PRIVATE INDEX // ACTIVE CONTACTS
I started keeping a separate record after forgetting the name of a customs clerk I had already bribed once and paying him again six months later. Four hundred credits is not an especially expensive lesson, but it was irritating enough that I decided not to repeat it. The first version was mostly names and occupations, which stopped being useful rather quickly. People change jobs. They gain access, lose access, marry, divorce, accumulate debts, settle them, or decide that someone they trusted last year is exactly the person they should avoid this year. A name without context is just another piece of data waiting to become obsolete.
The files contain the details. These are the parts worth remembering.
SERA NOLL
Communications Technician / Signal Forensics / Slicer
I met Sera because I hired somebody else. He called himself a slicer and charged accordingly, though every technical question seemed to require leaving the room before he could answer it. Eventually curiosity won out and I followed him. Sera was in the back with the freight computer I had paid him to crack open, doing the actual work for considerably less than I was paying for it. I let the arrangement finish as agreed, then sent her the difference afterward with a note explaining that she had done the work. Three days later she contacted me directly. We have been working together ever since.
Sera is thirty-eight, Sullustan, slate-grey, and small even by the standards of her species. There are old electrical burns across her hands and a technician's jacket she has repaired so many times that I doubt much of the original garment remains. She wears a copper ring on a cord around her neck. I asked about it once and received a question about whether I wanted my encryption finished that month, which I took as sufficient guidance on the subject. Her value isn't merely that she can slice a system. Sera can tell me whether data itself is trustworthy: what was deleted, altered, reconstructed, transmitted, or made to look older than it really is. She built much of the security around my own archives and remains one of very few people I allow near them without feeling the need to watch over her shoulder.
She also knows I'm Force-sensitive, though not the extent of it. A power junction failed while we were working together years ago and I moved before the warning indicator illuminated. Sera watched me for several seconds afterward before deciding that I was apparently "one of those people who make everything unnecessarily complicated." We have never discussed the matter more seriously than that. I trust her professionally more than almost anyone I know, and there is no debt or piece of leverage holding her in place. She works with me because she wants to. That distinction is probably more important than I like admitting.
TOVIN BRASK
Freight Dispatcher / Cargo Scheduling
Tovin is forty-nine, Human, broad around the middle and gradually becoming the same shape as the chair he has occupied for the last fifteen years. He has thinning sandy hair, a moustache going grey around the edges, and two styluses permanently tucked behind his right ear even when he is actively searching for one. His hands don't quite fit the rest of him. They're large and heavily calloused from the years he spent loading freight before an accident moved him behind a scheduling terminal, and the same injury still leaves him limping when he has been standing too long.
I met him when I was twenty-three and considerably less patient. A cargo container I was responsible for had been incorrectly classified as carrying volatile mining material, and I spent most of a day being directed toward people whose principal skill seemed to be identifying somebody else responsible for fixing the problem. Tovin looked at the manifest, insulted the clerk who entered the code, corrected it in less than a minute, and then spent the better part of an hour explaining everything else wrong with the freight administration system. I listened. Apparently that was unusual enough that he remembered me.
Tovin is useful because he knows what ordinary looks like. He has spent decades watching cargo move, which means he notices when three freighters are reassigned to a route nobody normally uses, when a mining concern suddenly orders six times its normal coolant, or when a captain he trusts refuses a perfectly profitable run without explaining why. Every so often he sends me a manifest number followed by some variation of "Thought you'd find this strange." Usually I do. We meet for drinks every few weeks and he tells me about work, grav-ball, his ex-wife and his daughters. I seldom ask him direct questions because I rarely need to. Tovin thinks we're friends. The uncomfortable part of keeping this record is that he's right.
KEVA DORR
Administrative Aide / Government Access
Keva Dorr is thirty-two, Pantoran, tall and narrow with cobalt skin, indigo hair cut precisely against her jaw and small gold markings across the bridge of her nose. She dresses with the same attention she gives everything else: nothing unnecessary and nothing out of place. I have seen her visibly rushed once. She insists I haven't.
We met because I needed a meeting with her employer and Keva told me no. She gave me the same answer the next day, so on the third I stopped asking and brought her an archive authorization she had been attempting to obtain for several weeks. She wanted to know how I found the correct person to approve it. I declined to answer, which was probably the point at which our relationship stopped being an inconvenience and became interesting. I had my meeting the following afternoon.
Keva understands institutions in much the same way Tovin understands freight. An organizational chart can tell me who possesses authority; Keva can usually tell me who actually exercises it. She knows which deputy writes the policy their superior will eventually claim as their own, which committee can quietly bury a proposal, and which aide has to be convinced before approaching the official supposedly responsible for the decision. We generally exchange favors rather than credits. I solve problems that don't fit comfortably through official channels and, in return, she gives me introductions, schedules, procedural details and the occasional warning that something apparently routine isn't. There is also a competitive element to our conversations that neither of us has bothered acknowledging. Sometimes she gives me a piece of information just to see what I make of it. I've returned the favor often enough that I suspect we're both cultivating one another. I would be disappointed if we weren't.
DRELL VANTO
Senior Customs Inspector
[SIZE= 15px]Drell's boots cost too much. That isn't how I discovered he was corrupt, although in retrospect it should probably have moved higher on the list. He's a forty-four-year-old Rodian with mottled olive skin, two pale scars along one side of his snout, and one antenna that healed slightly inward after being broken years ago. His uniform is always immaculate, as are his gloves and, unfortunately for him, the boots. Drell has expensive tastes and a government salary. Those two things are rarely as unrelated as people insist.
I found him while tracing confiscated electronics that had supposedly been destroyed after seizure. The paperwork existed but the equipment didn't, and a succession of salvage companies eventually led back to Drell. He had been redirecting confiscated property into private resale channels and was doing it carefully enough that I almost admired the work. Almost. I invited him to lunch, put a storage wafer containing what I had found on the table and told him it was insurance. He asked for whom. At the time, I genuinely hadn't decided.
Initially Drell supplied information because he understood what would happen if he didn't. Customs priorities, passenger flags, inspection notices, seizures, internal memoranda—things that let me know what authorities are looking for before most of the people being looked at know themselves. Our arrangement became less straightforward when an internal audit came close to discovering him and I quietly redirected it. He never asked how, and I never explained. He still resents me, but he also knows that his career now survives partly because the man capable of destroying it has become invested in keeping him exactly where he is. Somewhere along the way we began occasionally drinking together, which neither of us would admit has made the arrangement more personal. Recently I learned that Drell has started collecting information about me. I haven't stopped him. I have several explanations for why, none entirely satisfactory.
NEMI KORR
Provenance Specialist / Archaeological Consultant
Nemi dislikes being called an antiquities dealer. I learned that approximately thirty seconds after meeting her and have avoided repeating the mistake. She is fifty-seven, Mirialan, pale green, with dark geometric tattoos around her eyes and black hair now split by a broad streak of silver. Three fingers on her left hand are mechanical replacements from an excavation accident she insists was considerably less interesting than everyone wants it to be. She dresses as though any conversation could unexpectedly require crawling through a ruin, which, knowing Nemi, is probably a reasonable precaution.
Our first piece of business involved an object I thought might have some connection to the Force. Nemi turned it over, pointed out the manufacturer's number on the bottom and informed me that I had purchased an industrial pressure regulator. The object was worthless. The excavation records accompanying it weren't, and we spent most of the next six hours going through those instead. That was the beginning of a considerably more useful relationship.
Nemi understands history as a chain of custody. She doesn't merely identify an object; she wants to know who excavated it, who catalogued it, who bought it afterward, which institution inherited the records and why something supposedly lost appeared in a private collection forty years later. That has made her invaluable as my research into the Jedi and other Force traditions has grown. She has also noticed that my questions are changing. I ask less often what an artifact was and more often who paid for the expedition that discovered it, where the records went afterward, or why the same family name appears around three otherwise unrelated sites. Nemi asked once what I was actually looking for. I told her I'd let her know when I knew. She didn't believe me, which was unfortunate because I wasn't lying.
BRENN ORDO
Independent Courier / Physical Transport
Brenn is a Duros in his early fifties, tall enough that most furniture appears designed specifically to inconvenience him. His skin is weathered blue-grey, his eyes dark red, and his flight jacket is so old that repairs now account for more of it than whatever was originally manufactured. I once bought him a replacement. He thanked me, put it away somewhere and continued wearing the old one. He also keeps an analogue chronometer on his wrist that is less accurate than nearly every electronic device he owns because, in his words, machines should be permitted to perform only the tasks they deserve. Sera considers this philosophy offensive on a personal level.
Brenn and I met because the same client hired both of us without explaining that fact. I had been paid to acquire a data cylinder and Brenn to transport it afterward. He arrived earlier than expected, I assumed he intended to steal it, and he came to roughly the same conclusion about me. By the time we sorted out the misunderstanding there had been a weapon involved and neither of us particularly wanted to finish the job. I suggested we finish it anyway and charge the client twice for the inconvenience. That was the first time I saw Brenn smile.
He is the person I use when I don't trust a network. Physical records, sensitive hardware, people, anything important enough that transmitting it feels like an unnecessary risk. Brenn knows pilots, port crews and forgotten routes that larger organizations rarely care about until they suddenly need them, and he keeps almost none of it in a centralized database. I find this deeply irritating and entirely sensible. We can spend hours together without talking and neither of us feels required to fix that. He has also noticed that when I'm worried I apparently stop blinking often enough. I disputed this until he counted. Brenn has few absolute rules, but he does have them, the most important being that he will not transport slaves or knowingly support trafficking. I have never asked him to cross that line. I would rather not discover which of us I would think less of afterward.
LESSA DANE
Forensic Accountant / Financial Architecture
Lessa has spent considerable effort becoming forgettable. She is forty-three, Human, brown-skinned, with cropped black hair and thin rectangular reading lenses she prefers to implants. Her clothes are conservative enough that I have difficulty remembering any individual item despite having known her for years. The exception is an old wedding band she still wears despite being divorced for six of them. I've never asked about it. Contrary to popular opinion, I do occasionally recognize when a question is none of my business.
I found Lessa because a company I was investigating should have gone bankrupt and somehow hadn't. It produced too little revenue to justify its continued existence, yet money always arrived where it was needed and disappeared again before attracting much attention. Following the structure eventually led to Lessa, and following Lessa uncovered something unrelated. She had been stealing from one of her criminal clients to cover debts accumulated by her son. The people he owed had begun losing patience. Lessa was careful, but desperation tends to create patterns where there shouldn't be any.
I made the debt disappear, then showed her enough of the accounting trail to make clear that I knew what she had done. I never threatened her, which I think she would have preferred. She now helps me follow money through corporations, shell companies and financial arrangements specifically designed to make ownership difficult to understand. Our relationship remains complicated. Lessa is grateful to me, resents me, trusts me with her son's safety and does not trust me personally at all. None of those positions contradict one another as much as they sound like they should. I pay her for every job despite possessing enough leverage that I technically wouldn't have to. She finds that irritating too. I'm reasonably certain she keeps some sort of contingency file on me. I have never gone looking for it. Everyone deserves insurance.
VEYRA SOL
Private Hospitality / Social Coordination
Veyra is twenty-nine, Zeltron, with muted rose skin, dark auburn hair cut beneath the jaw and an irritating ability to recognize how someone feels before they've decided whether they want to admit it themselves. Her wardrobe changes with whatever event she's managing—private clubs, diplomatic functions, corporate receptions, hotel suites—but the shoes are always comfortable. Of all the lessons she has learned from wealthy people, that may be the most practical.
We met because an industrialist, his mistress and a diplomatic delegation had somehow been assigned overlapping private accommodations. Veyra had less than ten minutes before an administrative mistake became a scandal. I happened to be nearby for unrelated reasons and helped rearrange the problem before anyone important realized there had been one. The industrialist moved floors, his security team received a plausible explanation and the delegation remained blissfully unaware. Veyra found me afterward and asked what I wanted. When I told her nothing, she informed me that was worse. In retrospect, she was probably right.
Veyra understands people the way Tovin understands freight. She notices when two executives stop trusting one another, when somebody who normally travels alone suddenly books a second suite, when an assistant starts being treated like their employer, or when two guests arrive separately and spend the evening making a point of not being seen leaving together. For a long time I let her believe I simply enjoyed gossip. I suspect she worked out the truth months ago and has chosen not to mention it. I haven't told her that I know she knows, which means we're maintaining a deception that neither of us believes. Veyra also occasionally invites me somewhere without any professional justification. When I attend, she complains that I spend the evening watching everyone else instead of enjoying myself. I have explained several times that these are not mutually exclusive activities. She remains unconvinced.
GENERAL NOTES
They are not an intelligence service, though I suppose the distinction grows less useful the longer I keep these records. Sera would laugh if I called them one. Tovin would likely stare at me for a moment and ask what in the hell I was talking about. Keva's first question would be who was paying for it, which is probably the correct question. Drell would want to know whether his name appeared anywhere official, Nemi would object to the terminology, Brenn would say nothing at all, and Lessa would immediately begin considering how much trouble the whole thing could cause her. Veyra, I suspect, would simply ask why it had taken me so long to notice. It is better, for the present, that none of them think of it that way.
They do not know one another particularly well, although that is becoming harder to manage. Sera has met Brenn and considers his refusal to trust networked storage evidence of some basic defect in his character. Brenn, unfortunately, finds this very funny. Tovin has met Veyra twice now and has somehow forgotten how ordinary conversation works on both occasions. She noticed the first time. Keva and Lessa have never been properly introduced, and I have no immediate plans to remedy that. They are both too good at recognizing what people actually do for a living, regardless of what appears on a business card. Nemi met Drell once and disliked him before the drinks arrived. I asked her afterward what had bothered her. She said it was his boots. I have known Nemi long enough to leave certain answers alone.
There was a time when I could keep every useful name I knew in my head. Perhaps I simply knew fewer people then. The number is still not large, despite the impression I sometimes permit clients to carry away with them, but I don't think that is why I continue writing these entries. Sera tells me when information can be trusted. Tovin knows when freight is moving in ways it should not. Keva understands the distance between the person who holds an office and the person who actually gets something done. Drell knows what the authorities are looking for, Nemi knows where old things came from and where they disappeared to, Brenn can move what I would rather not transmit, Lessa follows money through places designed to hide it, and Veyra notices relationships before anybody thinks to put them into a record. Those were the reasons I began writing their names down.
I find that I remember other things now. Tovin's daughters have names, and I know them. Sera takes her caf far too sweet and denies doing so despite preparing it in front of me. Brenn's knee bothers him after long flights, though he maintains with some conviction that Duros do not suffer the same complaints as Humans. Keva rubs the inside of her left thumb when she is deciding how much truth to give me. Veyra removes the insoles from expensive shoes almost as soon as she buys them and replaces them with cheaper ones because, as she has explained more than once, nobody who designs formal footwear has ever worked a twelve-hour reception. There are questions I no longer ask Nemi. I know why Lessa checks on her son every morning. I know Drell worries that there will come a day when I have no further use for him.
Most of these things will never earn me a credit, open a door, or answer a question.
I keep them anyway.
I started keeping a separate record after forgetting the name of a customs clerk I had already bribed once and paying him again six months later. Four hundred credits is not an especially expensive lesson, but it was irritating enough that I decided not to repeat it. The first version was mostly names and occupations, which stopped being useful rather quickly. People change jobs. They gain access, lose access, marry, divorce, accumulate debts, settle them, or decide that someone they trusted last year is exactly the person they should avoid this year. A name without context is just another piece of data waiting to become obsolete.
The files contain the details. These are the parts worth remembering.
SERA NOLL
Communications Technician / Signal Forensics / Slicer
I met Sera because I hired somebody else. He called himself a slicer and charged accordingly, though every technical question seemed to require leaving the room before he could answer it. Eventually curiosity won out and I followed him. Sera was in the back with the freight computer I had paid him to crack open, doing the actual work for considerably less than I was paying for it. I let the arrangement finish as agreed, then sent her the difference afterward with a note explaining that she had done the work. Three days later she contacted me directly. We have been working together ever since.
Sera is thirty-eight, Sullustan, slate-grey, and small even by the standards of her species. There are old electrical burns across her hands and a technician's jacket she has repaired so many times that I doubt much of the original garment remains. She wears a copper ring on a cord around her neck. I asked about it once and received a question about whether I wanted my encryption finished that month, which I took as sufficient guidance on the subject. Her value isn't merely that she can slice a system. Sera can tell me whether data itself is trustworthy: what was deleted, altered, reconstructed, transmitted, or made to look older than it really is. She built much of the security around my own archives and remains one of very few people I allow near them without feeling the need to watch over her shoulder.
She also knows I'm Force-sensitive, though not the extent of it. A power junction failed while we were working together years ago and I moved before the warning indicator illuminated. Sera watched me for several seconds afterward before deciding that I was apparently "one of those people who make everything unnecessarily complicated." We have never discussed the matter more seriously than that. I trust her professionally more than almost anyone I know, and there is no debt or piece of leverage holding her in place. She works with me because she wants to. That distinction is probably more important than I like admitting.
TOVIN BRASK
Freight Dispatcher / Cargo Scheduling
Tovin is forty-nine, Human, broad around the middle and gradually becoming the same shape as the chair he has occupied for the last fifteen years. He has thinning sandy hair, a moustache going grey around the edges, and two styluses permanently tucked behind his right ear even when he is actively searching for one. His hands don't quite fit the rest of him. They're large and heavily calloused from the years he spent loading freight before an accident moved him behind a scheduling terminal, and the same injury still leaves him limping when he has been standing too long.
I met him when I was twenty-three and considerably less patient. A cargo container I was responsible for had been incorrectly classified as carrying volatile mining material, and I spent most of a day being directed toward people whose principal skill seemed to be identifying somebody else responsible for fixing the problem. Tovin looked at the manifest, insulted the clerk who entered the code, corrected it in less than a minute, and then spent the better part of an hour explaining everything else wrong with the freight administration system. I listened. Apparently that was unusual enough that he remembered me.
Tovin is useful because he knows what ordinary looks like. He has spent decades watching cargo move, which means he notices when three freighters are reassigned to a route nobody normally uses, when a mining concern suddenly orders six times its normal coolant, or when a captain he trusts refuses a perfectly profitable run without explaining why. Every so often he sends me a manifest number followed by some variation of "Thought you'd find this strange." Usually I do. We meet for drinks every few weeks and he tells me about work, grav-ball, his ex-wife and his daughters. I seldom ask him direct questions because I rarely need to. Tovin thinks we're friends. The uncomfortable part of keeping this record is that he's right.
KEVA DORR
Administrative Aide / Government Access
Keva Dorr is thirty-two, Pantoran, tall and narrow with cobalt skin, indigo hair cut precisely against her jaw and small gold markings across the bridge of her nose. She dresses with the same attention she gives everything else: nothing unnecessary and nothing out of place. I have seen her visibly rushed once. She insists I haven't.
We met because I needed a meeting with her employer and Keva told me no. She gave me the same answer the next day, so on the third I stopped asking and brought her an archive authorization she had been attempting to obtain for several weeks. She wanted to know how I found the correct person to approve it. I declined to answer, which was probably the point at which our relationship stopped being an inconvenience and became interesting. I had my meeting the following afternoon.
Keva understands institutions in much the same way Tovin understands freight. An organizational chart can tell me who possesses authority; Keva can usually tell me who actually exercises it. She knows which deputy writes the policy their superior will eventually claim as their own, which committee can quietly bury a proposal, and which aide has to be convinced before approaching the official supposedly responsible for the decision. We generally exchange favors rather than credits. I solve problems that don't fit comfortably through official channels and, in return, she gives me introductions, schedules, procedural details and the occasional warning that something apparently routine isn't. There is also a competitive element to our conversations that neither of us has bothered acknowledging. Sometimes she gives me a piece of information just to see what I make of it. I've returned the favor often enough that I suspect we're both cultivating one another. I would be disappointed if we weren't.
DRELL VANTO
Senior Customs Inspector
[SIZE= 15px]Drell's boots cost too much. That isn't how I discovered he was corrupt, although in retrospect it should probably have moved higher on the list. He's a forty-four-year-old Rodian with mottled olive skin, two pale scars along one side of his snout, and one antenna that healed slightly inward after being broken years ago. His uniform is always immaculate, as are his gloves and, unfortunately for him, the boots. Drell has expensive tastes and a government salary. Those two things are rarely as unrelated as people insist.
I found him while tracing confiscated electronics that had supposedly been destroyed after seizure. The paperwork existed but the equipment didn't, and a succession of salvage companies eventually led back to Drell. He had been redirecting confiscated property into private resale channels and was doing it carefully enough that I almost admired the work. Almost. I invited him to lunch, put a storage wafer containing what I had found on the table and told him it was insurance. He asked for whom. At the time, I genuinely hadn't decided.
Initially Drell supplied information because he understood what would happen if he didn't. Customs priorities, passenger flags, inspection notices, seizures, internal memoranda—things that let me know what authorities are looking for before most of the people being looked at know themselves. Our arrangement became less straightforward when an internal audit came close to discovering him and I quietly redirected it. He never asked how, and I never explained. He still resents me, but he also knows that his career now survives partly because the man capable of destroying it has become invested in keeping him exactly where he is. Somewhere along the way we began occasionally drinking together, which neither of us would admit has made the arrangement more personal. Recently I learned that Drell has started collecting information about me. I haven't stopped him. I have several explanations for why, none entirely satisfactory.
NEMI KORR
Provenance Specialist / Archaeological Consultant
Nemi dislikes being called an antiquities dealer. I learned that approximately thirty seconds after meeting her and have avoided repeating the mistake. She is fifty-seven, Mirialan, pale green, with dark geometric tattoos around her eyes and black hair now split by a broad streak of silver. Three fingers on her left hand are mechanical replacements from an excavation accident she insists was considerably less interesting than everyone wants it to be. She dresses as though any conversation could unexpectedly require crawling through a ruin, which, knowing Nemi, is probably a reasonable precaution.
Our first piece of business involved an object I thought might have some connection to the Force. Nemi turned it over, pointed out the manufacturer's number on the bottom and informed me that I had purchased an industrial pressure regulator. The object was worthless. The excavation records accompanying it weren't, and we spent most of the next six hours going through those instead. That was the beginning of a considerably more useful relationship.
Nemi understands history as a chain of custody. She doesn't merely identify an object; she wants to know who excavated it, who catalogued it, who bought it afterward, which institution inherited the records and why something supposedly lost appeared in a private collection forty years later. That has made her invaluable as my research into the Jedi and other Force traditions has grown. She has also noticed that my questions are changing. I ask less often what an artifact was and more often who paid for the expedition that discovered it, where the records went afterward, or why the same family name appears around three otherwise unrelated sites. Nemi asked once what I was actually looking for. I told her I'd let her know when I knew. She didn't believe me, which was unfortunate because I wasn't lying.
BRENN ORDO
Independent Courier / Physical Transport
Brenn is a Duros in his early fifties, tall enough that most furniture appears designed specifically to inconvenience him. His skin is weathered blue-grey, his eyes dark red, and his flight jacket is so old that repairs now account for more of it than whatever was originally manufactured. I once bought him a replacement. He thanked me, put it away somewhere and continued wearing the old one. He also keeps an analogue chronometer on his wrist that is less accurate than nearly every electronic device he owns because, in his words, machines should be permitted to perform only the tasks they deserve. Sera considers this philosophy offensive on a personal level.
Brenn and I met because the same client hired both of us without explaining that fact. I had been paid to acquire a data cylinder and Brenn to transport it afterward. He arrived earlier than expected, I assumed he intended to steal it, and he came to roughly the same conclusion about me. By the time we sorted out the misunderstanding there had been a weapon involved and neither of us particularly wanted to finish the job. I suggested we finish it anyway and charge the client twice for the inconvenience. That was the first time I saw Brenn smile.
He is the person I use when I don't trust a network. Physical records, sensitive hardware, people, anything important enough that transmitting it feels like an unnecessary risk. Brenn knows pilots, port crews and forgotten routes that larger organizations rarely care about until they suddenly need them, and he keeps almost none of it in a centralized database. I find this deeply irritating and entirely sensible. We can spend hours together without talking and neither of us feels required to fix that. He has also noticed that when I'm worried I apparently stop blinking often enough. I disputed this until he counted. Brenn has few absolute rules, but he does have them, the most important being that he will not transport slaves or knowingly support trafficking. I have never asked him to cross that line. I would rather not discover which of us I would think less of afterward.
LESSA DANE
Forensic Accountant / Financial Architecture
Lessa has spent considerable effort becoming forgettable. She is forty-three, Human, brown-skinned, with cropped black hair and thin rectangular reading lenses she prefers to implants. Her clothes are conservative enough that I have difficulty remembering any individual item despite having known her for years. The exception is an old wedding band she still wears despite being divorced for six of them. I've never asked about it. Contrary to popular opinion, I do occasionally recognize when a question is none of my business.
I found Lessa because a company I was investigating should have gone bankrupt and somehow hadn't. It produced too little revenue to justify its continued existence, yet money always arrived where it was needed and disappeared again before attracting much attention. Following the structure eventually led to Lessa, and following Lessa uncovered something unrelated. She had been stealing from one of her criminal clients to cover debts accumulated by her son. The people he owed had begun losing patience. Lessa was careful, but desperation tends to create patterns where there shouldn't be any.
I made the debt disappear, then showed her enough of the accounting trail to make clear that I knew what she had done. I never threatened her, which I think she would have preferred. She now helps me follow money through corporations, shell companies and financial arrangements specifically designed to make ownership difficult to understand. Our relationship remains complicated. Lessa is grateful to me, resents me, trusts me with her son's safety and does not trust me personally at all. None of those positions contradict one another as much as they sound like they should. I pay her for every job despite possessing enough leverage that I technically wouldn't have to. She finds that irritating too. I'm reasonably certain she keeps some sort of contingency file on me. I have never gone looking for it. Everyone deserves insurance.
VEYRA SOL
Private Hospitality / Social Coordination
Veyra is twenty-nine, Zeltron, with muted rose skin, dark auburn hair cut beneath the jaw and an irritating ability to recognize how someone feels before they've decided whether they want to admit it themselves. Her wardrobe changes with whatever event she's managing—private clubs, diplomatic functions, corporate receptions, hotel suites—but the shoes are always comfortable. Of all the lessons she has learned from wealthy people, that may be the most practical.
We met because an industrialist, his mistress and a diplomatic delegation had somehow been assigned overlapping private accommodations. Veyra had less than ten minutes before an administrative mistake became a scandal. I happened to be nearby for unrelated reasons and helped rearrange the problem before anyone important realized there had been one. The industrialist moved floors, his security team received a plausible explanation and the delegation remained blissfully unaware. Veyra found me afterward and asked what I wanted. When I told her nothing, she informed me that was worse. In retrospect, she was probably right.
Veyra understands people the way Tovin understands freight. She notices when two executives stop trusting one another, when somebody who normally travels alone suddenly books a second suite, when an assistant starts being treated like their employer, or when two guests arrive separately and spend the evening making a point of not being seen leaving together. For a long time I let her believe I simply enjoyed gossip. I suspect she worked out the truth months ago and has chosen not to mention it. I haven't told her that I know she knows, which means we're maintaining a deception that neither of us believes. Veyra also occasionally invites me somewhere without any professional justification. When I attend, she complains that I spend the evening watching everyone else instead of enjoying myself. I have explained several times that these are not mutually exclusive activities. She remains unconvinced.
GENERAL NOTES
They are not an intelligence service, though I suppose the distinction grows less useful the longer I keep these records. Sera would laugh if I called them one. Tovin would likely stare at me for a moment and ask what in the hell I was talking about. Keva's first question would be who was paying for it, which is probably the correct question. Drell would want to know whether his name appeared anywhere official, Nemi would object to the terminology, Brenn would say nothing at all, and Lessa would immediately begin considering how much trouble the whole thing could cause her. Veyra, I suspect, would simply ask why it had taken me so long to notice. It is better, for the present, that none of them think of it that way.
They do not know one another particularly well, although that is becoming harder to manage. Sera has met Brenn and considers his refusal to trust networked storage evidence of some basic defect in his character. Brenn, unfortunately, finds this very funny. Tovin has met Veyra twice now and has somehow forgotten how ordinary conversation works on both occasions. She noticed the first time. Keva and Lessa have never been properly introduced, and I have no immediate plans to remedy that. They are both too good at recognizing what people actually do for a living, regardless of what appears on a business card. Nemi met Drell once and disliked him before the drinks arrived. I asked her afterward what had bothered her. She said it was his boots. I have known Nemi long enough to leave certain answers alone.
There was a time when I could keep every useful name I knew in my head. Perhaps I simply knew fewer people then. The number is still not large, despite the impression I sometimes permit clients to carry away with them, but I don't think that is why I continue writing these entries. Sera tells me when information can be trusted. Tovin knows when freight is moving in ways it should not. Keva understands the distance between the person who holds an office and the person who actually gets something done. Drell knows what the authorities are looking for, Nemi knows where old things came from and where they disappeared to, Brenn can move what I would rather not transmit, Lessa follows money through places designed to hide it, and Veyra notices relationships before anybody thinks to put them into a record. Those were the reasons I began writing their names down.
I find that I remember other things now. Tovin's daughters have names, and I know them. Sera takes her caf far too sweet and denies doing so despite preparing it in front of me. Brenn's knee bothers him after long flights, though he maintains with some conviction that Duros do not suffer the same complaints as Humans. Keva rubs the inside of her left thumb when she is deciding how much truth to give me. Veyra removes the insoles from expensive shoes almost as soon as she buys them and replaces them with cheaper ones because, as she has explained more than once, nobody who designs formal footwear has ever worked a twelve-hour reception. There are questions I no longer ask Nemi. I know why Lessa checks on her son every morning. I know Drell worries that there will come a day when I have no further use for him.
Most of these things will never earn me a credit, open a door, or answer a question.
I keep them anyway.
