The freighter was older than it looked from a distance, and from a distance it had not looked new. Its hull carried the particular discoloration of a vessel that had spent many years in warm water, the paint peeling in long strips below the waterline, the deck fittings worn smooth and salt-bleached. Forty-odd people had gathered on the dock beside it, most of them from the Frontier Republic, most of them carrying more luggage than was practical and wearing the expression of people who had made a difficult decision and were now committed to it.
The man Soren was directed to was thin in the way that suggested something other than poverty, his arms marked with the small, evenly-spaced scars of a long-standing habit. He sat behind a folding table at the base of the gangway with the unhurried
