Low Dodge, High Soak

[00:36] <VoxPVoxD>
[00:36] <VoxPVoxD>
[00:36] <VoxPVoxD>
[00:36] <VoxPVoxD>
[00:36] <VoxPVoxD>
[00:38] <VoxPVoxD> Whew! Long night. It's quite late when Piu withdraws from the conspiracy nook and makes her subtle way back to the palace proper. But she's feeling better, and at this point the foul taste in her mouth is figurative at worst. What's on her agenda?
[00:39] <Crion> Check the harbor to make sure Moray hasn't docked and...otherwise she's pretty much free, at least until Dryas returns with a plan.
[00:39] <Crion> So it'd be back to her room with Caedus, who is still out and about.
[00:41] <VoxPVoxD> None of the Four Fangs know what the Keystone looks like, so she can't be sure, but there's no sign of any undead pirate lords, and you'd have to assume there'd be something. Caedus has some business to take care of, yet, so Piu finds her suite empty. Despite the hour there are lights beneath almost all of the doors of rooms allotted to the Defiance's staff and crew, so it seems
[00:41] <VoxPVoxD> like no one else particularly wants to sleep either.
[00:43] <Crion> Well, it could be time for another bath. Though she has to weigh which of the other crewmembers she'd like to bathe with naked right now. Not for her comfort but for theirs. Maybe the twins are still up...
[00:45] <VoxPVoxD> She's in luck -- or perhaps they are.
[00:47] <VoxPVoxD> The light's also on in Garnet, Sadako, and Seiri's room, in Ratel's room...
[00:47] <Crion> No, no. Pleasure can wait. Besides, they don't seem that into it.
[00:47] <Crion> Ratel always is, of course; something of a problem there.
[00:49] <Crion> ...There's some unfinished business with Garnet. There always will be, of course, but 'hiding in the washroom' is taking the woman's antipathy for Piu to a whole new level.
[00:50] <Crion> Still, she can hardly barge into their apartment and demand reconciliation.
[00:54] <VoxPVoxD> Maybe not, but she can probably poke her head in if the door opens... which it does, with Sadako and Seiri emerging into the hallway, hand in hand. Is Piu visible to them?
[00:55] <Crion> Yes, and thanks to her reflexes she's casually emerging from her room as well, rather than looming in the hallway in the shadows.
[00:57] <VoxPVoxD> "Lady Piu!" She's stunned and then mortified when she remembers the hour, and when she speaks again it's in a hush. "Lady Piu!! You're feeling better!"
[00:58] <Crion> A gentle, tired smile. She can still pull those off from time to time. "Yes, a bit. The Blood is strong and a little frog poison isn't going to kill me."
[00:58] <Crion> "Of course, I had a bit more than a little, so...taking it easy. Was headed to the baths, maybe...unless you two are heading there to be alone."
[00:58] <Crion> "In which case I can reschedule."
[00:59] <VoxPVoxD> Sadako doesn't whisper, but her voice is naturally menacingly quiet anyway. "We're gonna go get some wine. You want anything from the bar?"
[01:00] <Crion> "Wine sounds good!"
[01:00] <VoxPVoxD> Seiri: "Lady Garnet might like a bath, if you think it's safe for her."
[01:00] <Crion> "How is Garnet? I thought we might chat."
[01:00] <Crion> "Hrm. There's no reason it shouldn't be."
[01:01] <VoxPVoxD> Sadako: "What kind of wine do you like? I don't know what kinds there are."
[01:02] <Crion> "Red. Dark red. Want it to taste like a desert."
[01:02] <Crion> Piu's fairly certain Sadako doesn't know what a 'malbec' is, and that it's not even called that out here.
[01:03] <VoxPVoxD> Sadako: "Like sand?"
[01:03] <VoxPVoxD> Seiri shakes her head. "I know what you mean. Come along, Sadako."
[01:04] <VoxPVoxD> Sadako affects a remarkably good Caxi-like drawl. "Do lead on."
[01:04] <VoxPVoxD> Seiri snickers and the two walk off.
[01:04] <Crion> Hah. Adorable. What a good decision it was to facilitate that. This leaves Piu to sigh to herself and knock at Garnet's door.
[01:07] <VoxPVoxD> The door opens a crack and Piu's stormcloud eyes meet Garnet's... let's call them crimson, for discretion's sake. "Lady Piu," she says. "Is everything alright?"
[01:07] <Crion> Piu: "Yes. I wanted to know if maybe you wanted to try out the bath."
[01:07] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Is it secure?"
[01:08] <Crion> "It was earlier, when Dryas and I used it. And it will be this time, once I'm there."
[01:09] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Very well. Come in."
[01:09] <Crion> She'll do so.
[01:12] <VoxPVoxD> The room is very tidy - Piu's certain that the first thing Garnet did after the girls left was make the bed. You could bounce a coin off it now. Garnet says, "Let me get the jar and some clothes to change into - are you well? You were in quite a state a scant few hours ago."
[01:13] <Crion> "I'm better. Well enough to do hygiene, at least."
[01:13] <Crion> "It's a wonder what some unladylike induced vomitting can achieve."
[01:14] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Good. That's good. The girls were very worried."
[01:18] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet comes out of the dressing room a couple of minutes later with an armful of clothes. "I'm afraid I have to impose on you to carry the jar, but these should fit in the bag." They do! The jar is now covered from all sides.
[01:18] <Crion> "Absolutely." Hup.
[01:23] <VoxPVoxD> Piu and Garnet aren't stopped or questioned on the way down to the baths, though they do turn heads - living and dead. One supposes they're used to that. Once they pass some very indiscreet nobles enjoying themselves, they're able to find a steamy, incense-smelling bath chamber they can keep to themselves.
[01:24] <Crion> "Ahhh." Piu will position the jar appropriately to give Garnet full access to the pool and as much of the surrounding environs as possible, then sort of pad around it with towels to keep it from completely covering in condensation and prevent it from being tipped over.
[01:26] <VoxPVoxD> "Oh, towels, that's smart. Do you think it's safe to take this off?" she's gesturing around her head in a vaguely circular motion, indicating either the veil or that she's insane.
[01:28] <Crion> Piu glances around, and when she's sure they're not being observed, "Yes, I think so."
[01:29] <VoxPVoxD> "Thank the gods." The veil comes off too, and the Scarlet Empress - or a stunning facsimile, groans in relief as she sinks into the hot water. "I haven't gotten to wash my hair in... centuries, I suppose."
[01:30] <Crion> Meanwhile, she'll slip out of her robe and into the water on the opposite side of the bath and the steam. "Mmmm. I suppose the officer's washroom on the Defiance would have been too public..."
[01:31] <VoxPVoxD> After bobbing beneath the water and resurfacing, "The Commodore thought it was, at least."
[01:31] <VoxPVoxD> "She seems very skittish."
[01:32] <Crion> Public for some things and not others, I guess. Out loud: "We've put her in a very weird position, given who we're chasing and why."
[01:32] <VoxPVoxD> "You mean me?"
[01:33] <Crion> "Believe it or not, we're not actually chasing you!" Piu sighs. "We're chasing the person who thinks she's chasing you. And seems to have gone quite mad."
[01:34] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Oh?"
[01:34] <Crion> "I kind of get the impression that Ratel and Peleps Furia had it out once, and Furia made it clear who had the position in that family and who didn't."
[01:34] <VoxPVoxD> "...oh."
[01:36] <Crion> "Plus, one of Ratel's kids is in her fleet. Was. Now she's in Dryas's, after an attempt to flee the mad admiral and some nonsense from before you joined us involving a cult and an evil magic box."
[01:36] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Another one?"
[01:37] <Crion> Piu laughs. "What's the first? I dispute that your jar is evil."
[01:39] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I suppose evil is a matter of perspective as much as anything else. I can't imagine it has any purpose but the nefarious."
[01:39] <VoxPVoxD> "I can't imagine I do."
[01:41] <Crion> Piu leans back. "I've always seen it as a matter of outcomes, not intent. Evil, that is. Good as well but most of my life it's been beside the point to wonder about fanciful things like 'good.'"
[01:42] <Crion> "I'd say, in the brief time we've known each other, you've done pretty well for yourself staying out of the evil column, even if that doesn't put you in the good one."
[01:44] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "If evil is a matter of consequence and not intent, then it's not really possible for me to be evil, is it? I can't do anything."
[01:45] <Crion> While politically speaking, for the world at large, it is probably for the best to plague the Scarlet Empress with crippling depression, it does make hanging out with her a bit of a drag.
[01:46] <VoxPVoxD> "Where would you sort yourself?"
[01:46] <Crion> "I think that's an ungenerous reading of your capabilities, fueled by some pretty bad circumstances where you end up cooped up in a room all day."
[01:46] <Crion> Without hesitation: "I'm not a good person. I try not to be evil."
[01:47] <Crion> "I have to convince myself those two things can co-exist."
[01:47] <Crion> "And I don't think my outcomes are evil."
[01:48] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "You seem broadly successful. It helps that the world is so filled with people who can be hurt with a clean conscience."
[01:48] <Crion> Piu: "That it does."
[01:49] <Crion> "A woman responsible for my education once told me I wasn't a weapon made for peacetime, but to be glad, because I was born into a world that would only know war."
[01:50] <Crion> "There was a lot of stuff like that, really."
[01:50] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "She sounds like someone no one would feel guilt about killing, as well."
[01:50] <VoxPVoxD> "Was it me?"
[01:51] <Crion> Piu laughs. "No, no. Ancestors, no. This was a shitty old spinster who's now a shitty old spymaster for House V'neef."
[01:51] <Crion> "They called her 'the Maudlin Tutor,' and she did that thing extremely lame people do, where she embraced the nickname."
[01:52] <Crion> "No, you and I did not have the pleasure of meeting until you first laid eyes upon me in that tower and tossed a bar of iron at me."
[01:53] <VoxPVoxD> "I suppose, knowing what little I know of you now, that you at least considered killing me on the spot."
[01:53] <Crion> Piu: "Absolutely not."
[01:53] <Crion> "Now, it was for cynical reasons, certainly."
[01:54] <Crion> "The usual 'you're worth more alive than dead' calculations. And also, I don't have the authority to make that kind of decision myself."
[01:54] <Crion> "But I've never had the animosity for your person that I've had for your empire."
[01:55] <Crion> Staring up at the ceiling. "It takes a lot of people, and a lot of work, to build that much greatness and suffering. No matter how much the teachers -- both for and against -- insisted it was you."
[01:55] <Crion> "And you alone."
[01:56] <Crion> "But I grew up seeing the Realm at work in the Threshold -- in military campaigns and border genocides -- instead of in the seats of power."
[01:58] * Quits: mattbaby (Quit: My MacBook has gone to sleep. ZZZzzz…)
[01:59] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "And yet, surrounded as I am by the people who ought to have benefited most from those crimes... I just see more suffering. Madness. Misery. Dire compulsion."
[01:59] <VoxPVoxD> "Droch bhrògan air bean greusaiche, droch cruidhean air each gobha, droch bhriogais air gille tàilleir, droch chart aig saor."
[02:01] <Crion> Piu can mostly follow that, and grimaces.
[02:04] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Suppose we find some way to break that Empyreal lock. Some way to put the Sword of Creation in my hand."
[02:04] <VoxPVoxD> "What would you have me do then?"
[02:06] <Crion> Piu: "I am comfortable trying to free you from that jar because I'm fairly well-convinced that what I or my handlers would have you do is immaterial."
[02:07] <Crion> "Which is something I haven't really told them about yet. They're probably under the impression we're going to set you up as some figurehead warlord out here to bait the Realm."
[02:11] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I think I might enjoy that. Waging war against the Realm."
[02:11] <VoxPVoxD> "It doesn't sound like there's much worth saving."
[02:12] <VoxPVoxD> "A monster of an Empress, whose children are monsters, breeding and training monsters to lay waste to the world from the center outwards..."
[02:12] <Crion> Piu: "There's all the people who don't matter."
[02:12] <VoxPVoxD> "Does the Realm do right by them?"
[02:12] <Crion> "Some nice music, too."
[02:13] <Crion> Piu snorts. "The Realm fulfills obligations. It does not do right."
[02:13] <Crion> "And now with civil war looming, it doesn't even manage the former."
[02:14] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Seiri gave me a gift earlier tonight. From that wine-bellied troubadour, apparently. It was an album of sheet music from another bard. Very prettily made."
[02:14] <VoxPVoxD> "Guess what her name was."
[02:14] <Crion> "If you're a peasant, your sons are for the fields and your daughters are for the shops; if you're patrician, your sons are for the dynasts' beds and your daughters are for the dynasts' offices. So it goes."
[02:15] <Crion> Piu smiles. "Xia Lan." She says it with the southern accent the name would come with, since that's where the famous iconoclast bard is supposedly from, rather than the prim Realm pronounciation.
[02:15] <Crion> "'The Unfettered,' if I recall."
[02:15] <VoxPVoxD> Xia Lan: "That's right."
[02:16] <VoxPVoxD> "The album was signed. She writes her name so that the characters resemble a broken chain."
[02:16] <Crion> "A revolutionary in the Faerie War on Nexus, who overthrew the city's corruption while saving it, then ran off with her dashing outcaste lover. Or some say, banished Cathak. I forget."
[02:16] <VoxPVoxD> "And an Old One as well."
[02:17] <VoxPVoxD> "Caxi was all too eager to tell me."
[02:17] <Crion> Piu laughs. "Yes. Well. We try not to fight those."
[02:17] <Crion> "They tend to win."
[02:18] <VoxPVoxD> "Quite a strange mix of songs. Some of them are poignant and spiritual. Some of them are achingly sad. And some of them are deliriously erotic."
[02:21] <Crion> Piu: "We were taught in school that they personified impetuous excess and spirtual overdosing, unable to exist virtuously in the world because of too much feeling. There always seemed to be an ulterior motive behind those lessons. They were never evil because they had terrifying power such that one could clear a whole village of peasants with fire merely by wishing it so. Because,
[02:21] <Crion> after all, so could the Dynasts."
[02:22] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Yes. That was the same education I had. It was not power that corrupted them - never that! think of the implications! - but perfection."
[02:22] <VoxPVoxD> "I never met one. I was taught that they were wiped from the world, and as far as I knew they were."
[02:22] <VoxPVoxD> "But it seems they weren't, or that they returned."
[02:23] <Crion> Piu: "They're rising once again. Shortly after the Empress disappeared, if you believe the stories. Or shortly before."
[02:24] <Crion> "Depending on whether the teller wishes to indict the Anathema for disappearing the Empress, or blame the Empress for bringing back the Anathema."
[02:24] <VoxPVoxD> "Where do you fall?"
[02:34] <Crion> Piu: "Where I'm told to. But, slightly more usefully, I have no patience or stomach for religious nonsense about the Anathema. They exist, they're powerful, we assess that power and we deal with it. Sentiment only where sentiment is worthy."
[02:35] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Do you see yourself as a free woman?"
[02:36] <Crion> Piu: "No. But I would feel guilt calling myself a slave."
[02:36] <Crion> "My prison has no bars and many pleasures. But I am not free."
[02:37] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "We're alike in that way."
[02:38] <VoxPVoxD> "After I took the second breath my life changed dramatically. Improved in every way. Every decision made for my benefit, my comfort, my satisfaction. But none of them made by me. And each of them came with strings, or chains."
[02:38] <VoxPVoxD> "The fettered Xia Lan."
[02:38] <Crion> She nods. She didn't want to be the one to say it. Too much resemblance to 'we're alike, you and I' moments from the scrolls Seiri reads.
[02:39] <VoxPVoxD> "All I ever wanted was the one thing it was impossible to have. A big family and no one to tell me how to run it. How to raise my children."
[02:39] <VoxPVoxD> "Someone saw fit to grant that wish."
[02:39] <VoxPVoxD> "I want to gut them like a fish."
[02:39] <Crion> Piu: "In the stories, most of the time that's when things start going wrong."
[02:40] <Crion> "But I don't even know what my wish granted would look like."
[02:40] <Crion> "I live for other people."
[02:40] <Crion> That's said flatly, with maybe a vague note of contempt.
[02:41] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "You seem well-liked. Loved, even. I think there's room in their wishes for you, whatever they may be."
[02:42] <Crion> "Well, that is the problem, isn't it? I'm well-liked and loved by the people I live with. Not by the people I live for. They've made their positions clear."
[02:43] <Crion> "Discipline applied with bruises, because scarring makes you worthless as a dancer or whore, and thereby restricts your cover. Watch the pigs die all afternoon; become comfortable with blood."
[02:43] <Crion> "Eventually the pigs become people. Eventually you do the killing."
[02:44] <Crion> "So it goes. Not even unique. These are tested techniques. Just boring."
[02:45] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "You do have very good skin."
[02:45] <VoxPVoxD> "I freckle terribly in the sun."
[02:45] <Crion> Piu chuckles. "I wouldn't be surprised if they engineered that too, somehow."
[02:48] <VoxPVoxD> "Why not run?"
[02:52] <VoxPVoxD> "The people who hold the far end of your chains are a world away, in the middle of a crumbling empire. People are lost a thousand ways. Apparently an entire navy has gone missing. And your bràmair would cover for you."
[02:54] <Crion> She sighs. "Eventually, after enough repetition -- after you've learned the rules of killing -- then you're allowed to start breaking them. To take risks that would otherwise be unacceptable because you know the precise balance of factors involved; to have such confidence in your ability to ad-lib that you can act with the audacity and compelling, winning immediacy of instinct and
[02:54] <Crion> still conclude with a plan. You become a woman of sheer, singular focus -- to the point where you're willing to do three lines of your own poisoned coke and suppress your body's own incredible resilience to make it actually hurt you. And you're doing it to cover the kill of slavemonger who just asked you if you were for sale, or merely for rent."
[02:55] <Crion> "In the end, in the way that I've been made, I like what I do. And I'm proud of my ability to do it. And if I ran, I'd just be doing it to the people who came looking for me, instead of the ones I think deserve it."
[02:56] <Crion> Piu: "So. Not a good person. But one who tries not to be evil."
[02:58] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "But it's made you so terribly cold."
[02:59] <Crion> Piu: "It has. But what is to be done about that now?"
[03:00] <VoxPVoxD> "If you enjoy who you are, then nothing need be done. The world is almost arranged to reward you."
[03:02] <Crion> Piu: "Only almost."
[03:02] <VoxPVoxD> "Mmm."
[03:03] <VoxPVoxD> "I don't know how any of you can stand to live like this. I don't know how you haven't all gone mad."
[03:03] <Crion> Piu: "Having said all of what I've just said out loud to someone else for the first time, I can't say I sounded very sane."
[03:04] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I disagree. Your reasoning is compelling. Almost irresistible."
[03:04] <VoxPVoxD> "To defy it would be madness."
[03:05] <VoxPVoxD> "And yet here I am, desperate to do just that. To see any other path."
[03:05] <Crion> "I suppose these days everyone lives in hot water, and learns to deal with it starting to boil."
[03:06] <VoxPVoxD> "I think sometimes about going for a walk, a long walk. As far as my legs will take me. So far that only by sheer blind luck could any living soul ever find me."
[03:07] <Crion> "I can understand the impulse."
[03:08] <Crion> Lightly: "Obviously, I strongly recommend against it; it will make Daizo quite cross to have to figure out how to find you and bring the jar to you once you're tired of it."
[03:09] <VoxPVoxD> "And you can understand, I think, why despite the impulse... here I still am. In a prison of someone else's design. On a voyage of unknown destination, in the service of a mission of uncertain end. Hoping that somewhere along the way something will feel good. Feel right."
[03:10] <VoxPVoxD> "We are not so different... but if I met myself on the road, I would slit her throat as soon as look at her."
[03:10] <Crion> Piu: "There's a blessed simplicity in that. I think if I met myself and tried to kill her it would become very tedious for both of us."
[03:12] <Crion> "...How much do you remember, against what you'd read in Seiri's books?"
[03:13] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "The last thing I remember is standing at the doors of the Mountain and Sea Palace. I was the sole survivor of my unit. The last, as far as I knew, of House Maheka. Perhaps the last woman in the entire world."
[03:13] <VoxPVoxD> "The world her books describe... I do not recognize. Even when they purport to describe things I *do* remember."
[03:14] <VoxPVoxD> "The daimyos' war. The plague. The invasion."
[03:14] <Crion> It's probably good that she's not remembering things that the Scarlet Empress did. The urge to ask her about the fall of House Iselsi would be overwhelming.
[03:15] <VoxPVoxD> "If I did remember more... what would you want to ask me?"
[03:15] <VoxPVoxD> "Ask your Empress?"
[03:17] <Crion> Piu: "Oh, silly things from history. Stuff that stood out in textbooks, or we bet on as kids. At Paisap's Stair they'd give us these essay questions, 'What do you think the Scarlet Empress would have done if...' and then this or that scenario. Clearly you're meant to answer the way the teacher and the school and the Realm want you to answer, and reason they phrase it like this is
[03:17] <Crion> weed out the kids who either can't pick up on subtext in their orders or like to act out. But I think you'd have a much different answer about what to do with a satrap whose dockworkers all decided as one to sit down and no longer work, no matter the threat or whip applied."
[03:18] <Crion> "The Empress from the bluebook made examples of their families."
[03:18] <Crion> "But you are not that woman."
[03:19] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Easy to say so. I haven't had the chance."
[03:19] <Crion> "And you got to read about what would happen if you did."
[03:20] <Crion> "The other you didn't get that opportunity. Sucks for her. Made her a piece of shit. But no reason you can't benefit from it. And no shame in it either."
[03:20] <VoxPVoxD> "You think she didn't know how it would turn out?" The question doesn't sound rhetorical.
[03:20] <Crion> Piu: "I think anyone in a position to tell her how it would turn out ahead of time was in a position to manipulate her with lies."
[03:21] <Crion> "And if you're not confident of perfect foresight in that moment before assuming power, I don't think she would have been either."
[03:26] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Is this the conversation you were hoping to have when you invited me down here? Caxi takes the view that I am in dire need of distraction. But I seem to keep forcing my preoccupations onto other people instead."
[03:28] <Crion> Piu: "It's in the neighborhood of that conversation. Or at least on the island. And perhaps you do, but you've got nowhere else to go and an existential dilemma of identity to confront. So it's understandable. How are the girls? Is Sadako still sulking?"
[03:30] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Yes. It's getting worse. Or perhaps she just hates me. But at least she hates me, and not the Scarlet Empress."
[03:31] <Crion> "Jealousy is a very difficult beast to break. I assume that you're not sleeping with either of them, and that somehow makes Sadako even angrier?"
[03:36] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet pulls a face. "Of course not. They're practically children. And they're so sweet together. Both taste and necessity inveigh against it. I think she might just resent that she has less time to spend with her leannan, because I so often have questions, or am bored... or lonely..."
[03:36] <VoxPVoxD> "Little Seiri is the only friend either of us has."
[03:37] <VoxPVoxD> "But Sadako's rage isn't half as terrifying as Daizo's. Did you see the hole he punched into my wall? Before explaining that I am broken beyond repair?"
[03:37] <Crion> Piu: "The straightforward solution seems to be to move them out of your room and institute a rotation, to give Sadako and Seiri time together. Of course then the question becomes, who else keeps you company? And how do we contend with the quite justified feeling you'll have that we're assigning you a series of minders and nannies? My solution, of course, is to find a way to free
[03:37] <Crion> you from the jar."
[03:38] <Crion> She frowns. "Daizo is...changing. Mostly in ways I like and respect, because I do not respect the Immaculate religion or its standardbearers."
[03:38] <Crion> "But seeing the world through eyes like ours, after a lifetime of monastic discipline and godly propaganda..."
[03:38] <Crion> "Yeah, there's gonna be some moments of rage."
[03:39] <Crion> "And I think he regrets that statement about you, since it comes from his previous life."
[03:39] <Crion> "Or at least the incessant hangups of it."
[03:41] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Even freed from the jar, I would be mad to go walkabout. I have no idea who would recognize me, by voice or face or even stance. The jar is a convenient excuse, but it's not safe for me or you or the very world if I were to go out or meet anyone new. For any purpose."
[03:41] <VoxPVoxD> "I thought he liked me at least a little. I even imagined I had a chance to pull him. But then that happened, and now I understand he's landed squarely in Caxi's lap."
[03:43] <Crion> Piu blinks. "So that's your type. Poor Samperson will be grumbly."
[03:44] <Crion> "I would not feel so bad; he's a sorceror know, and you know how those types stick together. It's not about you."
[03:44] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "There is nothing wrong with Samperson. But he's no more available than Daizo."
[03:45] <Crion> That gives Piu a long pause, then a sigh. "No, I suppose not."
[03:45] <Crion> "The work comes first."
[03:45] <Crion> "Only then are we allowed to."
[03:46] <VoxPVoxD> Now Garnet falls silent, studying Piu's face.
[03:47] <VoxPVoxD> "Yes. The work."
[03:49] <Crion> Piu: "He and I are, obviously, not exclusive. But that would be the problem, I suppose."
[03:52] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I don't think of myself as a jealous person. That wasn't a luxury women, even women in my position, got to have. The idea that a man would take only one lover was preposterous. But a man who has found, not a lover, but love... that's very different. To me. You both reassured me, independently, that there was no interfering feeling there."
[03:52] <VoxPVoxD> "I believed you. I didn't believe him."
[03:52] <VoxPVoxD> "Now I don't believe either of you."
[03:55] <Crion> Piu, a bit sadly: "It's not interfering for us at all."
[03:55] <Crion> "Sex and love have little to do with each other in the Realm. And nothing to do with each other in our training."
[03:56] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I believe you when you say that. But you can see why, from the outside, it reads very differently than a simple, casual coupling."
[03:57] <Crion> "...Yes."
[03:57] <Crion> Piu: "Well, there's always the twins."
[03:57] <Crion> "That means there's two of them, you know."
[03:58] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Mmm. But I think they view me as off-limits."
[03:58] <VoxPVoxD> "Perhaps the Commodore spoke to them."
[04:01] <Crion> Piu: "Yes, we've kept them out of the loop. They're good little boys about the whole Realm thing, and so the thinking was, with your identity...it would be more trouble than it's worth. But one of them recently took a mighty blow for the cause, and I can somewhat tell they're growing resentful of being openly treated like children when they're so obviously not. At this point I
[04:01] <Crion> think we'd be smarter to bring them in on it -- so the whole senior staff -- but I worry about deploying two giant labradors getting to meet someone who is, to all visual evidence, a near-religious hero figure of their lives, to your bedroom.
[04:01] <Crion> "Especially considering how you might feel about two young men asking you about how cool this or that atrocity was to do."
[04:02] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Do you think they'd have the nerve to say no, if they didn't want to?"
[04:02] <VoxPVoxD> "I don't know if I can afford to be pickier than that."
[04:03] <VoxPVoxD> "But I will be that picky at any cost."
[04:03] <VoxPVoxD> "Another reason I couldn't possibly lay a hand on Seiri even if I wanted to."
[04:04] <Crion> Piu: "That sounds like an impossible, absolutely ludicrous horny grade-school question to broach ahead of time. I could try, though."
[04:04] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet shakes her head. "They can't possibly know, themselves."
[04:04] <Crion> "I'm certain they've had it, though. I'm certain literally every male dynast who fancies women has had the 'would you fuck the Empress, bro?' conversation."
[04:05] <VoxPVoxD> Quietly: "No one knows what they'd do in that position until they've been in it. Even if what they do proves very hard to live down."
[04:05] <Crion> "Though usually it's about tactics and getting your own House."
[04:05] <VoxPVoxD> "Not just the male Dynasts, surely. I've read far enough into the histories to know the Empress was... quite ecumenical."
[04:07] <Crion> "Oh, we had them too. It's just if you're not producing heirs, you're not getting a House, so the whole theorycrafting aspect is less fun. As they say, everything is about sex except sex, which is about power. Even being the next House Nellens is worth bragging about."
[04:08] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I'd never heard that expression. But I quite like it."
[04:09] <VoxPVoxD> Idly: "...maybe if I keep the veil on..."
[04:09] <Crion> Piu: "It'll just fall off at the worst possible time, magnifying any problems."
[04:10] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet sighs. "You're right, of course."
[04:11] <Crion> Piu: "Way I figure it, I can make the first pass, see if there's any real weird hangups about it -- some really small number of Realm guys start thinking about the Empress as if she were their surrogate mom and things get either violent or incredibly freaky when you bring up the subject of the Empress fucking -- and if they seem fine with it, we can bring them into the senior
[04:11] <Crion> staff's confidence in a way that doesn't completely make them feel like prostitutes. And then what happens, happens."
[04:12] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "I imagine it'd be easier to bring them in first and then ask. If you ask first, I think they'd be suspicious when they found out. Unless they're very stupid."
[04:12] <VoxPVoxD> "Not that that's a dealbreaker."
[04:13] <Crion> "My own, uh, forays have made it seem like they're not into threesomes together, which fair enough, and would also give you two separate paramours to space out if you find the conversation with one excruciating. I didn't -- I think they're actually quite endearing -- but I've been well-trained to deal with silly men, so my instincts are sideways when it comes to something other than
[04:13] <Crion> work."
[04:15] <Crion> Piu: "It's better they come to the conclusion at their own pace than have their face and honor rubbed in it. They know what the position of men is in Realm society; they'll deal with it. And hopefully being part of the inner circle again will be its own reward."
[04:15] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet, drily: "After all, look at what wonders it's done for the rest of you."
[04:17] <Crion> Piu: "This'll let you continue your sessions with Seiri without Sadako actively pouting at every person she encounters while maintaining eye contact, and you get something that frankly we should have addressed sooner."
[04:19] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "And so do they."
[04:19] <VoxPVoxD> "Very clever proposal. Maybe you should have your own house."
[04:20] <Crion> Piu smiles: "Who knows. We'll see how things play out."
[04:20] <VoxPVoxD> "What's yours like? You don't speak much of the people who raised you. Only the people who hurt you."
[04:21] <VoxPVoxD> "I don't see many other V'neeves. I'm coming to form an opinion of House Cynis."
[04:21] <VoxPVoxD> "House Tepet seems to specialize in galoots."
[04:21] <Crion> "House V'neef is peaceful, and its members kind. For the most part."
[04:22] <Crion> "The smallest, least respected, most disadvantaged house needs to take care of itself in ways that aren't pretty sometimes. Especially now that the Empress is gone and the Realm is falling apart. And that's what my job is."
[04:23] <Crion> Piu: "Cynis Dryas is a hedonist partyhound who regrets the things her line of work and her family sometimes make her do, and strives to satisfy her responsibilities without compromising her morals. This makes her a shining beacon of hope and goodness compared to the rest of her debauched family."
[04:24] <Crion> "And it makes her my sister, because even removed from the muck of her house she remains a good and capable person."
[04:24] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "But it would make her quite an unsavory V'neef."
[04:24] <VoxPVoxD> "As you profess to be."
[04:24] <Crion> "But you've seen what happens if you put me in a room with her cousin."
[04:25] <Crion> Piu shrugs. "Unsavory? Yes. She'd also be our top importer/exporter in...three seasons? One Calibration?"
[04:26] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "V'neef sounds haughty and dishonest, to force its finest daughters to bathe in blood so everyone else can play nice."
[04:26] <Crion> Piu grimaces. "She would agree with you. If she knew."
[04:27] <VoxPVoxD> "Do you know her? Or is she long dead, like Cynis?"
[04:28] <Crion> She laughs. "She's barely ninety years old. The prime of her life. And as soon as she steps into her own, bringing in all the castaways and lost children of the Threshold, trying to build a real House not predicated on centuries of privilege and inherited imperial holdings and useless faildaughter snippery...the Empress disappears."
[04:29] <Crion> "And suddenly every other House starts looking at her, and takes out their forks and knives."
[04:30] <VoxPVoxD> "Sounds embittering."
[04:34] <Crion> Piu: "Not for her. She's the least bitter woman I've ever met. A true icon. Something to be protected. And she gets to be that because last Calibration I nearly decapitated a hardened killer from the Black Lotus, paid by House Ragara, not ten feet from where she slept."
[04:35] <Crion> "I hate the Realm, but I love V'neef."
[04:35] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "...huh."
[04:35] <VoxPVoxD> "I'd very much like to meet her."
[04:36] <VoxPVoxD> "If only such a thing were possible without dooming us all."
[04:36] <Crion> Piu laughs. "I think that would be very weird for her."
[04:36] <Crion> "But I think -- I hope, at least -- that she would like you more than she liked the Empress."
[04:36] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Really? Because meeting my own middle aged daughter for the first time would be extremely normal for me."
[04:37] <VoxPVoxD> Smiling a bit: "But I take your point."
[04:39] <Crion> "As for the galoots of Tepet...they're more complicated than they pretend. Zhangyu especially. But he's an absolutely infuriating man, refuses to ever talk about something directly. It's like he internalized the trope of the strong silent rock warrior only to deploy it in the most situationally annoying ways possible."
[04:39] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "He seems shy to me. Almost debilitatingly so."
[04:41] <Crion> Piu: "Yes. In a way it's a blessing, because an outgoing Zhangyu might already be the tyrant warlord of half the near-Threshold. He's a more skilled killer than I am, and tougher, and more bullishly implacable. The man can barely talk to people and yet still runs his own dojo. He is a singular talent."
[04:42] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Sadako thinks very highly of him."
[04:42] <Crion> "She's right to. It helps that his eccentricities perfectly complement hers."
[04:44] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "Seiri doesn't like that comparison."
[04:44] <Crion> Piu: "Being complementary isn't being compared. ...There are situations where Seiri is jealous, too."
[04:46] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "She's incredibly verbal. I don't think she knows how to deal with people who aren't."
[04:46] <VoxPVoxD> "My daughter was the same way."
[04:46] <VoxPVoxD> "She was scarcely past her second nameday when she learned to read."
[04:47] <Crion> Piu: "What's her name?"
[04:47] <VoxPVoxD> Garnet: "It was Xia Lao."
[04:47] <Crion> "Ah."
[04:48] <VoxPVoxD> "She was just about thirteen when the plague took her. My son didn't make it to his first nameday. So he never got one."
[04:48] <Crion> Piu: "I'm sorry."
[04:48] <VoxPVoxD> "Me too."
[04:49] <VoxPVoxD> "It really felt like the world had ended."
[04:52] <Crion> In a way it did, but there's no reason to say that out loud.