He looked up to see Affie standing in the doorway. She had on the exact same coverall as before but had let her hair down. That one small change couldn’t account for how much younger she looked. How much smaller. “What’s the matter, Little Bit?”

Her failure to object to her nickname worried him more than anything else. Affie plopped down in the other chair so they sat opposite each other across the narrow mess table. Instead of answering his question, she said, “Where’s Geode?”

“Hittin’ the clubs. The gods only know what time he’ll be back. Someday that guy’s gonna have to slow down.”

“I don’t know how he does it,” Affie said, but the shared joke brought no smile to her face.

Leox leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “Looks like I might get a whole lot farther by answering questions instead of asking ’em.”

It took her a few moments to begin, and she didn’t start with a question. “The Byne Guild doesn’t just hire people. It indentures them.”

“Correct.”

“You knew?” She gaped at him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“At first,” he admitted, “I figured you had to be in on that little secret, what with being Scover’s prize pup and all. Then I realized you had a sweeter view of the world, still, and I didn’t want to be the one to take it away. Shame any of us has to lose it.”

Affie put her head down on the table. He didn’t push or pry, just took another drag and let her work it through.

Indentured servitude sometimes got made out to look better than it was, because it wasn’t as bad as slavery. Not even close. However, it also wasn’t as good as freedom. Indentures came about when people desperate for employment met employers who wanted workers who couldn’t talk back. Even ship owners fell prey to it, when they wound up with more repair and fuel bills than cargo—not an uncommon risk for smaller craft. People sold their labor and freedom of movement for a set period of time, usually no fewer than seven years; Leox had heard of indentures that lasted three whole decades. There were a few legal limits on what indentured servants could be forced to do in guilds that wanted to work with the Republic—they couldn’t be required to risk their own lives, for instance—but that still left indentured people trapped for years in the misery of unceasing, unrewarded labor. The Hutts, not surprisingly, built industries of such practice.

“I looked up my parents’ ship,” Affie finally said. “The Kestrel’s Dive. That’s how I found out they were indentured to—to Scover.”

Getting that out had cost her. Leox reached into the nearby coolbox and grabbed her a bottle of water. She took it without comment.