Anne let Mary vent her rage, nodding sympathetically to show she was listening. Despite her calm demeanor and open, receptive posture, Anne was pretty damn frustrated. She was a little irritated with Romax Pol for his lack of diplomacy, but it would have been an awkward conversation any way it was played. And doubtless Mary had walked in already angry, forcing the man to adopt a hard posture to avoid showing weakness.

Anne blamed Calico entirely. This was just another of that damnable girl's attempts to humiliate them. Really, it was completely in character... Calico was always causing chaos, embarrassing their Corporation's image with her lewd behavior, and dragging them into insane situations. "You know, my darling," said Anne carefully, "We could - ah - disassociate ourselves from the scandal, if you would only disown...." She saw Mary's expression; she had not survived since the 17th century by ignoring any gaze so full of murder, and wisely did not finish the sentence.

She crossed her arms, taking a harder line. "Darling, we cannot simply put a hit out on this man." She raised a hand, stalling Mary's arguments. "Please! Hear me out. Who would we send after him? Sandrine? Faye Valentine?" Her tone suggested the ridiculousness of this proposition. "Even if they did succeed, and kill Romax Pol, what then? They are known associates of ours. Everyone would suspect us of having killed Lord Travanix's treasured business partner. It would be open war, and you know as well as I - war is bad for business. Some of us might live through it, but our Corporation would never survive here."

She saw that Mary was listening, and finished, "We would be forced to return to Earth in disgrace, and tell Pierre Couteau that we were unable to turn a profit on Rhy'din, the richest world imaginable. Would you be the one to explain to him that it was all because of Crazy Cally? That we'd started a war because someone insulted her, a tramp without a reputation to lose? Don't look at me like that. The fact that you love her does not change the way she has lived her life for the last several hundred years!"

Anne was frustrated with Calico, of course, but also with Mary for stubbornly defending such an impossible creature - and also she was angry with herself. In a sense, all of this was her fault. If she hadn't let that bastard Calico Jack Rackham knock her up, Cally would never have been born. But how was she supposed to know in 1720 that her baby would grow up to be such a monumental pain in her ass? That was the trouble with living forever... your mistakes always caught up to you.

"Yes, I have heard that," Anne said. She smiled, remembering. "'Assassination only works once, but character assassination works every day.' Pierre used to say that, right?" Her sire had often been distant from Mary, but he had taken time to instruct her in the ways of vengeance; Pierre had arranged to have Mary Embraced to act as Anne's eternal bodyguard, so he had taken an interest in her training.

Anne knew that it was a bad idea to act on a casual grudge. On the other hand, she had a deliciously sadistic idea. And now that she'd had it, it would be a shame not to see how it went.... In the interests of expanding their knowledge of insurrection, and continuing an education in vengeance that was rightfully a lifelong pursuit. Character assassination had always fascinated her, and here was a shining opportunity, if they could pull it off.

Mary, who could read Anne's face after so many centuries together, saw the evil wheels clicking in her head and waited patiently for her to speak. "There is someone we can send against him," said Anne slowly. "Calico."

She leaned forward, and said with great seriousness, "You warned him, did you not, that Calico was dangerous? That her friendship and affection are an extremely hazardous thing to have?" Mary nodded. "And he didn't want to hear it!" Anne said, warming to her idea. "So if she hurts him, it's no one's fault but his own. And if Calico were to attack him, there would be absolutely no way to connect our Corporation to it."

"Besides," she continued, her tone softer but her eyes gleaming wickedly, "don't you think that getting attacked by your own slave-girl would be... embarrassing? Particularly if you had sworn that she was no threat to you? It would really seem... to the other slavers, that is... as if Romax couldn't handle his girls. That at the best, he'd made a stupid choice about who to collar, and at the worst he'd been taken in by the seductions of a woman who meant him harm all along. We could certainly spin the situation, oh yes."

She laughed happily. "And the best part is, we don't have to talk Calico into a damn thing. If Romax wants her to do something, he has to try to communicate with the broken machine she calls her mind. If *I* want that child to do something, I go in through the back door and change her programming." Anne had installed this hypnotic shortcut in Calico's mind many centuries before, to prevent the girl from destroying the universe when she was first getting used to her powers. With this phrase of command, she could force Calico into a deep trance where she was highly suggestible to mind control.

"So you'll summon Calico here, with that skin magic you two do. I'll give her the command phrase, and give her some post-hypnotic conditioning. At a certain trigger, she will manifest some extremely lethal shenanigans. And no one knows why she does anything, so no one will suspect intervention in her actions. She often attacks people or throws inconvenient magic at them, after all. She's known for it." Anne pulled Mary close and starting to massage her beloved's neck, which was tense as marble. "We'll have our very own 'sleeper agent' gunning for Romax, won't that be fun? And she knows where he sleeps."

The moment Calico manifested in the room, Anne was already giving the command phrase. "Calico," she asked, in that persuasive voice she used to activate her mind-control powers, "wouldn't you like to go see the elephant?" Simultaneously, she gave Calico's mind a calculated shove with her telepathy. It was a command that only she could give - just like the lock on her special drawer, which required the right fingerprint and the right telepathic signature to open.

And it was a reliable trick. Just like her desk drawer, Calico's mind clicked open; visibly, the girl sank until she was lying on the floor, and her eyes glazed over. Anne knew better than to look into the girl's mind - that was a quick road to a splitting migraine and a lot of existential confusion. So she just commanded her in words. "Calico, can you hear me?" Anne asked.

"Uh-huh," said Calico. Even though she was not conscious, her voice was still resentful when she talked to Anne, her biological mother and least favorite person.

"Calico, when you wake up, you won't remember any of this conversation. You'll only remember that you came to see Mary, and she was busy, so you left. But your mind will remember. Your mind will keep secrets from you. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," said Cally. It figured, Anne thought. It was no stranger than the things that Calico believed without coercion.

"Then I will explain your orders," Anne continued. "The next time someone addresses you as 'pet', your own pet - Senor Gallo - will manifest and try to kill that person. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Cally, sounding a little more cheerful. She liked giving her monstrous rooster friend a chance to play with others.

Anne proceeded to give Cally half a dozen more commands, triggers which would lie in her subconscious. When she was done, she woke Calico with the same phrase of command, and Mary sent her on her way. What an interesting set of traps they had laid for Romax! Anne would be sure to follow his career with interest.