I came down to what I was starting to think of as the inn’s main dining hall. Which was a strange way to view a mine run I could have landed the Bucket in, but I couldn’t help it. It was homely.

  Maybe it was the smell of vanilla that still lingered. Maybe it was the gap-toothed smile Ma Tomlin kept giving me and her son. Maybe it was the obvious warmth between the two of them.

  Either way, I liked it. I felt a stab in my heart at the thought that I’d have to leave.

  Hao was gone. Not that I had expected her to wait around, now that I no longer had any means to pay her. But Tomlin was still around, lounging at one of the tables clustered by the bar. The table was all steel, with a runnel hole in the middle. Good in case you spilled a beer, or broke someone’s head.

  “Hey, kid,” I said by way of greeting. “Do me a favor?”

  “Ma left a bowl of shortbread on the bar,” he replied. “There’s still some left.”

  He had crumbs all over his face and shirt. I guessed the shortbread was good, not that I knew what shortbread was. Turned out it was a crumbly cake, thick as a finger and about three times as wide. Tasted heavenly, sugar and butter and vanilla. No wonder the whole place smelled of it.

  “Where’s your ma?” I asked.

  “Out,” Tomlin said, spewing yellow crumbs. “Had to run some errands.”

  “Won’t the Baylens be mad about what happened?” I said. “Take it out on her?”

  “The Baylens are always mad,” Tomlin said. “Besides, Ma said she’d go see old man Vincentes. They’ve got plenty of guns, if the Baylens come looking for her.”

  “Tell me about them,” I said.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Well, you’ve already seen Young Baylen and Da Baylen. They don’t have a ma, but both Baylen and his da got mistresses. Several of them.”

  Tomlin almost looked wistful, like a hungry man talking about raspberry pie. The kind served with ice cream.

  “Good to know,” I said, “but I wanted to know about the Vincentes.”

  For the next half an hour I pumped Tomlin for details, running through a complex web of siblings, cousins, spouses, in-laws, blood-brothers, and plain ol’ friendships. Not that there was much need for them. Everyone on Jackson seemed to be related to everyone else. The big problem was figuring out where one family ended and another began.

  “Except the Baylens,” Tomlin said. “They don’t belong anywhere.”

  “And Hao,” I added. “You didn’t mention her.”

  Tomlin swallowed noisily, looking off to the side, like I’d caught him in a lie.

  “She’s special,” he said.

  “So I’ve noticed,” I remarked dryly. I didn’t have the time for teenage love sonnets.

  “No,” he said. “Hao doesn’t have a family.”

  “They’re all dead?” I thought of the possibility of Baylen-arranged accidents.

  “She’s not from here,” Tomlin said. “Landed on a freighter ten years back and asked my da for a job.”

  Interesting.

  “Did she get it?” I asked.

  “Ya,” Tomlin said. “Da always had an eye for talent. Ma taught him.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Worked on the port facilities, mostly. Repairing the storage loaders and transmission towers, doing odd jobs on ships. That sort o’ thing.”

  “Was this before or after the Baylens arrived?”

  “Before,” Tomlin said. “Maybe a year or so.”

  “That happen often?” I said. “People migrating to Jackson, I mean.”

  “Before Hao? Ol’ Matron Vi-Luong’s first husband was from Idun. She met him on a trade mission.”

  So Hao had landed, an outsider, and a year later the Baylens had come. Not that it couldn’t be coincidence. But I didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Except that this line of thought brought me back to the Baylens. Who couldn’t have the hatchling, or there would have been a war of extermination going on right now, the Baylens making sure that no one on Jackson could grab their prize.

  Which meant that it had to be someone in the families. Not Tomlin, since he’d been with me the entire time. But even though he was safe, I could hardly ask him which member of the Grand Jacksonite Relatives Network was a thief. I might have been on his good side, but I was an outsider and he was Jackson Depot.

  That left Hao. She’d been with me for most of the day, which ruled her out as the thief, and she was an outsider, too.

  “You know where Hao is?” I asked Tomlin.

  “Sure,” he said. “She’s fixing your ship.”

  That was a surprise.