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reward me appropriately.”
    She blushed again. Harder this time. But didn’t comment.
    “So if I’m Hadiiye,” she asked after a beat, “who are you?”
    “I am Navarre ,” he announced with an air of dangerous menace. “The first King of Navarre, back on Earth, was an Aritza.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “I did learn a few things in history class, lady,” Javier replied.
    He took a deep breath and felt the seriousness begin to take hold of him, like darkness creeping in at sunset.
    “When we get there,” he continued, edging ever–closer to that black place in the back of his mind. “I’m going to need you to either be dead serious bad–ass, or total bimbo, but I need you to decide right now, so I can plan accordingly. Any slip–up in front of those people gets us killed.”
    Javier watched her eyes and then saw her take a deep breath, almost meditatively. She rose to her full height, towering almost as far over him as Sykora did, but there were fourteen centimeter heels involved with Hadiiye. Her eyes closed for several seconds.
    It was like watching ripples on a still pond as the energy flowed outward from her belly–button to the tips of her bright red fingernails.
    “I am Hadiiye,” she announced in a voice that had been cast in bronze. “Killer. Assassin. Death–dealer. Commend your soul to God before you try your luck, bucko.”
    She had gone for bad–ass. He should have known.
    Javier let a single raised eyebrow ask the next question.
    “The galaxy was no safer for a single woman traveling alone five centuries ago,” she purred silkily with an evil smile, just oozing big cat predator . “Not everyone took no for an answer. At least, not the first time.”
    He felt a chill in spite of himself.
    Part Three
    The goons had picked them up as they entered the joint. Wilhelmina counted them.
    No, damn it. Focus. Hadiiye counted them.
    Five, one obviously the official bouncer, two more at the bar, and two others scattered about the room, trying to look innocent as customers.
    Hadiiye did not hang on Navarre as they walked. That would have been the bimbo version of this costume.
    Hadiiye was a killer. She had to act the part: blades secreted in three places, plus one on her belt; a smaller flash pistol than Navarre carried, tucked into a hidden holster, against her left kidney, where she could get at it quickly.
    She was as much body–guard as gun moll here, with a dose of eye–candy designed as the second layer of distraction. Her nipples pressing against the soft cloth of her tunic certainly worked in her favor, but she honestly couldn’t help herself.
    This was so much fun.
    Shepherds of the Word were always serious people. Constantly learning, traveling, proselytizing. They were not supposed to do things like this, dressing up in costume so they could pull off a caper on a criminal enterprise.
    Hadiiye caught the appreciative looks from the five men, either staring at her chest or crotch. Navarre had been right. She would have to pay off on that bet.
    But honestly, what did she know about the baser examples of men?
    Well, okay, maybe that was a bit arrogant and superior, but here were several examples of exactly what the Word was intended to rectify. Hadiiye might have to kick their asses up and down the block a few times, just so Wilhelmina could preach to them, once they were properly disposed to listen to her as a person and not stare at her as a side of meat.
    Wilhelmina sat quietly in one corner of her mind as Hadiiye scowled at the men. They were seeing her undressed and probably bent over one of the tables in this restaurant, with them taking turns.
    She envisioned them hanging from hooks in an abattoir.
    Apparently, they picked that attitude up as she moved.
    Javier walked up to the bar and leaned against it.
    No, damn it. Navarre.
    A flunky appeared from a door behind the bar, cold and arrogant as he considered these tourists who had obviously wandered into the wrong