Niko did not particularly like him. No one liked Sessiles, and particularly no one liked Sessile priests, even other Sessiles. And that was all right, though it might have been nice to be petted the way Milly was or even to play with Skidoo. But he had never been invited to do that.

He had changed many of the things that had been part of his life as a priest, not because he wanted to but because Niko asked it of him. Bathing every day was not customary on a water-poor planet, but here every morning he went into the fresher like the rest of them and emerged smelling like nothing at all.

At Niko’s order he had learned all the tedious details of etiquette, the code that was supposed to keep gentlebeings in an accord, pointless though much of its mechanisms seemed, like saying hello or goodbye. Not so intricate as temple rituals, but just as arbitrary.

The ghosts writhed. The one he’d touched curled and slid over his wrist, parallel to the scales. Soon it would be time to go out and begin working. Soon things would happen. Steps would be made.

His thoughts turned again to the Spiral of Destiny. He had drawn it over and over as a child—in the sand, or scratched on the walls, or daubed in whatever was at hand—and that was how his nurturer had known what he was, and taken him from the crèche and turned him over to the priests to be raised.

Would he achieve the glory that he had seen, the picture he had drawn then, that he sometimes still drew in his head, each time more glorious? Nothing was certain. But staying with the captain was the only way to even come close to that path, because it was her path. There was no guarantee she would go all the way along it. Indeed, it was improbable that she would be able to do all that would be asked of her.

He knew one thing by now that he had not known when he first gave himself to her. It was something that made him know it had been the right choice, even if uncertain and unprecedented.

He knew that, no matter what, when the time came she would try.

In Niko’s office, Dabry and Niko stood over the crate, so still that the only motion was the menus fluttering near the air vent.

“Is that what I think it is?” Dabry said.

“Yep,” Niko said. “It’s a person. In stasis. Or a being of some sort in stasis anyhow. Humanoid in form but you never know. We won’t know what they look like until we bring them out.”

“Who is it?”

“Why should I know?”

Silence hovered in the cabin as they kept looking. The menus fluttered. Skidoo squelched past in the hallway, muttering something to herself about the glow lamps.

“We should un-stasis them,” Dabry said.