These are actually mine, but the setting and ideas come from Joss and Co. All power and glory to the Joss...

Ma En Lai checked into his hotel and went straight to work. By and by, he ordered in xiao chi, little eats, and tipped the man absently when he brought it. He ate while he researched the other passengers and crew of Orihime, for he was a careful man, and did not act without all the information he could get, or without knowing his own mind.

His enemies had called him 'the little rat-dog,' for good reason, and his friends, well, En Lai didn't really have friends, he had colleagues.

There was a knock on his door, and En Lai saw that six hours had passed. He turned on the local news as he got up to answer the door. The top story was piracy.

The man at the door was the very tall servant of Barbara Hambly, Howard Trent. He wore his servile persona, but to En Lai's careful eye, the other one was peeking out of those eyes, the hard Alliance special forces vet, not the Butler and cook for a silly old High Society Lady. Perhaps we all wear masks, he thought, but that was an alien concept, to him. Ma En Lai did not dissemble; with him, what you see is what you get.

"Madame would like a word with you, sir. She said that she would be very grateful, if you could spare a few minutes of your valuable time."

En Lai blinked, and considered all of the ways that the man could choose to enforce her will on a retired civil servant, and decided, under the circumstances, to acquiesce.

"Of course. Allow me to shut down my cortex box, and wash up? I was not expecting to wait upon a great lady, at this hour," En Lai added. It was pointless and rude to make the man wait in the hall while he did this, so he let him in, and a little while later the two of them left again.

(BTW, for them as know who I'm talking about, Hambly would be comfortable in the company of Inarra Serra, Lady Alys Vorpatril and Sam Vimes' wife, whose name escapes me, tho I could always look, Thud! is around here, somewhere...) –VLC