First Reply The End of a New Beginning

[Isildor Laskaris]

THE END OF A NEW BEGINNING
"Don’t get any big ideas — they’re not gonna happen"

TRUCE, NAR SHADDAA

Isildor strolled the interior of Truce to glances and whispers. Membership was by invitation, invitations were by reputation, and reputation was the one currency the Hapan always has in excess.

He came through the private lift still wearing the gloves.

Not tactical ones, just thin black leather, the kind that looked like an affectation until you noticed how deliberately he hadn't taken them off yet. A small tell, if anyone here were the type to notice small tells. Most weren't. The ones who were knew better than to say so out loud.

The job was done. Clean, quiet. He hadn't stopped moving since. The lift ride up, the walk through the atrium, the particular restlessness of a body that had spent the last several hours being very still and very precise and now had nowhere to put all that leftover current; none of it showed on his face. It showed, if you knew where to look, in the way his eyes kept finding the exits in a room of glut and excess.

The disgraced prince went straight to the bar and set both palms flat on the polished marmer like he meant to hold it down.

"Whatever's pouring," he told the bartender, "for everyone. My tab." A beat, a grin that arrived a half-second after the words did, like it had to catch up.

A murmur went through the room, the good kind, the kind money and mystery bought in equal measure at a place like this. Nobody at Truce asked questions they didn't already know the polite way to avoid answering, and Isildor Laskaris buying a round with that particular glint in his eye was, by now, a known quantity to the regulars. Something had happened. Something usually did, around him. Nobody needed the details to enjoy the drinks.

He finally peeled the gloves off one finger at a time, unhurried now, folding them and tucking them into a jacket pocket. The wired feeling hadn't left him. It just had somewhere better to go now; into the noise of the room, the clink of glasses, the low hum of a hundred conversations that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with why he'd come here instead of anywhere quieter.

He raised his own glass to no one in particular and everyone at once.

"To the ones who don't have to worry about tomorrow," he said, "and the rest of us, who apparently do."

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