people against grasping after the false god of riches and rumors of prosperity, but people rarely considered that such insults could also be stuck to them. Graspers ended up alone and vulnerable in someplace like Birdies, not running a successful orbital-based business. And didn't graspers deserve it, since they'd hidden from their life's Test instead of facing it—unless, as Claire hoped, you could sometimes beg forgiveness to choose your own Test?
She briefly considered asking for a loan from one of her cousins at Birdies and crushed the thought. There would be no certainty she could pay them back any time soon. Besides, the rest of the family might realize she knew that the working girls were holding back on the family. Lucy could be counted on. She still held tight to the anger that had inspired her to leave Burdette Steading, but their mutual cousin Mary occasionally broke down and went back home.
Worse, Mary repented with disturbing regularity and confessed everyone else's sins along with her own. Everyone else usually meant just Lucy, but Claire didn't want to be looped in for those inevitable follow-on rounds of family recrimination.
If Aunt Jezzy had cause to entirely empty Claire's account like the transactions showed, there would be a reason, and it would be neither a cheap reason nor an entirely paid for reason. At least not yet. Of course, her cousin Noah might have found the account and debited it directly himself. Claire gritted her teeth and tried to remind herself that the teenage head-of-household was due his privileges.
Noah had approved her authorization to work outside the home and signed all the renewals without a fuss. Who was she to hold his age against him?
Claire gently laid the uniforms out on the cleaner portions of the work counters and looked for a way to do the hemming herself. An industrial cutter made for materials far tougher than smart fabric made short work of the long tubes, and she gathered up the scraps.
The cut bits had quite a lot of stretch to them; she smiled at the idea of offering them to Lucy to use as a costume in one of her dance routines just to see the laughter in her eyes when she refused them. But Mary would miss the joke and want to do a team routine with Lucy, each with one well-covered ankle. The Birdies Club would bill it as a midshipwoman's uniform, and those boys in the audience would love it.
Claire stuffed the scraps firmly in the waste bin.
* * *
Claire arrived breathless at the XO's wood paneled outer office, answering the summons before the other two officers named in the page. The assistant tactical officer jogged in moments later. He glanced at her and away with a slight pinch to his lips.
“Have you done something wrong recently, I should know about?”
She tried not to clench her teeth as she answered the real question. “I don't know what this is about, Sir.”
Ambling in from the passageway, the Auxiliaries Officer shook out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His tailored gray-green suit matched his eyes and the fabric's undertone brought out the gleam of the silver sprinkling his dark hair. He had definitely been on his way off the ship, dressed in civilian clothes and looking to impress someone. Ephraim held the dubious honor of an extra engineering department billet, the AuxO, created by the Office of Personnel to repair if not prevent the ship's frequent maintenance issues. The AuxO winked at her and playfully punched the ATO on the shoulder.
“Claire's too straight-laced to cause trouble. I bet you the XO just needs something fixed.”
She hoped his prediction was right. She ran through the mental list of potential Navy sins that might warrant XO-level censure: a few sign-offs behind on her qualification studies for ensign (okay, a lot behind), the package in her arms, and the drunk who had mistaken her for Lucy.
The inebriate had apologized to the duty officer yesterday once he'd sobered up, and her cousins carefully kept their blood relationship to her a secret, even from the AuxO who was one of their better tippers.
The sign-offs? Why would the XO start to care about that now?
It had to be the ensign uniforms. Claire risked a glance down that might draw attention to the officer insignia she hadn't earned yet and maybe never would. Could the XO blame her just for having received the package?
Actually, yes, she was pretty sure he could. They would treat it just like