[b]Piripiri![/b]

Oh, Emli doesn’t blush! She’s been trained very well. Smooth as butter, flicking a stray lick of hair over her shoulder with an ever-so-slightly shaky hand. “It was before,” the northerner says, and isn’t her slight twinge of accent adorable? “I don’t know [i]how[/i] long I spent there before, well, the crash, the plummet, the, the [i]terror![/i]” A technical truth, hiding the simpler one: it wasn’t much time at all. That’s the direction of the misdirect; people assume that any unaccountable length of time must have been long.

“What [i]happened?[/i]” Now she’s pivoting, changing the subject. Except… no. Maybe? She might be sincere. She [i]is[/i] softhearted. But you can’t be sure. “Is everyone all right? Did Lady Cathak save us?”

What did happen? Who really deserves the credit for saving lives on the barge, Pipi?

[hr]

[b]Kalaya![/b]

Petony is not a woman given to much introspection. “I wanted to kick ass,” she says, pretty much immediately. “Why do you care so much?” But there might be more to it than that; something complicated underneath that she’s just not sharing with you. Not unless you use that mind of yours, think hard, and suss her out.

She doesn’t want you to, though. She doesn’t want to hear that you can’t sleep or more questions or any nonsense like that. She wants you to shut up and sit down and pretend to sleep so she doesn’t have to worry about you, and so that she doesn’t have to grapple with questions over how culpable she is for putting you in that position, and how she feels about the whole thing. She wants to be free to go steal someone’s wine and drink until it’s gone or she’s passed out. And you’re standing between her and just that, so if you’ve got a plan, it had better be a good one.

[hr]

[b]Giriel![/b]

Go ahead and take a mixed beat on Comfort and Support, as if Naji had opened up. And she does. She curls up on that massive tail of hers and sips tea with all the demure elegance of a proper maid. Maybe she’ll make it in the world yet. It’s always wonderful when someone makes the world a little bit brighter by being themselves.

But then, oh, here comes the Hero, distraught and disheveled. “Giriel,” Agata says, with a smile. “Giriel, I’m so glad you’re safe.” She takes you by the hand (dregs of tea are nearly spilled) and squeezes it firmly. “You can find them, can’t you? Han and Lotus, they must have been tossed from the barge, they need our help— you can find them. I know you can.”

And you can. That’s true enough. But it will require bargaining with those things that know, the spirits of the high airs and the wild rain, and you would need to be at your best to avoid even more disaster coming down on your heads.

But just look at Agata. Does it look like that’s what she wants to hear?

[hr]

[b]Zhaojun![/b]

“I will never be worthy of that scepter,” the Maid Confined hisses, bitterly, “not until I [i]defeat[/i] you!” And she hisses, her stockings torn, her eyes wild, her mood feral.

She flips you over, has you by the wrists, knots the ruined stockings around them— this, a compression of minutes of pathetic, clawing, desperate fighting, and fumbling, and rain getting everywhere, because it’s the Flower Kingdoms, and the rain does that, and the Maid spits and fumbles with the hair flopping into her eyes.

Then she stands up and tries to roar. It’s not very good and her throat goes hoarse halfway through. “I won,” she says. “I won, I…”

She stops. You turn yourself up on your side. She looks small, frustrated, like a mortal. Then her eyes alight on you. “But you haven’t [i]admitted[/i] I won.”

She scoops the mask up— she drops the mask in the mud, makes a keening noise, wraps her fingers up in her apron, picks the mask up again. “If you want this back,” she says, “then keep up.”

How badly do you want to keep that mask, Fengye? Because she’ll walk you until you’re both exhausted, at a snail’s pace, into the reeking jungle.

(And if you give out, exhausted, broken, unable to keep going… she’ll double back and drag you to somewhere that’s almost dry. The world does not get to defeat you.)

[hr]

[b]Han![/b]

“I’m just saying, [i]Han[/i], that between the cats and the [i]musicians[/i],” she says, as if that was not [i]one[/i] time, “you seem to attract [i]trouble.[/i]”

Then, suddenly, a redirecting, an ambush from another angle. “But maybe I am being too harsh. If she’s this bedraggled and desperate, maybe she’d appreciate seeing a sister in the veil, hmm? I could offer the poor dear some help, maybe even come [i]with[/i] you. Wouldn’t that be just [i]blooming?[/i]”

And she does the sassy little head tilt of I Won And You Have To Grumble But Behave Now.