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arrives?”
    “Unless you want to take a shuttle across to the transfer station,” she suggested. “There might be more to do there.”
    I looked at the shop. “I think I’d rather keep an eye on our walkers.”
    “I agree,” she said, shutting off her reader and putting it away.
    And then, to my mild surprise, she slid across the dozen centimeters that separated us and snuggled up against my side. “I’m going to take a nap,” she said, her voice a little muffled as she rested her head on my shoulder. “Wake me when it’s my turn to keep watch.”
    She exhaled a deep sigh; and with that, she was asleep.
    Bayta’s approach to the universe had a natural reserve to it, which acted as a psychological barrier to keep people at arm’s length. Part of that was undoubtedly her wariness about the Modhri and his little bag of telepathic tricks, the rest of it her own natural personality. But she and I had been through a lot together, and over the months she’d gradually accepted me into her inner circle.
    Apparently. I’d made it deeper into that circle than I’d realized.
    It felt a little awkward, and more than a little embarrassing. My own personality was every bit as closed as hers was, though that probably wasn’t so much natural tendency as it was having had all my alleged friends turn their backs on me during the Yandro controversy. I’d gotten used to my own company since then, and wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to start with the whole friendship thing again.
    I gazed down at the top of her head, tracing locks of her dark hair with my eyes. Still, Bayta was my partner in our little corner of this war, and it was part of my job to humor her.
    Shifting position, I put my arm around her shoulders and turned my head just enough to keep the shop/restaurant in view. Now that they’d succeeded in getting us off the train and away from the Gang of Fifteen, I wasn’t expecting the three walkers to give us any more trouble.
    But I’d been wrong before.
    Chapter Six
    Eleven and a half hours later, precisely on time, the next Quadrail arrived at Helvanti. Together with our three walkers, each of them now lugging a large bag of chocolate, we went aboard.
    The usual lack of communication with a moving train meant that Bayta hadn’t been able to arrange our accommodations ahead of time, and once again it turned out that all the compartments were booked. Still, with the trip only eight and a half hours long, a compartment hardly seemed worth the trouble anyway.
    After having been on guard duty most of the previous twelve hours, I spent the majority of the trip dozing in my seat. I doubted that Bayta, with her nervousness about being in an open car surrounded by walkers, even closed her eyes.
    The trip passed without incident, and we were soon weaving our way through the relatively large and bustling crowd at Terra Station toward the stationmaster’s office. First on our list was to figure out the fastest route to Ghonsilya for our rendezvous with Fayr, while a close second would be to see if the Spiders had retrieved our luggage from the train we’d been bounced from. Third on the list would be checking on Fayr’s and Daniel Mice’s passenger histories.
    We were studying one of the floating schedule holodisplays when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “Well, well. Look what the budgie left in the bottom of his cage.”
    I turned around. ESS Special Agent Morse was striding toward me, his expression hovering between angry and sour. “I could say the same thing about you,” I countered. “I thought you were on lapdog duty this week.”
    His face drifted a few percentage points further onto the angry side. “We’re more terriers than lapdogs, actually,” he corrected. “Bred to drive burrowing animals into the open, where they can be properly hunted down and killed.”
    “And I take it I’m the rat du jour?”
    “I’d like nothing better,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have other more pressing matters to