Everyone else was busy worrying about the captain, but she still had enough of his pain echoing inside her head, even thirteen-point-four-five hours later. So it was just her left to listen to the sad, deposed king, fidgeting in his fear and nerves, sad brain longing for his lost kingdom.
She leaned into the curve of the wall and pretended to be a part of it; limbs, flesh and blood, bone and hair melting into the lightweight fibre of the hull, watching him while she felt the soft, cold silence of the shuttle's metallic heart.
"It won't work," she said, as he figured out, on the second try, how to seal the door. "Besides, I can't let you take the shuttle. The captain and Simon need it. And I know you don't want to die out there, gasping for breath that won't come, surrounded by the Black."
He'd given a yell as he heard her, and spun. Now, he tried to compose himself. "I didn't see you there, love." Tugging at his jacket, straightening his hat. With pause for thinking, his unease only grew. "What you said there, about dying and suchlike... you don't know that, right? I mean, you couldn't. It's not real - 's just words."
She rolled her eyes and pushed off from the wall, hesitated briefly as her feet distracted her with the presence of the floor, then told him, "I'll forgive you for not believing me. None of the others really do. Not really." She drifted to the controls, felt him tense inside and out as she brushed close past him, and trailed her hands over the panels. The shuttle told her which buttons to depress.
"I don't want to die out here." He took a step back, nervously. "That much nothing, I always said it ain't healthy for a man. Like my feet kept firm on the ground. To be buried in good honest dirt."
"That's okay," River said. "I've locked the controls. You can't take the shuttle now."
"You - " His anger faded as quickly into confusion. He half believed. Enough to be afraid.
"We should go back inside Serenity. The captain will lock you up if he finds out you were in here." She turned and crossed to open the door and step through, not looking back at him. His frustration trailed after her down the walkways to the hold, with a jaunty swing determinedly affected in its step.
She saw Jayne, very briefly, as he emerged out onto the opposing walkway, then a fleeting look of alarm crossed his face as he saw her and he turned right back and vanished. Still sore about a card game...
Badger was breathing hard as he came down onto the floor of the hold. "Little boat's bigger than it looks, eh?" he excused, taking his hat off to fan himself and try to look dapper. He'd seen it on a vidcast once...
She almost drifted away in him, caught in the sprawling patchwork and rough string and spiky thorns and mass of wire and nails that held him all together. Blinked furiously and raised her chin to tell him, "Stop it."
He blinked back at her, hat stilled, mouth agape. "What precisely am I stopping, now?"
River shook her head, frustrated, and went to the secret space behind the panels, shoving the loose one aside to crawl in and closing it off behind her, as though shutting out his body could shut out the whole of him. It was hard enough keeping track of eight she knew. "Go away!" She caught the panel as it started to be pulled back aside, wresting the edges together again. "You're too loud!"
"This what they meant by all that 'crazy' talk?" He stopped pulling and she hunched back into the recess. Stared sullenly at the captain's box of old grenades nailed above her head. Hugged her arms about her knees. A moment later, the panel slid back and Badger hesitated, surprised he'd been able to move it. Then he peered through at her and she giggled at him knocking his hat backwards off his head, both hands shooting up too late to grab his stubby naked hair. "Glad we're funny," he rasped, and she felt again the ebb and flow and ebb of his irritation, replaced by something else less familiar. "Thought about you, you know. Since after I saw you that first time."
"I know," she said.
"Thought you was really something." He wasn't much bigger than her, but older; more worn, less nimble. He had a hard time crawling inside. "'Course, I didn't know anything then about all the crazy, nor the Alliance on your tail. But then so far, you haven't seemed so crazy as all that, far as I can see."
"That's part of the problem," River told him, nodding sincerely. She scooted forward on her knees 'til their foreheads were almost butting, hunched down in the cramped space, and she raised her hand... but the gesture stalled when her eyes caught on it, and she knew there really was no way to vocalise. "See - " She'd started to say. She curled her fingers up around the index finger she'd extended. "See," she mumbled.
He curled his hand around hers. His fingers felt almost as rough as the captain's and she saw him kill a man with them, untidily and brutally and ineptly, and with something of a craziness of his own; heard him brag about it. But death wasn't a thing he was drenched in, not like Early. There hadn't been many others. He reached with his other hand and cupped her face.
She jerked back. "You deal in slaving," she said.
"Have done. Dealt in a bit of everything," he said, with ease. "I'm a businessman, sweetheart. Pretty much means of necessity I ain't a nice man."
"Prostitution."
"Whoring's just another kind of work. Hell, got a fancy whore all of your own travelling on this boat, ain't you? Sometimes it's the only thing a girl has to trade off, but ain't safe trade for a girl alone. I never set one on wasn't willing for the work. They come to me desperate - everyone wants to eat, wants to feed their family. Me, I'm the magician can make it happen."
"They're afraid because you can hurt them." She hunched up again, taking herself out of his reach.
"Hey, now," he said angrily, his turn to retreat. "I don't take advantage... don't gorram need to, for a start. Got my natural charm workin', see? What kind of a man do you think I am? I got principles. Maybe not so many as your fancy captain - "
"You envy him," River said, smiling.
"That's not - I do not envy Malcolm stinking Reynolds!" In his outrage, his head crashed back against the cargo hold wall, and he cursed.
"You tell yourself it's just business, it's not you. Over and over and over until it feels like the truth, but it isn't the truth. You compromised yourself, again and again... and you want to know... you want to know the secret. How he can stay so clean. How they can love him. Nobody loves you."
"Malcolm Reynolds," Badger spat, "is a killer and a cheat and a liar. What claim does he have to any kind of gorram honour? Man of principle? Piece of crap smuggler, scraping off the bottom of the pile... killed more'n I ever did, that's for sure. Me, I deal in living."
"That's all true," she reassured him.
He nodded, satisfied like she was agreeing with him. "This ship... this ship's a joke, you know that? Anyone would think he was hauling a family around in this tin can. You got bleedin' plants painted on the wall!"
River laughed, the emotion bubbling over, impossible to keep caged, and she quite lost herself in it. Until the loud 'thud' of Jayne's fist shook the side of the crawlspace and made Badger jump, and a second later Jayne's face appeared at the opened panel.
"Hey! What the hell you two doin' in there? Out, 'fore the doctor catches you gettin' overfriendly with moonbrain and the cap'n decides that's another thing he can add to the list of things are Jayne's fault. Get!" He bashed on the wall until they did.
"He's such a big 'fraidy-cat," she leaned over and whispered as they were shoo-ed away, loud enough for Jayne to hear.
The moon as seen from the bridge was a distant speck little different to the eye than any of the far more distant stars. The yellow-orange gas giant behind it was far more imposing, huge by any reckoning.
"Now, there's a sight," Mal said, temporarily having ousted Wash from the pilot's chair. Wash leaned over him to fiddle with the controls.
"Pretty as a picture," Zoe agreed. "Someone should get Kaylee up here, let her admire the view."
"Oh, she'll have time enough," Mal said. "Gonna be hanging about this system a handful of days at the least, by Simon's account."
"You haven't been out this way before?" Inara's hand was rested gently on his shoulder, and she'd shown no sign of being particularly conscious of it, nor aware of how she was making things more awkward still for Wash, but Mal had no intention of pointing it out.
"It's a cul-de-sac," Wash said. "Nothing but a scatter of old colonies in decline on a bunch of moons barely terraformed on the way to the back corner of nowhere. Flew a supply run out here once. Wasn't too memorable - 'cept for the pretty," he added flippantly, conscious of his wife's eyes on the spectacle.
"It certainly doesn't feel like part of the core," Book remarked.
"I suppose it's only really that in name." A slight tightening of Inara's grip betrayed something of nervousness.
"Yeah, I'm guessing folks mostly come here for the fancy address," Mal said, dismissive, better things to discuss. "These little moons..." He ran his finger over them on the display of the smaller, nearer nav screen. "What are we looking at there? Those stats don't look like nothing but rock? There are colonies? People?"
"Early terraforming, never improved," Inara supplied. "They have an oxygen atmosphere, though it's getting progressively choked up without any natural means to restock, which is why most people will have their own atmospheric system in their homes and businesses. These worlds are dying, Mal. The Alliance ships everything in that keeps them alive, those resources that used to be of value are worn-out or outdated, and now all they have to offer is, as you say, their proximity to the core."
"Still, there might be work to be had. Passengers, maybe, looking to relocate cheaper'n the Alliance's fares, 'specially if nobody but nobody comes this way. Or maybe folks in need of a couple of decent gun hands, or a mechanic."
"I think I see what you're getting at," Zoe said, and added, "It's not generally what I think of as keeping a low profile, sir."
"Nope. But when we set down to this research centre, it'll be just Simon and myself. Already going to have Inara down there. No need risking more than necessary, and everyone extra only increases the risk. That means I got a near complete crew full of bored folk left kicking their heels with nothing good to do, and there's no point you all keeping a low profile if we're set to run out of food 'cause we never did get our advance on Sir Warwick's cattle before rabbitting from Persephone."
Zoe nodded. "I see."
"So while we're down there, you'll take Jayne and Kaylee, figure which of these moons might be the best shot at some decent business, and see what you can't drum up between the three of yourselves, and for a run back Persephone way."
"We are going back, then?" Wash asked, sounding relieved. "You think we're out of the woods with the feds?"
"Don't think anything 'cept that there's no point in planning for what we do if the worst happens, 'cause our options then will be precisely none." He relented. "It's been long enough. I would've expected something to have come up on the cortex by now if we were tagged. Still, nothing's certain."
"I hear you, Mal." Wash craned forward to hit a switch, squinting at the readings. "How do you keep so happy and positive all the time, captain, sir?"
"It's a skill." He watched the reflections of the raging gas storms in the shifting colours of the planet's surface, so minute at this distance it took some staring to see the movement with the eye. "How long before we're in shuttle range?"
"Anytime now."
Mal nodded. "Now, since there's no shortage of fed presence on Riarden, by all accounts, and still that chance all our details and Serenity's might show up on the cortex, I'm thinking we keep Serenity tucked out of sight. We dock anywhere, we got no false papers - they'll know we're here or we've been here for sure. These class of shuttles run with a good number of different types of boat, and a ship's a hell of a bigger thing for attracting attention anyhow. Since Inara's taking her shuttle down first, we'll need shuttle 2 to get Simon and myself to the research centre. Zoe, you'll fly us down, bring the shuttle back after. Then you, Jayne and Kaylee can take off to whichever of those other moons it happens we're choosing and, Wash - you'll take Serenity away and keep her out of sight a while. Not so far away either of us can't buzz you if there's trouble and we need pulling out. Should be possible to set in an orbit 'round the gas planet to keep it between you and the most of these moons, right? Render the Alliance's sensors useless should they have any reason to be looking."
Wash's lips dragged back over bared teeth as he set them in a rictus grin and forced a crazy kind of a laugh. "Should be perfectly possible for any self-respecting space genius, captain," he quipped with false cheer.
Mal rolled his eyes. "Do your best."
There was a small flurry of activity as Simon entered the bridge and folk turned his way. He cleared his throat and said, "I need to talk to Book about River's medication..." He cast his gaze around, looking uncomfortable for having interrupted.
The shepherd nodded. "Of course." Mal jerked his head, indicating he should go... and told himself he needed to start remembering not to do that, as he fought the resulting vertigo.
When they'd gone, he said to Wash, "That leaves you with the boat. There'll be River and Badger to deal with... Book should have a handle on the girl if there's any trouble there, and I can't say I'm forseeing any problem barring the odd bit more damage to the good book... Don't trust Badger. There won't be any shuttles, so we won't have any repeat of the kind of insanity what River apparently stopped him doing yesterday, but he needs you to fly this ship. I'm not saying he'll do anything, but... stay armed and stay alert."
Wash nodded slowly, straightening with a sigh. "Right," he said, and Zoe gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. "More fun."
"I've told Shepherd Book everything he should need to know about administering your medication," Simon said to River, where she sat cross-legged on his bed while he tucked items into an overnight bag at its foot. "You've stayed with Book before, and you're much better now than you were then, so everything should be fine. Wash will be here as well..."
"Simon," River chided, her hands idly stretching out to play with her bare feet. "I'll be fine."
"I don't like leaving you." He cast his eye up and down her form and tried to quash irritation and the conviction, whatever she said, that she really did need him around - if not, perhaps, as a brother, then as a doctor. Her medications could produce erratic results at times. Her moods could swing so easily. It was so difficult to predict, and only he could deal with a situation that required anything outside the routine. "You know I wouldn't go if it wasn't - "
"I understand you have to do this, Simon. You promised the captain." She frowned and extracted a sock from under her thigh; leaned out to brush it over his nose cheekily and then tossed it into the bag to join its pair and retreated. "He came back. He always comes back. And you're his doctor as well."
"Yes." Simon sat down next to the bag and focused intently on its contents, his back all but turned on her, tiredly running through what else he might need. Inara could call back within hours. He'd have to be ready. "It's only for a few days, River. We should be all right."
"You're not listening." She tapped his cheek twice with just the ends of her fingers, not quite slaps. "It's what I keep telling you." He hitched a knee up onto the bed and turned around as she tugged on his vest. "You looked after me a long time, Simon, and don't think I'm not grateful. But things are changing. Maybe I don't need to be looked after so much any more."
Simon grimaced, reminded suddenly. "Be that as it may, the captain doesn't want you alone with Badger. Jayne says you've been spending a lot of time with him... is that true?" A not-so-unlikely doubt of Jayne's honesty had crossed his thoughts.
"He's more interesting on the inside," River defended earnestly. "He sees me, Simon."
"That's... nice..." He narrowed his eyes, suddenly terrified at the potential of what that meant, and she laughed at him and kicked him in the buttock. "All right, but I'm not entirely sure myself that I'm happy about you being around him too much. The captain says he's a very bad man... and, well, if it's Mal saying that..."
River giggled. "I know that, you goof." More soberly all of a sudden in that disconcerting way she had, she added, "He is a very bad man. Not so bad as Jubal Early, but... I can feel him, in here." She raised her fingers and rested them, all four and a thumb, by the tips to the side of her head. "Like Jubal. Different. He isn't family," she stressed.
Simon puzzled over that one, and finally said slowly, "You're not used to strangers... I'm sorry. I didn't think. We should have left him on Persephone."
"If we'd left him, he would have sold us out," she insisted. "I'm worth too much. More than a percentage in a hundred Serenitys full of illegal cows."
"If you know he'd betray you..." Simon reached over behind him blindly to snap the catches on his bag. "Why would you want to spend time with him, mei mei? I don't understand."
"It's who he is. He knows no better. Nobody gave him opportunity for knowing. Just knives in the dark and a fist in the gut in daylight and if you don't put them down hard first, if you don't, before they can do it to you... the way of the world, little girl, been turning like that centuries and it ain't like to stop for you and me." Badger's accent rose gradually again in her voice, 'til it was present loud as clear as she wound up.
"Surely you don't..." Simon cringed at even the thought of saying the words. "You don't actually like the man?"
"He likes me." She said it as though it was an answer rather than an evasion.
"I'm still at a loss as to how that's a good thing in any 'verse." He slid the case off the bed and, standing, tucked it out of the way at the foot.
"Oh, it isn't," she said confidently. "It's just the reason why. Simon..."
He paid closer attention at the abrupt change in her voice. "River?"
"Before... I felt it... I felt him start to disintegrate, and the other... watching, enjoying it... It made my head feel unclean. I washed it away..." She was almost whispering as she finished.
"Is this about the captain?" Simon asked. He remembered her panic at the Alliance installation. Too much had happened too quickly for him to address it, but she'd known something was wrong with Mal, had sent them back... Mal had said enough to imply the Alliance weapon had hurt a great deal. Damn it, had she felt that?
"You'll help him, won't you?" And suddenly she was just a concerned girl. He'd seen her cup a broken-winged bird in her hand with that expression on her face, when she was a child, before she left for the academy and it all fell apart. Petitioning to him, the physician, to help. "He came back for me. Just like you came for me."
"I know." Simon touched his hand to the top of her head. "I know. And I will, mei mei. I'll do everything in my power."
"Your realise them all takin' off means I'm gonna have to holler for Jayne to come haul me back once you're out of here," Mal said to Inara as Kaylee, the last to disappear around the corner, raised her hand in a tiny wave. His laugh smacked of nerves, a little too high and weak. His fingers tightened where he half held himself up against the wall, and she could see he was determined to stay on his feet. "Speaking of which - " Distractedly, he craned his head back again. "You reckon they reckon there's something going on between the two of us?"
"I think," Inara said dryly, "That they think I managed to put the damper on your thick-headedness last time. Maybe they're still not convinced you're sold on this plan, and might need some last minute browbeating."
He regarded her archly. "Is that the case?" And, with playful aggression, "I still could stop you going."
She backed off a pace with a smile, cruelly setting herself out of his reach as she hit the switch to open up the doors to her shuttle. "So stop me," she suggested, arms held out defenceless.
"This is just 'cause you're wanting to see me fall flat again," Mal said. "I can see through your vile and fiendish ploy, woman." He awkwardly raised a finger to wave it in the air, ticking her off.
The instinct was automatic to lunge forward and catch him as he lost balance and slid down the wall.
He swore and they tried to disentangle, but he was all rough cloth and skin to her touch, and solid beneath that, and she felt almost dizzy, with her face pressed close to him, breathing him in. His chin butted her head as she tried to get him balanced against Serenity's wall once more. His hair brushed her cheek as he sagged into a position he could maintain.
"Are you all right?" she asked, hearing her own voice emerge sounding almost intoxicated. Her hand was caught in the strap of his suspenders, and between his back and the wall besides.
"Yes," he murmured.
He tipped his head minutely, so that the side of his face brushed hers, and she was supposed to have more control than this -
He ran his hand around to the back of her neck, and stole the kiss quickly, like it was something dishonest, breaking the spell. Inara wrenched her hand free but didn't pull away entirely until she'd let him catch his balance. She didn't need to say anything. "I'll send word soon," she promised as she stepped back inside the shuttle.
"Inara - "
"I'll be fine." Forcing a smile to her face, and turning aside. She didn't look his way again, as she closed the door on him and Serenity. Didn't know what he shouted as the hollow sound of its closing echoed around the shuttle's interior, though it seemed likely that all she'd need do was to ask anyone else aboard ship.
She blinked furiously as she seated herself in the pilot's chair. "Am I clear to go?" she asked the bridge, voice hoarse, thumb jabbing down hard on the comm.
"You're clear, Inara," Wash responded. "Good luck."
She uncoupled from the ship and flew free. Saw Serenity behind her as she came around, and then the ship was nothing more than a reading on the nav systems as she guided the shuttle away toward the distant moon, dwarfed by the gas planet it orbited.
Riarden was further from Serenity's position than she was ordinarily called upon to fly in the shuttle, but even so, the long stretch of nothingness felt inadequate to compose her mind, even armed with the relaxation techniques learned at the academy. Caught between the daunting memories of both the man behind her and the one in front, calm was the furthest thing from her mind. It took all of her training to pull herself even halfway together by the time the curve of the grey rock moon was close enough to challenge the gas giant over which should dominate the vista. She guided the small ship down into the atmosphere.
Riarden did have a small tangle of dedicated docks operational, although a wasteland sprawl covered the area where, in its heyday, it was clear they had continued for miles. Some of the ground had been redeveloped over and between the old lines, with squarish buildings - cheap facilities for administrative business bases enamoured of that all-important core address. In any case, Inara had no need of the docks, and only paid them close inspection in her fly-by out of the long-standing curiosity that this place held for her, described but never before seen.
A small craft like her shuttle could be set down safely in any sufficiently cleared flat space with little ado. Hoyle had recommended to her an area just off the main street of the town - if the settlement she could see below her even technically merited that name - and outside the block of government owned apartments that housed the quasi-Alliance employees of the research centre. In which Professor Sherwin had lived, she thought, these past three years. And she had once promised to visit, though they'd both known she wasn't speaking the truth.
She supposed now she proved them both wrong, after all.
The gravity of the moon was much lighter than she was accustomed to, and she felt the difference in the tug on the shuttle setting down. Planets and moons terraformed later had been more universally close to the Earth norm, which still passed as the most comfortable parameters for human habitation. As she stepped outside and closed up the shuttle, she felt the thinness of the air she was breathing like a constriction in the back of her throat.
Her feet sounded loud as she walked across the grey slabs that coated the ground, and the yellow dress she'd chosen to wear made her feel like she was the only splash of colour in the whole place. She marvelled at its monotones. There weren't many people out in the street - Riarden's main settlement fit too well the name of 'ghost town' - but those who were around had attention only, openly, for her. They didn't see strangers often. Registered companions... probably never at all. Though she was not unused to attracting attention, she was glad not to have far to walk.
The apartments had an automated intercom system on the door. Glitches hiccupped its metallic voice as she fed her details into it and then waited for it to relay them to their target audience: Professor Hoyle Sherwin, late of Sihnon, more initials than she could repeat after his name, who shouldn't be living out his latter years in a soulless box like this, out on a dead, cold, near-airless rock.
The autosystem fed his acknowledgement back to her in turn and slid open the door, relaying directions to his rooms. She was halfway across the harsh-lit interior foyer before an elevator opened at the end and the familiar figure stepped out.
"Inara," he said. His voice... exactly as she remembered. Wonder in it. Such wonder... "I wasn't sure whether I could really believe that it would be you, after all this time."
"Hoyle," she said. She wanted to smile. All her training tried. And the edges of her mouth tugged down, defying the falseness of trained display.
Despite her intentions, they met each other halfway in an entirely indecorous embrace.
"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," he admitted a short while later, pouring out the tea while Inara sat on the edge of a plush reddish-brown chair a little worn in the arms. She followed his movements as he carefully slid the cup across the table to her, memory and present perception mingling. "What are you doing out here, Inara?"
"I took residence in a ship," she said, with a smile, leaning forward to pick up the cup. "I talked about it, once, if you remember such a small conversation such a long way back."
He blinked at her. "The liners don't come out this way." A cough of laughter. "Truth is, nothing much does."
"Serenity's not a liner." She almost laughed herself, imagining Mal's face. "I shipped out from Sihnon on a cargo vessel, about eighteen months ago now. She isn't what you might call high class, but the captain and I set up an arrangement, and they're good people on board."
Hoyle seemed to take a few moments recovering from his surprise. Taking his own cup of tea in hand, he sank down into the chair opposite her. He shook his head slowly. "I find it hard to imagine you living that kind of life."
"You'd be surprised. The truth is, I haven't regretted it. Quite the contrary, in fact - it's provided some of the happiest experiences of my life. I've seen things, done things, met people... that I never would have, otherwise." At his slow nod of understanding, she cast her eyes about the government-owned apartment, in its state of hurriedly-tidied disarray. Some of the furnishings were antiques far too rich for their mundane surround. It was barely possible to see them beneath the clutter. "How about you, Hoyle? Regrets?"
He followed her gaze around distractedly, not seeing what she was, whatever it was he might be seeing. "I like the quiet here. And the research is what I wanted to do. There are none of the frustrations of the university on Sihnon here, no students in the way, nobody poking their nose in complaining about the application of resources - though it has a very lengthy catalogue of frustrations of its own, of course. Half the time it seems we have no resources for anyone to be complaining about the misapplication of. It hasn't been easy to keep the place up and running and our work alive. Sometimes I think the Alliance have lost all interest in my projects." He sipped at his tea, causing Inara to remember her own. "But you didn't come out here to swap tales, Inara. You asked about the facilities at the centre when you contacted me earlier, and you implied what you needed wasn't entirely... safe. Now, you know I'd help you out any time, though I don't see how it approaches danger..."
"It's not for me," Inara said quickly. "Serenity's captain, Mal... Captain Reynolds, was injured. Our doctor's qualified to treat him, but he needs access to more sophisticated medical equipment. That's all we need. That, and the time and anonymity to fix the trouble."
"Anonymity?" Hoyle fielded.
She compressed her lips and nodded. "Not everything the people I travel with are involved in is legal, Hoyle. These are hard times. After the war... a lot of people were left without many options; I know you understood that. They're good people, I promise you - I wouldn't be with them still after all this time if I didn't believe it - but there are complications." She took a breath. "The damage was done by Alliance weapon tech. Something I've never heard of before, nor our doctor. That's why we can't take this openly to any hospital."
"Well, now." Hoyle sat back, drink forgotten, and ran his eyes over her speculatively. "Here's a turn-up. The lady who never had a doubt in her head about all the carnage over that Unification nonsense, working on the other side of the law."
Inara smiled wryly. "Maybe that lady's seen a little more of the 'verse than she had back then."
"This captain of yours, your 'arrangement' with him - "
"Not that kind." And for someone trained in nuance, she well knew that came out far too quick, too defensive. "A business arrangement. We agreed I should rent one of Serenity's shuttles as my home and as a base to work from. Mal's a... difficult man, at times, but barring the occasional hiccup, it has worked quite well all around."
"It's obvious he means a great deal to you," Hoyle said gently.
"In a way," she conceded, bowing her head. "A very odd way, frequently. We agreed that nothing should ever interfere with the business arrangement and, well, it hasn't. But - "
"He's a friend," Hoyle filled in. "I understand. And I'll help you, Inara, and any friend of yours. Of course I will. You knew that."
"I knew." She smiled her best smile and reached over the table to set her hand on top of his. "Thank you."