He let the whelps shout a few possibilities. As they did so, Draycos slid his right front paw along the top of the jacket to rest on Jack's hand. He was onto the plan, all right. "Nope," Jack said shaking his head at the whelps. "As a matter of fact, when a magician fires his assistant, he goes into thin air!"

With a twist of his wrist, he flipped the coat over the top of Draycos's head. There was a brief surge of weight on his right forearm—

He let go of the jacket, letting it drop empty to the floor.

The whelps gasped. For another second there was stunned silence; and then, to Jack's relief, came the loudest burst of Wistawki applause yet. "Once again, my friends, I thank you," Jack said over the finger-snapping, bowing low three times. On his third bow, he retrieved the jacket from the floor.

Preenoffneoff was waiting for him at the door leading from the room. "An impressive show," the Wistawk said quietly. "Fully as impressive as if you had been invited."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked, trying to sound puzzled, his heart starting to speed up. After knocking himself out for an hour up there, surely Preenoffneoff wasn't going to make trouble for him. Was he?

"You came to our balcony to hide," Preenoffneoff said. "Don't deny it. Randorneoff told me."

Jack felt his heart sink. He'd seen the drunk Wistawk come in from the balcony half an hour ago, but he hadn't realized he'd talked to anyone. He was in trouble, all right. "Well..." he stalled, searching frantically for something to say.

"I trust you are safe now?"

It took Jack a moment to change mental gears. "I hope so, yes. And I apologize for breaking into your home."

The Wistawk waved the words away. "An impressive show," he said again, pressing a small velvet pouch into Jack's hand. "Go in peace and merriment."

"Thank you," Jack said, bowing again as he fingered the pouch. It was heavy, and the contents clinked slightly as he shifted them. High-value coins, he hoped. "May your family rest in joy and contentment."

The evening mealtime had passed while they were inside entertaining the Wistawki, and more pedestrians had now appeared strolling the streets. Not surprisingly, most of them were Wistawki, chattering together as they enjoyed the night air. Picking a direction leading away from the spaceport, Jack headed out, keeping to the shadows as much as he could without looking obvious about it.

"Where are we going?" Draycos asked softly from his shoulder.

"There's a small airfield south of the city," Jack said. "Hopefully, we now have enough money to hire a plane."

"Where will the Essenay will be waiting?"

"At a regional spaceport about half a continent away," Jack told him. "If Uncle Virge wasn't able to sneak back in under a different ID, he'll have gone on to a planet called Aldershot. In that case, I'll have to find a job somewhere until I can make enough money to get us there."

"Perhaps you should continue as a performer," Draycos suggested. "I was quite impressed by your skill."

"Thanks, but I'll stick with something simpler," Jack said dryly. "Like maybe heavy load lifting. Keeping an audience on the hook that way is a little too much like what I used to do."

He glanced down at his shoulder. "Speaking of which, you did pretty good yourself. Especially the juggling. When did you learn to do that?"

"When I was young," Draycos said. "It was a skill my older brother had, and which I very much wanted to master.

"No kidding," Jack said, feeling a twinge of the emptiness he'd always felt when someone mentioned brothers or sisters. "How many brothers do you have?"

"I had just the one brother," Draycos said. "I also have three sisters."

"Big family," Jack said. "Me, I was an only child. So he taught you how to juggle, huh?"

"He assisted, but I mainly taught myself," the dragon said. "I wished to surprise and impress him."

"I'll bet you did," Jack said. "You're darn good at it."

"Thank you," Draycos said. "It is odd, though, for I have always thought of it merely as a private amusement. I would never have expected it to prove a useful skill."

"Sort of backwards from me," Jack said. "Everything I did back there I learned for scamming or stealing or conning. I never thought it would be a way to just amuse people."

They walked in silence for another block. "It does not seem to me that your people have much of a childhood," Draycos said at last.

Jack sighed. "My people do all right," he said. "It's me who hasn't had much of a childhood. My parents died when I was three. Some sort of mining accident, I guess."

"You guess? You do not know?"

"I was only three," Jack repeated patiently. "I remember them wearing some kind of funny hats, and I remember that there was a big explosion. But that's about it. I wouldn't even know they'd been miners if Uncle Virgil hadn't told me."

"He told you this after he had adopted you?"

"Sort of adopted me, anyway," Jack corrected. "As far as I know, there was never anything formal about it. He came in after the accident and brought me to live aboard his ship."

"As his assistant in dishonesty."

"Mostly," Jack admitted. "Don't get me wrong. He was all the family I had, and he took care of me. And I do mostly miss him. But... yeah, mostly I was just his assistant."

"I am sorry for your misfortune."

"Save it," Jack bit out. He wasn't used to apologies, and he sure wasn't used to people feeling sorry for him. "I don't need your sympathy."

"And you also do not need anyone else?"

"I did all right before you got here," Jack said stubbornly. "I'll do all right long after you're gone, too."

"When I am gone?"

"Skip it," Jack growled. Now that they'd solved the problem of the missing cargo, Uncle Virge would probably push for him to dump Draycos off on someone else for this Valahgua hunting expedition of his. But he hadn't intended to let that slip to Draycos. "So where's this brother of yours? Coming in with that big fleet?"

"My sisters are with the fleet," Draycos said quietly. "But my brother is gone. He died in battle against the Valahgua."

Jack grimaced. "Oh. Sorry."

"There is no need to apologize," Draycos assured him. "It was long ago, and he was properly mourned."

"Mm," Jack said, not knowing what else to say. "So I guess you wanting to save the fleet isn't just your job as a warrior. It's also something personal."

The dragon shifted slightly against his skin. "The K'da and Shontine are my people," he said, "and I would willingly die in the defense of any one of them. But yes, it is also personal."

Jack grimaced. And would he also willingly give his current companion's life to defend these umpteen million people of his? That was something he really ought to get nailed down before they went much farther with this whole thing.

He was trying to think of a polite way to phrase the question when a shadow detached itself from a nearby wall and jammed a gun into the side of his neck.

"Nice and cool, now, Morgan," a familiar voice breathed in his ear.

Jack felt his throat go rigid. Oh, no. "Why, Lieutenant Raven," he said as casually as he could manage. "Nice to see you again."

"The feeling is mutual," Raven said. "Now. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. Your choice."

Under his shirt, Jack could feel Draycos sliding into position for a leap. "Uh-uh," Jack warned under his breath.

"Uh-uh what?" Raven demanded. "Uh-uh to the easy way?"

"No, just plain uh-uh," Jack said. Draycos subsided; clearly, he'd gotten the message. Though on second thought, maybe he should just let the dragon deal with it his own way.

A second later, he was glad he'd held Draycos back. Halfway down the block, two more shadows pushed away from different walls, one of them the wide bulk of Raven's pet Brummga. Even Draycos couldn't have taken all three of them, not with them spread out that way.