A few days earlier as they’d been finishing up getting the restaurant in order after a serving period, Dabry had offered to make her a snack. It was his way of asking to confer with her, and so she’d agreed, but it had turned out he also wanted to try a new recipe on her, what he said was a gougère, although he also said that the original version would have contained cheese.

Niko had always considered cheese one of the most disgusting notions known to humanity. Most of the foods that involved substances taken from living bodies were similarly repugnant, in her opinion, although she knew this split between flesh- and animal-based foods was one of the great divides of culinary thinking. She had tried things like cheddar and Brie from time to time, but never with anything but reluctance, and the experiment had never been successful. She said as much now, although probably in more words than she needed to.

Dabry said patiently, using an upper arm to stir a mass of dough that seemed mostly butter and flour, “I understand that, and that’s not what I’m using. For one thing, how expensive would cheese be? Plus I wouldn’t waste it on you.”

“It’s not that my palate is unrefined,” she said, “and I understand that species fall in one direction or the other on the topic of flesh.”

“It’s much more complicated than that,” Dabry murmured.

She held her hand to forestall him. “No, no! Give me a chance before you counter me.”

“Because I am not using cheese in the first place, this argument would seem to be only for the sake of argument,” he said. “I will let it proceed on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you convince me that there is a point to having it.”

He removed the pan from the heating element to place it on a thermal pad on the counter, still stirring. The glossy dough had thickened, clinging to the sides of the metal pan. The air smelled like toasted flour and butter flavoring.

“The point of talking—conversation, as one might call it—is to exchange words back and forth, building our camaraderie and friendship.” She spoke the words by rote, quoting an old training manual from the Holy Hive Mind they’d both mocked more than once.

Dabry laughed despite himself. After taking a shaker down from a shelf, he dusted the dough with green powder, then grated something from an orange lump over it.

Niko said, “That looks very much like cheese, or at least how I have heard it described.”

“It’s bilongi root,” he said, and held it out to her. “Some of the same flavonoids.”