A man with any sense of foreboding or instinct for caution would, at this moment, consider meandering idly in some gentle direction away from the stairs and the man ascending them. It would be a relatively simple thing to hold this conversation at a comfortable and most pointed distance. Maejyr Ralston in his faintly worn black coat waits where he is, idle as a school boy in some great lecture hall where he has habitually performed perfectly well.

"I can't say that I did. She went to the Free Cities, I think." The faint observational tip of his head angles now in the opposite direction—a hunting dog cocking first one ear and then the other.

"A friend of yours?"