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Wedge shook his head, slowly, not taking his attention from the man’s pistol.

With his blaster, the newcomer pointed toward the doorway whose knob he had tried. “You wait for him?”

Wedge again shook his head. Wedge pointed to Iella’s door, the only other doorway visible from their position. He dared not speak; his accent would give him away as a non-Adumari.

“Ah. She of the glorious hair. Are you here from rage—” he touched his fingers, still wrapped around the pistol butt, to his heart—“or from love?” He touched them to his lips.

Wedge touched his own fist to his lips.

“Ah. Then we do not conflict. Frothing disease to your foes, then.” He turned his back on the two pilots and stalked away. Wedge and Janson watched him ascend to the floor above, and occasional creakings from that floor suggested that the man had taken up position at the stairs’ edge, where he could look down upon the doorway of his target.

“You know,” Janson said, “how I really sort of liked this place when we got here?”

Wedge nodded.

“Well, it’s worn off.”

Wedge grinned. “I thought you liked high romance and skulking and impossibly shallow love affairs and everything they have here in such abundance.”

“I do. I just don’t like all the competition. Really, Wedge, when you can’t even do a stakeout without bumping into six or eight other guys in the same corridor, on the same mission—”

“Hold it.”

Another figure climbed the dimly lit stairwell, emerging onto their floor, heading unerringly toward Iella’s door. It was another silhouette, but Wedge estimated that it could correspond to someone of Iella’s build wrapped in a bulky hooded cloak. Again he cursed the Adumari fashion sense.

Signaling for Janson to remain where he was, Wedge moved quietly forward along the railing. The person had paused at Iella’s door, and Wedge could now hear a series of low musical notes emanate from the door or nearby—possibly a sonic cue for a lock, he concluded.

He was only a couple of meters away when the person at the door shoved it open and triggered a switch within, blinding Wedge with unaccustomed light. He blinked against the glare, raising one hand to shield his eyes from it—and discovered that the person at the door was now facing him, blaster pistol in hand, held in a very professional-looking grip.

“State your business,” Iella said. “Or keep quiet and I’ll just shoot you.”

Wedge pulled the preposterous lavender mask away from his face.

He still couldn’t see Iella’s face, but her voice certainly didn’t soften. “Oh. You. Once and for all, I’m not going to tell you any more offworld stories. Go home.” She put away her blaster and beckoned him forward. Once he was close enough, she whispered, “Don’t say a word.” Then she grabbed him by his tunic’s ornate collar and dragged him into her quarters.

Inside, he had an impression of a small outer room lined with shelves loaded with electronic equipment; beyond was a larger, darkened chamber, the air within it warm and musty.

After closing the door and resetting her lock, Iella reached up to the top of one of the shelves, reaching over a decorative rim well above eye level, and drew down a device that looked like a datapad but with a series of sensor inputs at one end. She waved this slowly along all four sides of the door, and various digital notations appeared on the screen. Then she pointed it into the darkened portion of her quarters and hit a button; the screen filled with data. She nodded, cleared the screen, and set the device back up where she found it.

“All clear,” she said. “No new listening devices. Wedge, you can’t be here. You’ll compromise my identity.” Her tone was pleading, not angry.

“I need your help,” Wedge said. “Help I can’t get from channels. Help I can get only from you.”

She led him into the next chamber and triggered the light switch. This was some sort of receiving room. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all brown wood, perhaps comforting and warm at some time in the past, now slightly warped and occasionally stained. A woven