“Haven’t you noticed the way he seizes control of a conversation? The way he provokes people out of their comfortable patterns? He has a very political mind, but he applies it quite unlike anyone I’ve met. I hope Humphrey can learn from him, a little.”

“You want Humphrey to be more like Jason?” Rufus asked incredulously.

“Humphrey is too straightforward a thinker for that,” Danielle said. “I’d just like him to understand that things are more complicated than he realises. Social survival training, if you will.”

“I think you may be overestimating Jason. You might be conflating unpredictability with cunning.”

“Perhaps,” Danielle said. “I will acknowledge he’s hard to predict. You know, I heard an interesting thing while you were off doing the field assessment.”

“Oh?”

“A god appeared in Divine Square.”

“They do that all the time,” Rufus said.

“There were a couple of interesting quirks in this particular instance.”

“Which god?”

“Hero,” Danielle said. “Interesting god. Did you know he’s the only core deity not to have subordinate gods?”

“I did, actually.”

“That’s right,” Danielle said. “Your uncle is a member of Hero’s clergy, isn’t he? How is he doing?”

“Very well. I’ll tell him you asked after him.”

“Please do. What really caught people’s attention about Hero’s appearance, though, was that when everyone kneeled before the god, one man did not.”

Rufus put a hand over his eyes, groaning wearily.

“Jason has something of an issue with religion,” he said.

“I did hear some rumours about that priestess you were working with,” Danielle said. “She has some unkind words about you, by the way. But you can see why I wasn’t startled at Jason’s lack of formality. What is the deference due an aristocrat when you won’t bow to a god?”

Rufus narrowed his eyes at Danielle.

“You seem to know a lot about Jason for someone who just met him,” Rufus said. “It’s hardly a surprise for someone of your influence to hear about the Divine Square incident, but you were certain it was Jason. You’re investigating him, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Danielle said. “At your father’s request.”

Rufus groaned. “Thousands of miles away, and he still can’t let me chart my own path.”

“He’s concerned about the man arresting so much of his son’s attention,” she said. “A man who seemingly fell out of the sky. Imagine my surprise to discover he did almost exactly that.”

“You know he’s an outworlder.”

“I do,” Danielle said. “Very exciting.”

“How?”

“It was a fanciful guess until I met him. He's so obviously a man out of place. The way he talks, the way he thinks. The way he looks at things. He doesn’t fit.”

“The way he looks at things?”

“Like a man who doesn’t expect to recognise anything.”

“Have you told my father what he is?”