She shook her head and declined the invitation to smell it. “As long as it’s vegetable. Or fungi, you know that I don’t mind fungi. It’s when we start moving into the animal kingdom that things go awry.”

“Eggs are acceptable in many cultures, including human,” he said.

“Not their own, certainly. And humans are a whole bunch of different cultures. Among the Free Traders, there’s not enough extra space to be keeping chickens. I never tasted an egg till I got to the station.”

“And you liked that one.”

“Because you disguised it and I didn’t know what it was!” Niko made a disgusted, repulsed face.

Dabry spooned the dough into a piping bag and focused on inscribing curls onto a heating sheet. The size of Niko’s thumb, each was flecked with green and burnt amber in the golden dough.

“Savory, I take it?” she’d said.

“I leave the sweets to Milly; she does well enough.”

“Well enough but not perfectly,” Niko said. “I thought every meal had to be perfect, down to the last morsel.”

He opened a thermo shelf and put the heating sheet on the rack inside, speaking briefly to the control unit. When he closed it, the interior glowed golden, a soft ambience that betrayed the lurking heat.

When he turned back to face her, his expression was grave. “It does and it doesn’t. A truly artistic meal requires a handmade quality, something that shows it could not have been mass produced.”

She tilted her head. “You are equating uniqueness with taste. I will argue again that the corollary is not always true.”

“How many races prefer cheap vat food?”

“Plenty of territory lies between cheap and vat food!” she protested. “Go up to the food court on the Midnight Stair and try any of the—well, most of the, stay away from Efrai’s and the Simmering, or so I’ve heard—most of the food stalls there, and you’ll find something priced not too far above vat food, but a hundred times more tasty.”

“Tourist food.” He waved a lower hand at her dismissively.

She subsided into silence, watching him cook, foaming white liquid in another hot pan, tasting it before adding spices and a pinch of caramel-colored powder.

She liked to watch him cook. She’d always liked to watch him cook. It was the only time Dabry truly relaxed into himself and let the lines of worry around his eyes that had crept up over the years ease away.

They all had the equivalent. The twins had nightmares, Gio had a bitter core layered over with jokes. Lassite had been grim to start with; the time he spent in the Holy Hive Mind had left him seemingly unaffected but she knew that couldn’t be true. He simply hid things better than most.