“I need a drink,” Sadea announced and began pushing her way through the crowd. She pulled Raksha along with her, his sleeve tangled in her fist.

“You’ve already had four,” he pointed out. “And eight of those iced cream things.”

“Nine, actually. Five chocolate parfaits and four strawberry ones. Delicious.”

“Can’t be good for you, eating so much sweet stuff.”

“My brain needs the sugar, because unlike you, I actually use it, so shut up. Ah!” Sadea grunted with satisfaction at locating another waiter. The man’s uniform consisted of a plain white shirt with black pants, making him and his fellow staff easily discernible among the garish crowd. He held a serving tray laden with crystal tumblers. She picked up one and sniffed at its contents. Whiskey, with what appeared to be flakes of gold floating on its surface. Perfect. She snatched up another and shoved it into Raksha’s hands. “Here, drink this! It’ll help you think. Or not think, which you always do.”

The martial scientist frowned. The tumbler looked absurdly tiny in his massive hands. Sadea tossed her own drink down her throat and swiped another from the waiter’s tray. The serf didn’t even blink, evidently accustomed to how hard nobles ate and drank.

Raksha sighed, took a sip of the fiery liquid, and immediately began coughing and gagging. Sadea laughed and clapped him on the back. “There you go. Have more. Then it’ll go down and stay down easier.”

“How come I can hear you so well in this din?” he asked, after catching his breath. “That Yagyu woman was pretty much shouting at the top of her lungs, and I could still barely make her words out.”

Sadea tapped her temple. “We’re still connected here. I tried terminating the psy-comms link a while ago, but it simply wouldn’t fade. Maybe it’s a leftover from our trip through the Ethereal Tides.”

“Goddamn sorcery.” Raksha grunted and took another sip of whiskey. This time, his reaction was far less averse. By then, Sadea had already downed another three tumblers and was holding the last two from the tray in her fists, her clutch clamped under her arm.

“If that was a Yagyu back there, things are going to get really bad, really quickly,” he said. “Getting drunk now isn’t very smart.”

“Oh yeah! What was that about? You keep using that word, but I don’t know what it means. What’s a Yag-whatever?” Sadea emptied one of the tumblers in her fist, thought briefly about giving the other to Raksha, then decided otherwise and poured its contents down her throat, too. She left the waiter holding a tray of empty tumblers. Stoically, the serf turned and left, his uniformed silhouette disappearing into the crowd.

“The Yagyu clan. They serve Belisarius nobles. Spies. Assassins. They’re very dangerous, and they can’t be trusted,” Raksha continued. Sighing, he started to place his whiskey glass on one of the many standing tables of carved ivory. Sadea snatched the drink from him and downed it, instead. “Are you even listening to me, woman?”

“Not really, but that’s alright.” Sadea placed her hands on a standing table and savored the sensation of the rapidly downed alcohol hitting her synapses all at once.

Warmth. Color, true color, not crystal-dripped neon, danced beneath her closed eyelids. Her racing thoughts slowed, the tumult of their passage replaced by a blessed mental silence.

She threw her head back and took a deep breath. A smile spread across her face. All seemed right with the world, then, even with all its mutants, heretics, and traitors, even with scheming nobles playing chess with the lives of others, even with the faces of those she’d killed appearing in her dreams whenever she actually dared to dream, even with how much she missed Doctor Horatius and Arj—

Raksha plunked down a parfait in front of her. “I’m told this one’s laced with caffeine. I tried it. Absolutely disgusting. So eat up.”

“Hush. Stupid people don’t get to have any culinary opinions.” Sadea dug into the dessert with the long silver spoon she found in her hand. The bittersweet taste of caramelized caffeine spread across her tongue. She dimly registered that she was only still standing because Raksha was holding her up by the scruff of her neck.

“Where’s Antonius? He calls us here and doesn’t even bother to show up?” Raksha grumbled. “Why can’t he just tell us where to find the fruit thing?”

“And have us miss out on all this revelry?” Sadea leered at a tightly muscled nobleman in an elegant silken suit. He returned her leer and began to approach, but he quickly found himself distracted by a noblewoman’s hand on his crotch. As the aristocrats locked lips, the woman shot Sadea a sidelong venomous glare.

“Ugh.” Sadea grunted and spooned the last of her parfait into her mouth. “Maybe if I sleep with enough nobles, one of them will buy me jewelry like Little Miss Snakeskin’s.”

“Can’t crack a skull with a gemstone unless you throw it very hard,” Raksha muttered, in a way that suggested that he had, indeed, killed with hurled jewelry.

Sadea went over how they’d gotten here: a carriage ride through the megapolis’s walls, a brief stop at a mansion requisitioned for Leona’s household staff, another ride through streets teeming with agri-serfs making their way to and from work, and a ten-minute elevator ride up to Antonius’s palace.

The former Hegemonic Lord’s home stood above Neo-Mizuru’s smog canopy, held aloft by a single massive shaft of permacrete and steel. Cloned psy-slaves welded into exploitation coffins kept the palace wrapped in a permanent telekinetic bubble, ensuring that no stray smog fumes would violate the perfumed bouquet suffusing its halls.

Below, tens of thousands of hydroponic farms and wireframe-meat generators toiled to feed the province, their choicest produce reserved as tribute for the palace. Sadea recalled the bitter, resentful eyes of the emaciated serfs they’d passed on their carriage ride. She had a sinking feeling as she worked out where the fruit’s taint was most likely to have taken hold.

Ah, what the hell. Not like I haven’t killed serfs before.

“Hey, dummy, we might have to—” Sadea blinked. Raksha held a roasted massive fowl leg in his hands, gnawed nearly to the bone.

“What? I haven’t eaten since yesterday. And someone was pushing a cartful of these around just now, and she asked me if I wanted one. And I did. So I took one.”

Sadea chuckled. “You want another?”

“Can… can I?” The martial scientist’s eyes went wide. For a moment, he looked more like a dazzled youth than someone capable of butchering fifty people and leaving their limbs strewn everywhere. “I’ve never eaten so much meat at once.”

Another smile spread across her face. This one felt more real, less painful. “You might as well. And get me another parfait. And something to drink. Don’t care what, as long as it’s strong. It’s going to be a long, long night.”