“We’re a marvelous curiosity, Surit,” Tennal said. His tone was overly sweet. “Let’s show these provincials what a sync looks like—everyone here can tell Oma I gave permission. Write me. Tell you what, I won’t even look.” And he gave Surit his sharpest smile and turned his back on him.

Surit’s mouth snapped shut.

Surit breathed out. He wasn’t going to write Tennal, however much Tennal pushed. But there was something he could do. He thought of how Tennal’s presence had felt when he’d guided Surit out of chaotic space. The edge of a vast expanse. A hint of salty wind, flung spray, a distant ocean.

He opened his hand to tell the onlookers he was writing and touched the primed weak point in Tennal’s mind.

“Lights,” Tennal said in front of him.

Surit withdrew as swiftly as he possibly could. He opened his eyes, dizzy from the contact, to see Tennal breathing out and dropping his arm, winding up his fake writing performance.

They’d timed it perfectly.

Tennal clenched his fist, and the purloined game pieces on the board turned on each other, destroying themselves in an orgy of gunfire. “Fine, whatever, there you are,” Tennal said in a more normal voice. “My forces are all down. Happy now?”

“How did you get that many ships?” one of the other players asked suspiciously. “Was that a reader thing?”

“Hardly. I just tweaked the probability settings when we started the game,” Tennal said. With anyone else it might be an attempt at an apology, but Tennal sounded completely unrepentant. “Old trick I learned from a gambling ring.”

Tennal had managed to sustain his distraction—every eye in the room was on him. Surit was trying to figure out where Tennal planned to go from here when Fari clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re impressive, Yeni,” Fari said. “You must be a Rank One—why are you just a lieutenant? Let’s see you write someone else.”

Tennal saw Surit’s face. He moved before Surit could: he abandoned his place by the game board and squeezed past a chair to get to them. “Let go, Fari,” he said, barely loud enough for even Surit to hear. “Yeni’s mine.”

Surit let his breath out between his teeth. That was a lie, of course. Surit and Tennal had invented so many lies between them that Surit was losing track. But Fari at least backed away, raising his eyebrows, and didn’t tell Surit to write anyone. “I’ll leave you to the game,” Surit said.

“No, wait.” Tennal turned back to the table, pulling everyone’s attention to him again. “Lieutenant Yeni will take over my pieces,” he announced. “Carry on!”

Surit looked at the board where Tennal had just destroyed all his own ships. “You don’t have any pieces.”