Atlanta found Roxana ahead of her in the sparring room, which had once been the warball zone, and then a restaurant, and now was gymnasium space again, the tables and chairs reabsorbed, only a few scattered logos bearing testimony to the most recent incarnation.
She paused and watched the other woman moving with a heavy bladed staff, swinging it in a slow dance that flowed from one form to another, the tip of the staff describing arcs so precise and calculated that they could have been measured and found identical.
Roxana said, without stopping, “You are welcome to enter.”
“Oh! I didn’t want to interrupt.” Atlanta came in, feeling foolish and awkward. She and Talon had started training together again as part of his post-market punishment, and she had found that if she spent some time stretching out and warming up before Talon arrived and started directing her, she would find things more pleasant, a suggestion that Milly had made. Atlanta had implemented it while ignoring all of Milly’s mutterings about why it shouldn’t be necessary. She sat on the floor and began stretching her legs, grabbing her toes and bending herself over her knees toward them. “Do you do this every day?”
“I do.” Roxana went on with the movements. They progressed, one arm lifting and falling, then the other. Roxana rolled her shoulders and shifted her grip on the staff.
“What does it mean, that you’re Cauldron-born?” Atlanta rose and went over to the wall to stretch further.
“The Cauldron was an artifact that the Pid took and used.” Roxana’s tone was placid, as though she were describing a passage from a history book and not her own story. “When they put dead bodies into it, the bodies were made into soldiers.”
“Dead bodies?”
“Often those that had fallen in combat to them, as well as their own. That was one reason they were so feared. One’s fellow soldiers stood side by side with you one day and then you found yourself fighting against them the next. And the soldiers that came from the Cauldron had stronger bodies than they had before. The more that died each battle, the stronger their ranks swelled. That was another reason they were feared to the point of extermination.” Roxana swung and moved, swung and moved, regular as a machine.
“So you were … dead?” Atlanta said.
“I must have been.”
“You don’t know who you were?”
“We are remade and transfigured. No one knows what we have been. We only know what we are now.”
“So now you’re a fighter by trade?”
“I am a paladin,” Roxana said.
“That’s what Jezli said, but she didn’t explain what it is that you do. All the legends say is that you are a knight of justice. Whatever that means.”
“A knight of the universe,” Roxana said. “A knight is a champion. They fight for those who cannot fight.”
“But you hang around with Jezli.”
“Jezli fights the same battle that I do. Not in the same way, and she doesn’t always fight it. But from time to time, enough that she can call upon my help.”
“What sort of champion helps a con woman pretend to fix the Gates and bilk people?”
“Have you asked what the money was intended for?
“No,” Atlanta admitted. “Was it intended for something good?”
“The vast bulk of it.”
“And the rest?”
“That,” said Roxana, “was how I persuaded Jezli to help me.” She brought the blade down in an overhand swing, snapping it back at the last moment as Atlanta gawped. She glanced at Atlanta. “Ah, I see you thought it was the other way around. No, it is a partnership.”
Even after Roxana had bowed courteously and excused herself, Atlanta sat there thinking. It must be nice to have that sort of purpose. It must be nice to have handed the reins over to the universe and know that wherever you were going, whatever you were doing, it was what the universe wanted.
Of course, it might all be a delusion, she told herself.
Still, what a nice delusion to have.
That evening, sitting in the lounge, footsteps coming along the hallway snagged Atlanta’s attention. She’d been half dozing, dreaming she’d found an occupation that made everyone else respect her.
Now she uncurled a little, not wanting to be caught in an undignified position. The heavier tread had to be Roxana. No one else on the ship walked with that heavy and considered tread, even and measured as a hymn. That meant the lighter step was Jezli.
The two women went everywhere on the ship together, and Atlanta wondered why. Was it a tie of affection? It did not seem to be. Roxana’s expression when dealing with her partner so often seemed like amused patience, as though Jezli’s words were some absurd inevitability.
And Jezli, in turn, seemed not to consult Roxana very often. Sometimes, in fact, she seemed to go out of her way to avoid corroboration by the paladin, as though afraid of contradiction. They were a curious pair, and Atlanta didn’t know what to make of them.
They had been speaking in low murmurs as they moved along the hallway, too low for Atlanta to catch anything, but they broke off as they entered.
Jezli said, “We were looking for the entertainment facility.”
“You could have asked me,” the ship interjected as Atlanta opened her mouth to answer.
Jezli looked startled but recovered herself. “I was hoping to find someone to game with actually,” she said with smooth ease. “It does me little good to find such a facility if there is no one there to play with.”
“It could be automated,” the ship said, a bit stubbornly. “Or you could play with me.”
“Play with a ship,” Jezli said, and this time her tone was full of wonder. “Do you gamble?” She cast an eye up at the ceiling. “What sort of games do you know how to play, Thing?”
“Arpat Takraven did not require such activities on my part,” the ship replied. “But my owner before that enjoyed playing quixit.”
Jezli snorted. “I’ll pass on complicated word games involving multiple rhyme sets, thank you very much. Do you know how to play handbliss?”
The question was addressed to both Atlanta and the Thing, apparently. Atlanta shook her head while the Thing said, “No.”
“Mmm, it is a common enough game in the spaceports, and most spacers know how to play it,” Jezli said. “Some even tell their fortunes with the patterns that manifest hand to hand. The pieces and the tap-pads make it a test of reflexes, but there is also a great deal of strategy that also carries over to life and a philosophy that is, to my mind, a trifle militaristic, but not uncommon or useless. It is at least educational. Perhaps I might teach the two of you how to play?”
Atlanta remembered Niko’s warning about the con woman. Playing games with her was definitely something Niko wouldn’t have approved of.
At the same time, Atlanta really didn’t have anything to put up to gamble, and if Jezli were thinking that she did, well, then she could just go on believing that up until the point that she tried to persuade Atlanta to risk that nonexistent stake.
She said, “Why do you want to teach me this game?”
“Because it is a good game, and the way one ensures there will always be someone to play a good game with is by teaching it as often as you can,” Jezli said.
She turned toward Roxana, who had moved over to the view window and was gazing out at the milky wash of writhing light that was Q-space. “Is that not true? How many hands of that do you think we have played over all the years we have journeyed together?”
“Fewer than you would probably say, but more than I would like to admit,” the paladin said without turning. “It is a reasonable way to spend time and, as you say, it does teach strategy. Indeed, it originated in the Tressemer Empire, they say, a training mechanism for the troops to take into the field with them. That empire is known for such efficiencies.”
Jezli rolled her eyes. “We do not need a history lesson in all of that,” she said. “I have a set in my things. Thing, will you play with a servitor?”
“I will watch, for now,” the Thing decided. It did not want to expose yet another servitor to Atlanta.
“How do we account for the differences in reflexes?” Atlanta objected.
“The set calibrates itself to the players,” Jezli said. “We will play enough practice rounds that it should be able to set itself accurately.”
She bustled off to find the game pieces. By the time she reappeared, Dabry and Gio had joined them, both of whom said they knew how to play already. They gathered around the main dining table, and Jezli set out the tiles and gave each player one of the little round tap-pads to place in front of them.
“Who is this lost love the good captain has been chasing all this time?” Jezli asked as she slid the disks together and then dealt them out to the players. They were a few hands in of real play.
“Petalia,” Atlanta said.
Dabry gathered up his pieces with his upper left hand and said as he did so, “We will not discuss the captain’s private affairs.”
Jezli essayed a smile in his direction, which was not returned. “Fair enough. But if we are headed their way sooner or later…”
“We will have quite probably parted ways by that time,” Dabry said. He studied his pieces and said, “Chipped diamond.”
“Quite probably,” Jezli said with smooth ease, shrugging. “Very well, what other topic of conversation shall we engage in?”
“You said that your mentor was fascinated by space moths,” Atlanta said. “How many have you visited?”
“Only five so far,” Jezli said. “In varying stages of decay. They are scattered far and most of them lie outside the edges of the Known Universe. Very few died within the territory defined by the Gates’ span.”
“You think that is significant?” Gio signed.
Jezli flicked a nod his way. “My mentor did, at least.”
Lassite appeared in the door. He slid into the seat beside Atlanta. “I wish to play,” he announced.
“You are a Sessile priest. Are they not forbidden from gambling?”
“You are thinking of Sessile acolytes. They are indeed prevented from such activities because they might distract them from their service to the world and learning how to become a priest. Once they have learned how to perform rituals and avoid such temptations, though, we are free to do as we wish.” Lassite’s tongue flickered out, sampling the air.
They dealt him in.
Five rounds later, he had won everything and the usually smiling Jezli was contemplating him with an edge of irritation in her eyes, although Roxana, who had declined being dealt in at the very beginning, was still unperturbed.
“It is considered bad sport to use magic to create an advantage in games of chance,” Jezli told the air as though making an observation.
“I did not use magic,” Lassite responded. He was feeling buoyed by his success. This woman posed no threat. His winning over her showed she had no power over him. She could not affect his plans. He gave her an indulgent look.
“Did I say that you had?” she bristled.
“You implied it.”
“I simply made an observation.” It was Jezli’s turn to deal. Her long-fingered pale hands flickered, dealing the cards out with swift, deft snaps. She picked them up and studied them.
Lassite did not pick his up. “You have cheated,” he said flatly.
Jezli started to say one thing, then clearly changed her mind and said something else. “Prove it. Or prove that you have not yourself used magic.” She played a card. “Page of grain.”
“I did not use magic,” Lassite said. “I read the probabilities.”
“And you do not see where that is an advantage?” Jezli laid her cards down again, gazing at him. “If you do not know the difference then there is no point in playing with you.”
“What if I am using it to counteract your own cheating?” he demanded.
“Again, I say, ‘Prove it.’”
Atlanta had never seen Lassite bare his fangs before. There was a shine to the ivory and whiff of some bitter scent as he did so.
Niko appeared in the door. “What’s going on here?” she demanded.
Jezli and Lassite had locked stares as though the first to look away would die.
“Nothing, Captain,” they said in unison.
Niko took three steps forward and barked out, “Stand down!” They both brought their attention to her, startled.
Another two steps and she was at the table and grabbing Jezli by the collar, pulling her upright. Roxana’s gray eyes flickered at the other’s yelp, but her face remained unmoved, as though sensing her companion in little actual danger.
Niko hissed into Jezli’s face. “I told you that you don’t play your tricks on my crew.”
“I wasn’t playing tricks!” Jezli protested. “Your crew members wanted to play a game.” The pair had their attention focused on each other to the exclusion of everything else, including the arrival of Milly just as Niko clenched a fist.
“Captain!” Dabry said and was there forcing the two of them apart. Both were glaring, breathing hard as though exercising. The tension in the air was thick as a cloud until Milly said, “Race your engines, maybe the two of you should just get a room.”
That broke the spell. Niko’s startled look at Milly made Dabry’s lips twitch, and Jezli’s expression of indignant rebuttal made Roxana’s expression mirror his. The two exchanged their own amused look.
Watching, Atlanta saw for the first time a similarity: something about the jut of their chins, the shape of their shoulders. A racial, rather than familial, resemblance that made her wonder again about what it meant to be a Cauldron-born.
What would it mean to be born for a purpose?
What would it mean to know your purpose?
Irritation frayed at Niko’s nerves as she went out into the hallway. Breaking up fights as though they were all still in boot camp. There wasn’t time for that sort of thing. She wanted to check on Talon, and then, if they were going to visit a dangerous site, there were supplies to assemble, and that would be a task for Gio.
Something about Jezli Farren, indeed. She snorted and shook her head, then saw Atlanta following her out of the doorway. She paused, waiting for the young woman to catch up with a few swift steps. Should she perhaps assign Atlanta to help Gio? She was still wavering, still unsure of herself. That was an impressionable stage.
She said to Atlanta, “If that woman, Jezli Farren, tries to talk you into anything—anything, whether it seems innocuous or not—you come to me, do you understand that?”
“What do you think she’s going to talk me into?” Atlanta asked, genuinely curious. “I don’t have any power over the ship. Or the other crew members. Or anything, really.”
Niko said darkly, “She’s a self-admitted con artist. No matter how innocent something seems, it’ll have an agenda behind it, something designed to put her in control. That’s what I’m worried about.” She cast an eye upward. “All of this could have been avoided if the Thing had thought to consult me before agreeing to take them on board.”
“But you would have refused to let me take them on board,” the ship said.
“That is my point.”
The ship considered. It still thought that its mode had been the most optimal. After all, Jezli and Roxana were aboard and being highly entertaining, while in the scenario that Niko was describing, they would not have been.