Serrin had grown thinner, Geraint observed as he studied the other’s face. He noticed, too, that the elf’s hands shook just a little now. Though Serrin had been shot up seriously not long before he and Geraint first met, the elf had possessed an energy in those days that now seemed to have turned in on him. Behind the effort to appear glad and pleased to see his friend again, Geraint felt a little saddened.

“So that’s about it. Amsterdam, Paris, Seattle, and now the delights of the bally old Smoke for this year. But hey! What about you? I read a profile of you in one of the UCAS business datanets sometime last spring. They tipped you as one of the fifty brightest comers in European speculative finances. If you’d been a racehorse, I’d have backed you to win the Derby!”

Geraint broke into a bright srnile as he opened a new pack for the first cigarette of the day. Serrin reached across and helped himself, dismissing the silver lighter as he struck an old-fashioned rnatch and lit both their cigarettes. Feigning a voice from an ancient American detective movie and pulling an imaginary raincoat closer to his neck to keep out non-existent rain, he whispered, “I wuz pleased to see my hurnble match lit as brightly as the dude’s flashy Zippo.”

Geraint leaned back and locked Serrin in a close gaze. "You always could raise a smile, old friend. I looked for you after it was all over, you know. I hoped that someone in Tir Tairngire might have been able to give rne a lead, but you’d gone to ground and your people were very silent. Very polite, but very silent. I didn’t forget you." Their fingers reached out, and they held their hands clasped strongly for a few seconds across the table.