He had been three years with the Spisoli before going to Rourke’s Leap with the group that had been sent to negotiate. That evening they had gone treasure hunting, but he had excused himself. By then he knew her name and her smell, though he was not entirely sure what she looked like, and he knew where he was supposed to find her. He had seen the place every night for ten nights before, in his dreams: a plaza on the edge of the rift, a balcony of dark glass, her figure silhouetted against the blue glow coming from below to light her face and give the mottled red coloring of the Holy Hive Mind uniform a purplish hue.

When he’d first foreseen her, he saw purple and gold and lights, and glory, and the way the gods wanted things to be. The path, a Spiral of Destiny, stretching away from her. Darkness, too, but that splendid vision had taken his breath away. He was only a minor speaker, not particularly talented or wise, but he had been given that vision by the gods themselves. He could not resist it.

He knew the circumstances from his dreams. Three cultures forced to come together, their attempt at a treaty hampered by bad-faith dealing, but more than that, by the uneasy amalgamation of ritual and custom that had evolved. Niko unaware—although beginning to suspect—that the Holy Hive Mind was abusing the system to enforce its own unrelenting expansion.

And the Hive Mind’s lack of transparency gave her a chance to thwart it by doing as she had been ordered—but she could do that only if she could match the ritual’s demands. Another place where it had stacked the deck, trying to create a failure it could take an advantage of.

Niko would need someone who spoke the right language to deliver her offer—the offer that her masters had given her to make, confident that she would be unable to do so. It would mean walking the span to meet the others, and speaking appointed words. All the random factors had come together to prevent the peace—some of that by design—and he had been the only thing that enabled her to cut through the obstacles placed in her way.

So he had done it, because of the preparations the gods had told him to make, and he and Niko had forged a system-wide peace together. Mostly the captain, but perhaps he might claim a little corner of that work to be proud of. And when she had asked what reward he wanted, his answer had not pleased her, but she had abided by it.