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legs again and another scaly side nudged him in passing. It was too dark to see the waters, but a splash now and then interrupted the monotonous bobbing of the waves.

    It must be a school of fish, he conjectured. As long as they're not hungry, I should be alright.

    Unable to do anything about it if he was wrong, he returned to his exhausted doze. And that is why he did not notice the distant running lights draw nearer, or sense the thrum of pulse engines in the water. Yavobo awoke before dawn when fishy bodies collided with his once more. He tried to move his legs aside again, but couldn't.

    He was caught in the net of an apaku trawler, snaring the run of spawning fish off the coast before they could dash ashore and expire.

    He laughed in exultation, a rasping bark unnoted by fishermen amid the grind of winches hoisting netting. When he was dumped to the deck under bright worklights, sprawling among the thrashing apaku nearly half his own size, Yavobo slithered to the edge like a monster from the deep and found his feet with a triumphant shout. He rose from the deck, red and black skin wrinkled and waterlogged, scales glistening along his legs and flank, with breather mask at waist and flotation belt around his chest. The trawler crew gaped at the sight, and fell back from their strange catch.

    Yavobo drew his knife with a flourish, and they fell back another step. Apaku flopped around his feet as he slashed the blade across his forearm, then brandished the bloody weapon and shouted an oath in his own tongue.

    "By Blood Oath and Clan, I swear vengeance for this wrong that was done! This blade shall not drink again, but it be for that cause!"

    Yavobo sheathed his knife without cleaning it, and laughed at the uncertain harpooner who stood portside, spear-rifle held in a threatening pose.

    The Aztrakhani strode forward from the mess of fish and nets and demanded in passable R'debhi, "Let me talk with your Captain."

XV

    Reva picked through the oddments on her sidetable, bits and pieces collected in the last couple of days. A ticket tab for the holoshow, an empty ampule from Kovar's Sensorium, a wrinkled flimsy with the Murs lost-at-sea newsblurb. A stranger's personal comp number that she didn't plan on calling. An address chit.

    A blue, triangular chit with a Des'lin address on it.

    She turned it over in her fingers, tapped it with a violet-hued nail. Tyree Longhouse.

    Reva toyed with the chit, and reckoned local time. It had taken a while to set up the hit on Murs, and it was now just into the start of apaku season, when the game fish rushed the island shallows to spawn. Just starting the last month of summer, that was.

    Lish would be on Des'lin, then, if she'd stuck to her plans. Reva needed to start thinking about Lanzig, niece of the late departed Advisor, and the main reason she was back on Selmun III She already had some ideas about how to approach this project. Maybe the Holdout would be worth talking to, see if she had some more specialty items that were hard to find—
    Dolophant dung, Reva interrupted herself. At least be honest about it. That woman is making the wrong moves, and she's going to get in trouble over it, sooner or later, Karuu or no Karuu Maybe I can give her a tip or two on the Holdout business....____
    The thought gave her pause. Why care? Why get involved? It's not like they were friends or anything. That was one kind of] entanglement Reva found easy to avoid. Even when she had wanted one, friends were too easy to lose when you crossed Lines. Her talent had taught her isolation early on, and relationships had slipped through her grasp as quickly as she could change the moment she called Now.
    Still, there was something perversely likable about the smuggler. Here, in this Mainline, she reminded Reva of a younger version of herself: with an overconfidence that spoke of underlying arrogance, the kind that put you out on a limb without even knowing it. The assassin shook her head and studied