Alexa pauses mid-stitch, and then, with the deliberation of someone who is suddenly painfully aware of what she is holding, tucks the needle back through the bolt of fabric.

There, see? Now neither of us is armed.

"Evocati Khaesh," she starts, picking her words slowly and carefully, "I have not ordered anyone executed in over two hundred years, and have no desire to break that streak. I am neither the captain of this vessel nor the leader of any group aboard it. I have no ability to order anyone executed, and do not seek that authority.

"Nevertheless. As much as you are bound to obedience in the eyes of Zeus, I am bound to be a good host. If any have harmed those who are under our roof, it reflects poorly on us. As such, I will help to locate and retrieve your soldiers. Who was the last to see Meuven Ra or any of the rest?"

And while we're at it, Hermes' tits, maybe we can find a bell for you to wear.

“I! You! Shut up!” Redana Claudius is not particularly eloquent at this moment; her cheeks are flushed. She is tap-dancing on dangerous mental ground, the shifting mirrors of Bella all around: maid, friend, longed-for, hurt, unattainable and slipping through her fingers like a phantom. She heaves the lid of the tomb up, the heavy stone, and flings it at Beautiful. Of course it won’t connect; both of them know it won’t. But whether Beautiful ducks beneath it or jumps atop it and runs across its face as it flies, pushes off into a jump, she’s still being pushed into a space where she’s reactive, and that gives Redana, her head throbbing, her heart open, room to breathe and room to seethe.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t know anything!” She lashes out with one fist, and Beautiful slams her elbow joint so hard it nearly locks up. “Fuck you! How come—“

Beautiful clocks her in the same point again, and Redana staggers back, choking on the wires. How come she gets to be beautiful, a vision of loveliness, but so cruel? How come she gets to be so smart that she can impress Bella, how come she has room for all those encyclopedias in her head? How come she has the chance for a fresh slate with Bella, when Redana’s already spent a lifetime wasting her chances?

How come Beautiful gets to be perfect, and Redana has to be Redana?

“You’re a loose gear with serrated edges,” Dany hisses, fists up, footwork evasive, memories of Olympic boxing baked into her muscles. “And no one is going to lose a finger. Not on my ship.”[1][2]

---

[1]: “You worked hard to earn your very own fingers. Don’t lose them!”
- Coherent wisdom as regards workplace safety.

[2]: Perhaps Redana can be forgiven for forgetting that Dolce is in charge of the ship now. Most everything in her life has been hers, and also, she’s facing down New And Improved Redana Plus, which would make anyone somewhat possessive.

Redana!

"Am I?" said Beautiful. "Severed from a world that still cared for me?" fighting her is maddening. She's weaker. She's slower. But somehow she's always going in exactly the wrong direction. "Awoken to a world that still has grudges against me?" The possibility space has closed. She is losing her ability to target specific locations, now she just has to take whatever blows are available. Cold comfort as she steps just past a jab and works your ribcage in passing. "Needing a thousand chanting priestesses to lay a foundation for each step and getting one mad princess instead?"

She has so many opportunities, so many places for needles or pistols or daggers to slip in under guards. Her instincts carry her into opening after opening. And opening after opening she has nothing better to exploit the flaw than a punch. When she tries tangling your legs in hers to send you stumbling she almost trips herself instead as there is less give in your muscles than she expects.

"It is," she steps up her tempo, looking to lay you out, end the fight, even if it means making it a fight rather than a dissection. "A poor craftswoman. Who blames her tools. A loose gear? Why don't you give me a name, then? Why don't you tell me who to kill? Do you want it done fast or slow, loud or quiet? Do you want me to make it look like an accident? Killed by her best friend while the cameras are rolling? Who is the target, you fucking bitch!?"

Alexa!

You step into the rooms of Galnius' praetorian guard, the last known location of the missing Kaeri.

There's a stink in the air. The smell of booze, sick, sweat and SP smoke. The smell of soldiers gone wrong. The door is marked with the scorch marks of SP rounds, black corrosion that eats right through the white paint and half an inch of the steel underneath. Jars of weapon oil are spilled and mix with a sludge made of kidney beans and the cream-sweet smell of monkfruit. A spear is run into a wall and every inch of it from blade to haft is covered in blood.

You can trace the violence in the patterns of blood, just as Athena always taught you. The heavy oak table was overturned, used as cover. Soldiers sheltered behind it until a Thunderbolt hit it and blasted it in half. And then... claw marks? Something terrible leaped upon the wreck of wood before pouncing onwards. There is a vortex of twisted metal on the walls and on the floor - steel flowed and twisted like a whirlpool, the jagged corkscrew wreckage of an improperly aimed Esoteric. So much of the fight is crystal clear.

And so much of it is not. There is no fire concentrated at the doorway. No clear point of breach or nexus of defense - it is as though the attacker teleported in from nowhere. The attacker left the claw marks of a great lion, wielded a Thunderbolt with a marksman's precision and discipline, and there is no sign that they spilled a drop of blood - or spilled any of their own. You spot the place where the spilled stew boils a toxic black and slide it away with the end of a stick. Sure enough, SP scorch marks on the floor.

A battle occurred here but it does not feel like any sort of war you've met before.

Evocati Khaesh could not be more on edge. She stands in a corner, a long rifle trained on the door held one handed, while her other hand holds a pistol she rhythmically scans the area with. "This was the Captain's work," she hisses. "Can you smell that? The stew was poisoned. The weapon of a chef."

You may need to Look Closely.

He is alone, now.

Vasilia left just a few minutes ago. Reached into her bag, laid a musket across her lap, and let the Coherent push her to the negotiations. She’d asked if he was alright. She could wait, until someone brought a wheelchair for him too. He’d refused.

Ramses had a comfortable chair arranged for him. Maybe she thought it would help smooth things over, get her favor back into the positives. Maybe she’d have done it for anybody. She hadn’t offered an explanation. Nor a path back to the conversation. Maybe she just thought it was safer, that way.

The shouts hurt his ears. More than the constant clamor of the film set. The headache buried between his horns sprouted through his skull, and his hands clasped knuckle-white to keep from flinching. He heard every step on her approach. He heard how angry she was. He knew who the voice belonged to, from the first.

“The Tides are…torturing themselves?!”

The Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt always returned his correspondence with interest. 50 pages for each one of his. Hours, of filtering through line after flowing line of titles, polite minutia, couched messages, to arrive at the barest kernel of actionable information. Later. Not today. Next week, for sure.

“Why didn’t they, they haven’t told me a thing, even though, I asked, but they, what?”

Ramses is indecipherable. This is not how a Captain should behave. Not to a professional.

“Because, yes, no, I’m in charge, here. I asked them aboard. He wanted to come aboard,”

And then. Nothing. From him. From her. From anyone. Anywhere. Ever.

“He wanted to come aboard, so, they shouldn’t, I would’ve! Done, I did, no, ah-”

He is alone, now. A small, broken sheep, begging a room full of strangers he doesn’t know.

“Could you please tell me what’s going wrong?”

She doesn't have it in her to laugh this time. It's the same joke on repeat out here, too soon to be funny again. She doesn't have it in her to keep shouting, either. Not to a half broken, twitching sheep that half looks like he's about to fling himself sobbing onto the floor, where he'll need someone to pick him up again after. Bella's shoulders roll. Her muscles twitch all along her arms. Her anger, her irritation, her scorn, her amusement, and her fear: all of them have nowhere to go. No correct expression, so they push out of her all at once in a single disbelieving huff. Not half a chuckle, all of it breath. That's all she's left with.

Bella shakes her head. Her smile is wry and toothy.

"...I was such an idiot back then," she sighs, "If I'd had any sense in me at all I would have let you dipshits capture me the first time I laid eyes on you. I would have had the Princess back on Tellus before Her Majesty's bathwater even cooled."

There's tension in that thought. Desire, even. Bella's face turns hard, and she covers her face with one hand and its outstretched, squeezing fingers. From in between the knuckles of her index and middle fingers, the baleful red glow of the Auspex fixes its unblinking gaze on Dolce. Cold and ruthless. She watches him watch it for several seconds until the good Captain summons up the power and the courage to look directly at it. She blinks a moment later, and lets the moment drop with a casual toss of her hair.

"It's really you? They put you in ch-- no, of course they did. Who else is there? Fine then if you're in charge then use your f-- just actually think about it for ten seconds, would you? You put the manifestation of a leviathan's terror after Odoacer put a damn ship through its brain in charge of Zeus knows what and then... what? Took it at its word? Let it be, as long as it kept the crabs pointed basically where you wanted them?"

Bella's teeth are grinding. She reaches up and scratches at her face with enough force that the only reason she doesn't tear her face half open is that the fingers she's using have had their claws torn out. She quickly realizes what the gesture is showing and folds her fingers into her palms faster than blinking. She folds her arms across her chest and tries to lean on her back leg, but apparently that's still too exposed because she puts her hands behind her back entirely a moment later, only to swing them free again and dip into what can only be described as history's rudest curtsey.

"Gods, why did it have to be you? I need this like I need another round of 'Beautification' procedures. But fine. Since you asked so nicely, I'll tell you exactly what's going on. Your so-called Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt has built himself a tiny empire of paranoia and death. He needs more nodes to handle the functions he's lacking, so of course he's spawned them. But they're all of them a threat in his eyes, so he pushes them about through his waves of bureaucracy. He pits them against one another, coaxes the fresh ones into killing the older ones, and shuffles them about through an endless chain of pointless bullshit, the only real point of which is to keep him safe and in power. Which of course he's done. What the fuck else would he do? This took me ten minutes of looking to find out. Fuck, first thing he did was beg me to be in charge. It's obvious to anyone with eyes the Tides as they are miserable and don't trust the systems around here, and apparently I come highly recommended. Or maybe that's just because I'm the first one to go visit their brine soaked hellhole.

"...Look, I don't want to turn this into a whole thing. Like I said, I don't want to be here and I know you don't want me anyway. I've given you your report, so let me out of here and we'll both be happier. Right? Right."

He doesn’t look away from that all-seeing eye. He listens, like he can’t hear the set awkwardly spinning up to life, the muffled conversation in her wake, the cacophony of people not paying attention. He wishes he could be anywhere else. But what good is that sort of wish? He can’t be anywhere but here. There’s nobody else but him. So he looks, and he listens, and he holds his head as high as it will go.

It makes sense. Horrible, horrible sense. But it all adds up, combines with what few scraps he had into a cohesive picture. Not the whole, but enough to see the shape of it. A scared fragment of the Eater’s mind, living on after death, without any of the structure it needed to function as it should. Promoted, suddenly, above its pay grade, with no choice in the matter, no support, and worst of all, no idea how to fix any of it.

By all the gods. If there was something, anything he could’ve done to discover this earlier, to have a chance to stop it, and he didn’t, forgive him. Please, forgive him.

And if nothing else, let him make this right.

“Please. Wait.”

He reaches out a hand, to motion to stop her, and has to brace himself on the side of his chair. Or else risk toppling over entirely.

“You’re the only person on board who’s been able to meet with the Tides like this. The Secretary runs and hides whenever he hears I’m coming. The ship’s much too big to have any hope of finding him, if he doesn’t want to be found. They don’t mingle. They don’t reach out. All I have are official channels, and they only use those to stonewall me. I’m sorry to keep you further, but, please, anything more you can tell us could help us do something about it.”

You, who can see through him, do you see his heart breaking?

“They shouldn’t be left to suffer.”

"I don't need! An! Assassin!!"

Redana is very difficult to fell. She used to push herself to her limits (which are very far indeed, even compared to some humans) for fun, for the hope of one day getting to be part of the grand competitions, and because exercise and strain felt rewarding compared to the nebulous, confounding difficulty of trying to get the entire universe crammed inside her head. And perhaps it's the fact that she is the daughter of gods, too; that now that she knows, it's that much harder to stop her.

"That's the last thing!" She lashes out, thud thud, too close in for Beautiful to do anything but twist so that it's not the vulnerable parts of her that end up beneath those brass knuckles. You can take it, can't you, Beautiful? These aren't weapons for killing; these aren't swords or claws or giant hands looking to crush everyone or the fangs of the hydra she slew. These are for the frustration. "I need! Like I want people killed?"

She pops up, catches the underside of Beautiful's jaw with her head, then falls on top of her and brings them both down. No more footwork. Just punches. "Fuck you! Fuck your training! Fuck your trainer and fuck her army and fuck her poisons! That's what she gave you, isn't it?" Then she stops, and several emotions slam into her face just before Beautiful's palm slams into her face, and Dany swings back with the brass gleaming on her hand. But she doesn't keep punching the same place, she doesn't fight like a killer, and that's what gets her shoved off and onto the floor, world spinning after the final savage punch to her Ajna.

"I don't need assassins," Redana says. "So try being something that's not that."

What happened here?

Not all of this mess is from the fight. Soldiers living large. There's a pile of clothing scattered across the floor, but the hamper's in the other corner, miraculously untouched. Not!Rusty noses aside a shard of shattered plate, one of dozens pilfered from the mess, and none of them clean. Thank the gods there's no blacklights.

She kneels and swipes one finger through a chunk of bowl that still has a remnant of stew in it. No, chowder--thick, creamy. Savory, with--she licks the finger, and grimaces.

"I appreciate that you have spent only a little time with the Captain, so please, understand that he would never poison soup. Or anything, really. He loves food, and especially loves sharing his food with his friends, too much to ever use it as a weapon. It'd be a betrayal to everything food stands for."

He also wouldn't completely overwhelm the delicate cream and crab flavors with that much pepper. Fwah, you can barely taste anything else!

Which doesn't guarantee it's not poisoned. It could even be used to cover the taste of the poison, though it'd be a poor poison that needs pepper to work.

No, what this room reeks of is Artemis. An expert in destruction appeared in the room, spilt no blood, and took no damage. A hunt declared? For what reason? On whom? Why are the Kaeri involved?

Somebody had a Thunderbolt. Who on the ship has a thunderbolt? Vasilia has the pistols. Who else? She would know if anybody else had one, surely? Galnius is brash and cocksure, but not to that degree.

She traces the clawmarks, compares the size and depth with those of her own hand. Traces back the clawmarks to where surely there must have been a launch. Something that big, pushing off against the floor hard enough to shatter oak, must have left a spatter in the blood. A paw? A foot?

God, please don't let this be Mynx. She hasn't seen her since the fight and, if this is Mynx, she won't. But the idea settles in her head and camps there. Mynx, with her poison. Mynx, unmasked amongst a phalanx suddenly realizing someone among them isn't who they should be. A flurry of activity--Mynx stepping along the floor, mid transformation into a lion… But the Thunderbolt. Mynx, having stolen Vasilia's pistols? Why? To what end?

No. It doesn’t make sense. She doesn't want it to make sense. There's no motive, no reason for the fight. It's the kind of twaddle you get in a mystery novel, all red herrings to throw the reader off.

Orders of business. Find Galnius. Find out why the Kaeri were in their chambers. Get more answers from them.

But first, though. Find the first spark. Find the first scattered chair, the first sign of violence. Retrace the steps of the fight, down through the layers of soldier's stink and SP scorch marks.

What happened here?

[Look Closely, 6,3,5, +1. 12. What does the play-by-play of this fight look like?]

Redana!

There is a very real limitation on how clever you can be after being punched in the face. For a long couple of minutes, Beautiful isn't being smart. She's not effortlessly dancing out of your reach, not analyzing, undermining, counterattacking. She's just lying there. In the state of having been punched. One hundred percent off her bullshit.

After a number of false starts at both sitting up and speaking she finally manages it. "You... don't need an assassin?" the question is hesitant, almost lost. The one thing that doesn't fit into the empty, all-encompassing mind of a Temple Assassin. "I mean... you know that I'm a very good assassin, right? Just putting it out there, if there's anyone you want... no?"

She's at a loss. All that programmed instinct, all the mathematics in her brain, processed and primed to lead inevitably towards absolute death and destruction. A lifetime of training that lives in her bones, if not in her conscious memory. And now...

"So..." she said. "... what you're saying... is I can be anything?"

Fingers drum against the cold metal floor. Wide eyes close for a long moment. And then she sits up suddenly, eyes as wide as they go and brimming with excitement. "Journalist! Oh no - card shark! Do either of those jobs exist? Doesn't matter! I'll bring them back! Detective? No, I'd need a rival. Oh, maybe I can commit crimes then wipe my memory and leave them for myself to solve..."

She tries to get up but doesn't quite make it, slumping back onto her side again. She rotates around to face you. "How about I start with you? What brings a dame like you into my office?"

Alexa!

Everywhere you look you find evidence to support your dark hunch. Soldiers, sitting around the table, eating and laughing. Then choking, shaking, spills, chairs thrown back as they start to feel the poison. One soldier is not affected and turns on the others, the falling bodies slammed down into the floor with strength enough to fracture the metal. Some soldiers lunge for cover behind the upturned table. One has an esoteric weapon, something that makes metal run like water for an instant before solidifying. They fire a ragged volley with their pistols and land hits...

And then the claw marks appear. The assailant's size and weight increases, razor talons begin to score the deck. The Esoteric begins to fire and the Thunderbolt fires in response, cutting the table and the weapon in half, freezing the room in its half-liquid state. Then, it leaps, standing up atop the table before descending on its disoriented foes...

This much anyone might learn. This was not what was kept a secret.

And then it is alone in a room with a dozen bodies. Where did they go? How did it carry them?

The ship isn't empty any more. This is not an isolated component. There were witnesses in both directions who saw nothing. No vehicles or carriages came through here. A Lantern reports that despite the grim thought, bodies were not disassembled and fed down the communications tubes. Your mechanical hound can't pick up a scent in any of the maintenance corridors or vents. The Kaeri Evocatii is growing more and more panicked at the accumulated evidence of this black miracle. You are too but for the opposite reason. She doesn't see it, can't see it - she's a predator, after all. A warrior. She understands blood and death.

You, though? You're not a warrior any more, Alexa. You know to stop and smell the flowers. You know how to see the trees despite the forest.

You can see the faces trapped inside the wood.

Everyone else is walking right past the ornamental trees. Trees grow everywhere on the Plousios, beautiful garden groves that filter the air and add colour to grim metal corridors. Some part of your mind, for its own safety, has avoided thinking about them too hard since the Master of Assassins raised the rainforest of Sahar.

But that's Galnius there, amidst those trees. That one further on looks like a Kaeri. Their branches bloom with black dahlias.

"The fool trims the leaves," the Master of Assassins said to you one fine day on Tellus, so many years ago. "A brute hacks the trunk. An expert pulls the roots. But a master..."

Hard and calloused hands ran through soft and loamy soil.

"Gardening has a way of wearing down the soul," she said. "When life itself is your enemy then the battle becomes eternal. But if you want to be able to appreciate a garden into your old age you need a way to break the cycle. And that is why the master catches the seeds."

Redana folds her hands over her chest and thinks about standing up. Her head informs her that if she even so much as thinks about it, it will unfurl the banners of revolution and overthrow her seat of consciousness in a glorious upheaval: red banners fluttering between the spires of her mind palace, the doors flung open wide for the common blood vessels to track their crimson boots on the carpeting, and where was she going with this?

"I don't need a detective," she opens her mouth to say. Instead, what comes out is: "Her name's Bella and she's used to be my maid. She's somewhere on the ship and she's alive because she braided my hair but when I woke up she was gone. And I know she left because ever after I left home, it turned out that she isn't just a maid, she's also an assassin, but the kind that only kills people that get in her way. I don't know what her school is. I don't think there's a maid assassin school. She must have learned it when she was very young, but I don't know when she found the time to keep doing assassin training? Imagine if she learned everything when she was a baby but then it was all thrown off by being an adult? And she's been chasing me all the way from Tellus and then on Salib she was taken by the Master of Assassins and locked in armor and when I broke her out we fought her together and she's still there, and I hate how many people we left behind, and even the ones that came back onto the ship with us, they came back changed, and if I hadn't told Hades I would do this none of this would have happened, but now that we're here it would be a waste if we didn't keep going, so we really have to keep going, and it's all on me to keep us going."

She stops talking for a little bit and stares at nothing, her Auspex-- her mother's eye analyzing, disassembling, making a hundred decisions about how to keep ninety-nine things away from her. Her body is heavy and intensely here, right here, right now, in a way that her mind isn't; scrabbling, trying to figure out the next step.

"She was mean," Redana admits again. "To Vasilia. To me. I don't know if she ever wants to see me again. I failed her over and over again. But she won't even let me catch up and try to talk to her about it. There is so much to apologize for, from the kiss, to what happened on Salib, and that also had a kiss, and when we left her on that awful station, I don't even know how she got off it, and she doesn't know that I tried to turn the ship around to go and get her, and that went so badly that-- and Mynx, I haven't found her again either. Everything is fallen apart and awful and all I have are these brass knuckles because my Magos told me I should challenge you if I found you, but you don't even remember Bella..."

Should she even be talking to Beautiful about her? The brass knuckles are heavy on her hands. Because it's inevitable, isn't it? When Bella sees the two of them, gets to compare them against each other?

It's just that she has to apologize. She needs to see Bella again and explain everything. Even if she's doomed to lose.

"Bella is a feline servitor," she loops back. "She used to be my maid. Then she was an assassin and my hunter. Now she's on the ship, after we saved her from being a weapon on Sahar. I need to find her. I thought she liked small spaces where she could find some privacy, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. She's got more to her than I knew, and... I thought she was going to come with me. I thought we were going to have an adventure. And when she hit me, I panicked. But I was going to come back. I was going to bring her the stars. Please help me find her. I have to try and apologize. Please."

Alexa's heart drops out of her chest, hits the floor, and starts to dig.

Only two people could have done this. One of them is still on Sahar.

She's not entirely sure whether she wouldn't like it to be the one still on Sahar instead.

"Evocatii," she says, quietly. "I think I've found your soldiers. But we have a new problem."

There is too much to do, and too little time in which to do it.

"I have the dizzying task of finding a consummate shapeshifter, possibly rampant, amongst thousands of people on this ship. If she does not want to be found, I will not find her. Please, calm your people. And spread the word to them, because any one of them could be her. Tell them, 'Mynx, I just want to talk where we talked before.'"

It's dumb. Mynx doesn't want to be found, has no reason to come. But it's the only thing she can think of to draw her out.

Her ear twists around on her head at the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. One wobbling leg does the work plaintive words and a tremulous voice could not, and freezes Bella in mid-step. Her back arches, stiffer than the scaffolding for the set being built around them. Her muscles ripple with the effort of standing in place in a moment when her heart is screaming to leave. She doesn't turn to face him; she lifts her hand to stare at her fingers instead. The memory of the blood makes her shiver.

"Twenty Poisons is Mynx's game," she hisses, "Quit fucking playing it with me, you aren't any good at it."

Bella's hair bounces across her back as she turns her head. It drifts casually across her shoulder and falls in luscious sheets down the other side. In all this lighting the blue-black sheen is startling, almost as much as the hard glint in her golden cat's eye. The half-dried dress of the Temple of Artemis clings and flutters across her body in such a flattering way that even the pieces of it that are torn seem artful instead of shoddy. The fur on her arms and legs seems especially silken compared to other times you might have met her. She looks like she belongs in whatever film is being shot here, in all honesty. The beautiful priestess who delivers a prophecy of doom or deliverance or whatever.

It's not fair, is it? That she could look so good and so whole when you and yours are all broken messes. She's the one who did everything wrong. She's the one who sold her soul for power. She's the one who came a hair's breadth away from killing half the crew, yourself included. So why does it look like she's being rewarded? And why has she so easily slipped inside the inner workings of this ship when it's bent over backwards to deny you?

"I'll tell you what I told him, while he was begging me to save his wriggling tentacled ass: I have never, and will never betray the Empire. If Mother couldn't drag me with her, you have no chance. But the Imperial Princess is on this ship and I'm still Her Majesty's Praetor no matter what anybody says, until the day she tears the title off my body with her own hands. So as long as I'm on this ship I'm damn well going to make sure it functions like it's fucking supposed to. We are not friends. And I'm not gonna sit here and guess what you're after, so spit it out or get the fuck out of my way."

...That was too far. She knows it. Bella tenses, and you can see the moment where she comes a twitch or two away from digging her claws into her own skin before she stops herself with a frankly huge and heroic effort. She sighs, and finally spins around. The conversation will continue. When she speaks again, her voice is low and cautious. It costs her a lot to be like this right now. And you're an attentive sort: from the way she keeps almost reaching for her back it's obvious something about it is bothering her a lot. But she doesn't dare say or do anything about it. Not when she looks the way she does, and you look like... well, you.

"You're in this mess because you didn't push. Do you get that? You knew you were being jerked around in that asshole's letterhead and you never hunted him down or sent anyone to speak with any of his other nodes, and now you're in a place where your enemy's giving you the status report that he wouldn't. And here you are, trusting me. Asking me for help. Why? What are you hoping I'll do? Just tell me what the fuck you want, already. I can't stand this."

It’s worse, somehow, now that she’s stopped shouting. There isn’t any surprise or crisis to hide behind. He is speaking with Bella. Bella is in the room, speaking with him. He and Bella are speaking, and they will keep speaking, until he dismisses her, or she leaves of her own will. Bella. She is here.

He’d expected…no, he’d suspected that she wasn’t going to sabotage them, now that she had the chance. The battle on Sahar. Redana’s tearful report. A hunch, at the effect of a Master, felled by her own hand. Enough to decide that his decision extended to keeping her unbound, and free to move about the ship.

That hadn’t told him enough to know what she would do. Or who she would be, freed of her old role.

She speaks loudly without raising her voice. There’s an edge to it, jagged and cruel, and she drives it into his stomach and glides it across his coat. He cannot tell which it will be until it happens. He cannot keep from wincing. He picks up every pause, every gesture, every little thing that might tell him what he ought to be doing to make it stop. Make her stop. Leave him alone. Find someone else. His wide eyes search hers. They find no relief.

She’s beautiful. By most standards. By his standards. By…by Vasillia’s standards. She is beautiful. Ramses is watching her. Many of the Coherent are watching her. He counts at least three who are only pretending to work. She walks with an assurance of step so secure, no movement is an accident. She knows she is supposed to be here. Perhaps more than anyone here. And he can’t keep his hands from shaking.

She’s here. And she doesn’t have to be. She doesn’t want to be. She hates it, here. Nothing that anyone’s doing is making it any easier. Nothing she’s doing is making it any easier. But she’s here. And she’s asking. And maybe he can believe that she’ll do as she’s said.

“How do you suggest we approach them?” As she asked. He spends no more words than necessary. Measured, despite himself. “Everything we have tried to date has failed, whether I attempt in person or by proxy, and this cannot continue.”

"You really want to know what I think? You should be getting ready to say goodbye. Fry them, shoot them off into space, set them down on some sorry ass rock if that makes you feel better about it. The Tides are dangerous. You shouldn't have let them on board in the first place."

Bella moves with the precision of somebody who knows how many eyes are on her. The Coherent all around her, who always stared like that whenever she needed to work with their kind when her chores included Plover maintenance or other highly technical labor. And the sheep who can't stop shivering, but also won't look away. She does what she's always done with eyes on her: rise to meet their expectations. She holds her back straight and head high. She flicks her tail with supreme confidence, and snaps her fingers imperiously. She gestures at a woman who is very poorly pretending to work, and with one nod and a jab of her finger sends her tumbling down from the light rigging to fetch a fresh chair.

She sits with her legs crossed and her hands folded over one knee. Surprisingly demure, for such a beastly creature. Her fingers are very carefully folded so that nobody can see the tips. Neither threatening or exposing her weaknesses. Her expression is thoughtful as she watches the captain of this worthless rustbucket of a ship. And not just him, but the scene around him. Which around him trip over themselves looking for ways to serve and which simply bend their ears to eavesdrop. Who is truly indifferent and who is uncomfortable. Who is excited. She licks her lips, and closes her eyes. Don't hurt yourself watching her, Dolce.

"...But you did. You asked monsters on board your ship, and you left them free to do whatever they wanted."

It's not clear if she's talking about the Tides, or herself. The way her eyes keep drifting to her hands every time the sheep winces is difficult not to notice. But she's decided to stay, since nobody will dismiss her. And she will not dismiss herself, or run away. There's pride in that ample chest that won't let her abandon whatever sort of duel this is. Memories and thoughts flicker in the light across the surface of her natural eye.

A moment later, several Coherent come scrambling up carrying a table and a pot of tea. They pour two cups before shooting back to an officially sanctioned Respectful Distance, and watch with the kind of tension that suggests they've forgotten how to breathe. Not out of fear. Everything in the air here suggests excitement. Everything except the captain and his guest, locked into their battle for the fate of all the monsters on the Plosious. Bella picks up her cup and lifts it to her lips. She holds it there for a long moment, taking delicate sniffs.

"Sugar, you assholes. And cream."

She sets the cup down and waits for them to sweeten it. Can't quite keep the smile off her face when that first completely smitten girl comes racing out of the green room at the speed of gay and adjusts the cup to Bella's specifications. She picks it back up and takes a long sip. She shrugs.

"...Wine."

"Uh, ma'am? I dunno that we've got anything to your, uh..."

"Did I stutter?"

"No, but I uh, I really don't think you understand how bad--"

Bella rolls her eyes.

"It won't be the worst thing I've ever had, just bring it. Aren't you filming a movie? Not to mention you're alive. I'd like to celebrate that. Your names were all carved into my skin, after all."

"R-right. Ma'am. On it. Uh. Ma'am. Back in a, uh, a minute. Ma'am."

"Praetor."

"Oh shit, right! That whole thing! Right back inaminutebyyyeee!"

Another eye roll, followed by an annoyed huff. Bella takes a long sip of her tea and sets the cup down in front of her with a quiet clink.

"You're right about one thing: this can't continue. The Assistant Secretary can't lead for shit, which is so obvious that even he doesn't want the damn job. You keep asking, I keep telling you. Put someone else in charge and you'll unfuck that system overnight. Give me more time and I can even tell you exactly who it should be. If you want me to fix it just say so. It'd be a lot easier than having to keep talking about it."

She frowns and lifts her cup again, eyes flitting about in search of wine that is apparently not coming. There's a tension on her face that implies she's considering whether or not to say something. But then, why not? She licks her lips again, and drains her cup without spilling anything, or bothering to breathe.

"I heard you. On Sahar, you said my name. Why? You could have had me in chains and in a cell and instead I'm -- fucking finally, put it on the table. Thank you -- I'm here, giving you advice about how to do your job. Why? Why the fuck are you doing this? What the fuck makes you think you can trust me?"

Redana!

"Huh," said Beautiful. "She must be really hot if I got involved in relationship drama that intense."

She finally managed to pull herself into a sitting position, wiping her bloodied face off on her gown. "Alright, so; I don't know much but I do know how Artemis works. So there's a couple of ways to build an assassin: lifetime of training, weird hunt rituals, but the easiest and cheapest is just to make someone into a bomb. It sounds like Bella was, like... a fighty bomb. I don't know the name for it either, I just got here. Anyway, so, if her life is anything like mine she's probably aware of it. I can feel the frontiers of my consciousness getting further and further away, even over these couple of minutes, more and more stuff gets caught and processed and becomes solved. I don't think she'd have exactly that but she'd have something like that; some constant sense of tension. If she was assigned as your bodyguard then I imagine every second you're not in her field of vision is lowkey stressful. No wonder the idea of you leaving Tellus freaked her out."

She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily against her sarcophagus. "What I don't get is how you - saved her? Like, to save me you literally need to undo my brain and start again from scratch. So if I'm right and she became a divine avatar of slaughter, then how the fuck did you get from that point to the point where you're worried about her not kissing you more?"

Alexa!

"Well, the good news is that this is absolutely fascinating," said Ninox Rufa, Biologis Weaver of the Kaeri.

The ship, meanwhile, was rapidly disintegrating into armed and fortified paranoia. Each deck had immediately entered its own lockdown. Perversely, the Kaeri are handling it the best - they are intimately familiar with the capabilities of Temple assassins and their movements, and live their entire lives in a state of militarized paranoia by default. Their quarantine and checking procedures are flawless. The problem is that the range of responses from the other factions aboard ranges from 'ineffective' to 'wildly counterproductive'.

It's a horrible irony that if the Kaeri were put in charge right now it would go a long way to managing what is rapidly becoming a crisis.

But at least there's good news! "There are, of course, a variety of poisons capable of killing a modern bioform," Ninox continued. "But none of them are perfect. There are always tradeoffs to be made to do with speed, certainty, reversibility, and so on. This one is certain - but slow, and curable with an original poison sample. I'll also note that all of the victims were poisoned, even the ones that could have been killed in hand to hand combat. From this we can infer that the poisoner needs these people dead even if she's prepared to wait for it."

Or she's giving you a chance to stop her, Hera willing.

She hasn't arrived at the meeting spot.

"But there is, of course, a psychological component to all this," Ninox chirped on. "The spectacular visual impact of the poison and its permanence is no doubt designed to throw terror into the ship once the connection was made. An unprepared society is naturally most vulnerable, but a chaotic response is easily the next best thing. It allows for spectacular raids on high profile targets in the confusion, which will only deepen the crisis."

So, Alexa: who do you guess is about to be attacked in the midst of this confusion?

Bella!

"Oh, don't worry about that ma'am," said Prion Paula. You take a deep sniff of the wine just to make sure it's not poisoned with hallucinogens. Maybe the girl wasn't kidding when she said it wasn't up to your standards? "It was explained to us. You were under a witch's curse!"

She drew her blade - the Peony Rainbow Blade! - and swooshes it up to the sky. "And the curse was broken with true love's first kiss! The one flower Demeter never expected to bloom upon the battlefield was love! Such is the strategic mastery of Captain Dolce of the Golden Fleece, Ram of War, whose obsidian eyes always know strength from weakness!"

Redana sits up, ignoring her body’s immediate protests and attempts to reverse the motion. “She— you can do that?” Her stomach clenches. She’s going to be sick. “No. Stop. Go back. She might be suffering just because she can’t see me?”

The thought makes the world tilt sideways. Her hands are shaking on her knees. She wants to go back to that awful desert waste and dig Sagakhan back up just to— just to— to stomp on her heads, to ram a spear through them until they’re a kebab made of snakes, to scream and scream and scream. And it makes sense! She can see it! Carrot and stick: shape any tool to its purpose. But Bella wasn’t supposed to be— she only wanted a friend— why would you do that to a maid, a friend, a girl in a box—

“We can figure that out later. I need your help finding her now. What do you need? Just tell me. Anything. I’m not in charge of the ship any more but whatever you need I will make sure you have.” If it means she’s not hurt by the laws in her spine anymore. That’s even more important than apologizing. Does she know? Could she know? Would it sound like she’s lying if she told her? If she pushes Bella away will she spend the rest of her life miserable and stressed and screaming at people because her princess ran away?

Beautiful has to stop it. And Dany will do anything to make sure Beautiful stops it.

But why is she doing this?!

That's the one question she needs to answer, she's sure of it. Solve that, and everything else falls into place. There has to be a motive, and that motive will dictate who the target is.

If Mynx wants to stop the journey, then Redana's the target. Redana, with her open heart and with her bonds to the crew and with her desire to cross the rift. Kill her, or poison her, and the journey ends.

But we have two ships! They're not both crossing the rift! If Mynx wants off, off is an option! Redana would...

Well, Redana would be a bit hurt, of course. Would do her best to avoid making it a thing. Would let it happen. But hurt nonetheless.

Revenge, then. Bella did a number on her back on Sahar. Mynx is probably the only person who could track where Bella is, but even with a disguise, Bella's probably too paranoid to let anyone close enough for poison. No habits to exploit, too much risk for a good fight. Stir up chaos...

Table that. Call it a maybe. Even if it's Bella Mynx wants, Bella's about as hard to find as Mynx if she doesn't want to be found.

She dismisses Dolce and Vasilia almost out of hand. Either one would be ridiculously simple to eliminate, simply by taking the form of the other and waiting for the opportune moment. No chaos necessary. Hell, chaos would make things harder, if for no other reason than making them look at each other harder.

Maybe chaos itself is the point. Make enough problems, and somebody has to pay attention to her. Acknowledge her. But if that's the point...

She'd even baked cookies. That stings, somehow, almost as much as the murders. They're still in the meeting room--Alexa hasn't been back yet to check whether they've been touched yet.

The list of leaders is dwindling, at this point. Jil of the lanterns? Potential. And it'd fit, if Mynx wanted to start a war, to assassinate both leaders and point each side at the other. Only slight problem is that Jil's not on the ship. Iskarot? Has some of the same issues Bella with being harder to find, but with none of the motive. Ramses? She'd only be a target by association with the Hermetics, it feels. Maybe the Assistant Secretary, to plunge the Tides into chaos?

And finally... Well, she's not so naive as to think she, herself, might not be a target. She's involved in other groups to at least the same degree as Redana. And while her death wouldn't mean the end of the journey

So, then. Call it probably six possible targets. Three more likely than others--herself, Bella, and Redana. Only one actionable out of that list, apart from herself, is Dany.

But... Well, her gut says that Dany isn't in immediate danger. Even if she is the ultimate target, she won't get hit until others have died. And she trusts Dany to take care of herself.

So that just leaves Ramses and Iskarot to find and protect.

Ah. Hrm. It turns out? There’s a difference between the honeyed words of a guest, offered in hopes of teasing out some family secrets, and a hero of legends wholeheartedly singing your (slightly embellished) praises. And the mental training required to smile and nod in response to the former offers shockingly little defense against the latter.

Dolce buries his face in his hand. It does nothing to hide the embarrassed flush spreading across his cheeks. “That’s not…exactly how I worded it.” And how had he explained the miraculous change that’d come over Bella, hrm? If he looked at it, out of the corner of his eye, perhaps he could see the shape of the journey from his words to Prion Paula’s declaration. Perhaps. And perhaps he’d better just start at the beginning. Before any more heroes decide to explain for him.

Captain Dolce straightens in his chair, and coughs lightly, to give his hand a thin excuse for its position before he returned it to his lap. “Before the battle on Salib.” Deep breaths. As direct as he could. She did request as such, after all. “We held a council of war, to decide our approach, and our objectives. Which included what to do with you, if given the opportunity. We didn’t know how we’d find you, and I decided we couldn’t afford any confusion or disagreement in the heat of the moment.”

A difficult decision. Argued fiercely on both sides, despite the clear majority. The voices still ring in his ears. The passion, and the hurt. His eyes fall to his folded hands. His fingers clench uncomfortably. “I opened the floor to the matter. The crew had their say, for and against. And in the end, I made the decision to offer you a chance.” And here you are, having actually taken it.

Is that relief he feels? Or regret?

“...I didn’t think kisses would be involved, but I can’t say I’m surprised?” He gives a little shrug. “Aphrodite’s been involved, after all. The possibility was always there.” So says Captain Dolce,of the Golden Fleece, Ram of War, whose obsidian eyes always knew strength from weakness.

Bella sits in silence, watching the scene in front of her with the wary eyes of a stray cat long since used to disappointment. She watches Prion Paula draw the Peony Rainbow Blade with the same confidence and energy she'd done for the cameras probably a thousand times before. She watches the Captain sit in his chair and flush with embarrassment. She watches the second cup of tea sit there on the table between them, untouched. She watches her fingers circle the rim of her wineglass.

"I watched your movie," she says, "One hundred and forty-seven times. Prion Paula vs Djemento 2... the posters were all over that damn ship. And you're. Look, I... nevermind. Forget I said anything."

Her eyes fall to the table as her words fail her. The pointlessness of it all plays out as frustration on her face, and all she can figure out to do with her hands is play with the edges of her glass some more. Eventually she lifts it to her lips and takes a slow, uncertain sip. The wine sits on her tongue for several long moments before she swallows. Her eye lights up with some new realization and she tilts the liquid up into the air to view it from a new light. Her mouth opens, maybe to make a comment about something. She closes it again in a quiet frown.

Why was she bothering with any of this? All this small talk and playing nice for an enemy! She'd come looking for a fight (or at least some ointment she could steal), only to find the person she'd come to rip into was too sorry and sad to put any pleasure in the act? Now what was she supposed to do with herself? She can't leave without settling things, that would only put the ship on high alert. Her on again off again flirtation with death felt more and more permanently stuck in the 'off' position the longer she spent prowling Hade's sad joke of a vessel. And besides, she had a project now. What would happen to that if she knocked herself off the board? To them?

She pinches one claw into her hand. The thought of violence is exhausting. Her body isn't remotely recovered from Sahar, and even just the memory of blood is enough to make her stomach churn right now. It's a much stronger reaction than she remembers; just what had happened to her? What did it really cost to rip herself out of that divine armor at the peak of its powers?

Bella wets her lips with more wine, and shakes her head. She gestures, with some insistence, at the still-untouched teacup across the table from her.

"Is that how you run this ship, then? You wife makes a more convincing argument than," she hesitates reaching for a name that might have plausibly pushed to 'save' her, "Jil, then instead of giving me my name back you put a sword in Tredecima's stomach? That would've worked out great for you. Tell me, were the Tides part of this discussion? I saw them on the field. I'm curious, did they advocate for or against ripping my guts out?"

Her smile betrays genuine amusement. That's probably worse for her than if she was angry, isn't it?

Redana!

Beautiful has by this point improvised a walking stick out of a section of piping torn from a wall. She gets unsteadily to her feet and starts limping. "I can find her!" she said. "But you'll need to tell me more about her. I don't hunt using senses, I hunt using data - so tell me everything you can about Bella. Small details, big ones, build me a complete picture."

Alexa!

Iskarot is, fortunately, predictable: he is with his engines.

It's a hive of activity. Yellow robes and invisible faces everywhere. Specters pulling levers and adjusting pipes and marking records in spiral-bound notebooks. And as you rush into the center of this hive of activity you realize with a start the purpose of the Hermetic robes. Picking Iskarot out of this crowd is almost impossible. The flow of anonymous figures and their incomprehensible engineering work is a veil of anonymity. The Order of Hermes, when threatened, vanishes into an opaque mass.

But there's also an unbearable tension running through these movements. There is a predator moving through this sea of anonymous faces, an imposter among us, and right now everyone is doing their best to seem as normal as possible while waiting on terrified edge for someone to step out of character.

Bella!

Prion Paula smiles and signs the empty wineglass with lipstick. Swooshes and swirls and passion, rendering the Kanji almost unreadable! She flicks the symbol with a flicker of light from a UV pen that makes it solidify like paint, rendering it immune to smudges, and seals it with a kiss just below the lip of the glass before sliding it back across the table.