“Lady Kareen,” Audrey said clearly. “Be welcome in my house.”

It was the proper sentiment, properly expressed, thought Pat Rin, working his way forward. Though what—and from whom—his mother might exact as Balance for being made welcome at a whorehouse—

“Well met, cousin!” Val Con murmured, astonishingly slipping his arm through Pat Rin’s. “Where to in such a rush?”

“If you would not see a murder done—or worse—” Pat Rin hissed into the frigid silence that followed Audrey’s greeting—”let me tend to this!”

“Nay I think you wrong both our host and your lady mother,” Val Con said tranquilly, his grip on Pat Rin’s arm tightening. “Besides, the hand is dealt.”

“You know what my mother is capable—”

“Peace,” his cousin interrupted. “My aunt is about to play her first card.”

“Who speaks?” Lady Kareen’s Terran was heavily accented, but perfectly intelligible; her tone as frigid as the wind in high winter.

It was of course quite mad to even consider that he might extricate himself from the brotherly embrace of one who was both a pilot and a Scout. Nonetheless, Pat Rin took a careful breath to camouflage his shift of weight—and felt warm fingers around his unencumbered hand. He looked down, equally dismayed and unsurprised to see Miri grinning up at him, grey eyes glinting.

“Take it easy, Boss,” she whispered. “Audrey’s good for this.”

He began to answer, then closed his mouth tightly. The fact that this had been planned—that Audrey had been coached on form and manner...

“That’s right,” their host was saying equitably to his mother. “You won’t know that. I’m Audrey Breckstone, boss of this house. I’m happy to see you.”

Not for nothing did Lady Kareen stand foremost among the scholars of the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct. She not only knew her Code, but she practiced it, meticulously Rather too meticulously, as some might think. But there was perhaps, Pat Rin thought now, an advantage—to Audrey, to the house, and to Kareen herself—in an extremely nice reading of Code in regard to this particular circumstance.