Chapter 23: Chief of Anchors

The Council gave me a title the next morning, in the same chamber.

The Speaker read it from the dais.

I stood in the middle of the pale floor and listened to my own name.

"Vesper Hargreave. The Council creates the Corps of Anchors to replace the dissolved Office, and names you its first Chief."

The gallery rose.

I did not know where to put my hands.

"The Corps will have one law," the Speaker said. "An anchor chooses her commander."

She looked over the gallery.

"Nobody is assigned. Nobody is drawn by lot."

"And the scale?" I said.

"Yours begins where the old one ends. The engineer has agreed to build it."

She almost smiled.

"We are calling it the storm scale, until someone thinks of a better name."

"The engineer will want a raise," Caspian murmured beside me.

"The engineer will get one," said the Speaker, who had very good ears.

The mess hall on the Meridian had never been so loud.

Somebody had found a roast again.

Nobody could explain it.

Dax sat at the head of the long table with his arm in a sling and a crown of ration foil on his head.

He had been working on a speech for three days.

"I would like it known," he said, standing, "that I got shot, I opened the channel and I toppled an Admiral."

"Sit down, Dax," said the pilot.

"And I am still the funniest officer on this ship."

"I will not sit down," Dax said.

"Sit down and drink," said the pilot.

He sat down and drank.

The gunnery chief came around the table with something folded in his huge hands.

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