[b]Mra’al![/b]

On your first hunt with your alpha, you had failed her; the revolutionary used a vial of stolen perfume broken in an alleyway to burn your nose and mask her trail. Then, you had fallen to your knees and begged her for forgiveness, tried to confess your weakness to her. She ordered you up and kept the hunt on. You caught the revolutionary in the end, and delivered her to salvation, that she might understand her place in the Great Chain. And when you returned to her estate, your alpha punished you both for your failure and for begging for forgiveness at the wrong time. When you are hunting, you are [i]hunting,[/i] and the huntress does not stop to beg for the scourging of her sins.

This is why you are not groveling at her feet. That would distract her from her thoughts. She looks out over the crowd, fingers drumming on the marble railing, as the revelers demand answers from the guards.

“They scattered the guards outwards,” she says. “So that they could work inside. The response has to be both internal and external. The witch, she has Zhiantu arts; locking the doors will not help. We need an Altar of Interdiction, but by the time the ab-Enkiji respond to our request... Caphtor.”

The djinn appears, bowing her head in reverence.

“By the name of our lady, who is the Scourge and the Rose, carry this to the Hierophant. Annan ab-Ereshkigali bids her to have three-fifths of the janissaries under her mantle conduct a rice-grain sweep through the temple.” If we do not find them, your alpha thinks to herself, we will find their objective, and so understand them. “The other two-fifths should conduct a slave-search both above and below.” They must masquerade as slaves, your alpha knows, so we will strip that anonymity from them.

“As you will,” Caphtor says, and then is gone. Your alpha pours herself a glass of a rich, dark wine, the bottle taken from a platter held by a golden-haired slave girl, and then a second for you.

“Now, Mra’al,” she says, as you take your cup from her mailed fingers, “tell me everything about your battle with the witch.”

***

[b]Set![/b]

“Please, please, don’t send me back!” The high, panicked voice of Jerry snaps you out of your focused reading. “Anything, anything, Ma-Ri-Ann, just don’t lose me in Hell!”

Interesting! The Annunaki have a religious concept that is best translated as “Hell” and thinks that Marianne has access to it.

...oh right Marianne’s looking at you, you’re on cue! As the avatar of your goddess, you get to establish yourself as someone who passes [i]judgment.[/i] There’s a reason that you picked Jerioth ab-Ishtari tonight, and there’s a reason that Marianne has been so gleefully terrorizing her. Plenty of them, in fact: you’ll have to narrow them down to the ones that she’ll [i]remember[/i] from now until the end of the Annunaki Empire. Marianne has ranted to her, probably about tyranny and lessons and dire threats, and now it’s your turn to explain to the head midwife (and controller of the slave breeding programs) her sins.

Tell Jerry what she’s being punished for. Explain to her that this wasn’t just a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time, but a deliberate choice. Give her something to [i]think[/i] about while she stews.

***

[b]Canada![/b]

Arákh crumples to her knees. She looks up at you like you are the light of heaven. One by one, everyone else in the room kneels and beholds you. One of the Lynx janissaries starts crying, confronted by the gap between who they are and who they could be.

“I’m sorry,” she says. And you get the sense that she [i]means[/i] it. It’s not a confession. It’s an apology. “I meant to make you one of my dancers, but... that is unworthy of you. It is [i]ugly,[/i]” she says, as if pronouncing it to the fires of purgatory. “And there is nothing in this world that is righteous but beauty.”

Silently, she takes a key from her Thornback and unlocks your chains, one after another. Her smile is beatific, but you’re very aware that this doesn’t last for long. Beauty and righteousness have a short half-life in this world once unveiled; as soon as you leave, it’ll start to fade like a dream.

Objectively your best choice is to lock them all in the cell (they’ll agree that you should if you tell them) and then leg it before the lusty, petulant Arákh reasserts herself.