The room beyond was small, but well-kept. Two ragged chairs sat near the burning fire, and pictures of people who were probably two or three centuries dead lined the walls. He gestured to the less dilapidated chair, inviting her to sit, then brought two mugs over from the side of the fire. She took the one he offered, and sipped at the contents, unmindful of what secrets the brew might contain. He'd no more poison her than he would himself.
"Chicory," she said, somewhat surprised. She'd not had it in a long while.
"The beverage of choice about these parts." He dropped down with a sigh in the other chair, and put away half his drink at a draught. She sat silent, watching the flames, waiting for him to speak first. She'd have to be careful of him now, lest he refuse to aid her. She could not afford that. He was the only one living with the knowledge to master the Mainframe…
She quelled that line of thought. There was still a bit of time, yet. Let him have his say before she asked him to save the world.
He glanced at her sidelong, the corner of his mouth turned up wryly. "Giving me a few minutes to collect my thoughts before you hit me with your reason for coming out here, eh?" When she snapped her head around to stare at him, startled at how he had read her, he chuckled. "Aye, I'd say we know each other's tricks rather well, even after seven years." He sighed again and settled back in his chair, his eyes not leaving her face. "Ye ever wonder what we missed those seven year, Lilith? What might have been, had I stayed behind?"
"No."
Jerent sipped at his chicory, not replying, not meeting her gaze any longer. She glanced at the ceiling for a moment, as though to draw strength from the cracks that ran across it, then fixed him with her pale eyes. "I don't waste my time wondering what might have been, Jerent. I'm more concerned with the present and the future than the past. It is as it is, and nothing can change it."
"True," he replied, staring at the flames. "What's done is done, what's dead is dead." He glanced at the guns, silent harbingers of death held close to her sides in their oiled leather holsters. "I have to admit, that was one thing I never could reconcile with my idea of you - the fact that ye've killed with those things. Killed many, too, I wot." He met her gaze again. "D'ye ever regret it?"
She shrugged dismissively. "'Tis Ka. A gunslinger knows it, even if most don't. Ka does as it will, and it be not my place to try to guess it out."
"And in all the years ye've had your guns… did you ever meet another who followed Ka? Another gunslinger?"
She started to speak, then frowned. "No. Never another, though for a time I did search. I think I might be the last."
Jerent's gaze was sharp on her now as he rose from his chair and walked slowly to the small window set in the thick concrete wall. He had seen her begin to reply, though she had cut the words off before they could be spoken. Lilith cursed her momentary lapse. She had not come here to tell the story of her journey, she had come to -- but it was no matter, or none she need concern herself with, anyway. Ka at work once more.
"There was one woman I had thought was a gunslinger," she said. "By the time I realized otherwise, she was dying in front of me.
"I think that's the only death that's truly sat ill of me in all these years."
She stared moodily into the mug of chicory in her hands, not looking up as Jerent paced back and forth before her. He would not mean to pry, no, but neither would he rest until he'd the full story out of her. It was his way, and he was as set in it as she was in hers, wasn't he? Aye, of course. As ever it had been.
"Ye're not content to let me keep it, are you? You've to hear the story or suffer the lack of it?" Her voice was flat, but perhaps he noticed the irony lurking just beneath the surface, for he grinned sheepishly and ducked his head.
"Am I that predictable?"
"Of course."
He leaned against her chair, still grinning. "So. Are you going to make me suffer, my dear, or will you take pity on me and tell me about this woman?"
Lilith sighed and set her chicory down on the rickety table at her side. "Fine. I'll tell ye the tale, since ye'll not rest till I do." Then she surprised herself by speaking her earlier thought aloud: "It is your way."