Chapter IV: Questions and Answers


Stro'to makes a faint clucking noise of protest, but making excuses and explaining away suspicious coincidences is a life skill Stro'to calls upon daily, and he wastes no time launching into today's one.
"I assure you, the boot is entirely on the other leg! I was merely stuck in traffic trying to get to my meeting-- which, as you rightly say was not for another 50 minutes-- when my Master, an avid watcher of the news, hologrammed me and told me that Xizran had gone missing less than an hour before he was due to deliver a rather large payment to us, and told me he had hired a very seedy bounty hunter-- a cheap, seedy bounty hunter whom neither of us have ever worked with before, but whose ProB reviews, which I now see were entirely false! were 4 stars-- to track you and discuss the matter of payment before you left the planet. You are a valued customer, after all. And usually late payments or faked deaths are trivial matters one is able to sort out in a handful of weeks at most, when one is dealing with Exchange vigos or CEOs of businesses worth billions or princes, much less all three. It is not my fault you, Fennec, do not believe in subtlety and therefore left a trail of destruction and threatened destruction in your wake that was very easy to track and for witnesses to remember. If a useless wretch like Quilran could find you, it is no wonder Lendon did too. The only wonder was that he had not already done so already."