Heir-Disinherited Tomasz Ostrick

The Ostrick-Vandermeyr duel-debt is one of the longest honor-debts on the Confederacy rolls. Tomasz's great-grandfather lost a foundry duel and signed the standard hereditary forfeit: the senior Ostrick line gives up its primogeniture for as many generations as the Vandermeyr line has heirs to enforce it. The Vandermeyrs have had heirs every generation since.

Tomasz was born expecting to inherit. At sixteen the family lawyer told him the chair would pass sideways to a cousin, and that the Settled In Blood, his grandfather's siege gunner, was the most the senior line would ever give him. He took the ship and the brass collar of a disinherited heir, which is a real designation with its own protocol. He works the Vandermeyr border at long range. He has not crossed it outside authorized fleet actions. He has filed every grievance the protocol allows, and he attends their ceremonies in dress uniform. He is waiting for the line to fail to produce an heir. He has been waiting forty years. He has time.