Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Trixie's Bar (Everyone welcome)

The door did not open. It made an entrance. Tonatiuh Xīhuitzin arrived with the insolence of a curtain lift. He paused on the threshold as if waiting for applause that the room did not deserve to give. Then he glided forward, shoulders rolling like a dancer warming into a number. One hand lifted. Wrist loose. Fingers poised. The gesture was pure theatre. An invitation. A warning. A promise that the air itself was about to be improved.

Behind him, four skeletons strode in formation. Not shuffling dead. A runway cohort. Vertebra proud. Jaws angled like they had opinions. They wore his wares as if even bone understood hierarchy. Velvet. Bone-trim. Necro-ice beadwork that sparked cold blue along hems like frostfire trying to flirt. Tona turned once in the aisle, letting violet-and-gold shimmer under candlelight. Wet-jade sheen. Turquoise runes. Bone edging that made the garments look expensive enough to offend the poor. He planted a hand on his hip. Cocked his head. Smiled at the tavern like it had personally disappointed him.

Then he spoke. Loud enough to claim the room. Warm enough to make people forgive him for doing it. “Everyone breathe.” He fanned a hand, shooing dread as if it were smoke. “Do not clutch your purses. Do not clutch your prayers. If you must clutch something, clutch your *standards*, because they are clearly slipping.”

He took three more steps. The skeletons pivoted with him, a synchronized flourish. One snapped a cape outward in a clean arc. Another presented a ribbon like a royal decree. Two posed at either side as if the tavern were suddenly worthy of choreography. Tona’s smile widened. He tilted his chin toward the nearest table of staring men. “And do not fear. The greatest sword-swallowing mouth in this entire sodden establishment has arrived.” He tapped his own throat with two fingers. Velvet confidence. “Yes. *Higher.* I heard the rumors. I am here to confirm them. Consider this my charitable donation to your grim little lives.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the room. Nervous first. Then helpless. He let it happen. He *fed* on it. “Now.” He spread his arms, robes catching candlelight like stained glass. “I know this bar. I can smell it. The wet wool. The stale courage. The regret that has been reheated too many times. I am not here to judge you.”

A beat. Then his expression turned pitying, deliciously dramatic. “I am here to brighten this dreadful pit with my superior taste in fashion. Because death itself knows these people have no taste.”

He leaned toward the ceiling as if confiding in the rafters. “Death is a connoisseur. Death has standards. Death takes one look at this room and says, ‘No. I will not be seen here. I have an image.’” He snapped his fingers. The skeletons strutted. They moved down the central aisle with crisp heel-to-toe precision. One stopped to turn, offering the sharp angle of a shoulder piece. Another tilted a skull to show off bone filigree and turquoise beadwork. The third flared a hem so the necro-ice stitching caught the light and threw it back in glittering little insults. The fourth held swatches aloft like sacred relics. The tavern became a catwalk by force of audacity. Tables turned into seats. Patrons turned into audience. Nobody had voted on it.

Tona watched them with a proud, exaggerated hand to his chest, as if the sight moved him spiritually. “Look at them.” His voice softened into mock-reverence. “Polite. Disciplined. Better posture than half the living. That one has never once spilled ale on itself. Can any of you say the same.” He turned his head. And found her.

Ixqueya, alone at her ledger. Brooding like a cathedral in winter. Ice in the eyes. Warpaint immaculate. The room’s mood bending around her like weather around a mountain. Tona’s whole demeanor changed into delighted mischief. He approached her table with a flourish that respected her space while still making the act of approaching feel like an event. He bowed, not low. Not submissive. More like a man acknowledging an equal threat with a joke on his lips. “My Marchioness.” He placed a hand over his heart and let the other hand drift out, palm up, as if offering her the entire room and apologizing for the quality. “I have never seen anyone brood with such… professional artistry. Truly. If gloom were a textile, you would have it cut to perfection and stitched into an heirloom.”

He angled his body sideways so the lamplight kissed the runes on his sleeves. He was performing even while he spoke. A slight pivot. A controlled turn of the wrist. A half-smirk that suggested he knew exactly how charming he was being and found it amusing. “I came because I sensed a deficit.” He nodded at her ledger. “Not in your numbers. In your surroundings.”

He glanced around the tavern again, visibly pained. “Death knows these people have no taste.” He pronounced it like a scandal. “They think ‘well-made’ means ‘still holding together.’ They think ‘color’ is something you catch from a rash. They think a ‘silhouette’ is a threat.” His expression turned theatrically mournful. “Alas.” He sighed, long and dramatic. “I cannot work miracles.”

Then he brightened instantly, as if he had remembered he was the miracle. “But I can commit tasteful arson.” He spread two fingers like scissors. “I can cut. I can shape. I can make misery look intentional. And if the world insists on being dreary, I can at least force it to be well-dressed.” He leaned in just slightly. His voice dropped, silky and delighted. “Tell me, Lady Winter. Are you here to count threats. Or to punish yourself with bad ambience.” His eyes flicked to her inked columns, then back to her face. “Because I am prepared to rescue you from this aesthetic crime scene.” He gestured behind him. “My chorus is warmed up. My bones are obedient. My taste is violent. Give me a single nod and I will turn this miserable room into something that deserves your shadow.”

"What just happened?"

"Hah! Clearly two people who aren't going to honk or fight."

"Well, in the words of my former commander Ultra Magnus, I can't deal with that now." Springer transforms into a helicopter and flies off.

From the kitchen again stepped out the same girl, except she's a lot cleaner and her clothes were changed to ones not broken.

Looking at the complicated scene, she couldn't help but wonder, what had happened? There are so many people around here now, some mysterious.

Suddenly, her left feet knocked into something, and she was tripped over, faceplanting.

"Ow."

Then, with her right hand pushing the ground, the girl rose to her knees. With that done, she then raised herself completely, looking around.

The greeting arrived like a small bright stone tossed into the slow current of the room.

“Hewwo and welcome to Twixie’s Bar. I’m Fumizuki.”

The syllables were soft. Round. Almost kittenish. They skimmed through the tavern’s usual strata of sound and came to rest by the hearth where Zubaida sat.

For a heartbeat longer she did not move. Her attention remained inside the coals, in that incandescent nucleus where wood forgot its past and offered itself entirely to combustion. Heat breathed against her face. The scents of resin and charcoal mingled with her own perfume until the air felt almost votive. Then she let her gaze detach from the ember-bed and rise.

Honey-brown eyes lifted first. Slow. Deliberate. They found the source of the voice and adjusted to the contrast. From the fire’s crimson logic to the living figure framed by barlight and shadows.

Fumizuki stood at that easy distance where one could retreat without embarrassment or approach without presumption. Zubaida took her in with the same unhurried appraisal she gave everything. No flinch. No condescension. Just a patient cataloguing of detail. The cadence of that playful “hewwo.” The posture. The eagerness that moved ahead of the body like a small, bright aura.

Heat glanced along Zubaida’s profile as she turned more fully. The pale strands of her piebald hair caught the glow and kindled. Ivory flashed against obsidian, a living contrast that made the hearthlight cling to her like something it recognized. Gold circlet. Dark cascade. Skin marked here and there with lighter pigment that the fire revealed as softly as dawn on stone. Her jewelry murmured with the faintest crystalline clink as she shifted. Chains at her hips settled. Bracelets slid a fraction down her forearms.

She straightened, though she had never truly slouched. Spine aligning into full consideration. Hands unfolding from her lap. Fingers, long and ring-adorned, rested upon her knees for a moment before one lifted. A quiet, measured gesture of greeting, palm tipped slightly toward Fumizuki in acknowledgement.

The perfume that wrapped her deepened as she moved. Amber. Benzoin. Myrrh warmed into velvet. A thread of saffron’s dry brilliance. The smallest exhale carried it forward. Not invasive. An invitation drawn in scent.

When she spoke, her voice arrived low and warm. Not languid. A controlled contralto.

“Peace upon your threshold, little spark,” she said. The words carried a faint desert cadence, as though shaped by dunes and sun before ever touching this timbered ceiling. “You welcome strangers with such brightness that the lamps grow timid.”

There was a glimmer of wryness at the corner of her mouth. Not mockery. Amusement held with care, as if she was afraid to bruise something delicate.

“I am Zubaida Ahmadzai,” she continued. “A pilgrim of the Lord of Light. A traveler who has known more sand than stone. Tonight I borrow your fire. I hope it takes no offense that I listen to it as though it were an old friend.”

Her gaze did not pierce. It warmed. She let it rest on Fumizuki’s face long enough to make the greeting feel individualized. Maternal consideration settled in her eyes, the kind that weighed not whether someone was useful, but whether they were safe. Whether they were well.

She inclined her head in a slow, respectful nod. The gesture held the solemnity of a desert bow without bending into formality so stiff it shattered the easy atmosphere.

“You have offered me welcome,” she said. “For that, may your nights be untroubled. May your lamps never sputter. May your own heart never want for warmth when the world chooses to be cold.”

Only then did she let a touch of mischief surface, subtle but unmistakable. Her lashes lowered, then rose again with a trace of glittering humor.

“And if your Twixie’s Bar keeps its promises as sweetly as its name suggests,” she added, “I will trade you a prayer at dawn for a drink now. Something with heat in it. Not only in the glass, but in the way it lingers.”

The fire cracked. Coals settled. Light crawled across Zubaida’s features, gilding the piebald pale at her temple and collarbone, kindling amber in her eyes. Around them the bar continued its ordinary life. Tankards. Laughter. A half-tuned song. Within that ordinary world, she sat as she always did. Perfumed. Composed. A desert devotee in a northern room. A holy woman wrapped in sensual finery. A mother of light making quiet room at her side for a lively stranger who had said “hewwo” and meant welcome with all her small, earnest flame.

*confused smol floof noise*

Noticing this small moment after her accidental fall, Xueqing seemed brightened.
"Heh. Hiya!" She waved at the two, and lightly scurried to them.

She proceeded to pat the smol fluff, her gestures friendly and soft. "She was wishing you no nightmares, bud."

Then, she sat down on the floor, her body leaning backwards with hands pushing against the ground to offer support. "Today was complicated..."

Ixqueya did not look up at once. The Marchioness of Winterwake finished the line she was inscribing. The pen moved with mortuary exactitude. Each numeral landed like a nail in a coffin lid. Ink congealed into obedient columns. The ledger accepted its newest decrement with the composure of a sealed crypt. Only then did her hand still. Only then did the Princess of the Dead lift her gaze from the ashen folios as though raising her eyes from a private altar where prayers were replaced by tallies and absolution was replaced by consequence.

Tonatiuh’s arrival had not opened the door. It had performed a threshold rite. His violet and gold shimmer threw sacrilegious beauty into corners that had only ever known dampness and debt. His skeletal cohort moved with curated insolence. Not the shamble of famine-dead. A procession. A ceremonial cortege where even bone remembered hierarchy. Necro-ice beadwork sparked along hems like frostfire flirting with candlelight. The tavern, by force of his audacity, became a chapel of spectacle. Tables turned into pews. Patrons became congregants. Nobody had consented. Consent was never required for miracles, or for invasions.

Her eyes reached him with the slow inevitability of a verdict. Cerulean, frigid, unpersuadable. War paint remained immaculate. Turquoise strokes across cheekbone and brow. Carmine crescents beneath each lower lid like blood-tears arrested in perpetuity. The room’s sallow illumination attempted to cling to her and failed. Sound thinned in her vicinity as if the air had taken vows. Warmth retreated, not dramatically, but as doctrine. The cold around the Marchioness did not behave like weather. It behaved like jurisdiction.

“Your timing,” the Ice Marchioness said at last, voice low and evenly weighted, “is characteristically indecent.”

The words contained no heat. They were appraisal. The tone she reserved for a blade that arrived honed. For a messenger who arrived punctually. For an enemy who at least understood the dignity of competence.

A pause followed. A microfracture at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile. A concession no larger than a snowflake, and just as capable of accumulating into disaster.

“This establishment was already condemned,” the Princess of Winterwake continued. “You have merely come to clothe the cadaver.”

Her gaze drifted past Tonatiuh for a heartbeat. Not to admire the audience. To measure them. Patrons blinking at sudden theatre. Faces rearranging into reverence the way frightened animals rearrange into stillness. Men who had been loud moments ago now watching the bones as if watching their own eventual biographies. It amused her. Not because it was humorous. Because it was predictable. Mortals mistook illumination for absolution. They mistook choreography for safety. They mistook perfume for purity.

Ixqueya returned her eyes to Tonatiuh. The return was deliberate. Like a blade returning to its sheath. Like a seal pressed into wax.

“You mistake my stillness for self-punishment,” the Marchioness said. “I am not suffering. Ugliness is useful. It strips the living down to their truest appetites. It makes them honest. If only by accident.”

The chair beneath her issued a strained complaint as she shifted. Timber flexed under the consolidation of her colossal mass. She ignored it with the indifference of winter toward a roof beam that believes itself essential. One armored leg crossed the other with parsimonious precision. The movement was controlled. Predatory. It read as courtesan poise translated into siegecraft. A femme fatale posture that erased half the room’s confidence without granting the room acknowledgement.

Behind her, the wasp tail drifted through a languid arc. Not threat. Not invitation. A pendulum of conditional consequence. The aculeus glimmered with interior cyan. Necro-ice honed into verdict. It hovered like the thin edge of a doctrinal clause. One that could be invoked without raising a voice.

“That said,” Ixqueya added, and the phrase fell with the weight of a legal amendment, “your presence improves compliance. It redirects attention. It complicates cowardice. I find those outcomes efficient.”

Efficient. The word struck like a coin dropped into a poor man’s bowl. Not charity. Transaction. The highest commendation she offered to anything not divine.

Her gaze flicked, briefly, to the skeleton cohort. Their posture. Their tailoring. Their disciplined insolence. The way Tonatiuh had taken the most egalitarian substance in existence, bone, and made it aristocratic. A subtle approval passed through the Princess of the Dead. It moved like rime across stone. When her eyes returned to Tonatiuh, they carried no softness. Only recognition of value.

“You are not rescuing me,” the Marchioness said. “You are improving working conditions.”

The tavern’s lamps guttered slightly, as if embarrassed by their own crude persistence. Smoke above the crowd sagged and rearranged. The room tasted, for an instant, of cold incense and old oaths. Ixqueya held Tonatiuh’s gaze with a familiar severity, the sort granted to those who had earned proximity without begging for it. The kind of severity that, paradoxically, was its own form of intimacy.

“And for the record,” she continued, voice dry as crematory ash, “if gloom were a cloth, you would overwork it. You would overdye it. Then you would complain it lacked drama.”

A pause. Long enough for the insult to become an offering. Long enough for it to be understood as affection spoken in the dialect of knives and invoices.

“But you would make it sell.”

That was her benediction. Sparse. Unadorned. Irrevocable. It did not praise his charm. It confirmed his function. Tonatiuh would recognize it as trust rendered in the only currency she spent without regret.

Ixqueya set her palm atop the ledger. The cover creaked faintly under her weight. The book itself seemed to acknowledge its sovereign. She did not reopen it yet. She did not need to. Permission had already been issued.

“Proceed,” the Inquisitor of Frostmarrow said. “Quietly. Or loudly. I do not care which.”

Her eyes did not leave him as she spoke the next words. The air sharpened. The room leaned in without wanting to. Then the Marchioness lowered her gaze again. The ledger awaited. Numbers waited like bones in ordered stacks. Tonatiuh had what he came for. A sanction. A faint, lethal amusement.

"Come over here, sweet face" he said with a warmth to his daughter

His eyes caught that of the Chaplain and he raised his mug of Mjod in a greeting

"Welcome, Brother-Chaplain!"

Tonatiuh took her verdict the way a seasoned performer takes a thrown dagger. He let it glitter. He let it hover. Then he caught it with a flourish and smiled as if she had just handed him a bouquet. He did not sit. Sitting would have implied comfort. He hovered at the edge of her table instead. Close enough to be useful. Far enough to be deniable. One hand rose to his chest in exaggerated injury. The other drifted outward, palm up, as if offering her the scandal of his existence for inspection. His posture was theatre refined into etiquette. A dancer’s balance. A courtier’s restraint. A predator’s patience in silk.

“Characteristically indecent,” he repeated, savoring it like a rare spice. He sighed. Brightly. Tragically. As though she had accused him of being fabulous in public. “My Marchioness. If you wanted decency, you would have summoned a priest. You summoned me. That is on you.” His eyes flicked to the ledger, then back to her face, as if the ink itself had just been weighed and found insufficiently dramatic.

Then her second blade landed. Cadaver. Cloth. Condemnation. Tona’s brows lifted in pleased disbelief. He clasped his hands together under his chin as though she had offered him the finest commission. “A cadaver.” He said it with relish. “Yes. Exactly. Quiet client. Honest client. A body that does not pretend it is not going to end. Do you know how refreshing that is.” He leaned a fraction closer, eyes bright. “Cadavers do not argue about collar height. Cadavers do not demand to look younger. Cadavers do not insist their dignity is allergic to color. Cadavers simply accept the truth. And darling. I can dress truth.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a grin. Something sharper. He let his gaze travel her war paint, the immaculate severity, the cold authority set into her features like a seal pressed into wax. “And you.” His tone turned appreciative. Unashamedly so. “You are not pretty. You are decisive. Those cheekbones are law. That mouth is a wax seal. Your face could end a negotiation before it begins.” He gave a small, delighted laugh. “I adore a strong face. Weak faces make weak promises.”

Her stillness did not invite him. It measured him. He loved that even more. He performed anyway, but he performed for her specifically now. A subtle pivot. A controlled tilt of the head. Fingers describing a shape in the air as if tracing an unseen pattern. “You say ugliness is useful.” He nodded with theatrical gravity. “Then I am afraid to see the maidens who share your bed.” His eyes sharpened with amused approval. “Your method is brutal. Practical. I respect it. I suppose even the unfair women need some charity. I wouldn't know, I like my partners with lagre curved swords.”

Then his voice warmed again, playful, wicked. “However.” He lifted one finger as if correcting a student. “Ugliness is useful. But it is not sacred. We do not have to live in it like it is a virtue. We can use it. Then we can cut it away.” He glanced, briefly, toward the tavern, not to address it, only to register it the way a strategist registers terrain. Then his attention snapped back to Ixqueya like a ribbon pulled taut.

“You called my presence efficient.” He placed his hand over his heart again, scandalized and pleased. “That is not praise. That is a permit. It means I’m allowed to exist in your weather without being struck by it.” His smile flashed, bright and unapologetic. “Do not worry. I have taste. I will not mistake professional trust for romance. But I absolutely will mistake it for a commission.”

A beat. His gaze dipped, technical now. Not lewd. Tailor’s mathematics. The set of her shoulders. The poise that turned weight into threat. The waspish architecture of her form. The tail’s slow jurisdiction. Siegecraft translated into elegance. “Brutish and waspish.” He said it with reverence and glee, like he’d just been handed the perfect pattern. “Perfect. You are built like a giantess who learned to dance.”

He opened his hands, palms outward. A gesture of permission requested without begging. “Let me make you a new piece.” His voice brightened into excited, bossy precision. “Not to soften you. Never. To compliment you. To frame you properly. A collar that turns your throat into proclamation. A mantle that parts cleanly so the stinger is honored, not obstructed. Lines that respect your hips as architecture, not as apology. Bone trim that reads as rank. Necro ice placed sparingly. Like stars used for navigation.”

He smiled, sharp and delighted. “Something that says. I am not here to be understood. I am here to be obeyed. Your whole dommy mommy stick.” He straightened, then executed a tiny, flamboyant turn in place, as if the idea itself needed choreography. He ended facing her again, posture impeccable, smile insolent. “So.” He lifted his brows, playful as ever. “Do you want your next outfit to terrify them without a word. Or humiliate them while they smile.” His gaze dropped to her pen. Back to her eyes. “And may I take your measurements.” The question was sweet. The implication was not. “Or shall I guess and risk the only sin you truly punish. Inaccuracy. No offense, but you've gained weight since we last spoke.” He quipped.

" Brother Graystorm... what... is... this... place ? "

He added his tone conveying confusion as he moved towards the spacewolf, heavy bolter still at the ready.

" What of the others and Brother Aphael ?... The augur arrays encountered significant interference calculating a trajectory to this place and the auspex registers quaint errors... the machine spirits are disarray by the radiant auras that have settled therein. I do not know you to be one to exercise much restraint in this regard and am glad to witness your poweraxe by your side... the nature of things here disturbs me however. "

"This place is a bar. People come here to imbibe in foods and various libations. It is operated by the one known as Mathius. Brother-Captain Aphael is......hmm. I do not know where Brother-Captain Aphael is right now. He stepped out for a moment. I cannot help but feel the influence of Chaos heresy radiating from a couple of the people here. Two Slaaneshi curs. The lot of them. However, Mathius had requested no fighting to happen here, so I will comply for the time being".



(I have seriously lost my edge in RP)

Ixqueya permitted the tavern’s respiration to petrify into fog.

Tonatiuh’s advent was officiated. A threshold rite enacted in silk and audacity. Wet-jade shimmer and bone disciplined into pageantry. He bore with him the insolence of curated death. Not the clatter of pauper remains. An ossuary retinue schooled in posture and hierarchy. Necro Ice beadwork caught the candlelight and returned it as cold scintillation. This was not performance. This was dominion. It was aesthetic and intentional. Imposed upon a room that had long confused squalor with character.

The Marchioness of Winterwake did not acknowledge him at once. Her ledger remained sealed beneath her palm. Hide stretched over bone. An ossuary codex. A private altar where arithmetic supplanted prayer and consequence supplanted pardon. Around her table the air crossed an invisible boundary. Sound dulled as if pressed into reluctant genuflection. Warmth retreated by doctrinal degrees. Not as wind. As decree.

She studied him before she judged him.

Not the silk. Not the color. Not even the bones. Those were vocabulary. She studied the cadence beneath it. The way he occupied space without encroaching. The distance he maintained that was neither deference nor challenge. The manner in which his skeletons mirrored him without parody. Obedience without fear. Discipline without decay. This was not a man posturing for approval. This was an instrument that knew its tuning.

Her eyes tracked the micro-adjustments. The subtle recalibration of stance when he recognized her attention. The fraction of restraint he introduced when he realized the room had ceased to matter. Tonatiuh performed for crowds. He refined himself for authorities. The distinction pleased her.

When the Princess of the Dead finally raised her gaze, it rose with the inevitability of wax receiving a signet.

“Nothing has been gained,” Ixqueya said. Her voice carried no theatrical frost. It carried adjudication. “Mass has been redistributed. Densified. Winter does not bloat. It compacts.”

The pause that followed was clean. Incision-precise.

She watched him receive it. Watched how he did not recoil. How he did not rush to fill the silence. He let the verdict land. He understood hierarchy. Good.

“If your eye cannot discriminate refinement from slackening,” the Inquisitor of Frostmarrow continued, “I will remedy the defect. With calipers. With a pedagogy that will linger in your knuckles each time you pretend a seam may forgive you.”

A faint fracture touched the corner of her mouth. Not indulgence. Not warmth. A glint of dry amusement reserved for competent tools. She noted how his expression shifted. Pleasure. Not offense. He was dangerous in the way artisans often were. He loved constraint because it sharpened him.

“You arrive after excess,” Ixqueya said, eyes sliding once over the skeleton cohort and their obedient arrogance, their posture like a funerary procession drilled into etiquette. “After an evening that ought to have been terminated earlier. Yet you endure. Concordantly. Adequate.”

Her war paint did not fissure. Turquoise strokes across cheekbone and brow. Carmine crescents beneath her eyes like arrested blood-tears. Her face did not invite admiration. It imposed terms. She saw how his gaze measured that. Appreciated it. Not as desire. As recognition of function.

“Cadavers are indeed honest,” the Ice Marchioness continued, granting him that single concurrence like a coin dropped into a bowl that was not begging. “They do not barter for innocence. They do not demand youth as tribute. They accept the cut that fits their ending. The living should envy their lucidity.”

She leaned back. The chair beneath her groaned in structural protest. Timber flexed beneath her colossal consolidation. She ignored it with the indifference of winter toward a roof beam that mistakes complaint for authority. One armored leg crossed the other with parsimonious precision. Not languor. Governance expressed through posture. Femme-fatale poise welded to siegecraft. Her wasp tail traced a slow arc through the air. The aculeus caught lamplight like doctrine honed to a point. Not menace. Caution. She observed how his eyes followed it without fear. Without hunger. With professional calculation.

“Do not confuse my tolerance for ugliness with reverence for it,” Ixqueya said. “Ugliness is a tool. It strips pretense from weak mouths. Beauty, when disciplined, is also a tool. It precedes violence. It instructs without blood. That is why you are permitted to exist within my weather.”

The clasp of the ledger clicked softly. Final as a lock on a crypt.

“And you will not guess my measurements,” the Princess of Winterwake continued, tone mild enough to deceive the foolish. “Approximation is the faith of the mediocre. It breeds error. Error breeds casualties. If you hunger for gambling, do it with dice. Do not do it with my form.”

Her eyes narrowed by a fraction. Focus. She watched his reaction carefully. No flinch. No protest. Acceptance. Relief. He wanted rules. Another point in his favor.

“I punish inaccuracy more harshly than betrayal,” Ixqueya said. “Betrayal at least confesses intention. Error confesses only incompetence.”

Then her voice descended beneath the room’s hearing. Not intimate as sentiment. Intimate as contracts become intimate when they bind.

“You may take them,” she murmured. “Later. Somewhere the air is not rancid with witnesses. Bring instruments worthy of your hands. Leave the carnival. If you require repetition, ergo, you were not listening.”

She held his gaze. Measured whether he understood that this was permission and threat entwined. He did.

“And do not flatter yourself into romance,” the Marchioness continued. “This is professional trust. Rendered as license. You will frame authority. Not soften it. You will honor the stinger. Not obscure it.”

A hush settled around her table. Chapel-quiet. The tavern remembered reverence without understanding why.

“If you succeed,” Ixqueya said, voice rising again to her public register, “they will obey before they understand why. If you fail, I will wear your failure long enough for this congregation to learn what indulgence costs.”

Her gaze dropped. The ledger reopened. Pages the color of crematory ash received lamplight like penitents receiving judgment. The writing implement returned to her fingers with predatory grace. Numbers aligned. Balances recalculated. Tonatiuh was already being entered. Not as ally. Not as ornament. As asset.

A final beat passed. Nearly inaudible. A blade returned to its sheath.

“And Tonatiuh,” the Marchioness said without lifting her head. “Do not call consolidation weight again.” A final warning.