“Will you do us the honor of sitting with us for a moment?” Jezli asked of Niko.
Niko checked Dabry’s face; he nodded at her. They were both curious about the traveler, and this was a chance for intel, though Niko was not the best of their group at wheedling out information. That would be Skidoo, who could and had charmed the pants off countless individuals.
Lassite seemed to have vanished. She waved Atlanta off for now and led them over to a triangular table near the circle of tables. Part of a set recently added to accommodate the demand; they hadn’t realized how popular the restaurant might prove.
The table seemed tipped on the edge of a precipice, falling away into velvet depths pinpricked with sparkles of stars. The table was purplish and metallic in hue, its legs stylized versions of the Thing’s logo. The limited menu was inset in the surface. The gray woman studied it while Jezli did not look down, looking instead at Niko.
“I wanted to introduce myself. I am an archaeologist, first and foremost,” Jezli said. “Like so many others, I study the Forerunners.”
Niko suppressed a snort. “Forerunner archaeologist” was, in every case she’d ever met, synonymous with “treasure hunter” or “con artist.” Instead, she nodded with as much politeness as she could summon.
Jezli’s green eyes held the trace of a smirk. “I know the reputation, but I have actually studied them. And their artifacts, particularly the larger constructions.”
“Like Gates,” Niko said.
Jezli shrugged. “Definitely. They are, after all, one of the largest and most prevalent manifestations of Forerunner technology.”
“If you can control the Gates, you are possibly the most valuable individual I’ve ever met,” Niko said.
Jezli’s face dialed to crestfallen honesty. “If I’ve given you that impression, that is not accurate. I’ve gotten lucky, a few times. And now here I am again in a position to help. A manifestation of great luck.”
She opened her mouth to say more. But Roxana raised her hand from the table as though about to forestall her and Jezli closed her mouth and thought for a beat before speaking again.
“Allow me to introduce my companion,” she said. “Roxana. A paladin.”
“Rumor said that you traveled with such,” Niko said and nodded curtly at Roxana, who returned the gesture with grave courtesy.
“Indeed. But to return to my point, I am in search of a person who may be helpful to my studies, and all accounts hold you as someone who saw them recently.”
Niko’s eyes narrowed. “So you came chasing me for word of someone? Who? A message would have sufficed, surely.”
“I was bound this way no matter what—this Gate is along the route to Miska University. But I had heard recent word, and your name was linked to it, so when I was catching up with news of the trade tangle, an agent chirped at the mention, and so I thought I’d follow up.”
Now Jezli cast her eyes down at the menu. “A rare person,” she said, tracing a finger down a column as though calculating. “A Florian.”
Niko leaned back in her chair, arms folded. “There I fear I must disappoint you,” she said. “They left my ship sometime past—Montmurray Station, it was—and I have had no word of them since, nor do I know where they went from there. I think many will be chasing them, though, the last Florian, for one reason or another. I see no reason to help anyone find them without knowing the object of their hunt.”
Jezli left off studying the menu. “I travel with a paladin!” she said, gesturing over at Roxana.
“Jezli, do not use me as passport,” Roxana said. She said directly to Niko, “I do not vouch for anything on her part. We travel together but our errands rarely overlap and we often do not see eye to eye on matters.”
“It is true I see the universe in more shades of gray than my partner does,” Jezli said agreeably. Roxana winced at the word “partner,” but did not object further. “But it does not mean I am bad at heart. First and foremost, I seek knowledge, and its preservation, and particularly its collection, and I have theories about Forerunners and Florians that could be tested by conversation with one. That’s all. I’d pay well for the privilege.”
“Alas that I cannot oblige more than I have,” Niko said. “Have you thought on what you would like to try? If so, I will send Atlanta along to take your order.”
She pushed herself away from the table and stood, inclining her head to Roxana and then Jezli, the second gesture more than a shade less deferential, which Jezli did not seem to notice at all.
In the hallway, Dabry caught her, having heard most of the conversation. “Do you trust her?”
“Not a whit, not a particle,” Niko said. “Forerunner stuff holds plenty of lure for scientists, but even more for flimflammers and cheats who count on mysticism to cover up their bad behavior. She is here to open the Gate and accept payment for it, and I cannot think anything but that she somehow caused it to shut down before her arrival.”
“What has she ordered?” Dabry said to Atlanta as she started to pass them on her way to the kitchen. “And where did Lassite go?”
“He was upset about something,” she said.
The Sessile had been more than usually subdued this evening, which Niko had been grateful for at first. Lassite had a way of making things more complicated that could go awry in so many ways. But now it felt ominous.
“The paladin has asked for a standard plate,” Atlanta reported. They’d assembled the standard for those new to the cuisine; it held a few surprises and delights, put together with skill that would give someone a feeling that they had sampled Velcoran food deeply enough that those who liked to brag could do so with a bit of authority.
“And Jezli Farren?” Niko said. “What has she ordered?”
Milly shrugged. “Chef’s choice,” she said. “With instructions that she does appreciate the floral notes.”
The trickiest to execute, those notes. Was that the point or a play on Florian? Niko thought it might be both at once. Jezli seemed … complicated.
Dabry wavered, torn between the urge to discuss this all with her and the need to oversee his kitchen. “Go ahead, we’ll talk later,” she said to him.
Lassite was a ball of nothing but misery and failure. Something was wrong and surely it was something he had done.
He had not foreseen Jezli Farren.
Not that he knew the future. Never that. That would have been much easier. But he saw things, had glimpsed enough to steer their path the way it should—the way it must—go. And then here was a strange new thing. Because he could sense that there was something about Jezli Farren that was much larger than she pretended to be.
A knock on the door, Niko by the sound of it, then it opened.
“What is wrong?” Niko said.
He stayed pressed in his ball. He could not tell her that he was wavering in the path, that he was not sure what to do. That someone had happened who he had not foreseen, and that was a matter for very great alarm.
Niko gave him time to gather himself, though.
Finally he stirred and managed words. “Beg pardon, Captain,” he said. “I am not feeling well.”
“You’ve seen the prophet—now what do you think of her?” she asked Lassite. “Have you seen something in the future attached to her that struck you amiss?”
He met her gaze, looking even more troubled. “I have seen nothing of her,” he confessed.
At first she thought it nothing out of the normal. And then the meaning sank through to her. “Not a glimpse, not a shadow of her?”
“As though she does not exist in the future,” he said.
Niko groped to make sense of it. “So she must die soon, according to your vision.”
“No, I have never seen her,” he said. He shook his head as though trying to clear it. “All the time I have contemplated the futures that are the nows that we are walking right at this moment, I have never seen her. Not as though she were about to die and thus pass away from being able to shape outcomes. As though she did not exist, never has existed.”
“And Roxana?”
“Oh, she is solid. I have seen her coming for a long time. I am surprised you did not feel it, even though you are deaf to the vibrations of magic. She is more than someone who plucks at magic, makes it work for them. She is magic, through and through, and she will affect the girl, Atlanta.”
“She will not have much chance to do so,” Niko said briskly. “They will be gone after this meal. Go and deliver the order, Lassite. There are others that you need to take, soon enough.”
He passed Gio coming down the hallway at a speed that meant something else was up.
“Sky Momma, give me strength,” Niko muttered under her breath and hurried her pace to meet him.
“It was before I met you,” Gio signed to the attentive Niko and Dabry, who she’d summoned as soon as she caught the gist of what Gio was saying. “I don’t remember names well, I’d thought it was Gesli Warren, I knew it seemed familiar to me.”
“You knew her back when you were working for Gnarl,” Niko realized, connecting the dots between Gnarl’s hesitation and asking if anyone on her ship had said anything. “And the paladin?”
Gio shook his head. “Never met her. Truth be told, Jezli’s how I broke away from him, and she’s why he liked it so little, because she tricked him out of cargo in the process. That’s what she was after, it’s just that it created a window for me to walk off the ship while he was off shouting at the local police to find her.”
The story finished, Gio let his hands slow and fall back in his lap.
“Well now,” Niko said. “So while you do not know the paladin—if she is really one—Jezli Farren is a con artist and that means that it is unlikely that Jezli actually has the sort of control that she boasts over the Gate.”
“Or that she shut it down, perhaps?” Dabry offered.
“At any rate, there’s definitely some scam going on here, and I would say that our first priority is not to get caught by it.”
“It’s possible that she does have some hold over the Gate tech,” Gio signed. “She was always fascinated by Forerunner things. And Gnarl is not a terrible target. If anyone were ever deserving of being fleeced, it would be him.”
“You are arguing for honor among thieves, and I have found that the definitions of such can be very flexible, depending on which thief is doing the talking,” Niko said.
He twitched a shoulder in a half shrug but was smiling faintly. “Are you calling me a thief?” he signed.
“There is a difference,” said Niko, “and a very vast one between being called a thief and being called someone who used to be a thief. I don’t hold you responsible for anything Gnarl made you do. That lies on him.”
He shrugged again but nodded.
“We’ll spring you on her with dessert,” Niko decided. “You can bring it to their table and see what she does.”
Gio’s lips drooped. “You’re not going to make me wear a uniform like Lassite’s, are you?”
“Maybe,” Niko said darkly, then relented at his face. “Just go and prep the dessert.” She frowned. “And check on Lassite, make sure he’s gotten to the kitchen.”