Vorn was waiting at the canal bench.

It wasn’t the one I always went to — the city had plenty of those, and he’d chosen the one that was two bridges east from mine, for reasons of deliberate separation or happenstance. The latter idea had never been particularly applicable where Vorn was concerned, and neither had it been the case since the day I realized as much.

His forearms rested on his knees, and he was staring at the water. No sign of crisis here; just a man with plenty of time on his hands, and no real destination in mind.

The UI marked him at forty feet away.

VORN — STATUS

All flags: SUSPENDED

Post-trigger status: SELF-DETERMINING

Location: CONFIRMED — canal district, east bridge 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Threat assessment: INACTIVE

Mood: Processing / Stable

I sat down on the opposite side of the bench without further introduction. He glanced up, noted my presence, and turned his attention back to the water.

"Kai," he said.

"Vorn."

This settled into the air for a bit. Canals moved as canals always did — efficiently, disinterestedly, doing their duty without comment.

"Your sister is in the city," I said.

And then he went very still. Not dramatically so — just that kind of stillness that comes from being surprised by a particular line. Three seconds or four. "Esta."

"She has been here for two days now. She’s been going through every inn in this district looking for you." I paused. "Her letters stopped coming four weeks ago. That’s why she came down."

Vorn stared at the water for quite a while. Some emotion passed across his face that I couldn’t pin a name on precisely — something halfway between guilt and surprise. "I hadn’t considered her letters."

"But she did."

"That would explain everything. Where is she?"

"Wren’s Rest. Two streets up from the Crown." I met his eyes. "She isn’t panicking, and I don’t think she’s angry either. At least, that’s the impression she gives. She’s done her research, and she’s being thorough about finding you."

Vorn’s lips twitched a little bit. "That’s Esta."

"I got that."

There was a moment of silence between us. The water continued flowing. Upstream, the wheels of a cart rolling across a bridge clattered along the stones.

"You talked to her?" he asked. Again, no accusation — just the way she had talked to me when she had asked me the same question. Evidently, that was something else they shared.

"She introduced herself. She knew I knew you after about four minutes."

"How?"

"Observant, and Sena gave herself away."

Vorn made some sort of noise, almost a laugh. "Everything comes out when Sena makes up her mind to tell you."

"I see what you mean now."

Vorn leaned against the seat, the first shift he had made since I’d sat down. Thinking. Figuring out the ramifications of the fact that Esta was two streets up from the Crown and searching inns while he’d spent two days on canal benches thinking about what he wanted.

"She is all right?"

"She’s fine. Capable traveler, good method, accurate assessment of the situation based on one conversation." I stopped there. "She’s concerned about you. She’s not doing it — she’s just bringing it."

Vorn nodded. One motion, just like Esta’s nod — a brief and efficient gesture made by someone organizing information for future action.

The physical similarity was notable, but not relevant to our discussion, so I set it aside.

"I will go to her," he said.

"Good."

His gaze rested on me for a moment; those calm, dark eyes studied me silently. "Why did you come find me yourself?"

I considered my answer. There were two parts of an honest answer, and I already gave him the more sanitized versions of both when talking to Esta. "Because she traveled far to get here. And because you are a variable that I would prefer move in a predictable manner rather than sit on an unknown bench."

Vorn looked at me. "That is more honest than necessary."

"Honesty usually gets you further than management," I replied.

There was another change in his expression — the same unnameable something, but light this time. He stood up, stretched, and for an instant there he actually looked like the A-minus ranked operative that the UI classified him as rather than a guy sitting on a bench figuring out what to do next.

"Kai," he said.

"Vorn."

He left, going east this time. I watched until he disappeared around the canal bend before I claimed one of the canal benches because I definitely deserved one of those for my efforts.

Esta was already at the Crown when I returned.

She wasn’t waiting on me — she was sitting at a table with a cup and a piece of paper that looked to be some kind of city map, intensely focusing on it. She noticed me walk into the room, noted it, and got right back to her map. I took a seat opposite her.

"He knows you’re here," I said.

She turned toward me, giving me the quick look over — a calibration check. "You found him."

"He found himself a bench. Easy."

She looked down at her map again for an instant, then carefully folded it, setting it on the table in front of her. "Thank you."

"He said he’ll be coming to see you."

She nodded, that same tiny functional nod.

The UI refreshed itself unobtrusively on the margins of my vision.

ESTA — STATUS

Relationship / Kai: 31

Corruption meter: 7/100 — rising

Mood: Resolving / Present

Wiki: 94% — GENERATING

Note: Genuine interaction taking place — meter fluctuation consistent with proximity and presence / no mechanics engaged

Seven.

It made a mark somewhere. I didn’t make a note of it.

Sena put a cup down before me. Esta observed her doing so with an air of having revised a past opinion.

"She always does that," Esta observed.

"Always," I agreed.

"What have you done to deserve that?"

"I don’t know," I said. Which was mostly the truth. Sena had a different way of interpreting people than I did, and one I would never completely understand. She’d decided I was worth keeping a cup in front of and had never explained her methodology.

Esta looked at me with an observing attentiveness not unlike a calibration scan, but more settled. As though she had completed some computation and was now simply observing me. "You live here, in Ashveil."

"For now."

"You’re an adventurer."

"B-rank."

It made sense to her. "Vorn is A-minus."

"I know."

There was something in her look that suggested she was adjusting for me again — not because I already knew what his rank was, but because I was speaking about it in such terms. It was something she knew by doing an assessment herself. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough."

She took it all in stride — the way she did everything else. "The dungeon work. What’s it like?"

I thought of Floor 7. The artificial construction, the relatively warm illumination, and the unit that had shown us how to get into its system and had tilted its head in half a minute, almost like it was monitoring a learning curve. "It has been interesting lately," I told her. "Floor 7 contains entities that behave unlike any other floors’ entities."

Esta studied the table for a while. Something was stirring in her mind — thoughts of something that she wanted to say. She was straightforward, as the wiki had shown me, but she did think things through before voicing them. That combined made sure that whenever she spoke, it was something she felt was important enough to say.

"Vorn used to talk about the dungeons," she said. "When he first went to a city which had a dungeon. He said that it was the first place that felt like it had edges to it."

I recalled all of that. Vorn sitting in his usual spot and telling me about how his life was made up. Vorn at Sera’s stall and acting more submissive than usual. Vorn walking east to meet his sister, just two minutes ago.

"Then he has plenty left, because now he’s trying to understand what to do with those edges," I replied.

Esta opened her mouth and then closed it instantly — the involuntary movement that I remembered from the day before. "That’s more than I expected to hear from somebody who said he didn’t know him well."

"He talked about his past with me twice at a canal bench," I retorted.

She looked at me for a while. Then she took up her cup and drank, and the conversation continued where it was, not operational, not red-flagged, just two people sitting around the table in the back corner of the Crown as the city did its morning business outside.

The wiki reached ninety-seven percent.

The corruption level went to nine.

I drank my cup and watched it rise and ignored it and paid attention to the fact that I was ignoring it and added that to the pile of unresolved questions.

Sena stopped by, didn’t touch our cups, and was gone.

Esta followed her with her eyes. "She’s making a decision," she remarked.

"She always makes a decision," I remarked.

"We all do," Esta agreed and returned to her map.