"You've any idea what the last word of this is supposed to be?" Amy shoved a slip of paper beneath Mencha's nose.

The paper's margin brushed Mencha's skin like the sharp edge of a blade. Mencha wondered, vaguely, if the paper would leave a cut. Certainly, all the conditions had been met. Her nose stung.

"Oh, sorry about that!" Amy's hand—the empty one—jerked, as though she meant to be motherly about the whole matter and rub the pain away.

"'S all right," mumbled Mencha, looking at the table.

She doubted Amy heard that impeccable bit of English; she herself hardly heard it above the drunken banter that filled her ears, filled her brain, filled the confines of that close tavern room. When Amy began speaking again, Mencha knew she had not heard.

"When I fairst saw the note and it was sayin', 'if ye would seek eternal gloray and boundless power, find the artifact known as Azazel’s Stone'—"

Amy leant over the table until she was scant inches from Mencha's bowed head; she jabbed the slip of paper to emphasize her words. Mencha sighed. Amy had already read that note out loud three times, and theorized upon it several times more, but she'd also had several pints to drink in the last half hour, and Mencha was starting to fear for her companion's wits... if they had ever been something worth fearing for, that is. Mencha was starting to suspect they were not.

"But I canna, faer the life of me, settle upon a word to end this." Amy gave the paper a conclusive little smack. "I'm thinkin' maybe the word was "find"; it'd make sense, 'doan let the Sun Rod find', but ye'd want tae be perfectly clear, don't'chya think? Ye wouldn't want to jump to conclusions and that sort of thing."

"You will forgive me… but what does this have to do with… anything?" Mencha blinked up at her companion. "I thought we were going… back to… Spain, not… not…"

She wasn't exactly sure what Amy was doing to engage her time at the moment, and so she decided her tone of voice and its insinuation must be enough to carry her meaning.

"Of course I'm taekin' ye back to yaer Spain!" Amy said, cheerfully. "Ye must miss it sorely, bein' lost from it faer five months." But she had paused before she had spoken, and when she did speak, the words had come too fast, and now she was smiling at Mencha as though she were saying sorry.

Mencha drooped.

"Mencha-a-a… I told you ye should have bought yaerself a bed back at that inn." Amy leant toward her, voice companionable, matter-of-fact. "Ye should go get one. It'll do ye a bit of good, gettin' a bit of rest." She patted Mencha's shoulder.

Mencha shuddered. She had tried, earlier; she had actually gone as far as to examine one of the rooms in the inn. But she had detested the only room available at the price she could afford: she had smelled the sweet rot of the sunken floor and walls. The concave mattress had been yellow and heavy with age; its musk had been as strong as liquour, reeking of crushed grapes left to ripen in the heat. She had nearly been sick.

"No… I'm fine… really…" she said, and a yawn caught her midsentence. She suppressed it as best she could.

"Of course you are," said Amy, skeptically.

Her hand slid from Mencha's shoulder and she sat down, fingered the scrap of paper, considered it.

"I wonder why the waitress gave this tae me," Amy commented, as if she had not made this remark several times already. "I didn't even get a good look at haer face… if waitress she was. You think she was?"

Mencha shrugged. "Amy…"

"Mmm?"

"We… are… on our way back to my home, just as you said, when we left the Dome? We are—?"

"Lass!" Amy reached across the table and patted Mencha's hand. Her smile was soothing, her voice soothing, the heat of her hand a bit uncomfortable, but Mencha was too shy—or maybe it was too polite—to take her hand back. "Didn't I say I'm going with you back to yaer Spain? I was just curious about this little note, that's all. Just all…"

She trailed into silence, and stared over Mencha's head at the tavern door.

Mencha glanced back. A woman was moving through the network of tables, a tall, silver-haired woman, walking with the fluidity of water: everything she passed seemed to become insignificant, meager. The woman wore a broadsword at her back. There was direction to her step.

"That's not an everyday sight," Amy remarked. "A lady with a broadsword."

Mencha looked back at her, just in time to see Amy glance again at her confounded scrap of paper, then back up at the woman. She sprang from her seat. Her sudden energy startled Mencha, for all the lethargy and the nausea and the headache besieging Mencha's body.

"I'm off faer another drink!" Amy said, brightly, and promptly moved in the direction opposite the bar, toward the tall, silvery woman, still grasping that horrible scrap of paper as though it were a key to something great.

Mencha, loathe to remain behind, stood unsteadily and followed her.