“I’m not gonna speak to a dog of the Yishang,” Yuna said, sounding like a growling wolf.

“She says she’s not gonna speak to a dog of the Yishang,” one of Yuna’s Non-Hero rebel soldiers explained.

“Uh-huh.” Daisy said, folding her arms. “Yun-chan, two months ago we were shooting the breeze at a summer party event. A month ago we were drinking together after finally getting through that new Sibe-Landian dungeon. What in the heck are you on about now?”

Fangs snuck out of the snarl Yuna sent her way. “I better not hear you call me Yun-chan again, understand? I got a different perspective on things now. I know you’ve got your special relationship with the Yishang, same as all the other Top Heroes.”

Yuna spat a tar black glob on the floor at Daisy’s feet. “‘Cept for me. And I’m done playing the villainess who’s always thwarted just before following through on her ambition. The Yishang are propping up the Shikijiman Imperial inbreds against the oppressed Non-Heroes. I plan to change that. For good this time. No cute little quests the Yishang can tinker with to make me lose. I’m playing for real this time. And when the money’s down…”

Yuna slammed the table, causing the bags of Ying she had wagered to jingle. “You’ll be on the Yishang’s side, because it’s their teats you suckle and their yoke around your neck.”

Daisy furrowed her brows. “Am I the livestock or the offspring in this metaphor?”

“Both!” Yuna yelled, causing the Heroes that had been politely ignoring the drama to turn and watch. “I asked myself, deep down, whether I wanted to take the easy road and play along with the Yishang and live a cushy little life where all I have to do is go to their shitty little events and put on degrading costumes and get my promise that I’ll never become irrelevant. I meditated on that for days. Then, I decided I’m not gonna do that anymore. I decided I’m going to finally help the poor, oppressed Shikijimans once and for all, no matter what it takes.”

The accusations Yuna had thrown Daisy’s way didn’t bother her, they were basically true. But the “no matter what it takes” comment made her anxious.

“What do you mean by that?” Daisy asked, her usual playfulness falling away.

“Aha! There it is!” Yuna said with a dark laugh. “The mask slips! There’s the Daisy I knew was in there.”

“Yuna, what did you mean by ‘no matter what it takes’?”

The Non-Heroes guarding their general pointed their weapons at Daisy. Twenty or more naginata blades tipped down, ready to try and skewer her. Try, because it would have been trivial to wipe them all out.

Yuna’s Use-Ranking was below her actual power level since she refused to cooperate with the Yishang and gain the boons this conferred. Vice-versa, Daisy’s ranking was inflated because she did. The only people stronger than Yuna were the #1 and #2 Heroes, her teammates, Boulanger and Ailing. And technically Natsuko, if she got the jump on them with her bottle. But as things stood now, Yuna could annihilate Daisy and get right back to her card game if there was much of a Heavenly Card Parlor left after their fight.

“I meant,” Yuna said, curling her fingers around one of her katanas, “whatever it takes. I don’t care about the Yishang’s rules. I don’t care about this stupid, bullshit, play-pretend fight we’ve got going on with the Entropic Axis. I care about the people of Shikijima. All of them. Heroes and Non-Heroes. And that means getting rid of the Imperial clan. Permanently.”

The “P” word raised eyebrows across the floor. No one was playing cards in the card parlor anymore. Yuna stood up, the scabbards of her dual katanas pinched in one bulging hand. She towered over Daisy by almost a foot, the lacquered wood armor on her thighs and chest making her form even more bulky and intimidating.

Daisy felt around her trouser pockets for her pocket watch.

“How do you plan to get rid of someone permanently? They’ll just be re-summoned,” Daisy said, fishing for an open confession to stealing Shuixing’s research.

Yuna responded with a wicked grin, her sharpened teeth bared. “And give away my secrets to the Yishang’s lapdog so that she can run off and tattle on me to her masters? No. I don’t think I will. But I’ll tell you what…”

Yuna flicked one of her swords’ hilt forward, popping a couple inches of steel out of the scabbard. The insinuation was easy enough to guess. The other Heroes in the room reached for their own weapons and some of the Non-Heroes ran, forfeiting their games.

“I’ll give you one chance. One chance to tell me that you’ll give up doing the Yishang’s bidding, that you’re going to stand on the side of the righteous. Otherwise, you better start running, because the next time I see your little pink face, I’m cutting it open, understand?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Daisy bit her lip and said nothing. This hadn’t gone the way she would have liked, even if she had more or less confirmed that Yuna really did steal the papers. The thought went through her mind that she ought to make Yun-chan confess it outright, and expose her as killing Margaret, but that would draw too much attention to the debacle and Daisy’s goal was still to clean things up before the Yishang had to get involved.

She hated taking a backseat, but Sofiane really would have to be their trump card. The one good thing to come out of this interaction was that Daisy now knew how to pressure Yuna to keep forced dimension jumping a secret after they had stolen the papers back. All she had to do was drop hints that forced dimension-jumping might end up in the hands of the Shikijiman Imperial Clan.

“Alrighty, I’ll get outta your hair,” Daisy said, holding her arms up and walking backwards. Her folksy, bubbly tone of voice was back. “Your business is your business.”

Yuna glared. “You don’t fool me, Daisy. I know how the game works.”

Daisy shrugged. “Can’t say I’m interested in cards myself!”

“Or putting up an ante when you can sit nice and fat, turning a blind eye to this messed up world,” Yuna said.

“Oh, Yun-Chan, you say that like you were any different a couple weeks ago,” Daisy said with a wink before launching into one of her hands-on-hips snort-laughs again. “Tell Nuxalk and Cornelius I said howdy!”

Daisy clicked her pocket watch as she stepped back onto the balcony and Peng reconstituted himself out of the swirling dust. She leapt onto the stone bird and directed him towards the Yongfu Hotel.

Soaring through the air, her brain finally had time to catch up with her. Two things still didn’t sit right, and made her regret not getting more out of Yun-chan before she had to retreat.

One was that the mysterious assailant she had fought in the ice cavern hadn’t been as tough as Yuna, meaning that either she had been deliberately throwing the battle to disguise her abilities from Daisy—which seemed unlikely given Yuna’s rather unsubtle disposition—or there was more than one Hero involved in the theft.

Two was that Zhidao was sniffing around. That meant the Yishang knew something was up, even if they didn’t know what it was yet. It also meant they knew she was involved.

Daisy sighed, the sigh drowned out by the wind whipping past her. She was going to have to give an account of everything if she didn’t clean this mess up soon. If possible, she really didn’t want to drag Natsuko and Shuixing into all of this, but the latter seemed determined to poke and prod at things she shouldn’t.

Peng cleaved towards the balcony, whipping Sofiane’s ruffles, Shuixing’s robes, and Pechorin’s hair in its wake. Daisy hopped the wooden railing and Peng once again dissolved.

“Howdy! I’m back!” Daisy said.

“So, what’s the news with Yuna?” Sofiane asked.

“I’m pretty certain she’s got those papers, but she won’t talk to me. Not without cursing my name and whatnot. Guess you’re up, Sofi!”

“Why won’t she speak with you?” Shuixing asked, straightening the glasses that had almost been blown away.

Daisy laughed. “Who knows? Anywho, I wanna get some poetry writin’ in while I’m on break, so if ya need me just holler! Say, hold up a sec, where’s Natsu?”

“Off to go chase Zhidao,” Sofiane said, parceling his cards out in neat piles.

Daisy suppressed the frown that wanted to overtake her pearly-white smile. “What’s she doing that for?”

Shuixing sighed. “Said she’s creeped out by him. No clue what she plans to do even if she catches up to Zhidao. She’s like a dog chasing a squirrel.”

“Perhaps torture the poor creature until it reveals its secrets,” Pechorin said, hands in his trench coat pockets.

“Gods-damned dude, that’s dark even for you,” Sofiane said.

“The world is a dark place, full of misery, injustices, and secrets,” Pechorin said.

Daisy watched Pechorin’s gaze and paid attention to his tone of voice. Nothing suggested the comment was some kind of hidden barb aimed at her. Pechorin’s habit of saying generically edgy things that wandered too close to the truth was going to give her a heart attack. She needed a drink, which was probably arriving any second now.

She moved towards the front door of the hotel room and was halfway there when the knock came.

“Room service! Complimentary mint julep!”

Daisy threw the door open for the hotel attendant holding a silver tray with a charcuterie board and a mint julep in a silver cup.

“You’re a blessing, sweetie!” Daisy said, accepting the drink and snacks and putting a bag full of a couple thousand Ying on the tray as a tip.

Returning with cured meats and mint julep in hand, she glanced over at the open door to Natsuko’s room. Fortunately, her wine bottle was still propped against the side of her bed, right where it ought to be. The last thing she needed was for Natsu to do something stupid, like try to force dimension-jump Zhidao.

Daisy set the charcuterie board down on the little bit of table space not taken up by cards and munched on some lap yuk and smoked goose. Forgetting entirely that she’d meant to go do poetry, she looked on at the card games business.

“Are we lookin’ good on the cards front?” she asked.

“Oh yeah, real good,” Sofiane said. “Turns out our Shui here is a real card shark. She can count all the cards up and clock combos before people can pull ‘em off.”

Shuixing blushed at that and looked away.

“I’m running her through the meta game right now and then we’re gonna scope out the competition so she can get a sense for what everyone is likely to be playing. Between her statistical acumen and my raw, card-playing instinct, we’ve got this one in the bag,” Sofiane said.

Daisy smiled. “Plum! Well, like I said, if y’all need me I’ll be in my room writin’ poetry.”

Pechorin raised his eyes. “Shall we compare some time?”

“Oh, er, I’m a lil’ embarrassed truth be told. It’s more of a… private thing, y’know?” Daisy said.

Pechorin nodded sagely. “I understand. Sometimes we must write lyrics to soothe the demons within, rather than to placate the demons without.”

“Who are the demons without? Is that supposed to be us?” Sofiane asked, gnashing his teeth on some salted duck.

“In one way or another, we’re all demons. The better for us to proclaim it aloud than to trick ourselves into thinking we can purge the demon through ignorance,” Pechorin said.

Sofiane pointed at the balcony door. “Poetry room’s inside, big guy.”