“Reports?”

“Mocha, idiot.”

“Why not.”

After the waiter left, Aslan started talking, her eyes vague, her, hands busy preparing the mocha. “The Callidara Pseudo-Cluster. Busy place. Round a thousand systems less than a light-year apart, two hundred of them inhabited, mostly colonized from other worlds. You might remember something about it, Shadow. That’s where you and the Dyslaera flattened that bunch of Omphalites. Up until last year everyone thought that only ten of the systems had indigenes.”

“Up till last year?” Shadith dropped a dollop of whipped cream into the rich chocolaty kava, swirled a spoon through it, watching the white lines turn ivory then pale brown. “What happened last year?” She scooped up a spoonful, rolled it on her tongue, smiled with pleasure.

“A little rat caught his tail in a trap. Good, isn’t it. I love Nik’s mocha. As the Yaraka Rep told it, a Lommertoerken smuggler called. Cassecul found himself in difficulties both financial and criminal. The Rep was a handsome twerp. Nice fur and a mouthful of major words.” She wiped whipped cream from her upper lip. “Our hero scratched about for something to buy himself a bolt-hole and came up with the location of an unlisted world. Bйluchad. The local name.

“In the Callidara? I do remember the place. So much traffic round there the insplit shakes with it.”

“Even the Callidara’s got places nobody looks at. This one was in the upper right quadrant, tucked away in a nest of multiple stars some of which do have planets, but they’re basically sterile rocks, the orbits are eccentric and the radiation’s fairly lethal, so the usual scouts didn’t bother nosing about there.”

“Yesss, teacher.”

“Snip. If you were in my class, I’d smudge your record. So listen. Up till Cassecul’s hm indiscretion, maybe half a dozen free traders and a handful of smugglers worked Bйluchad. Knowing Quale, you’ll have a fair idea how much they weren’t talking about the place.”