The armored car cut through Belvare's night with smooth, silent efficiency, water and neon blurring past the tinted windows. Inside, the air was cool, filtered, and heavy with the faint residual trace of Dax's pheromones and the sharper scent of metal and leather.
A tactical display hovered above the fold-out screen in front of him.
Two families.
Old money. Older blood. The kind that had survived three regimes by never standing too close to the throne and never too far from the knives.
House Verdan. Dock controllers, shipping unions, "logistics."
House Morcant. Warehouses, customs, private security, and a charming habit of losing containers and finding them again full of weapons or people.
They had staged a meeting at the docks under the pretense of a territorial dispute.
Which meant they were coordinating.
