Lili only remembers the preceding day in bits and pieces. She remembers the name of the girl who saved her and her otherworldly powers, but not of the battle that had ensued during their escape. She remembers the sodium lamps, the blue glow emanating from the vats, and the dark flesh of the organs within them. She remembers a high pitched shriek, long and piercing and hollow.
It confuses her to no end. Lili’s been sitting up in the bed with her hands balled into the velvet covers for who knows how long.
Another thing: she doesn’t know where she is. The room she’s in is a far cry from the industrial environment she’s been living in for the past few weeks; it’s heavily embellished to the point where Lili has no idea where to look. Every painting that she glosses her eyes over gives her a technocolour migraine, and even the carpet offers no respite—the pattern is offensive to the eyes and it confuses her in swirls and spirals.
Her stomach rolls. She feels her mouth growing moist, but she swallows down her bile and pushes herself off the bed.
A glint of reflected light catches Lili’s eye; she looks to the bedside counter and finds a transparent slide of plastic there. When she picks it up, it turns matte black and shows a faint battery gauge in the centre. The container is red and hardly filled.
She blinks. Is this Avett’s GlassLink? Upon holding the device up to the light, she sees no trace of his fingerprints on the screen, meaning that it’s brand new.
Lili cradles the device to her cheek. Is it a gift from Auren, Ysh’vanna, or Av—nevermind. It doesn’t matter, a gift is a gift. She’s just happy to be receiving anything at all.
Remembering how the GlassLink is supposed to charge, she slots the device into her pocket and makes for the door. She makes her way through a short corridor before reaching the main area, and when she does, she’s immediately greeted with a sorry sight. There’s paper strewn across the rugs and countertops, and in the middle of all this—like a beacon in the wasteland—is a single, velvet armchair.
Lili tiptoes through the mess, making sure not to step on anything. A glance at the golden nameplate on the countertop informs her that this is Alexei’s office. It’s a bit disappointing to find out that the haughty and royal overseer is a slob behind the scenes, but she supposes that it’ll have to slide.
She’s about to pass through to the kitchen when she catches a low murmur and a flash of white hair. She darts behind the wall again.
“It’s all so much to take in,” Ysh’vanna grumbles. “It’s just—this isn’t what I signed up for when I went to pilot school.”
“Nor I,” Auren answers. He seems to be deep in thought elsewhere. “It is understandable should you choose to abandon Alexei’s request, and Lili and I as a consequence.”
Lili’s eyes widen, and she covers a hand over her mouth to keep herself from gasping.
Ysh’vanna speaks slowly. “The pay… is pretty good. Better than good, actually; five hundred thousand for a single job is insane. But—”
“But?”
“We’ve got jobs and our own lives to get back to, it’s just a lot to lay down for someone we hardly know.”
“I understand.” Auren sounds almost dejected.
Lili doesn’t stick around to hear the rest. She needs more information beyond the vague terminology of 'Alexei's request.' They're kicking her off the Winnow, but that means they're kicking Auren off as well, and that doesn't make any sense. He's too diligent to be fired. Ysh'vanna wouldn't do something like that.
Though who's she to make calls on what Ysh'vanna would do? As far as Lili knows, they hardly even know each other. Maybe Auren's heavily broken protocol just now, or they're finally seeing his lack of physical skill as a liability on the battlefield. The reasons for his dischargement could go on forever, and so could Lili's.
"Upset, Lili?"
She whirls around and finds herself face to face with Alexei. Flabbergasted, Lili doesn't have an inkling of what she should be saying right now. She blurts out, "Where am I?"
"Hive headquarters, or my humble abode." Alexei gestures to the walls. "Just as a teacher may only live at school, an overseer's life and blood belongs to their sanctuary."
Teachers don't live at school, but Lili’s not about to correct him. She asks more questions instead. “What’s this request Auren keeps referring to?”
Alexei smiles at Lili. “Are you attached to these off-landers?”
She shrugs. Then she realises that Alexei has done nothing to answer her question. “You’re separating us—but why? Did we do something wrong again? I could take the blame for it—”
“Excellent joke, however that won’t be necessary.” Alexei pulls Lili aside and puts his hands on her shoulders before leaning down to her level. “You have done nothing wrong. My request necessitates absolute loyalty until the very end, and your friends are simply re-evaluating their values before they come to a decision. They are, of course, mercenaries first and foremost.”
She tears herself away from his grasp. “Tell me what your request is, or I’m not helping.”
“Lili.” He reaches out again; she steps back.
“I could hurt you,” she says, her voice low as she can make it. “I’m not Human. I’m like you. I think you’re hiding something from me, like how Kashira’s more than just an artifact, isn’t she?”
Alexei’s expression darkens, and he averts his gaze. “You’re correct. She is an overseer, much like you and I.”
“Why was she down there then, in that vat?”
He hesitates, unsure of the words he should use. “Overseers were created semi-naturally. Each overseer was originally Human, and they were designated a sanctuary during the initial… attack. There is to be no more than seventy overseers at any given time, else…” He trails off, inhales, then begins to speak again. “Kashira, however. They animated her from the corpse of the Exodus overseer, in Greenland, in order to test the limits of the seventy overseer limitation rule. It shook the overseers to their very core to see that she was allowed to exist by the system. As a result of her unique origins, she has an affinity unclaimed by any person, unmatched by any power, overseer or not. You’ve seen it in action already, I'm presuming.”
It dawns on Lili exactly what Kashira can do. “She makes prophecies,” she breathes.
“She lacks a degree of proper control, from what I’ve heard. It’s more like she makes a request with terms that she must fulfil. For small boons, this may include a blood sacrifice. For larger requests bordering on the miracle, she would require more than a few droplets, I’d say. Perhaps a ritual.”
“Is there anything she can’t do?”
He shrugs. “So long as she has the ether and the means to fulfil the terms of the prophecy, theoretically there is no limit to her affinity. You can see why her power is so coveted among us overseers. All of our deepest, darkest desires—fulfilled right down to the atom. It’s understandable that the twins kept her in stasis in that vat for so long, though their actions were hardly excusable.”
Lili narrows her eyes. “So I guess there's something you want from her, then."
"In the face of a thousand possibilities, man is often blinded by desire, and I like to think that I am an above average individual. I have no intention of using her for my own gain, and I would never entertain the mere idea of it."
She keeps her eyes narrowed, because to hell if she's accepting a roundabout response such as that.
Alexei caves in, thankfully. "Alright. Well, if I were to come into the possession of the ability to change reality, in this dragon infested world… I would simply rid the realms of the beasts once and for all."
Lili waits for the contradiction, the drawback, the punchline that she’s allowed to fly over her head. It never comes; Alexei is wholly serious.
It takes a moment for his proposal to sink in. He chuckles at her silence. “Are my motives far too sinister for you to comprehend?”
Lili jolts back from Alexei. “N-no, uh, I just.” She coughs. “Didn’t expect something so, so—”
“Naive, perhaps.”
“Um, selfless?”
“Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”
With every ounce of her former confidence having disintegrated into meek embarrassment, her cheeks redden and she looks to the side. “I thought it was pretty noble…” she mumbles.
“You’re too kind, Lili.”
She opens her mouth, but the words don’t come out. She’s embarrassed herself enough already today, so maybe it’s for the best that she’s suddenly lost her tongue.
“Back to the topic at hand, naturally Kashira cannot hope to create and fulfil such a demanding prophecy on her own. Which is where you come in. You’re a bit of an outlier as an overseer, Lili.”
“How?”
“Which sanctuary do you belong to then?”
Lili shrugs.
“An overseer without a sanctuary means that you were created outside of the system, and since I haven’t caught wind of any of our already established overseers passing,” he says, his gaze sturdy, “you would be our seventy-first. From what I’ve heard from Kashira, she was only able to use her fateweaving after your assistance, and that your ether carries some vein of… unique properties to it that she couldn't quite explain. God only knows of the other miracles that you are capable of performing.”
Something clicks for Lili, and she looks up to the taller man with her breath held.
“You have a lot of potential as the first ‘true’ artificial overseer, Lili. That’s why I need you to see this plan through. I cannot even hope to begin planning without your involvement.”
She stumbles back, but Alexei takes her hands in his, steadying her.
"Please." His eyes are shining. "To liberate your own home realm from the throes of the dragons so early into the Migration would be to save your world from any further ruin. Think about it for me."
“I—I—thanks. I’ll, yeah. I'll think about it,” she manages to say.
“Another thing.” He tightens his grip. “Kata’lana says she has no working theories of the cause of your status as an artificial overseer—but perhaps you might. Is there a moment in your past where you felt something snapping into place?"
"That's…"
"Or like you’d spent your entire life adjusting the focus of a lens? I'm not fond of vague terminology, however I suppose if the situation calls for such…”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I recall on my first day as an overseer, I accidentally created a miniature crater on the side of a mountain.” He sounds like he's joking, but Lili can't be too sure. His voice seems far away, like he's talking to her down a narrow corridor.
‘Not really,’ she tries to say, but she's not totally in control anymore. It feels like there’s a tangible delay, a yawning chasm between her brain telling her body to move and her body actually moving. It feels like she's back in her down-beaten house in the wilds. It feels like she'd never left in the first place.
“You’re so useless, Lili.”
Lili blinks. All of a sudden it’s not Alexei in front of her anymore, but Ava’s peaceful scowl. She blinks again, and the world folds out before her: grass blades dig into her calves, and the sun’s rays pelt down like thrown knives. Ava is leaning against an old brick and mortar house.
It’s so hot. It’s so unbearably hot.
The handle of her makeshift dagger is made out of cloth scraps that they’d found in an old Spotlight store, and it’s gone yellow from the sweat in her palms. Lili doesn’t know what she’s to do with this blade. Ava opens her mouth to speak, and it feels like she’s let forth a deluge of dammed-up thoughts for the last time.
“You’re fucking useless. You’ve always been a useless bitch. Prove me wrong. You can’t, can you? You're sca—”
—
Alexei stops himself short. His gaze turns worried, then soft as he releases Lili from his grasp. “My apologies. I hope you can forgive me.”
A breath. Another breath. Lili’s hand involuntarily flexes against itself, and she’s glad to find that there’s no dagger in her grip. She sighs and presses her lips together.
“Are you alright?” he asks. “I shouldn’t have—I should have been more careful.”
“You saw my memories,” she whispers. “Now you know.”
It’s Alexei’s turn to be stone-cold silent now.
Lili looks away. At least she doesn’t have to explain herself to him, but even now she’s only just shaking off the dregs that comes with recalling her past. It’s been like this for years now, and she's ashamed that she’s not more used to it. She takes another deep breath.
Alexei steps back into the main hall and beckons for Lili to follow. “Have you checked on the others yet?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve only just woken up myself.”
“Avett is outside, if you need him.”
Excitement flutters in her chest. She’s about halfway down the corridor when she realises why Avett isn’t with the others inside the building; fear seizes her stomach. “Is he coming—or, er, staying with me—uh…”
Alexei is already gone.
—
Despite herself, Lili ends up seeking out Avett anyway. She doesn't have to look far; she finds him leaning against the wall outside Alexei's office. In front of him is a large, glass screen, and if Lili looks too far down, she can see that Alexei's office is actually connected to a hallway that's suspended high above the ground. There are Humans wandering around like ants below her, and it's the most she's ever seen in one place. She steps back out of shock. Avett snorts.
"And here I thought you'd appreciate the view," he says. "It's like a miniature Earth down there with all of those Humans."
She shakes her head. "I'm not used to seeing this many, it just took me…" She tries not to look over the edge of the platform again. "...By surprise."
"Yeah, it's real scary up here." Avett's smile turns devilish as he regards Lili's pale face. "I heard one of the screws on this platform squeaking loose, stars, I almost shit my pants when I felt the floor wobble."
"R-really?"
"No."
Lili looks at her partner oddly, though her confusion is short-lived as she soon realises that he's just having her on.
Avett grins. "So you're just scared of how high up we are, is that it?"
She shrugs, neither dismissing nor affirming his claim. Better for Avett to think that she’s scared of heights than to look like she’s scared of people, she supposes. Or more specifically, murderous hounds who want each and every off-lander dead.
“How’d you get in without…?” Lili beckons to the sanctuary below them.
“Without getting jumped? There’s a hidden hangar connected to Alexei’s office that leads straight into the wilds, and we dropped the Winnow off there.” He wrinkles his nose. “Though I would’ve lasted at least ten rounds in the mosh pit, believe me.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.”
Avett smiles, but he doesn’t say anything else. He chooses to keep his arms folded across his chest as he gazes out of the window, his eyes fixed on the leaded glass dome ceiling and on the clouds outside.
Lili swallows. He looks like a man that’s already made up his mind. All of a sudden, she feels stupid for even thinking that she’d ever had a shot at changing Avett’s decisions. He’s worked his whole life to get here. He’s not about to throw it all away for a stranger, especially not a stranger that’s as listless and clueless as Lili.
So she does the unthinkable. If Avett won’t hurry up and spit out his goodbyes, she’ll just take this opportunity to make sure that he knows exactly how she feels.
She steps in front of him, spreads out her arms, takes another step closer—and hugs him. She presses her face into his chest. It’s uncomfortable for her to do so since she’s a touch taller than him, but she doesn’t mind the strain at all. She would bend her spine over backwards to keep her friends in her back pocket as she’s come to realise.
He doesn’t return the hug. Lili doesn’t blame him for trying to keep his distance.
It’s only after a few seconds of heavy silence that Avett decides to ask, “What brought this on?”
She shrugs again. He goes quiet.
“Alright. That’ll be one grand for the mental consolation, and another grand for the intimacy.”
“Wh—”
“Pay up. It’s an additional two grand if you want me to hug you back, I’m not a free whore.”
Lili pushes away from him. “I—I just wanted to say goodbye, I didn’t want you whoring yourself out to me or anything.” Despite everything she’s done to prepare herself, she still chokes on the slur; this elicits a smug grin from Avett.
“Goodbye?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Alexei wants me to go with him,” she mumbles. “I’m the only person alive who can power Kashira, so I have to go."
He blows his hair out of his face. "You don't have to. You can say no."
"I'd feel terrible."
Avett snorts. "Well, guess I'd also feel terrible for leaving you be with those two creeps. Good thing I'm feeling awesome right now."
Lili has to do a double take. "I'm… sorry?"
"Why would I not come?"
"I just—Alexei told me not to get my hopes up, so I expected the worst, especially from you." She staggers back, her face burning a bright crimson. "I don't mean that I think that you're cruel enough to not come with me—ok, maybe you are, maybe a little, but you worked so hard to get to where you are now and I would hate for you to suddenly drop all that just for me because last time you did that you cried so mu—"
Avett makes a slicing motion at his neck with his hand. "Please, just stop talking."
She does. She regrets the hug now. So much.
He continues, "Listen, I don't know where you got this idea that being a mercenary explicitly meant taking jobs from the IRC board, but that's not all we do. Third party benefactors aren't all that rare nowadays, especially not with New Therius' status as a criminal hotspot, since no well-meaning outlaw's gonna want to involve themselves directly with the IRC. Not with the strict regulations they've got in place regarding IDs or whatever—they've probably got me tracked down to my bowel movements, and I've only been working for three years."
"I… I see."
"It's literally in my best interests to accept Alexei's offer, actually. He's putting forward enough money to buy a hug from me five times over, with a little extra on the side if my client's feeling a bit raunchy afterwards."
She deadpans. “But Ysh’vanna wasn’t interested in the job.”
“Ysh’vanna might look like she’s got her head on the right way, but she’s got this nasty habit of deliberating over every single decision sometimes. She doesn’t like being chained down by certainties. She just wants to fly.”
Hope blooms in her chest. “So you’re coming?” she asks.
He scowls. “Yes, but please stop making that face at me. You look like you’re about to launch into a love confession that’s the length of a thesis.”
Fuck—Lili draws back from Avett and rubs at the smile on her face. It won’t come off.
“Anyway, if we can’t get Ysh’ as our pilot we can always grab another off the board, though those’ll tend to be fresh graduates from school. Or get Alexei to drive us around, I doubt Auren even knows how to navigate anything beyond the messenger app on his GlassLink.” Avett shuffles on his feet, his features shifting to something darker. “You kept your mouth shut about that night, right? They don't know?”
Lili is about to shake her head when Ysh’vanna slams open the entrance to Alexei’s office. Her shoulders are quivering, and Lili thinks that her captain’s about to smack her on the head as penance for escaping with Avett when—
Ysh’vanna does slap Lili, but she aims a little lower instead of at her face—her back. She hits hard her enough to send a sharp cough up Lili's throat. “I knew you two could do it! As your captain, I’m real damn fucking proud of you guys! Congrats!”
“Thanks, Ysh’vanna,” Lili says, but her voice rasps on the last syllable and she launches into a coughing fit again. She's not even sure of what she's being congratulated on.
“We didn’t fuck, end of story,” says Avett. “Try eavesdropping better before jumping to conclusions next time.”
"Bleh. Boring." Ysh'vanna shrugs. "An easy misunderstanding. So what did you guys get up to in the dead of night that you don't want your captain to know about, hm?"
"Lilith just threw up and hid in a corner all the way to the Afflatus while I was piloting, it's no big deal. It's a huge stain on my ability to pilot though. I'd rather her not bring it up with anyone."
Lili is coughing way too much to quip back at him with a snarky insult. She curses silently and continues to blink away her tears to no avail. Just what the hell is going on? The conversation’s zoomed by so quickly—she’s hardly grasping one topic before it's already melted away into another.
Ysh’vanna continues, “Anywho, heard you and Alexei need a pilot. You’ll be glad to know that I’ve decided to tag along for the job. Can’t get rid of me that easily, Ironsturm.”
Her grin is so sweet that it’s almost saccharine. Avett pretends to gag. Lili is already on the verge of actually gagging from coughing so much.
Lili rasps out her sincerest gratitudes after she calms herself down. It gets a laugh out of everyone as they bring her back into the dining hall, where Auren and Alexei both happen to be waiting for the trio’s return for what looks to be an early dinner consisting of steaming hot spaghetti. Thankfully, Avett doesn’t bring up the hug once, nor of the awkward encounter that had ensued right after.
Lili is glad for that. It’s good to move past misunderstandings quickly.
—
“I apologise for the hasty meal.” “Cooking is not an endeavour that I wish to undertake.”
They’re eating Watties. Watties canned spaghetti; the soft, almost gelatin-like stuff that comes in the 420g tin bricks that you have to open with either a specialised can opener or a sharp knife. Lili knows this taste, and it stings her tongue like a rusted spoon.
None of the Winnow’s crew say a word. Not even Avett, who looks like he might explode at any second. Lili muses over what he’d say as she watches his jaw clench. “You can’t cook? The almighty overseer can’t cook? I could burn bread better than this microwave slop.”
He doesn’t say it. Alexei is looking over at everyone with the sincerest, most genuine smile he’s ever made in the time that they’ve known him. This spaghetti is his magnum opus, his chef’s specialty, and Avett isn’t as cruel as he thinks he is. To criticise Alexei now would be like tearing up a five year old’s drawing.
So the young man keeps his mouth shut, albeit with some degree of difficulty. When Lili goes to give her meal another prudent sniff, she notices the stench of tin that belies the initial sour tang from the faux-ketchup. It's only a faint whiff to her; she can't imagine how it might reek to the Kattish nose.
Kata’lana eats the spaghetti by the spoonful, and is the first to leave the table. Lili has no doubt that the young Draconian woman might’ve ended up chewing on nutri-bars made out of sawdust had Alexei not heated a canned meal for her. The dark circles around her eyes and her sunken skin just scream bad diet.
Sighing, Avett puts down his spoon on his plate. "What does… being your assistant actually mean? What's Kata'lana's role in all of this—what’s she good for?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Alexei doesn't even have to waggle his eyebrows for Avett to get the full picture. Upon witnessing Avett’s scowl, he corrects himself: “Nothing too out of the ordinary for an assistant researcher, I can assure you.”
“Oh yeah, and where’d you go for your first date?”
“She took my hand and dragged me into my basement, whereupon she presented the results of her first etherchemical experiment on organic dragon material.” Alexei spins his spoon into the spaghetti; none of it sticks to his utensil. “Quite the boring first excursion—Kata’lana has no interest in the carnal either, which makes us rather incompatible. You, however, seem to care a great deal about my sexual affairs.”
“I think we’re incompatible for other reasons, but sure.” Avett returns a full-faced smile rather than the fang-bearing snarl Lili had expected. When she casts a glance at the backside of his chair, she immediately knows why; the fur on his tail is spiking straight up. He’s very angry. He’s just keeping it all inside for now.
"She seems tired," Ysh'vanna says. "I feel terrible for her."
"As do I. Rest assured that her sleep deprivation is self-inflicted; she has worked into the early hours of the morning on various projects despite my protests. I owe her a great deal in regards to pinpointing the whereabouts of the artifact both times. I only wish peace upon her in the years following our success."
Lili also puts down her spoon to fidget with her nails. "Is Kashira ok?" she asks.
"Merely resting in her chambers, Lili. There's no need for worry. You lot did well in keeping her unharmed."
“Speaking of,” Ysh’vanna says between mouthfuls. “What’s the plan after this? You said that Lili had to act as Kashira's ethereal battery while she made the prophecy. I'm guessing there's a missing step there, considering how you haven't already done just that."
“Quite the sharpshooter, aren’t you O’Raal?”
Avett butts in. “She’s the pilot, actually. I’m the sharpshooter.”
Before Alexei can snipe back at Avett, Ysh’vanna says, "I'm willing to guess that it's got something to do with her New Order heritage."
"Alas, you are spot on. From what I can recall, the overseers chose a Gallian as their vessel for the race's innate ether handling capacities, however as you know…" Alexei's eyes trail off to rest on Auren's displeased expression. "Eldrakians that have been dispatched to Earth are so incredibly rare. The overseers knew that they would have no chance of acquiring a subject for use, much less a willing subject. Yes, believe it or not, Kashira was willing."
Avett snorts. "I'd ask to see your gold star from the ethics department, but from the way you've worded all of this, it sounds like you weren't even involved."
"The overseer tribunals called upon a vote once the Afflatus's overseer brought up the possibility of an artificial dragon-hybrid to reliably fill in the wake that the Exodus' overseer had left in her death. The vote did not swing in their favour—not only that, but I chose to cast against it. They went ahead with the plan anyway, as you can see.
"But I digress; you aren't here to hear me plead for my innocence. As a New Order Gallian, Kashira has not been trained as an Eldrakian would. She can take and use another's ether, but only as much as her original capacity allows her to. A true Eldrakian would not be fettered by their bodily limits as they would have been trained from young to manipulate monumental quantities of ether."
Auren sits up a little straighter. His meal is untouched, and his spoon remains in front of him. "You cannot train a Gallian in Eldrakian techniques past their sixth year. What do you imply, overseer?"
"That's where my lovely assistant comes in." Alexei flashes his teeth at Avett. "Kata'lana is an avid researcher of the draconic, though she isn’t formally recognised for any scientific achievements on Therius. As such, she's already collated a list of possible ether-enhancing artifacts from every current dragon on Earth for our usage."
He slaps a sheet of paper into the table. The handwriting is a hasty scrawl, and there are brown half-moon stains on each corner of the sheet. The list itself, however, only goes one line down.
Avett takes one look at the list, exhales through his nose in resignation, and scrunches his features. So does Ysh'vanna.
Curious, Lili takes a look at the list:
A07 - nicknamed "the Palatable," has been known to demonstrate several reality warping abilities that might assist with increasing Kashira's ether capacity. A rank. Readings are most prominent surrounding the southernmost area of the New Therius - Afflatus landmass.
She swallows. Ysh'vanna grits her teeth and slams her hands into the table. "The deal is off, Alexei. Assemble your suicide squad elsewhere."
Avett hisses, "We both know that A07 isn't on the bounty boards for a reason, dick, and that's because it's still in the same region as its artifacts. You've never had to deal with one of these assholes, and it shows."
"Settle down, I have yet to divulge the specifics of your task."
"Divulge my balls, prick."
Alexei continues, undeterred, "Surely as mercenaries you must know that the Palatable cannot release an aura?"
"Doesn't matter," says Avett, but his voice wavers in uncertainty. "Still an A, still a bitch to run from."
“Fine then,” Alexei says, folding one of his hands over the other. "Six hundred thousand credits."
"You're a real dick if you think you're gonna actually bribe us—"
Ysh'vanna goes still. Deathly still. "Nine hundred."
"Seven hundred. I may have funds at my disposal, but I’m no bottomless well."
“Eight hundred and fifty.”
Alexei clicks his tongue. "Deal."
Avett gawks at his captain, who remains unmoving as she stares Alexei down. "Where are you getting all this money anyway?"
"The very same organisation that I call when I need to make an arrest on a certain band of tax evaders," he responds easily. "Being an overseer has its perks. Please, do sit back down. Your food will get cold."
The meal continues in silence, broken only once by Auren asking whether the spaghetti happens to be vegetarian or not. Avett is the first to leave, and he makes a big show of it by rattling his chair legs against the wood as he gets up. No one stops him.
Lili chews the insides of her cheeks and continues to eat.