“I still say they were wrong,” Honor said stubbornly. He looked at her quizzically, and it was her turn to shrug uncomfortably. “All right. I suppose that if I were sitting on a court of inquiry on a similar incident and all I had was the official record, I might have agreed some penalty was appropriate. I might have. But I like to think that by now I’ve seen enough of the ways in which good, competent officers can do everything right and still crap out to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.”

“Perhaps you have,” he agreed. “And perhaps, if it hadn’t been an incident in peacetime, if the officers of the court had had the sort of experience you have now, their decision might have been different. But it was a different set of rules in a different time, Honor.” He shook his head. “I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt. But I’ve never felt it was a gross miscarriage of justice, either. And,” he gestured at the blue uniform tunic he wore, “it wasn’t exactly the end of my life.”

“No, I suppose it wasn’t. But you’d still look better in black and gold than in blue, if you’ll pardon my saying so. And the Navy could darned well have used your experience when the war finally began.”

“I suppose if I’m honest, that was what hurt the most,” he admitted in a slightly distant tone, gazing at something only he could see. “I’d spent so many years training for exactly what happened, and I wasn’t allowed to use all I’d learned in the Star Kingdom’s defense when the storm finally broke.” He gazed at that invisible something for several more seconds, then shook himself. “But,” he said briskly, focusing on her face once more, “there was absolutely no point in sitting around and brooding over what had happened, and I’ve found the odd project here and there since to keep myself busy.”

“I understand you own your own shipping line,” Honor said.

“That might be putting it just a bit grandly,” he replied wryly. “I do own two ships outright, with majority shares in three others. Not quite on the scale of the Hauptman Cartel—or Skydomes of Grayson—but not too shabby an accomplishment here in Silesia, I suppose.”

“From all I’ve heard that’s a pretty severe case of understatement. And they tell me you have at least two armed merchantmen?”

“True,” he said. “You’re wondering how I managed it?” She nodded, and he shrugged. “Like everything else here in the Confederacy, it all depends on how deep your pockets are, what contacts you have, and who you know. Silesia may be a dangerous place to be a merchant skipper, but for that very reason, there’s a lot of money in it if you manage to survive. And I’ve been out here long enough to’ve amassed quite a few debts and favors… and to learn where a few useful skeletons were buried.” He shrugged again. “So, technically, Pirate’s Bane and Ambuscade are auxiliary units of the Confederate Navy. Technically.”