Lolola ate all three cakes provided to her, her expression neutral. After the third, she pushed away from the table and looked at Niko.

“Well?” Niko said, tilting her head. “Would we have won a Nikkelin Orb or not?”

“All things considered…” Lolola said. She let the words trail off, savoring the moment like an after-dinner mint, all attention fixed on her, even Dabry and Gio’s. The ship placed this level of curiosity as very high, almost as though the expectancy of the others ratcheted it up even further.

“You would have easily won a Nikkelin,” Lolola admitted. She took out a chip from her purse and handed it to Niko. “There’s the formwork for it. Fill out what you need to and submit it at a Creditnet system when you’re next at one. It’s retroactive; you’ll be able to cite the restaurant as Nikkelin-marked.”

Niko nodded, savoring the moment herself. That was why she had pursued the bet. It was a leap upward whose value could not be underestimated, were they to start another restaurant, which was very much inside the realm of probability. She started to put it away in her jacket pocket, then grinned and handed it to Dabry.

“Perhaps you had best hang on to that, Sergeant,” she said.

“Indeed, sir.” He put it away with a straight face, but she could sense his pleasure. He was by far the one who took cooking the most seriously, and had put study and time into it. She was lucky that he had been willing to pass a great deal of that along to her.

She surveyed the chamber of happy faces. Even Lolola looked pleased by the turn of the events. Niko had been prepared to argue the point and was a little surprised that the critic had been so untempted by the sum that lay at stake in the bet. What was her real game?

Something about that rang oddly to her ear, sidled up and whispered to her sense of caution. She wished Lassite were here; something about the moment was haunted somehow, and sometimes the mystic knew just what was going on, if it was a matter that lay in that realm.

She put the worry away and asked, “Was this you entirely, Dabry, or did the ship assist?”

“The ship assisted quite a bit,” he said. “I look forward to cooking with it again.”

The ship, uncertain whether to acknowledge this, remained silent. It was, however, reasonably sure that what it was experiencing now was camaraderie.