“Redana? Recruiting? Ugh, no thank you.” Vasilia pulled a sour face. “We’ve enough trouble already with the hoplites, can you imagine five hundred of them? We’d have a mutiny or an example on our hands, and neither helps us go any faster.” She sank deeper into her chair, posture crumbling under the weight of a thousand unjust slights. “I can’t fight my own crew every step of the way. Unity, expertise, rhythm, we can work all of that out, but I simply can’t do a thing if they’ve already decided to be difficult.”

“If it were up to me,” Dolce tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Everybody who’s here would want to be here. In space, on a long trip, on this trip, with these people...” He looked out into the dreaming distance, and smiled at what he saw. “They ought to want to be here.”