his forehead, listening to whatever Tennal was complaining about, or said, “Tired?” with casual concern when they came back in late—then, Tennal was in unexpected trouble.

Tennal had tried moving on Surit once already, back on the Note. Surit had said no. The chain of command between them had flipped, but it hadn’t broken. Tennal watched the way Surit meticulously drew back from touching him, and avoided looking when Tennal showered or changed, and he knew as surely as reading him that Surit had not changed his mind.

His attempts to forget this at work were thwarted by his own deputies.

“So, you and the lieutenant…?” Istara said, late one afternoon after a particularly long day.