We waited on the path like long-haulers with skippers too cheap to pay the docking fees. Another couple in brown passed us by, an older woman and a young man, their hands intertwined, rubies glittering at their cuffs and in their hair. No petitioners, those.

  On the blue-and-gold plaza, servants sauntered by with trays of colorful foods. The foods were in shades that matched the servants' attire. A woman in red shirt and thighs passed bearing a tray of canapes topped with bright red cherry tomatoes, dark pinkish salmon rolls, fried beet cutlets. A man walked by, dressed in black and green and carrying what looked like rye bread, dark, smoked cheese, tiny dried sausage, and cloves of black garlic.

  I was about to ask Riina about it when Ardon returned. His bow was marginally less deep. If this continued, he'd be nodding his head from on high by the time we got out.

  "I have found you a patron," he said.

  Riina's answering bow was deeper. Gratitude, or an indication of debt? I should have read the brief, but I'd fallen asleep at the com, and then it had beeped, warning me that it was time to land the Bucket, robbing me of the time to read. Lost chances and departed ships, no sense in wishing; they never returned.

  Riina led me to the edge of the plaza then pointed to a row of low-backed seats beneath a red-leafed tree.

  "Wait there," she said. "You won't be bothered, I think."

  "You think?" I whispered. The seats looked comfortable, and not being bothered by men with huge guns sounded like a good idea.

  "It depends on whom our patron is," she said. "Some of the parties have enemies."

  Which made me doubly inclined to sit down and not be bothered. I wished for my mageshield, which lay on my bunk in the Bucket, together with my Hurmer sub-machine gun, and my Mino M3, which should have been the gun riding on my right hip instead of the antiquated monstrosity poking out past my knee. The Dromoni gun even made it hard to sit.

  In the plaza, a crudmunging strange dance went on. Two rows of young men shuffled sideways, then back. Slide, slide, step. Slide, slide, step in the other direction. They looked ridiculous, like trees trying to walk, with all that brown and black clothing, but they seemed very intent. The music was soft, slow, relaxing. Lots of strings, accompanied by muted chimes and the occasional twang of a steel guitar. Pretty good. I'd have to grab some recordings before we left Dromond.

  One of the men on the other side of the line suddenly broke away, clomping out of line to listen to his com. He started talking animatedly but quietly into it, gesticulating with his hand, while slowly backing up. His hand wove figure eights in the air, making the yellow stones on his cuffs sparkle. Strange way to be talking.

  The man bent over his com, taking another step back, apparently oblivious to the line of dancing men with their backs to him. Slide, slide, step. His contorted posture stuck his gun out at an unnatural angle behind him. Slide, slide, step went the dance line. Step went the com-talker. It looked wrong, standing so awkwardly. Almost like he was trying to trip the man behind him with the barrel of his gun. Voidmunching idiot. That's the way people got accidentally friendly fired.

  Slide, slide-

  "Hey!" I called, reacting with my gut before my mind had time to intervene.

  The two men at the very end of the line jerked to a halt, the rightmost's gun mere centimeters from the outstretched gun of the com-talker.

  Com-talker froze, his gun barrel quivering. Must have been mighty uncomfortable, holding your entire weight on one leg and trying to make it look casual.

  The rightmost dancer paled, his Adam's apple bobbing. He was young, maybe eighteen or twenty years old, a kid on the verge of being an adult. The man beside him, a big, older grunt, glared at the com-talker.

  "Why, my dear Master Saradon," the com-talker said, straightening and turning. "Fancy meeting you here."

  His words couldn't quite mask his rage, and his shallow bow was jerky and curt. The young dancer took a careful step back, pressing his own gun barrel tight to his leg with his hand. His companion, a hulk of a man more fit to be an assault marine than a dancer, kept glaring.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The com-talker retreated, giving me a stare that would have stripped the color off an electroplated hull. I'd known Syndicate pirates that stared like that when making up their minds whether to kill you or skin you alive. Lucky that we were leaving soon. If com-talker had any sort of power, it would make staying voidmunchingly sticky.

  The young dancer waited until com-talker had passed by my seat, then approached.

  "I owe you a debt, Master..." his voice trailed off. Belatedly, I realized that he was waiting for me to supply my name.

  "Jakob," I said with a smile. Jakob. Not such a bad name, really. Except that it didn't fit me. I'd gotten used to Jake. Tough. I could be Jake again when we left.

  "I am Saradon," the young dancer said. I lifted my fist for a bump, and he stared at it. Big brute shifted forward, as if waiting for me to make a threatening move so he could smash me.

  "I see," said Saradon. "A Galactic. We do things a bit differently on Dromond." He made a fist and touched my knuckles gently to his.

  "How do you do it?" I said, genuinely puzzled. Fist-bumps were the thing on every planet and station I'd ever been to. It's how you dealt with people.

  But Saradon held out his hand, flat palm vertical in front of his body, and I mimicked his motion, holding my hand low and in front. Saradon touched his palm to mine, then wrapped his fingers around my hand. After a moment, I did the same, and he lifted and dropped our clasping hands. His palm was moist.

  "Not so difficult," Saradon said.

  "Requires practice, I think," I replied, which got me a wry twitch of the lip from the brute behind him. I held out my open palm to the brute. His grin disappeared.

  "Traz is my protégé," Saradon said.

  Being an ignorant Galactic, I decided to abuse my position and Riina's orders to shut up. Besides, what could go wrong? People love talking about themselves.

  "What does that mean?" I said.

  The question floored Saradon. He rolled his eyes skyward, opened and shut his mouth, did a low whistle. I might as well have asked what gravity was or why fish swam.

  "Traz," Saradon said, "Is in my care. He is my responsibility. Any act he commits, I commit."

  That sounded like a high-minded sort of thing, and nothing at all like what I was seeing. I'd have pegged Traz as a bodyguard, and Ardon's young woman with the violet eyes as a secretary or a very private sort of secretary. Or both.

  "You make it sound like you're his parent," I said.

  "In part," Saradon answered, without apparent irony. "Protégés give up a measure of their responsibility when they sign away their life."

  "They what?" I said.

  "Sign away their life," Saradon repeated. "You didn't think we took free people against their will?"

  Which was exactly what I thought. Slaves were slaves, no matter what you called them.

  "So a protégé can walk away whenever they want?" I said, just to make sure.

  "It would be a great shame," Saradon said. "Unless it was into service to a master of higher standing, in which case it would be a shame to the protégé's previous master, and a boon to the protégé himself. Of course, it would mean blood between the masters, and likely their parties as well."

  The way Saradon's hand went to his ridiculous gun, I could imagine what type of blood it would be. Duels weren't unheard of in the universe. Stupid way to resolve conflict, though. If you wanted someone dead, you shot them in the back, then ran for it before their friends found you. Dueling was a way of showing how crudmucking stupid you could be, and still survive, hopefully.

  I was about to say so, but Riina saved my hull by returning with a middle-aged woman in a very tight-fitting black dress that covered her from neck to ankles. The only dab of color on her was the chain of bright blue stones around her neck, held together with something too bright to be silver. The necklace shone with a deep, blue luster when the light hit the stones. Quite fetching, and likely more expensive than the Bucket.

  "Master Saradon," the woman said with some surprise.

  "Mistress Tashent," Saradon said, with a light bow. If I was any judge, the angle of the bow put him above her, but not by much. Either that, or he was being polite.

  Or I was reading the entire thing wrong. Maybe it was another of those open palm bumps, or protégés, impossible to understand unless you were Dromoni. Made me feel lost in the void. I'd have given a lot for a pile of wards to engrave and infuse. Magic was the same everywhere.

  "Jakob," Riina said, giving me a cold smile and no honorific. Saradon drew a sharp breath.

  "I apologize, mistress," he said. For what, I couldn't understand. Voidmunching culture.

  "Riina," said Riina, "Unaffiliated at the moment. And no apology necessary, it is I who should be apologizing for whatever my protégé has done."

  They kept going like that for a while, Saradon keeping up his end of the pact of mutual admiration. I could see that he was getting bored with it. I was too, and it was making Riina's new friend more and more uncomfortable, until Saradon sent her away with a glance and a nod. Definitely higher in standing.

  "Let us share the blame," he said graciously, a microsecond before I was about to do something inexcusable like shooting them or rolling my eyes. "What brings you to Dromond?"

  Riina gave him her most grandmotherly smile, her wrinkles all bunching up and creasing her in new ways. She was going to give him more of those flowery phrases.

  "We need supplies," I said. "We have ten thousand civilians stuck on a ship that is about to turn into a very large coffin."

  Riina's shoe smashed into my foot. Luckily it was flat, or she'd have speared me, and likely the stones as well.

  "A small favor to ask," Saradon said, ignoring my strained face, "and one my father would be happy to grant."

  The stunned look on Riina's face was worth getting my foot stomped, smashed, rolled into a bun, and eaten.