“Considering your background,” Mara smiled, “you’re in good company out here.”

“Good company!” Malhomme cried.  “I’m not looking for good company!  My work, my mission calls me to where men’s hearts are the blackest, where repentance and redemption are needed—­and so I come to the Edge.”

“You’re religious?” she asked.

“Who is religious in these days?” Malhomme asked, shrugging.  “Religion is of the past; it is dead.  It is nearly forgotten, and one hears God’s name spoken now in anger.  God damn you, cry the masses! That is our modern religion!”

“Rene wanders around shouting about sin,” Rynason explained, “so that he can take up collections to buy himself more to drink.”

Malhomme chuckled.  “Ah, Lee, you’re shortsighted.  I’m an unbeliever, and a black rogue, but at least I have a mission.  Our scientific advance has destroyed religion; we’ve penetrated to the heavens, and found no God.  But science has not disproved Him, either, and people forget that.  I speak with the voice of the forgotten; I remind people of God, to even the scales.”  He stopped talking long enough to grab the arm of a passing waiter and order a drink.  Then he turned back to them.  “Nothing says I have to believe in religion.  If that were necessary, no one would preach it.”

“Have you been preaching to the Hirlaji?” Rynason asked.

“An admirable idea!” Malhomme said.  “Do they have souls?”

“They have a god, at least.  Or used to, anyway.  Fellow named Kor, who was god, essence, knowledge, and several other things all rolled into one.”

“Return to Kor!” Malhomme said.  “Perhaps it will be my next mission.”

“What’s your mission now?” Mara asked, smiling in spite of herself.  “Besides your apparently lifelong study and participation in sin, I mean.”

Malhomme sighed and sat back as his drink arrived.  He dug into the pouch strung from his waist and flipped a coin to the waiter.  “Believe it or not, I have one,” he said, and his voice was now low and serious.  “I’m not just a lounger, a drifter.”

“What are you?”

“I am a spy,” he said, and raised his glass to drain half of it with one swallow.

Mara smiled again, but he didn’t return it.  He sat forward and turned to Rynason.  “Manning has been busily wrapping up the appointment for the governorship here,” he said.  “You probably know that.”

Rynason nodded.  The headache he had been expecting was already starting.

“Did you also know that he’s been buying men here to stand with him in case someone else is appointed?” He glanced at Mara.  “I go among the men every day, talking, and I hear a lot.  Manning will end up in control here, one way or another, unless he’s stopped.”

“Buying men is nothing new,” Rynason said.  “In any case, is there a better man on the planet?”

Malhomme shook his head.  “I don’t know; sometimes I give up on the human race.  Manning at least has a little culture in him—­but he’s more vicious than he seems, nevertheless.  If he gets control here....”