It was, as Quistis had promised, a very nice, out-of-the-way cafe, hidden in a narrow gap between two shops selling healing herbs and alchemical compounds. Far enough from the Guild and the Sisters to not be treated to the noise, but easily within walking distance to both and the elevator into the lower city.

Once past the heavy nondescript door, Mertle found herself in a cosy, candle-lit place with separated narrow booths and two-person tables. The cushions were all velvet and there was pipe smoke in the air, sweetened with scents of fruit. String music drifted in from somewhere, though she could see no musician in attendance.

Privacy was the coin of trade here. No windows. No sprites in the air. Only flickering candlelight and the warmth they produced. Patrons were nearly faceless in the cosy gloom, their voices lost in the hum.

A faint breeze wafted the smoke about and made the flames shimmer and shiver.

Mertle took it all in upon first step, and loved it.

A serving girl took their cloaks and greeted Captain Quistis with the ease of long familiarity. She led them among the labyrinthine arrangements of tables, down a short flight of stairs and into an unexpectedly private booth.

“If I worried of your intentions, Captain Quistis, I would think you were leading me into a dungeon,” Mertle said as she seated herself on soft cushions. “The Guard must pay spectacularly well for one to be intimate with a place such as this.”

“Please, just Quistis is fine, lady Tianna. I’m out of uniform and this is really just a personal invitation.”

There was a lie in there, somewhere. Mertle could read it on her face, though she couldn’t figure exactly what she was being lied to about. She nodded and picked a menu plaque from the wall.

“Quistis, then,” she said, softening her tone to hide her shock at the prices on the plaque.

Two bloody lions for a cup of coffee?! In the Agora, two lions would buy her and Tummy an entire meal and leave over some eagles for a couple mugs of Valen beer. Pastries and cake slices were even more absurd. She looked over the edge of the plaque at Quistis and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t come here by myself. And I never get to pay,” Quistis said and there was a slight, very human blush on her cheeks as she said so. “Serving in the Guard does not pay quite that well I’m afraid. And, anyway, most of it goes home to my parents.”

All the same, unperturbed, Mertle ordered coffee—sweetened, of course—and five different cake slices of the most expensive varieties. Three of them had decadent as a descriptor. She only stopped when she saw a momentary flash of panic on Quistis’s face. One more cupcake, for good measure. Petty revenge for that terrifying night, true, but it relaxed her to see the Captain sweating and touching her money pouch.

“You offered. I accepted. Or did you believe my company would come cheap?”

“I’m just surprised, really. Did not expect your sweet tooth to be quite so ravenous. I’ve never seen anyone, except maybe an elend, stomach two of these sugar monstrosities. My date normally can’t even finish his.” She only ordered a coffee for herself. Black. No sugar needed. “It’ll be a tale for the barracks and no doubt.”

Mertle cursed inwardly. There was no attack in the words though. She shrugged.

“I’m eating out of frustration, if you must know. And I hold you personally accountable for it.”

“Me? Whatever for?”

She levelled her best, most loathing glare at Quistis, the kind she only reserved for the obnoxious customers come to haggle back at the shop. It usually got them blubbering.

“You scared my friends away.”

“Pardon?”

“Your foul shenanigans and that ghastly threat of violence on my person, the things you’re trying to bribe my anger away for? After all that my companions disappeared into the night. Thank you so bloody much, Quistis.” She added a slight hiss to the name, for effect.

An excellent opportunity had just presented itself, to deal with the one detail that could hinder her mission. Tummy couldn’t become Vergil anymore than Aliana could turn into Sil. Tianna losing her constant companions would be an impossible to ignore detail for anyone bright enough to originally figure out she was a fraud.

“I did wonder at that,” Quistis replied quietly. “You don’t mean quite literally disappeared into the night, right?”

“Absolutely literally. The moment your lot disappeared from sight, so did they. The elend girl that was with us fainted at all the excitement and I caught her before she fell. When I turned around we were alone. Not so much as a word. Bloody incredible. And it’s all your fault.”

Quistis regarded her with an interesting mixture of emotions as the serving girl brought in their order on two trays. A tiny bowl of honey was set next to her coffee, after the Southern style of Calabran port. Mertle cooed over the detail, her anger seemingly overshadowed by this touch of home. The further North one travelled, the rarer honey got.

Since Tallah’s departure, she’d had Tummy read to her about the Southern cities as she’d only spent little time in the ports of Vas. Amazing how much humans wrote of their homes and customs. She considered dictating some things to him about Beril.

“Did you have any word from your friends since?” Quistis asked. Her gaze had unfocused and she scratched at her neck, beneath the collar of her robe, a gesture completely at odds with her overall bearing.

“You’ll cut yourself if you keep doing that,” Mertle noted and took a bite out of the first cake. Delicious and, indeed, decadent. She took some time to savour it before responding. “No. Not a peep.”

“Have you had any valuables go missing?”

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“I couldn’t say. Silestra took care of that stuff and she did the packing for our planned trip to Solstice. We were supposed to leave on the Vulniu caravan, but then you showed up and buggered my plans.” She tasted each cake. Every slice was so different and each so wonderfully prepared. She desperately wanted to come here and have Sil try these as well.

“What were your plans, lady Tianna? Why were you planning to leave?” Quistis’s interest had changed. The way she held her hand curled on her mug, one finger tracing the outline of its lip. How she leaned forward slightly and her eyes focused intently on hers. No longer out of uniform it seemed.

Tallah and Sil hadn’t had the chance to set this up. All she knew was that it involved the South, Ria especially, but nothing beyond that. Again, she shrugged dismissively, as if the matter did not warrant consideration. Her attention was on the sweets and her wonderfully sweetened coffee.

“I’ve tired of Valen and its gloom. Especially, I’ve tired of the stench of smoke everywhere. I was heading for Solstice, and from there down to one of the Southern cities. I miss the sight of the Divide. It’s been too long since I’ve felt the ocean breeze on my face.” Safe answer. From Solstice it was an easy trek down to Calabran, home, and from there she could head to Vas’s opposite coast.

“Why were you at the Sisters of Mercy? Looking for news of your two?”

“This is turning into an interrogation, Quistis,” Mertle said. She’d finished one slice of cake and moved on to the next. Yes, she would finish them all, but the cupcake would need to come home with her or she’d waddle. “One normally uses hard drink to get answers, not cake. Bold strategy.”

“I apologise. Just…” Quistis floundered for a moment and then reached inside her robe and took out a scroll. “I can have people looking into your companions,” she said, voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, as if hiding her preferential treatment. Not that she needed to. There was nobody around on this lower level. “Or... There are two people of interest, a healer and a warrior, that have come to our attention at pretty much the same time as what you describe. Given some of the circumstances that lead us to mistakenly accuse you, what you’re saying now is difficult to ignore.”

Even by flickering candlelight it was entirely too easy to recognise who was sketched out on Quistis’s scroll. Mertle’s heart skipped at least two beats when she looked.

“Who’s that?” she asked, spoon resting against her lower lip to hide any emotion.

“Do you recognise this woman at all? Have you ever seen her around any of the places you were at? Please, think very well on this.”

The background hum of the cafe and the soft music died away as she pulled the image closer and stared down into Sil’s charcoal eyes. It was a very good rendering of her likeness, right down to the twist of her mouth in anger and the shawl Mertle had gifted her. Someone had gotten a very good look, probably in the commotion Tallah had stirred.

She swallowed her cake and took another bite before pushing the paper back.

“Looks a bit like a younger you, if I’m honest,” she replied. A stupid but true answer, after a fashion. If she hadn’t known Sil to be an only child, she could see Quistis as her older sister from the resemblance. Nose and eyes were very similar. “But otherwise she doesn’t strike me as familiar.”

The scroll stood between them for a while longer as Quistis sipped her now cold coffee. “More’s the pity, I guess. Would’ve given me something to go on.” She rolled back Sil’s image into a tight cylinder and stowed it away. “We’ll be circulating plaques of this person and hope for the best.”

Mertle chocked on a lump of cake, gripped her coffee and tried to wash down the lump of chocolate. It made it worse.

Mertle had been seen with the person on the scroll!

In more than one place and in less than platonic circumstances. They’d never made it any kind of secret while out and about, enjoying the kind a freedom only a human city could afford an elendine.

Quistis rose to help her. Mertle waved her back as she tried to compose herself.

“Went down the wrong way,” she wheezed out as she emptied her coffee mug. It all tasted like dust now and she felt a sudden stab of pain through her forehead. The armlet felt hot to the touch and she struggled to breathe. Cold sweat drenched her back and plastered the dress to her skin.

“Most people pale when choking. You’ve gone quite red in the face,” Quistis noted with some worry.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She breathed out, coughed, closed her eyes, forced herself to calm. Nothing had yet happened, a distant voice whispered in her ear. This is a blessing in disguise. Without it, you wouldn’t have had advance warning of what was to come. There would be time for panic later.

“Did not expect it to be quite so hard to push down.”

A wintry smile, a signal to the serving girl, and two more Valen lions marched out of Quistis’s pouch.

“Bugger me, that was embarrassing.” Mertle sipped her fresh coffee and burned the roof of her mouth without feeling it. “Who was that on the scroll?”

“I can’t say. I’m sorry. But I can have my people on the lookout for your two missing companions.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do. I’d like to ask about them if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind.” Mertle moved on to the next slice and brandished a spoonful of it at Quistis. “This is excellent cake, Captain, and this is my first real moment of joy since the Night of Descent. I’ll be much more favourably inclined towards you if you’ll just let me enjoy it without more interrogation.”

“I apologise.”

“No need. Consider my anger somewhat abated. You delivered as promised and I got to see you sweat. I think we might be near to even. Now have your men leave me alone and I will truly be satisfied. I’m tired of always being followed about. It was flattering for a time, but now it borders on obnoxious.”

“Pardon? I don’t have anyone on you at the moment. I called back surveillance after the Descent.”

That brought Mertle short, especially as there was no lie in the words. “I can recognise soldiers, Quistis. I can recognise when they’re following me. The same sort of people that have been dogging me all Winter. Your men.” She leaned forward. “I’m sorry to say, they are not that good at their job if the point was to remain unseen.”

It was Quistis’s turn to frown and hide it behind the coffee mug. “My men are hand-picked and beyond any sort of reproach. If you’re being followed and you know about it, they’re not answering to me.” She sounded offended. Downright pouted.

Maybe if I was what you thought I am, Mertle thought with relish. Of course, she’d had very different training and could see an Imperial tail from the other side of Valen. This was going into self-indulgence already. Some of her watchers were simply of the Aieni Holding, keeping tabs on the prodigal daughter, but the rest were definitely Storm Guards.

“As you say,” she conceded and let the matter drop. “Must be my imagination then.” A hint of malice slipped in, just enough to sting Quistis’s pride again. “Don’t look so boggle-eyed. Is there something on my face?” She wiped the corner of her mouth with the heel of her palm, a definitely unladylike gesture, to declaw her previous words.

“You’ve finished four of them…” Quistis looked a bit green at the sight of four empty plates. “How are you not sick? Will you be able to walk?”

“Because they’re excellent. Have you tried this one? Puts to shame Verti’s girls, and they’re elend.”

“My teeth hurt only thinking about one of those.”

Mertle took entirely too much pleasure out of Quistis wincing when she took the next spoonful. “As for walking.” She closed her eyes in pleasure at the taste of distant lemons. “I’ll waddle home.”

It was worth it.