“This is a bad idea,” Red groans, pinching the narrow bridge of his nose. The desk shakes just noticeably along with his restless leg.

“So is hanging out with one of your spies all the time,” Tailor reasons, “but, hey, I’m not complaining.”

“We were friends before all this; it’s not suspicious. If you’re caught, I’ll plead ignorance. I’m from a well-respected family. It’ll work. If I’m caught in contact with the crown princess, however, even indirectly, people will care. If they find out about this, we are all dead.”

“Red,” Tailor smiles, threading a needle with her calloused hands beside the light of the candle on his desk, “if they find out we’re a part of a rebellion against the crown, we’re dead anyway.”

“Ah, yes. Perfect reason to increase the risk of being caught,” is Red’s rebuttal. He sifts through some of his notes. College is difficult—college and a job sucks, especially since his job is treason, and both activities combined take up most of his day. If the Cerinthe Rebellion ends up gaining some territory and he gets caught, would he be able to transfer to another college? Hm…

“Are you worried she’ll tell her mother or that someone will find out?” Tailor questions. Red twirls his pen in his hand, contemplating.

“I trust she can keep her schemes to herself; she’s a Spark, after all. It’s her loyalty, I question,” Red explains. “She just met us, and she signs right up? I don’t get it. How can someone be so ready and willing to switch allegiances at the drop of a hat?"

“Oh, that’s all? Red, it’s not the means she cares about right now,” Tailor clarifies, “it’s the end.” Red pauses his schoolwork to face Tailor, sewing something much simpler than her usual work. Her eyes leave her project for a moment at his silence to see his expectant look. “I’ve met her before, the crown princess,” she begins. “I didn’t recognize her without all the makeup, the oversized gown, the regalia. I doubt she recognized me, either. It was a long time ago, and she’s probably had thousands of seamsters in her time. I got the job because of Tulip, actually. I’m certain I only witnessed what I did for the same reason we employed Tulip: people let a lot of things slip around servants. I can assure you; Cloud’s loyalty hasn’t been strongly attached to her mother for a long time. It’s not so much that she’s loyal to us, she just doesn’t like her mother.”

“The enemy of the enemy is my friend,” Red hums.

“That’s not to say she won’t become loyal to us,” Tailor provides. "She did imply that she holds Tulip's judgment in high regard, so she may end up trusting us from our association to her." Red nods, mostly to himself.

“What’d you see?” Red inquires. He huffs a little, sarcastic laugh through his nose. “What makes you so sure that she truly isn’t loyal to her mother? That’s an awfully bold statement to base off of one, well, two instances you’ve been present for.” Tailor sighs, leaning back in her chair as she recalls the details from years and years ago.

“They didn’t mean for Tulip and I to see it,” she starts. “It was behind closed doors. I was hired to make her dress for the winter solstice festival. They had a minor disagreement; Cloud wanted something more Heiwanese and the queen was insistent on something Frithian. The queen excused the both of them to go discuss it, I guess, but they were taking way longer than needed for such a simple dispute. I went to check on them. Tulip had been standing outside the room with the door cracked already.” Tailor’s hand slows in its stitching. “I don’t know how it escalated to this point, but I heard the queen threaten to kill her sister, Summer, if Cloud didn’t stop opposing her. It was clear to me; this was much bigger than a dress.” Red stills his bouncing leg.

“Oh,” he says. That’s… a lot to unpack. From what Farrow said, the two sisters didn’t seem very friendly. Are they close, after all?

Tailor continues, “From the look on Cloud’s face I could tell it wasn’t abnormal behavior on the queen’s part. She looked terrified, don’t get me wrong, but not shocked. The queen left through a different door after telling Cloud to handle the dress herself and to make the right choice about it.” The sewing halts completely. “She just stood there for a second, hollow. Then, like striking flint and steel, life filled her again, and it wasn’t happy. She broke this nearby vase, hurled it against the wall. It was so loud, and she was so quiet. I went back to the room. She came back. I pretended I hadn’t seen anything. She picked the design her mother liked. If I hadn’t seen that go down, I wouldn’t have noticed anything was off about her. She seemed completely collected.” Tailor resumes sewing. “I asked Tulip about Cloud’s relationship with her mother later. Tulip just kinda grimaced. I forget exactly what she said, but it was something along the lines of ‘how do you think a dictator goes about parenting?’ and left it at that.”

“You’d think she’d spoil her children,” Red states, "being the queen."

“I don’t know anything about rearing children,” Tailor replies. “But I can say I believed Cloud when she called her mother a tyrant. I honestly think she knows that to be true. On some level, her beliefs align with our own. I don't think she'll snitch.” They sit in that for a moment. Then, she adds, “And, by the way, you had no place to call her out for her wealth and influence, rich boy.” Tailor pokes the golden buttons on his jacket to punctuate. “Daddy’s paying for your schoolbooks, buddy. You really went and threw stones from a glass house.”

“Hey! My family may possess a large portion of wealth, but we are leagues away from the top ten percent, let alone the royal family.” Red grumbles, “Also, I appreciate my privilege and don’t claim to not want it.”

“She literally said she hated it but sees the value in using it. You’re both doing the same thing,” Tailor responds. “The coins of government officials line your family's pockets, and you give a good chunk of it to the rebellion. You’re both using the system to fuck the system. You're no better than her, man. Your family’s old money, and we all know what that means. I'm just above the poverty line. You don’t want to have this debate with me. I don’t care if you are a lawyer, I’ll drag you to hell.” Red promptly decides to go back to said law studies. “Look, it’s done. You can’t change it. If Gushiken thinks Cloud is a worthy investment, you could at least give it some thought that isn’t entirely oppositional.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Red mumbles. Despite the tone, he does take the notion to heart.

He ends up falling asleep at the desk in his tiny apartment, Tailor seeing herself out shortly after. He awakes to the sun blinding him through the glare of his windowpane. He groans and shoves himself up. Petulant, he yanks the curtain closed to banish the hellish fireball in the sky from his home. Grateful he didn’t drool on his open textbook, he snaps it shut. Red swaps clothes and makes himself presentable enough to be seen by his neighbors. For the third morning in a row, he grabs his bookbag and steps outside to make his rounds.

There are many spies in the Cerinthe Rebellion, each having a different ring of contacts and different drop off points for intel. Red thanks his parents for making him learn Heiwanese despite the shaky relationship Frithians have with the annexed culture. It made learning codes, practically languages of their own, much easier. Red picks up the notes his contacts decided were worthwhile enough to pass along, each in their own little nook and cranny that’d be missed by those who wouldn’t know where to look: holes in trees, between bricks, under wood piles. You can hide things anywhere, really, as long as curious children can’t get into it. Of course, not all information is compiled in notes, that’s just how it’s sent off to Red Wood. The final place Red checks, a spot he's been keeping eye on for three days now, is near Gushiken and Farrow’s home. After all, it’s not like the crown princess has been around the city enough to know many secluded spaces. With a yawn, Red sticks his hand into a pair of old boots Gushiken agreed to leave outside for this reason. His hand freezes when he feels paper.

Red’s springs up, wide awake, with the letter in his hands. “No way,” he murmurs to himself, unfolding the note. The handwriting is tiny, sharp, and fashioned in a way to include as much information as possible on such a small piece of parchment. Red gets the vibe it’s not her actual handwriting, she would’ve been tutored out of rushed script such as this. It’s all in the code he’d given her the key to. It looks correct, too, from his brief skim. He shouldn’t read this here. If someone asked him why he was just standing there, he wouldn’t have a great answer off the top of his head. He shoves the paper into his pocket and hurries back to his apartment.

He locks the door behind him, despite there being no real reason anyone would burst in anytime soon. Red shrugs his book bag of notes off, pulling the crown princess’s from his pocket to read first. At this point, reading these codes has become second nature. He rarely needs to get out his ciphers anymore. It reads like a soldier's report. His scarlet eyes shine as he reads the exact information he’d asked of her, a detailed run-down of every available queensman and their equipment within a certain radius of Trinity Citadel. Some information is admittedly an estimate of numbers: not baseless, but not exact. However, it’s damn near perfect for his purposes. Still, he beats his optimism down. Who knows if this is true? She could be leading them into a trap. Just because Cloud, at some point, didn't get along with her mother doesn’t mean she still doesn’t. That said, a cautious hope bubbles in his chest as he wedges the note into a novel of his, like a bookmark. He’ll have to cross reference the note with existing information. For now, he turns to sifting through the other notes to decide what’ll go to Gushiken.