Everyone in the tea shop looked up at that sound. The proprietor set her kettle down on a table with a smack that should have startled the people sitting there but did not, so intent were they on whatever was happening out on the shadowed small concourse. Grim, angry determination on her face, she strode out of the shop. I stood and followed, Five behind me.

Outside, the Sword of Atagaris ancillary had pinned the painter against the wall, bending her right arm back. It had kicked the tub of paint, to judge from the pinkish-brown splotches on its boots, the puddle the tub now sat in, and the tracks on the floor. Captain Hetnys stood where I had left her, observing. Saying nothing.

The tea shop proprietor strode right up to the ancillary. “What has she done?” she demanded. “She hasn’t done anything!”

Sword of Atagaris didn’t answer, only roughly twisted the painter’s arm further, forcing her to turn from the wall with a cry of pain and drop to her knees and then facedown onto the floor. Paint smeared her clothes, one side of her face. The ancillary put one knee between her shoulder blades, and she gasped and made a small sobbing whimper.

The tea shop proprietor stepped back but didn’t leave. “Let her go! I hired her to paint the door.”

Time to intervene. “Sword of Atagaris, release the citizen.” The ancillary hesitated. Possibly because it didn’t think of the painter as a citizen. Then it let go of the painter and stood. The tea shop proprietor knelt beside the painter, spoke in a language I didn’t understand, but her tone told me she was asking if the painter was all right. I knew she wasn’t—the hold Sword of Atagaris had used was meant to injure. I had used it myself for that precise purpose, many times.

I knelt beside the tea shop proprietor. “Your arm is probably broken,” I said to the painter. “Don’t move. I’ll call Medical.”

“Medical doesn’t come here,” said the proprietor, her voice bitter and contemptuous. And to the painter, “Can you get up?”

“You really shouldn’t move,” I said. But the painter ignored me. With the help of the proprietor and two other patrons, she managed to get to her feet.

“Fleet Captain, sir.” Captain Hetnys was clearly indignant, and clearly struggling to contain it. “This person was defacing the station, sir.”

“This person,” I replied, “was painting the doorway of a tea shop at the request of that shop’s proprietor.”

“But she won’t have had a permit, sir! And the paint will certainly have been stolen.”

“It was not stolen!” the proprietor cried as the painter walked slowly off, supported by two others, one of them the angry person in the gray gloves. “I bought it.”