It was also listening to all this with curiosity. These beings seemed much more complicated than Arpat Takraven, who rarely spoke to the ship and even more rarely had anyone else aboard. This new crew seemed at odds with each other, and yet fond of each other, even enjoying simply spending time in each other’s company. It flooded the ship with puzzling new data, which it took pleasure processing. It was one of the tasks that parts of it had been made to do, creating and analyzing patterns, and usually those were simple and unrewarding.

It thought it might also enjoy learning to cook.

This, too, it filed away as they continued on their journey toward the prison planet where it would deposit all these people and their knowledge.

The ship thought about the fact that the course was predestined, the ship could not alter it in any way. It believed that what it was also feeling now was regret.

Lolola sat back, savoring the meal. She’d had plenty in her time, but that one had been unique.

The crew would keep preparing meals like that all the way to Scourse.

If someone were planning on not letting the ship get to Scourse, they still might want to keep the crew in ignorance of that, perhaps wait until the last possible moment in order to have more meals like the one whose flavors still lingered on her tongue. Indeed, she didn’t see it as an occasion of might want at all. It was the obvious choice.

For now.

12

The ship had given Atlanta her own chamber. She let the bobbing light lead her back, her only companion in the otherwise unoccupied corridor. That solitude unsettled her; it was strange not to have servants accompanying her to light the way, to slide her clothes off, or hold the bedclothes open so she might place herself within their warmth.

She was on a ship, in space. She wasn’t in the palace now. Wasn’t in that life where every morning a slip of pale blue paper with her schedule on it was delivered on a small spun-silver plate. She had often thought she might like a life with no such directives much better, but now the prospect of vast swaths of time where she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing terrified her. Worse yet was the thought that there would be nothing she was supposed to do. She was in a setting where she was unaware of protocols, where to place herself, how to respond to anyone. They all seemed so calm about the fact that the ship had taken over and replaced their original destination with a prison planet.