Raine was more bemused by the query than anything else, and had to pause to think about it. There had been a disconnect in the calendar when she arrived in Keeliai, autumn shifting into spring without the decency to pause for winter, and she hadn't really bothered to keep track. "Twenty-four by now," she said. The fiasco with Evandau had about marked it. "Why do you ask?"

She did definitely know people who could have benefited from his philosophy. The corners of her mouth turned up a little at that, trying to imagine Kratos without his near-definitive caginess. It was a difficult mental image to maintain. "Without you, I'd be dead," she reminded Cain. If there was a debt owed, as far as she was concerned, it wasn't on his part. "All right, how old are you, then?"

Other, more serious questions she considered carefully, not asking immediately, intending to be sure they were questions for which she genuinely wanted the answers, not simply questions for the sake of themselves.