Jazathya took a deep breath of fresh ocean air. The day had started out badly enough, with her having to pen a polite reply to that scavenging hyena Gabiral. But that was finished and over with, handed off to the courier and on its way to his office. And now she was on the hook to actually meet with the man long enough to turn the conversation towards Kashin and see what information he’d be willing or even able to provide.

And wouldn’t that be fun, begging for help from the very people who had abandoned Irdishan in its time of need?

Jazathya shook her head to clear her thoughts. No point in worrying about that all right now, she supposed. She needed to pick up Mipmip and see if Kel’s sister couldn’t be reasoned with. Who knew, if things went well, they might not even need to bother with Gabiral.

She had finally managed to find her way through Reeftown’s twisted streets of coral to Lilannette’s door. She didn’t bother knocking this time. She assumed she was expected.

Opening the door, she saw that, instead of another eel spirit like last time, the entryway was blocked by a hulking, blue scaled humanoid creature with a fish head. Strangely, it seemed to be in poor shape, with fresh wounds crisscrossing its body. One even looked like it was still bleeding, leaking out purplish blood that dripped down the spirit’s side.

“You are not welcome here,” it gurgled.

“I know you can hear me,” Jazathya said. “It’s me. I came to pick up the cuddlefish that ran in here yesterday. Don’t make me blast my way through this thing like I did with the other one.” She punctuated the last statement with a blast of lightning aimed at the floor near the fish man’s feet for emphasis.

After a moment, the spirit grunted and shuffled aside, opening the door and standing back to allow her through. Lilannette was once again waiting in the room, this time with Mipmip sitting on a table beside her, happily cooing as he hugged her arm.

Jazathya approached them. “Thanks for taking care of him,” she said.

“Whatever,” Lilannette said listlessly as she pulled away from his arms. “Just take him and leave.”

Jazathya bent down, putting her face nearly level with Mipmip’s. “Were you a good boy? Did you have fun at aunty Lilannette’s house?” she said.

“Mipmipmip!” he burbled cheerfully. Jazathya smiled as she scooped him up in her arms and let him hug her.

“There, you’ve got your stupid pet back,” Lilannette said. “Now get out.”

“Since I’m here anyway, I wanted to talk about acquiring your services,” Jazathya said.

Lilannette rolled her eyes and sighed. “No, absolutely not. Whatever help Keloran needs, she’s not getting it from me.”

“Keloran isn’t here,” Jazathya said. “You’re a professional witch for hire, right? This is just business between you and me.”

“I’m not stupid,” she replied. “Whatever you want is obviously going to be part of whatever she’s doing. There’s no difference between which one of you asks.”

“I can pay,” Jazathya said. “Just name your price.”

“There’s not enough money in the world,” Lilannette said.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little ridiculous?” Jazathya asked. “Maybe you two don’t get along, but you can’t let that get in the way of…”

“Do you have any idea how much shit she’s put me through?” Lilannette interrupted. “Hell, even just yesterday she killed my guardian spirit. The Reeftown Guild’s been breathing down my neck about joining them, and now I’m stuck with trying to fight their thugs off with an Ichthyoid because I couldn’t summon another Rift Speaker on such short notice.”

“So that’s what the cut-up fish spirit out there is for…” Jazathya mused.

“Of course,” Lilannette said. “Do you think I like having to keep the foyer empty so that nothing gets broken in the scuffles? No! But that’s a lesson I learned the hard way.”

“You couldn’t just move?” Jazathya asked.

“There’s nowhere in Darazzo where some Diver guild or other wouldn’t be doing the exact same thing,” Lilannette complained.

“Speaking of Divers,” Jazathya said, quickly seizing on the chance to turn the conversation towards her own problem. “Niva tricked your sister and I into telling a guild master that we knew the identities of the thieves who stole a very valuable item from him and that we could recover it in a week.”

“Don’t care,” Lilannette said.

“Oh come on,” Jazathya said. “Look at what Divers are doing to you, and you’re someone they want to eventually work with. Do you really think it won’t be a million times worse for her? They aren’t chomping at the bit to have her work for them. They’ll just want to punish her for the failure and for having accepted the down payment.”

“Don’t care,” Lilannette stated flatly.

“She’s your sister!” Jazathya screamed. “You really hate her that much? You don’t care what happens to her at all?”

“And she cares so much about me?” Lilannette retorted. “She puts so much thought into what’s going to happen to me? Hell no! She barged in here and started riding my ass about not going to temple enough, just like always. Did she even stop to wonder why I might need to keep a dangerous spirit right inside my door at all times? No, because that’s not important. What is important is figuring out what little Lila did wrong this time and how my perfect big sister can stop it by managing my entire life for me.”

“Okay, I know that things aren’t great between you…” Jazathya started.

“Not ‘great’?” Lilannette said. “You don’t know anything. Ever since we were kids, it’s always been ‘Lila do this,’ ‘Lila do that,’ ‘Lila stop doing that,’ ‘Lila you need to dress like the daughter of a baroness,’ ‘Lila you need to study harder,’ ‘Lila you need to exercise and train for combat more,’ ‘Lila you should pray more often,’ ‘Lila you’re making the family look bad,’ ‘Lila you’re wasting your life,’ ‘Lila you should be more like me.’ It was like I was her fucking pet! And who did our family always back? Little miss perfect, who could do no wrong in their eyes and who would hover around and tattle on me the minute I stuck a fucking toe out of line. And if I ever breathed a word of complaint about her, that was just another piece of evidence proving that I needed even more discipline. My family didn’t want me, they just wanted a second Keloran.”

As she finished her rant, Mipmip turned around in Jazathya’s arms and reached out towards her, burbling “Mipmipmipmip!” as he did. Lilannette cocked an eyebrow at his antics.

“I think he wants to hug you,” Jazathya explained. Lilannette didn’t say a word, but she did step closer and take Mipmip into her arms and, begrudgingly, hugged him. “Look, you’re right. I don’t know what’s going on between you or what she did to make you hate her so much. But you can’t really want to paint a target for a Diver guild on her back.”

“Why not?” Lilannette asked. “It’s her own damn fault for getting into trouble in the first place. Why’s it my responsibility to get her out of her own mess?”

“She’s your family,” Jazathya implored. “Even when you’ve got nothing else, you can count on family.”

“Family,” Lilannette scoffed. “That doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.”

“Well, it means a lot to your sister,” Jazathya said. “You have no idea how concerned she was about you. She kept bringing it up again and again all day.”

“Oh great,” Lilannette said, rolling her eyes. “Keloran’s ‘concerned’ about me. I’m always in for a fun time when that happens.”

“Maybe she can be overbearing,” Jazathya admitted. “But I could tell she really cares about you.”

“Well I don’t care about her,” Lilannette said.

“Don’t you think you’re being even the slightest bit hardheaded here?” Jazathya asked. “You really can’t just put off dealing with your family issues when someone you love is in danger?”

Lilannette snorted. “’Love’? Oh great masters of the Depths, don’t tell me you’re going to give me a sermon on ‘the great goddess of love and compassion’ too.”

“You seriously don’t love your own sister?” Jazathya asked, incredulous.

“Damn right I don’t!” Lilannette shouted. “Where was all that ‘love’ when I was growing up? Nowhere. It was rules, nagging, and condescension. I loved her about as much as I did the schoolmarm who would whip my ass for being tardy. No, wait, I take it back. Mrs. Drorvar at least had the decency to leave me alone after school was over. Keloran was never that merciful!”

“And what about the rest of your family?” Jazathya asked. “How are you going to explain it to them if something happens to her?”

“Fuck ‘em,” Lilannette replied. “None of them ever really supported me. Maybe then they’ll finally see that I wasn’t the one they should have been worrying about all this time.”

“That’s an insane way of looking at this!” Jazathya growled out in frustration.

“Hell, if you care about family so much, go ask your own damn family for help and leave me the fuck out of it!” Lilannette yelled. “As for me? My family can go fuck itself. I’m better off alone!”

Jazathya slapped her. As soon as Lilannette turned her face back, it was obvious she was furious, but Jazathya didn’t care. Mipmip looked up at her, actually crying in shock and frowning in what she could have sworn was disappointment.

“How dare you!” Jazathya yelled. “I’ve lost my entire family. My mother died when I was young. My father died fighting the Krovians. I wish I had a sister, no matter how gods damned annoying, just so I wouldn’t be alone. You have no idea how lucky you are, you ungrateful little bitch!”

Lilannete only continued glaring at her, before finally responding with just one word. “Leave.”

“Fine,” Jazathya said. “Come on, Mipmip.” She accepted the cuddlefish into her arms and turned to leave, while he pitifully let out a stream of mips while looking back at Lilannette.

Jazathya was already through the door when she heard, “Wait.”

She turned around to face Lilannette. “You know, maybe if Keloran would take responsibility for overreacting for once, I might be willing to let her pay for my help, same as anyone else.”

“And by ‘take responsibility’, you mean…?”

“I mean, get the fucking Reeftown Divers Guild off my back,” Lilannette. “If I didn’t need to keep those assholes out, I wouldn’t even have needed the damn Rift Speaker.”

Jazathya smiled. “That sounds fair.”

Lilannette made a “harrumph” sound. “Fair would be if you two hadn’t screwed me over in the first place. Now get out, and don’t come back until you’ve got the Reeftown Guild to agree to stop hassling me.”

Jazathya only nodded, but Mipmip, sensing the change in the atmosphere between the two, instantly perked up. As Jazathya turned back to the door to leave, he flung his head over her shoulder to happily burble “Mipmipmip!” at Lilannette as he was carried away.

As she walked down the street, she held Mipmip out in front of her. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she said to him. “Now, instead of getting killed by the Twilight Eye, we just have to fight a gang of Divers from a different guild, and somehow intimidate them into leaving a diviner alone.”

“Mip,” said Mipmip.

“And we have to do that with just the three of us.”

“Mip.”

“And in exchange, we’d get a chance that maybe we’ll find out where the cauldron is.”

“Mip.”

“And we have to do all that before we can even start worrying about how to actually retrieve it from whoever stole it in the first place.”

“Mip.”

“Yeah,” Jazathya said. “I agree, that does sound better than having to go near that group of unpatriotic slime balls and pretend not to hate them.”

“Mip!”