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been a game of dress up, for a party. She sensed a line suddenly drawn in the sand at her feet.
    “ No ?”
    “You will either say yes , or you will stay on the ship while I handle this. I have to trust you completely, unquestioningly. Pick. Right now.”
    The last several days were gone, just like that. The last six weeks. The friendship. The comradery. Staying up late and fooling around. Everything.
    Gone.
    Doppelgänger .
    There was no Javier. Only Navarre. Where had he come from? Would she ever see Javier again?
    Already, she missed him.
    “I trusted you with my life,” she said quietly. “My soul.”
    “No. Sykora did that. You were just the result.”
    Huh?
    Wilhelmina thought back to the long conversations with Djamila, over tea, listening to the ancient ship chug through the darkness while Piet and Afia slept. She had missed something. Something critical between those two, Javier and Djamila.
    Lovers in hatred .
    Wilhelmina considered her options.
    The Word conveyed the value of all lives. At its very bottom, the cornerstone of Rama Treadwell’s teachings was the very egalitarian nature of happiness. All beings deserved the freedom to define and obtain happiness on their own terms, in their own way, free from censure.
    Thus had she been taught. Thus had she taught.
    And yet…
    Sophisticates frequently fell into their own logical trap: the Fallacy of Pacifism . They forgot that the Vow of Peace contained within it the promise of violence in defense of others.
    Shepherds of the Word were expected to engage with their words, but they were also equipped to use their hands, if all else failed.
    Wilhelmina looked around the room once, aware that Javier was waiting for an answer. To an outsider, it would look like Hadiiye actively looking for threats to her being. But this was much deeper.
    There were no tourists here. Not in the sense of fat, happy, middle–class travelers on an adventure. That kind did not come to Meehu . Even accidentally.
    Instead, there were kids, folks barely past their teens, who had either run away, or been chased out. There were middle–aged people who had lost it all and had to start over. There were older people trying to hang on to something, facing only a cold and lonely death ahead.
    Very few of the people she could see here probably intended this as their destination, their lot.
    But then, who did?
    Wilhelmina framed the words, passed down from Rama Treadwell and his intellectual descendants a very long time ago, but Hadiiye spoke them aloud.
    “Paladins are men and women of the Sword , Navarre.”
    There. Commitment.
    I will kill people for you, for Djamila, for Sokolov. I will use violence to try to make the galaxy a better place, not by imposing my order upon it, but by using my will to thwart would–be conquerors, bad men, villains.
    Navarre studied her for several moments silently before he drew a breath and nodded.
    For a moment, she saw a depth of pain in Javier’s eyes she had never imagined existed. Something terrible and bitter. Obviously, he was good at hiding things from people.
    Would it better to let it lie, or help him heal? Would he welcome the suggestion?
    A change came over Navarre as he glanced to his right over her shoulder. Subtle, but critical.
    Hadiiye shifted her weight invisibly and let one hand fall off the table to rest close to a blade balanced for throwing, hidden in her right boot top. Something prickled in the air, like the smell of ozone.
    “Captain Navarre?” a man asked carefully.
    Hadiiye looked about, but nobody else was paying attention. She glanced back at the figure.
    Oily, in a slippery way. Well–dressed man in dark pants and matching jacket. Businessman who knew how to wear the suit, instead of the goons at the other restaurant who let the suits wear them. Hair cut short, brown on top and graying on the edges. Conservative and quiet.
    Hard, but in a deadly, accountant kind of way, rather than being a killer.
    Not like her.
    Across the