She glanced at the counter, then at me.
I remembered last night. So did she.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’relookingat me,” it was an accusation.
I considered that. “You are a wonderful thing to look at.”
She threw a dish towel at me. It didn’t make it halfway across the room. I laughed, and after a second, so did she.
Then the porch steps groaned.
The sound ended the morning.
I knew that tread. Lorkin was too heavy to tiptoe, and too practical to try. By the time he knocked, I was already at the door.
He stood on the porch with soot still caught in the creases of his hide. His horns nearly touched the top of the frame, though I’d built the doorway high enough for our kind. His expression told me the news was bad before he opened his mouth.
Then he looked past me.
Maisie sat at the table in my shirt, her hair loose, her mug in her hands. There was no reasonable explanation for any of it. Lorkin saw that. He saw too much.
His jaw tightened once, but he said nothing.
That was friendship.
“You’ll want to sit,” he said. “Both of you.”
He came inside and closed the door behind him. Maisie set down her mug. She had gone still again.
“The hunter’s handled,” Lorkin said. “He’s off-world by now. He won’t come back.”
Maisie’s hand tightened around the mug.
He turned his attention to me. “I went into New Knossos last night after I dealt with him. Stopped at the Agency. Nezara had information.”
“What information?” I asked, even if I didn’t want to know.
“The complaint was already filed.”
Maisie was frozen where she sat. “James.”
“Yes. Breach of promise. The hunter logged it formally with Nezara the day he landed. Then he registered it with the off-world Agency network the same hour.” Lorkin’s mouthflattened. “Earth has it now. Once it’s there, it can’t be quietly removed.”
Maisie’s face had gone pale, but her voice was steady. “That asshole.”
“Yes,” Lorkin said. “And they’re sending an auditor.”
The room seemed to narrow.
I knew that word. I knew enough about the bride program to know what it meant, and enough about Earth bureaucracy to know they’d written themselves power wherever they could.
“When?” I asked.
“It will take two weeks.”
