Squadron Leader Elkizer scuttled toward Fleet Commander Enderby and slammed to a halt, his upper body thrown back to bare his throat for the killing stroke.

Kill me if you so desire, my lord: that was the service’s ideal of subordination.

Elkizer’s entourage—Martinez wanted to use the wordpack — imitated their superior. Standing at attention, they came up to Enderby’s chin, with bodies the size of a very large dog.

“As you were, lords,” Enderby said amiably, then engaged Elkizer in a discussion about whether one of Elkizer’s cruisers would be out of dock in time for the Great Master’s death—and Enderby’s own suicide, of course. This was complicated by the fact that no one knew when the Great Master’s death would come, though everyone was reasonably certain it would be soon.

“Leave nothing undone,” Enderby said to Martinez after the warm-blooded reptiles went on their way. “You won’t mind some extra work helping me with my preparations?”

“Of course not, my lord.” Which meant, damn it, that his meeting with Warrant Officer Amanda Taen would have to be postponed.

“We don’t know the day,” Enderby said, “but we must be ready when it comes.”

Martinez felt a sodden, drizzling cloud of gloom press on his skull. “Yes, my lord,” he said.

Enderby’s office had a soft, aromatic scent, something like vanilla. It occupied the southeast corner of the Commandery, with a curving window that made up two walls. The magnificent view included the limitless, brooding expanse of the Lower Town, and above, Zanshaa’s accelerator ring—the thin arc of brilliant sunlit silver that cut across its viridian sky and circled the entire planet.

But Enderby had always been indifferent to the sight. His desk faced away from the huge window, toward the interior of the Commandery, and beyond it to the nearly empty Great Refuge of the Masters, where his duty lay.