“Then why do it?”
And Grytel of Thirty-Nine looks up at him. “Because they used my name for eight rotations to murder your parents. They ran the whole thing out of my administration and let every being on this planet believe it was me, and I sat in that office and signed what they put in front of me and never once looked hard enough.” His voice doesn’t rise at all. “I’ve had my name used for something I didn’t choose. I’d like to use it once for something I did.”
Cannibal looks at him for a long moment. Then he nods, once, and doesn’t say anything else, and from Cannibal that’s practically an embrace.
“It’s still not enough,” Mara says. She shifts in the chair with difficulty. “You post a Bounty. Daxon goes and gets Andrew. Great. Then what? You’ve got a broke human gambler in a hold with no evidence connecting him to anybody, and House Vaszneth has never heard of him. He’s atool.You can’t put a House on trial for a tool.”
“She’s right,” Ines offers. “So the question isn’t how do we catch Andrew. It’s what do we catch comingthroughhim.”
“Go on,” Grytel says.
“He’ll come back,” Mara says.
Chief frowns. “He’s off-world.”
“He’ll come back, or he’ll reach out, or he’ll try to sell something. He has to.” She sits forward. “You’re all treating my brother like an operative who got extracted. He isn’t. He’s agambler.Look at where he is right now. He’s parked somewhere cheap with no income. He took the largest sums of money he’s ever seen and he was broke again inside a moon cycle, three separate times, so he’s in deeper debt now than he was before they bought him. And his employers are sitting there deciding whether he’s worth the food.”
“He’s desperate,” Hallie says.
“He’sdesperate.And a desperate male with exactly one skill in the world is going to try to use it again, because he’s never had another idea in his life.” Mara looks around the room. “So we don’t chase him. We give him something to sell.”
It takes an hour after that, all of them at once, the way this family does everything.
I watch with pride burning in my chest as Mara plans it all out with my family, Grytel and Daxon.
She’s going to build a false vulnerability in the old grid. A genuine-looking weakness in a section Andrew audited beside her for two moon cycles, documented, logged and hidden slightly too well, of exactly the type a House with ambitions toward this mine would pay a great deal to know about.
“He’ll recognize the work,” she says. “That’s the whole point. He’ll be able to see it’smine— my notation, my method, the way I mark a load path. And he’ll know it’s real, because I’m the one who taught him what real looks like.”
“And how does he hear about it?” Chief asks.
“Because he still has one asset in the Four Sectors. Me.” Her jaw sets. “He knows I’m taking a permanent Minecorp systems position. I told him myself, in my own kitchen, the last morning I ever spoke to him. He knows exactly where I’ll be and what I’ll have my hands on for the rest of my career. If word gets to him that his sister has found something enormous in the old grid and hasn’t reported it up yet, then…”
Ines nods. “He has something to sell.”
“And when he sells it,” Grytel says slowly, “Vaszneth has to send someone to Timbur to act on it.”
“Yes.” Mara sits back. “And whoever comes here is a House operative, on Timbur soil, on Minecorp property, committing a crime, in front of witnesses, documented by an investigative journalist, under the authority of the Chief Executive of the facility.”
“That’s a case,” Mara says.
Ines makes a small sound of pure professional joy. “Finally.”
Daxon’s voicecomes off the screen, low. “And when they run,” he says, “they’ll run for Chronos. Which is where I’ll be sitting.”
“With a Bounty posted,” Grytel says.
“With two.” Daxon’s eyes are steady. “Post one on the brother and one on whoever comes off that rock. I’ll take them both. I’ve got a hold that’ll carry four and beings in three sectors who owe me a great deal more than they’d like.”
Grytel considers it. “That’s actually cleaner. If the second Bounty’s posted before the operation, then any being fleeing Timbur is fleeing a live warrant.”
“Then post it before. And when this starts, when she springs that trap, I’ll be in orbit.”
Chief’s head comes up. “You can’t land.”
“I’m not landing. The banishment order says I may not set foot on the surface of Timbur, and I have read that order approximately four hundred times, and it says nothing whatsoever about the orbit.” Something dangerous and pleased goes across his face. “A Hunter ship in a legal parking orbit above a Minecorp facility is a Hunter ship in a legal parking orbit. And every being who runs off that rock runsup.” He shrugs. “It’s the closest I’ve been to my family in four rotations and it’s the closest I can legally get. I’ll take it.”
“And after?” Rook says. “If the ban lifts?”
