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Thahl. “You have the ship. I’ll view the orders and briefing in my study.”
    He never called it a cabin; he used it as a study. It was large and sparse, like the apartment he kept on Earth, and, along with the Bridge, the only uncramped space on the ship. Everywhere else was crowded with functionality.
    Without being asked, the screen in his study showed him a digest of his orders and briefing, and he scanned both without surprise. He found, as expected, that they hadn’t repeated the mistake they made at Isis. At Horus—the solar system of Sakhra, Thahl’s home planet—it would be different. He would meet Her alone, as he had always insisted.
    He knew what had happened to the Pallas at Bast, to Copeland’s Wulf at Anubis, and—most recently, and most dramatically—at Isis, where they had sent Ansah. She would be their scapegoat; he knew the outcome of her trial, from Thahl’s voice and from his own instincts. When I form any kind of attachment with people they usually leave, in one way or another. In the privacy of his study his heart nearly broke, a process to which he allotted five minutes; then he spoke into his comm.
    “Thahl, do you have the transcript of Ansah’s trial yet?”
    “Yes, Commander.”
    “Put it on my screen in here, please…Thank you.”
    As the words began to form on his screen, he tried to put pictures in the spaces around and behind them; to imagine what it must have been like for her. Isis trials were inquisitorial, not adversarial, so she would have been facing them alone, without counsel. She would be looking at them with her head slightly cocked to one side, the way she used to look whenever she felt threatened.
     
    •
    She looked at them for a moment, with her head slightly cocked to one side. Then she poured herself a cup of scented tea from the immaculate service of white fluted porcelain set before her—not easy considering the manacles, though even these, in deference to the occasion, were slender bracelets of chased silver. She made the operation last long enough for the Chairman to decide to repeat his question.
    “Commander Ansah, I’m giving you, on record, a second chance to exercise your rights. Think carefully. You’re charged with desertion and cowardice. As a result of these offences….”
    “Alleged,” intoned a lawyer member of the Board.
    “….alleged offences, this city has been subjected to an unprecedented and humiliating attack. Ships have been lost. Crews have been lost. You’ve been told the penalty you face if found guilty. You have the right to refuse to stand trial here on grounds of possible bias and to elect for trial on Earth. You don’t seem to regard that as very important, but I do; more important, for instance, than the dignity of this Board, so I’ll ask you again. Will you elect for trial on Earth?”
    “I’m not interested in where I stand trial.”
    “Unless you formally elect for Earth, it will be here.”
    Ansah shrugged. The Chairman nodded and leaned back.
     
    •
    The next day, Ansah was back in the same room. It was large and formal, almost ballroom size, with a geometric parquet floor, furnishings of red mahogany and buttoned velvet, and watered-silk wallcoverings. As before, she sat in a comfortable keyhole-back armchair, with a circular drum table to one side, set out with a tea service of white fluted porcelain and silver. She faced the same large curving bay window, through which sunlight streamed, silhouetting the figures who sat before her at the long table whose curve matched that of the window. When she had last faced them there were six and they called themselves a Pre-Trial Directions Board. The same six were there, but now there were six more, and they called themselves a Supreme Court. The Supreme Court.
    The trial would be in camera, in view of possible public reaction; it was not even widely known that Ansah was on the planet. Her ship had returned to Earth, with—the story went—her aboard in custody.