“Remember? I was there after it hit. Six months on-planet.”

“Really? Okay, so you know what it was like. Well, this was after the worst part of the chaos had been quelled, when the long, slow work of reconstruction was under way. There was a dispute that should have been nothing, but, with the tensions of the lengthy assignment, it grew way out of proportion.”

“What kind of dispute?”

Stansill shrugged. “It was about a woman. What else? A couple of Knights got into a feud when one ran off with the other one’s wife. Only he couldn’t exactly run off, because he was assigned to the reconstruction. So he was there, working side by side with the guy whose wife he’d taken.

“Now ordinarily the two would have had to settle it themselves somehow. Fight a duel, or just punch each other out, or something, and it would be over. But the feud just got bigger and bigger as time went by, and everyone assigned to the reconstruction started taking sides. Suddenly, you had two reconstruction teams, each taking every opportunity to find fault with the other, even undermine the other’s efforts. The whole process was breaking down.”

“I never heard about any of this.”

“That’s exactly the point I’m getting to. Another Knight who was on planet called in Morten, I guess because he knew his reputation. Morten spent a day with one of the guys in the feud, then a day with the other. Next thing you know, they’re best friends. They’re in public everywhere together, saying nice things about each other, showing everyone that their feud is over and done with. As quickly as they’d been divided, the workers came back together. The reconstruction was saved.”

“And the wife?”

“Stayed with the guy she ran off with. How Morten made that all work, I’ll never know. But he did.”

Jonah made a few notes, but, impressive as the story was to Stansill, there was little to help him out. Except for one small thing that was nagging in his mind.

“The Knight who brought Morten into the dispute—do you remember who it was? I’d like to hear the story from him.”

“Of course I remember! He was just elevated to the conclave!”

Jonah’s heart dropped a little as Stansill said the name. “It was Gareth Sinclair.”

Cloverleaf Bar, Santa Fe

Terra, Prefecture X

6 December 3134

It was another dry, chilly Santa Fe night. The distant stars were points of cold blue-white, like chips of diamond against the black sky. Burton Horn was where he always thought he should be at this time of night—in a bar. Unfortunately, he was there on business.

The days just past had been strenuous, by anybody’s reckoning, but things had worked out well enough in the end. Elena Ruiz had been soothed, supported and sent away to recover in the home of her widowed mother in Albuquerque. The police, for their part, had been satisfied with her story of a home invasion interrupted by the good luck of Horn’s timely arrival.

Whatever their suspicions (since Horn doubted they’d missed the fact that Ruiz’s alleged assailant had been dealt with professionally), they weren’t likely to push further. The Santa Fe law enforcement community already knew that Burton Horn was a Paladin’s operative. Furthermore, Horn was willing to bet that the late Delgado was already in their files as a known troublemaker, hoodlum and general bad egg. People who took money from strangers to intimidate young women living alone were seldom upstanding citizens.

The Cloverleaf Bar, when Horn entered it shortly before midnight, was exactly the sort of place that might have attracted someone like Delgado, full of loud music and people who never looked you directly in the eye. The smell of beer and bourbon hung in the air along with tobacco smoke.

Horn had dressed for the occasion. He’d made no effort to look local; he wasn’t familiar with the Santa Fe outlaw style, and knew it would be pointless to try. But he knew the interstellar spaceport version of that same style quite well. It wasn’t his usual look—give him nondescript invisibility any day—but in black trousers, a muscle-hugging black knit shirt, and a loose black coat obviously cut to conceal weapons, he would be recognized at once as a serious player from out of town.

Horn let the inner door of the Cloverleaf slide shut behind him and moved through the crowd to the bar. He took a seat on a stool near one end, out of the bright lights, and waited for the bartender to finish filling a quartet of frosted beer mugs and putting them onto a tray. The waitress sashayed off to a table on the far side of the room with the beers, and Horn took the opportunity to catch the bartender’s eye.

The bartender came over to him. “What’s your poison?”

Horn laid a fifty-stone note on the bar. “Bourbon, straight.”

“Bourbon it is.” The bartender poured a shot of bourbon and set the glass on the bar in front of Horn. He picked up the fifty-stone note and looked at it. “Planning on running a tab?”

Horn didn’t touch the shot glass. “No.”

“I might have trouble making change for this.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Uh-huh.” There was a long pause. The bartender gave Horn a summing-up glance. “With that sort of cash, are you looking for one of our …special services?”

Horn smiled smugly and played dumb. “Special services?”

“Look, I’m not playing games. You know what you want. Ask, and I’ll help you if I can.”

Horn acted like he was pondering the offer. “What if I want something stronger than bourbon?”

“I’ve got what you see behind me,” the bartender said, waving at two shelves of dusty bottles.

“Come on,” Horn scoffed.

“I don’t know you. For strangers, what you see is what you get.”

Horn peeled off another bill. “How many do I have to put down before we’re not strangers?”

The bartender’s eyes were drawn to the money like rats to a sewer. Finally he said, “Look, I don’t sell anything like that. I run a completely legit business, you understand? But what I can do is make referrals.”

“Referrals?”

“Right. There’s a guy in the back, wider than he is tall, named Snorky. He might be able to help you out. And there’s Pritt.”

“What’s he got?”

“Nothing. But he knows people. People looking for companionship. He’s a kind of …matchmaker, right?”

“Right. Sorry, I don’t want any of that stuff. Anyway, what if I’m a cop?”

“Then go introduce yourself. Snorky loves cops.”

“Scary guy, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” the bartender said.

He broke the ensuing silence by going off to serve a new arrival at the other end of the bar. Horn watched him go, then picked up his shot glass and drained it. The bourbon was cheap stuff, too sweet for Horn’s taste. He was glad that this job didn’t require him to pretend to like it for long. He set the empty shot glass down on the bar.

The bartender came back, and Horn said, “Another.”

“I thought you weren’t running a tab.”

“Things change,” Horn said. “If I can’t get what I came for, I might as well get what I can.”

The statement drew a curious look from the bartender. He poured Horn another shot and asked, “What did you come here for?”

“The answer to a question.”

“What kind of question?”

Horn took a swallow of the bourbon before answering. The bartender’s curiosity was piqued now; a little delay would serve to draw him in further. “A simple one. A question of identity.”

“I don’t give out names.”

“What about Snorky and Pritt? Those names came out pretty easy.”

The bartender scowled. “They can take care of themselves. They come in here to do business five or six nights a week; they like it when I point people their way.”

“Respected regulars, I can tell,” said Horn. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to name anybody.”