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yes—but I can’t manage two words of it without having a sore throat for a whole day afterward. How did you learn it so well?”
    “There was a Selvaur who knew my father during the Magewar,” said Ari. “I was fostered with him on Maraghai. It was part of some agreement he and my father made before I was born, back when my father talked the Selvaurs into joining the fight.”
    Ari watched Llannat Hyfid putting the pieces together as he spoke. “That’s right,” he told her, “Rosselin-Metadi as in the late Domina and the Commanding General. And you probably know my brother Owen—he’s an apprentice in the Guild. Me, I’m about as sensitive as a brick.”
    “He has the manners of one sometimes, too,” said Jessan. “It comes from talking with too many holovid reporters.”
    “You probably wondered,” said Ari, “why I took my leave here on Nammerin instead of going home. I’ll tell you why—Galcen probably has more holovid cameras than this planet has water-grain seeds.”
    “I still call it a waste of good leave time, roughing it in the backwoods on this quaking mudball,” said Jessan. “But there’s no accounting for taste. Speaking of roughing it—I finally got my orders this morning, and do you know where they’re sending me next?”
    “No,” said Ari, smiling a little. “Where?”
    “Pleyver,” said Jessan. “Flatlands Portcity.”
    Ari whistled. Flatlands wasn’t Waycross, but the Pleyveran port had been wide open enough in the bad old days to serve as one of his father’s best ports of call. “I didn’t know Space Force had a station there.”
    “We don’t,” said Llannat. “Don’t listen to his griping, Ari—they’re making him a lieutenant commander and putting him in charge of setting a place up.”
    “So I can spend my time in a one-man office treating stranded spacers for social diseases,” said Jessan. “It’ll be a picnic, I can tell you.”
    “Life around here isn’t exactly going to be a tea party either,” said Llannat. “Four cases of Rogan’s Disease just came in from a logging camp upriver.”
    “Four?” said Ari. “Plus the three we’ve got and the one we brought in … that’s more than just a fluke. It’s an outbreak.”
    Llannat nodded. “One of the old cases died while you were collecting the latest one. And without any tholovine, we’re going to lose some more.”
    “Didn’t anybody put in a request for some?”
    “I did,” said Jessan. “As soon as the first case showed up. But you know how it works: if Supply can hurry things up, you might see some tholovine before next flood season. And by then it’ll be too late.”
    “Too bad we don’t have some right now,” Ari said. “We could handle the problem while it’s still small.”
    “And if I had hyperspace engines,” said Llannat, “I’d be a starship. Where are we supposed to get the stuff—on the black market?”
    There was a silence. Ari and Jessan looked at one another.
    “Munngralla,” said Ari.
    “Right,” Jessan said. “If anybody can get it, he can.”
    “Wait a minute,” Llannat cut in. “Who’s Munngralla?”
    “He’s a Selvaur who runs a curio shop down in Namport,” said Ari. “At least, that’s what he does officially. Unofficially … rumor says he’s the local Quincunx rep.”
    “I see,” said Llannat. If the Adept had any qualms about dealing with the most notorious organization of smugglers and black marketeers in the civilized galaxy, she didn’t show it. “But is he likely to have tholovine on hand?”
    “You name it,” Ari said, “and Munngralla will sell it. But not for decimal-credit prices.”
    “Never mind the price,” Jessan said. “We can always find cash someplace. The question is, how do we get in touch with him? If he thinks we’re working for Security, he won’t take the job no matter how much we offer.”
    Another long silence. Then Llannat looked over at Ari. “You did say he was a Selvaur … .”
    Ari sighed.