There was the screech of multiple sets of brakes, and the train rolled to a stop. Directly in front of us was the middle of the three first-class compartment cars, the one in which Bayta and I had booked our usual double room. All along the train the doors irised open, and a line of seven-legged conductor Spiders stepped onto the platform, settling into their standard Buckingham Palace guard stances.

[All aboard Trans-Galactic Quadrail 1077 to Venidra Carvo of the Shorshic Congregate,] they announced in Juric, as always using the local language. For the rest of us, a multilanguage holodisplay with the same information floated above the train. [Departure in thirty-three minutes.]

This was it. Squaring my shoulders, reminding myself that so far we’d been able to handle anything the Modhri threw at us, I started toward the door.

And stopped short as the back of a hand suddenly pressed imperiously against my right shoulder. “Excuse us,” a voice said tartly. “Coming through. Excuse us, please.”

I turned to look. The owner of the hand was the middle-aged Human I’d seen talking to the four Fillies. Along with his salt-and-pepper hair. I saw now that he had a slightly bushy mustache, cut in the style currently in vogue among middle-level corporate drones. He was about my height, running a little to fat beneath his traveling suit. Confidence and authority and calm arrogance wrapped around him like a rain cloak.

His eyes flicked to me, sized me up and dismissed me in that single glance, and moved on. The pressure of the back of his hand vanished as he passed me by, still warning the rest of our fellow passengers to give him room as he ushered his four Fillies toward the door.

A few meters down from me, one of the waiting Juriani muttered something about decorum and proper procedure. But no one else seemed inclined to raise any objections. In fact, I spotted several of the passengers moving aside of their own accord.