Chewing a particularly tough and stringy chunk of chamois meat, Kylee made a face. Swallowed. Her eyes on Falise, she said, “I got an idea. We could put your sister up on a tall pole out at the aircar field. With that glowing dress, she could be a navigational beacon we could see all the way from the Wind Mountains.”

“It’s called luminshift.” Dek gave his sister an amused glance. “Fabric that changes colors has been around for a long time, but not with the luminosity, let alone the implant link that lets a person think a color change, and then it happens. What that dress cost back on Transluna would have housed and fed a hundred families for a year.”

Down inside, Demon hissed, as if the beast could have cared. Or maybe he did it just to raise Dek’s hackles. The evil little son of a bitch had come close enough to killing him out at Two Falls Gap.

“Well, the only thing it did for your sister was make her look like a fucking moron.” Kylee pointed with her spoon. “You sure you’re really related to her?”

Dek heard Rocket’s chittering amusement as it filtered through his head.

Talina, arms crossed, her hat hanging down her back from its strings, walked over, hard eyes on the four nobles and their entourages at the tables up front.

“So that’s the cream of the Corporate crop? And she’s your sister? Did you see how she came off the shuttle?” Talina made a face. “Maybe your mother was having an affair with someone smart when you were conceived?”

Kylee snickered, used her sleeve to rub her mouth where it dripped chili.

“That seems to be a recurrent theme at this table.” Dek took a bite, chewed. “To set both your minds at ease, Taglioni genetics are very carefully monitored. Little sister, up there, in her colorful carnival tent of a dress and absurdly impractical transparent shoes, has the same genes I do.” He swallowed. “The difference is that where I grew up to be a cad and bounder, she grew up to be a spider. She likes webs, intrigue, and camouflage before she kills her prey.”

“She walked right past you at the gate,” Talina noted. “Like she had no clue who you were.”

“She didn’t.” Unlike Kylee, Dek used a napkin. “It’s the beard, the scar, the fact that, like you and Kylee, the facial bones and eyes have changed. Oh, she looked at me, all right. What she saw repulsed her, and—being the kind of local riffraff that we are—she didn’t bother to hide her disgust. And then she turned her attention to fuming over the comic disaster that her arrival turned into.”

“You could have warned her about what to wear.” Talina was still watching the room, flickers of irritation playing at the corners of her mouth as she studied the nobles and their hangers-on.