Ms. Mason finishes serving the soup and the tea.

"If you will excuse me for a moment," she says. "I have some business to attend to in the kitchen."

"Of course," Aira says. "You are dismissed."

She scurries from the room.

"Well!" Aria says once she's left. "Now we can talk in peace." She gestures to the soup. "Eat your soup, it's perfectly good."

She feels like she is really missing something there, but sure, she will eat her soup???

Around an hour later, in Indigo Bramble's rooms...

"So, Ms. Carpenter. Report."

"Yes, Your Grace." 

She pulls a small sheaf of parchment from her inside uniform pocket. 

"Starting from the oldest reports and working forwards chronologically..."

"Last evening around eleven PM, Her Grace of Thorn called an urgent meeting with Black Cocoa. We had an agent placed at the scene, but the conversation was primarily about stars and alchemical rarefactions. My agent was treated warily, and with Black Cocoa's presence, divination charms were deemed too risky. As such we do not have enough of the conversation to piece together any coded message that may have been transmitted. However, given Black Cocoa's movements of the past twenty-four hours, we can presume that the conversation somehow related to Corvina Quill - bringing her into the Liberal faction, most likely. Why this required an urgent meeting at eleven PM is still unknown, though our agents' further observations of Ms. Quill suggest that the Liberals somehow had a source of inside information about her extraordinary talents.

"The following morning, around four AM, our network noticed that Ms. Quill was out of her rooms for an extended period and took the opportunity to search her belongings. She appears to have only brought one suitcase with her from home. Her clothing appears to be of simple, commoner make, preferring comfort over any expressed style; however, in the bottom of her suitcase there was a lingerie set in a pink, flowery style. It would appear Ms. Quill has a softer side. Also in her suitcase were a pair of sentimental items - a book of fairy tales, and a commercial sparker. The book had a bookmark in it to a particular story, about a woman who has to hide from the world because her magical talents are uncontrolled. We have photographs of the relevant pages and can pass them on to Ms. Brachia should you choose to. The sparker is a very cheap model, with a small mana store in the base. However, it has been modified to absorb ambient mana to recharge, which shows Ms. Quill's evident talent at reverse-engineering artifacts, as well as a certain ability to scrounge resources. Ms. Quill also brought a small bag of toiletries and a makeup compact, though she has never yet been observed to actually wear makeup. Perhaps she has a complex about her appearance.

"Around seven AM that same day, our agent assigned to Black Cocoa observed him making two visits, one to Her Excellency Aria Roscente, presumably with Corvina Quill in attendance, and a second one to Bitter Silvertail. We have no information on what occurred within Roscente's rooms, but presumably a bargain of some form was struck, as during lunch Aria was observed to approach Her Grace of Thorns and propose meeting to discuss Ms. Quill's education. 

"The visit to Bitter Silvertail appears to be part of Black Cocoa's ongoing campaign to seduce the foreign dignitary. Our agent was ushered out of the room for them to ostensibly engage in sex; examination of the bedsheets afterwards confirms that sex did actually occur. The visit thus appears to have been routine for Black Cocoa.

"Our agent assigned to Leah Brachia observed her entering Aria Roscente's rooms as well, and having another private discussion. We have not yet received a full report from Ms. Brachia on what transpired there. I would like to ask her for her recollections when there is a spare moment."

"Returning to Aria herself - our agent assigned to her was allowed into her rooms to serve tea and soup in private after her appearance at lunch. I have just received their report, which they apparently felt was urgent enough to abandon the scene immediately. I agree with their analysis. Aria asked Ms. Quill to demonstrate the ability to emulate a sparker, to which she proceeded to produce a small flame in one hand with no apparent effort. This feat, if genuine, cannot be understated - the ability to draw enough mana from the air to produce flame at will clearly demonstrates that Ms. Quill has incredible native mana draw, or else has discovered a new technique to refine the efficiency of the conversion to heat. If it is the latter, that technique could go on to be used in weapons manufacture and might well tip the balance of power. Even if there is no new technique and Ms. Quill is simply a freak of nature, this demonstrates her incredible casting potential and shows she should not be underestimated. It is clear that Roscente is sending us a deliberate message in this regard."

"That is all I have to report for the past twenty-four hours."

Indigo rests his hands in his lap and taps one foot against the floor. 

"That late evening meeting..." He crosses his arms. "It seems reasonable to assume that some piece of information about Ms. Quill came into Ishaza's possession late in the day. Once again, we have more evidence of the liberals having some form of communications that eludes our network in the Academy. What were Ishaza's movements immediately before calling said meeting?"

"Unfortunately, she departed the Academy for about an hour between her assignation with the princess and her calling the late meeting with Cocoa, which places her beyond the reach of our network. I believe she visited her family's estate, but who she spoke to there I can only guess at."

"Have we gained any agents in the Thorn estate yet?"

"No, Your Grace. The Thorn estate's servants are largely personally loyal to the family and have not responded well to overtures."

"A pity. For now, let's return to other matters." 

Indigo folds his hands in his lap. "I am surprised that there was anything for us to find in Ms. Quill's rooms. A single suitcase should have been easy enough for her to take with her to Countess Roscente's rooms, where it would have been much more difficult for a search to reach. It's unlike Aria to make such a simple blunder as forgetting the maids have keys to the guest rooms. So I suspect the suitcase is a trap. It is much too convenient for a book of fairy tales with a bookmark on a particular page to exist in Ms. Quill's luggage. Moreover, commoners are unlikely to have access to quality lingerie, and the makeup kit is similarly questionable. I believe the commoner's clothes are genuinely Corvina's, and I suspect the lighter to be genuine as it would be difficult to forge on short notice, but the picture of a vain woman who longs for contact with others that is put forwards by this suitcase does not ring true to me. The contrasts seem too sharp. Do we really believe that a common woman with Corvina's test scores would put all her savings towards a lingerie set and makeup kit when she could be acquiring additional artifacts to modify and learn from?"

He shakes his head. "I don't believe it. I think it is an elaborate fraud set up by Aria Roscente to conceal some of Corvina's real possessions from us, likely cheap artifacts that Corvina has somehow modified to be exceptional."

"An interesting theory, Your Grace. I agree that the book-with-bookmark is too convenient. The rest is more questionable to me - the picture of Corvina I have been able to assemble from my agents is of a deeply lonely woman who wants to find real peers in her life. She's too intelligent to fit in with commoners, and, now that she has arrived here, too common to fit in with the nobility. The lingerie might express a genuine desire to be physically intimate with someone, despite its expense as a purchase. The makeup kit is more questionable, but still possible. 

"I believe, though, that construing this suitcase as a deliberate message from Aria Roscente is more likely to lead to correct action than taking it at face value." 

"In the context of being a message from Aria, the story in the book suggests that Aria believes Corvina to be a genuine threat to the political balance, with little to no understanding of her true nature. It's a warning to step carefully." 

Indigo crosses his arms over his chest. "I hate trying to read Roscente. You can never tell which level she's playing on. The suitcase could even be completely genuine, an error, and we're completely overthinking it."

"I believe that to be unlikely, Your Grace."

"I know, I simply felt I had to state the possibility." He sighs. "For now, let's not use the story in the storybook and take the rest of the contents with a large grain of salt, keeping in mind that Corvina, under Aria's instructions, may yet be concealing some important items from us."

"Shall we move on from this point, Your Grace?"

"I think it would be best for now. Let us discuss Corvina's talent at producing fire. Is it genuine?"

"My agent claims to have directly witnessed it. We have not yet ruled out the potential existence of a hidden mana source, however."

"Aria has every reason to talk up the potential of her student. For now, I don't believe it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a single report from a situation clearly set up by Aria Roscente is not strong enough evidence for me to believe this extraordinary result. It is far more likely that this talent is being faked somehow."

"It seems somewhat unlikely that Corvina could be convinced to take part in such a deception within the two days that Aria has had access to her. She seems straightforward to a fault and politically inept."

"Nonetheless, the alternatives are that Corvina has discovered something groundbreaking completely independently, or that she has a truly astonishing mana draw. I don't believe we have enough evidence to reject the far more mundane explanation of fakery, even with Corvina's test scores to date."

Ms. Carpenter nods. "That seems wise, Your Grace. Hasty motions seem to be ill-advised in any case."

"Still... That lighter does seem to be genuine evidence of some talent at artifice. I know that Aria wants me to think that, but it is possible that it is nonetheless true."