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"A cup of sencha, please," she looked up at the waitress. The waitress typed something into the PAD, nodded and took away the menu card. "Thank you," Haze replied before turning back to Olivia.

"You'd envision me more as a hedge fund manager or something?" she chuckled. "Attitude has little to do with it, and I assure you I much prefer this than the pitiful existence of some kind of Interspace quant holding BMM stocks in 817, hanging himself in the Newark Station loo after the Gallic invasion. This is more like artisan crafting, in a way. You work with your hands and see the results of a job well done right away, and sometimes it is just as pretty. There's a reason the bounty hunters call themselves a guild."

After a moment's pause, she shrugged and continued. "And it is not really that low a life after a while. I respectfully discard the labels of bounty hunter or mercenary, they imply a drive of revenge in the case of the former or profiteering in the latter. If one maintains a degree of professional integrity and knows where to look, the yields become quite lucrative indeed. But this is all a means to an end of course, everyone wants to retire at some point. I tried once but I ran out of money so it was little more than just a short break."

She looked at the table for a few seconds, wondering if there was anything to add. Deciding for the negative, she looked back up at Olivia. "What about you? I seem to recall you calling yourself a mercenary at some point."

"You go ahead," Haze spoke, replying to the unasked question. It was a minor annoyance for her that the café staff did not bring the orders of the people sitting at the same table at the same time, but perhaps that was not a custom in Kusari. And it was not like she wasn't used to mediocre customer service anyway, given her usual company of misfits, thieves and rogues.

She looked Olivia in the eye, intrigued by her words and the sudden sombre attitude. "Knowing your luck?" she mirrored her words, seeking to extract more information.

Haze rested her head on her palm, drummed her fingers on the table and gazed off towards somewhere in the corner, thinking about what Olivia had just said. A bird call sounded off in the distance.

"Back on Earth," she started, still looking away, somehow prompted by the bird, "centuries ago, there lived an adventurer by the name of Giacomo Casanova, a wannabe scholar and a legendary seducer of women. He seemed to have a trait that most would envy him greatly for — misfortune just did not seem to stick to him. He described the tales of his exploits in an autobiography, in ten beefy volumes entitled Story of My Life."

"Aside from it lacking any literary merit, it's notable for providing an engrossing account of all the dips and bounces, twists and turns, downfalls and ascents of a man who seemed to have luck on his side. Casanova felt that every time he encountered any difficulty, his lucky star, his étoile, would pull him out of trouble. Every time, when things got bad, an invisible hand of fortune somehow showed up and make them go away."

Without moving her head, she moved her eyes back on Olivia. "Could it be, that this particular mister Casanova was selected by destiny to bounce back from all hardships? We hear of those constantly. Are we down on our luck because all of it has been consumed on the Casanovas of our day?" She paused for a second for effect.

"I don't think so. Of all the colourful adventurers who have lived, many would have been crushed, and many bounced back. Many young boys, I imagine, read stories of Casanova and thought themselves his equal, only to just end up dead in a ditch or impaled by a sword of an angry father whose daughter they tried to woo. And the few who survive believe they are indestructible. People sing their praises. They become extravagant bon-vivants. And even fewer live long enough and gather enough experience to write books, to permanently keep them in memory. That is, of course, until...," she slid her index finger across her throat in the familiar gesture.

"Fortune is not something we control, but just by the fact that we are here, talking, and we have such interesting times behind us is a testament to incredible luck indeed. The longer I live, the more I learn that chance is just a fact of life. Some have it on their side, some don't. It can't be controlled, though it can, I think, in some way be helped." She seemed like she wanted to continue, but the waitress has just arrived with her cup of green tea, which occupied her attention for the moment.

The tea was vividly green, with a few tiny specks of the plant still swirling inside the vessel that had evaded the filter. Haze glared at the traditional Kusarian cup for a few long seconds before sighing with exasperation. "Are we really the only culture which favours cups with handles?" Seemingly not paying much attention to anything else but the function of the container, she carefully slid the hot ceramic cup aside, letting the beverage cool down in the afternoon breeze and turned to Olivia.

"Oh, a junior devil asking the senior one for advice, how archetypal! Unfortunately, I should seek to avoid casting myself in the role of old Screwtape, lest something I tell you is going to get you killed."

Haze squinted and sat back again. "Advice, advice..," she repeated, playing with a lock of her hair, combing it with her nails and looking for invisible split ends.

"Giving advice is like seasoning food," she finally spoke, savouring every word. She had a penchant for analogies and metaphors, and it was being really activated that day. "You need to know what you're dealing with before you commit to something. Highly specific, good advice requires an intimate and long-lasting friendship, much like a specific mix of spices requires thorough knowledge of what it is you're cooking."

"Good, timeless advice is like salt. 'Be generous in friendships'. 'Respect your elders'. 'Exercise temperance'. It works for most people, much like salt works in most dishes. And much like salt, it is ancient and common and boring. Specific advice is like the rarer spices; Cretan pepper, ginger, cloves or nutmeg. They work in some specific cases, but if you are not careful, they will ruin even the most exquisite recipe."

"But most of these people you see on the Net, those that spew 'good advice' and are experts at everything are just like the Casanova. One sees them and thinks 'oh, he must know what he's talking about, after all he is wealthy and rich and happy'. But you don't see the corpses of all those who tried the same and failed, they were just at one point in the wrong place at the wrong time and perished. Those Net gurus are like a man who just discovered that he can season a pumpkin pie with nutmeg and told you that you should add it to everything from breakfast cereal to foie gras."

She paused to touch the cup with her tea and noticing that it has already cooled down enough to be touched, she took a small sip. "So that's why I would rather avoid donning the robes of Screwtape, the old devil giving advice to the young one, today."