– Present –
von Valancius flagship, warp travel
Following the incursion, a new room was quickly set up for Elena by her newly recruited servants, where she received the visit of the Chief Medic. Doctor Jane Valess was busy meddling up some stabbing wounds with a high-tech skin rejuvenating operator while her servants had washed her and were now combing through her hair. Abelard had sent Pasqal as her personal watchman for the time being, and the Magos was busy looking over Valess's operations. Valess was making a show at ignoring him, even though Pasqal was heavily leant behind her back, assessing her every move. He wasn't saying anything, but one could almost hear the patronizing comments of the Magos as he looked down skeptically at the doctor's use of technological implants.
The repartition was simple : Pasqal was her medic on the ground and for missions, and Valess her doctor on board. However, Pasqal considered that his competency knew no bounds nor limits and that Valess, not being from the Priesthood of Mars, was inherently bad at her job. So the Magos never let Elena be operated or medicalized without him hanging around and analyzing every gesture. Valess hated it, of course, but dared not complained openly about the esteemed Magos.
" I cannot believe the Gellar Fields have failed to protect your personal room, Lord Captain. Praise be to the Emperor that you're safe and sound !" Jane Valess shook her head, her cybernetic eyes enhancing their focus as she stitched another wound. The medical portable apparel she was using deployed its spidery-like metal arms, flashed some anesthesia on the wound, stitched it back up automatically and then sprayed some rejuvenate lotion on it, making the scar fade away. It was really impressive to see…and definitely expensive. " You're really not letting yourself get bored, eh, Lord Captain."
" I'm sure Lady Theodora went up to you with her share of wounds a lot", commented Elena.
The doctor laughed. " That she did. Your esteemed predecessor, may she rest in peace, was a trouble-maker. I can't count the amount of time I rejuvenated her." The doctor's lips stretched into a snarky smile. She had a tendency to show more familiarity than most, just like Ravor. " The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, it seems." In a swift gesture, she applied her apparel on another wound.
Her servants were now braiding her hair and two of them were busy putting on her boots for her. They had found her an old suit of Theodora that she was now wearing and hating very much. Her ancestor had refined taste, she presumed, but the thought of being in her literal clothes rattled on Elena's nerves. She would have to order Janrus to see for that.
She glanced at Pasqal. He hadn't said a word since coming here. Her vox, for one, kept ringing with communications from her crew. Cassia had been quite worried about the incursion and blamed herself for it ; Abelard had begun the investigation on the Gellar Fields ; Idira was busy looking over at the corpses' possession, in search for any clues. Argenta was supervising the cleaning of her room, feeling that the corpses of the demons and the ongoing distortion from the warp required her presence.
" Are we done ?" she asked the Chief Medic impatiently. She'd been getting patched up too long for her taste. She wanted to roam the ship and assess the situation for herself.
"One last wound…and here we go." The doctor got back to her feet, nodding to herself with approval. She put her apparels back in her kit, carried by a medical servitor.
Elena dismissed her servants, and was left alone with Pasqal. She looked blankly at him.
" I suppose all this meddling of flesh must seem risible to you", she said.
The Magos hummed approvingly in his vox, his voice grave and calm. Listening to Pasqal always soothed Elena. When she had time, she enjoyed lurking around the engine's room where the Magos and Abel worked. He often paid her no mind once she was there and let her be to her thoughts, enjoying the foreign language of the machines she could not understand but that calmed her down.
" Only the machine can bring perfection. All rest is shallow." He paused.
Elena had a small, sad smile. " I suppose skin is indeed inherently superficial. You never told me ; just how many augments do you own exactly ?"
Pasqal's only green eye looked in the distance, pondering. " It would be easier to show you." In a soft movement, with almost reverence, he unwrapped the red piece of cloth covering his chest.
Elena had not expected that to happen. She had to make an effort not to stand gaping as the Magos disrobed the top of his sacred vestment, letting her contemplate the mechanical part of his torso.
There was no flesh nor organs to be seen. Under the red cloth, Pasqal's body - though body didn't feel quite like the right word - was completely replaced with machinery pieces. Most were delicate, almost beautiful in an eerie way. Through the transparent cage replacing his ribcage, she could guess at the shape of a mechanical heart, pumping red liquid in tubes mimicking the function of arteries and veins. She was surprised by the delicacy of the construction ; in combat, Pasqal liked to use plasma pistol or electric axe, both weapons were not known for their light weight and subtlety. It contrasted deeply with the intricacy of his mechanical ribcage.
She wasn't certain what this vision inspired her. Awe, to some extent, as to how devoted Pasqal was to the Omnissiah. But it was also repelling, in the sense that an empathetic feeling made her skin crawl in disgust when trying to imagine the amount of work and surgeries that went into this creation. There was almost nothing human left. After seeing that, she would not consider the Magos the same way she did before. He was on another level of comprehension of the world entirely. It was even surprising that they managed to communicate at all. She wondered for a second what the Magos must see in all of them, and in her especially. She wasn't quite sure what the doctrine on psychic evolution was in the Priesthood of Mars.
For a few seconds, Elena had no idea what to say. She had been around Tech-Priests before, but always from afar.
" That's…really impressive", she commented awkwardly.
Pasqal didn't seem to notice her unease - and if he did, she supposed he was accustomed to being misunderstood by non-Tech Priests. He wrapped back his robe, apparently satisfied with her reaction.
Elena swayed in her chair and jumped back on her feet, adjusting one of her pauldrons. Theodora had been smaller than she was and her servants had to sow the uniform in an emergency ; it felt like a patchwork not suited for her.
" Let's go to the Gellar Fields. I want to hear Abelard's reports."
Diligently, Pasqal followed as she stormed out the room.
Elena and Pasqal descended in the warp-drive room. Situated on the rear of the flagship, the engine room was heavily protected and it was difficult to imagine how anyone could have bypassed the security. Two dynamic patrols, three static ones, a horde of Tech-Priests surveying everything, servo skulls checking their accreditations and access at every meter, multiple priest of the Ecclesiarchy giving their blessings and watching for any signs of heresy or corruption ; Elena found it hard to believe that someone could fool them all and tamper with the drive unnoticed. The guards were animated. They saluted stiffly as she went past them.
The engine itself was contained into a giant mechanical tower filled with external cogitators. A little legion of Tech-Priests were monitoring the engines and checking the variables of the drive. The room was poorly lighted, the drive providing a ghostly, blue like light pouring through the tower. It was very hot inside the room.
Abelard was standing besides the main cogitator, Heinrix to his left, and Jae to his right. They seemed busy discussing excerpts of data on the various screens of the cogitators. Silent Tech-Priest surveyed them from a distance.
Jae acknowledged her arrival with a tired, weary smile. " Shereen ! Looking better already", she said warmly. Heinrix nodded as she came by, lost in his thoughts.
Abelard lifted his head up from the screens. For a second, he looked surprised by her appearance : Elena presumed she looked much more normal now than she did an hour ago, and, in Theodora's outfit, she somewhat looked like a younger, weirder version of the late Rogue Trader. " Lord Captain. We've had some results here. The Magos can surely confirm what we think : someone tried to override the machines with heretic code. Of course, the Tech-Priests quickly cleansed it…however, it must have been enough to create a small breach in the bubble of realspace projected by the Field. Enough, at least, to lure in some entities from the warp. We can't trace it back, though." Abelard looked at Pasqal expectantly.
The Magos took the Seneschal's place, putting him away from the machinery, and started speaking in binharic rimes to the machines. It almost sounded like a song. Elena wondered what meaning conveyed the other-wordly melody, that eluded her too humane senses.
She lifted her head up, trying to gaze at the top of the engine and to bathe into its gigantism. The blue light rippled through like waves to the ceiling, hypnotic. It was hard to think that the survival of the thousands of souls living in the flagship laid upon this piece of engine. She frowned as she noticed the presence of a pattern in the cogitator, one she knew from the Warrant Antechamber - the curious, gargoyle-like representation that she now associated with the Sentinel.
She had told Abelard about the Sentinel, but they had decided to keep it a secret from the rest of the retinue and especially from Pasqal. Theodora had forbidden the Tech-Priests to enter the Warrant Antechamber ; Elena wasn't great at technology, but she had presumed that the Sentinel was some sort of archeotech that the Priesthood of Mars could frown upon. Pasqal had seen her communicate with the Sentinel before - when she had ordered the ship to jump into the warp after Rykad. At the time, Pasqal had been oblivious to her proximity to the machine and had classified this event as a miracle. How long would it take for the Magos to notice the oddity that was the Sentinel ?
Should she tell him, in order to better understand this mystery whose traces she saw everywhere on her ship, but whose meaning eluded everyone ?
She glanced back at Pasqal and Abelard, leaning over the cogitators as the Magos typed various sorts of commands and celebrated the machine's glory. Jae was studying the room. She felt Heinrix's dark eyes upon her, watching her expressions closely.
She looked back at him, feeling slightly annoyed by his indiscreet examination. Focused on the cogitators and the screens, the others were not paying attention to them.
" What is it ?" she asked.
" Daemonettes are powerful and cunning demons, known for bringing their prey into corruption through vile temptations and stratagems. Many cannot oppose them, let alone survive an ambush with them", he replied cautiously, unfazed by her brusqueness.
Heinrix's patronizing and slightly accusing tone angered her. She narrowed her eyes. " Heinrix, I have undergone the same training as you did. You must realize I already know all of that. Also, if you are trying to guess if I got corrupted in the fight, I can assure you I'm definitely lacking in the scales and mutated flesh area."
Heinrix's gaze went from neutral to cold at her blatant derision. " This is no laughable matter, Rogue Trader. Corruption does not always come in the most visible form of unholy mutations. It can strain from the mind. I know you are aware of that, still I don't take this lightly. I have seen what these wretched entities can do…and no training can prepare anyone for that."
Elena first interpreted this as a new sprout of patronization and better-than-thou attitude, and had to fight back her annoyance to remain polite. As she forced herself to remain calm, she thought that this strange and convoluted conversation was maybe just Heinrix trying to ask her if she was all right, considering he was the more prone amongst all her retinue to know about the demons' insidious tactics. If that was so, the man was really bad at speaking his mind. She decided to go with this second assumption, and replied more gently :
" I am fine, Heinrix. My mind has been put through worse", she said, softening a little.
Her sudden openness seemed to convince the Interrogator. He hummed in response, and looked as if he was going to add something, but Pasqal cut them, calling for their attention :
" The machine spirits are angry at the one who tried to influence them and distract them. They speak of a virus-code, poorly designed, that Voigtvir had used on the ship to jam the vox. Apparently he and his servants are fond of such depravity and blasphemous attitude towards the cogitators, using their positions to overwhelm the machines with heretical code and commands. This sabotage seemed to have originated, not from the drive-warp, but from the main cogitator on the bridge, thirteen hours ago. It should be easy to triangulate the culprit from that piece of information, though it is likely the saboteur was amongst the ones that attacked the Lord Captain. He may have been helped, though. I shall examine the main cogitator to purify it, and interrogate the Tech-Priests surveying it."
" Then, this stratagem had to be operated by a high-ranking officer." Abelard's face grew sour and disappointed. " And here I thought Kunrad's treachery couldn't get any worse."
" Heresy can run deep and lay dormant for months, even years, before it reveals itself," commented Heinrix. " Only a deep purge could unroot your enemies."
Elena reflected upon this. The confirmation of Idira's intuitions by the cogitator was at least a step forward, in the sense that they now had information about the methods of the saboteur. She found it strange that Kunrad and his cultists relied so heavily on tech-use to ferment their attempts at mutiny and assassinations.
As for the idea of ordering a purge on her high ranking officers, it would certainly lead to more unrest on the ship, especially considering she had forbidden the wardens to enforce their rules in the lowest decks prior. Abelard did not say anything, but she could tell he was thinking along the same lines. However, her options were limited. They had to make sure that the main infrastructure of the flagship was secured.
" Fine. Do it, then", she said almost casually. But deep down, she was worried.
The rest of the warp travel was spent taking care of investigating all the officers on the upper bridge as well as the Tech Priests and anyone that could have access to the main cogitator.
It was grueling, with a lot of hard work for Abelard, and hard decisions for Elena. Idira basically spent all the travel divining at people, scratching the voices for any pieces of information ; she provided leads that all turned out to be right in the end. She also confirmed that one of the wardens enrolled in Elena's personal guard had been the saboteur and a Chaos worshipper. Idira looked exhausted by the task, and, when she was not working for the investigation, she was more and more locked up in her room. She didn't talk much to anyone.
Ultimately, the strange combination of Heinrix's menace looming over the bridge with the threat of interrogation at hands, and Jae's sweet smile and silver-tongue lurking into bars and hidden places where tongues were loosened, proved efficient enough to track down a cell of Theodora's loyalists that didn't believe that Kunrad was a traitor. Most of those men believed that Elena was an imposteur and the murderer of the Rogue Trader, and it was that narrative that drove them to plot against her. In their folly, they had designed a few schemes to try to take her down, taking advantage of the break time at Footfall to spread. None of them was a cultist or a Chaos worshiper ; still, both Abelard and Heinrix were convinced that these men's strings had to be pulled by more cunning and ill-intentioned people. Jae kept on working on every tie of the plotters, leaving no stone unturned.
Abelard had the men executed and replaced, and every patrol on the upper decks was reinforced. Discontent grew, but no one dared question the Seneschal or the Rogue Trader…yet. Still, the idea that Kunrad may still have men working for him on the ship spread, like a haunting menace. That, and the stupid rumor according to which Theodora's ghost still sometimes roared the ship, darkened the rest of the trip. The crew was tense, displeased.
Their exit out of the warp and into realspace was then a true relief for everyone. As the shuttles protecting the ship from the view of the warp - as glancing into the Empyrean could turn even the strongest will insane - rolled up, a sense of fresh air passed amongst the ship. The augurs bended over their cogitators actively, and the whispers and the hushing of the crew turned away from the dark subjects of treachery and ghosts, to something more optimistic.
Cassia had found the way to Janus.
The route to the first world of the protectorate was rediscovered.
Surely that was a good sign.
Elena had reintegrated her office and her personal rooms, now that all the traces of the assassination attempt had been cleaned up. Abelard had kept true to his words and she had received new wardens to watch over her, only the bravest and most dedicated ones, whose mind had been tested by Idira and their belief by Argenta. Tonight, her assigned retinue companion was Abelard himself, who would not sleep but patrol all night behind her doors, checking to see if everything was all right.
As soon as Cassia had managed to get them on track to Janus, the Navigator had emerged from the Sanctum Naviis to go to her. She had heard about the warp incursion, obviously, and was feeling unnerved and guilty : Cassia felt that it was somehow her fault. Elena had reassured her but the young woman still was upset by it. The way the young woman worried about her…was unusual to Elena. Very few were the people in her life that had shown her any kind of genuine concern.
It was not the best time to talk about the accusations laying on Cassia's late actions, but Elena did it anyway. She invited the Navigator to dinner and asked Abelard for some privacy while she was talking to her. The wardens had retreated behind the door.
Cassia had been so seemingly genuinely happy to have dinner with her that Elena felt uneasy. The Navigator had put on a beautiful, lilac dress, adorned with golden jewelries hanging like chains from her shoulders and waist. The color of the dress matched the headband hiding her third eye. Her long, white hair was neatly brushed. Elena had noticed that Cassia, when she was embarrassed, liked to hide behind her long strands of hair. This sheepish gesture was disarming in someone so powerful. The young Navigator could basically turn her soul into mash in a second if she felt like it, but still possessed these puerile quirks.
Elena couldn't help the rush of affection she felt at Cassia's entrance. She was unreasonable when it came to her Navigator. Cassia had always looked up to her, and they had formed a sort of friendship or connection in their harnesses. Both of them were unprepared for the strange twist of fate that had Elena become a Rogue Trader and Cassia a Navigator. Well, Cassia had been trained for that all her life, but was still very young and not ready for this task ; and Elena's life as a psyker never destined her for such a respectacle status. Both were mutants, in different ways. And they were the youngest of the group, with Elena being older than Cassia. Elena never had a proper family, but she knew that the affection she felt for Cassia was visceral, like that an older sister would address a younger one.
She was happy to have Cassia on her retinue, and she could not bear to think about losing her. Surely House Orsellio would reclaim their heir in time. But she knew this softness was also a risk. After all, who was to say if the affection she felt for Cassia truly stemmed from her ? It was clear from Eurac-V that Cassia held great powers over the minds and feelings of her entourage, being able to make them feel what she felt. Was Elena being manipulated ? Her benevolent tendencies being played upon ? Cassia was no innocent after all : she had killed, maimed, tortured, and her sense, or lack of, empathy was so messed up that she didn't even realize that some things she deemed normal were tyrannical.
Elena had to try to know if Cassia's actions were that of someone who had spent her whole life caged up, to the point of not being able to manage social mingling at all and lashing out violently to others without even noticing it, or if she was a true sociopath, manipulating her and everyone around with pretenses of innocence while perfectly knowing what she was doing.
In this, Elena's judgment was completely biased and she had to make an effort to steer the conversation away from Cassia's happy dissection of the book she had offered her on Footfall.
" I am very glad to be reunited with you, Lady Orsellio, but sadly I fear the reason I invited you to join me is not merely to have dinner. I have something serious to discuss with you. I have heard reports about your attitude towards the crew being less than satisfactory. I have been told you were the source of many conflicts."
The smile on Cassia's face froze and wavered, and it seems the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. Elena felt her heart beat faster in her chest and a feeling of betrayal and disappointment rolled over her, and then disappeared. It was not hers.
" I have nothing to say to your unfounded accusations about my conflicts with the crew - I cannot recall having a single quarrel with any of your people during my time aboard !"
Cassia's underlying tone of hurt was difficult to bear, but Elena chose not to be distracted and kept on asking, remaining neutral and cold :
" The errand boy you have rebuked has butchered his whole family and then himself. What did you say to him that day ?"
Cassia's eyes widened. " I haven't rebuked a single errand boy !" she started, and then stopped, pondering the situation. " Ah, yes, I remember now…A kind young man with a shy smile and skillful fingers, and too much rotten ochre on his shoulders. I grew tired of the disgusting color and advised him to lighten his burden by casting the weight off his shoulder. Now that I think of it, he didn't show up on the next day. Or ever after."
Elena stared blankly at the Navigator, who didn't seem shaken at all by what she said.
" Doesn't it bother you ?" she asked kindly.
Cassia shook her head shyly. " I didn't think about it at all." She had no reaction over learning that the boy had killed his family.
Changing the topic, Elena continued : " During the warp travel, I am told you gave the wrong order and changed course abruptly, which led to the service bay being destroyed."
" I saw something in the warp. Something vast…predatory. Shimmering with indescribable colors. It came from nowhere and stared at the ship with hundreds of hungry eyes. I decided to change course while it was still possible but did not want to sow panic. Would it have been better to tell the crew we were heading right into a monster's gaping maw ?"
" It would have been better to tell me and the Seneschal immediately, yes ", Elena replied evenly without missing a beat.
Cassia frowned, looking upset now.
" The officers are reluctant to be quartered near your chamber, because of the constant emotional outbursts it causes them. Some even maim themselves or others", Elena continued.
The gills on the Navigator's cheeks flapped open aggressively, a gesture Elena had never witnessed before. " I told you I cannot control my abilities ! What else do you want from me ? Will I be assigned a Pariah chaperone ? Or will you put me in suppressing shackles ?"
That was the first time Cassia ever lashed out at Elena. The Rogue Trader considered her anger carefully, trying to determine if it was sincere or not. She didn't reply to Cassia's questions. As a psyker, the last thing she was going to do was to have a Pariah on board and Cassia knew that. It would drive her mad. As for suppressing shackles…she would have to command some when they got to Dargonus. But the target she had in mind was Idira. Just in case.
" Would you mind telling me why you need one hundred species of birds and what you used them for ?" she finally asked.
Cassia's cheeks reddened. "I…you are going to think I'm foolish. I told Evayne Winterscale, when you welcomed him on board in the Rykad system, that I liked birds. On Footfall, he arranged for a hundred birds to be delivered to me. The quartermaster put them in cages and I received the package. They were all wrapped in bright red panic with flickering tints of fear. There were so many of them ! I was so excited, I thought I would have a friend in every one."
Cassia let her white hair cover her face and paused for a while. " It was a beautiful gift. I let the poor things out - they seemed so miserable inside their cages. I started feeding them on my meals. But the stupid birds would not stop chittering even after bedtime ! They were dashing around in the room, smacking me in the face with their wings… and defecating ! I became angry, and suddenly they started pecking at each other's eyes and attacking me ! Then I became afraid…and they all fell dead. I do not think I want to keep pets anymore."
Elena's eyes grew distant as Cassia's words evoked memories of her own past. Her eidetic memory would never let anything be forgotten. She remembered when she was so afraid that she tricked her father into killing himself, she remembered the snapping necks of the children she had murdered. Every psyker had a story like that. Idira killed the neighboring crew on a warp travel, driving them insane with visions of her delirious mind. Even Heinrix boiled his pet and grandmother to death when he was a kid.
The difference between them and Cassia was that they had learnt how to control it. It only occurred to Elena now that maybe she didn't have only one unsanctioned psyker on board, but two. Cassia's stories ticked all the boxes. But Navigators were…something else. It didn't seem to work the same way for them. As far as she was aware, there were no Black Ship for them. They were supposed to be educated and trained from birth.
What went wrong with Cassia ? Why couldn't she master her abilities ?
" Please, say something, Elena. I cannot bear your distance and your silence", asked Cassia, lifting up her dark eyes to her.
" I think I have heard enough", replied Elena in a whisper.
" Will you share your thoughts with me ?"
Elena bit her lips, pondering this. Everything pointed to Cassia being a dangerous sociopath. Maybe she wasn't as blatantly unstable as Idira, but she was certainly even more powerful and more dangerous, in an insidious way.
However, Elena couldn't judge Cassia for anything she had done. She was obviously someone special and precious, above the rest. In Elena's eyes, Cassia was as much a victim as she was a predator. Still, it was obvious that Cassia didn't perceive the wrong in her actions. In part because she was prideful, but also because she hadn't been taught to.
" Lady Orsellio, you are an exceptional being. I believe you have a very kind soul. But your education and bringing up has not exactly taught you how to reach out to people. It is not surprising that you have difficulty mastering your abilities if you have difficulty understanding others. I could teach you how to communicate better and how to get a better hold of your feelings, if you like", she said prudently.
She didn't know how Cassia would take this. She didn't like sounding patronizing. But she badly wanted to protect Cassia, including from herself.
" Oh, that would be wonderful !" The look of anguish disappeared from her face. " My education on Eurac V was cut short, but I realized that the wisdom of books is a poor substitute for the wisdom of experience."
Now I am responsible for you and for your actions. If you maim or kill someone - I will have to take the blame , reflected Elena sternly. She decided it best not to voice that out loud.
" Very well ! Now that we have corrected this misunderstanding, it would be only fair for me to ask some questions as well, don't you think ?" Cassia smiled, looking relieved.
" What would you like to ask, Lady Orsellio ?"
" I read a treatise by Paisius de Mobbius very recently, who claimed that subjects would never believe their new ruler was better than the old one unless the old one had been a tyrant. No matter the circumstances, the lowborn rabble become deluded about their prospects and rebel in favor of their base desires. What do you make of that ?"
Elena stared at Cassia. The reference to her new status as Rogue Trader and leader was evident. She had not expected Cassia to be so devious in her questioning.
" What are you trying to ask exactly, Lady Orsellio ?" wondered Elena out loud, crossing her arms.
" I just want to know what you think. If you agree to share your thoughts with me, that is."
Elena paused. She had no idea what Cassia was searching for with these questions, but she saw no reason not to play along.
" The lowborn rabble is more inherently servile than this de Mobbius think. I believe that as long as you show a firm grip and ensure that the bare necessities are provided, they would not rebel. Should you also be able to instill meaning and elevate their minds with being an exemplary leader, and you might also become a true leader in their eyes. All new changes lead to unrest and carry doubt in its wake. A leader's will is ironed in the fire of hardships - it should catalyze unrest and doubt to harden itself. That's what I think."
Cassia pondered what she said. " I..question the wisdom of your words, but your ability to hold a conversation is unquestionable. It is an interesting and new perspective on things. I hope my second question does not confound you either. According to the twenty tomes penned by the preacher Oystach-Istafan the Forgotten, mercy and cruelty go through the world hand in hand, but people flock only to one pan of the scales. Would you rather inspire fear in your followers, or be magnanimous and choose awe ? "
Another well-chosen question. She had often thought about it herself - and found that her action lately strayed farther and farther away from what she had been taught.
" I believe one should be able to either wear the guise of a fox or that of a lion. I mean by this that I would rather adjust my actions to the situation - be either strong or merciful as is needed. Overall, I do think that leadership by awe is more powerful than leadership by fear. The Emperor governs us because he inspires us to elevate ourselves. I don't pretend to be able to have this sort of charisma - but is it what I think a leader should strive for."
Cassia's eyes shone with interest. " There is so much power in your words - power that makes me want to join. I understand now why your subjects are eager to follow you."
Elena was still unsure what Cassia had been looking for in this exchange, but the Navigator looked pleased by her answers, however uneducated and simple they seemed to Elena.
" I must confess that sometimes I can hardly bear the burden the House has placed upon me", confided Cassia suddenly, her long, taloned fingers grasping at a piece of hair. " I feel I am not doing my best…tell me how you, heir to a protectorate, can bear the responsibility for billions of lives day after day and not stoop under all the weight ?"
Oh. So that was it. Cassia had not been inquiring about her feelings towards her new status at all. She was trying to solve the dilemmas of her own inheritance.
" I…" the truth was that Elena didn't know. She felt she had only understood the vastness of her duty after her dilemna over Rykad's fate. It had only provided her with doubts, not certainties. She would be a bad counselor for Cassia. " I try to think about it and let my duty inspire and guide me. I want to strive to lead my protectorate to prosperity with worthy means. I seek to protect the lives that are now under my responsibility." She resented the fact that she could not explain it with better words. Eloquence was not her strong suit.
But Cassia didn't seem bothered by the simpleness of her wording. She smiled. " Thank you for your patience, Elena. You are helping me to see the world in different colors…a novel experience for me. Our conversations hold a special place in my heart. Allow me to bid you farewell for now. I am heading back to my chambers to consider today's conversations."
" I wish you a pleasant evening, Lady Orsellio."
Cassia left the dinner room, looking satisfied. After a few minutes, Abelard entered, clearing his throat to signal his presence.
" I take it everything went alright with our Navigator ?"
Elena stood up. It had been a long day and tomorrow they would reach Janus. " Yes. We have discussed together the accusations the crew laid against her. Abelard, I do not believe Lady Orsellio means any harm or possess ill intentions. However, she needs some help getting adjusted to her new life and responsibility."
Abelard listened to her, silently.
" Give her another chance, that's what I want to say. You're the only other person she trusts on board and I know she thinks a great deal of you. I would ask you to show more patience with her. She needs a bit of guidance, that's all. If there are any other issues with her - it will be my responsibility to deal with it."
Abelard nodded approvingly, considering what she said. " I understand. I shall make some effort with Lady Cassia."
" When do we reach Janus ?"
" Only a dozen hours left until the landing zone. I am more than impatient to see how the protectorate is faring !"
" Fine. Wake me up if anything arises. I'll get some rest."