Free A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright

year, with the
occasional bad patch. ” He rubbed his
cheek against the hand on his shoulder. “ You ’ re honoured. You ’ re only the second person who ’ s
ever been woken by one. ”
    “ Oh? What sort of
company am I in? ”
    “ One of Avannya’ s juniors. She was in the web
when we hit the EMP-mine. ”
    “ I ’ m sorry. Was she special to you? ”
    “ We only spent the
one night together. She was a nice kid, though. ” Rafe shook his head in remembered grief. “ About Churi ’ s age, and
as plump. Working her way through every cabin in the ship, the way they do when
they ’ ve just got their webs. Making
up for lost time as an apprentice and eager to find out about the fringe
benefits of their new nervous system. Hell, the way I probably behaved when I
first got my web. ”
    “ Churi been in
your bed yet? ” Joshim teased
deliberately.
    “ No. ” Rafe accepted the diversion
gratefully, determined to enlarge on it. “ He
thinks the Commander is in possession, or will be soon. Magred has better
powers of observation. She was backing you. ” He turned to face Joshim completely, slipping one arm around his waist and
tracing the linked circles of the tattoo on his left breast with the fingers of
the other hand. “ Ready to go back to
sleep? ”
    “ You have another
idea? ”
    Rafe grinned mischievously and straddled Joshim. “ I do, ” he promised deep in his throat. “ Lie there and I ’ ll show
you. ”

----
Conversation at the office of
Councillor Danriya Lady Carher
    “The agent is in place, with explicit
instructions to cover every contingency. If all goes well, the problem will be
solved by the end of the year.”
    “You said that last year too.”
    “This time the matter will be handled by the agent in person.
He is in no doubt about the consequences of another failure.”

     

----
227/5043
ARAMAS ZONE, OLD EMPIRE
    Rallya dropped into the seat that Elanis had just vacated
in front of the web-monitor, perfectly aware that he had only risen to collect
a cup of alcad. The monitor showed no unusual activity, just two web-teams in
the last hour of another uneventful shift. Vidar was nominally in the
key-position, with Rafe as second, but they had switched roles for this shift.
Good practice for both teams, and halfway to the convoy’s destination without
incident, everybody needed a little variety to keep them sharp.
    The small screen to one side of the web-monitor showed a
mass-scan of the convoy, the cargoships as fat, lumbering blips and the
patrolships as smaller blips tied to the speed of the cargoships by invisible
chains. The cargoships were complacent; Noromi spent his whole time exhorting
them to make better speed, without results. Having passed safely through the
system’s major jump point, the obvious place for an Outsider attack, the
cargoship Threes had given a collective sigh of relief and dropped their speed,
to settle happily around the optimum of their mass-speed cost curves for the
run down to the settlements on the inner planets.
    Only Sajan, aboard Tariya ,
was showing any sense, and in her position at the back end of the convoy, she
was handicapped in her attempts to gain speed by the ships in front, who wailed
to Noromi whenever Tariya ran up to
their tails. In Noromi’s place, Rallya would have used Sajan to force the
others to increase speed, instead of giving her a warning about convoy formation
whenever the wails became too loud. In fact, she had offered Bhattya ’s services to perform the same
function; a patrolship creeping inexorably up your rear end was a powerful
incentive to accelerate. The hell with Noromi’s veto; if things did not improve
soon, she would do it anyway.
    The view on the small screen altered as Rafe focused on the
large cluster of asteroids in the trojan point of one of the system’s gas
giants, altered again to scan to the limits of Bhattya ’s sensors. He learned well, Rallya thought