Niko lurked in the hallway to watch Jezli Farren come on board.
There were six people on the shuttle, but something about Jezli Farren pulled Niko’s eyes immediately. She was a pale-skinned woman of indeterminate age, with spiky orange hair and eyes that were the most remarkable thing in her face, a green so lucent it almost glowed, their hue bordering on neon.
She wore a simple ship’s jumpsuit, its color a faded brown, but not visibly mended or tattered, and cling-boots with a heel to them that added an inch to her height, bringing it up toward the human average. Niko’s keen eyes noted where the suit had been augmented: a sheath along both sleeves, pockets in seams with just a touch of stiffness to show that something out of the norm sheltered there. Over it all, a flowing white outer robe, immaculate and frilled and clearly meant to evoke the feeling of a priest.
She also wore a single piece of jewelry beyond the usual comms earpiece. The necklace around her throat was at odds with the flow of the rest of her outfit. It was a jagged thing made of chunky, frosted-white crystals held together by bits of silver-colored metal, and was just long enough to touch her at the top of her breastbone.
Each crystal was the length of Niko’s thumb, and while the edges were clearly delineated, they lacked the glassy sharpness that a gem would have possessed. The necklace looked heavy and unwieldy and above all distinctive, where the rest of Jezli’s clothing seemed chosen for ease of movement and to blend into the crowd.
Her companion was at least a third taller than Jezli, tall enough to overlook even Dabry, who was the largest member of their troupe. Grayish skin covered her head, unimpeded by hair, and her features were flat and broad, with a look that was unmistakable: one of the Cauldron-born, the remade soldiers from the Pid wars.
“I thought they retired those,” Niko said to Dabry. “When the Pid were overthrown.”
“They agreed not to use them,” he said. “A handful were left over from that last battle, though. They were retired.”
Niko hadn’t ever thought about what those soldiers had done after the war.
If she’d had to venture a guess—based on what she knew of war—she would have thought they would have all been put down. The Cauldron-born, shaped by sorcery from corpses of those fallen in battle, were tough and strong, magic resistant, and impervious to pain.
She had never met one before. She was fascinated to see that the expression in the other’s eyes was not the dull, impassive stare she might have expected but rather a frank and curious regard, looking around at the Thing with a touch of open admiration.
Rumors had said that Jezli Farren was accompanied by a paladin, but Atlanta was sure the gray woman was no paladin. She didn’t look like one, that was the main thing, and wasn’t that a crucial part of being the embodiment of Justice, looking like it so no one might mistake what you were or what you were about?
She had loved stories of paladins when she was a little girl. They seemed so noble, so inspiring. But she knew in truth that they were rare and very few had even seen one in the flesh. “Justice is fair of face,” though, wasn’t that how the Paxian saying went?
True, the woman was big, imposingly big. Even Dabry looked small by comparison. But her skin was a mottled, pebbled gray and her eyes were a soft, muddy brown and she had no hair stretching across her lumpy, scarred scalp. She wore no uniform, only a battered black ship suit with a badge like a stylized lance. It was clean, at least. A paladin with food stains would have been impossible.
As though sensing these thoughts, she paused where she stood and looked over the room. Her eyes met Atlanta’s …
space and stars and strength
Meeting the force behind that look was like seeing a curtain part and realizing you were not looking at a stage but finding yourself on that stage, and it was five hundred—no, a thousand—times larger than you had thought.
It could have staggered her. It should have staggered her. But even if she wasn’t an Imperial heir, she was more than capable of impersonating one, and so she raised her head and squared her shoulders and returned that look.
The gray woman inclined her head. Atlanta did the same. Then everything moved on and the pair continued past. Atlanta thought it strange no one had marked the moment. It had felt like hours, that interaction. But even as she thought about it, she realized it had only been seconds, barely long enough for a breath.
The only person who might have noticed was Jezli Farren, and though her eyes flicked over Atlanta, their expression was unreadable, like a master gambler surveying a hand that could determine a match. Satisfaction? Dismay? Amusement? It could have been any of them.
Lassite squeezed past Atlanta in the hallway, moving quickly away from the dining room. “I am indisposed,” he tossed back behind him, along with his apron and info pad. “You’ll have to take over.”
Panicked, she grabbed his leavings from the floor and went into the dining room.
Up in the kitchen, Gio signed to Skidoo, “So what’s this prophet look like?” He hadn’t caught her name, but certainly there had been plenty of speculative chatter.
“Is being having orange hair, green eyes, one of the brother races,” Skidoo said. “Is being having a big gray woman with her. Cauldron-born, Milly is being saying.”
His knife moved over a slab of protein in quick strokes, dicing it in seconds even while he was reaching for another.
At her words, the knife stopped mid-slice before he laid it down. “Green eyes, very bright?” he signed. “Orange hair, all spiked and short?”
“Thats’s her.”
“Oh, hell no,” Gio signed. “Where’s the captain right now?”
“Talking with her.”
He was out the door before she could ask any questions.