The Black Author rolled his neck once, the sound of it audible in the courtyard's quiet, and Dimitri Stein looked at him with the expression of a man reassessing a situation he'd thought he understood.
"Okay," the Author said. "Enough with the paltry words. We are not in some Senate meeting." He spread his hands — an open, almost generous gesture, ink trailing from his fingers like smoke from a just-extinguished flame. "Let's get the show on the road. You try your best to put me down, and I beget the inevitable loss of a Champion of the Republic."
He was the one that struck up a conversation, Dimitri thought, with the particular weariness of a man who had been in enough exceptional situations to recognize when he was in one and find it annoying anyway. What's he hassling me for. He really is nuts.
He didn't say this. He adjusted his stance instead and considered his options with the methodical calm that years of building toward Champion had deposited in him like good sediment.
