"Yeah, well, some lives are apparently cheaper than others," Jack said. "That still doesn't explain why you threw Jommy and the rest of them to the wolves along with Alison and me."

Elkor sniffed. "What's this 'and me' stuff? Kayna was the chief suspect, not you. You were just one of the known contacts."

Jack blinked. "The what?"

"She talked to you, Montana," Elkor said patiently. "Grisko told us. Alone, and at length, out on the shooting range. Do I have to draw you a picture?"

Jack stared at him in disbelief. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "Alison has a chat with, say, Rogan Mbusu, maybe about nothing more classified than the lousy food. And suddenly you're just going to throw him away? Just on the off chance that she might have passed secret information to him?"

"You make the assumption that any of you were worth much to begin with," Elkor said. "You ever hear the term 'cannon fodder'?"

Jack swallowed hard. "Yes."

"It's rather out of date, actually," Elkor went on. "No one but a few primitives use real cannon anymore. But the term still applies."

"Kind of an expensive hobby," Jack murmured. "You still have to pay all of our indenture fees."

"You should read the contract more closely sometime," Elkor suggested blandly. "There are all sorts of neat clauses that cover death or capture in a war zone when the subject has failed to properly defend himself. Another good reason to bring you out here instead of dealing with you back on Carrion."

He lifted his eyebrows. "You did fail to defend yourselves, didn't you? I hadn't heard any reports of gunfire."

For a long moment Jack just looked at him, wondering what Draycos would say if he reached over and pushed the smug son of a snake out of the tree. Uncle Virgil would have, he suspected. Even Draycos, for all his warrior ethic, was crouched there with his eyes burning like those of an avenging angel. He probably wouldn't lift a single claw to save scum like this.

He took a deep breath. No. He'd never been a killer, or even an avenger. He'd been a thief; and even there he was supposed to be reformed.

And he was probably selling Draycos short anyway. The dragon had gotten that look in his eye before, and he hadn't murdered anyone yet.

"You are a small, petty, pathetic little man," he told Elkor quietly. "You deserve to die. With any justice, it'll be at the hands of your own people."

Elkor's mouth twitched in a lopsided smile. "So you don't even have the guts to kill me, huh? You're no soldier, Montana. You never will be."

"I can live with that," Jack told him. "Incidentally, I have lived in the real world, sometimes among people who would have pushed you out of this tree ten minutes ago if you'd done this to them."

Elkor snorted. "If you're hinting that you've got friends, save it," he said. "I don't scare that easily."

"I'm not trying to scare you," Jack said. "And none of them are my friends. I was simply pointing out that none of them ever tried to kill the casual acquaintances of people they were mad at. Even they had more class than that."

"Did I say I needed your approval?" Elkor asked. "Or even wanted it?"

"Hardly," Jack said, suddenly thoroughly weary of this man. "Fine. We're going. Where are your transports?"

A slight frown creased Elkor's forehead. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Jack retorted. "So we can get out of here. Don't worry, I'm not going to steal it. All I want is to use the comm."

"And you think I'm going to tell you?"

With a sigh, Jack pulled out the small folding knife from his belt pack. He locked it open and waved it under Elkor's eyes. "That cable you're tied with is pretty tough," he reminded the other. "Even with this, it'll take you quite awhile to cut through it. Would you rather use your teeth?"

Elkor eyed the knife. "They're on the west side of the outpost," he muttered. "In a clearing about two hundred yards due west of the sentry cage on that side. But you'll never make it past the guards."

"We'll take our chances." Reaching up, Jack drove the tip of the knife blade into the tree trunk a couple of feet above Elkor's head. "Help yourself after we're gone," he said, pulling the colonel's hood over his eyes again.

Catching Draycos's eye, he nodded. "Come on, buddy," he said. "Let's go."

They headed down the tree, Draycos climbing down backwards as Jack dangled onto his tail beneath him. They reached the ground without incident and headed off through the woods toward the area where Elkor had said the transports were located. If they weren't there, Jack promised himself darkly, he would make sure to send Draycos back up the tree and get his knife back.

"Then the disturbance outside the training camp was a diversion for Alison's benefit?" Draycos murmured as they slipped through the trees.

Jack blinked, forcing himself back from half-hoped-for scenarios of revenge. "What? Oh. Yeah, I suppose that makes the most sense. I wonder who she's working for."

"We had already decided it was not the Shamshir," Draycos reminded him. "Could it be a different mercenary group?"

Jack frowned. With his own chances of escape weighing heavily on his mind, the last thing he was interested in right now was Alison Kayna's possible background and friends. Still, it was an intriguing question. "I don't think so," he told the dragon slowly. "With all that's happening here, it would make sense for the Shamshir to send in whoever they had handy to grab some quick information about the Edge's plans for Sun-right. But any other mere group ought to be able to take the time to find an adult to use as a spy instead of a kid."

Draycos seemed to digest that. "Then who is she working for? Were we wrong about her connection to the Shamshir?"

"I don't know," Jack said as a sudden and very unpleasant thought sent a creepy sensation tingling across the back of his neck. "You don't suppose she might be working for Neverlin, do you?"

"I thought we decided he was too busy hiding from Braxton to bother us."

"You decided that," Jack countered, "I never did."

The dragon twitched his tail. "I do not believe Neverlin could have moved this quickly," he said firmly. "And how could he have known we would be joining this particular mercenary group? Alison was clearly already signed up before we arrived."

"I suppose," Jack conceded reluctantly. "Yeah, you're probably right."

But the creepy sensation refused to fade completely away.

They were making their cautious way around the perimeter of the outpost before Draycos spoke again. "Where are we going?"

"Weren't you listening?" Jack asked. "We're going to find a transport, you're going to knock out whatever guards there are, and we're going to whistle up the Essenay."

"We are leaving, then?"

Jack grimaced. "Look, Draycos, I'm sorry," he said. "It just didn't work out. We'll back off, regroup, and try to get the Djinn-90 data some other way."

"I was not thinking about the information," Draycos said. "I was thinking about those still in Shamshir hands."

"What about them?"

"Did you intend to simply leave them there?"

Jack frowned down at the dragon padding soundlessly through the dead leaves at his side. Uh-oh. "Hey, I know how you feel about that sort of thing," he said cautiously. "K'da warrior ethic, and all that. But I think that asking Colonel Elkor for a rescue party is pretty much out of the question."

"Certainly," Draycos agreed. "That means we will have to do it alone."

Jack took a careful breath. "Look," he said, as if talking to a very small child. "I know you're upset. But you have to understand the realities of the situation. We're talking about two of us—you and me—against a whole mercenary force."

"Dahtill City is not a military base," Draycos pointed out. "There will be a limit on the number of soldiers to oppose us."