"That's it?"

"That was all I could see," Draycos replied. "But I do not claim to be an expert yet at these matters."

"No, but you're probably right," Jack assured him. "Gazen's got that overconfident attitude we professional thieves love to see. Besides, here in the middle of the mansion, what does he need security for?"

"We will hope you are correct," Draycos said. "What about the camera?"

"Were there wires attached?" Jack asked. "Or did it seem to be wireless?"

"There were definitely wires," the dragon said. "I could see them going into the wall.

Jack nodded. Again, as he would have expected. The signal from wireless systems could be tapped into by someone who knew what he was doing, possibly even from outside the house. And if there was one thing Gazen wouldn't want, it would be strangers looking over his shoulder. "We should be able to get to them though the wall," he concluded. "Anything else?"

"Only a device labeled 'Dropskip Sequencer' built into the lock," Draycos said.

"It does not appear to be an alarm, but I am certain it has some special purpose."

Jack's brief surge of overconfidence vanished. "Oh, it has a purpose, all right," he said with a sigh. "A sequencer keeps track of how many times the door has been opened. Practically foolproof, and practically undetectable. Except by K'da poet-warriors."

"Can it be disconnected?"

Jack shook his head. "Like I said, foolproof. Even if we were able to take it off, Gazen would know it had been tampered with and figure out someone had been inside. Might as well save ourselves the trouble."

"What is our plan, then?"

Jack chewed at his lip. His time was sliding away, he knew, the seconds vanishing like peanuts at an elephant convention. He had to get in, get the data, and get out. And he had to do it without Gazen knowing he'd been there.

Or did he?

He scratched his cheek as a new thought suddenly struck him. Did he really care whether Gazen knew he'd been in here? After all, the minute he got the mercenary data they needed, he and Draycos were going to be out of here. Through the front gate, over or around whatever security the Brummgas had hanging around, back to the Essenay, and off this rock.

But to knowingly reveal himself in the middle of a job went against every cubic inch of training Uncle Virgil had hammered into him. Very unprofessional.

Also very stupid.

Draycos was still waiting. "All right," Jack said slowly. "Compromise. We'll take out the camera, but we won't worry about the sequencer."

"We do not care if Gazen knows someone has been inside?"

"With luck, we'll be long gone before he finds out," Jack assured him, straightening up.

"Perhaps," Draycos said doubtfully. "It does not seem, though, that this thing you call luck has been with us in any great quantity so far."

"Tell me about it," Jack said dryly, straightening up from his crouch. "But it's got to change sometime. Let's get around the other side of that wall and find those camera wires."

CHAPTER 17

Back aboard the Star of Wonder, the wiring for the purser's office security cameras had been hidden inside the walls. Here, in the middle of the Chookoock family stronghold, the designers had apparently decided not to be so fancy.

The wires from Gazen's camera ran along the outside of the office wall, snugged up close against the ceiling.

It was a place most intruders wouldn't have a hope of reaching without a ladder, Jack included. Fortunately, he had Draycos instead. By standing on Jack's shoulders, the dragon was just able to reach up to the wires. A delicate puncture with one of his claws, and the camera was out of the game.

The lock on the door itself was only a little trickier. With the help of a flat lockpick Jack had hidden in his other shoe, he had it open in under two minutes.

And with less than fifteen minutes gone since they'd sneaked out of Her Thumbleness's room, they were inside Gazen's office.

"Okay," Jack breathed, standing with his back to the door and giving the room a

quick once-over of his own. It looked clean, all right. Gazen definitely liked his privacy. "It should be downhill from here."

"Pardon?"

"It should be easy," Jack translated, crossing the room and sitting down in Gazen's chair. It was a very comfortable chair, soft and smooth and luxurious, and he found himself feeling a twinge of discomfort as he settled against the smooth material. He shouldn't be even touching something this nice, let alone be sitting in it.

He blinked, an ugly shock running through him. I shouldn't even be touching something this nice? What in space was that supposed to mean? Because he'd certainly touched fancier stuff than this. Way fancier. He could remember standing on a carpet once that would have cost Gazen's entire year's salary, in the middle of a room decorated with original da Vincis and Michelangelos and ancient Chinese urns. What was this nonsense about not being good enough to sit in Gazen's lousy chair?

Because he was a slave, that was why. And even in the short time he'd been playing that role, the whole slave mindset had wiggled its way into him.

Quietly, subtly, and a lot deeper than he'd realized.

Until now.

Back in the slave compound, he'd often wondered why none of the others seemed interested in escaping from such a horrible place. Greb and Grib he could understand—they'd grown up there. But that didn't explain the others.

Now, he was finally beginning to understand. Once a person got used to something, it became normal. Normal, and familiar, and in a weird way even sort of comforting.

You knew what the boundaries were. You knew what you could do, and you knew what everyone else could do. You didn't have to think, or plan, or take any real responsibility for your life. In spite of all the work, and all the drabness, in some ways being a slave was easy.

And apparently for most of those back in the compound, that was what mattered.

Deliberately, defiantly, he ran his hands along the arm of the chair, pressing his fingers hard into the material. He was not a slave, and he would not think like one.

"Your language seems overfilled with these odd figures of speech," Draycos murmured. "I sometimes wonder that you can find any rules in it at all."

"We didn't exactly sit down and map the thing out ahead of time," Jack reminded him, forcing his mind back on track. Giving the arm of the chair one last squeeze, he leaned forward and switched on Gazen's computer. "The next time we invent a language, we'll take better notes."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Jack said, watching as the computer ran through its startup procedure. Still, to be honest, were the slaves back there doing anything worse than what he himself had done?

Because he'd stolen and conned and cheated people knowing full well that it was wrong. He'd taken the easy route himself, sitting back and letting Uncle Virgil tell him what to do.

So he had no business feeling superior to Lisssa and Maerlynn and the others.

In a lot of ways, he'd been a slave, too.

And he'd only had Uncle Virgil to keep him there. Not a laser-equipped wall and a few acres of armed Brummgas.

"You will be using your sewer-rat program, I presume," Draycos commented.

"Someday I must meet the creature it is named after."

Jack frowned down at what he could see of the dragon's head beneath his shirt.

That was the second time in as many minutes that Draycos had cut through some unpleasant thoughts with an odd and vaguely humorous comment. Was he getting nervous?

Or could he somehow be sensing Jack's dark mood and trying to nudge him out of it? "I'm sure you'd both be charmed," he said, hitching his chair closer to the keyboard. "And yes, that's what we're going to use. Unless you want to try slicing open the computer and seeing if you can sift all the right zeros and ones out of it."