The next morning sees Ember rise in the morning feeling refreshed and strong. Between carefully rationed masturbation and her control drills, she's had the best night of sleep in the entire week she's been on aphrodisiacs. Her body feels colder this morning, less flushed and needy.

  Just today and tomorrow left.

  She steps into the coral-tinted common room as she does up the top button of her dress shirt, her ponytail with its butterfly clip trailing behind her.

  Fianna sits alone among the scarlet pillows of the pillow pit, fork in hand, picking at a pte of eggs and sausages.

  "Morning," she calls. "How're you doing?"

  "If it isn't the mystery woman," Ember replies. "I'm alright this morning. Feeling focused. I think I'm going to win this."

  Fianna dips her head in confirmation. "Sure. After what Maeve told me about st night I'd say you've got a better chance than I thought." She smiles. "Care to join me for breakfast? I've got nothing better to do right now, I'm caught up on my homework. And you look like you could use a break."

  Ember raises an eyebrow. Fianna, who doesn't say word one about herself, asking to talk? Yeah, she's definitely interested. "Sure. Let me make myself something quick for breakfast and I'll join you in just a minute."

  She goes over to the pantry and gets out some eggs, then breaks them into the frying pan that's already on the stove along with a little oil and starts to fry them.

  "So," she says. "You had something you wanted to say?"

  "Not a lot, really," Fianna says. "I guess I just wanted to try to get to know you a little more. And... maybe share a little about myself. I don't generally — what's important about all of us is that we passed the interview and we're building ourselves up and we're going to be immortal. What happened at the very start of our long lives isn't that important compared to what we do with the rest of them. That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "Oh?" Ember turns to meet Fianna's gaze. "What about it?"

  "Do you ever get the feeling that..." Fianna searches for the words. "The world doesn't know how to treat sex, sexuality. That it's stupid. That people should be freer to have the sex they want, and not the sex they don't want. I know you see it, it's clear from your pns. You want to make a pce where it's okay to be sexually open. It's a great idea. I wish it would work. I just — the Courtesans have been trying for something like two hundred years, what makes your idea different?"

  Ember blinks. "That's not what I expected to hear from you this morning, but... give me a second to pte these eggs."

  She turns back to the stove and quickly removes the fried eggs from the pan, then puts them on a pte along with a few pieces of precut cheese and an apple and comes to sit next to Fianna. "I have a pn," she says. "People want pces like this. The tavern that my family owned was one of them — a pce where people could come and have the sex they wanted to have, freely, openly. We had a courtesan on standby, and there were still problems sometimes, but they were all... problems the people were already carrying inside themselves. The ones who knew how to move in the world like courtesans were some of the best partners I'd had, and that kind of connection is worth having too..."

  She bites a piece of cheese, then frowns. "Damn, I forgot to grab a fork." She sets her pte down and goes and takes a fork from the drawer and plops back down next to Fianna. "Sorry, you were going to say?"

  Frown lines crease the corner of Fianna's mouth. "I don't deny that there'll be demand, but... This is a city where the courtesans have already been stationed for two hundred years. You're local, right? They've had time to change the culture here, and it's still not good enough for you. You want something with less alcohol, more responsibility, more of a sense of what you want out of sexuality. Something more comfortable." She shakes her head in refusal. "It's not that simple. You can't make a culture just by setting a good example. There's too many other people out there who'll get in your way."

  "So what's your alternative, then?" Ember crosses her arms, a little irritation building in her chest.

  "Spread the guild, make it bigger, help it grow," Fianna says. "It's a tried and true method. Guildhouses and brothels. Take the jobs that otherwise would be forced on women who didn't want them, and do them well and devotedly. Change whores' reputation one satisfied client at a time. The more people who are saved from a death by old age the better, and the rger the guild is the more people it can shepherd through kindling, and it builds on itself, faster and faster, until eventually everyone who matters is Guild. Already the Guild courtesans are seen as nobility — that's only going to keep going. Extend the hand to women who've been out there on the streets and give them a chance to join us."

  Ember cocks her head to the side, her brow furrowing. "And eventually all the people who disagree with us will just die of old age?"

  "Something like that. Or have too little power to oppose the guild. That's politics for you." Fianna spreads her hands.

  "What about all the people who are suffering now, though?" Ember folds her arms across her chest.

  Fianna shrugs. "We were never going to get everyone. We're a small guild now, but we won't always be. In time, we'll fix it all. We just have to wait and build."

  "You talk as though you're already a courtesan." Ember tilts her head.

  Fianna's lips twitch up. "And you think you're not? They didn't fail Maeve for trying to attack me. They accepted us out of some thousand applicants. It's not that I'm presuming, Ember — it's that you're still catching up to reality."

  Ember lets out a heavy breath. "What a cynic you turned out to be..."

  "Maybe," Fianna says. "But yeah. This is why I haven't been saying much. I figured we'd disagree on this one."

  Ember lets out a puff of ughter. "Disagreeing on the best way to make the world a healthier pce isn't the same thing as being real enemies, Fianna." She shrugs, then extends a hand. "We're both here for the same goals. Friends?"

  Fianna takes Ember's hand. "Sure. Friends." She shakes her head. "Anyway. Now that that's more or less out of the way, want me to brush your hair or something? We should be getting used to each other's company if we're going to kindle together. I'm not going to ask you to fuck me during your training, but afterwards maybe? I want to see the skills of Ms. Twenty-Seven Partners." She gives Ember a full-strength smile.

  Ember waves away the offer. "Yeah, maybe ter. For now, I'm gd to know you a little better. It's been a hard few days, so..." She looks down at her pte, then picks up her apple and takes a bite of it. "Mmm. It's good to feel like I made a connection with someone. What brought this on, anyway?"

  Fianna rolls her shoulders in a careless shrug. "I guess that Maeve telling me about how you resisted her earlier made me see you a little differently. As someone who... might have something worthwhile to say. Something like that."

  Ember snorts. "I see. Well, thanks for the vote of confidence. I'll try and impress you more if this is the kind of reaction I get from you." She fshes her eyebrows at Maeve, then turns her attention to her food.

  "Yeah," Fianna says. "Definitely try that. You've got a ton of potential — you've just gotta apply it." She finishes her st sausage and gets up from the pillow pit. "See you around, Ember."

  "I'll do my best," Ember says with a bright smile. "See you around, Fianna."