When Yue challenges Rose, the new handmaiden is coming back from cards at Rahn’s place, which is to say, she’s coming back from that great big cat with the windows in the sides, almost like some sort of bus. It’s warm inside (like you’d expect), and the black rabbits vet everyone who tries to climb in for their Burrow bonafides. You gotta be somebody to get into Rahn’s— a leftover, an archeologist, a collector, a rube, or eye candy, because Rahn’s not just a Burrows demon, she’s also a disaster lesbian. When Rose tried to sneak in this time, Rahn hopped up on the sales counter on one side of the long damp room and wolf-whistled and applauded until everybody’s attention was on the pretty little handmaiden who just came in.

Of course, some of them just took it as Rahn being Rahn. She’s got a few screws loose; the treatments she took for the contamination in her blood, leftovers from cut corners in her production, were intense. You have to be patient with her, whether she’s in a high manic mood right now or in one of her sullen fits, gnawing her blackened fingernails down to the quick. That’s one of the unspoken rules of Rahn’s. Follow it or the rabbits will [i]fucking get[/i] you.

So that’s why some of the guests here to look through Rahn’s antiques turned back to their business pretty quick: an architect in a pretty nice suit discussing tech with one of Jezara’s salukis, also in a pretty nice suit, with the hulking demon serving as one of their bodyguards playing with the bat on his shoulder; the bitter old man talking about his hunting and trapping during the first winters as he turns a 3D model of a tree over in his hands, and the black-eyed man listening with complete, vast and unearned gentleness; the brawny man with a massive hammer on his back, discussing repairs with a half-horse engineer and an imposing eagle-woman in a suit of High Burrows armor. They had their own business to attend to, after all. And a good thing, too. When Rose met those black eyes for a fleeting moment, she took them for a lightless planet, and shivered, knowing she wasn’t the most powerful being in the room.

That’s Rahn’s for you. It’s the kind of place where you can find peers if you’re a leftover super-soldier or a sword saint or an attempt to make a god.

She ends up at the card tables on the other side of the room, looking for approval from one of the regulars. One of the few people in the world she’s jealous of. And when The Duke saw her, they (no, leaning he today) gave her one of those dazzling smiles and told her to take a seat. And when she did, he asked her with mock seriousness to blow on his cards for good luck, those vivid green cat’s-eyes dancing (not literally, you have to specify with him) as he reached one hand around and gave one thigh a flattering squeeze that made Rose feel pretty and silly and enviable.

That’s not the only reason she’s jealous, the way that The Duke seems to effortlessly know what someone needs to be validated and encouraged. There’s also the way that his shapeshifting is a lot more sophisticated than hers; when he wants to lean female, she just [i]flows.[/i] She can try out new bodies and styles like she’s trying on clothes, and that’s before she turns into technicolor canines or almost-perfect copies of people, keeping the eyes as a deliberate affectation. And there’s also the way that he shrugs off everybody’s expectations of what a Burrow relic should do with their life, and the smile that makes even Rose’s heart skip a beat, and the way he seems to know everybody who’s anybody. Even monsters have their role models.

“So who’s the lucky girl?” He asked, and everybody got to see Rose from the River, the Thorn Pilgrim, squirm and stammer and smile helplessly as he laid down his cards. And hardly anybody minded that he’d bluffed them out on two pair, not when Rose was playing with her hair and trying to explain, see, there’s this princess…

There even was a princess at the table! At least, a self-claimed princess: Rahnya (no relation), from a city without a name, far away, that had something to do with tigers. Very nice girl, somewhat sleepy. And there’s a warden-witch, too nice to hate, her blonde curls getting everywhere; and there’s Fayruz, wait, no, Dr. Fayruz now, she got her medical license recognized in Pasalkhen and she’s headed to Ys just in case someone needs the best damn medical care in the Nine Kingdoms (anything up to and including death’s door); and there’s Nova, who works for Kikil now, looking good with her shock of blue hair standing out against the Tesla jumpsuit; and even Sainbec, shirtless and more cat than ever, betting some of his outrageously gaudy rings against The Duke’s stake.

But that’s not what Rose is always going to remember from visiting Rahn’s again. No, it’s The Duke off-handedly mentioning that he always knew. And Rose asked: that I’d lose to a princess? And she let her hair down loose, all silver-and-black, and filled out her silver-and-black vest, and gave Rose a [i]ladykiller[/i] of a look, and smiled: not the gaudy smile, not the completely self-assured smile, not the we-can-figure-this-out-without-resorting-to-violence smile, but the kindest, gentlest smile she had on tap.

“You know what I mean,” she said, and then touched her cards to Rose’s veil in a way that made her brain overheat. That’s The Duke for you. She could run her own kingdom if she was into that these days. But it’d be impossible to extricate the part of her that didn’t want that responsibility and still have The Duke, so here she is, playing hands in Rahn’s.

Which is why, when she’s ambushed on her way back, almost floating on air, her first reaction to being challenged to a duel is an unreasonable spike of fear. What if Yue is insulted that Rose won’t go all out? But what if Rose [i]does[/i] go all out, in front of a crowd, no less, and then everybody knows about Princess Chen’s amazing swordwoman bodyguard who probably needs to be encouraged to work for them by putting Chen in peril? What if she’s too strong for this to last? What if, what if, what if? Does she even deserve to use this sword?

But that plea in Yue’s face is too precious, too earnest, to refuse. “All right,” she says, with a curtsey. “I am happy to serve,” she adds, with another little thrill. Then, to Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, she bows and asks: “what are the rules?” Because if she has rules, she can stay within them. If she has rules, then she can be an ordinary sort of swordswoman, maybe even a cute one. If she’s allowed to be just an exceptional handmaiden, oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Not a weapon that any of these travelers would kill to possess, but just the best Rose that Chen could ask for?

Besides, everyone knows that foxes give out reasonable rules and requests. [i]Everybody.[/i] No further questions about Rose and foxes are allowed at this time! None!!

She flicks her wrist in that special way— still got it!— and the sword becomes—

It’s a scimitar. A very Ysian scimitar. With a snowflake-patterned guard, and thorns worked up and down the blade. A sword for Chen’s Rose. Behind her veil, Rose bites her lip and lets out the tiniest squeak over how her own sword has betrayed her. How dare you, moon sword? This is a completely unjustified betrayal, and now she’s going to have to change her style completely!!