Cyril did not hesitate to expound upon the finer points of cat ownership, despite the fact that the Derisas had never, in fact, owned a cat. They were owner-adjacent, baby-sitters and house-watchers and friends to neighborhood strays, which he insisted was enough. As he highlighted for Quinn the various joys of animal friendships, there was a conspiratorial lilt to his voice, the idea that she might not be alone in her desires.

“Alas,” he lamented, with all the drama and tragique of a dying soliloquy. “Camille would murder us. And probably keep the cat.”

Sybil remained quiet throughout, though she secretly shared the sentiment. Sometimes their little corner of the Ange could feel so sterile; a little fuzz wouldn’t hurt. Truly though—and she would not have admitted it at gunpoint—there was a genuineness in Quinn’s reaction that had affected her deeply. She hadn’t gushed compliments, hadn’t waxed on about avant garde approaches to color theory, or tried to analyze her brushing technique. She’d just looked at the painting, and felt something very strongly.

When Sybil did paint for others, which was not as often as everyone seemed to think, that was thereabouts what she wanted from it.

Reluctantly, she began to understand why Cyril thought so kindly of the Runan pilot. He spent so much of his life on stage, pretending, and often he complained to her about the same sorts of things she despised about her newfound fame in the art world. No one, really, ever seemed genuine.

Eventually their little reprieve ended. The twins were called away to their various duties, and before long the evening came, and Quinn was ushered back into the CSC’s zone, to a commandeered motel. She was given her own room with all its amenities, with the other pilots a few doors down—minus Camille, who would be gone late, attending briefings for tomorrow's duel. Beyond the cordon the party went on, lights and voices in the dark that wouldn’t dim for hours yet, if they did at all.

But here, at least for the time being, things were quieter. Save for the bootsteps outside Quinn’s room. Toussaint had seen fit to increase the security presence, and so every entrance and exit was manned, every floor patrolled in regular intervals. But her responsibilities, vague though they were, were done for the night.

Upon finally reentering the CSC zone, Quinn let out a long, shaky breath. The time she'd spent with the Derisas had helped immensely, and she'd spent the remaining few hours trying to paradoxically be part of the crowd, yet skirt around it as much as possible. It was...not the easiest thing to do, and her nerves were screwed up so tightly she thought her whole body would snap. As the sun had begun to dip down over the bay she had been filled with a terrified crushing sensation that someething truly awful was about to happen. And so being escorted away from the crowd and into her quiet room was a balm on her raw soul.

And it was the right kind of quiet, too. Not silent, but Aerie quiet, where she could occasionally hear Besca or Dahlia clattering in the kitchen or filtering in and out of the dorm at odd times; or Roaki...growling in her sleep? That kind of quiet, where the occasional boots in the hallways outside became more of a comforting metronome than provoking any kind of anxiety.

Her door was cracked open just half an inch or so, not as much as she wished but hopefully little enough that it would keep most of the noise inside as she flopped down on her bed and let out a combination of a sigh and a groan. She let her eye slide closed for a brief moment, focusing on the bootstep metronome, as she tried to excise the tension from her body. And failed in spectacular fashion, an instinctual part of her still convinced deep down that the screaming was going to start from outside any second. Well, at least Camille couldn't fault her for trying, and she hadn't had a breakdown.

Well. At least it had been a week since she arrived in Casoban. And that meant...

She plucked her phone from where she'd haphazardly let it drop on the hotel nightstand, leaned back against the plush hotel pillow, entered her contacts list, and tapped on the very first name: Besca.

It rang once, twice, thrice, then was picked up on the fourth ring. Quinn's voice, when she spoke, had a familiar character to it: a thin, reedy thing, the unfulfilled but burgeoning promise of tears looming behind her.

"Hi, Besca..."

“You what?”

Besca became briefly, shamefully aware that the door to her office was open. A few bridge personnel craned their heads to peak inside, confused, concerned, curious. She gave them an apologetic look, then quickly shut the door. It would be soundproof now, but she still tried to wrangle her temper in, just in case.

“I offered them the alliance,” Toussaint said. “Well, I was approved to offer it to them, then I did it. Effective immediately, the CSC would cease any and all cooperation with RISC, and Casoban would begin nullifying the past decade or so worth of trade agreements between us and Runa. We would, effectively if not officially, become a vassal state to Eusero.”

“Why.”

“Because they didn’t expect it. Because the Casobani people would likely riot under whatever new agreements they’d have needed to endure. Mostly, though, because I knew Eusero wouldn’t accept.”

It seemed restraining herself had been the right call after all. Normally she’d have known better than to underestimate Jaime. As aggravating and sycophantic as he could sometimes be, it was easy to forget that he was her peer for a reason.

He seemed to take her silence for permission to expound. “You should have seen the treatise, Besca, it would have made you ill. We’d have ceded almost everything, forsaken every connection outside of Eusero’s umbrella. They’d have been the exclusive recipient of all our resources, at a rate that would have made Selen Dane blush. And we only asked for one thing.”

“Cantimine.” she muttered.

“Cantimine,” he agreed. “They denied the request ten minutes after I sent it. I imagine that wasn’t a second longer than it took to reach Dane’s desk. They aren’t even reporting on it. Imagine how humiliating it would be for Casoban, and Runa, to air a deal that desperate. But not a peep.”

Besca sat back in her desk. None of this made sense; Cantimine belonged to Eusero, but according to Toussaint, whatever signal had breached the Ange’s systems originated from Cantimine. Led them right to it—whatever it was. If Eusero was hiding something in the town, why in the world would they leave a trail of breadcrumbs leading right to their doorstep, then pretend like nothing had happened? Why fight so hard to protect a secret they’d leaked?

“Regardless,” Toussaint said, pulling her back. “Dane surely suspects we know something, or at least that there’s something to know. This won’t end with the duel tomorrow, I’m sure, regardless of how it goes.”

“And how is it going to go?”

He sighed, she heard his chair creak. “They rejected a nation to keep ahold of Cantimine. I expect they intend to win. Romeo or Faltiste would be my guess.”

“They’d look desperate sending their best pilots to a dispute like this.”

“True enough. Anyone in their top ten would give them a decent shot. Camille is talented, but, well, we’ve avoided conflicts with Eusero for a reason. Besca.”

“Hm?”

“You understand that neither of us can afford to let this alone.”

Besca scoffed. “I think the fact that you’ve got half our pilots with you states pretty clearly that we’re not abandoning you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Toussaint said. “If we fail tomorrow, you need to take up the torch. Not for Casoban’s sake, for Runa’s. The signal that got through here…something is wrong. I have a feeling they’re going to push, even if we win. If they posture, send Romeo, or, I don’t know, whatever they do—do not back down.”

It was a tall order. Toussaint was, essentially, asking her to risk Dragon—risk Dahlia—over this town. Over something that they didn’t even know was anything.

Over something that had scared Quinn.

Quinn. Quinn was calling her. Right now. Besca scrambled out of her seat, fumbling with her phone to make sure she was seeing right.

“Besca?” Toussaint asked. “Is everything alright?”

“Peachy,” she said. “I gotta go, Jaime. Good luck tomorrow, I’ll keep what you said in mind, uh, I’ll—yeah, you got it. Gotta go. Bye.”

“But—”

She hung up, steadied herself with a few breaths, then swiped ‘Accept’ on her phone. “Hey hun,” she said, as casually as she could. “How’s it going down there? Everything alright?”

And as nice as it was to hear the girl’s voice again, it became quickly clear that, as was so often the case with Quinnlash, no, everything was not alright.

For a moment, Quinn didn't know how to respond. Long enough to for the silence to drag, to be filled with a unpleasant anticipation. "I know," she began haltingly, "that being in Cantimine is supposed to be a...vacation for me, I think. But...It's just..." She clenched the phone tigher in a whitening hand and took a long, shaky breath, staring up at the hotel's unfamiliar ceiling. She was starting to get tired of looking at unfamiliar ceilings, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to be back in the Aerie dorms where she could bury her head in Besca's shoulder instead of waiting a week for a phonee call. "The--the small town. The...street festival. The crowds. The water."

Her voice's trembling grew more pronounced, and she levered herself upright, wrapping her left arm around her knees and pulling them tight to her chest while she still held her phone in her right She sqeeezed her eye shut as hard as she could, trying her best to stave off the frantic tears that she could feel burgeoning--that she'd felt burgeoning for hours now. "And--and--then the s-sun started setting and...it was like...like--" She clenched her teeth tight, the sounds coming through the phone reduced to breaths rendered shallow by an almost atavistic fear.

"I don't...remember most--most of...that night," she said after some moments, voice a strangled whisper. "But it's...enough."

Having said that, she made some attempt to get her breathing back under control. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In--it wasn't working, she could't--and all at once, she surged into out-and-out hyperventilation as she reached a hand up to cover her face. The terror that she'd bottled up over the course of the day came rushing out all out once, and her tightly wound nerves snapped. "And it's like dark bitter water and sickness and the smell of blood and smoke and fire and a sound like thunder--"

She clapped her hand over her mouth, forcing herself to suck harsh breaths in through her teeth------

Besca listened quietly. It was all she could do, really; an unpleasant reality she’d thus far been able to bury under the mountain of other unpleasant realities. Quinn might as well have been across the sun for how far apart they were, how impossible it would be to reach her, and as someone with a scientific background and an extensive history ceding to futility, she should have been able to boldly face the fact that there was nothing she could do.

She couldn’t, of course.

But there wasn’t room for two breakdowns, and anyway, the thought of slipping into despair in front of Quinn filled her with an unmanageable amount of dread. So she shelved those impulses for now and decided to drown them in coffee later.

She should have seen this coming, frankly. Cantimine shared too many similarities with Hovvi for this to go any other way. If it had been Dahlia down there instead, Besca would probably have needed to make this call herself just to make sure. At least with Quinn, she could always count on the girl to be upfront with what was bothering her. A selfish part of her lamented that, but it was the part that demanded she do her job in the cold, effective way that the Euserans or Helburkans did. If RISC had those resources, those numbers, she wondered how long it would have taken them to churn through Quinn and Dahlia for quicker, frictionless alternatives. The answer was not optimistic.

When Quinn’s paper-thin composure finally gave way, there was nothing for several moments but quick, panicked breathing. Besca shut her eyes, resisted the urge to pull the phone away from her ear; sometimes it felt like her own lungs took the cue to shrivel up and choke her from the inside out.

“I—” she cleared her throat. “I understand, hun. I do. When I first got to Runa, for a long time I didn’t…uhm…” again, more hoarsely. “I had trouble visiting big cities, being on boats, seeing Saviors. I spent a lot of time on the Aerie out of…self-defense, I guess. It never really went away, you just…see more of how a place is rather than what you remember it could be. See the people as people, instead of shadows. See Saviors instead of monsters. It’s…hard.”

She sighed. When she was little, she used to wish the world was a gentler place, and after Westwel, she settled for wishing it was a place she could survive in. It wasn’t that she’d stopped wanting a kinder world, she’d just given up on it. Until Dahlia, until Quinn. Now, especially right now, she found herself wishing she could say more than what she needed to.

“I want to tell you that Hovvi will never happen again. That you’ll never see anything so terrible in your life, and that you’ll always be able to stop the tragedies before they happen. I…can’t, tell you that. I can’t promise you that. I should, I know, maybe that’s what you need to hear right now, but I wouldn’t believe it.

“What I do believe, from the bottom of my heart, is that there’s no one I would trust more to try. I don’t think a single person on this planet would fight harder, for the right reasons. Maybe you can’t understand how much that means right now, but for me it means a lot. This business with Casoban isn’t forever, Cantimine isn’t forever, but there will always be another fight. All I can tell you is that you will never be in those fights alone. Not really. Not ever.”