Slowly, he lowered himself back into the booth. “How so?”

“How are you making me regret it? I don’t got enough fingers.”

“Jamila.”

She sighed heavily, dropping her shoulders and head into a weary slouch as though he’d placed a great burden on her. He thought this a trifle dramatic, as she was the one who had volunteered the favor. But he kept his mouth shut lest the situation escalate further into farce.

“This muff of yours they got in lockup,” she said, voice low enough he had to lean in. “I asked around.”

“Whom did you ask?” he asked. “And what about?”

“The kind of folk with names you don’t just throw like seed,” she said. “My folk. You ought to know; I hear you used to have the same kind of people yourself, back then. When you caused the right kind of trouble.”

Under the table, his swollen hands made aching fists.

“They’re taking him to the courthouse in a couple days. Dunno what for; my man ain’t a lawyer. Point is, he knows when the transport leaves and he knows what route it takes.”

The hairs on the back of Aristide’s neck prickled as they rose.

“Now normally,” Jamila went on, “you’d be sunk—they’d take Station Way straight through, under the Queen’s eyes and everybody else’s. But there’s a big patch of trolley line still busted up where the Catwalk blew the Capitol transfer—where Armament meets Station. Concrete barriers, blocked-off intersections. They’ve got to go around.”

Of course. He remembered the same situation on Temple Street, his cabbie cursing the drawn-out construction project.

“I ain’t advocating anything, understand?” Jamila pulled out her billfold and thumbed thoughtfully through the cash therein. “Just saying, if you’re on your way out of Amberlough anyhow…” Licking her thumb, she peeled a bill from the clip and set it on the table by her empty beer glass. “That ought to cover yours and mine.”

Faintly, he said, “They’ll charge it to the room.”

Jamila smiled, like she knew what he was thinking. “I didn’t want to sack you and then make you pay.”

“Please,” he said, voice gathering strength. The surface of the money was slick beneath his fingers, and it slid across the table toward her as if greased. “One good turn deserves another.”

In better days, he would have fallen straight into the telephone, the details, the favors owed he could now call in. But there was barely time to consider all the details, and nobody in Amberlough owed him favors now.

Besides, he was paralytically drunk.

He put his carcass to bed, but hope and despair conspired to keep him from sleep. Horizontal in the darkness, at least his head didn’t spin so badly.