Bella scowls and flicks her tail with undisguised irritation. Her ears are perked fully up as they strain and twitch themselves around trying to pick up useful noises over the top of all this loud and obnoxious music. By Hera, please don't tell her the Admiral has her soundtrack playing on her personal craft too, or things are about to get smashed. 

She glares down imperiously at the grovelling seneschal, straightening her back and drawing herself up to her full height without quite realizing what it is she's doing. But looming over this pathetic symbol of authority is doing nothing to calm her nerves. If this keeps up, she's going to... no. She must not claw herself again. She mustn't. Giving in will make it worse, and there is still so much to do. Thank the gods she'll be able to put this all behind her once she has the Princess again. 

"You know, I wonder what kind of smile you'd have had on your face if we'd let you march us back to the feast. Must be a pile of corpses by now, what with all the horrible accidents happening on this ship today! You an actor? Or... no, I think you're more the type to laugh while you push me in front of a spear. Lucky thing I'll get to find out when I take you to see a dead Codexia!"

All at once, Bella's tongue goes horribly, desperately dry. She can't swallow. She can't speak. She's stuck, with this half feral, half terrified smirk on her face, willing every muscle in her body not to betray her and show how terrified she actually is by the thought of having to follow through on her threat. One on one? If she's lucky? Frankly, she'd rather just tuck her tail between her legs and walk politely back to the murder feast. 

It comes unbidden. The image is so strong it has its own scent. The quiet garden adjoined to the Princess' room where Bella secretly grew and gathered all the herbs she used to prepare Red... the Her Highness' meals. It was supposed to be a flower garden, a little bubble of beauty that showed everything the Empress thought worthy of praising about Tellus. Bright lights and huge flowers and sweet smelling grasses you couldn't find anywhere else, trees for taking shade under and even a tiny river that ran through with different mineral mixes depending on when in the day you drank from it. And Redana would study there, under that cherry sapling, and pretend to study, her face all screwed up with fake concentration when she was really watching Bella watch the tiny yellow butterflies that were attracted to the mint leaves, and...

Bella plants her right foot firmly on the ground, and reaches up behind her head to toss her hair with both hands. When she steps forward again with her left, her hands are clutched along the thick iron leash dangling from her collar. The symbol of her guilt as a shameless destroyer of the pride of the holy Olympic Games. And just as much, the symbol of her pledge of loyalty to the Empress. Of trust.

She swings it like a whip and watches with satisfaction as the links at the end wrap themselves around the seneschal's throat once, twice, three times. She pulls on the slack and hauls him, retching and coughing, to his knees. There, now their fates are connected, at least for a time. She grabs him by both shoulders and drags him the rest of the way to his feet. It satisfies like nothing else to see she's taller than him. 

"Show us the way to this other bay. Point out the guards to me, unless you'd rather they die. And then say your oaths of penance to the gods. You've been a very unvirtuous man, little mouthpiece..."

[My second Speak Harshly question is "Tell me where the Admiral's personal craft is docked."]