[Ari doesn't think she's capable of stabbing someone in the eye at all. Shooting them in the head, sure, but she can do that from a safe distance. She doesn't point it out, though. Nobunaga seems to have a certain faith in her. She doesn't want to disappoint him, and it isn't as if such a situation is ever likely to arise.]

Sun Tzu does sound wise. You can't help having emotions if something like betrayal happens, but you mustn't let your decisions be guided by them. I think you're right, I'd get along with your generals. [Which pleases her immensely, because Ari's cultural translation for 'general' right now is something close to 'planetary captain'.

She's less happy with Nobunaga's treatment of his sister, but she had asked.

It's not really my place to pry into other people's family business, I suppose, but where I'm from we wouldn't accept that one person had any right to sell another, under any circumstances. Or to stop someone from becoming what he wanted. [There, that's Ari Tayrey at her most diplomatic, and she quickly moves on to slightly safer ground.]

I'm... Cardalek is complicated. My geneparents were never in contract. I was adopted as a baby by one of my great-grandmother's Directors - I suppose you might consider them like generals, only in a business sense. He has no other children, so I might inherit from him, but I'll get nothing through the Carrington bloodline. And I left home at thirteen to be a spacer, so maybe that rules me out anyway. [She looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes her head.] That wasn't what you were asking. My Carrington cousins - none of them are out on the Tradelines, but none of them wanted to be. They do what's expected of them, mostly. What's good for the Company. But nobody's forcing them to.