“Ghosts Numbering Five is going to win their fight. It’s not even going to be close.”

We’re gathered at the table, the six of us. I eye our new companion with a mixture of skepticism and interest; ze’s a slightly-built, slightly overweight tazi, about one and three-quarters meters tall with an open-backed shirt and feather tattoos on zir shoulder blades. There’s magic glimmering in them, something Systemic and structured, and at a guess those can be wings at the drop of a hat.

Zir name is Khalal, a mercenary whom Amber and Zidanya hired. I can’t tell what Zidanya’s expression means when they’re introducing zir, but Amber’s is mostly embarrassed, and reading between the lines there was fighting and fucking involved. Well, it’s all irrelevant; in the end, if they trust Khalal enough to bring zir onto the team for one fight, I’ll extend that same trust as well.

Khalal shows zir surprise more than the rest of the team does, though everyone is at least a little bit shocked at my opening pronouncement.

“Magelord, with all respect, that is… a great deal of confidence?” Zidanya starts bitingly, but reels it in with a glance at our new party member, however temporary.

“I’d ask ya if that’s augury, but everyone knows the Lady don’t allow it, and besides, everyone knows yer deal.” Khalal’s got an accent, one that shifts zir everyone to erryone, but as always, Omniglot handles enough to leave me comfortably able to understand.

“Sages are favored twelve to one over them.” Sara’s voice is even. “Those who are backing the Ghosts are estimated to be largely doing so due to the vast skew in the victory payout.”

Amber looks at me, trying to keep a straight face. She can’t fool me, though; I see every miniscule motion of her mouth’s suppressed smile and the raised eyebrow she isn’t letting show. Eventually, she sighs and leans back in her chair. “How can you look so smug without moving so much as the least part of your face? My lord.” She waves a hand in my vague direction. “Say it.”

“Look at this.” I wave a hand in what I belatedly realize is a mimicry of Amber’s hand gesture, and one of the walls lights up with text. “Tell me what jumps out at you with these Skills, huh?”

• Varad (Blade): Ancestral Form, Consume, Damage Resistance, Into The Fray

• Easy (Bow) : Volley Fire, Crystalline Onslaught, Bow Mastery, Shared Ranged Mastery

• Raoul (Brawn) : Grappling Charge, Blink, Ground Pound, We Are Unstoppable

• Peacebringer (Control): Baneful Grasp, Shrouding Shadows, Slumber, No Obstacles Bar Our Path

• Sun’s Glory (Mage): Rime Burst, Frostflame Barrage, Soar, Wing We to Battle

There’s a spluttering sound from Khalal, and I try to stifle my grin. It’s not particularly successful.

“Is that—how did you—what?”

“Systemic Skills have a resonance that is detectable, in certain circumstances, through my artifact-boosted Visor,” I say by way of inadequate explanation. “It’s a long story. Wait, no, actually, It’s not a long story, but unless you want to become one of my long-term companions, that’s all I’m telling you.”

Zir eyes are wide, until ze get a grip on zirself and goes back to zir previous relative impassivity. “Tha’s not what everyone thinks ya got packin’ for powers.”

“Oh?”

“Burst-mage, little bit’a fighter,” ze says, answering the obvious question. “With them frontloaded orbs. But if ya got that level of analysis, that puts ya more in Multimage territory, even if ya got the mistress here, and she’s more omni than multi, ya? Still gets ya the frontload, ye’re more the burster.” Zir eyes narrow. “Ya put whatever spell in there ya want, doncha. Everyone saying ya can’t, that can’t be done.”

I don’t answer for a bit, studying zir. I’d dismissed zir earlier as just none of my business, someone to be tolerated for the duration of the fight we were going to have in a day and a half, but that was interesting; a mix of insight and an ear for the rumor mill, and a statement of both.

Khalal squares up a little under my gaze, and I take that as an invitation to engage in some belated contemplation and assaying. There’s muscle under that fat, mostly in the core and shoulders, and an alert tension in the set of zir body from the slightly-flexed taloned feet to the taut curves of zir throat, all of it subtly other in ways I can’t really integrate into my expectations of what someone should look like; a matter of zir being tazi, I figure. There’s also a dense, complex circulation of mana going on inside the tazi’s body and a separate, connected circulation of mana, even more complex, that runs… well, it runs somewhere, or somehow, but I can only see two points of it and there are at least two places where mana is jumping away or jumping in.

I have no idea how that works, but there’s an obvious solution to that problem.

“What’s your deal with the, uh, dimensionally-hopping mana flows?”

“What’s yers, with the glimmer in front of ya eyes?”

“Got a skill; it conjures a visor. Data display, computation, integration of extra-sensory bullshit.” I smile across the table and wait expectantly.

“I do motion.” I raise an eyebrow, trying to convey that’s hardly a full answer. “My self, the System, the world, far as we got one, everything flows, nothin’s… stagnant. We…” Ze grimaces, pausing as if to try to summon the right words. “We ain’t static. We’re motion, or we’re dead, walking or not.”

“So soft, your condemnation of your peers.”

Khalal meets Zidanya’s eyes steadily, with a twist of the lip and sharp, glinting eyes. “Ain’t my place to lay judgment on others. Magelord asked my truth, and, well. ‘Sides, if ya dint approve of my motion, Gods all bless yer acting.”

“Okay, okay!” I wave my hands vaguely in the air, doing my best not to burst into laughter. “Let’s leave the talk of Zidanya’s sex life for later.”

“But, my lord!” Amber is stifling laughter, I can tell, but she manages to mostly keep control of her face, affecting a shocked look. “Without knowing such, how can you render judgment on our choice?”

“I’faith, Magelord, we—”

“By trusting you,” I say, grinning, cutting across whatever no-doubt-tremendously-scathing witticism Zidanya was about to deploy. “Which I do. So that was never a question; the only question is how we mesh.”

“As I say, I do motion.” Khalal cuts in with commendable smoothness. “Space, too, seeing as it’s a reflection of the same. Way I figure, they do theirs, the Dame Paladin, the Lady Architect; I keep folks off’a you, Magelord, you and and the Magus.”

“Space and motion. You can, what, deflect projectiles and rays, slow down people trying to get to us, expand space to make them have to run farther? Those seem obvious, but I’m probably missing plenty.”

Khalal blinks a few times at that, not a full-eyelid blink but a motion of some sort of semi-transparent nictitating membrane. “Ye’ve a blessed far range for obvious.” I meet zir gaze steadily, and ze shrugs. “Can also blow apart spellwork, a bit. Mess with runes and the like, formations, anything what takes positioning and precision. Trip someone up; ain’t easy, running and then ya got a foot goes up the wrong way all sudden-like.”

“I can see that.” I hear myself humming under my breath and stop myself, immediately afterwards not knowing why I felt the urge to do so. “Alright.” Ze raises a not-exactly-an-eyebrow at me, it’s a ridge of bone. “Sara?”

“I consider this an acceptable risk, and prefer it to the alternatives.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of any further questions, but that works too. Welcome to the team and whatnot, Khalal. Got any objections to beef stew with sauteed greens and vegetables?”

That gets me another few of those slow membrane blinks. “Can’t say as I have, no.”

“Well, that’s what’s for dinner.” I stand, feeling the stiffness in my legs that’s come from too much sitting around and thinking with too little exercise. “We’ll drill tomorrow, integrate you into our style, inasmuch as we have one, given that we basically just bullshit our way through everything. I’m hungry, it’s getting late, let’s eat.”

And eat we do. Khalal turns out to have fascinating dentition, which I try not to stare at; it’s a mix of recognizably teeth-like structures with hard ridges of probably cartilage, leaving food mostly broken apart or mashed but still big enough to go down the throat in noticeably-distending chunks. Ze also has a predictably keen eye and catches me at it, explaining without a hint of offense about zir gizzard and how most tazi digest their food, at which point Sara calls a moratorium on the discussion of, as she put it, any variant-form digestion mechanisms.

We all take turns trying to draw Khalal out a bit, which ze fields with an admirable ability to answer questions and exchange anecdotes without revealing anything in particular. I learn that Zidanya’s childhood involved learning to use a knife as a child of less than three years, a hundred megaseconds, cutting the inedible tips off of long, thin beans, which seems maybe a little earlier than I’d expect a child to have the dexterity for it. I share in turn some of the ways we got creche-children involved in food preparation, from moulds to decoration to, yes, a certain share of knifework, but with rather more assistance than Arcadia apparently expected its children to need.

By the time we’re done sharing stories about toddlers trying to grind spices and ten-year-olds trying to surprise their parents with a cooked breakfast, I find myself with my hands occupied giving Zidanya a shoulder massage as she sits at my feet, gone boneless instead of prim not long after I started. She runs her hand up the inside of my thigh when I stop, catching my eye with a long look, and I find myself grinning down at her.

I’m dense, but not that dense, and I’m distracted by the insights and revelations and by the blood and violence, but her eyes outshine the stars and she arches her back when she sees me looking, lacing her fingers together on the other side of my leg from where she’s lying and raising them slowly into a full stretch. I say goodnight with more alacrity than grace, pulling her to her feet with a sudden heat racing through me; she glances towards the door to her room and raises an eyebrow at me and, laughing, I drag her to her bed.