[b]Piripiri![/b]

The Laema plays a joke on everyone. It is not a nice joke. This is the joke: she has decided that you must be kept safe, and that the safest place to keep you until Ven returns is in Ven’s own chambers. It will enrage Ven, disappoint her own daughters, keeps you from going to find Azazuka, and means you have to spend the night (if not longer) in that miserable room.

It is a transitory room. It is the room of a young woman who both hoards possessions but does not much care for them beyond having them close to hand. It is tacky luxuries imported from Hell and then papered over a room that lies at the thin point between one side of the castle and the other.

Rain streaks down over the dusty panes of one window, clamped in place by old and rusted iron in the classical Kingdom style. It is dark, and cool, and the night beyond is silent and still. Green sunlight shines through the thick panes of the [i]other[/i] window, and the distant chaos of Hell is a dull roar at the edge of your senses, the kind of thing that takes some time to acclimate to. Between the two is an overly plush bed somehow crammed in, despite all the exits being too small for it, hung with green curtains and covered with swirling, writhing labyrinth-sheets.

In this room, there are maps, crammed haphazardly into a lacquered box; in this room, there are two piles of clothes, the used and the unused; in this room, there are masks, and incense sticks, and shaman-pouches full of Hell’s trinkets.

In this room there is something like a black monkey with a hideous and arching claw on either hand, locked in a thing like a birdcage. Its bulging, oversized eyes have no lids. It has no mouth that you can see. It watches you with unwavering intensity, scratching something into a brass sheet with its nail and then returning to stillness with just enough irregularity that it is impossible to relax. Perhaps anything you do in here will be presented to Ven; perhaps anything you do in here will be presented to Ven’s masters; perhaps it is writing an aria intended for the revels of the Broken King’s tattered heart, and your paranoia is misplaced.

But isn’t it tempting to figure her out by proxy? To play a game with the demon scribe, to spy without being caught spying, to gather a picture of the fool before her return? It would at least distract you from that unearthly, far distant music— from the flutes, the drums, the pipes and bells, the harps and tambourines and horns— singing to drive off a silent, deadly, all-consuming wind— playing because silence is death and death is swift and because Whirling-in-Rags dances still through the winding black streets, his golden feet streaked with his blood, his yellowing robes swirling all about him as he loses himself in the ecstasy of motion which he shares with the Fivefold Wind whose sermon is the release of all those painful attachments to the world that she has lost and therefore were only and ever holding her back and in her depthless benevolence she will carve them from you too until you are free from existence—

Perhaps it is best to think about other things. Yes.

***

[b]Kalaya![/b]

Ven stiffens awkwardly as she is held, much like a cat that has been bowled over by an affectionate dog. There is little softness in her, particularly on one side of her body, hard as a sword. For a moment, there’s nothing in her face but confusion and distress— until realization, memory, uncertainty bloom. “[i]Kal?[/i]”

Despite that, when you hug her again, exuberant, for a moment some of that hardness slips. Her nails dig against your shoulder; she leans into you like a ship hugs a cove in a storm. She looks down, lets your eyes get lost in her short hair, the way it curls at her jaw, the way it hides her own eyes in the dark.

“I had to leave the Kingdoms, Kal.” The words slip out of her like a dagger leaving its sheath. “To study. To find myself. There wasn’t any future for me here, not as a failed princess.” The dagger turns. It is not driven into you, but for a moment its sharpness is unmistakable. “Now I’m here. Pilgriming, obviously. Doing pilgrim things. Walking to some of the old shrines. Paying homage. Seeing what’s left for me.”

She wants to push you away. She chooses not to, again and again, because she wants to be held. Because she wants you to keep holding her more than she wants whatever else keeps making her tense up, keeps her from opening to you.

“I’m. I’m [i]really[/i] lucky to see you,” she admits. “Just... please don’t tell anyone else, okay?”

She finally looks up at you, and her eyes are dark and large and perilous. That’s what you call places where you could drown: perilous. And that dagger of a voice keeps turning, keeps leveling its tip away from you, hard and sharp and trying so hard to be gentle with [i]you.[/i]

“I don’t want people to know I came back,” she says. “Not unless it’s on [i]my[/i] terms. Thus. You know. The hat. And the cloak.”

She pulls her cloak tighter against that unnaturally hard arm in unconscious self-consciousness. A veil, of sorts. Something she wants to hide, even from you.

***

[b]Zhaojun![/b]

The N’yari camp is typical for them: small, camouflaged, easily pulled up and relocated. They’re evidently early in a raid: their spoils include a few pigs, a couple of lockboxes into which clothes and coins and materials are sorted, and two girls who are both a little scared and a little excited, torn between embarrassment and curiosity and fear of the half-known. One girl sits in Machi’s lap during the strategy meeting, her linen-swaddled face buried into Machi’s neck, squirming in tantalized fluster as one hand kneads her rump with distracted feline rhythm.

“Now, I don’t just want the knight,” Machi dictates. “I want hidden treasure to bring back home, [i]and[/i] I want to match up against the dragon girl again, my little kitten, just so she knows I defeated this knight.” She presumes that her new spirit will know innately who the dragon girl is; her rival-desire for the girl burns brightly. The dragon girl is strong and cunning and wonderfully unscrupulous; the dragon girl is her destined trophy, prize, and makeout partner, and Machi doesn’t just want the glory of bringing her home, she honestly thinks that she’ll be bringing the dragon girl [i]home[/i] — that she’ll be doing right by both the dragon girl and her community by helping her discover she belongs among the N’yari.

In contrast, she just wants to dress up this knight in a cute maid outfit, force her sword-hands into mittens, and show her off at feasts as proof of Machi’s strength and prowess. Maybe dangle her from the chandelier in her family’s hall, for guests to bat at and spin around. Clearly, there is work to be done if Machi is to be convinced to be Kalaya’s nemesis, properly and completely.

***

[b]Giriel![/b]

“Ah, yes. The Prince.” The General begins to move again, restless, beginning a great arc that will eventually end with you surrounded on all sides. “An excellent protege. The dancer taught her etiquette and extended her protection when she was weak and unforged, and the sun gave her new flesh and lessons in statecraft, but I was the one who taught her the [i]war.[/i] Swordplay, strategy, and [i]liberation.[/i] She was cast down, and it is our privilege to make her a weapon, an agent for the front, to raise her again, just as our standard will rise over the rebels, the revolutionaries, the anarchists, the traitors.”

Pale fingers twist a pauldron into useless scrap, effortlessly. It is discarded into the heaving sea of trash.

“First she simply wanted her kingdom returned. It took time to convince her to be a uniter; we must maximize our beachhead. She’s still in the early stages of the campaign, introducing saboteurs to the occupation, suborning their defenses, facilitating our advances, delivering us [i]traitors.[/i] Soon she will be ready to move on their regional hub, and we will raise her to glory, and their kings will kneel and lose their crowns, and she will make a throne of them, and stand on their throats.” He stops his rambling for a moment, and then turns to you, speaking almost conspiratorially.

“She has recently identified a [i]vulnerable asset.[/I] The daughter of a [i]revolutionary.[/i]” A god’s daughter, then. “When she acquires it, we shall see whether she gives it up to us or not. I will think less of her if she tries to hide it from me, or thinks to give it over to my brothers. But the joke is that I [i]will[/i] take it. There are [i]interrogations.[/i] There are [i]disciplines.[/i] There are [i]humiliations.[/i] There are [i]punishments.[/i] I have my right. I will not be denied. There is a war to win.”

It would be unwise to point out that his motives are nakedly revenge that he cannot admit to himself, rather than being driven by any sort of tactical sense. Watch how his fingers twitch with their naked need to punish the gods and their children and their servants. Try not to imagine the deep pits, the oubliettes, the prisoners lost underneath the waves of this horrible sea, alive beyond the reach of time. Try very hard not to imagine the General deciding that you, too, are on [i]their[/i] side.

(There is, of course, even in the demon city, the hope of reprieve. There is always the chance of being fished out by demon-thieves who scurry beneath Tichtokh’s notice, unearthed by the churn of the Waste, or even being traded away as a prize so that the General receives the concessions he needs for the neverending war. Small comfort for anyone sinking to their knees in the Waste, betrayed and handed over to face a litany of their crimes against the rightful ruler of the world.)

Peregrine makes the little noise, beside you. She doesn’t blurt it out, but if she doesn’t know who he’s talking about, she knows how she can find out, and she finds this interesting, perhaps interesting enough to distract her from Uusha’s need— at least until she gets the answers she wants.

“Now, go pick up your meat. Take it to Kingeater Castle. Their little joke on the front. There you’ll find my Ven. And if she thinks to hide it from me— I have my ways. She cannot keep it from me. But unbar the door, and I will remember.” Ah. So he wants you to call on him so he can intercede very directly.

Add that to the list of things you definitely should not do.

***

[b]Han![/b]

The little bud shivers and gives you tiny appreciative squeaks and breathlessly thanks you for saving her from such an [i]awful[/i] fate. It would be fairly obvious how titillating, how both scary and enticing she finds it, for anyone who wasn’t busy brooding. Which, of course, means that it soars right past your head.

By the time she falls asleep, her head resting on your shoulder, her dainty body all tucked in next to you, you’re still running over those thoughts of Machi, over and over, and the difference between you. Machi is wild, selfish, and impetuous, and she thinks any cutie she sees is hers to kiss. And after sharing what the N’yari are like with the little bud? If you remind her of Machi, she’ll make some excuse to leave you. She’ll run away from the [i]catkisser.[/i]

And that thought hurts, doesn’t it?

All you have to do is be the opposite of those things. Be safe and tame. Be selfless. Don’t do things without thinking them through very carefully. Don’t think of Crane scoffing and telling you that you’d never be those things. You have to [i]prove[/i] that you’re nothing like Machi.

Drop your Feral to 0, and then tell us how you try to show Lotus that you’re a good girl over the course of your trip, and how you deal with unwanted heart flutters.

(For her part, she walks without complaint, but is easily distracted; she is constantly on the lookout for whatever she finds beautiful, which is often something quite ordinary. She is cheerful, and happy to share little songs, but drifts close to you and shrinks whenever someone passes by. And she watches you when she thinks you’re not looking, all her judgment hidden by her veil.)