“Tool?” Derek asked, shuffling his feet where a few wispy threads of roots were working toward his boot.

“Kylee seems to think that’s how the family uses me.” She paused, hesitated. “Maybe she’s right.”

“Then stop it.” Derek told her. “You want to win on Donovan? You’ve got play by our rules.”

“Like that damned poker game?”

“There’s a lesson in that—and not just that you were acting like an arrogant, superior slit who needed the piss slapped out of her.”

Falise chuckled, raised her maimed hands in surrender. “All right. I needed that. I just wasn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

“Yeah, I know. You’d never been faced with the likes of Port Authority and its lunatic libertarians. So, sure, that’s part of the lesson you needed to learn. Another part you’ve learned out here with Kylee and Flute.”

“So what else was I supposed to learn from that damned card game?”

“You won that night. Let me bluff you. If you’d played that hand out instead of folded, you’d have had me.”

“Huh?”

Derek shrugged. “Hey, I screwed up. Dealt you that fourth jack. You’d have won, Little Sister. Taken the whole pot, and I’d have looked like an idiot.”

“Wow!” Kylee mumbled and yawned. “A half metric ton of rhodium.”

Falise blinked, watched another invertebrate immolate in the fire. “That was a lie, right? Part of the bluff. You really don’t have a half metric ton of rhodium, do you?”

“Nope.” Derek waved at an invertebrate that flew too close. “When you get it all together, it’s more like a ton and a quarter.”

Chapter 76

  76  

Inga’s, of course, was packed. Not only were the locals there, but so, too, were many of the Corporate Mine crew, some of them preparing to space back home with their plunder. Others, being on rotation, wouldn’t have missed Kalico Aguila’s inquest for anything. Especially as the story made the rounds that she’d personally saved IG Soukup’s life and done so even after the man had tried to abduct her off-planet.

At the same time, a number of folks under Pamlico Jones’ supervision were out hunting the quetzals; the sobering realization that five people had died had galvanized a party to search for the raiders. Most upsetting was that the attack had been so successful. Not just that they’d killed a pilot, copilot, Colonel Creamer, and two marines, but Whitey’s lineage had learned marines were vulnerable if they were not wearing helmets.