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and the other. I saw her tip. “I’ve never… Fleet Captain, I don’thave any experience with this.” Trying very hard not to let her voice shake. She’d never dealt with ancillaries before, I was the first she’d ever had in her medical section. Ship had told her what to do, with me.
    And I was hardly typical. “Not many do. Putting them in is routine, but I can’t think of anyone who’s had to take any
out
. Not anyone who cared about the condition of the body once they were done. But I’m sure you’ll manage. Ship knows what to do.” Ship was saying as much to Medic, at that moment. “And I’ll help.”
    Medic looked at Tisarwat—no, Anaander Mianaai—tied down to the table, no longer struggling with the restraints, eyes closed. Looked, then, at me. “Sedation,” she began.
    “Oh, no. She has to be awake for this. But don’t worry, I choked her pretty badly, a few minutes ago. She won’t be able to scream very much.”
    By the time we finished and Tisarwat was unconscious, dosed as heavily as was safe with sedatives, Medic was shaking, not entirely from exhaustion. We’d both missed lunch and supper, and tired and increasingly anxious Bos were passing the entrance to Medical in ones and twos on increasingly flimsy pretexts. Ship refused to tell anyone what was happening.
    “Will she come back?” asked Medic, standing, trembling, as I cleaned instruments and put them away. “Tisarwat, I mean, will she be Tisarwat again?”
    “No.” I closed a box, put it in its drawer. “Tisarwat was dead from the moment they put those implants in.”
They
. Anaander Mianaai would have done that herself.
    “She’s a
child
. Seventeen years old! How could anyone…” She trailed off. Shook her head once, still not quite believing even after hours of surgery, of seeing it with her own eyes.
    “I was the same age when it happened to me,” I pointed out. Not
I
really, but this body, this last one left to me. “A little younger.” I didn’t point out that Medic hadn’t reacted this way to seeing me. That it made a difference when it was a citizen, instead of some uncivilized, conquered enemy.
    She didn’t notice it herself, or else was too overwhelmed just now to react. “Who is she now, then?”
    “Good question.” I put away the last of the instruments. “She’ll have to decide that.”
    “What if you don’t like her decision?” Shrewd, Medic was. I’d rather have her on my side than otherwise.
    “That,” I answered, making a small tossing gesture, as though casting the day’s omens, “will be as Amaat wills. Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you’ve eaten and slept.”
    “Really?” she asked. Bitter and challenging.
    “Well, not necessarily,” I admitted. “But it’s easier to deal with things when you’ve had some rest and some breakfast.”

4
    In my quarters, Kalr Five, disquieted by the day’s events but of course expressionless, had my supper waiting for me—a bowl of skel and a flask of water, common soldier’s mess. I suspected Ship had suggested it to her but didn’t query to confirm that suspicion. I’d have been content eating skel all the time, but it would have distressed Five, and not only because it would have deprived her of the opportunity to filch tastes of non-skel delicacies, a cherished perquisite of serving the captain or the officers in the decade room.
    While I ate, officerless Bo halfheartedly, nearly silently, scrubbed their allotment of corridors, still spotless as it had been this morning, but part of the day’s routine and not to be neglected. They were tired and worried. Judging from their sparse chatter, the consensus was that I’d abused Lieutenant Tisarwat so harshly she’d become sick. There were some grumbles of
no different from the last one
. Very carefully referentless.
    Bo One, decade senior, checked their work, reported to Ship that it was complete. And then said, silently, fingers