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'His reputational success didn't necessarily come at the expense of others, you know. As far as I'm aware, he was never branded as an idea thief or anything like that.'

'Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he was a swell dude. Gave to the poor and rescued lost kittens in his spare time, probably. What a homie. I'm just tired of hearing his name all over the fuckin' place.'

'Hmm. I feel like you're disproportionately upset at this guy for some reason.'

'Pah. He's long dead, so who cares if I talk shit on him? Who am I hurting, huh? His reputation has enjoyed plenty of overblown adoration already. What, was he a personal friend of yours or something?'

'Well, no, but--'

'Then fuck 'im!'

'Those aren't the words of a well-adjusted individual, Voreese.'

'Am I supposed to give a shit about that?'

'Ideally, yeah, kinda.'

The reapers' conversation kept devolving for a while, and Hector waited for them to circle back around to the topic of that "magic compass" that Roman and Voreese wanted, but they never did.

Instead, the reapers went abruptly silent, and then Garovel said something that Hector was not at all expecting. 'Ravi Zaman is here.'

That certainly caught Hector's attention. Ravi had never visited Warrenhold before--or even Atreya as a whole, as far as Hector was aware. The fact that the man was suddenly dropping by like this, totally unannounced, was actually quite alarming, Hector felt. Ravi was an important political figure in Lorent with not very much spare time on his hands, and even though Hector was on good terms with him, the courteous thing to do would have been to make known several days in advance that he intended to visit.

And Ravi was nothing if not courteous.

So Hector couldn't imagine that the man was going to have pleasant news for them.