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I drew myself up to my full height and stared down at them, and gave them the sharp smile. “Not,” I said, “if you’re going to be snotty about it.”

In the morning, when I reached the cantina, I found the Modal Nodes already there, setting up.

Wuher scowled at me. “I got shot at. By a stinking droid.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t seem that angry, though … “You heard them play.”

He nodded grudgingly. “Yeah. They’re pretty good.”

“They’re the best,” I said softly. “And I think you know it.”

He just snorted.

“About my fee.”

“Yeah?”

“Free drinks for a year.”

He snorted again. “Not bloody likely. We won’t get a year out of this lot; they’ll jump planet as soon as they can find some idiot to run the lines for them.”

He had a point. Still—

“Their stay might be longer than that,” I pointed out. “Jabba will want to keep them from leaving the planet. He might even want them back someday.”

He actually smiled at me; I like him better scowling. “Seven free drinks a day as long as they keep playing. As soon as they sneak out of here, you pay again. You pay for every drink over seven anyway.”

I grinned at him before I remembered myself, with the sharp teeth. “Deal.” I got up and walked over to where Figrin was setting up with the band, and introduced myself.

I swear, Biths look contemptuous even when they’re not trying to. The fellow had obviously heard of my reputation: Labria the drunk. The half bright, half sly, half sober. He barely glanced at me. “Oh, yes. Jabba’s least favorite spy.”

The fellow was a notorious gambler. “Interested in a few hands of sabacc? The crowd doesn’t start showing up here until later afternoon anyhow.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Twenty-credit minimum bid.”

His head swiveled as though it belonged to a droid. “Oh? Can you back that up?”

I gave him the sharp smile, on purpose. Bith know they’re food. “Are you trying to insult me, Figrin Da’n?”

There may have been a deck somewhere, somewhen in the history of time colder than the one we used, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Bith come from a warm, bright world. Devaronians, by the way, see farther into the infrared than practically anyone. It’s useful to be able to see heat, when you evolve in the cold.

Buried in the black border along the edges of the cards were markers sensitive to low-spectrum infrared light. I knew every card he held, all that morning.

They were already broke: By the time we were done I owned their instruments, except for Doikk Na’ts’s Fizzz.

And what a day that turned out to be.

For the life of me it seemed the universe had conspired to keep me from enjoying the music. First the band squabbled with each other, and then when they finally got going, with a nice upbeat rendition of “Mad About Me,” some old fool chopped up another fool—with a lightsaber, of all frozen things—and interrupted it. That psychotic Solo actually showed his face in the cantina just after that, and then of course had to kill a miserable excuse for a bounty hunter named Greedo. If I’d had a blaster on me I might have shot Solo in the back as he left, but well, opportunities slip by.

Besides, it’s best not to draw attention.

• • •

Afternoon slid into evening, and I nursed my drinks and watched them play. It took them a while to get into it; at first Figrin couldn’t stand looking at me, and every time he saw me watching them it threw him out of his game. But it’s hard to stay infuriated with someone who is knowledgeable about what you do, and appreciates it as I appreciated them. The music got darker as the day wore on, smokier and more intimate, and Figrin Da’n performed with his eyes closed, moving through the numbers, with Doikk Na’ts at his side; and they played with each other, building through the numbers together, playing off each other, feeding improvisations back upon improvisations, playing, for the first time in who knows how long, for an audience that could, and did, appreciate what they did. An audience of one.

They closed up with “Solitary World,” an appropriate choice, I suppose, with the long intertwined sequences of Fizzz and Kloo,