Banjin Colle had shadowed the fake captain at a very healthy distance. He was certain that, if he followed that young man for long enough, he’d discover who sent him. Instead, he found out that the fake captain was the real captain of an actual freighter ship. Banjin was simply flummoxed when the man had gone into the port and approached a ship, only for some woman to approach him. She’d addressed him as Captain Rinn. Of course, then he’d pulled that blaster so damned fast that Banjin was reassured that fleeing had been the right course of action. He’d heard the stories, of course, but seeing it in action was something wholly different. Banjin’s own grandfather had seemed too fast and too strong for words, but those were a child’s memories of a man he’d worshipped. Banjin hadn’t trusted the recollections. Seeing this Captain Rinn made him reassess those memories.

Of course, that didn’t explain why that young man was captain of a freighter. If he was what Banjin suspected, and Banjin was increasingly sure that he was, it didn’t make sense. This wasn’t how they operated. He’d done a little digging and that ship really did belong to that young man. Stealth was to be expected. Building an entire backstory as a freighter captain, though, that was a level of subterfuge that didn’t line up with anything Banjin had heard about that particular order. Yet, it was the only explanation for how that captain had so easily overcome Temera. Anyone who could defeat Temera Amaluy without so much as a bruise to show for the encounter didn’t belong on a freighter ship. They belonged in a throne room serving as a personal bodyguard to some high and mighty monarch or an exceptionally powerful noble. Either that or usurping a throne for themselves. Something in the mathematics of the situation didn’t hold up. That made Banjin Colle deeply uneasy.

When he considered it later, Banjin could never be certain if it was that deep unease, the distance from his government, or something else entirely that drove him into an action that he wouldn’t have otherwise considered. He went looking for Temera Amaluy. Even that far from his own society, it didn’t take him long to find the right kind of neighborhood. Agrarian worlds like Hasen 5 had a criminal underclass just like everywhere else. As distasteful as he found the situation, it was often the criminal class that had the most useful information. It was why he’d cultivated an informal and far-flung network of criminal associates. In some places, they were also the best source of discrete services. It was information about those kinds of services that he sought out. He’d seen Temera’s condition, if only briefly, and she was going to need medical assistance. It took a few hours and more drinks than usual, but he eventually got the names of a few people with medical backgrounds that didn’t ask questions and liked payment in hard currency.

He came up empty with the first three names. The fourth name belonged to a cadaverous old woman who stared at Banjin through a partially opened door with unnerving, dead eyes. She stared at him the way he thought some scientists stared at animal test subjects. Of course, the first three names hadn’t been much better. They were all unsettling in one way or another. He never let his revulsion towards the old woman show. Instead, he adopted an air that he’d found effective in these situations.

“Hello, madame. I’m hoping you might be able to render me a small service.”

The woman sniffed at him. “You’re not injured. I’ve no time for people who aren’t injured.”

Banjin just smiled at her and continued. “A friend of mine was injured earlier today. I suspect she might have come to you for assistance.”

“A friend? Men like you don’t have friends.”

“An associate, then. She’s about so high,” he said, holding a hand at the level of his own eyes. “Light hair that she keeps short-cropped.”

“I’d never discuss a patient,” said the woman.

“Nor would I ask you to do so,” Banjin lied smoothly.

In point of fact, he’d rather forcefully required exactly that from two of the other “doctors” he’d visited. That wouldn’t work with this woman, though. No amount of force or threat was going to move her to speak.

“Of course, you wouldn’t,” she said with another sniff.

“I propose a bargain,” said Banjin, fishing a pouch of hard currency from a pocket and offering it to the woman. “If you did have such a patient, you can go and inquire with her as to whether she’s willing to speak with Banjin Colle. I’ll wait outside. If she’s willing, you can come and get me. If she’s not, or she isn’t here, the money is still yours.”

The old woman plucked the pouch from Banjin’s hand with skeletal fingers. She closed and bolted the door firmly. Banjin knew he was rolling the dice. The old woman might well just keep the money and call it profit. She was the last name on his list, though. If Temera wasn’t here or wasn’t willing to see him, he’d chalk the whole thing up as a bad idea. He pulled out his pocket watch and thumbed the catch. The lid opened with a smooth action that he never grew tired of witnessing. He’d give the old woman five minutes and, if she didn’t come back, he’d leave. You didn’t win on every gamble. He could live with the loss of some credits if this one didn’t pay out the way he hoped. After the allotted five minutes, Banjin closed his watch, put it away, and started down the street. He was a little disappointed, but not entirely surprised. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if their respective positions were reversed, and Temera came looking for him.

“Hey, boy,” rasped the old woman from behind him.

He turned and saw her standing half out of her door.

“Yes,” he said.

“She said she’ll talk to you.”

“Very good,” said Banjin with a crisp nod.

He went back and followed the woman into a tidy space that still felt overstuffed. There was medical equipment, medications, and texts covering every flat surface and all of the copious shelving. He wasn’t sure who her black market supplier was, but they weren’t specific about where they got things from. He saw medication with labels from the Ikaren monarchy, the Kesselian Alliance, the Fonerian League, and even a few from his own government, the Zeren Authority. Then again, it was equally likely that she got supplies from anyone who made regular visits. Say what you like about the criminal underworld, they worked hard to make sure that their doctors stayed supplied. The old woman said nothing. She just took him to a plain door in the back, waved at it with a negligent gesture, and then disappeared behind a different door. With a shake of his head, Banjin decided he was going to work hard to never get injured on this planet.

He opened the door, stepped through, and came to an immediate halt. Temera was half-sitting, half-lying on an oversized cot. She looked even worse now than she had earlier. Most of her face was mottled with bruises, although there was some kind of salve spread over it. He supposed it was just a basic regen cream. One of her arms was all but immobilized in a compression sleeve. He suspected that there were other injuries he couldn’t see beneath the loose-fitting smock she wore. His brain made an idle accounting of all these injuries, but his attention was focused on the blaster. Injured or not, her hand was perfectly steady. Banjin slowly lifted his own hands to show her that he wasn’t holding a weapon.

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“Come to finish what your attack dog started?” She asked.

“Peace, Temera. I only came to talk.”

“Talk? You?”

“I thought it was time.”

“Your killer did plenty of talking. Don’t you think? He damn near got the job done.”

“He isn’t mine. If I hadn’t seen him throw you through that door, I’d have thought he was yours.”

“Kicked.”

“Sorry?”

“He kicked me through that door.”

Banjin winced at the idea. He gave Temera a thoughtful look. “May I come in, Temera?”

“Sure. Close the door, please.”

Banjin stepped the rest of the way into the room and very slowly closed the door behind him. He turned to look at her again, his hands still in the air.

“Are you going to kill me now?” he asked, less afraid than curious.

Temera sighed, winced, and shook her head. “I suppose not. Put your hands down. You look silly.

“Thank you,” said Banjin, lowering his hands with a little relief.

“Still,” said Terema, “you don’t really expect me to believe that he isn’t the Zeren Authority’s newest toy, do you?”

“If they had someone like that, do you think I’d be here?”

The question seemed to catch Temera a little off-guard. She frowned, then gestured to a chair with the blaster. “Sit.”

Banjin sat. “No, he’s not one of ours. He’s clearly not one of yours.”

“Who does he work for?”

Instead of answering that question, Banjin posed one of his own. “Do you know what he is?”

“He’s terrifying. That’s what he is.”

“He’s a Warder Under the Night. Well, I believe he is.”

“A Bloodhand. No chance,” said Temera, shaking her head.

Banjin flinched at the derogatory term. “For your own sake, I strongly recommend that you never use that term around one of them. They take it personally.”

Temera seemed to weigh his reaction. “How personally?”

“The challenge you to combat to the death kind of personally.”

“I see,” said Temera with slow deliberation. “Even so, I’ve seen some of those Warders at work. There is no chance he’s one of them. They’re very good, but that man,” she shuddered. “He was, the things he did, it was impossible.”

Temera apparently came to some decision because she put the blaster down.

“What do you mean impossible?”

She gave him a frightened look. “I threw two knives at him.”

Banjin considered that for a moment. She was positively lethal with those knives. “So, you injured him?”

“He caught them. Just grabbed them right out of the air.”

Banjin blinked at that. It wasn’t quite impossible. He’d seen people do similar things, but only under tightly controlled circumstances. To do it under pressure, with little or no preparation, was the next best thing to impossible.

“My gods,” he whispered.

“If you say so,” said Temera. “Things didn’t go any better when I pulled a blaster on him. You saw what happened when I tried to take him hand to hand. I can’t remember the last time someone slapped me down that hard. You know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“He wasn’t even trying that hard. I could see it on his face. When he pulled that sword, though, there was nothing there. No emotion. No anything. I’m not even sure that he’s human.”

Banjin let all of what she’d said sink in for about thirty seconds before he finally answered. “He’s human enough.”

Temera lifted an eyebrow. “What gives you that impression?”

“He let you go.”

“I escaped,” hissed Temera.

Banjin shook his head. “You ran, but he let you go. He could have run you down if he had any real inclination to kill you. I watched him make a conscious choice not to chase you.”

“Listen to me, you smug,” Temera started before Banjin raised a placating hand.

“He let me escape as well. When I ran away.”

“You ran?” she asked in naked shock.

“As fast as my legs would carry me. The salient information is that he didn’t chase either of us. You attacked him. I intervened. Yet, he let us both flee. Letting one of us escape to pursue the other, I could understand. Letting us both go, however, suggests to me that he had no vested interest in either you or me. That brings me around to your earlier question. I’m not convinced he’s working directly for anyone. Did you see the way he was dressed?”

It was Temera who fell silent for a time before she nodded. “Looked like some kind of, I don’t know, pirate, I suppose.”

Banjin threw his head back and laughed. Temera leveled a very unfriendly look his way. Banjin did his best to suppress his mirth.

“No,” he said. “Not a pirate. That’s the style among freighter captains these days. Well, it’s the style in some places.”

“He’s masquerading as a freighter captain? Why?”

“That’s just the thing. It’s not an act. I did some checking. He’s a legitimate freighter captain with his own ship.”

Temera shook her head. “No. No, that doesn’t make any sense. Someone with those skills doesn’t captain a cargo ship. If he’s really a Bloodhand, which I’m not conceding to yet, he answers to someone. They contract their services. They don’t run operatives. They never have. It’s why everyone leaves them alone. Unless there’s been some massive political shift on their world, he’s under contract to someone.”

“Play along with me. Let’s just pretend for a minute that he’s exactly what he appears to be, a freighter captain who somehow, someway, got all the training of a Warder Under the Night. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, isn’t beholden to that particular order.”

Temera sighed but nodded. “All right, let’s pretend that’s all true.”

“What are the odds that someone like that shows up here at the same time as us? Of all the places in the galaxy that a freighter captain with those skills could be at any given moment, he turns up here, now, at that information broker’s home. What are the odds of that?”

“Infinitesimal,” answered Temera with a thoughtful look on her face. “Let’s say you’re on the right track. He’s just some freighter captain who fluked into some very specialized training. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that some third party knows what he can do. This mysterious third party comes into possession of some sensitive information.”

Banjin nodded. “The kind of information they know that large, powerful governments will send people like us to retrieve.”

“They don’t want to keep it themselves for any length of time. Too much risk that someone will show up looking for the information. Better to pass it off to an information broker.”

“Of course, you need to get it to that information broker. You don’t dare transmit it over any kind of public system. If it gets intercepted, your life becomes very difficult, very quickly.”

“So,” continued Temera, “who do you trust to carry that information for you? Who can you trust to actually get it to the intended recipient? Who better than some kind of rogue Bloodhand?”

Banjin winced again. “Truly, you should excise the word from your vocabulary.”

Temera glared at him. “I’ll work on it on a day when I’m not injured and exhausted.”

“Fair enough. I think you drew the right conclusion. I think someone sent him to bring the information to the broker and just passed it off as another delivery.”

Temera lifted an eyebrow at him. “You think he doesn’t know what he has.”

Banjin shook his head. “I think he didn’t know before. I’m sure he suspects now.”

Temera frowned. “Complicated, in a lot of ways.”

Banjin leaned back in the chair and idly slipped the watch from his pocket. He saw Temera eyeing the little device. She composed her face into careful neutrality before she spoke.

“May I see that?” She asked.

Banjin suppressed an amused smirk and unfastened the watch from his vest. He passed it over to her. She examined the watch closely, popping the cover and closing it several times before she handed it back. He took his time putting it back into place before he let the amused smile settle on his face.

“Find what you were looking for?” He asked.

She sighed. “It’s really just some old watch, isn’t it?”

“It’s just a watch.”

“There are a lot of rumors about that thing. Why do you keep it?”

“Because I like it,” he answered with a shrug. “Don’t you have anything you keep just because you like it?”

“No.”

Banjin eyed the woman. It was hard to read her expression with all the swelling and bruises. He couldn’t tell if she was indifferent to the matter or if there was some other emotion lurking beneath the surface.

“You should try it sometime,” he offered. “Then, people will start rumors about your innocuous objects. Add to the mystery.”

She gave him a half-smile before she turned serious again. “We’re still on opposite sides of this thing.”

He nodded. “We are. Honestly, I’m a little shocked that a volcano hasn’t spontaneously formed beneath this building already. We have been in the same room for entire minutes.”

“I was thinking something similar about earthquakes.”

Banjin smiled. “We are on opposite sides, but it’s a moot point until we answer a fundamental question.”

“What question is that?”

“What to do about Captain Rinn?”