Bertram Eaton sighed inwardly as he entered his office to begin his workday. There were days he jumped out of bed to face the morning. This wasn’t one of those days.

Sometimes, he thought,I feel like I’m just the sad little king of a sad little hill.

“Mornin, Badger.” Buster’s bald scalp was already shining with sweat in the morning sun filtering through the open skylight. The big man held Bertram’s ‘business suit,’ jacket in one hand, sweat-stained derby and wrinkled tie in the other. The sight of the big mook playing butler broke his bad mood. The tatty ensemble had been something the boys had found in a second-hand shop and presented to him as a gift, saying in all seriousness that a man of business needed a proper kit. He’d hadn’t the heart to refuse, and had felt ridiculous in it at first, but the way his boys had swelled with pride to see him wearing it on business had changed his mind, and it had become a trademark of sorts. It was also a way of poking fun at their more affluent clients, dandies who’d look right through you anywhere but Eavesdown; it tickled his people to see those peacocks coming for favors to their Badger in his secondhand coat.

You want to keep good people, he thought, you have to let them know their worth to you. He slipped the knotted tie on over his tee shirt, adjusting it loosely around his neck, then slipped the jacket on. Buster set the hat on his head and watched him critically as he cocked it back. “Natty.”

“Right, then.” Badger settled into his rather dusty leather office chair and began looking over reports. “What’s on for this morning?”

Ho, his appointments secretary, was seated on the couch nearby. He crossed his legs and consulted his pad. “Hoya’s on his way. Routine collection, but you know how they are. He’ll want the money from your hand, no one else’s.”

He nodded. Persephone was a world that styled itself an outpost of Core civilization in the hinterland of the Outer Worlds, but it wasn’t all urban bustle and high society. Eavesdown Dock was a freewheeling enclave