“Oh. Beautiful.” A badly controlled smirk. “Best-looking swamp town in the southern hemisphere. Well worth a visit.”

Sylvie sat forward. “You from there, Micky?”

“Yeah. Long time ago.”

The apartment door chimed and then unfolded to reveal Orr, still stripped to the waist, right shoulder and neck liberally smeared with orange tissue weld. He grinned as he saw Jadwiga.

“So you’re up, are you?” Advancing into the room, dumping a fistful of clothing into the lounger beside Sylvie, who wrinkled her nose.

Jad shook her head and waved the empty vial at the giant. “Down. Definitely down. Chilled to flatline.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a drug problem, Jad?”

The slight woman dribbled sniggering, as poorly suppressed as the earlier smirk. Orr’s grin broadened. He mimed junkie trembling, a twitching, idiot face. Jadwiga erupted into laughter. It was infectious. I saw the smile on Sylvie’s face and caught myself chuckling.

“So where’s Kiyoka?” asked Orr.

Jad nodded back at the room she’d come out of. “Sleep.”

“And Lazlo’s still chasing that weapons chick with the cleavage, right?”

Sylvie looked up. “What’s that?”

Orr blinked. “You know. Tamsin, Tamita, whatever her name was. The one from that bar on Muko.” He pouted and squeezed his pectorals hard towards each other with the palms of both hands, then winced and stopped as the pressure touched his recent surgery. “Just before you pissed off on your own. Christ, you were there, Sylvie. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could forget that rack.”

“She’s not equipped to register that kind of armament,” grinned Jadwiga.

“No consumer interest. Now I—”

“Any of you guys hear about the citadel?” I asked casually.

Orr grunted. “Yeah, caught the newscast downstairs. Some psycho offed half the head Beards in Tekitomura by the sound of it. They say there are stacks missing. Guy just carved them out of the spines like he’d been doing it all his life, apparently.”

I saw Sylvie’s gaze track down and across to the pocket of my coat, then up to meet my eyes.

“Pretty savage stuff,” said Jad.

“Yeah, but pretty pointless.” Orr acquired the bottle from where it stood on the kitchen bar worksurface. “Those guys can’t re-sleeve anyway. It’s an article of faith for them.”

“Fucking freaks.” Jadwiga shrugged and lost interest. “Sylvie says you scored some ‘dorphs downstairs.”

“Yes, I did.” The giant poured himself a glass of whisky with exaggerated care. “Thanks.”

“Ahhh, Orr. Come on.”

Later, with the lights powered down and the atmosphere in the apartment mellowed almost to comatose proportions, Sylvie shoved Jadwiga’s slumped form out of the way on the lounger and leaned across to where I sat enjoying the lack of pain in my side. Orr had long ago slipped away to another room.

“You did that?” she asked quietly. “That stuff up at the citadel?”

I nodded.

“Any particular reason?”

“Yeah.”

A small silence.