His Iron Mercy

Earth is a client world now, and Port Kestrel is where the paperwork happens. Sera Oyelaran has been a cargo broker on that dock for nine years, and for the last four she has skimmed a percentage off every refugee manifest into an account meant to buy her sister a ticket off-planet. She is careful. She is also caught. The syndicate's enforcer is Tarrek va Kest — seven feet of Vantti who has never taken a bribe and has an unfortunate habit of reading every line of a manifest. He should file her for execution. Instead he files her debt publicly under his own bond, which makes her his property and puts his life on the line for her honesty. He wants her manifest skills. He also wants her testimony against his own bond-holder, the underboss who has been selling human refugees back to Earth for a fee. Testifying is a death sentence for a human. Tarrek knows it. So does Sera. She names her price anyway: her sister's passage, and his bond, on the same line.