“I doubt we’ll be quite that lucky,” Lady Harrington disagreed, “but we can at least hope his blood pressure will kick up a few points.”

“I like it,” White Haven announced cheerfully, and waved for her to precede him towards the door.

For the tiniest sliver of a moment, Andrew LaFollet hovered on the brink of the unthinkable. But the instant passed, and as he stepped around the Steadholder to open the door for her, he pressed his lips firmly together against the words he had no business saying.

They really don’t have a clue, he thought. That’s why they don’t realize I’m not the only person—the only two-footed person, anyway—who’s begun to notice the way the two of them look at each other. The last thing they need is to go traipsing off to a private lunch in such a public place, but they don’t even realize it.

He opened the door, glanced through it in a quick, automatic search, then stood aside to allow the Steadholder and her guest through it. He watched them heading for Johannsen’s desk to sign off the range sheet, and shook his head mentally.

Father Church says You look after children and fools, he told the Comforter. I hope You’re looking after both of them now.

Chapter Four

CAPTAIN Thomas Bachfisch, owner and master of the armed merchant ship Pirates’ Bane, was a lean, spare man with a thin, lined face. He was more than a little stoop-shouldered, and despite his immaculately tailored blue civilian uniform, he did not cut an impressive figure. Nor, for that matter, did Pirates’ Bane. At around five million tons, the freighter was of little more than average size for most regions of space, although she did tend towards the upper end of the tonnage range here in Silesia. But although she was obviously well maintained, she was not—despite her defiantly aggressive name—much to look at. To an experienced eye, it was apparent that she was at least half a T-century old, and probably a product of the now-defunct Gopfert Yard in the New Berlin System. Gopfert had once been one of the busiest shipyards in the entire Andermani Empire, supplying not only the Empire’s great merchant houses but also building warships and auxiliaries for the Imperial Navy. But that had been a long time ago, and nowadays Pirates’ Bane’s lines were clearly dated, a bit antique. Indeed, her brand spanking new paint made her look like an over-aged dowager after an unsuccessful make-over, and anything less like her warlike name would have been difficult to imagine. Which was just fine with Captain Bachfisch. There were times, especially for a merchant spacer here in the Silesian Confederacy, when being underestimated was the very best thing that could happen.

As his present occupation demonstrated.

He stood in his freighter’s boat bay, hands clasped loosely behind him, and watched with grim satisfaction as the latest group of Silesians to underestimate his vessel shuffled toward the waiting shuttle from the Andermani cruiser Todfeind. They were more than merely subdued as they filed between the row of waiting Andermani Marines and the armed crewmen Bachfisch had detailed to deliver them to their new jailers.