Meanwhile--

...

“...No thank you, I do not want any tea at the moment.”

Then: “...Who are you?”

"I'm, uh, Sir Martin Blackwood. Knight of Malta.

The, err. Last Knight of Malta."

“Sir... Martin... Blackwood. And—what brings you here?”

Araari is having a VERY weird day.

"You were in trouble?"

At some point Araari has calmed down enough to look around. A four-foot cross stands at one end of the candlelit shrine, behind a modest altar. A long wall is painted with lovely fresco depicting Knights of Malta on a long spar of rock battling a dark and shapeless foe with many heads and black, grasping limbs.

“...Thank you.” Araari bows and kisses his hand. “This room is beautiful.”

This is also, unfortunately, the point at which she has processed the day's events enough to realize that someone did in fact just attack her. Abruptly she jumps away from Martin, eyes darting, and presses herself against a wall.

"...um. Are you quite all right? Do you need some tea?"

“—Sorry, I got—startled. There’s been a lot happening.” Her eyes focus on him but she is still pressed very firmly against this wall. “...No tea please.”

"Okay."

“...Do you know who you rescued me from? ...Sir.”

"Oh, um, you don't need to call me Sir? I'm not. A very good knight. --This is probably why I am an alive knight."

You’re still a white man I don’t know, Araari thinks and does not say.

“I am glad you are alive. Thank you again for saving me.”

"Victoria Prescott is a member of Montgomery Donovan's cult. She handles security.

I, uh, wasn't sure at first whether you were cultists or not-- You kind of talked to cultists a lot?"

“That is—a fair assumption to make. I am—glad that you determined otherwise.”

"But I noticed that your friends were, uh, trying to help the kids. Which is a good thing! I think you should help the kids."

Araari actually smiles at that, her body relaxing. Her back is still against the wall but she no longer looks like she is trying very hard to fuse with it. “Do you know anything that might help us help the children, sir? It is—very important to me that they are safe.”

"Um, not a lot?

You can look at the library if you want, we have lots of books that we collected through hundreds of years of study, but. I am not, uh. --You would definitely be talking to some different knight if any of the other knights were, um, alive."

“Are the books of the library the sort that are—dangerous, if I go into them with the wrong mindset? I feel—very shaken, and would rather... Recover, first. Unless I might take them to show my companions?” She successfully cuts herself off before saying “sir” this time, at least.

"Um, some of them? I think? But there are many that are just-- histories.

And theology. A lot of theology. We're an order that's supposed to fight the ancient evil but we're supposed to know more about God than about evil? Because he's more powerful and, um, the creator and everything?"

Araari smiles again. “My order had a lot of reading on theology as well. Perhaps I can read some of yours, as well as your history. I would offer to repay the favor but I ought to counsel first against visiting Ethiopia until the political situation is more stable.”

"Oh! That's good. I'm probably not going to be able to talk about it much, all the stuff about the uh-- substance and accidents and so on-- my brain starts spinning? My skills mostly run towards the direction of, um. Running away."

“It can be an important skill to have. You said you didn’t know much about the children, but you knew who the woman was that attacked me—how much do you know of the cultists?”

"They worship little mouths that appear and disappear in places they've sanctified? And the mouths are manifestations of an ancient evil that seeks to enslave mankind."

Nothing she doesn’t already know, then. “And—Montgomery Donovan, and Nectar?”

"They’re producing a drug using some sort of, um, mystic rite? In a warehouse in Paola. And they're shipping it out of Malta to various places in Europe and Africa and for some reason Latin America?"

“The drug comes out of the mouth; it’s addictive and makes people desire power for its own sake, until they have forgotten what else they might have desired. Its antithesis is humility and self-giving. Do you know the specific locations it is being shipped to?”