“Yeah,” Tal told her. “Kylee’s no stranger to Chaco’s homebrew. She might be sixteen, but she’s smarter and more mature than half the drunks in here. I’ll vouch for her. And bring us another two plates of the special.”

“My tab!” Kalico called.

“You got it.” Inga turned, hustling away as she called, “Three specials!”

“How is Flute?” Kalico asked. “He still rising in the ranks out there?”

“Second elder now, still orange. Tip and I, we helped the lineage with a chamois trap. Works on roos, too. Flute runs it and we share food. But it comes with its own problems. Nutrition is up, which means more young. Population’s getting out of balance.”

“How does that create imbalance?” Shig asked, still rotating his wineglass.

Giving him a skeptical glance, Kylee said, “When quetzals hunt, they burn up a lot of calories running down prey. There’s not much spirited chasing when a herd of chamois run into a corral trap. There’s no energy expended let alone depleted nutrients to be replaced. Means that those resources can be freed for the reproductive system. Fat healthy quetzals translate into lots of little quetzals.” She frowned. “Flute, Tip, and I, we’re going to have to give this some consideration. Otherwise, there’s going to be plague of young rogues out stirring up trouble with the neighboring lineages.”

“And I thought Port Authority was challenging at times,” Shig noted.

Inga came bustling down the bar, took a swipe at the stained chabacho wood with her towel, and thunked two mugs down, all the while giving Kylee a hard-eyed appraisal. Then, as quickly, the woman was gone.

“She doesn’t like me,” Kylee said with an ominous tone.

Kalico laughed it off. “You’re new, and the stories told about you are fantastic. Suddenly, here you are. Instead of looking like a demigod riding into town on a fire-breathing quetzal, you look like a really exotically proportioned copy of Talina, but with long blond hair and striking blue alien eyes, all dressed in trimly cut chamois leather with a rifle strapped on your back.”

“Not to mention,” Shig told her, “that you were behind one of the biggest bar fights to ever break out in Inga’s.”

“Muldare was right in the middle of that,” Kalico reminded as she rubbed a finger down the scar on her jaw. “She said something about you saving our lives out in the forest. That we’d be dead but for you and Flute. Hofer shot off his mouth. Called her a liar. Said that no freaky little girl could ride a quetzal. And then Muldare hit him. Of course, everyone picked a side, and by the time Talina got it broken up, half the furniture was splintered, six people were in the hospital, and it took Inga two days to clean up the mess.”