Songs of Love & Death

navy and the Infanta if the government had to admit that the citizens of a Hidden World had destroyed a battle group. Better to blame a slightly shady trading vessel commanded by a disgraced Imperial officer. I decided that it couldn’t hurt to clear things up with Mercedes.

I had given her my cabin. It was slightly larger than the crew cabins, and the bed could actually hold two assuming they were friendly. Privacy on ships is the opposite of what one might expect. You’d think that people living in close confines inside a tin can would want the closed door and a private place. Instead I found that crews tended to live in a constant state of togetherness, like a group hug. We walked in and out of each other’s cabins. When we weren’t on duty we played games that involved lots of people. I think it’s because space is so vast, so empty, and so cold that you want the comfort of contact with other living things.

Which is why I just walked in on Mercedes. She was kneeling in front of the small shrine I maintained to the Virgin, and she was saying the rosary. The click of the beads set a counterpoint to the bass throb of the engines, and I was startled when I realized she was using my rosary. But of course she would have to. Hers had been reduced to dust and atoms along with everything else aboard the Nuestra.

She gave me a brief nod, her lips continuing to move, and the familiar prayer just the barest of sound in the room. I sat down on the bed and waited. She wasn’t that far from the end.

I closed my eyes and took the opportunity to offer up a prayer for my father, still laboring away in the tailor shop on Hissilek. A stroke—brought on, I was convinced, by my court-martial and subsequent conviction—had left him with a crippled right leg, but he still worked, making uniforms for the very men who had ruined me. Sometimes it felt like the most personal of betrayals, and I hated him for it, but in more rational moments, I realized that he had to eat, and that he had spent a lifetime outfitting the officers of the Imperial Navy. It wasn’t like he could become a designer of ladies’ fashion at age sixty-eight.

I jumped and my eyes flew open when I felt cool fingers touch my cheek. Mercedes was standing directly in front of me, and so close. She jerked back her hand at my startled reaction. I didn’t want her to take my response as a rejection, so I reached out and grabbed her hand.

“It’s all right; you just startled me,” I said.

While at the same moment she was saying, “I’m sorry. You just had such a hurt and angry look on your face.”

“Memories.” I shrugged. “They’re never a good thing.”

“Really? I have some nice ones of you.”

“Don’t.” I stood up and brushed past her. “All this proves is that the universe is a bitch and she has a nasty sense of humor.”

“We were very good… friends once.”

“Yes, but that was years ago, and a marriage ago.” I couldn’t help it. I looked back, hoping I’d hurt her, and was embarrassed when I realized I had.

But it was hard, so hard. She had married my greatest enemy from the Academy. Honorius Sinclair Cullen, Knight of the Arches and Shells, Duke de Argento, known to his friends and enemies as BoHo. He was an admiral now, too. I touched the scar at my left temple, a gift from BoHo, and his mocking tones seemed to whisper in the throb of the engines. Lowborn scum.

Mercedes sank down on the bed. “We all do what we must. That must be what the people on Kusatsu- Shirane thought.” There was an ocean of grief in her dark brown eyes.

I walked back and sat down next to her. Sitting this close, I could see the web of crow’s-feet around her eyes, and the two small frown lines between her brows. We were forty-four years old, and I wondered if either of us had ever known a day of unadulterated happiness.

“Has it been so bad?”

She looked down at her hand, twisted the wedding set, and finally pulled it off. It left a red indentation like a brand on her finger. “The palace makes sure his affairs are conducted discreetly, and they vet the women to make sure they aren’t reporters or working for political opponents, and thank God there have been no bastards.” She paused and gave me a rueful smile. “Unfortunately, no legitimate children either. If I don’t whelp soon, my father may remove me from the succession.”

There was a flare of heat in my chest. If she wasn’t the Infanta, wasn’t the heir, she could live as she pleased. Maybe even with a tailor’s son. There was also a bitter pleasure in learning that BoHo was sterile.

“But look at you. Captain Belmanor. How did you come by this ship?”

“I won a share of it in a card game. It seemed great at first. Then I discovered how much was still owed on the damn thing. Sometimes I think Tregillis lost deliberately.”

Mercedes laughed. She knew me too well. “Admit it. You love it. You’re a captain, you go where you please, no orders from highborn twits with more braid than brains.”

“Yes, but I wanted to stay in the navy. To prove that one of my kind could be an effective officer.”

There was a silence; then she asked, “Were you guilty?”

“No.”

“I thought not. But the evidence against you was—”

“Overwhelming. Yes. That should always be a clue that someone’s being framed.” I sat frowning, shifting through all the old hurts and injustices.

She hesitantly touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I thought about doing something.”

“So why didn’t you?” And I realized that I was less angry than honestly curious.

“I was afraid…”

“Of—?” She held up her hand, cutting off the rest of my question.

“There would have been whispers.” We sat silent for a few minutes. The memory of the Star Deck returned. “Have you married?” she suddenly asked, pulling me back to the present.

“No. I never met anyone I wanted to marry.”

“Liar.” Her look challenged me. I realized that our thighs were touching, shoulders brushing. Her hair was tickling my ear and cheek. She smelled of sweat and faded perfume and woman.

“Mercedes, I’m… um…”

“You saved my life,” she said softly, and she took my hand and laid it on her breast.

I jumped up and looked down at her. “No. Not because you’re grateful. That would be worse than never having you.”

“You loved me once.”

“I still do.” She had tricked me, and I had said it. I fell back on the only defense and the source of my greatest pain. “And you’re another man’s wife.”

She stood. “Damn your middle-class morality! My life has been bound by expectations, rules, and protocol. I married a man I do not love. I became a military leader because of my father’s frustration over his lack of a son. And now I’ve led my fleet to destruction, and the very thought of me and what I represent has driven the population of an entire planet to commit suicide! But I’m forced to live on with all the loss and regret. Can’t I have one moment of happiness?” The agony in her voice nearly broke my resolve.

She turned away, hiding her tears. I gently took hold of her shoulders. “See if you still feel this way after a night’s sleep. I don’t want to add to those regrets.”

I left before temptation overcame scruples.

WE TOOK THE Selkie out to an area of open space, well away from any planetary bodies in the solar system, and folded. The ports now showed the strange gray filaments, like spiderweb or gray cotton candy, which was the hallmark of traveling past light-speed. I checked the watch implanted in the weave of my shirt. Midafternoon. I decided to check on Mercedes. There was no response to my gentle knock. Concerned, I slipped into the cabin and found her asleep, but there were traces of tears on her cheeks. She murmured disconsolately and her fingers plucked at the sheets. Feeling like a voyeur, I quietly left.

And was caught by Baca, who with unaccustomed seriousness said, “I was thinking about saying a Kaddish for the people, but I realized it was more Masada than Holocaust, and then I had to wonder if it was a righteous choice. To die rather than submit. Is that noble, or is it more noble to survive and persevere? What do you think?”

I looked at this stranger in Baca’s body, and tried to compose an answer. We had stood at the edge of a massive graveyard, and I couldn’t grasp it. All I knew was that this burden of guilt rested on the shoulders of the