They had all stopped talking when Antaea entered the room.

Even now she felt eyes on her back, though of course, nobody would have the courage to actually approach her.

She took a bigger drink of the champagne, and was just regretting not having started in on it earlier when the doors to the lounge opened and a new knot of officials sailed in. They caught various discreet straps and guide ropes and glided to a unified halt just as the distant drone of the ship's engines changed in tone.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said a bright young thing in a sequined corset and diaphanous harem pants, "we've arrived."

There was a murmur and polite applause; Antaea turned back to the window. As her hand felt for the railing, it fell on someone else's. "Oh!"

"Excuse me." The voice was a deep, commanding rumble. It came from a man with the craggy features of an elder statesman and silver hair tied back in a short tail. He was dressed in a silk suit of a red so dark it was almost black. He seemed quite relaxed in the company of so many powerful people; but his accent pegged him as a foreigner.

He'd shifted his grip and she put her hand on the rail next to his. Only then did she notice that they were still the only ones at the window; everyone else was listening attentively to the government delegation. Of course they were. They couldn't very well ignore their hosts.

The rope that their ship had been following through the weightless air of Virga ended at a beacon about a mile ahead. This was a heavy cement cylinder with flashing lamps on its ends. Right now their flickering light was highlighting the rounded shapes of clouds that would otherwise have been invisible in the permanent darkness. Without the rope and the beacon, it would have been impossible for any ship to find this particular spot in the thousands of cubic kilometers of darkness that made up Virga's sunless reaches.