"I'll do it if you'll have a drink."

"Sure."

Cumin closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she has a trencher of stale bread with a bunch of small sandwiches on top of it.

Clarinda immediately grabs a sandwich.

The musical butterfly takes a drink, which looks normal, and then flies over to a sandwich and does something confusing to it. The end state does seem to involve the sandwich not being there, aside from a few oddly tetrahedral crumbs.

"You're good."

"She's kind of evil and I think you know it."

"I'm not an axiomite, how do you want me to speak? 'The person at this table presenting as a witch named Cumin, who appears to be of evil alignment, is capable of conjuring high-quality lobster sandwiches'?"

Imrijka shrugs.

"You're evil?"

"I'm retired."

"Yeah, either she retired or she's a really good illusionist."

Clarinda looks at the lyrakien. "I suppose it's fine if you're fine with it."

He drinks. He watches the conversation with interest but doesn’t ask if they’ve clocked him yet.

Cumin turns to the new person. "Your turn!"

"Never have I ever had a master I didn't hate."

Cumin has a drink. "I've got a good agreement with Saffron these days, and Thyme wasn't that bad."

Imrijka makes a face. "She absolutely was."

"What was wrong with her?"

"In general terms, she was compromising the structural integrity of the universe, getting innocents sent to Hell, et cetera. In terms of her treatment of Cumin, she really seemed to have been trying to set Cumin up to be killed or captured."

"She said anyone who thought through it would realize the usual air setup wouldn't cut it for harvesting giant tubeworms!"

(Clarinda and the lyrakien also don't drink.)

"That's not even the incident I was thinking of, there's another example?"

"The question is about whether I hate her, alright? I don't. If we're going to argue this much, maybe I should ask how you feel about Atropos."

"Atropos pays me to do work that I agree needs doing."

"You work for Atropos?"