As Spud-Bar pours them both another round, Evie continues to take in the sights and sounds of the Revel. A few tables down she spots another figure who stands apart from the crowd, this one a Savage, though he looks more like a valet for some highly regarded Gen. His shoulder-length hair, dark with just a few threads of gray, is meticulously kempt and combed back. He’s tall and willowy and fragile-looking, as if she could knock him over with the rough jab of a single fingertip. Unlike the older ones, however, he doesn’t appear to be afraid, or even maudlin.

If anything, he looks full of disdain.

“Excuse me for a moment, would you?” she says to Spud-Bar.

“I’ll save you some food.”

Evie snatches up the nearest unattended cup still cradling wine and rises from the bench. She walks over to the willowy one’s table.

“Not into celebrating our inevitable deaths?” she asks.

His expression remains unchanged. “They aren’t celebrating death here, they’re celebrating life, in their own crude way.”

“Then why aren’t you partaking?”

“This is not life.”

Evie nods, offering him the cup. “That’s a notion I’d drink to.”

He looks down at the wine. “I… appreciate the gesture. I do. But I don’t drink.”

“Fair enough.”

One of the Elder Company, Mother Manai, shouts across the hall at them: “Is school in session, then, Professor?”

The rest of the old-timers and their coterie share a round of laughter.

Evie watches them, and then looks back at the willowy man speculatively.

“Professor?” she asks.

“Their invention,” he explains. “My war name, I suppose. I was a teacher, once.”

“Where?”

“At the University in the Third City. I belonged to a Gen of respected educators that stretches back all the way to the Renewal.”

“What did you do to be sent here?”

“I asked my students questions.”

“Isn’t that a teacher’s job?”

“I asked them the wrong questions,” the Professor says. “According to our illustrious Nation State, at least.”

A golden-skinned boy of perhaps eighteen approaches them both then, amber chiffon wrapped around his waist and barely touching the middle of his thighs. He tilts his head, smiling silently, eyes drifting between the two of them.

Evie can’t help but grin back, although she’s far more interested in the Professor in that moment. He seems deeply uncomfortable, averting his eyes from them both. She can see his face flush.

“I think we’ll finish our conversation,” Evie informs the boy, who takes the hint and saunters away.

“You really don’t partake, do you?” she asks the Professor.

“I prefer an unclouded head,” he answers stiffly.

“So tell me, what questions did you ask them? Your students?”

“What do you know of Crachian history?”