Mel found her ship in the hangar bay where it normally berthed, under repair. It was larger than it looked in comparison to the other ships in the dock, 24 meters or 39 Royal Cubits in length. The crew had reattached the bridge module to the graceful neck for which the Cygnus-class Strike Craft was named. They had also attached a pristine nacelle on the right side. A whole team was still pulling tree branches out of the dismounted port nacelle. No one challenged her as she approached her ship from the rear. She was preoccupied speaking into a slender mouthpiece. "Yes, I've been with Ajax, yes, him," she said. "Yes, a date, don't talk like that, Nopalina already told me what you did… I know, we agreed to share the suite… I gave you until I came back to leave." She made a gesture to cut off the call.
In front of her, a red light flared in the middle of the panel. A metallic voice declared: "State your name."
"Meliboia," she said. "The Pale One. Accuser of the Gods. Emasculator of Computers."
The light turned green. "Welcome, Mel," said a pleasantly soft voice.
"It's good to be back, Cal," she said.
She smiled in relief as she surveyed the interior. There was the storage compartment that held her spare Lorica and a small but select collection of civilian outfits. There were the kitchen and dining area, the lavatory and her bed, just large enough for two. There was the holding cell, really a comfortable and well-lit guest cabin. And there was the footlocker, in the midst of the only space without an evident function.
The footlocker looked like a giant lozenge, almost two-thirds as long as she was tall. She entered a combination in a keypad on one side. The locker opened like a clamshell, with an audible pneumatic hiss. The upper half was an assortment of firearms and their partially intercompatible ammunition and accessories. She gave them only a glance. The lower half held several compartments. She opened the one that was longest and thinnest. At the top was a rolled-up red banner. Beneath it was a leaf-shape short sword in an ornate sheath. At the bottom was an oil lamp and a bust of a god with a split face, one side smiling and the other contorted in a grimace of rage.
She closed the case. On the wall, she hung the banner, which unrolled to reveal an eight-spoked wheel embossed in gold. On top of the case, she laid the sword, the lamp and the effigy. She retreated behind the partition of the cabin. There was a musical hum from the valves as she washed. The cabin dimmed to the soft orange from a strip of emergency lights. When she emerged, she wore only her Cingulum and a hooded mantle. She knelt and lit the lamp, filling the cabin with a red-gold light and a fragrant smoke.
"I am Meliboia, last daughter of Caledon," she said. "I bear the name Khloritia Niobides, Daughter of Grief, the one whom the gods could not destroy. To Janus the Just, Protector of Peace, God of Fate and Fortune, I give this offering. I call upon you to witness my vows."
She lowered the hood as the lamp burned fragrantly. Her platinum and pearl hair irridesced more strongly in the light. Her olive skin appeared even darker. "By the Vow of Amphion the Defender, my father in spirit, I swear: That I will fight for my honor and the glory of my clan; that I will protect my kin and benefactors, and honor my oaths until I am released; that I will kneel with humility in victory and stand with courage in defeat."
She lifted her head. "By the Vow of Sisyphus, the Truth Teller, I swear: That I will give no false witness, either for my friend or against my foe; that I will give no false oath or ill counsel to my benefactors; that I will speak when the weak are wronged by the strong, even against the gods themselves."
She held up the sword, still in its sheath. "By the Vow of Aesclepius the Healer, I swear: That I will do no harm to the child, the mother, the man who has done me no wrong; that I will not dishonor the defeated or defile the dead; that I will confess every broken vow and every sin against my brothers and fellow men, lest I be left uncleansed to the shores of Styx or cast into the cold of Cocytus."
She returned the sword to the assembled shrine. Her mantle fell away as she rose, her arms outstretched. She gave a sigh of release as she continued her exercises, executing the maneuvers of war as a stylized dance. After a time, she knelt and blew out the lamp. The cabin lights turned on immediately. "Now," she said, turning to the closet, "what in the Nine Hells am I going to wear?"
As evening approached, Ajax still sat in his VIP quarters, fretting. He absent-mindedly gave approval when someone buzzed for entry. He was surprised to see Lady Daffodil. He was all the more surprised to see her in a halter top and workout shorts. "My Lady," he said. "I… thought you would have Hector escorting you."
"Oh, you!" she said. "You're like my big brother!" She walked right past the leather chair in which he sat and flopped down on his bed. She bounced twice before sitting up.
"Of course," Ajax said, trying not to sound sad. "Did you need any help?"
"I'm checking on you, silly," she said. "Everyone says you've been down all day. So what's going on? You know you can talk to me…"
"Lady Meliboia says she wishes to break the pact of courtship," he said. "She agreed to wait until tonight to decide."
Daffy returned his gaze. It took a moment to realize that she looked at him expectantly. "So?" she finally said. "That's it?"
Ajax shook his head. "She has already done a great deal for me," he said. "I do not wish to lose her, but I do not know what I can do to change her mind…" He looked at Daffy in surprise as she laughed.
"Come on," she said. "First, breaking off is only the end if you let it be. Don't you remember how many times I dumped your brother? Second, women don't change their minds the way guys do. We take time to figure things out, if we need to. A lot of the time, we don't. When Hector picked me up for our first date, I knew he was going to be my one and only. I just had to polish him up a bit. All you need to do is show a lady you can learn." Only then did her expression grow more serious. "But then it's not about her, is it?"
"It is not as people think," Ajax said finally. "I have wished Lady Pruna nothing but happiness. I know she would wish me nothing less. But I still failed her when she needed me. That, I cannot forget."
"Okay," Daffy said. "Then what? You think she doesn't think about it? I still talk to her, you know. Everybody does, except you. Yeah, you really hurt her. She needed a lot of time to deal with it. But the rest was your idea, not hers."
Daffy rose from the mattress. "But that's the past," she said. "Right now, you have got to get into something new, because I have a lot riding on this." She picked up a phone and started to dial. As Ajax looked back to the mirror, he glimpsed just for a moment a jet of blue-white flame.
"What was that?" he asked with some concern.
"What was what?" Daffy said. "Room service, get me the concierge…" As she spoke, a thin tendril of smoke wafted from between her lips.
An hour later, Nopalina picked up the phone at the penthouse. "Yeah, I'm still here," she said. "I straightened up a few things, like you asked. No, I'm not busy… Sure, I'll come over." Her dress reformed as she rose to leave.
"Come on," a voice called out behind her. "We don't have to do what she says. Can't you stay a while?"
She looked back. "Would you be asking me if she was taking you back?" she said. She scowled as she walked out.
She found Mel on the floor of the spaceship, crying. She gave only a sidelong glance at the shrine. The woman with platinum and pearl hair held up her fantastical one-piece pant suit. "This," she said, wiping away her tears. "This is the first thing Ajax saw me in!"
Nopalina considered the outfit, and others like it in the closet and scattered on the floor. "Yes, you haven't exactly been collecting practical evening wear," she said. "Then again, you don't exactly have the figure for a ballroom gown, do you?" She looked at the Lorica, then at the shrine. "We're going to have to improvise."
Meliboia was stopped three times by security. The third time, she would have turned back if Cerasa had not been there to vouch for her. "My," she said, "this is… different."
"We threw a few things together," Nopalina said.
Mel was dressed in her Cingulum and the inner layers of her Lorica. Anyone familiar with the design could have picked out the components. A lamellar inner cuirass and two shoulder pads covered her upper torso. Below, she wore knee-high boots with clog-like soles designed as shock absorbers. Her thighs were covered in what looked like stockings, on examination translucent scale mail. Two more lines of lamellae overlaid the lacing of the Cingulum on either side of her abdomen, without concealing an ovoid window that stretched from below her navel to just short of her sternum. It all served to draw the eye to her pelvis, where a set of greaves that could be called a skirt hung lazily from her hips. Cerasa herself went through the inventory. She finally spoke when her eyes came to Mel's right hip. "Did you have to bring the sword?" she asked.
"It makes a statement," Nopalina said.
"Yes," Mel said. "Get out of my way, or get the sword."
They boarded an elevator that would take them to a boarding area for Xaja's overnight aerial tour. As it rose, Mel asked, "Any more trouble with Kiv?"
"We got his stuff packed," Nopalina said. "We… might be married now. He said it's a Myrmidon thing."
"Oh," Mel said. The Maiden's cheeks reddened. "That's Kiv."
The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Before them were Hector, Daffodil and Ajax. "My Lord," Meliboia said instinctively. Nopalina only gaped.
Ajax stood before them in the full attire of a Greek warrior, complete with a crested helmet. "My Lady," he said with a bow.
"Dammit dammit dammit," Mel muttered through gritted teeth. "He's good…" Then she took his extended hand as she stepped through the door.