No confirmation, no denial. The woman slips right through the middle ground, while turning the focus back on Jedao. She's good, he'll give her that, and dangerous though she undoubtedly is, he enjoys that danger. He's not fool enough to believe he can match wits with Thirteen, not in any short term game. She's too much like Nirai-zho. She knows all about him. A meeting like this, where neither of them know each other, is far more tempting a game for the night.

"A professional troublemaker, on leave," Jedao winks, his tone light and teasing. It could be the honest truth or a dead lie. Plenty of serious people get tasked with identifying troublemakers. Intelligence comes hand in hand with counterintelligence. Retired, he could have said, but he's not sure he could be so optimistic. Not in a lie or the truth.

"I'm hoping for a good decade of leave before I get pulled back into things." What an impossible amount of time, if one's conscious for it.