The next morning, Ember is awoken by a light rap on her door.

  "Morning!" comes the bright and amiable voice of Maeve. "I brought you something!"

  Ember sits up, rubs her face, and pulls on her skirt, then pads over to the door in her bare feet, still doing up the buttons of her dress shirt. "Yeah? What is it?"

  "I wanted to invite you for snacks and some light teasing," Maeve says through the door. "I picked up some hot cross buns in town and I wanted to share them with you and... apologize a little myself, actually." There's a pause. "Could you open the door, please?"

  Ember gets the st few buttons of her dress shirt, then opens the door just wide enough to see Maeve. She's wearing the gilded-fme uniform, as usual, but the top two buttons of her dress shirt are undone.

  Maeve gives Ember a bright smile, her green eyes warm behind her silver gsses. "Sorry for the mess yesterday, I was kind of sharp with you. The bet's still on, but I wanted to talk and get to know you a little... partly as an excuse to toss some light teasing at you, I'll admit, but you kept things pretty gentle so I want to py fair at least to start. Care to join me in the common room?"

  Ember raises an eyebrow, but after a moment's thought she nods. The heat in her is weak, this far from her st dose. "Sure. I mean, it's not a real competition if I don't give you any chances to tempt me. I could just avoid you like the pgue for the rest of the week, but I don't think that's sporting either."

  Maeve lets out a puff of ughter. "Of course," she says. "It's good to see we've both come to simir conclusions. See you in the common room!" She tosses a small wave over her shoulder and walks off down the hall, a slight sashay in her gait that wiggles her ass quite attractively.

  Ember pulls her gaze away, shuts the door, and takes a few minutes to get some socks on and properly change. She strokes a wooden comb through her hair and redoes her ponytail with her butterfly hairclip.

  Remember, Ember. If you mess up, you could lose something precious to you. You’re not going to get that vibrator back now, no matter what you do.

  She steps out into the common room, and crosses to the pillow pit, where Maeve is already holding out a pte with a hot cross bun on it. Fianna's in the pillow pit too, wearing her owl pin on her dress shirt's pocket as usual; she looks up and waves casually.

  "Hey there," Fianna says. "Don't mind me, I'm just here to talk. I wanted to get to know you a little better and since Maeve here wanted to chat I figured I might as well tag along." An easy smile comes to her sharp-lined face. "Fun bet you two have going. Can't wait to see who wins."

  Ember accepts the pte with the hot cross bun from Maeve, and sits in the pillow pit next to the other two girls. "Do you two know where Camellia is?" she asks. "I haven't seen her yet this morning."

  "Out in the garden doing her morning control drills," Maeve replies. "She does them from six till seven, regardless of the day. It's how she got so good." She takes a bite of her own hot cross bun. "Gd to see you out here, by the way. We've all been so swamped with work the st while that we've hardly gotten a chance to see the new girl."

  Ember ducks her head, feeling oddly fttered. "I'm gd to be considered interesting, I guess? It's been a real rough experience getting caught up with everything. I'm still owing homework in pretty much all my csses — control, service, history —"

  "What we haven't been seeing," Fianna cuts in, "Is your strengths. It's natural that Ishaza would be drilling you on your weaknesses, but — twenty-seven partners? In a year? That's a real astonishing figure. How did you do it?"

  Ember's line of sight drifts down to Fianna's colr for a moment. "Well..." She lets her gaze trail down to her hands and taps her fingers together. "A lot of people come to taverns looking to score. I learned the signs of someone like that, and started approaching them. Some of them were fine partners I wish I could have spent more time with; some of them were... not. I had to be bailed out of one or two situations by my family, which I will thank you not to inquire into."

  Fianna raises an eyebrow. "Sounds kind of intense..."

  "Yeah," Ember says. "But I survived it all, and it wasn't so horrible I regret it or anything. Mostly just people who were... selfish lovers, let's put it that way. But I enjoy helping others get off even if I don't get anything, so sometimes that was fun too." She meets Fianna's gaze with her own.

  Maeve's eyebrows jump as well. "Seems like you were maybe a little less discriminating than you ought to have been."

  Ember shrugs, then nods. "Yeah, I guess so. I did gradually learn some of the signs of poor partners and how to approach less directly and leave more room for pusible deniability, but... how did Ishaza put it in communications css... 'Be frank, be forthright, be forward.' Those core principles got me a lot of experience. I guess you could say that's one of the privileges of being a woman — you get to have more or less as much sex as you'd like provided you don't care who it's with." She shakes her head. "I regret some of the individual encounters, but on the whole I don't regret taking the chances that led to them."

  Maeve ducks her chin in agreement. She pushes up her gsses and gives Ember a wry smile. "I can't help but notice that you're leaving out a few details here."

  A sweet ugh spills from Fianna's lips. "I'd say more than a few."

  "A dy doesn't kiss and tell," Ember replies, her gaze locking with Maeve's. "At least, not to strangers. Which we still are, at least for now. That might change in a few months, once I'm more sure you two are cool, but..." She twitches up a shoulder. "Sorry."

  "Of course," Maeve says. "It would just be unseemly for you to discuss sex in front of two other candidates for courtesan." She gives Ember a lopsided smile. "As. I will just have to tempt you to remember all the times you've had sex before in some other fashion." She stretches, pushing her bust out and wriggling her toes. "What a hard proposition. Much like some other hard things you might have encountered in your twenty-seven partners."

  Ember ughs, though her gaze does dip to Maeve's neckline with its open buttons. "Yeah, there were definitely some hard things about it." She fshes her teeth in a fragment of a grin. "But also some soft and inviting things too."

  "Sounds fun." Fianna interces her fingers behind her head and lets a smile tug at her lips as well. "So are there any questions you have for us?"

  Ember snts her head. "Well, there is one thing... How do you two know so much about me already? Did Ishaza share my file or something?"

  "More or less," Fianna says. "She passed me a copy of your business pn, and told all three of us your basic history before you were introduced to us. Normally she respects privacy more than that, but given that you were being inserted into a css that was already well underway, I think she made an exception."

  "Why you specifically?" Ember raises her eyebrows. "For the business pn, I mean."

  "Ah, well..." Fianna taps her chin. "Let's say it hooks into my future goals and leave it at that for now. Maybe I'll tell you after the kindling."

  Maeve gives Fianna a frown, then shrugs when Fianna shoots her one of her own in reply. "Anyway," she says. "Want to hear about my sexual escapades, if you're not going to share any of your own?"

  Ember shakes her head. "Nah," she says. "Not that I'm not tempted, but I'm not going to give you that easy an opening to get me hot and bothered."

  Maeve breathes out a ugh. "Fair enough." She gets up, finishes the st of her hot cross bun, and nods to Ember. "Have a nice day," she says. "It's only going to get harder from here."

  Ember gives Maeve a challenging grin. "Bring it on."

  Fianna taps her thumbs together, and looks from Maeve to Ember and back. "Well then," she says. "You two have fun."

  And with that, the girls break up the meeting.