The crew’s habit, acquired long ago while in the ranks of the Holy Hive Mind, was that if they could, they ate well before a launch, packing themselves with protein. The first few hours in transit were unsettling to the stomach. And so everyone showed up except Talon; Niko dispatched a tray to his cabin, hoping he’d bring himself to eat it.
“All right,” she said as they got to about the halfway mark in the meal, slowing their eating while several of them reached for seconds, or in Gio’s case, thirds. “If we’re going to be traveling, then we need to make the most of the time we have. Dabry, did you get all your plant shopping in?”
“Most of it, Captain. The essentials.”
“So you’ll want Gio helping you with stowing that—anyone else?”
He pointed at Atlanta. “I’ll start giving her some of the basics of ship care while we’re at it.”
“Actually,” Atlanta said, “I was hoping you’d teach me to cook.”
“Hmm,” Niko said. “I’d thought I’d give her hand-to-hand combat basics.”
He squinted at her while dishing Gio more fruit porridge. “Begging your pardon, sir, that sounds as though you intend to undertake her training personally.”
Atlanta looked between them, not sure exactly what was at stake or being discussed. But this conversation brought with it the realization that both of them had been thinking about her and where she might fit, a thought that made her feel much more settled than she had been. She straightened her shoulders.
“I was thinking about learning to cook,” she repeated. Everyone kept telling her to stand up for herself. Now it was time to do so. She took a decisive bite.
Niko tilted her head forward, rubbing her palm over the table’s surface. “I think we’ve probably all got quite a bit to teach you.”
“All the more reason that she should be oriented and eased into things.” Dabry’s tone was patient but firm. “You can have your own chance at playing mentor soon enough. Cooking’s not a bad way to start.”
Niko laughed. “Look how excited we all get at the thought of a newbie to boss around a bit!” she said wryly. “Very well, Dab, you get your way, since you’ve always been the one to do it. Once you think she’s ready for it, let me know and I’ll slide her into the duty roster.”
She glanced around at the rest of them. “And in the meantime, I have figured out plenty of tasks for all of us and before you can say anything, yes, you can swap duties if you feel inclined, but I think I’ve chosen well overall.”
As a final course, Gio produced a plate of his flatbreads, each of them rolled and filled with a mixture that was both creamy and spicy, a pleasant zing that lingered in the mouth and made Atlanta’s nose run, enough that she groped for her napkin. She coughed and took a sip of water. At least they’d listened to her about the cooking. Maybe she’d learn how to make these. Everyone else seemed to like them well enough.
“Spicy’s good for you,” Niko told her, helping herself to another of the rolls. “Clears out the system.” She turned to Lassite. “I asked you to see what protections you might layer into the ship,” she said. “What have you come up with for me?”
The snakelike creature lowered his hood. He had declined most of the dishes and stuck to a plain porridge. He said, “The ghosts are continuing to make their way around it in patterns that I had not foreseen.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“They are—” He broke off, shaking his head in perplexity as he tried to find the right words. “They are rubbing themselves and their magic on it, so it is staying with the ship, and I do not know how to predict that. Because it is a living being, the magic seeps into it as it would not with a ship that was made of metal or some other inert material.”
“You mean they’re tainting me!” the ship said in alarm, fully prepared to believe in the ghosts again. “They’re tainting me with magic!”
“Stow it for now, Thing. Lassite, boil it down: Is that going to be good or bad? Does it help us any?” Niko said patiently. She was used to the little Sessile’s evasions and refusals. He was a creature of prophecy and portents rather than facts, which could prove infuriating. But he also understood how magic functioned in a way that she had not much seen in anyone else.
She herself had only the most rudimentary understanding of how magic worked, let alone its complex and convoluted interactions with science. She knew that magic lay at the heart of Talon’s ability to shift between forms, becoming full-fledged lion, human-shaped, or any number of possibilities in between. And similarly, magic lay beneath what Lassite could sometimes do—though not with any sort of reliability—which was foresee the future.
He said slowly, “I think it is a good thing and any spellwork that I do will be augmented.”
Niko looked at Atlanta. “Your society is magic-poor, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I’ve never heard it described that way,” Atlanta said, startled into indignation. “Usually it’s phrased as we’re more rational and less superstitious than some of the other groups.”
Niko tapped her upper lip with a finger, looking at Atlanta. “There are so many reasons for you not to say it like that. For one thing, it’s incredibly offensive to societies that are more magic dependent. For another, rationality is not confined to science. Plenty have spent their lives trying to untangle all the methods of spell work. The Holy Hive Mind has perfected much of it, anything they could find that could be made into a weapon.”
Lassite looked between the two of them, watching this conversation play out as it always did. Satisfaction oozed in him. It was good when things moved the way they were supposed to.
“I ask because people who come out of a society like that, ones that are less experienced with magic is how we will say it perhaps, are usually not trained in many of the basics. Magic may seem as though it is arcane and incomprehensible, but there are systems behind it. And if you have even a little talent, that would be a good thing to find out, because it is the sort of thing that you might be able to capitalize on. Do you know if you have shown any signs of it?”
“I don’t know what sort of signs I might’ve shown,” Atlanta admitted.
“Are you prone to making lucky guesses? Or perhaps you win things more often than you should?”
“Neither of those.”
“Hmm. Are you good at establishing connections with people? Any animals that are particularly fond of you?”
“Not very, and no.”
“Is there anything that seems to turn up in your life over and over again, as though the universe were posing you some sort of question?”
“Uh,” Atlanta said. “Not up till now.”
Niko arched an eyebrow and gestured at her to go on.
“I mean, until recently I just figured I would keep on living at court and being part of that. Maybe at some point be given some role within the government or be asked to undertake some sort of diplomatic mission. You know, keep training to be an heir.”
“I see,” Niko said thoughtfully. “And now you have not a clue what it is that you are supposed to do, or even what it is that you will be doing a year from now.”
“I’m not even sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow.” Atlanta didn’t realize how much her tone had betrayed about her state of mind until Niko’s quirked smile sobered.
“We will not desert you, child,” she said. “We will make sure that you have some skills to get you by and you will have a place with us for as long as you need it, even if that continues to be all your life.”
“Why?” Atlanta demanded.
“Why what?”
“Why have you taken me on as a responsibility? I understand why you take care of the crew, why you look after them. They were your soldiers and you were their captain.”
“Except Milly,” Niko murmured.
“Even she was someone who worked for you—an employee. I just showed up. Mailed to you, in a crate.”
“Because I do not believe that you put yourself in that crate, nor that you mailed yourself to me,” Niko said. “There was some reason on someone’s part to do things that way.”
“But you know what happened. It was some sort of test. One that was meaningless. One meant for a real Imperial heir rather than just a throwaway clone.”
“Still, they sent you”—Niko poked a fingertip into Atlanta’s mid-chest—“to me.” She tapped herself. “That wasn’t a random thing. And even if it was random, Lassite would tell you that often there is great meaning in the random movement of things.”
She pointed at Lassite. “And that brings me to what I want you to do after she’s finished with Dabry, Lassite. Show her the basics, enough that if someone does magic in her presence, she’ll have a good chance of recognizing it.”
“Magic is a very subtle thing,” the Sessile murmured. “Sometimes too subtle for someone to sense.” He didn’t think Atlanta would be sensitive to magic yet. That wouldn’t happen until she changed, the change he had foreseen rolling toward her, an inexorable force of destiny. He yearned to see it happen soon.
“And I will not expect you to have prepared her for such cases, but I would like you to have showed her what some of the less subtle ones look like. And show her what you can about attracting luck. Sky Momma knows that we always need more of that.”
Lassite inclined his head. He pushed away his empty plate and turned to Atlanta. “When you are ready, you must tell me well ahead of time, so I may pray and prepare myself, and so I can find a place where it is quiet and we will not be interrupted.”
His glance around at the others at the table made it clear that he expected them to make sure this lack of interruption was, in fact, what happened.
Feeling much more satisfied about the universe and her place in it, Atlanta hastily ate the last flatbread on her plate, although she took time to savor it when she caught Gio’s eyes on her.
“What is the little crunchy seed?” she asked him. She’d learned by now how best to flatter both him and Dabry, which was to ask about some detail of the food that demonstrated the attention she had given to the act of ingestion.
This was a new thing to her. Certainly, the court had featured all manner of great cooks and chefs, but she had paid more attention to her fellow eaters than to what was being consumed or the way it had been prepared. Dabry had said truly great food made you stop eating. Made you think about the moment.
She had come to realize with time that when Dabry Jen had told the pirates he was a Class One chef, he had not been lying. Nor had Milly, who had told them she was a Class Three. Both of them were double-sided creatures, capable of deadly combat or a delicate soufflé with equal ease. She hadn’t witnessed any of Niko’s cooking yet, but the captain had also claimed to be such a chef, and while Atlanta had thought they were just bluffing, counting on the untutored palates of the pirates, the fact was that they had the skills to back their claims up.
“Celery seed,” Gio signed, pursing his long, flexible lips in the expression she’d learned to interpret as a smile.
“Did you have some of that with you or did you break into my stores?” Dabry said in a suspicious tone.
“Used a pinch,” Gio signed with a squint, “and put a packet of it down with the rest of stuff to be planted.”
“Mrrm,” Dabry grumbled.
“What exactly would you have done differently, Sergeant?” Niko asked.
“Nothing,” he admitted, and she laughed silently at him.
The ship, while still unsure how many uses celery seed could be put to, thought that what it was currently experiencing was camaraderie.