It was the dim, cool night cycle in the garden where the crew lingered after mess. By the table one of the tall, antlered linangi grazed while Fathema scratched the ridge of coarse fur at its nape. The pond lapped at its banks in the dark. A little lantern flickered on the table to provide a circle of light around them. The meal cleared away, they picked at a bowl of ripe berries as they talked of the day's findings.
"Well, I think we've gotten what we can from here, then," Captain Avda said.
Fathema nodded and Sophine asked her, "How long to our next sun, Temi?"
The Helmswoman looked up from the beast under her fingertips, "If we keep on our course toward the violet sun, less than two days from when we set the sails."
"Anything more interesting on the scopes?" asked Avda.
"I caught sight of those two suns on the far-field. They are so close on the scope, I think they might share a domain." The linang's muzzle bumped Fathema's breast, nipping at her long, loose tunic in irritation. Fathema set her hand back on the nape of its neck, digging into the fur with long, dark fingers.
Avda pushed up from the table and tied her baggy shirt close over her ribs, "I'll set the sails so we can buy a night."
"There's no hurry, Avda," said Sophine, "On a voyage of years, what's a night? Take your leisure."
"I've had leisure enough watching the scopes all these last days. Gainful labor will ease my mind more." She walked away from the table toward the gangway hidden among the tree trunks.
Sophine laughed lightly, "Take care anyway, Cap—."
"Take up arms and search the ship," Avda interrupted imperiously. A few yards beyond her, just inside the ring of the lantern's light, one of the garden's kleptomaniac tree mice was tugging a length of red cloth through the high grass from the direction of the bulkhead. Fathema leapt to her feet and was a black and white blur as she raced out of the garden. The tree mouse abandoned its prize with an irritated chitter.
Avda scooped up the cloth, and Sophine matched her long-legged gait at a stride and a half to each of Avda's. She asked, "What is that, Captain?"
Avda kept her eyes fixed on the door ahead, and explained: "It is a 'scarf.' They are used in arctic climes to keep one's body warm."
Sophine's face flickered with confusion, "You suspect an interloper? And from the arctic?"
"Perhaps."
The crew raced through the labyrinth of the Hutana Van's holds. An hour of searching through empty, untouched corridors cooled the manic energy of their search. They eventually proceeded in careful, methodical paths toward the ship's depths. A nimbus of lantern light followed them, lit and quenched as as they opened new corridors. They rigorously searched each hold: ship's supply storage, personal quarters, training room, meditation bay. They even proceeded down toward the less-used holds deeper down: emergency supply storage, engine room, armory, reliquary and lower, where the holds were cordoned off for disuse.
"We go too far. The tree mice do not range so far afield," Fathema halted them.
"There is the chance that the thing was left here by preparation crews," Sophine said, "This place swarmed for years with Ezwen's-all of Hutana's-best minds."
Avda did not even give the suggestion consideration, "And what is your confidence in that chance, Arbitress?"
"Admittedly low. Below trivial, but compared to the chances of a stow-away?" Sophine assented, "And while she could be hidden forever in the far decks, Fathema is right: we know she is in the pilfering-grounds of the garden's mice."
Fathema nodded.
"But where, then?" Sophine said, "We were able to search the top decks well before we would have given an intruder room enough time to re-position. We know the mice can wriggle their way into the service tunnels, but no one could get in there without the key since the Navy Hazards put them under relic lock."
"What about a sufficiently motivated Hazard, herself?" Avda asked
They both looked to Fathema, best-versed in the operation of the Hutana Van. She nodded. By way of the reliquary, they took up the service tunnels' relic-key and returned to the top-decks.
*
It was after a dozen tunnel doors had been pulled from the stone-wood and gilt walls with the relic-key that Fathema called out the alert. Sophine and Avda tensed in preparation. Avda's hand clenched the hilt of her bright white and gold sword-unwilling to draw it needlessly. Sophine held her needle-thrower close, her fingers at the primer and trigger. Both were a few paces off from the service tunnel's mouth. Where the relic key had dislodged the panel, it was a sharply defined, square cutout in the smooth wood and gold of the wall.
Fathema crawled out back-wise, her practiced muscles as at home on all fours as two. With a final grunting pull, a second unconscious Hutanari tumbled from the tunnel. She fell limply, sprawled out on the huge pack at her back. Clad in crude, careless leather boots, black stockings, shorts and scanty top, she had the small breasts and slim, angular hips and shoulders that bespoke her youth, topped with a shock of oil-matted pink hair-so close to the hue of the captain's-held back by a gilt tiara with nodes of reliquary stone-wood set into it at points.
Fathema flowed to her feet and took up her fighting staff to stand alongside the captain. As she and Sophine looked upon the motionless girl, Captain Avda growled and took her hand from her blade.
She snatched the tiara from the girl's head and asked, "What are you doing here, Rewan?"
The girl, Rewan, was immediately lucid as the relic came free of her scalp. She wiped a glisten of drool from her lip as she leapt to her feet, flashing green eyes taking in the corridor and the ship's crew before her. Her voice was clipped and business-like, "Well, it's earlier that I should've been roused, but," she tugged the red scarf from Avda's hand with a deferential nod and tossed it around her neck to dangle in bright contrast with her aggressively revealing black garb, "But here we are: obviously, Ezwenari Command would not have sent you out into the void without a Hazard to test the relics you will encounter." She chuckled with her statement's self-evidence.
Avda seethed, "What are you doing here, Rewan?"
Rewan held up a staying finger, "Daavi: I'll have you rein in your emotions. Obviously, with all of Hutana's Hazards angling for a place on this ship, you surely can't be surprised that one would be selected and installed in secret."
"Daavi?" Sophine asked, "Do you know this girl, Avda?"
Avda stared at the stowaway for a beat too long to make any convincing denial, "She's my sister."
"Rewan Heller-Guidres," the young Hutanari introduced herself, reaching out a hand to grasp the Arbitress's wrist, "You are Sophine Arbitress." She turned and offered her hand to Fathema, "Helmswoman Fathema Zafri."
Fathema looked to the captain, who-massaging her temples with thumb and middle finger-nodded. Fathema took Rewan's wrist and inclined her head in greeting.
"Well," Rewan continued, "If we're going to hold the formality of an interrogation, might we do so with some food?"
*
Between rambling 'explanations,' the young tunnel-dweller slammed food down her throat as fast as Sophine could prepare it. Avda and Fathema-having slipped into the trim blue and white of their Ezwenari uniforms-picked at the herb-seared poptoes and tufa before them for morning repast. Sophine brought the last batch of the poptoes to the table in the garden. It was the full, warm light of the day-cycle above them and the creatures of the garden were invisible and silent in the shade of the fruit trees. Sophine sat down at the head of the table forming an accidental arbitress's hearing: the accused, Rewan, at her left; her accuser, Avda, at her right; and Fathema at the far end, a witness. All that was missing was the arbitress's golden censer among them.
"Have you lied to an arbitress before, Rewan?" Sophine asked, breaking Rewan's train of thought.
"Of course not, Ma'am." She swallowed the big mouthful of the soft poptoes and firm, sweet tufa.
"And would you make the attempt?"
"Of course not, Ma'am." She held the arbitress's gaze unflinchingly.
"Of course, because if you lied to an arbitress, she mightn't be skillful enough to see through to your true intents and motivations. Then she might misrepresent your interests, mightn't she?"
"Sure." Rewan's eyes clearly calculated the measure of the arbitress before her.
"Good," Sophine smiled at her as a friend, "Then let's have the captain ask her question once more in that light, yes?"
