- Prologue

'By all understanding your father is Liaden, whether he properly wears a clan name out of history, or not. It is obvious that his clan has called him home. The delm has the right to demand, and the clan member has the duty to return.'

'No,' she said. 'He wouldn't—'

She stopped, hearing Kara's voice, speaking very seriously, warning her—warning her about Liadens.

Everything—promises, partnerships and plans—must be set aside, should the clan call one to duty. Remember that, about Liadens, Theo. It's just—it might help. Later.

She closed her eyes, trying to accommodate a universe in which Father could be commanded—compelled. Father had always been a force unto himself—like a law of nature, Kamele used to say.

'Theo?'

Her hand moved of itself, fingers forming pause.

Contract, she thought. Win Ton. Father. Bechimo. Four problems, pulling in different directions, and no clear solution to any of them. She needed—

She needed time. Focus.

Theo rose, memo pad in hand, sparing Win Ton a nod that was far more curt than she intended.

'And by this you mean?' he asked with some perspicacity.

She took a breath.

'I mean that I need time to think. I'm missing a father. There's a ghost ship looking for me. I have a friend who is dying. I have a contract to read and a future to decide. Right?'

She stared at the cuff of Rig's jacket—her jacket—and looked back at him.

He rose, shaky, but determined.

'Be as well as you can, my friend,' she said, softly. 'We will sit board together again. I want that. If there's anything I can do to make that happen, be sure I'll do it.'

He bowed then, perhaps with a bit of energy.

'You have my direction, Theo. I will contact you as soon as I may, if you cannot contact me.'

Theo sighed, and gave him the pilot's salute she'd learned on Melchiza.

'I'm due back on Primadonna,' she said. Chaos! Tranza would think she'd been taken by slavers!

'If you do not return or reply, Sweet Mystery, what shall I assume? That you have decided that my plight is beyond your care?'

She took the question, looked at it advertently, felt the terrors around the edge of it. Carefully, she extended her hand, and took his cold, weak one. He did not withdraw.

'Win Ton. Pilot yo'Vala. Friend. I will reply as soon as I may. If I do not reply it is because the solution is one beyond me, and I've gone—gone for help. Is that acceptable?'

His eyes widened very briefly, and he bowed a stately bow on unsteady legs.

'Pilot's choice, Theo. As I sit your second, it must be acceptable.'

Thirty- Nine

Primadonna

Volmer

'Right.'

Rig stood with arms crossing his chest, noting the board feed Theo was taking from Volmer's orbiting station. She could see him reflected in the screens—a not-unusual thing for her this past year.

'It makes sense to see what they're looking for there, but, Theo, the real action's right there in the bar, right? They got the same feed you got from station and they got bidders and askers looking for work right now. The usual applies, of course—makes sense to get a checkup on the ship if you can, and know the crew if there is one—but here you can find something you can check before lunch and sign before dinner if you need to, and you don't have to pay a fare or pull a favor to get there, and you're not paying for your own air while you wait. Right. Station-waiting can be a big drain on the accounts!'

That made good pilot sense, even if her mood now was to get off-planet as soon as she could. With no need to go to Delgado, no real need to be anywhere except at the board of a ship . . . and coming up with a plan to find her father, of course. And figure out a way to help Win Ton, and Bechimo, if it existed, and for which, she had realized on her ride back to Primadonna, she only had the word of a very ill and perhaps unstable man.

'Guild member to Guild member, Rig, am I reading this right?' She flicked to the screen displaying the new Hugglelans contract.

'Right. See, historically, the whole trip run gets credited to whoever runs the board, with time as PIC. This contract, I think they want to make it so they can keep running to places like Eylot and Tourmalin and—well, these places that want to look at the ship's log for the last ten years and see if you've ever been anywhere they don't like. So see, they'd not mention that you was even on board here at Volmer if they wanted you to be PIC when we got to, say, Tourmalin, who don't hold with trading someplace where the Juntavas is quite so thick on the ground. Thing is, by this contract they could hide that, and once you hide that on the ship records, then it gets pretty easy to hide or steal flight time from pilots, or release it only under seal to the Guild and such.'

'That's what I thought I was seeing, like here—' Theo pulled a second screen live, several sections highlighted in the ugliest pink she could find. 'Which, it looks to me, means they could cut my pay if I'm aboard a ship going to Eylot, by cutting me out of the in-and-out loop there so Eylot Admin wouldn't see my name and number; they wouldn't need to give me full time-in-grade points and—'