The others are more opaque. Spider, the pilot on medical leave, appears all smiles and confidence. Happy and self-assured as any regular schmuck has the right to be. But something seems off about it. Something about his veneer is too shiny, like it’s buffed every day, every hour, the moment it picks up the merest fleck of dust. The kind of fretful maintenance done when you’re worried about the rot underneath showing. Misery doesn’t trust his aura of normalcy, although she can’t say what might be lurking below it. If he once served on Sunyata Diamond’s ship, perhaps the cause of their trauma is the same. He could be dangerous. Or he could just be sad. Misery isn’t sure, so she can’t trust him yet. This puzzle is one that requires more time and effort to unlock.

Ghost, the white saint, she would prefer not to think about. But they’re here and she has to deal with them, like it or not. Alone among the serving they have not unpacked their food; it sits placid and cubical in front of them. Do they not eat? Maybe they weren’t made with a digestive system. Ghost looks like they’ve never consumed a meal their entire life, with those hollow rings around the eyes and the milk-curd skin that displays blue veins in their hands and wrists. Maybe they’re not exactly identical to the clones on the Capital. Can she tell? Their faces blend. Ghost’s gaze skips from one instance of human interaction to the next with the intensity of a small sun. What goes through their mind as they study others?

Lastly, there’s the princess. The Lady Lee Alodia Lightning. As the serving had milled around their assigned table, doing the awkward shuffle of figuring out where to sit among a group of strangers, Misery had deftly positioned herself across from the princess. All the better to watch her. The investment has paid off; even as Misery studies the other members of the serving, she keeps the princess in the corner of her eye. The princess is watching her in return, in between spoonfuls of mouth-melt protein. Unsettling. The Lady Lee Alodia Lightning is the most dangerous of all: closest to figuring out the falsehoods driving Misery’s apotheosis, and most empowered to cut the lines on the whole gig. That she’s gotten knees-and-elbows involved in the serving hints at a personal agenda, but Misery will be taken if she knows what it is.

Already cracks are showing in the social fabric of the serving. Tank and Spider scrap verbally, the small feints of a petty disagreement played out by two people realizing they don’t like each other very much. The argument is about something stupid—Tank has opinions about language patterns, Spider thinks a young girl like her can’t possibly know anything about anything.