At Duchess Celestra's, the hunting party got under way with reasonable efficiency, despite the low average riding skill. (Halley: "You want me to ride something that breathes?!") Unfortunately, just as the travel-fox was sighted, Halley made her horse rear theatrically, with predictable results. Having more sense than to chase after a horse that was laughing at her, she sat down to tinker with her gadgetry while waiting for the other hunters to come back. With a growing sense of horror, she heard the thunder of hoofbeats in the distance grow louder and louder and LOUDER and the hunt ran right over top of her. She wasn't hurt, but the horse was much more amused. It was pointed out that shooting one's host's horse was not sanctioned under the laws of hospitality; Halley was dubious. Matsushida's attempt to weasel the pelt away from the lad who actually scored the kill was notably unsuccessful.
After the usual festivities and recovery period, our heroes returned to Escoral. Just outside of town, they encountered the lovely Lt Windsor and her combined-arms platoon off to put down a rebellion in a peasant village. Matsushida, hoping that the incident might be related to the one he was nominally investigating, hijacked the party to go along with Mei-ying. The uprising was efficiently squashed, with many scruffy poorly-armed peasants being gunned down and a few taken prisoner. None of the prisoners admitted to anything on the spot, so Matsushida requested that Mei-ying put him on the CC list for interrogation results, flirted with her a bit more, and dragged everyone back to Escoral.
On Tuesday, a progress check on Darwin Colt, PI, proved disappointing. After considerable alleged effort, he was able to come up with four people who didn't like Lim Evrard: someone he turned down for a loan, someone he cut off in traffic, a waitress he hadn't tipped, and a Charioteer, currently off-planet, who might be his old lover. After Halley interacted with him in some obscure Scraver fashion that involved a trip to the back room, and promised him lunch, Colt coughed up another suspect: Countess Leonara Li Halan, whose steward ended up dead because of Lim. Gwen encouraged Matsushida to leave a few bags of groceries on Colt's doorstep as retainer, although Colt's utility seemed minimal.
Jaana pushed to make the trip to the Ishwin Confederacy as soon as possible, before any more terrorist conspiracies could derail her own personal goals, so bright and early Wednesday morning everyone mounted spitters[*] for the three-and-a-half day ride to Nadina. Surprisingly, the trip passed without incident, and the group arrived safely about mid-day on Saturday.
The first stop was at the house of the local sheikh, Daas Estabar, to pay their respects and (successfully) scam lodging and board. To the curious question, "Do you have any new demands?", Matsushida cautiously replied "No, the current arrangements are satisfactory.", and was presented with a scroll containing Estabar's new demands. When Matsushida looked it over in his quarters, the demands proved to be for things like thirty virgins, several tanks, five books of pornography, .... Baffled, Matsushida took Gwen out to see Ishwin life. Shopping ensued, including a surreptitious incident in which Matsushida bought Elaine expensive jewelry while Gwen wasn't looking.
While Matsushida and Gwen were fulfilling the diplomatic niceties, Jaana was out looking for Fars Ikoru, a Dervish she had served with on Stigmata. A local dispensary of booze and gossip pointed the way, but Ikoru wasn't in. Jaana instead found his daughter Vana and her daughter Shara. Vana explained that Fars had gone to seek wisdom, but had left a letter for her. The letter turned out be annoyingly precognitive, but did tell Janna that Ikoru had left word of his whereabouts on Pentateuch.
After meeting up with the sightseers, Jaana encountered more strange natives. Three idiosyncratically-dressed women (presumably Midnight Furies) accosted her in the marketplace with vague cryptic warnings of danger ("You risk us all. / Why have you come here? / You must leave. / There is no help for you here. / You have brought danger here. / We do not want your seed. / You must leave.") in three-part spookiness. Ignoring all questions, they vanished into the crowd. Jaana vanished into the bar and, despite Halley's well-meant interference, drank with extreme masochism.
Gwen tried to find out where to get hold of the Midnight Furies to grill them further. After first being sold a Second Republic signal flare of dubious provenance (which she later gave to Halley) she managed to arrange a meeting for 1500 the following day.
That night, there was a feast. Spitters were eaten, ribald Ishwin songs were sung, wine was drunk (but not enough of it by Gwen).
Sunday morning dawned bright and early, with the Sun leaping straight through the window to leap up and down cheerfully on Jaana's retinae. After somewhat hung-over services, Jaana heard Gwen's confession. Most of her sins were negligible, but for the heinous offense of practicing deception to protect someone she cares for, Gwen was told that she needed to make pilgrimage to Pentateuch and cleanse her soul with meditation.
This came as quite a surprise to Matushida, but no good Li Halan could ignore such a request, so passage on the next pilgrimage ship was duly booked for as far as the route to Pentateuch coincides with the route to Holy Terra.
That afternoon, Gwen met secretly with one of the Midnight Furies (not one of the three who spooked Jaana), who was unable to shed any light on the actions of her sisters, but expected that if she knew what was up, she'd tell Jaana to leave too.
[*Spitters (Pherizas, to the picky) are a species of large, ill-tempered lizards indigenous to Kish, with acidic spittle than can eat through armor ceramic. Riding beasts have the spit sacs removed, almost always.]
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