"This is actually pretty nice, as far as interrogations go."

Kore and Diesch sat opposite one another in a booth packed tight into the corner of a smoky, dim-lit restaurant. Between them rested multiple empty glasses and an ashtray containing no fewer than four freshly-discarded cigarettes. Some manner of meek, unobtrusive piano crept along the background, and the air was filled with the sounds of low-voiced conversation. It was nearing midnight, now.

Diesch raised an eyebrow.

"Is that what this is?" he asked, taking a sip of his beer, to which Kore gave a derisive snort. They had been at this for hours now - poking and prodding at one another's defenses. And while Diesch had made for surprisingly pleasant conversation, Kore was no diplomat - no master wordsmith like her liege, Jaheed - and her patience was beginning to wear thin.

"Wipe that look off your face," she ordered. "Do you really think you're being subtle right now?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Diesch said, his expression still entirely innocent. Then, at the narrowing of Kore's eyes, his face finally relaxed, and the gaunt man let out a half-hearted chuckle.

"You got me," he admitted, putting up his hands. "Look, Kore, this is my job."

"Mine too," Kore said evenly. "Why else would I even be here?"

"Ouch," Diesch said, a ghost of a smile upon his face.

"What - you wanted me to be honest, right?"

"Nah," Diesch shook his head, taking a drag from his cigarette as he so often did before embarking upon a new thought. "If anything, I much prefer when people lie to my face. Honesty is complicated. Lies are simple."

"That so?"

"Yep," Diesch nodded. "Once you've caught wind of a lie, all you gotta do is trace back the lines of self-interest. Why is she lying? How does it benefit her?" He gestured broadly. "People, in my experience, are simple and stupid. Liars are doubly so."

"But not you, of course."

"Please," Diesch scoffed. "I'm right there with the rest of us humans. We're all miserable, greedy, self-involved little shits. There's no-"

"So, tell me," Kore interrupted, cutting his diatribe short. Fuck all this beating around the bush, she thought to herself - it was time to kick the damn door down. "How did a 'self-involved little shit' like you become the Duke's right-hand man?"

"Right-hand man?" Diesch chuckled - a sleek bit of deflection. "That's a bit of an overstatement, no?"

"You shadow Sorrel closer than his own guards."

"Yeah, well," Diesch shrugged. "Sorrel likes to have my eyes on people he's not sure he can trust."

"Like me."

"Oops."

"Okay, okay," Kore pressed. "How did a self-involved little shit like you become Chief Inspector?"

Diesch was quiet for a moment. Then, he raised his glass and offered her a wry smile.

"This is supposed to be your interrogation, not mine."

"Guess you let it slip away from you."

"Hey, Kore - how'd you end up as Jaheed's right-hand woman?"

"I asked you first."

"Alright, alright, alright," Diesch acquiesced, leaning back in his seat. He jammed his cigarette down into the ashtray, then spread his palms. "I was a bartender for about a decade and a half."

"Go on."

"You really want the whole spiel?"

"Abel."

"I hear ya," Diesch said quickly - but his expression was hardening, now, and he was visibly sobering as he interlaced his fingers and stared right past Kore with eyes that were suddenly quite dull and faraway. Kore put one leg over another, folded her arms across her chest, and listened closely as the Chief Inspector began to speak.

"I used to really like people," Diesch said, fiddling idly with the snuffed-out cigarette. "What made me love bartending so much was the privilege to be able to listen in on a thousand different stories and lives - to swim, and to dive deep into the oceans of their little worlds. It made me happy in a way I'm not sure most others would understand, and for a very long time I was perfectly certain of my place in the world."

Kore didn't reply, didn't even nod her head - but her attentive silence was a clear signal for Diesch to continue. He reached up with a metal hand, covered his mouth, and coughed.

"There was this trio of regulars I got on pretty well with," Diesch said, after the coughing had passed. "One of 'em, guy named August, his wife had just given birth. He was going to be a father! And he was so joyously, deliriously happy that his happiness spread to me, too, and when I closed up that night I couldn't help but do so with a smile on my face. Well."

He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose between two iron fingers.

"Next day, August isn't there - but his buddies are, and the two of 'em are barely speaking. So I go over. I ask, hey, August taking care of the kid tonight? Baby duty already, huh? And one of his buddies, guy called Kaz or Daz or something, looks up at me with these red-ringed eyes and tells me they found August's body this morning, left out on the side of the street, half-frozen and just fuckin'...carved to bits. They say the body was so badly mangled that the Enforcers could barely even identify him. And they say..." He trailed off, fully lost now in the memory of another time, of another place. "They say it happened just across the street from my bar."

"You didn't-" Kore started.

"See anything?" Diesch let out a bitter, humorless little laugh. "No. Not a thing. But I did some research, afterwards, and I found out that this was just the latest killing by a guy people'd been calling the Shrike. He was targeting drunks when they were staggering home, yanking them into back alleys and cutting 'em up like he was a trained surgeon. August was his seventeenth victim. And the Enforcers? They didn't even really give a shit. This guy was thorough, you see - never left even a shred of evidence behind, and since there was no connection between him and the victims that meant there was also no lead. No thread to pull on. So the Enforcers just...didn't even bother."

"But you did," Kore said, after a moment.

"I've always been a good listener," Diesch sighed. "Always had an ear to the ground. So...I listened. And every night, before I closed up I went to the back and took down notes on what I had heard. And I drew connections. And I pulled on threads. And I made leaps of logic. And every night I was bartending practically on autopilot as my mind delved deeper and deeper and deeper into this web of my own creation. There was a pattern, I'd discovered. And according to that pattern, the Shrike would kill someone coming home from my bar sometime that very week."

"And did he?" Kore asked. All sense of physical time and place had melted away by now, and she had found herself utterly absorbed in the Chief Inspector's tale.

"I watched, and I waited," Diesch said. His voice was growing dry. It was as though the emotion were bleeding out of him with each and every word. "And waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, I saw him - a figure emerging from the shadows of the alley with knife in hand, looming behind a woman walking home on her own. And I had to wait, you see, until the knife touched her skin before I could make a move. I had to be sure."

"Did she...?"

"No," Diesch shook his head. "She survived. But he did cut her, before I stepped out from my own shadows and opened fire. It was an old, antique show-pistol - inherited from my grandfather long ago - and my aim was as shaky as it gets. Still, out of three slugs, one struck true, embedding itself in his leg. It was over, then. He knew he couldn't run. But that didn't stop him from trying."

"Did you call the Enforcers?" Kore asked - already knowing the answer.

"Not yet," Diesch said. "First I chased him down, cornered him in an abandoned old building. He managed to get the drop on me - but he was wounded, and I had the gun, and a pistol-butt to the jaw put him flat on his back. And then I held him an gunpoint, and we talked."

Diesch closed his eyes, for a moment. And when they opened once more, they were like a doll's eyes - lifeless and blank.

"I looked down at him," he said, quietly, "this complex, myriad human being - this living soul - and I felt nothing. And when I shot him, I felt nothing. And even on the next day, even when I dragged his corpse to the Enforcers and threw him onto their doorstep - even then, I didn't feel a thing. I think I lost some part of me, that day. Something important. Something that would've kept me from doing my job as well as I do it now." He sighed, took a shaky-handed drag of his cigarette. "I thought they'd arrest me, y'know, or maybe gun down this bloodied corpse-draggin' maniac right where he stood. Instead, they offered me a job."

"They actually condoned a vigilante killing?" Kore asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Implicitly, but yes," Diesch nodded. "And I became something of a minor celebrity as a result. The 'brilliant vigilante detective' who hunted down the Shrike, you see - like the protagonist of some trashy mystery novel. And so, for reasons I truly can't tell you, I took the job. And, well, I turned out to be pretty damn good at it - good enough to catch the Duke's eye, eventually." He shrugged his shoulders. "And that's that."

A long silence hung between them.

"Do you hate human beings?" Kore asked, finally - and even she was startled by the question that sprang from between her lips. Yet Diesch seemed almost to have expected such a blunt query.

"No," he said, forcing a small smile. "I just don't expect much of them."

There was another agonizing stretch of silence - and then, with a yawn, Diesch rose to his feet.

"Alright," he said. "That's enough interrogation for one night, I think."

"I think you're right," Kore agreed, moving to join him. The two stood opposite one another, for a moment - and then Diesch extended a hand.

"Tomorrow," he said, "you tell me how you ended up here, in that uniform, with that pistol on your hip, standing beside the son of Jerohd Vell."

"You know what?" Kore said. She took his hand and shook it, firmly. "I'll be looking forward to it."

"Likewise," Diesch smiled. "I suppose we'll see each other in the morning, then."

----------------------------------------

Fatigue - more emotional than physical - hung over Kore like a shroud as she trudged along the darkened hall.

This was by no means a life she had ever envisioned for herself. The lies, the constant state of alertness, the verbal sparring - nothing like that had ever been required when she was just killing for Tsen, and it had certainly never been required when she was still slaving away at the Cordite mines. At all times now Kore had to project a shield, a shell of false-Kore encircling the true-Kore - a shell that could and would be attacked at any time.

She stopped outside her door - pressed her palm flat against the scanner - and let out a quiet sigh as the panel blinked green and the door hissed open.

She stepped into the pitch-darkness of her room, fumbling for a lightswitch, found none, and let out another sigh, feeling her way across to what must have been the bathroom. Finally, her hand found a switch - and the lights flicked on, revealing in the mirror the face of a grim, tired woman.

"Try not to look like you just stepped in shit," Kore said to her reflection, who respectfully declined to reply. Diligently, she peeled off her uniform, grateful to be free from its suffocating clutches, and donned both sweatpants and a loose grey t-shirt provided by their gregarious hosts. Kore hadn't brought luggage of any kind because she didn't have possessions of any kind - and she realized, distantly, that at some point she would probably have to ask Jaheed to take her shopping. What a ridiculous situation.

She brushed her teeth, spat, yawned, and keyed open her comm-pad as she stepped back into the room and flopped down upon her waiting bed. She scrolled through the news with lazy, half-lidded eyes, feeling herself drift further and further into the warm blackness lurking at the edges of her vision.

And then she saw her.

"Woah!" Kore shouted, leaping back - her head painfully against the wall. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her eyes darted frantically about, searching for her gun - which currently rested in its holster atop the bathroom sink. Cold fear crept into her gut as she turned her head to face the intruder once more.

Standing there in the corner, all but invisible in the low shadow, was a shaggy-haired blonde woman in a denim jacket, her skin replete with countless intersecting scars and pockmarks. And now the woman was taking a single step forwards, her movement dripping with measured confidence and true, absolute calm.

Her eyes were the coldest Kore had ever seen, twin orbs of pure steel that shone with terrifying callousness - but there was something else there, too. A hint of...mirth?

"How the fuck did you get in here?" Kore demanded, her usually-stoic demeanor shattered by the sheer impossibility of her situation. She was very awake now and very sober.

"Vent," the woman said casually, jerking a thumb at a small grate on the ceiling.

"I...okay..." Kore sputtered. Breathe, she told herself, breathe. Steady yourself. This intruder had come unarmed, and Kore was twice her size. And if she could just make it to the gun...

But there was something in the woman's eyes that told Kore, in no uncertain terms, that she could take her life as easily as drawing breath. And so Kore resolved that the best course of action was to remain totally, perfectly still.

"So," Kore said, after a few seconds of silence had passed. The woman was looking her up and down - was she sizing her up? "Is this an assassination?"

"Probably not," the woman replied, distracted, continuing to scrutinize Kore all the while.

"Okay..." Kore trailed off. That was something, at least. "Who are you?"

"Oh!" the woman exclaimed, snapping into focus. "That's right - you wouldn't recognize me, would you? I'm Sekhmet."

Sekhmet? An odd name - where had she heard that name before? Surely it wasn't-

Kore's eyes went wide. A jolt of raw panic surged through her heart, and it took every ounce of discipline and self-control she had not to bolt and run somewhere, anywhere, because standing before her now was a full-blooded Se-dai.

A full-blooded Se-dai whom Kore had killed.

Another in Kore's position might have frozen on the spot - might very well have simply curled up and awaited death, confronted as they were with a being of the most elite fighting force in the entire Great Domain. A being who had been trained to kill faster than humans could perceive and quieter than humans could detect. A being who had every reason to hold a grudge against her!

But, as always, Kore fell back upon her old protocols. Assess the situation. Make a decision. Commit to following through. There was nothing she could do to influence her current predicament - so all she could do was deal with it as best she could.

"How is this possible...?" Kore asked, slowly.

"You mean how am I here, walking and talking and scaring the shit out of you, after you shot me three times in the brain?" Sekhmet tapped the knot of scar tissue on the side of her forehead. "C'mon, Kore. A Se-dai doesn't go down that easy. But really, it is kind of a miracle - even my own people figured I was done. I had been wheeled halfway to the crematorium when I finally came to."

Kore's bafflement only grew. Was it the delirium of this late night, of this impossible situation - or did the Se-dai actually seem...kind of friendly?

"So," Kore said, endeavoring to keep the superhuman talking. "You woke back up, and they sent you...here?"

"Oh," Sekhmet said, tilting her head back. "I see where this could be confusing. No, Kore, nobody sent me anywhere. You killed me, you see - you, a soft, ordinary little woman, defeated me, a full-blooded Se-dai. Like hell I was going to just suit back up and carry on like nothing ever happened. First thing I knew when I woke up was that I had to find you. Of course, I knew full well that my masters would not be partial to such an indulgence, so my exit was..." A smile split her cracked lips. "...a violent one."

"You left the Se-dai?" Kore demanded. "I've never heard of-"

"It doesn't happen often," Sekhmet admitted. "But I'm not the first, and I doubt I'll be the last. I mean, come on. I got killed by a women with no last name. How am I supposed to take any of this shit seriously anymore?"

There was something deeply, deeply unsettling about a multi-trillion-credit weapon - one of the blessed executioners - walking and talking like someone Kore could've run into at a bar on Callisto. The situation was so incongruous that she couldn't help but let out a short, sharp, disbelieving laugh.

And slowly, surely, Sekhmet began to laugh as well, and for nearly thirty seconds the room was full to the brim with giddy, delirious laughter. And then, abruptly, Kore's laugh was cut short - and her expression fell.

"Why are you here?" she asked, her voice hushed.

"Relax, relax - I already said I'm not gonna kill you," Sekhmet reassured with a slight, final chuckle. "Killing you would be...I mean, it would be nothing. It would be a flick of my wrist. I could kill you on accident. What'd be the point in that?"

"So...?"

"So, it's simple," Sekhmet clasped her hands together. "You beat me, which makes you better than me."

"That's not-"

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"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Here's the thing - you're in way over you head, you have no idea what you're doing, and sooner or later someone is gonna put a bolt right through your pretty little face."

"Pretty?"

"And you think I'm gonna let some random slack-jawed dipshit kill the woman who killed Sekhmet?" the Se-dai demanded. "Not a fucking chance."

"And I don't get a say in this?" Kore complained - and she was immediately taken aback by how at-ease she'd become in the presence of a void-damned Se-dai!

"Oh, come on," Sekhmet drawled. "I'll follow you and Jaheed from the shadows - totally invisible, as you should know very well a Se-dai is capable of being. You won't even see me, and you won't see the assassins I protect you from, either. Face it, Kore, you're being offered a pretty sweet fucking deal here: free bodyguard service from one of the most elite bodyguards in the universe. A bodyguard for the bodyguard! I know that little pissant Jaheed would be thrilled to have a Se-dai protecting him."

"You think it would thrill Jaheed to be associated with a rogue Se-dai?" Kore asked, incredulous. "Your very existence is a crime!"

"Only if they catch me," Sekhmet winked.

"That's...that's not..." Kore sputtered. Void-damnit, she had just wanted to go to bed! And now here she was, negotiating terms with a Se-dai asking permission to stalk her for the rest of her life!

"If I say no..." Kore began, finally. "What'll you do then?"

"Suicide?" Sekhmet shrugged, as though it were a perfectly acceptable alternative. "Look, Kore, can I share something with you? Something that might seem, I dunno, maybe a little crazy?"

"I...go ahead," Kore said, gesturing broadly. "I don't think there's anything you can say to surprise me at this point."

"Back on Callisto..." Sekhmet trailed off. "After the explosion, when I was impaled on that spike of rebar. Do you remember limping over, pressing the barrel of that gun to my temple?"

"I do," Kore gulped.

"I confess," Sekhmet said, "I've never seen a woman look more beautiful than you did in that moment."

There was only one thing Kore could possibly offer in response:

"What the fuck?"

----------------------------------------

"Well?" Jaheed asked.

Dawn was painting the window behind him with brilliant yellow as the Marquess fiddled with his collar, his eyes locked onto his own reflection as he spoke. Beside the door, Kore leaned against the wall, arms folded and cap pulled down to obscure her eyes.

She had not mentioned Sekhmet, nor was she certain as to whether or not she ever intended to. Hell, she didn't know what to do about the obsessive superhuman fugitive who had vanished from her room as inexplicably as she had entered.

Jaheed, she reasoned to herself, had bigger things to worry about right now.

"We had drinks," Kore said, one eye peeking out from beneath the brim of her cap. "As you seem to have planned."

"He looked like he wanted to ask you something," Jaheed shrugged. "And it's only natural for Diesch to seek camaraderie with his counterpart."

"I'm not a diplomat, Jaheed, nor am I a spy."

"Yes, yes, I'm well aware. But you play the part well enough. Anyway, how did it go?"

"I got him talking," Kore said, after a moment's contemplation. "He told me about his history. How he got to where he is now."

"You got him talking about his past?" Jaheed repeated, glancing back at Kore for the first time. "See? As I said, you play the part perfectly well."

"You wanna to hear my assessment, then?"

"Shoot."

"He," Kore hesitated. "He's not doing particularly well."

"In what sense?"

"His mental state, I mean."

"Oh," Jaheed said. And then, after a moment: "Well, that's good to hear. Unstable is good for us. Do you think he suspects?"

"Us? Me?" Kore shrugged her shoulders. "Not a clue. Hell, I don't even know if any of what he said was genuine, or if he was just reeling me into some kind of trap."

"Mmh," Jaheed mused, running a hand through his hair. "Well, keep on him. It's good to keep Diesch distracted, if nothing else. That one worries me."

"And what of Duke Sorrel?" Kore asked, to which Jaheed gave a small, smug chuckle.

"He's all but confessed," Jaheed grinned. "Already, he considers me a close confidant, and I've been carefully sowing seeds that mark myself - and my father - as dissatisfied with the reign of the new Emperor. Really, it's not even a lie, is it? My father did consort with the Crimson Emir, after all." The young man's smile faded, then, and his lip curled ever-so-slightly. "Useless fucking moron that he was."

Kore did not react to venom Jaheed so readily spat at his deceased father - such sudden proclamations were frequent when keeping the highborn's company. Even in death, the specter of Jerohd Vell loomed large over his son's shoulders, constantly weighing down upon him. A small part of Kore wanted to help him, somehow, but for the most part she was content to merely listen with neither judgement nor complaint.

"Do you have a timetable, then?" Kore asked, adjusting her cap. "The longer we stay, the more we give Diesch to work with."

"Two days," Jaheed said, holding up a pair of fingers. "Today, tomorrow, and then I guarantee I'll have a recording of Sorrel confessing his treachery. Hell, we could leave tomorrow in the middle of the night - we don't even need to wait for morning."

"That seems prudent, my liege."

"Then that's what we'll do," Jaheed declared, clasping his hands together. Something shifted in his expression, then - and he crossed the room to where Kore stood, then reached for her shoulder. Stopped. Let his hand drop. And Kore kept her expression neutral the entire time as the former Marquess said:

"I know this isn't a life you ever thought you'd be living."

"No, my liege."

"And I know this is all way out of your comfort zone."

"Yes, my liege."

"But for what it's worth," Jaheed said, "thus far you've been nothing short of exceptional, Kore. I couldn't..." He glanced away, and for a moment Kore could swear she saw tears welling up in the corners of the young highborn's eyes. "I don't think I could do this without you. Any of it. So...thank you."

A pang of sympathy pierced clean through the shell in which Kore had carefully enveloped herself - and to even her own surprise, she reached out and patted Jaheed gently upon the arm.

She remembered the promise he had made, at the twilight of that fateful night. She thought of all the hopes she had anchored upon this man.

"I'm with you, Jaheed," she said, her voice gentle and firm all at once. "Whatever you need, I've got your back. Count on it."

A weak smile spread across Jaheed's face - and he nodded, patting her hand and drawing away.

"Well then," he declared, sniffing loudly, and instantly the mask of the indifferent nobleman was plastered upon his face once more. And Kore, too, receded into the facade of the stern, pragmatic sentinel. "Shall we?"

Kore gestured to the door.

"Right this way, my liege."

----------------------------------------

This time Kore was, admittedly, a little drunk.

"He's not-he's not-" she was trying to say, as Diesch gesticulated wildly with beer in hand.

"He is! He is!" an even drunker Diesch was saying. Night had fallen, and they sat now in the same booth in the same restaurant as the night prior. "He's exactly like one of those yapping little dogs."

"Jaheed-" Kore said, her expression growing hard and serious, "is the highborn son of Duke Jerohd Vell, and heir to the Vell Dynasty. He is not to be taken lightly."

Then, she broke, and the two of them descended into raucous laughter once more.

"Ah, boy," Diesch sighed, taking a quick drag from his cigarette. "Tell me, Kore - did you ever think you'd end up here, walking and talking amidst a gaggle of unfathomably frou-frou noblemen?"

"No," Kore admitted, taking a sip of her sixth - seventh? - drink. "I told you last night, Abel, I was a miner for most of my life."

"Right - you're from Callisto," Diesch observed, jabbing a finger. "So you were doing...Cordite Extraction, yeah?"

"Yes sir," Kore gave a two-fingered salute.

"I've heard that's miserable fucking work."

"You've heard correct."

"Must be nice, then," Diesch said, leaning back and lighting a fresh cigarette. "Going from that to this. If you don't mind me asking, how'd you manage to pull it off?"

Wait. Was he probing her? No, no. Diesch was - he was her friend, right? It was a casual question, and a perfectly reasonable one to ask in the course of this conversation.

Kore decided to tell him what she could.

"I got this...condition," she said, searching for the right words. "It's killing me, slowly."

"Yeah? I got two - cigars and booze," Diesch drawled, eliciting a snort from Kore, though he quickly motioned for her to continue.

"Asshole," she smirked. "Anyway, the day I found out was the day I got laid off. No. Wait. That was the next morning. Whatever. I lost my job, found out I had two months to live, found out there was nothing I could do about it - so I went to a bar."

"Sheesh," Diesch let out a low whistle. "That's a lot for twenty-four hours."

"You're telling me," Kore agreed. "Anyway, so I-" She halted abruptly.

Her time with Heraldry had always been a strange, unspoken elephant in the room when it came to her and Jaheed. The former Marquess was well aware that her skills in combat befit neither a miner nor a servant, and seeing as how she wasn't one of his father's soldiers - well, surely it hadn't been particularly difficult to trace those lines together. But Jaheed had told her that her past meant nothing to him, and true to his word he had not once ever encroached upon the subject.

And thus, Kore had never bothered to construct any sort of concrete lie - but now, here she was, needing to come up with something fast in front of a man legendary for his ability to root out deception.

Kore considered her options - and decided, finally, to be as honest as she possibly could.

"I was recruited, then," she said, "by a man called Jiang Tsen."

"Can't say I'm familiar," Diesch said. "So you were, what, palace guard?"

"I was what you'd call..." Kore trailed off. She couldn't help but smile at the absurdity of it all. "Something of an agitator." Diesch's eyebrows lifted.

"How the hell," he chuckled, slowly, "did you end up right-hand woman for Jerohd's fucking kid?"

"Now that," Kore said, thumping her finger against the table, "is a story for another time. Look. here's all you need to know. Jiang Tsen? That man is scum." She took a long, long sip of her beer, then slammed the glass down with an exaggerated gasp. "Marquess Jaheed? I'll protect him with my life."

"Well, well," Diesch said, after a moment had passed. "Look at you. A domesticated little rebel. Does Jaheed know?"

"You gonna tell him?" Kore countered.

"Nah, nah," Diesch reassured, wiping at the corner of his mouth. "I am curious, though - why did you and Jaheed come here in the first place?"

"We-" Kore started, then stopped. "Wait, what?"

"I said," Diesch repeated, his voice going low. "What are you two doing here?"

It was as though he had transformed into a different person entirely. Gone was the jovial, snickering, witty man - the comrade, the brother-in-arms who understood, like she did, all the grievances of serving at the beck and call of a snooty highborn. In his place was the empty man who had executed the Shrike in cold blood - the emotionless husk whose eyes were flaying Kore open now and rooting through her steaming entrails for even the tiniest scrap of information. Of evidence.

Sitting before her now was the man they called the Black Hound, and unlike Kore he was entirely sober.

"You know why we're here," Kore said slowly, carefully. She tried and tried and tried to will her brain back to clarity and sobriety - to no avail. "Our purpose is threefold. First, to negotiate a new standard price for Cordite coming in and out of Callisto. Second, to further strengthen relations with our kinsmen in the Sorrel Dynasty. And third," she hiccuped, and silently cursed herself, "Jaheed is here to spend time with his godfather."

"Why?" Diesch asked simply.

"Why...what?"

"Why is Jaheed doing these things?" Diesch pressed. "If the primary goal is an adjustment to the intricacies of trade between our worlds, why is Jaheed here unaccompanied by any sort of treasurer? If this is to further secure alliances with one of Callisto's oldest and closest allies - an odd proposition to begin with, if you ask me - why not send either a diplomat or the Duke himself? And if the goal is simply for Jaheed to meet his godfather, well," he narrowed his eyes, "does that really warrant a fourteen-week round-trip?"

He was relentless. Pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and never giving her even the slightest moment to breathe. Her every stumble, her every misspeaking - all were cracks in her facade through which Diesch was flowing like a virus. Not only were her lies beginning to fall apart - but the shell she had constructed, too, was rapidly disintegrating, and before the him Kore felt nothing short of utterly, nakedly exposed.

She had underestimated him, and all the while everything he had said and done was to lure her into a false sense of security. He was so far beyond her that she'd never even stood a chance. Jaheed, she was certain, would know what to say - how to slip out of this conversation, or to steer it elsewhere. But Jaheed wasn't here. Jaheed had entrusted this to her.

"I can't speak to any of that," she said, finally, for the best answer she could offer was simply no answer at all. "I am a bodyguard and nothing more."

"You're Chief of Security," Diesch scoffed. "And his only traveling companion. Jaheed has no aides, no attachés. Whether you admit it or not-"

There was a shout, a scream, a crash of porcelain - and Kore's head swiveled around to see one of the restaurant's many wealthy patrons slump face-first into his soup, his neck quite cleanly and obviously broken. Already, the room was exploding into motion, with patrons fleeing and guards rushing to the scene and amidst the chaos of it all Kore caught only the briefest, most infinitesimal glances of a figure vanishing lightning-fast into the throng of the surging crowd.

The inhuman speed. The utterly silent killing. The total disappearance that seemed to have left even Diesch baffled as he leapt from the booth with revolver in hand. Sekhmet claimed that she would be shadowing Kore's every move, though up until now she had detected not even a hint of the Se-dai's presence. Had Sekhmet just...gifted her a diversion?

"They're down, sir!" a guard was saying, distantly. "Both cameras - the cables have been cut!"

"Do we have any footage of the exterior?" Diesch demanded, his finger resting upon the trigger of his weapon. His eyes were relentless and hunting as they combed through the chaos of the restaurant. "Did anyone see what happened - anyone at all?"

Kore tried not to think about the very real possibility that an innocent man had just been killed to allow her an escape - and took the opportunity she had been given, slipping away into the crowd and out of sight. Out of Diesch's sight.

----------------------------------------

The door to Kore's room hissed open, and she was completely unsurprised to find Sekhmet sitting casually on the foot of her bed.

"Hey," Sekhmet said, giving a small wave.

Kore wished she had the energy to be properly terrified of her.

"Was he innocent?" she asked, simply, stepping past the bed and setting her cap aside. She could feel Sekhmet's eyes trailing her all the while.

"Not by a long shot," the Se-dai smirked. "This guy was eating alone at a fancy restaurant with two poorly-concealed pistols - Disruptors, judging by the heat they were giving off - and all night he had been trying his hardest not to look like he wanted to murder your boy Diesch. Which, of course, made his intention twice as obvious."

Kore glanced back at Sekhmet, her brow furrowed.

"He was there to assassinate Diesch?"

"Are you surprised?" Sekhmet shrugged. "Diesch's whole job is to kill assassins. Why shouldn't they want to kill him back?"

"Says the assassin."

"Don't be rude," Sekhmet chided, clicking her tongue. "I bailed you out tonight."

"I didn't ask for your help."

"You didn't need to. Se-dai don't need direct orders - we're trained to respond to the tiniest of visual cues. To act as true extensions of our charges' self-conscious."

Kor reached up, undid the top button of her uniform - felt a relief of pressure as the entire thing loosened, at least by some small increment - and turned back to that damned smirking Se-dai.

"Diesch is gonna know it was a Se-dai that killed him," Kore declared. "He's gonna start asking questions."

"Good," Sekhmet shrugged. "Let him focus on me instead of you. If he finds me, he'll just disappear. No problems."

"You are not killing Diesch-" Kore started.

"I said if he finds me, which he won't-"

"Void-damnit, Sekhmet, get the fuck off my bed!" Kore snapped, to which the Se-dai shot instantly to her feet. "And stop doing that!"

"Doing what?" Sekhmet asked, cocking her head to the side in a gesture of genuine confusion.

"Moving faster than human beings are supposed to move!" Kore said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. "I'm trying to pretend you're not a Se-dai, damnit!"

For a second, she worried that the superhuman warrior would be offended. But instead, Sekhmet merely shrugged her shoulders again and stepped off to the side.

"My bad," she said simply.

It dawned on Kore, then, that she had actually been comfortable enough to yell at a Se-dai. And what's more, her shell of faux-Kore - her shield against the outside world - had unconsciously fallen away the moment she stepped into the room. With Jaheed, Kore was able to let it down by increments and degrees, and Diesch had done fine work of picking it apart piece by piece. But with Sekhmet? The shell just...vanished, as though there were truly no need for it.

Why was she only truly comfortable with a fucking Se-dai?!

"Look, I'm sorry," Kore said, after a moment, tossing her uniform aside and slumping back onto the bed. She undid her holster and set the gun on the nightstand with a heavy thump. "You saved my ass tonight, Sekhmet. I'm grateful. It's just-"

"He had you pretty upset there," Sekhmet observed. "Your heart-rate was spiking like crazy."

"How did you-" Kore started - then, she remembered the Sekhmet's eyes probably cost more credits than Kore had ever seen in her life. "Yeah. I was drunk, and disarmed, and I hadn't realized I was starting to see him as a friend until it was too late. And I felt-" she shook her head. "Suddenly, it reminded me of talking to Tsen. The way they both just saw right through me."

"The man who recruited you?" Sekhmet asked. "For Heraldry, I presume."

"Yep."

Kore closed her eyes and let out a long, heavy sigh. Distantly, Sekhmet's voice came:

"So how did you end up working for Tsen?"

"Sekhmet."

"I'm just curious. You don't have to answer."

Kore was silent for a long, long time. And then:

"He told me he wanted to help people. I thought I was gonna make a difference - put some good into the world, for a change."

"And then?"

"And then I realized he didn't give a damn about anyone other than himself," Kore said. "And that those words, which had been so important to me, were absolutely nothing to him. Just lines off a script."

"And Jaheed?"

"I made him promise me the same thing," Kore said quietly. "And I believe him. I have to. Because if I don't..." She shook her head. "I helped Tsen kill innocent people. If I don't do something good before I die, then well...I guess I was only ever just a murderer."

The room was as silent as the grave. Finally, perturbed by the Se-dai's silence, Kore opened her eyes - and she saw Sekhmet looking down at her with an expression she could not have predicted in a thousand years.

Sympathy.

Soundlessly, Sekhmet walked over and laid a hand over Kore's own. The Se-dai's skin was coarse and pockmarked and eerily, uncannily warm. Distantly, Kore wondered if that was the heat of cybernetic implants or simply of the raw, superhuman vitality coursing through the warrior's veins.

Regardless, Kore did not pull away.

"Tsen used you," Sekhmet said quietly, and there was softness in her voice that Kore had not believed the Se-dai to be capable of. "You were but a weapon in his hands. Does a sword think, Kore? Does it sin as it carves through the enemy's flesh?"

"That's a nice little metaphor," Kore sighed, "but I chose to serve him. A sword doesn't get a say in who wields it. People do."

"Do they?" Sekhmet asked. "You told Diesch that you had a disease that couldn't be treated."

"That's right."

"So how are you here, now, living and breathing before me?"

"I..." Kore trailed off. "Tsen offered me treatment."

"Regular treatment?" Sekhmet asked. "Like, a once-a-week or once-a-month injection?"

"Yeah," Kore answered, already seeing where the Se-dai was going with this.

"Well then," Sekhmet said, crossing her scarred arms. "Doesn't sound to me like you had any choice at all in who wielded you."

"It would have been better to let myself die than to work with that man," Kore muttered, running a hand over her face.

"And did you know that at the time?"

"Sekhmet."

"Kore?"

"I'd like to go to bed now."

"Alright," Sekhmet said simply, withdrawing her hand. There was a ghost of a smile upon her face as she stepped back. "I'll see myself out the usual way."

"Hey," Kore interjected - sitting up, blinking in the dim light. "Hang on. Sek."

"Sek?"

"Where do you-" Kore gestured sluggishly, "y'know, sleep?"

"Sleep?" Sekhmet repeated. "Oh, right. I haven't slept since I arrived on Proxima. I can go about eight days before it starts to become a problem."

Kore couldn't exactly articulate what compelled her to do what she did next - but she reached over, grabbed a pillow, and tossed it across the room. Sekhmet caught it deftly with one hand, eyebrow raised.

"You can sleep here," Kore offered simply, gesturing to the floor. "Not the bed, but-"

"Heh," Sekhmet chuckled, dropping to a low crouch. She set the pillow up against the wall. "You're way too nice, Kore. This line of work's gonna get you killed, you know that?"

"I know," Kore muttered, leaning her head back and sinking into blissful unconsciousness. "But I got you...watching my back...right...?"

And though Kore would be loathe to admit it, she slept more sound and secure with Sekhmet by her side than she had in months.

When she awoke up the next morning, as vitalized and rejuvenated as she had ever felt, the Se-dai was already gone. And so Kore got up, got dressed.

And got to work.