The odds were not in Salvo Starborn’s favour. He was sitting at a sabacc table, in the Pair O’Dice casino where, fortunately for him, the odds were in almost no one’s favour, except the house of course. He knew where he stood with the Pair O’Dice. If there was one thing you could trust a Cloud City casino to be, it was dishonest and Sal could respect that.

It wasn’t that the Pair O’Dice was the worst casino on Cloud City. Far from it. There were places where the prize pot was a lot less, and even more where he could win hundred times more, but the higher the prize, the greater the risk. Though they didn’t wear their colours openly, it was an open secret that just about every one of the major venues was affiliated with a syndicate or cartel. Sal had his suspicions that behind one of the glitzy fronts was at least one woman he’d wronged in the past. A reliable source told him that Em was calling Cloud City home now. Would she be happy to see him? Sal fought back a grimace. About as happy as he was to look at his current Sabacc hand.

He glanced about the table, at the other players, and chewed the inside of his cheek. He was almost certainly going to lose the small stack of credits that he’d won so far. The Lutrillian he’d originally won them from looked pretty pleased with himself and the prospect that he might get his money back, and then some. Sal smiled a tight smile at him. It didn’t matter, did it? He was just here to kill a little time, waiting on a meeting with someone who was worth more than a lost hand of sabacc.