Brave New World

[Neology]

There were some habits that Lidah Faine would never give up. Arrive early to any engagement. Learn the ground. Have an emergency exit planned – preferably more than one – just in case it all went sideways. The silver speeder swooped around and down, granting a very good view of the block. The Solstice Tea Room was on the top level, in the heart of a major financial district. The front was very elegant, lots of frosted glass and membrane thin vidscreens showing wide angle vistas of more beautiful worlds. Busy but relatively sedate for the Smuggler’s Moon. She hadn’t been there in some time, but it seemed prudent to keep this one far from home. As much as could be expected, anyway. It was piss poor timing that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Wildly disproportionate assassination attempts were bad enough, now a Jedi was lingering too long around the Eye. Ambushing Vance while he was out. Locke too if ’keep your head on a swivel’ meant any damn thing. She needed to know if this was going to be a problem. Yesterday, if possible. Unless ... ”You know, we could just leave for a few months. Take a vacation. Ylesia is nice I hear.” Lidah sent Vance a sideways look as he parked the speeder. Though early in the afternoon this was late in the day for her to be up. She was still dressed for the night before in a ruched bottle green dress and open toed sandals. She climbed out of the speeder and turned a thoughtful look back on the driver. ”Thanks for the ride. Now get out to a good distance, yeah Thel? I’ll comm you.” Lidah gave her erstwhile apprentice a lazy little salute and strode into the Solstice Tea Room, guided by a hostess to a table screened behind a lattice of ivy.

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

Talau looked at it....stared at it....with utter bafflement as she reached the front desk of the hotel. She didn't stay here, really, but she had checked in for the sole purpose of appearance and a place for people to search if they came looking for her. She had a vid cam set up to watch the door and alert her of movement in the room that wasn't hers. Certainly she'd go in and out every day so the desk staff would see her, rumple up the bed a bit and move the towels around so the cleaning staff wouldn't think anything, but other than that she was out through a window every night and back in at morning, sleeping at her ship every night, which wasn't docked under her name.

Paranoid? Certainly.

She hadn't always been, to this degree anyway, but time changed people. It was a hard lesson she was still learning.

A bitter, and painful, lesson.

So now, as she stood there at the front desk and looked at the strange...flower....arrangement, and the even stranger card, Talau didn't know quite what to think. Certainly she hadn't expected...cookie flowers?....to be dropped off when she'd made the arrangements for the room. Sighing, she took the card and let the office staff have the cookies. She wasn't interested.

Thinking back on the morning, as she crouched, perched in the shade of a building's sign across the street from the meeting place, Talau thought the whole thing utterly peculiar. Which, 'utterly peculiar' was probably what the staff of the tea house was going to think of her. Certainly Talau could have donned her armor...it was battle tested, yet still ornate enough to look ceremonial, but she didn't feel that walking into a tea house in a full set of combat gear would go over well with anyone. Better to just stick to a good long shower to get clean (as clean as one could on this world) and settle herself internally, then redo all the ties of feathers in her hair and just go about in her normal get-up. So...that's what she'd done.

She still got here plenty early. Early enough to find her perch and study the clientele, the outside of the building, the roof, the outsides of the other buildings beside that of the tea house...certainly she wouldn't know the inside, but she'd be able to get along well enough, she figured. As a speeder pulled up below through the round-about in front of the building, Talau watched with keen eyes as the threads connecting became recognizable...one of them, anyway....Vance? What is he doing...He certainly can't be the one I'm meeting...but.... A faint glimmer of something close to hope was squashed by her practical side. No, it had to be whoever was getting out of the speeder.

Slipping down from her spot with a few deft leaps along window ledges, structural bars and decorations along the edifice of the building, she landed with a soft thump on the pavement below, her sabers both stowed in their pouches on her belt and out of sight. Pressing her hood back and drawing her cloak over her shoulders, she would pad along in the wake of the speeder's backwash of thrust. She didn't so much as glance at it, though the sigh was audible for the people that passed around her...and, as expected, her appearance garnered more than a few odd looks...to which she also sighed.

The whole way up Talau was closed off and folded down After being shown up to the table, Talau peered at the woman there for a moment and bowed her head, a few singular tendrils of awareness probing out toward the woman...a cautious, measured, action but not invasive. "I believe you asked to meet with me?" she said, sliding the card onto the table, sitting once it seemed appropriate.

[Neology]

Lidah studied her lunch guest briefly, keeping any judgments to herself, and looked back down at the menu. She shook her head at the Jedi’s telepathic appraisal. As always, her thoughts were carefully guarded behind a mirror-sheen barrier. That, at least, was nothing personal. ”I did. And I want to speak to you here,” Lidah gestured vaguely, encompassing their private table. ”Not up here.” Lidah tapped her temple with one manicured nail and fished a slim recorder out of her purse. She set it on the table and flicked it on, unobtrusive but certainly not hidden. She ordered a pot of green tea, an assortment of finger sandwiches, and scones with clotted cream and jam. ”I run a business here on Nar Shaddaa. You have been trying to poach certain members of my staff without so much as a by-your-leave. Terrible manners, that. Wouldn’t you agree?” Lidah smiled her sharpest smile. ”Perhaps you are under the mistaken impression that contracts cannot be made to stick in a place like this?” It didn’t matter, at least in Vance’s case. But this was the game, the cover. She had extensive paperwork to back it up. ”That I am here to meet you now is an act of courtesy that you have not thus far earned. Why are you on this planet, Ms. Firians? What can my company do to expedite your departure?”

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

The carefully guarded mind of the woman didn't bother Talau, really, but it gave her a bit of respect for the woman. In all honesty she had no clue who, or what, Lidah was. If she was a force user she was certainly keeping that presence tame, but for as much as Tal watched for shadows everywhere she didn't like to assume things about people. There had been a mando or two who'd had barriers this strong and weren't force users, after all. It wasn't like it was an impossibility.

"Now why would you assume that I would care for anything more than words? Just because it's possible, doesn't mean I'm comfortable with you getting that close," she stated to the notion that she would want a telepathic conversation with the woman. It was true, after all. Vance, she had trusted, and had needed to show him just what had been happening. Jazen she had trusted. Locke, she trusted. This woman? No. There was no trust here....and the fact that she wanted to record the whole thing? It seemed pointless, but...if it made her feel like she was in control, fine.

"Considering I have very little idea who you are, nor particularly care...no offense, I simply am not concerned with who you are....I can't say I was intentionally 'poaching' anyone. Everyone I have spoken to are people from my own past, and believe me that I was surprised to find them all in one place...more or less. So don't believe that this is a matter of manners or lack of them, this is a personal affair for me and had nothing to do with you or your....business....whatever it is."

The smile earned a simple blink of those dulled grey eyes as she watched the woman, speaking evenly and simply. The jedi (was she even that any longer? Yes, to some degree she supposed.) didn't have time or desire to play the threat game, and the part of her that wanted to react to it she had locked down tighter than ever. At the final two questions Talau huffed and shook her head a little.

"I'm afraid I'll leave when I feel I'm done. I don't imagine that will be long from now, however, so you shouldn't worry your pretty little head...As for why I am here? I'm afraid that's a personal matter. Initially it was a draw to my former padawan, but with that done, I had merely stayed to speak to the others I knew about the same matter."

[Neology]

”I see.” Lidah produced a comlink from her purse, unlocked it with a quick series of taps, and thumbed through recent contacts. Pick me up in 10. 2 blocks down. ”Well … If you don’t want to deal, it really is no skin off my back. If you contact Thelonious or Forte again they will suffer financially for the association. Enjoy your lunch.” Lidah stacked a pair of Huttese peggats on the table and collected her recording device. ”Good luck with your little war, by the way. We’re all rooting for you.” Fiending for a cigarette, Lidah got up from the table and walked out.