Okay, she wasn’t laying an ambush for Dek. “Gotta go. There’s quetzal smell coming from the south. Need to tell Talina.”

Hofer squinted. “What’s that to you? Thought you’d be on their side.”

Tall as she was, she leaned, eyes within inches of Hofer’s. “Learn something, dick brain. This is Whitey’s lineage. I don’t owe him jack shit to start with, but he’s tried to kill Talina too many times. That makes it personal.”

She slipped past the men, her sharper hearing letting her catch Montoya saying, “And you really picked a fight with her? Damn, Hof, you got a death wish?”

“Aw,” Hofer muttered self-consciously, “maybe the kid’s all right.”

That brought a twist of smile to Kylee’s lips. Rocket chirped inside her as she practically danced her way down the stairs. Suck a skewer, the place was packed. Lots of soft meat in the most remarkably clean and new-looking overalls Kylee had ever seen. The shaved skulls, the wide-eyed expressions, the pale complexions stood out like oil from Donovanian water, given that the locals were dressed in quetzal, chamois, and claw shrub fiber.

At the bar, Talina’s stool was empty, as was Kalico’s.

But where . . . ? Ah, yes. There she was with her tall golden-haired male companion and the sloe-eyed black beauty crowded almost defensively close.

Kylee was aware of the gazes cast her way as she seated herself on Talina’s stool. Sacred ground. Claimed territory. The quetzal inside her reveled at the transgression onto a venerated elder’s domain.

Didn’t take long before Inga came trooping down, her towel over her shoulder. The look on her face might have frozen Leaper. “You know whose chair that is?”

“Yeah, Aunt Talina’s.” She flipped a ten-SDR gold coin from her pouch. “How much whiskey does that buy?”

“Five glasses. But I don’t serve kids. Not even you, Kylee. And if Tal finds out you’re trying to—”

“Five glasses.” She pointed Falise’s way. “For them. Falise and her two stumbling sycophants.”

“How’d you ever know what a sycophant was?” Inga was shooting a wary glance at Falise.

“Dya was my mother, along with Rebecca and Su. I don’t get much use for words out in the bush, but it seems they come in handy when a person is in town. Now, there’s ten. You gonna let me take five whiskeys over to Dek’s sister?”

“I’ll send someone. That good enough for you?”

“Absafuckinglutely.”

The look Inga gave her might have cowed a quetzal, but she took the ten and lumbered her way back down the bar.