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The newest people to join the Cabal in Stormreach come into the communal hall together, warforged and kobold, human and weird-hair and tiefling. Eirene is curious about the tiefling: he looks so different from Alexios, and he doesn't try to hide it. Maybe it's regional: her last guardian said humans and humanoids are strange about things like that, and she should be polite because not everyone can be a dragon.
She thinks it was the kobold, the littlest one, who almost opened the door to Alexios's room while Eirene was inside the other day, before the warforged talked them out of it: Eirene heard them discussing it, and then the human woman came and took notes. Eirene has good ears, Alexios says so, and she listens carefully. It's safer to know what's going on when you’re around other people, that's what Alexios says.
She's glad they didn't try to open the door. When the annoying small man with a tail who spends too much time with the man with wings tried to open the door to Alexios’s room he got blown up very badly, and Alexios almost got in trouble for attacking another member of the Cabal even though he wasn't even there. Eirene thinks it's stupid to try to open the door to an occupied room, especially when the writing so clearly says "Open at your own risk."
It's not Alexios's fault if someone doesn’t speak enough languages to understand it and opens it anyway to snoop.
She's kind of glad the woman took notes and then they went away and no one got exploded. It’s messy.
Eirene expects them to stick together, but the littlest one, the kobold with a nest on its head, makes a beeline for the table where she and Alexios and Narzzen are eating. The tall warforged follows instead of going to the kitchen. That makes sense: warforged don't need to eat, do they?
Eirene chirps a warning, because she's the lookout this afternoon, and Alexios and Narzzen pause their conversation, something about Jeffa. Narzzen scowls and adjusts the set of his swords. He's not very nice, but Alexios trusts him, so Eirene should trust him too.
The kobold is heading their way fast, and smiles and waves, so Eirene waves back. Egg, that's her name, is friendly and talkative, and she even gets Alexios to really get involved in a conversation about alchemical ingredients, which is good: he needs more friends than just Narzzen and Jeffa. Jeffa's not allowed to come into the Hand, after all.
But when the human woman and the girl with really interesting hair come up to the table with food, and then sit down without asking, Alexios gets stiff. He looks the way he does when he expects a fight, and he doesn't usually look like that inside the Hand anymore. Raoul, the tall one with horns, sits down and gives Egg a plate from the kitchen, and gets conversation going again, and Eirene thinks she likes him because he made everyone less anxious. Things get messy when Alexios is too anxious, especially when Narzzen is here.
The woman's name is Heleen, and the girl is Shalimar, and the warforged is RT, and Eirene pushes a little closer to Alexios when they start asking her too many questions. He scratches above her brow-ridge just right with his left hand, just the way she likes. His fingers are too soft, because he's not a dragon, but he can't help that.
"We've been in Xen'drik some time," Alexios says to Heleen, nodding at Narzzen, who has been making Shalimar laugh and showing off a knife-juggling trick to Raoul. "Almost before the Covenant and Codex and Blackwheel really got interested in the Prophecy."
Eirene knows he's been here long enough to be killed once by the Covenant's agents already, but that was before the Council assigned Eirene to him, and he doesn't like to talk about it. Narzzen says Alexios was being stupid, but Narzzen says everyone who gets hurt is stupid, including the people he kills, and some of the people she’s seen him kill have been very smart and fighting very effectively, so she doesn't think that's really very helpful.
Heleen admits they've interacted with the Codex, choosing her words carefully and glancing at Shalimar, who looks away and flexes her fingers. Alexios nods. Eirene knows someone brought back a captive: was it them?
"Be careful of the Covenant," Alexios says. "They're righteously murderous assholes who are convinced they're right about everything." Then he looks at Raoul. Eirene is a little surprised. He doesn’t usually care enough to warn people. "Especially you. They really don't like extraplanar things. That includes tieflings. They’ll hit first and ask questions never."
His hand goes still, and Eirene chirrups so he'll go back to skritching her brow-ridge and calm down.
"They're mean," she says. "All paladins and clerics and armor and bad opinions. I don't like them."
RT doesn't react, really, but he and Heleen share a look, and Eirene makes a note to tell Alexios about it later, because that means they have a secret, or something they don't want to say in front of her. She'll find out later: she's good at finding things out, because everyone thinks she's cute and assumes she's not smart, just because she's still so small. She's older than Alexios, and older than Narzzen, and she's still very young for a dragon, but she's not stupid.
So Eirene draws Raoul into conversation, and Alexios goes back to talking to Egg about bags of holding, and no one gets murdered or set on fire over lunch, which is really, she thinks, a very nice change.