Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach Page B

she was the first woman ever to receive a royal knighthood. I wrote a paper about her in school. They used to call her ‘the sword you never see.’ A perfect namesake for a blade that retracts.”
    Nova’s pale eyebrows shot up. “Are all your weapons named after famous Paradoxians?”
    I pulled Elsie back with a laugh. “I wish. I was never that good at history. Mia’s called Mia because I liked the sound of it, and Sasha was my grandmother’s name.”
    Nova bit her lip. “You named your gun after your grandmother?”
    “Yep,” I said, checking Elsie’s sheath to make sure my new baby had gone in snugly, which she had. “She was so proud when I told her that she bought me a whole crate of ammo blessed by the king’s monks.” I still had a clip left, actually, stowed in my armor case along with the pictures my mother had sent of my sister and her family. You can guess which one I looked at more.
    “Come on,” I said to Nova, flipping down my visor. “We’ve got an hour before takeoff. Let’s go get a drink and scare some Terrans.”
    “But I don’t drink,” Nova protested as I pushed her along. “And I’m Terran.”
    “You can spectate then,” I said. “Come on, this will be fun.” And if we were quick, we’d be off-planet before the Wuxian cops could give me a ticket for wearing my suit.
    Nova didn’t look convinced, but I was already escorting her through the lounge to the cargo bay steps. The cook was sitting at the table prepping a pile of vegetables for dinner. Nova said hello to him, but I kept my mouth shut and my eyes down, using my suit to track him just to be sure he was keeping his promise not to stare. It wasn’t perfect, but as far as I could tell he kept his eyes on the leaves he was mincing like he was trying to turn them into powder, and that was good enough.
    We left Wuxia with minimal fanfare. As usual for the Fool , the cargo bay was empty, but if Rashid was worried by the lack of actual trading aboard Captain Caldswell’s trade ship, he didn’t comment. He didn’t comment on anything, actually. He was unfailingly polite, but he kept to himself, though not to his room. He followed me on patrol while we were waiting our turn to use the Wuxia gate, but the moment we entered hyperspace, he’d taken off his armor and installed himself on the opposite side of the lounge couch from the captain’s daughter with Mabel’s fat cat snoring on the cushion between them.
    This didn’t seem to bother Ren at all, but though I still wasn’t looking at the cook directly, I could tell it bothered him. He was glaring at Rashid so hard I could feel it through my suit, but Rashid paid him no mind. He just sat there reading on his handset, never bothering the captain’s daughter, never crowding her, and never speaking unless spoken to. He stayed that way all through the jump, and while I thought it was a little odd, he wasn’t doing any harm, so I quickly moved on to other, more important things, like seeing just how much metal my new blade could slice through.
    By the time I’d pinned it down to six inches of industrial steel, exactly as the brochure promised, Basil was announcing our exit from hyperspace. That surprised me. Last I’d heard we were headed for the Aeon Sevalis, which was a lot farther away than the hour and a half we’d spent in hyperspace. I couldn’t see a thing from down in the empty cargo bay where I’d been doing my cutting, though, so I pulled my new baby back into her sheath and trotted up the stairs to see what I was in for.
    The answer seemed to be snow. We’d come out of hyperspace in orbit around a small planet that shone blindingly white in the light of its distant sun. Looking down through the lounge windows, I tried to spot the cities, but I couldn’t see so much as a shadow through the thick clouds that swathed the planet like a waxy coat. The heavy atmosphere hid everything from mountains to seas, leaving only smooth whiteness, like a pearl floating