“That was his calling,” she corrected him.

“What makes me so important to him?” demanded Cain.

“I should think that would be obvious to you,” said Silent Annie.

Cain stared at her for a very long moment. Finally he spoke.

“Why should I want to join him?”

“Because you yourself were once a revolutionary.”

“The galaxy is lousy with men who were once revolutionaries,” he said.

“Most of them have adjusted. You haven’t.”

“I’ve adjusted better than most,” Cain replied with a touch of irony. “I took what I learned and put it to a new use. I used to kill men for free.” He smiled mirthlessly. “Now I do it for a living.”

“He’s not interested in you because of the men you’ve killed.”

“Then why is he interested in me?”

“Because of the men you haven’t killed,” said Silent Annie.

He frowned. “I don’t think I understand you.”

“You let Quentin Cicero live.”

“He had a hostage.”

“You’ve given out other pardons, too,” she continued. “You spent ten weeks hunting down Carmella Sparks, and let her walk away.”

“She had three kids with her,” said Cain uncomfortably. “One of them was still nursing. They would all have died.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped Peacemaker MacDougal or the Angel,” she said.

“Then maybe Santiago ought to be talking to them instead of me.”

“He has no interest in men who have forfeited every last vestige of their humanity. It is because you are still capable of acts of compassion that he wants you.”

“Yeah,” said Cain. “Well, I don’t know if I want him.”

“You will,” she said confidently. “He is the greatest man I know.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I grew up on Raxar Two,” she said. “It had a large alien population, and we had a military government in order to keep them properly pacified.” The muscles in her jaw twitched slightly. “When I was eleven years old, I was beaten and raped by three soldiers. The Democracy was having trouble getting more military funding, and they didn’t want any incidents that might embarrass them and cost them their money, so they covered it up. The three men were transferred to another world, and were never punished. I spent two years in the hospital.”

“Is that where you got the scar?” asked Cain.

“That’s just the one you can see,” said Silent Annie bitterly. “Anyway, Santiago heard about what had happened, and—”

“How?” interrupted Cain.

“He’s been out here a long time,” she replied. “He has sources everywhere. Once he learned what they had done to me, he had the three men killed.” She forced a grim smile to her face. “I believe the late Altair of Altair was my particular angel of vengeance.”

“And then you joined him?”

“Wouldn’t you have?” she replied.

“I’d have killed them myself.”