“I don’t know if I like working for her.” He finally says, keeping his hands busy with stirring sauces. “She won’t harm us, and she’ll protect us. I know this. But. Bahhhh. I don’t know.” 

Which to the trained ear, meant that he did know, and he did not like the answer. So Vasilia keeps silent a while longer.

“I think that.” Gradually, working himself up to it. “If it got her a better result, she would not hesitate to let us or our friends come to harm. I know it’s awful to say, before she’s even had the chance, but, the thought is there, and I can’t ignore it.”

“You don’t have the choice she has, Dolce.” She offers, now that he has the thought out in the open. “We’re against an Ikarani. If we don’t follow her plan, we’ll be dead without ever knowing what killed us. Whatever her plan may be, it’s [i]her[/i] plan. You’re not vouching for it, and you certainly don’t have to like it or her. You’re doing the only thing you can to save us all.”

“But the Housekeeper [i]was[/i] special. To H'san, and Jalia, and Fangst, and all of them.” He stares long into his bubbling pot. “And our crew’s special too. I know it. Whatever an Eater of the Dead is, whatever she knows, she doesn’t know [i]that.”[/i] 

“So. If she's wrong there. What ought a good Captain to do about it?”

Now where did all this come from? Usually, he just stopped at whatever thought was bothering him, but then again, he also usually didn’t wear a hat of high office. Just what had Zeus been teaching him?! Or was it Hera? She hopes it was Hera. Easier to thank her. “For now, we serve dinner.” She sets a great silver-and-blue tray atop a floating sphere. “If the moment comes...I trust you’ll make the right decision. And in any case, you can always come to me for poor advice.”

[i]“Vaaas!”[/i]

“You stand upon a vast treasury of mistakes, and I will [i]not[/i] have my husband and Captain acting the miser of such riches.”

They left the kitchens, off into the unknown. Whatever would follow next, nothing would negate this truth: He is giggling, and she is the richer for it.