“And you didn’t answer. So I’m asking again.”

Zaira’s shoulders moved in the barest shrug. “I don’t have family.”

She said the word as if it were a particularly filthy social disease with which she disavowed all connection.

Marcello’s voice softened. “Even family whom you don’t care for, or whom you think don’t care for you?”

“No one.” Zaira clipped the words off with utter finality.

“Friends?” Marcello pressed. “Business associates? It’s important for us to know about your connections. Not only do we want to do right by you but we want to make sure Raverra’s enemies can’t use them against you.”

Zaira made a show of peering at Marcello’s face. “Your black eye is fading. If you keep asking me the same question over and over, I can refresh it for you.”

Marcello winced. “All right. How about enemies?”

“Orthys,” she said immediately. “May the Demon of Corruption rot his poxy bowels.”

“His men who attacked you said something about an indenture contract,” I remembered.

“The old bilge rat claims he has a piece of paper that means my mother sold me to him, and I have to work for him.” She showed her teeth. “But I don’t have a mother. And I can’t read. And paper burns.”

“Ah.” I digested this compelling legal argument. “Well, I’m glad he didn’t get his hands on you.”

Zaira shot me a contemptuous glare. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking you saved me from anything. A jess is worse than any damned indenture contract.”

Marcello passed a hand across his eyes. But he didn’t rise to her bait. “So you were serving out this indenture contract to Orthys, and you ran away?”

“He never had me in the first place. I was free as the seagulls who crap on the Imperial Palace until you jailers found me.” She spat on the floor. Marcello winced at the practiced smack of it striking the polished boards. I looked away. “I never heard of this contract until five or six years ago. My dear mother didn’t stick around after I was born to tell me about it. Orthys comes through town every few months, so I have to dodge his scum when his ship is in port.”

“He’s a smuggler?” I guessed.

“I’m sure he’s a fine, upstanding, tax-paying citizen of the Empire like everyone else around here who tries to drag a girl off against her will.”

Marcello ignored that. “So who raised you, if you have no family and didn’t grow up working for Orthys?”