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corpse. “Belay that,” he ordered. “His Lordship has doffed his mortal coil.”
    James’ face screwed up again, but via sheer willpower he forced his expression back to normal. Then he turned to me. “By tradition,” he explained, “an exceptionally loyal and beloved family retainer removes the dead Lord’s ring. Will you do my father this one last service, David?”
    For the first time since I didn’t know when, I bowed deeply and formally. “Of course, sir. I’m honored.” Then I hesitated. “Now?”
    He nodded. “Now.”
    The ring slid off surprisingly easily. It wasn’t bad at all after removing poor Jenkins from the survival bubble. Because it seemed to be the right thing to do, and because I meant it, I lifted milord’s hand and kissed it afterwards. No one seemed to mind.
    James accepted the ring and bowed three times to milord’s corpse. Then he slipped the emblem of nobility into his pocket. “I’ll hold this for my brother,” he declared
    “Of course you will,” Sir Leslie declared loudly. “And I’ll keep you safe to get it to him. Just you wait and see!” He smiled and patted James on the back. “Now, we’ll settle you into my cabin and get a nice pallet set up for your footman in the galley—”
    Suddenly James’ eyes went hard and he twisted out of Captain Blaine’s grasp. “David Birkenhead is not my footman and never will be!” he declared. “He’s a free Rabbit. Father manumitted him, you see! And he’ll not be treated as a slave! David saved our lives!”
    The captain’s jaw dropped. “I… But…”
    “You’ll treat him exactly as you would anyone else closely associated with my family!” James ordered. “Or else you’ll learn that I inherited more from my father than just his surname!”
     

11
    At first, I couldn’t see all that much difference between being a free Rabbit and an enslaved one—instead of a pallet in the kitchen, I got one in the captain’s cabin on the floor alongside James. But after the first couple nights, once James recovered a little from the shock of watching his father die, he and I started trading off night-and-night. It was his idea and he absolutely insisted on going through with it. I was surprised at the result. Once the captain found out what was going on a spare bunk appeared out of nowhere.
    James and I spent all our time together in the cabin. This wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been because the terminal there had unlimited access to the ship’s computer systems. No one ever figured out that I knew how to access vital systems, so we boys spent most of our time watching the upcoming battle develop. The maneuvering was terribly complex and drawn out because so many possibilities arose out the combination of Hummingbird ’s superb turn of speed and the numerous hyper-points scattered all about Marcus Prime’s solar system. Even five days into the chase we were still capable of hitting four different translation points directly, plus we could gravity-sling to two others. Only the fact that we’d heard the first officer talk about passing near a cruiser told me that we were going for Point Five—eventually, that was, after misdirecting as many other ships as possible. One of the enemy’s light cruisers had suffered an engineering failure and was crawling for Five at very low speed; I predicted to James that this was the cruiser in question and he refused to bet against me. We probably could’ve gotten away clean, save that Captain Blaine had poured on full emergency power for ten long minutes in order to match courses with the dying Broad Arrow. This had warped a core rod, something which couldn’t be repaired short of a shipyard. Still, we were the fastest thing in the sky. Which was just as well, because by then there wasn’t another king’s vessel left in local space.
    Finally about the sixth day I got to where I couldn’t stand being cooped anymore; Captain Blaine had quit visiting us after seeing me lying in his