Zin stopped winding Tennal up regretfully. “You don’t need to withdraw, I’ll tell them we rescheduled,” she said. “I can at least give you my work contact.” She touched her wristband and glanced at Tennal as if she were uncertain, then straight at Surit. When she was serious, she looked a lot like Tennal and a lot like the legislator. Surit didn’t know which one made him warier. “Really, though, you were a lot of help to my family. If you need anything—the Halkanas are in your debt.”

“Don’t turn that down,” Tennal muttered to Surit. “She can coax anything out of the legislator. Get her to sort out that pension.”

Surit wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be more tangled up with the Halkanas—but then again, he already was, and he didn’t see that ending any time soon. “Thank you,” Surit said. He bowed to Zinyary and touched his throat, then let Tennal pull him outside.

On the sunbaked flagstones outside Zin’s workplace, Tennal watched Surit’s familiar broad shoulders and solid presence and wondered why he’d ever thought his luck was bad.

Surit shut the bronze swinging doors with meticulous care, turned around, and smiled. Even in the handful of days he’d been on-planet, he’d lost some of his space pallor. He seemed slower and a little absentminded, and—happier. Was Tennal still lucky? Well, he was here to find out.

“Hey, boss,” Tennal said, by way of greeting. Keep it casual. Surit didn’t know what was happening in his head, and right now that was a good thing. And Tennal only felt the ghost of a temptation to read him.

Surit looked Tennal over, and then he smiled again. This really wasn’t fair. Surit’s smile made all Tennal’s trains of thought derail. Surit said, “You look good.”

Tennal’s mind blanked. He had come here to be emotionally honest, but when the chips were down, he absolutely couldn’t do it. “Thank you, I know.” It came out in the same breezy and superficial tone he would have used a year ago. “It’s all the political infighting that does it. Gives me a beautiful glow to the skin. You haven’t cut your hair in weeks, have you? It suits you.”

He’d fucked up; he’d meant to say something meaningful, and he’d fucked up. He could feel his expression defaulting to condescending posh twit.

Surit laughed. It wasn’t really a full laugh but a low rumble in his chest. “I’ll remember that.”

Maybe he hadn’t fucked up completely. Tennal couldn’t manage to say what he’d come to say, but he groped for a lifeline. “We said we’d go out in Exana once, remember?” He gestured to the hazy street. “Got some time?”