“Where exactly are we going?” Maranne asked, taking an extra long step to get in close behind Kast.
“This way,” Kast said, veering through the crowd toward the side.
The others followed, and a moment later all five were standing in the narrow walkway between two shuttered booths. “Here?” Trell demanded.
“The booth you want is five ahead on the left,” Kast told them.
“Curio shop-owner’s named Sajsh. You-” he pointed a gloved finger at Trell “-will tell him you have a cargo for Borbor Crisk and ask for delivery instructions.”
“What about the rest of us?” Riij asked.
“You’ll go out first,” Kast said. “Stay out of the conversation, but watch and listen.”
Trell looked out into the flow of the crowd, a shiver running down his neck. Something about this didn’t feel right, but it was too late to back out now. “Maranne, make sure you’re where you can cover me,” he told her.
“There will be no shooting,” Kast assured him.
“Glad to hear it,” Maranne said. “You don’t mind if I cover him anyway?”
Kast’s invisible eyes seemed to bore into hers through the helmet visor. “As you wish,” he said. “All of you: move.”
Wordlessly, the others filed out into the crowd, Kast bringing up the rear. Trell gave them a count of fifty to find their positions, then followed.
The curio shop was easy to find: a small, somewhat dilapidated open-air booth with an enclosed back room that had been inexpertly added on long enough ago to look almost as moldering as the booth itself. A lizardine creature of an unfamiliar species was leaning on the counter, watching the crowds passing by. Taking a deep breath, Trell stepped over to him.
The lizard looked up as Trell approached, his alien expression unreadable. “Good day, good sir,” he said in adequate Basic. “I am Sajsh, proprietor of this humble establishment. May I be of assistance?”
“I hope so,” Trell said. “I have a cargo for someone named Borbor Crisk. I was told you could give me delivery instructions.”
A three-forked tongue darted briefly from the scaled mouth. “You have been misinformed,” he said. “I know no one by that name.”
“Oh?” Trell said, taken aback. “Are you sure?”
The tongue flicked again. “Do you doubt my word?” the alien spat.
“Or merely my memory or intelligence?”
“No, no,” Trell said hastily. “Not at all. I just… my source seemed so sure this was the place.”
Sajsh opened his mouth wide. “Perhaps he was only slightly incorrect.
Perhaps he meant the shop to my kill-hand.”
He pointed to his right, to an equally dilapidated booth that was currently closed up. “The proprietor will return at the seven-hour.
You can return then and ask him.”
“I’ll do that,” Trell promised. “Thank you.”
The lizard snapped his jaws together twice. Nodding, Trell turned and pushed his way back into the stream of pedestrians, face hot with embarrassment and annoyance.
“Well?” Maranne demanded, sidling up beside him.
“Kast had the wrong place,” Trell growled, glancing around. But the bounty hunter was nowhere to be seen.
“Where are the others?”
“We’re right here,” Riij said, coming up through the crowd behind him.
“Kast said to head back down the street and he’d meet us.”
“Good,” Trell said tartly. “I’ve got a few things to say to our esteemed bounty hunter. Let’s go.”
ajsh and the unknown man finished their conversation, and the latter moved away back into the mass of browsers and shoppers. Two booths over, Corran Horn set down the melon he’d been examining and eased into the flow behind him.
The stranger didn’t seem to be trying to lose himself in the crowd.
Though any such effort would have been quickly negated by the company he linked up with: a hard-eyed, competent-looking woman, a young man about Corran’s own age, and a yellow-skinned alien with several short horns protruding from his chin. For a moment the four of them conversed; then, with the contact man leading the way, they continued on down the street.
At the edge of Corran’s vision, a heavyset figure stepped to his side.
“Trouble?”
“I don’t know, Dad,” Corran said. “You see that foursome up there?
Tooled brown jacket, blondish woman, white-spiked collar, yellow-skinned alien?”
“Yes,” Hal Horn nodded. “The alien’s a Tunroth, by the way.
Fairly rare outside their home system; most of the ones you run into these days work with high-stakes safaris, mercenaries, or bounty hunters.”