"Do you feel lightheaded at all ?" he asked casual y, plucking a bottle painted with icy lace of frost from the trol ey. "Any strange vision problems, like tiny glowing threads flying about?"

He was trying to check if she suffered any mind lesions. Claire smiled. "I'm fine."

Ven opened the bottle and poured shimmering pink liquid into two glasses. "I'm sorry. I should have never put you into that position."

Ven would have never attacked a civilian. In his mind, that sort of action was filed under It's Just Not Done. His mind-shields were down - probably so he could scan her mind at the first sign of trouble - and his emotions leaked out. He was intensely worried about her well -being.

Claire smiled.

"Am I funny?"

"No."

"Then why are you smiling?"

"I find your customs - Dahlia customs - antiquated.

Charming, but antiquated."

"We're a very violent society," he said, turning the skewers. "We have to have customs and ceremonies, otherwise we'd constantly offend each other and soon none of us would be left. Some things are not done. Attacking a civilian is one of them."

"Were you worried?" She sipped the pink drink. It was sweet, tart, and refreshing, with a trace of alcohol. She realized it must be wine.

"Yes," Ven said. "I was worried. I didn't want you to be hurt because I was caught off-guard."

"I wasn't worried," she told him.

"I noticed. You handled the whole situation with the poise of a seasoned kinsman." He laughed. "A violent psycher paralyzes your mind, and when he lets you go, you calmly ask if you should alert the authorities. You kil me, Claire."

Kil . A dangerous word. "I considered screaming in blind panic, but I didn't want to break your concentration."

"Was that a joke?"

"Possibly."

He raised his glass. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." She grinned and drank her wine.

Ven frowned. "I don't know what Castil a has on Sangori, but I cal ed a friend of mine in the Provinces, Celino Carvanna. The man is a financial shark, so if something is going on with Sangori, I will soon know about it."

Ven took a plate from the trol ey, used a fork to slide the meat and vegetables off the skewer onto it, and passed it to her. Claire took a bite. The meat tasted smoky and tender and completely delicious.

"This is great."

"There is something about food cooked over the open flame," he said. "I don't know if it's a racial memory from the time we huddled around the fire in animal skins, but there are few things as flavorful."

He raised his glass. She raised hers and he clinked it against hers. "Do you like the wine?"

"I love it. This is my first taste."

"No wine on Uley?" he asked.

"No. Occasional y we would be issued grain alcohol, but no wine." She bit the meat and chewed, savoring the taste. "Do you and Castil a have some sort of prior history?"

Ven sighed. "Yes. Yes, we do. My father was an off-worlder. He came to Rada with nothing except the clothes on his back, but he was a very powerful psycher and my mother's family took him in. He became a client It's the next step up from the retainer. When you're a client, you are almost family. My father fell in love with my mother and she fell in love with him. They married. He took the Escana name, because our family had status and name recognition, while his surname meant nothing. They were both older at the time, so it was a surprise when I came along."

"Were they happy you were born?"

He nodded. "Yes. I had a happy childhood. The money was tight, but tight by kinsmen standards. We had a nice house. During summers, we'd go to the coast to swim in the ocean. It was beautiful. Endless water, bril iant blue, as far as you can see and under the surface fish in every color.

The mountains thrust right out of the water, and I'd sit on the rocks and watch the shark dolphins play..."

She almost said, "You see the bionet as the ocean, don't you, Ven?" but caught herself. Claire Shannon, the secretary, wouldn't know that.

"My parents loved it so much, they live there now. I always wanted to live on the coast." Ven smiled.

"So why don't you?"

"There are very few businesses on the coast. The ocean storms six months out of the year, so little shipping is done by water. The ports are mostly for tourists. Besides, most of the family is here. Our business interests are here.

My father and mother have little concern for Guardian.

Neither one of them is real y the business type. They have the ability, but not the ambition required to grow a business."

Ven shrugged, leaning back. His face seemed almost melancholic, and then he shook it off.

"Anyway, back to Castil a. As I grew up, the family realized that I was their most valuable asset. I'm a stronger psycher than my father, but we had very few resources to make use of my talents. De Solis is an old family. A lot of money, a lot of connections, and decades in the bionet business. So, my parents approached the de Solis with a marriage proposal. De Solis would get a powerful psycher and Escana's financial issues would be resolved through the all iance."

He seemed unperturbed by the idea of his family sel ing him. "How did you feel about it?"

Ven drank his wine. "Imagine that you're eighteen years old. On this world eighteen means you are a man, expected to support yourself and your family. You're the golden child; your family expects you to lift them out of misery and solve all their financial problems, and you have no idea how to do that. You have a lot of anxiety about it.

Then your father comes to you and says, 'You don't have to go to col ege and you don't have to worry about finding a job. all you have to do is marry this beautiful girl, make her happy, and work for her family business. They'l train you, they'l teach you to develop your talents, and one day you'l inherit the whole enterprise. You'l never have to worry about a thing.'"

"Sounds great," she said.

"I was all about it," Ven said. "Ask any eighteen-year-old boy and he will tel you he'd jump on the chance. And Castil a was gorgeous. She had breasts the size of grapefruits."

Claire blinked.

"I'm trying to give you my eighteen-year-old perspective."

"So her breasts were a large factor in your calculations?"

"Yes. Sex with a beautiful girl on regular basis, I wasn't going to pass that up." Ven shook his head with self-mocking expression.

She laughed.

Ven refil ed their glasses.

"What happened?" Claire asked.

"It turns out that I knew about the negotiations, but nobody bothered to tel Castil a. She was sixteen at the time and she was a kinsmen princess: expensive clothes, pricy jewelry, endless parties... Anything daddy's money could buy, she bought. She set the scene. She had a crowd of flunkies fol owing her around, egging her on." Ven stirred the coals with a metal poker and set a few more skewers over the fire. "Somehow the rumors of the possible engagement leaked and one of the tabloids cornered her.

She was at a party at the time, surrounded by her hangers-on. They asked her what she thought about the engagement."

He fell silent.

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'Wel , of course every beggar boy wants to marry a princess, but princesses don't dream of marrying into panhandler families.'"

Even with her minimal knowledge of Rada, Claire knew the insult to the Escana family was monumental.

"The tabloid had her on vid, and they ran with it. Her father tried to quash it, but it was too late. The engagement was impossible after that. Castil a's parents were furious with her."

"Because of the insult to you?"

"That, but mostly because her conduct was vulgar. It made her seem stupid and spoiled and it was unbecoming of her family name. Kinsmen mothers would play the vid for their children as a demonstration of how not to behave in public. De Solis had been above reproach and now they were deeply shamed. Her father told her, 'You think you're a princess? Let's see how you will do without my money.'

Everything stopped, all her parties, all her shopping sprees, all of it went away. Her crowd dumped her. She worked for the family company and was given just enough money to live on. To this day her spending is tightly control ed. She live on. To this day her spending is tightly control ed. She hates me. You saw her today, she was practical y frothing at the mouth."

"You hate her, too."

Venturo stirred the coals again, the light of the fire playing on his face. "It took me eight years to scrape together enough funds to start Guardian. I took every job I could find. I remember two months after Guardian opened, a contract fell through. We couldn't pay the power bil . We got one terminal working, because we had to log in and patrol for our monthly maintenance. We had it running off the aerial's generator. I'd drained it dead. When I think where I could've been if we had married... She set me back about fifteen years."

Fourteen years ago the Intel igence soldiers had led her away from her mother's apartment.

"Do you regret it?" Claire asked.

"No. If I went down that road, I wouldn't be the person I'm today. I'm not indebted to anyone. I own my business, I own this building, many people feed their families because I provide them with jobs. I got there on my own. Nobody tel s me what to do."

"Except Lienne."

Ven grinned. "Except her. She never lets me forget that I have family obligations. The other day she actual y sent a pulse through the building looking for me. It's a kind of psycher wake-up cal ."

Yes, I know, it gave me a headache. Claire bit her tongue.

"Besides, I'd have to be married to Castil a." He grimaced.

Claire sipped her wine, feeling the pleasant heat slide down her throat. "Why aren't you married, Ven?"

He shrugged. "I work. A lot. Psychers aren't exactly a commo n kinsman variant and dating non-psychers is difficult." His face slid into a suave expression. "Hel o there," he said in a smooth bedroom voice. "My name is Venturo Escana. I can read your mind!"