Problem was, he wasn't sure that was the effect he wanted here. It might get him off this particular hook, but it might also get him booted straight out the door behind him. That wasn't exactly what he and Draycos had had in mind.

"So," Basht said at last. "You looked in."

Jack nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Just looked in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Really," Basht said, his voice suddenly the temperature of a walk-in freezer. "Then how do you explain that your papers are halfway into the office?"

Jack blinked. "Excuse me?"

Basht pointed past Jack's side. "Those are your papers, aren't they?"

Jack turned around. Lying on the floor partway into the office, half visible from where he stood, was a neatly folded set of papers with a blue backing. The same blue backing, he realized, that had been on Jommy Randolph's indenture agreement.

Only then did he finally catch on. An office, a secretary's work station, neat stacks of blank Whinyard's Edge forms conveniently lying around ...

And a clever and resourceful K'da poet-warrior.

Score one for the dragon.

"I don't know," he said, fumbling at his inside jacket pockets as if looking for something that should have been there. "I guess ... I guess so."

Basht's eyes flicked to the side. "You," he said to one of the teens. "Go get it."

The teen hurried to the office and returned with the blue-backed paper. "Jack Montana," Basht read aloud. He frowned as he looked down the sheet. "Who filled this out, your baby sister?"

"My parents didn't have much school-learning," Jack improvised. Draycos's reading skills were improving rapidly, but his penmanship still needed a lot of work.

"Let's hope yours was better," Basht said. "Are you satisfied yet that we aren't going to shoot you in the back?"

Jack swallowed again. "Yes, sir. I'm ... I guess I was just..."

"Don't make excuses, Montana," Basht said coldly. "Edgemen do their jobs right