Redana folds her hands over her chest and thinks about standing up. Her head informs her that if she even so much as thinks about it, it will unfurl the banners of revolution and overthrow her seat of consciousness in a glorious upheaval: red banners fluttering between the spires of her mind palace, the doors flung open wide for the common blood vessels to track their crimson boots on the carpeting, and where was she going with this?

"I don't need a detective," she opens her mouth to say. Instead, what comes out is: "Her name's Bella and she's used to be my maid. She's somewhere on the ship and she's alive because she braided my hair but when I woke up she was gone. And I know she left because ever after I left home, it turned out that she isn't just a maid, she's also an assassin, but the kind that only kills people that get in her way. I don't know what her school is. I don't think there's a maid assassin school. She must have learned it when she was [i]very[/i] young, but I don't know when she found the time to keep doing assassin training? Imagine if she learned everything when she was a baby but then it was all thrown off by being an adult? And she's been chasing me all the way from Tellus and then on Salib she was taken by the Master of Assassins and locked in armor and when I broke her out we fought her together and she's still there, and I [i]hate[/i] how many people we left behind, and even the ones that came back onto the ship with us, they came back changed, and if I hadn't told Hades I would do this none of this would have happened, but now that we're here it would be a [i]waste[/i] if we didn't keep going, so we really have to keep going, and it's all on me to keep us going."

She stops talking for a little bit and stares at nothing, her Auspex-- her mother's eye analyzing, disassembling, making a hundred decisions about how to keep ninety-nine things away from her. Her body is heavy and intensely here, right here, right now, in a way that her mind isn't; scrabbling, trying to figure out the next step.

"She was mean," Redana admits again. "To Vasilia. To me. I don't know if she ever wants to see me again. I failed her over and over again. But she won't even let me catch up and try to talk to her about it. There is so [i]much[/i] to apologize for, from the kiss, to what happened on Salib, and that also had a kiss, and when we left her on that awful station, I don't even know how she got off it, and she doesn't know that I tried to turn the ship [i]around[/i] to go and get her, and that went so badly that-- and Mynx, I haven't found her again either. Everything is fallen apart and awful and all I have are these brass knuckles because my Magos told me I should challenge you if I found you, but you don't even [i]remember[/i] Bella..."

Should she even be talking to Beautiful about her? The brass knuckles are heavy on her hands. Because it's inevitable, isn't it? When Bella sees the two of them, gets to compare them against each other?

It's just that she has to apologize. She needs to see Bella again and explain everything. Even if she's doomed to lose.

"Bella is a feline servitor," she loops back. "She used to be my maid. Then she was an assassin and my hunter. Now she's on the ship, after we saved her from being a weapon on Sahar. I need to find her. I thought she liked small spaces where she could find some privacy, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. She's got more to her than I knew, and... I thought she was going to come with me. I thought we were going to have an adventure. And when she hit me, I panicked. But I was going to come back. I was going to bring her the stars. Please help me find her. I [i]have[/i] to try and apologize. Please."