By the time we’re all showered and dressed, we have a little bit more than three kiloseconds left in our grace period, about five sixths of a Cadorian hour. I’d slept almost all of that, and I’m grateful for it, but I feel profoundly awkward as the small cavalcade of the three of us settle around the table for a meal halfway between breakfast and lunch.

“You didn’t strike me as the cooking type, Sara.” I cock an eyebrow at her, waving at the frittata that she’d apportioned out to our plates. “This looks delicious.”

“It amused the Lord Mayor to make me perform the duties of a servant.” Her voice is cold, and her hands clench around her fork.

“I want to be completely clear about this,” I say as firmly as I can manage without being ungentle, “while I appreciate the food, you don’t ever have to cook if you don’t want to. You’re not my servant.”

She nods at that, digging a fork into the food. I follow suit, and the flavor explodes in my mouth; eggs, a plant they called the tomato, sweet peppers, two kinds of cheese, and more all blending into one meta-flavor. It’s really good, better than any scramble or omelette I’d ever managed, but my attention is split between the food and waiting to see if Sara is going to say something.

“I hear you, Adam.” Her palms are flat on the table, loose, which is as good a sign as any. I can’t get any other body language from her, anyway; she’s dressed in new layers of robes, which are fewer in number but more voluminous in style, and as before the only real tells she has are her fingers and a slightly wider swathe of visible face around her eyes. I keep waiting, as do the others, and after a bit she shakes her head and speaks again. “Your words imperfectly match your actions. Your preoccupation this morning was considerable, and I have no desire to insert myself in any way into your sexual or romantic entanglements.”

“And there weren’t enough leftovers for everyone to fill up on?” I glance at her, and then at the refrigerator. “Not that I’m complaining! This is delicious.”

“We all of us were a step from slumber last night, Magelord.” Zidanya looks up from where she’s more or less shoveling food into her mouth. “There is very little left, of all that was cooked before or that we prepared then.”

I nod at Zidanya, and then again at Sara. “I’ll try to do better in the future. Amber, Zidanya, please help me do better in the future.” That gets a murmured Magelord and my lord, proof positive that they think I’m being ridiculous in some way or another. “Actually, speaking of doing things better, I barely know who you are and you barely know me, but we’re going to be traveling together. Let’s do introductions again!”

“Is that… necessary?”

“Technically, no, Sara, my new friend, my new companion, it is not.” I grin at her. “But maybe it’s a good idea. I mean, can you tell me what Zidanya’s full name is, or what her title means? Do you know where Amber’s from?” I blink a couple of times. “Huh. I barely know where Amber’s from. Amber, I’ve been slacking off on being a good friend, and I apologize.”

My dear Paladin snorts at that, in a deliberately ungainly manner. “In this,” she says, looking right at Sara, “I might think to demonstrate the ridiculousness of this man, but it will be part of how he succeeds, I suspect.”

“Right.” I nod emphatically. “If I’m going to succeed, it’ll be because I treat my companions as the friends and fellow travelers they are. I’m okay with this logic. So, I’ll go first. Hi, I’m Adam, Adam Levi James. I…” I’m about to say I made some bad choices, but something in me rebels at saying it in that way, and something else rebels at defining myself by those decades. “I could tell you about where I’ve been and the choices I’ve made, good and bad alike, but they’re not really that important right now. Suffice it to say that it’s more wildly different than anyone seems to believe. If you want to know more, ask Amber or Zidanya, I guess.”

“I do not require details as to your no-doubt tragic backstory.” Sara visibly winces after saying it, but doesn’t retract it, and I snicker quietly for a moment until Zidanya speaks up.

“Taveda Zidanya Medah would be my formal address, were I in the Arcadia of my life.” Zidanya looks pensive, or maybe grave, but her voice is steady. “I was fewer things, when I left for Iavshet proper from the hidden islands; Taveda was the greatest of them, a woman in service to Arcadia, through both the Council of Rangers and the First Druid. I was an ambassador, perhaps, sent to stir the continent to alertness as the Demons roused.

“Now? I remain a Runewright. I remain both Druid and Ranger, and if ever it should be relevant that I remain of Arcadia, so be it; I am the Council and the Circle entire, now. But I think otherwise. My past is ashes, on Cador’s surface, and though I do not know how I survived my death, by Teiwa’s grace shall I build a life more glorious.” Zidanya looks at Sara, at Amber, and then at me, and smiles a little more every time. “A family, an we make it one, boon companions bound together by choice ere necessity leaves us? If it should come to pass, I’d not begrudge it.”

“So that is the meaning of Taveda.” Amber props her chin on her folded hands, leaning forwards.

“From the same root-trigram as work, in the liturgical dialect.”

“It’s as our new companion says.” Zidanya nods at Sara, and then looks at Amber. “Well?”

“Reca Amber Ashborne, Paladin of Kazir, sworn to the service of the Outsider Adam Levi James, Magelord.” Amber taps the table with a finger for a couple seconds before continuing. “Of these things, only perhaps half pertain to who I am, rather than what I am, or who another is. The man I serve would no doubt say that who I am is a thing entirely internal to myself, but is he not in so many ways a product of his history and those he has been surrounded by?” She sort of smirks at me, and I tap the bone of my skull just behind my ear twice in a gesture of rhetorical surrender. “Some days ago, I came into being; I have lived my twenty seven years in the valleys of Ion’s Eastern Reaches, where the deserts rise into the mountains and fade into the waterways of the Canyons of Rushing Tides. My mother, who had some days only four sons and was always wishful for a daughter, bore me in the town of Shale, a mining town as small as any, save that it did some trade with the Nayyo.

“Reca, they call us, for retroactive and for how our coming into being affects the causal histories of those whom we have now touched. Of my brothers, two loved me for this, in the way that simple men bear simple joys; one did not care, and one hated me for usurping his position as the youngest of the family.” Amber grins brilliantly, almost viciously. I’ve seen that grin before, in a dozen different creche families. “He was a spoiled brat, and remains one even with the primary factor in his being spoiled removed from him, for the Gods change easily enough the path we walk but touch only lightly on who we were and are.”

“Siblings.” Zidanya smiles, almost fondly.

“I studied the blade and entered into the service of the God of harvests, festivals, and growth; Kazir is the Patron of the Ionderai, and the people of Shale are now stronger and healthier than they were, children growing taller and the elderly keeping their teeth. This was my consequence, if not my doing.” She’s looking at me as she says this, and I feel my shoulders go up in tension and make them settle back down. “I took a vocation with the Temple Lands, to study under the High Cleric of the Forsaken, Neza.”

“Neza?” Zidanya’s eyes are wide for a second, and then she shakes her head. “No, carry on, forgive me.”

“There is not much else to say. We studied history and the present, combat and negotiation, the Gods and the Goddess. We tested, whenever asked, to see if someone was of the Firstborn; they never were, but if they had been killed before we arrived, we would try as murderers those who did the deed, and as accomplices those who stood by.” Amber smiles a little, head tilting up, arms laced behind her hair. She says something else, something dismissive and unimportant, but I’m distracted despite the absolutely fascinating mysteries she’s just dropped on me, and then I realize the room is quiet.

Everyone is looking at Sara, who looks back, steadily moving her gaze from one of us to the other. We wait, patiently; I almost tell her she doesn’t have to introduce herself, but honestly, she kind of does, at least a little bit.

“Sara. Evetheri, a name I am now permitted the use of once more. My family is dead; to the Heharai, gentry are an acceptable target in raids and internecine warfare, and my fathers were vile.” She stops at that, hands clasped in front of her. “They would have wielded me. I chose otherwise, and have never regretted the outcomes, even when it resulted, in a roundabout manner, in my slavery.

“I had, as a child, an unusual degree of skill and talent. It was nurtured as one might hone a weapon, and I have grown; I began as a Prodigy, and I am, in my second tier, an Arcane Prodigy.” She clenches a fist, taking a breath. “The Lord Mayor did not permit me to pursue the avenues of mastery that would permit me to take the class I desire upon tiering up, and I would not consent to crippling my progression by leaving my chosen path; I find it distasteful to speculate as to why, and will not do so.

“I suspect that you will support me in my goals.” She lays her palms flat on the table, when gives an exaggerated shrug, visible even through the layers she wears. “That is all. You will have my loyalty, if you continue to comport yourselves in the manner you have to date, and grant me the leeway to pursue those goals.”

“I think,” I say, smiling happily, “that seems very likely.”