When she looked up she saw an old man. He was seated in a raised chair at the foot of the bench. His clothes were garish, loud, and clashed badly. Gray-white hair was parted down the middle and combed off to both sides, tied at the back in a pigtail. She found the air of polite concern he affected while staring down at her positively revolting. She would have preferred some honest drooling.

He was an ugly old man. Not that his features were particularly repulsive; they weren’t. But the aura of evil he carried about him was as perceptible as rotting wet vegetation. Some folk felt nice, some felt ugly. This one felt ugly.

“Hello, my dear,” he said. The voice was high, almost girlish, but there was little hint of age in it—no quaver, and certainly no weakness. It wasn’t even a tiny bit grandfatherly, although that was apparently the impression the man was trying to give. “Glad to see you’re awake. Permit me to introduce myself.”

“Not until you release me and my friend from these ludicrous contraptions!” she said, putting as much ice into her words as possible. The oldster didn’t appear chilled. “And until you explain yourself. Then perhaps I may forgive you enough to make your acquaintance. This is a strange way you have of doing business.”

“I suspect, my dear, that your concern with my business is not from the point of view of a purchaser. Meanwhile you should know—whether you ‘forgive’ or not—that my name is Dominic Rose, my title Lord, and that you are presently ensconced, however indelicately, in my own residence some several hundreds of kilometers from Repler City. As for releasing you, I have two pilots currently undergoing treatment in my private dispensary. One has a broken kneecap, the other six parallel wounds in his belly that your not-so-stuffy companion put there.”

“I do apologize for that,” broke in Porsupah. “I was aiming for his eyes, but he slipped. I will have the peasant’s head and my Uncle his ears when word of this outrage is revealed!”

“You will have nothing but a short existence if you persist in upsetting my liver, Tolian. Your ‘Uncle’s’ reality is suspect. Now then,” he continued, turning back to Kitten, “if you will simply tell me who you and your friend are, we might avoid any messy unpleasantness. I should also like to know which of several governments or competitors of mine you are working for.”

“I don’t see that my identity should be in question,” she replied venomously. “Surely you’ve gone through our private effects by now!” Inside she was beginning to shake a little. This fellow was too direct. Such men survived by a habit of discarding semantic chaff and going straight to the point. Cold men disdained word-play.

“Oh yes,” Rose said. “They declare you, quite thoroughly, to be one Pilar van Heublen. A young lady of respectable means and impeccable pedigree here on a pleasure trip from Myla IV. Should I request confirming detail, I am sure you could embroider these facile evasions elegantly.”