"Yeah. But--I don't know, I do think it matters that they wouldn't all have been fine if El hadn't killed it. Like, it was the seniors we were negotiating with, but ethically speaking, they don't actually have more of a claim on the stuff than the sophomores do."

"They had possession and the knowhow to maintain the sink. I guess you can say that's not ethics but it matters."

"Ugh. You're not wrong. I don't suppose there was any chance of not sucking, in this situation." 

Aadhya looks at El. "You didn't know. Even if you had it might not have changed anything but you didn't."

"Thank you, that solves all of my problems forever."

"Unfortunately, this is real life, and making the best possible choices does not prevent those choices from having consequences." 

"If someone looks jumpy in a bad direction you can fess up? It being an accident isn't great but it's better than it being an opening shot in a war."

"I don't think I'm immune to being assassinated."

"...If we tell everyone the truth, you could get assassinated even if nobody did figure out Bangkok."

"Yep."

"I'm suspicious of the conclusion that we should just not tell anyone the thing that would be really inconvenient for people to know, but, it might actually be right...I don't want a war either, but if one starts on the outside then there's nothing we can do about that." 

El digs her magic mirror out of where she's got it muffled and pulls it out to see if it has anything to say.

"Hail, Galadriel! Bringer of death and slayer of Busarakham and Michael Lang!" 

"Who are they?" El asks blankly, sort of at the mirror but mostly at the room in general.

"Busarakham sounds like a Thai name." 

"And Michael Lang sounds Anglo enough, but that doesn't narrow it down much." Sigh.

"No, I mean--Bangkok." 

"Yes, presumably that was the first rotisserie unfortunate. But Michael Lang doesn't exactly sound like a famous missing person who disappeared circa the establishment of Tampa or anything."

"Oh. Yeah, I dunno. But, like, 'someone Anglo' does give us relevant political information? Like, that's one apparent shot fired at each side, not two shots fired at the Sino side? Which, like, might make things worse, but also might not make things worse, because New York knows they didn't do for Bangkok and Shanghai knows they didn't do for Probably Not Tampa?"

"Yeah, I guess it's geopolitically, uh, promising." She taps the mirror like it's a reptile tank at the zoo.

"Hail Galadriel, first slayer of a maw-mouth in centuries!" 

"The hell you say, you mad bit of tinfoil -"

"- unless Dominus Li was having everyone on? There were witnesses, though, his whole circle - I suppose they'd have been in a pickle if they wouldn't have lied for him -"

"There definitely was a maw-mouth in the Shanghai enclave before he went in, and wasn't one afterwards--I guess if he, like, teleported it away, maybe nobody could tell the difference?"

"They don't wear nametags, do they." Shudder. "He took days about it! What was he doing taking days about it if he was teleporting it?"