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in the Chee system, making one rendezvous after another with asteroids, strapping antimatter-fueled thrusters onto the giant rocks, and sending them on looping courses to Wormhole Station One, where they were used to balance the mass coming into the system on the huge freighters. The task was both dull and dangerous, a risky combination, but the voyage had been successful and the wormhole station wouldn’t need any more raw material for a year or more.
    “Fortunately the mass driver on Chee’s moon is taking over the job of supplying the wormhole stations, “ Severin said, “so we’re available for other duties.”
    “Excellent. Your voyage was uneventful otherwise?”
    “Our skipper’s good,” Severin said. “No one on the trip tore so much as a hangnail.”
    “Do I know him?” Martinez asked.
    “Lord Go Shikimori. An old Service family.”
    Martinez considered, then shook his head. “The name’s not familiar.”
    Marcella returned from the smoking lounge brushing ash from her jacket. Pa and Mukerji arrived with an elderly, fangless Torminel named Lady Uzdil.
    “I seem to be caught up in the game,” Martinez told Severin. “My apologies.”
    “I think I hear music,” Severin said.
    “Enjoy.”
    What did Severin do with himself in his ship’s wardroom? Martinez wondered. He probably couldn’t afford most of an officer’s amusements.
    And judging by his uniform, he couldn’t afford much of a tailor, either.
    Martinez settled in to play tingo. Lady Uzdil seemed to be shedding: the air was full of graying fur. Martinez played conservatively, which meant that he frequently allowed himself to be driven out of a round by Mukerji’s insistent doubling. He held firm when fortune gave him good tiles, though, and managed a modest profit on top of the forty thousand he’d won earlier. Lord Pa did very well, Cassilda well enough, and Lady Uzdil lost a modest amount. It was Mukerji who lost heavily, plunging heavily on one bad venture after another. Though he didn’t run afoul of any limit schemas, and he didn’t lose another High City palace, Martinez calculated that he lost at least the value of a sumptuous country villa— and not one on Laredo, either, but on Zanshaa.
    After two hours Martinez considered that he’d done his duty in giving Mukerji a chance to win his money back, and left the game. Mukerji protested, but Cassilda and Pa were happy with their winnings and left the game as well.
    “I’m glad he doesn’t have any financial control in the Chee Company,” Martinez told Terza later, when he was abed. “Not if he runs a business the same way he gambles.”
    “I’m sure he has no idea whatever of how to run a business,” Terza said as she approached the bed. “That’s what Marcella’s for.” She wore a blue silk nightgown, had bound her long black hair with matching blue ribbon into a long tail that she wore over one shoulder. The look gave her a pleasing asymmetry. Martinez reached out one of his big hands and stroked her hip with the back of his knuckles.
    Their marriage had been arranged by their families, one of Roland’s more elaborate and insistent conspiracies. Martinez felt free to resent Roland’s interference, but he had decided long ago not to resent Terza.
    “What about Ledo Allodorm?” he asked.
    Terza’s almond eyes widened faintly. “You noticed?” she asked.
    “I saw you react to the name. I doubt the others know you well enough to have seen what I did.”
    “Move over. I’ll tell you what I know.”
    Martinez made room on the bed. Terza slipped beneath the covers and curled on her side facing Martinez. Her scent floated delicately through his perceptions.
    “I found out about Allodorm when I was asked to review some old contracts left over from the war,” she said. The Ministry of Right and Dominion, where she was posted, was the civilian agency that encompassed the Fleet, and dealt with issues of contracts, supply, Fleet facilities, budgets, and