Certain things did indeed repeat everywhere human beings gathered. So of course there was a bar. It was another single-storey, but a good deal broader than the Axu Lanes building. The windows did not have a protective mesh, but it was also advertised as being open all day every day, so break-ins were probably not a big concern.

It was within easy sight of the destroyed shipping company, so it seemed like a logical first step. Gaylen and Kiris walked through a simple set of swing doors, and he took a moment to take the place in.

He had seen far worse drinking establishments, but then he had been to neighbourhoods that did not have plumbing. There was a smell in the air, but it was bearable. The furniture was mostly ugly, but serviceable. This seemed like the kind of place people came to forget their misery for a bit, rather than have fun, but it was too early in the day to be certain.

“Well, let’s play this game,” Kiris whispered.

“Yeah.”

The woman behind the bar was baseline, not quite into middle age, and did not wear any kind of work uniform. But she didn’t seem to be there to steal drinks, and so the two of them approached her.

“Gyvo?” she asked, in the language itself.

“Yes,” Gaylen replied. “Good day.”

He fished a casual smile out of his armoury and put it on. The woman responded with a tired, professional one. Her eyes lingered on Kiris just long enough to not quite be rude. The Chanei had her hood on, but up close there was no missing her golden skin and eyes.

“We just landed,” Gaylen said. “So just start us off easy. What are your milder drinks?”

They each ended up with 3% beer in a mug that was some local measurement unit Gaylen had never heard of. Like the bar itself, it wasn’t terrible, and Gaylen started slowly sipping away at it, as he waited for his chance.

It came during a window in which the woman clearly had nothing else to do, and just looked bored.

“Say, I walked past that burned house,” he commented. “Was it a… gas thing, or something? I have a bit of a fear of those.”

“Ah, it might have been,” the barwoman told him. “But it happened during the night, so no one is sure.”

“No one was there? It wasn’t a home?”

“Not a home, no. But the guards did pull a couple of bodies out. I suppose they were at work. The fire must have happened fast.”

“Wasn’t that a shipping outfit?” Gaylen asked with fake innocence. “I didn’t think such small ones were open at night.”

The woman waved her hand slightly, and looked away.

“Eh… it happened in the night. Don’t bother with it. Let the night keep its troubles. Let me know if you need anything.”

She moved on down the bar, and pretended to be busy by going over the taps.

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There was a phenomenon that Gaylen had noticed in many places, thanks to the kind of work he’d done for so long, and the dangerous areas it took him to. A very particular kind of nervousness about things that were not meant to be discussed. That was what he saw now, in this woman. And that meant Kiris was seeing it under a microscope.

“I am going to use the bathroom,” the Chanei lied, and got up off her stool.

Gaylen nodded, and watched her drink as she left. He waited, until she’d found enough privacy to talk into his earpiece.

“She is afraid,” Kiris told him. “But I sense a desire to talk. To unburden herself. I do not think I can get any deep secrets out of her. Not in a speedy fashion, anyway. But I think I can milk her for more general stuff, if I’m careful, and steer her into making it her own idea. And I would need to be alone with her.”

“Got it,” Gaylen replied very quietly.

Kiris stalled long enough to justify her excuse, then returned. He finished his drink, then claimed to need a bit of air.

“I’ll be close by,” he told Kiris. “Just call if you need anything.”

“I will,” she told him.

Two people had been either burned to death, or quietly assassinated and then burned to cover it up. So he did indeed stay close after exiting the bar; he drifted back to Axu Lanes. He stood in front of it, with his back against the building opposite the ruins, and wondered what exactly he was feeling.

It was possible that Mardus had met his end in there. Gaylen found himself wondering how things might have played out differently if the two of them had stuck together after that disaster with the Slashers. The realities of needing to make a living would have remained, but perhaps two heads instead of one could have made better decisions. Or perhaps it would have just doubled the overall folly.

Looking back, he also could not help but reflect on how much fifteen years could change a man. If Mardus really had spent all that time attached to gangs and the overall underworld life, what had it done to him? Was he still the type to stand by someone when it mattered?

What am I actually chasing here? A man I haven’t spoken to for close to half my life? Or some kind of ideal of honour?

That last thought pulled him out of the brooding through the power of cringe. And Gaylen realised he wasn’t alone.

A man stood nearby, clad in a maroon-coloured robe of some kind, complete with a hood. Despite the lack of both rain and shine, the hood was up. It made Gaylen think of him as some sort of holy man. He had never lingered on the planet long enough to get a deep picture of its culture.

The man was watching the burnt building, with intense eyes set in a grim face, and Gaylen decided to take a shot.

“Excuse me,” he said in Gyvo. “Do you know what happened here?”

That grim face now turned his way, and there was a moment’s silence before the man actually spoke back.

“I did not see it with my own eyes,” he said, “But I know the cause.”

The Gyvo language came out of him in a thick, awkward accent, and he had an air of being faintly insulted somehow. Or something. Gaylen wasn’t quite sure.

“Oh?” Gaylen pressed him.

“The outside imports its problems. Builds these cages of vice and distraction. Of course this happens as a result.”

“Right,” Gaylen said, and his interest in this conversation started fading very fast.

“You do not agree?” the man asked, and his mien of ‘disappointed school teacher’ did nothing at all stem Gaylen’s leak of interest.

“Oh, cities create problems, absolutely,” Gaylen replied. “But it’s been my experience that isolated, underdeveloped places just have slightly different kinds of problems. All people shit.”

“All people shit, true,” the man said, though there was something testy in his tone. “And here there are two different kinds of shit, competing for space. I reserve the right to resent it.”

The man walked away, and Gaylen watched him go. In his earpiece was the sound of Kiris patiently working her magic on the barwoman, but his attention was on the maroon-coloured stranger as he walked off. Because while offworlders paid the man no more than a passing glance, the locals who noticed him gave the man a berth. Well ahead of time.

Well, what’s all this?