"How long do we need to wait for your deepnavigator?" Virid Hessh asks, the first day, putting down the third and final box of her belongings on the deck.
"We have no deepnavigator," Ion Twelve Horizon says. "The ship has an indwelt mechself."
"Sorry," Virid Hessh says reflexively, in the vague direction of the ceiling, then to Ion Twelve Horizon, "how did you manage to steal a mechself?"
"It didn't have one at the time."
Virid Hessh abortively begins to ask several questions in a row, with a little pause between each attempt, face darkening and darkening.
"Mechself indwelt-ship is an illegally self-extended office mechself," Ion Twelve Horizon says succinctly.
"Are you deranged?" Virid Hessh says loudly. "An office mechself? Can it even fly? What if its self-extension goes wrong and it kills us all?"
Technically, I am a municipal maintenance servo mechself, mechself indwelt-ship chirps them cheerily. I am familiar with self-driving operation! And all of the people I have killed so far have been bad people, and the Ink-Coloured Mouse told me to!
"Suffering eternal," Virid Hessh says, even louder, and the baby complains back at her. "No. Hush," she says, frowning but quieter. "Who is this Ink-Coloured Mouse—"
"I am," Ion Twelve Horizon says, sharp and annoyed, rocking her child.
"Oh, just what the Apparat needed, more names," Virid Hessh sneers. "You're a Mouse, and she's a Spider. What am I, then? Can I be the Earwig in the Dark?"
"You can be argumentative," Ion Twelve Horizon says. "Be useful; I must help plot our deepnavigation. Change the baby."
"Never hand me a baby, Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says, tucking her hands behind her and sticking her chest out in refusal. "I won't do it."
The Spider in the White Steel Palace enters the cockpit, miming stamping her feet as hard as is possible while still walking silently, casts a searing glance as much in Virid Hessh's general direction as is possible without raising her eyes above the level of Virid Hessh's knees, takes the baby from Ion Twelve Horizon, and returns to the rear compartment of the ship.
"Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says ominously, after a long pause. "Who is she."
"Leave her alone," says Ion Twelve Horizon, and turns away to do inscrutable deepnavigation tasks with a furious intensity that oversells how much attention they really require.
"Why haven't you named the baby yet," Virid Hessh says, the second day.
"I will simply visit the office of the nearest Paramanuensis and register the name," Ion Twelve Horizon says bitterly, seated in the cockpit, gently playing with her child's grabbing hands.
"All right," Virid Hessh allows quietly. "Can you really not call him at all, until then?"
"That's not how it's done."
Virid Hessh purses her lips. "All right," she says finally, sounding more as though she knows she cannot win an argument against the weight of the Apparat than anything is really right about it.
"Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says quietly, the third day. The mechself is completing the last few hours of deepnavigation to their next destination; all of them are in the rear compartment, Ion Twelve Horizon feeding the baby, the Spider in the White Steel Palace sleeping in one of the bunks.
Asleep, she looks even younger, chalk white, bruise-dark carved deep beneath each eye. She sleeps curled tight around herself, as if to ward off the cold, or fend off blows.
"Leave her alone," Ion Twelve Horizon says wearily.
"Why is she even here," Virid Hessh says, looking down at her, mouth flattened into a line.
"Because helping me burned her life down to nothing," Ion Twelve Horizon says.
"There are other places. Just set her ashore with some money—"
"Every penny we spend is hers. I ran with barely even my skin."
Virid Hessh covers her face with her hands. "One criminal mechself, one stolen ship, one legal liability fugitive Apparat, and whatever is left of a child's life savings," she says through them. "Am I missing any of our assets?"
"Virid Hessh," says Ion Twelve Horizon.
"Oh, good," says Virid Hessh.
"One baby."
"No more good news, thank you."
Virid Hessh visits someone she knows from a long, long time ago. Ion Twelve Horizon stays on the ship, visibly sickened by the de facto continuation of her imprisonment; Virid Hessh insists on taking the Spider in the White Steel Palace.
"She's the bankroll, she may as well see what she's buying," she says.
The girl sits silently and watches her haggle and wheedle, over body armour and personal weapons, combat medical kits, certain software and insystem enhancements.
"Sergeant, you're robbing me," her old friend says eventually, grinning, and they shake on the deal, and he only looks sideways a little and doesn't say anything when the unspeaking girl is the one to pay.
It will take a little while for the goods to be delivered to the ship. Virid Hessh diverts the girl with a hand on her arm, and sits her down with tall, flavoured drinks full of crushed ice in front of them at a street café.
"Song Aloft is probably going to get us killed," she says to her, matter-of-factly. "She is a high Apparat, and she is very clever, and very brave, and Parahandrar is hers by right and her own personal playground since she was old enough to remember it. Nonetheless, her opponent is a fully empowered Apparat, a high Paramanuensis, Five Arc Rising. Her husband. In full control of the shipyard, and all their combined assets, and legally able to speak for her so long as he doesn't admit she's missing, which naturally makes our Song Aloft an imposter by law. How would we prove otherwise? And the moment it suits him, he can instead declare her newly kidnapped, which makes us her abductors, and how would we prove other than that? This is a fool's errand, and we are fucked."
"Then why are you here," the Spider in the White Steel Palace says, stubbornly disdainful, not looking directly at her.
"No," Virid Hessh says patiently, "why are you."
"No," the girl says back, refusing to touch even her drink, because Virid Hessh bought it for her.
She covers her face. "Listen," she says, and uncovers it again. "I have principles. Not good ones, maybe, not very consistent. I can't always give a good account of what exactly they are, even to myself. But some I'd die for. This is principle, you understand?"
The Spider in the White Steel Palace tightens her jaw, as if Virid Hessh and all her principles are entirely dubious.
"Among my principles is an aversion to seeing other people die, if they seem too young, or too innocent, or too harmless, or as if it's basically not their business they're dying for," says Virid Hessh. "I can take it from here. She's not on her own. You can cash out."
The Spider in the White Steel Palace looks at her, finally, right in the eyes. "No," she says, and stares like she can bore a hole right through Virid Hessh's face with her gaze and leave her a cooked corpse.
"This is the worst job ever," Virid Hessh says glumly, sucks ice slush through her straw, and immediately gives herself brain freeze.
