As it happened, Thandi did get there in time. When she entered the main gaming area of the space station, Berry and her women in tow—they'd left the mangled Scrag in the hands of security guards, to be given medical attention—she saw that the huge hall had been almost cleared of people. Except for five people sitting at a table some distance away, everyone was gathered in the center. Two of the gaming tables had been pushed aside to make for an open space perhaps ten meters in diameter.

Thandi couldn't really see who the five people were, at the table to the side. Three men and two women, but beyond that she couldn't make out their faces. The hall was very dark, except for the spotlights shining down in the center.

"It's so dark, "Berry whispered, glancing up at the ceiling far above. Thandi couldn't tell exactly how far above, because the ceiling was pitch black.

Four men were sitting on chairs in the center of the hall. More precisely, they were shackled to the chairs: ankles to the chair legs, and their arms cuffed behind the back rests. The chairs were arranged in an arc, covering perhaps a third of a circle. Enough of an arc, Thandi realized at once, to enable them to see each other easily.

She recognized those men, of course. Their faces, unlike those of the people at the table to the side, were brightly lit by the spotlights.

Flairty, who was now one of the few survivors of Templeton's original group of Masadans and Scrags.

Unser Diem, the roving troubleshooter—ha! Thandi jeered silently—talk about trouble!— for Jessyk Combine; and, effectively, Mesa's chief representative in the Erewhon system.

Haicheng Ringstorff, who was officially a "security consultant" but was, in reality, Mesa's strong-arm specialist in the area.

Thandi studied him for a moment, through slitted eyes. She knew Ringstorff was suspected by Lieutenant Commander Watanapongse of having been responsible for a number of major crimes over the past couple of T-years, including:

—the presumed massacre of two thousand religious colonists headed for the planet Tiberian;

—an upsurge of piracy in general in Erewhon's galactic region;

—the destruction of an Erewhonese destroyer sent to investigate;

—and the ensuing attack on the Manticoran cruiser Gauntlet sent to investigate the disappearance of the destroyer.

That last attack had gone awry, mainly because the captain of the Manticoran cruiser had proven to be ferociously more competent at his trade than the pirates who attacked him. It remained unclear exactly how pirates had managed to get their hands on naval cruisers in the first place, but Thandi had heard Watanapongse speculate that they'd probably gotten them from Technodyne Industries of Yildun.

TIY's reputation for shady dealings wasn't quite in the same league as Jessyk's or Manpower's, but it was fairly impressive in its own right. Yildun's location, roughly a hundred and eighty-three light-years from Earth, put the A1 star almost exactly on the boundary between the ultra-civilized core planets of the original League and the more recently settled systems whose attitude towards things commercial (and sometimes military) remained rather more bare-knuckled than the satisfied worlds nearer the League's heart. Yildun was far enough off the main sequence to have no habitable planets, but the system was rich in asteroids and contained the second oldest known wormhole junction in the galaxy. It had only three termini, including the central junction, yet that had been more than enough to turn it into a central hub for shipping. Industry had followed, exploiting the incredible natural wealth of the system's asteroids, and, over the centuries, TIY had become one of the SLN's primary builders, with an in-house R&D division which enjoyed an enviable prestige.

TIY was also one of the trans-stellars which had vociferously protested the technology embargo the League had slapped on the belligerents in the Manticore-Haven War. Which might have had just a bit to do with its habit of occasionally disposing of the odd modern warship under questionable circumstances. It was rumored that the Yildun yards routinely built five to ten percent more hulls than the SLN had ordered and either kept them off the books completely or else "lost" them in a maze of paperwork which eventually deposited them in some very strange places indeed. And it was a demonstrated fact—no rumor, this!—that dozens of warships TIY had purchased "for reclamation" had ended up in the hands of third and fourth-tier navies (and sometimes pirates).

Of course, "losing" four almost-new Gladiator -class ships to a single customer would have been something of a new record, even for TIY. But given the whispers that Mesa and Yildun enjoyed a much closer relationship than either was prepared to admit officially, TIY seemed far and away the most likely source of the vessels.

Wherever they'd come from, there'd been very few survivors from the four pirate cruisers. Enough of their personnel had been captured on the surface of the planet Refuge, in the Tiberian System, however, for interrogation. And said interrogations had, apparently, provided evidence which suggested Ringstorff had been in overall charge of the affair. Unfortunately, the evidence hadn't been enough to bring any charges. And since Ringstorff enjoyed the official seal of Mesan approval and protection, he had to be handled with kid gloves, even on Erewhon.

Thandi suppressed a harsh laugh. Kid gloves! In point of fact, she noticed, the man who was standing at the very center of the tableau—Victor Cachat, not to her surprise—was putting on a pair of gloves at that very moment. But they weren't kid gloves. Whatever substance they were made of, they were dead black in color; and the slow, careful way Cachat was fitting them on his hands was somehow incredibly menacing. Traditionally, she remembered reading somewhere, executioners always wore gloves to carry out their trade.

The fourth man shackled to a chair was George Lithgow, Ringstorff's chief lieutenant. Also someone suspected of the foulest crimes. And also someone who enjoyed Mesa's approval and protection.

Berry's thoughts must have been running tandem to Thandi's own. The girl whispered again:

"I think Mesa's line of credit just ran out. Who's that guy standing in the middle?"

"Victor Cachat," Thandi whispered back. "He's—well, he's from Haven, although he's supposedly just here on a private visit."

Berry Zilwicki's jaw sagged. "But... I met him. This guy doesn't look... oh. I guess he is the same guy. But he sure doesn't look the same as he did at the funeral."

The girl studied Cachat for a moment longer. Then: "He looks maybe fifteen centimeters taller, fifteen centimeters wider—I don't remember his shoulders being that broad—a lot older, and... oh, Jesus." The next words came in a whisper so low they could barely be heard: "I really feel sorry for those guys."

"I don't," hissed Thandi.

Their whispers must have been louder than Thandi thought, because Cachat turned his head to look at them. There was no expression on his face. In fact, Thandi could barely recognize him herself. The pale features under the spotlights were the same, true, but the eyes now seemed like black stones, and the face itself no longer seemed square so much as a block of marble.

Cachat's eyes met hers. Still, there was no expression on his face, no sign of any recognition, or sentiment, or... anything. There was nothing. It was like staring into the darkened eyes of a statue—or a golem.

Cachat's head swiveled away, bringing the eyes back to bear on the men shackled to the chairs. Despite their immobilization, the four of them tried to lean away from his gaze. Even the religious fanatic Flairty seemed to shrink like a slowly deflating balloon. Thandi could only imagine how menacing those black eyes must seem at close range, when you were their actual target.

"He's really a pretty scary guy, isn't he?" whispered Berry. "I remember Daddy telling me that once, even though... well. He did save Helen's life. Mine too, maybe. It's hard to understand."

For a moment, Thandi felt a vast gulf opening between her and the girl beside her. And, boiling out of that gulf, the magma of raw fury. She understood Victor Cachat in a way that Berry Zilwicki never would—no pampered rich bitch ever would—and—

She drove down the rage and sealed the gulf. Forcefully, and feeling profoundly guilty as she did so. For all that Berry was now dressed like a princess and consorted with one, Thandi reminded herself that the girl had not been born into privilege. Watanapongse had sketched the girl's biography for her. In most ways, in fact, Berry's life had been even harder than Thandi's own. Or Victor's. Berry had just managed, somehow, to come out of that life with apparently none of the hatred and anger which had played such a role in shaping people like Thandi Palane and Victor Cachat. How'd she'd done so was a mystery to Thandi, but she realized in that moment—it came to her with a genuine sense of shock—just how unusual a person the girl truly was. Like a human diamond, untouched—unscratched, even—by a universe full of cruelty and indifference. As if, where other people specialized in skills and talents, she'd simply specialized in sanity.

She felt Berry's hand sliding into her own, and gave it a little squeeze.

"I'm pretty sure this is going to get ugly, Berry," she whispered. "Do you want us to leave?"

"No," came the soft reply. "There's no point in running from things." The girl's face was creased with a little smile. "Besides, you make one hell of a terrific big sister."

Thandi felt a glow inside. The feeling relaxed her, and she resumed her study of the rest of the scene. Victor Cachat was... Victor Cachat. She would deal with that, or she wouldn't, but whatever happened it could be put off for some future time.

Other than Victor and the prisoners, there were eight men and three women at the center of the hall. Those were standing back a bit, facing the prisoners but leaving a space for Cachat. They were a peculiar mix.

The three women, she knew: Inge and Lara, whom she'd left behind to follow Flairty; and Ginny Usher.

Inge had no expression on her face, but Lara seemed very pleased with the whole situation. Thandi couldn't figure out why, until she saw the look which Lara bestowed upon a man standing not far from her. The look combined a sort of hard affection, none-too-veiled lust, and amusement. It bordered on being downright predatory.