Scoundrels

by Timothy Zahn

  And if they had such evidence, surely they would have moved on him already.

  He took a deep breath, feeling the tension draining away. So they knew he was here, they knew he was someone who’d interacted with Aziel under unusual circumstances, and they were going to keep an eye on him just in case.

  That was fine. Dozer wasn’t planning on making any mischief. At least not here and now.

  But as long as they were watching him anyway …

  Midway between Dozer and the guarded door were a couple of youngish men wearing the neat but plain tunic-and-trouser outfits that pegged them as working-class types who’d put on their finest clothing for their visit to Villachor’s party. Both were holding cups, and from the way they were chattering and gesturing, it was likely that they’d had more than a couple of samples from the drink pavilions. Watching as much of the area around him as he could, Dozer headed toward the door.

  The response was instant, nicely subtle, and extremely revealing. Both uniformed door guards and all three of the plainclothes ones he’d tagged suddenly seemed to have eyes only for him. Dozer saw one of the door guards say something, either to his partner or into a collar-clip comlink, but none of the others so much as moved their lips.

  Which wasn’t to say they weren’t communicating. On the contrary, as Dozer kept walking toward the door, he saw the three men slipping through the crowd in a well-coordinated move that would put two of them between him and the door and one directly behind him in backup position. At that point, they would have several options on how to deal with him, none of which would likely be pleasant.

  They were nearly to their chosen positions when Dozer reached the two men. “Hey!” he said affably, stopping beside them and raising a hand in greeting. “Thought I recognized you. You’re friends with Cadger, aren’t you?”

  The men turned to him, their alcohol-creased grins taking on a slight edge of puzzlement. “Cadger?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah,” Dozer said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two security men pause, one of them holding position while the other edged a little closer to the conversation. “Well, we call him Cadger. Always borrowing stuff, never remembers to return it—you practically have to call out the Tweenriver garrison to get it back.”

  One of the men’s faces cleared. “Oh,” he said knowingly. “You mean Esmon.”

  “Yeah, Esmon,” Dozer confirmed. “We always just call him Cadger. Listen, this is my first time in this venue. You guys know when those pavilions stop serving? I can’t get close enough to ask anyone.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” the man assured him. “You’ll scrap out long before they do.”

  “Just make sure you don’t bleep so much that it’ll take you more than a day to dry out,” the other man added, raising his cup for emphasis. “ ’Cause the day after tomorrow is the Honoring of Moving Air, and Villachor serves the best whipped liqueurs on Wukkar. You’ll want to be here bright and early for that.”

  “You bet,” Dozer agreed, slapping the other genially on the shoulder. “Thanks. When you see Cadger—Esmon—tell him Blather said hi.”

  Turning, Dozer headed away from both the men and the door. Glancing casually around, he saw that the security men were likewise moving back to their earlier positions, the alert apparently having been rebranded as a false alarm.

  Still, he had no doubt they would continue to watch him as long as he was here.

  Which was fine. In fact, it was perfect.

  Dozer had never been entirely comfortable with the thought of being front man on this job. A certain level of con work was necessary in any branch of thievery, of course, and ship boosting was no exception. If necessary, he could have done a fair job with this one, too.

  But it would have been a fair job, not a spectacular one. Going up against a man like Villachor, Dozer knew, would require something better than just fair. Though he would never admit it, especially not to Solo, he’d secretly been relieved when Calrissian unexpectedly showed up at the suite door.

  So let Calrissian grab the glory and the danger that went with being front man. Dozer had his own set of skills, skills none of the rest of them could match on their best day.

  Turning south, he headed toward another of the pavilions, beyond which, not so coincidentally, was another of the mansion’s doors. By the time the team reassembled at the suite, he promised himself, he would have a complete handle on Villachor’s Festival security setup, their encirclement system, and their alert ripple paths.

  Let Calrissian and his fancy smile top that.

  There was an art and a science to bumping into people. Fortunately, Bink had long since mastered both.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, darting her hands up and letting her eyes widen with embarrassment and chagrin as she spun around to face the man whose chest she’d just gently bounced off. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her, giving her a small and slightly frosty smile.

  “I’m so sorry,” Bink said again, looking him up and down as if she were somehow expecting that whatever massive bruises her nudge had caused would be visible through his clothing. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t spill your drink, did I? Please let me not have spilled your drink.”

  “Not a drop,” he assured her, some of his stiffness easing. As well it should—this was Bink’s best dippy-girl act, guaranteed to spark feelings of amusement, sympathy, or protectiveness in the majority of the male population. “See?” he added, holding his cup out for her inspection.

  “Thank heavens,” she breathed. The cup was about half full of Carlem brandy, she saw, about the right level for someone who’d been slowly savoring it for the past half hour or so. “That looks really good. I’d hate for someone to waste it. Especially me being that someone.”

  “It is, and you didn’t,” he again assured her.

  “I’m so glad,” she said. He was lying, of course, at least about the first part. The cup might be only half full, but there were no drops or other traces of liquid on the cup’s rim or inner sides. It had been half full right from the start, and he hadn’t taken so much as a sip.

  He also had a collar-clip comlink, the slight bulge of a concealed blaster beneath the right side of his tunic, and the equally subtle bulge of a knife strapped to his left forearm beneath the sleeve. The lack of drinking alone would have tagged him as one of Villachor’s people. The hard eyes and the weapons clinched it.

  Of course, so did the fact that his face matched the holo Rachele had pulled up of Lapis Sheqoa, the head of Villachor’s household security force.

  Holos really did take the fun out of this game.

  “Just try to be more careful,” he said, offering a slightly more genuine smile this time. “Looking behind you when you’re walking is a bad idea, especially in a crowd like this.” He leveled a warning finger. “Besides, next time you might walk into someone’s seafood fork.”

  “And it would serve me right,” Bink declared mock seriously, matching the tone with a wry smile as she backed away from him. “See you.”

  She spent the next half hour strolling around the grounds, admiring the displays, striking up casual chatter with a couple of the other women in the crowd, getting herself a cup of something fruity to drink, and making sure not to keep the slightest track of where Sheqoa was. He would almost certainly be watching her, at least off and on, and it couldn’t look like she was doing the same.

  When it was time, she didn’t expect to have any trouble finding him again.

  She judged she’d waited long enough, and gave it ten minutes more. Then, joining the celebrants at one of the serving tables, she loaded up a small plate with a sampling of the snacks, carefully creating just enough imbalance to make the plate difficult to handle without making the imbalance obvious. With the plate in one hand and her cup in the other, she headed out to find Sheqoa.

  As she’d predicted, there was nothing to it. Barely two minutes after leaving the pavilion she spotted him th
rough the crowd, still doing his casual wandering act as he watched for trouble.

  Time to kick things up a level.

  The first step was to come to a sudden and awkward halt, her eyes on her plate and the suddenly tottering stack of glazed pental crackers there. Next came her requests to passersby for help, all of her increasingly frustrated entreaties completely ignored by everyone as they walked by.

  Of course, the reason for that was that she was moving her lips but not making any actual sound, which meant none of the people passing by had the slightest notion that she was having any difficulty. But Sheqoa had no way of knowing that, not at his distance and with the low roar of the crowd and the moving stone displays all around them.

  She kept up her pantomimed calls for help for several seconds, until her gut told her that that part of the charade had run its course. Still dodging passersby, she began studying the ground at her feet, as if trying to figure out if there was any safe place where she could set down her cup—

  Abruptly, and a couple of seconds sooner than she’d expected, a hand appeared from the edge of her vision and plucked the cup from her hand. “Here—let me help,” Sheqoa offered.

  “Oh, thank you,” Bink said, letting her pretended anxiety and frustration roll out in a flood of relief as she rearranged the pental crackers into a more stable configuration. “Thank you,” she repeated, looking up. “I was—oh. You.”

  “We do seem to keep running into each other, don’t we?” he said, offering a more genuine smile this time.

  But it was still a guarded smile, with a thick layer of vigilance behind it. “At least this time I didn’t try to turn your whatever-it-was into one of those volcano things,” she said. “Thank you so much for your help. Those pental crackers are just too good to waste as ground clutter. I’m Katrin, by the way.”

  “Lapis,” Sheqoa said. “This your first Festival?”

  “First one here,” she told him. “I did the Barrange venue twice when I was living in Opolisti.”

  “I’ve heard that one’s pretty nice,” he said.

  “Not as nice as this one,” she said ruefully. “Not that I got much chance to enjoy it. I had the same kind of boss back then that you do.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, frowning.

  “Your comlink,” she said, pointing to his collar. “You’re on call, right? Off duty, but still on call, and he could yank you away on half a second’s notice.”

  “Something like that,” he said. “So how come you know that setup? Are you police? Military? Med tech?”

  Bink snorted out a laugh. “This’ll kill you. I’m an accountant.”

  “An accountant?”

  “Isn’t that just insane?” she agreed. “Come on—when was the last time someone called an accountant after working hours and said”—she dropped the pitch of her voice into a caricature of a stern, humorless boss—“ ‘We need you to rush in and examine some numbers right this very minute’?”

  He chuckled, some of his reserve fading away. “Most of the numbers I know are perfectly happy to wait until business hours,” he agreed.

  “And the crazy thing is he actually did it,” Bink told him. “He actually hauled me in twice for things that could have been left until the next day without anyone in the universe except him caring. One of those times I got the call right in the middle of an opera.” She shook her head in reminiscence. “The looks on people’s faces as I stumbled past them. If the Empire wants to kill Rebels, they should talk to those folks. Some of those looks could fry banthas at fifty meters.”

  “The opera, huh?” Sheqoa said. “I would never have tagged you as that sort.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” Bink said. “But the guy I was with at the time really liked them. I’m more the three-stroke glitz type. What about you? I assume you’re not an accountant, unless my ex-boss has opened an Iltarr City branch.”

  “No, no, I’m something far less interesting,” Sheqoa said. “I’m with Master Villachor’s household security.”

  Bink let her eyes widen. “Oh. Wow. Did I—I didn’t say anything bad about anything, did I?”

  “You said Master Villachor runs a better Festival than Master Barrange, that my drink looked good, and you didn’t want to spill pental crackers all over the ground,” Sheqoa said. “The cleaning staff will be especially pleased about that last one.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “Because I really am enjoying this. I’d hate to be banned from the rest of it.”

  “Just try not to run over anyone else and you should be fine.” He held out her cup. “And now I need to get back to my duties.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Bink said, accepting the cup back. “Thank you again. Quick question: someone told me once that Master Villachor has the original Sunright Feinhomm glitz instruments. Is that true?”

  “It is,” Sheqoa confirmed. “Maybe I can show them to you someday.”

  “That would be so great,” Bink said, giving him her most dazzling smile. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lapis. I’ll probably see you around.”

  “I’ll be here,” Sheqoa said, smiling and giving her a sort of abbreviated wave. He was still smiling as he turned and wandered away into the crowd.

  Taking a sip from her drink, Bink headed toward one of the seating areas. Yes, that had gone well. He was totally into her.

  He was also totally on to her.

  She smiled to herself. Perfect.

  The crowds were already substantial, and it seemed like every third person who spotted Villachor wanted to come over to greet him, thank him for his hospitality, or chat a moment with him as if he were an actual friend.

  But if there was one thing Lando had learned at the sabacc table, it was patience. He cultivated that patience now, strolling around the edge of Villachor’s entourage, studying the man and his bodyguards. The locals used particular words and gestures in their greetings, all of which he noted while at the same time trying to sort out Villachor’s own telltales for signs of interest, impatience, or boredom.

  Finally there was a lull. Villachor paused, looking around as he murmured something to one of his bodyguards. Slipping around a pair of hammer-headed Ithorians, Lando moved toward the group.

  Villachor spotted his approach, and Lando caught a brief twitch of his lip before his face broke into yet another of his counterfeit smiles. “Good afternoon,” he said, probably hoping that by getting in the first word he would be able to control the duration of the conversation. “Enjoying the Festival?”

  “Very much,” Lando said, giving one of the polite nods that seemed to be associated with the upper-class Iltarr City citizens. “I imagine something like this is extremely expensive to run.”

  Villachor’s smile slipped, just a bit. Apparently, most of the people he’d talked to had known better than to bring up such a crass subject. “It’s well worth the cost,” he said evenly. “The pleasure the Festival brings to the average citizen is something that can’t be measured.”

  “Indeed,” Lando said. “And of course, I expect the Festival provides unique opportunities to meet with people. Some of whom may bring you interesting offers.”

  Villachor’s smile broadened even as it cooled a few degrees. “I’m sorry, but all new business discussions are paused during the Festival,” he said. “But feel free to contact my office after the Honoring of Fire is over.” He inclined his head and started to turn away.

  “I understand,” Lando said, taking a long step closer, aware that the two bodyguards were already moving to intercept. “Let me just say one word. Cryo—”

  He broke off as both bodyguards grabbed him, one of them throwing a warning forearm across his throat as they started to pull him away from Villachor.

  “A moment,” Villachor said, stopping them with an uplifted finger. “Very well,” he continued, his voice studiously casual. “One word.”

  The guard lifted his arm fractionally from Lando’s throat, ready to clamp down again if necessary. Lando cleared his throat. “
Cryodex,” he said.

  He counted out six heartbeats before Villachor spoke again. “Bring him,” he said shortly. Spinning around, he strode back toward the mansion, heading in the direction of one of the smaller service doors. The bodyguards released their grips, one of them nudging a silent order into Lando’s back.

  Not that he needed any prompting. He set off briskly after Villachor, adjusting his pace to slowly catch up to the other. There were dozens or possibly hundreds of extra people and droids moving in and out of the mansion today, he knew, resupplying the pavilions with food and drink and handling other chores. It would be instructive to see exactly how Villachor had arranged the door locks to allow for such traffic while at the same time preventing random strangers from wandering inside.

  It was, as it turned out, distinctly anticlimactic. Villachor merely marched up the flagstone walkway to the door, gripped and turned the handle, and pushed open the door without any fuss, bother, or challenge.

  Lando suppressed a smile as he and the two bodyguards followed him in. Like one of Zerba’s magic tricks, there was more to this one than it appeared. Villachor had gripped the handle, but right before he’d turned it, he’d bowed just slightly at the waist. Some kind of electronic trigger, then, with the receiver in the handle mechanism and the activator concealed somewhere in Villachor’s shoulder or neck area. Possibly the fingertip-sized rectangular glazed-stone pendant he’d noticed riding a small choker chain around Villachor’s neck.

  And, he noted now, riding his bodyguards’ necks as well.

  They had their way inside. Maybe.

  Villachor had stopped a few steps inside the door and was waiting for them beside two more guards. “And now,” he said, even the false warmth gone from his voice, “let’s go someplace quiet and have a little talk.”

  The various displays that Villachor had put together for the Honoring of Moving Stone were uniformly impressive, Han had decided early on during his private walking tour of the grounds. But for him, the sand tornadoes were the most interesting, the most photogenic, and, ultimately, the most potentially useful. He went from one tornado to the next, standing for a couple of minutes at each, admiring the twisting shapes and pretending to take endless pictures with the fake holocamera Chewbacca had built for him the previous night.