Camilla cut her palm with the edge of a ring.
The wound closed in under a second: a thread of heat, the Star Mark doing its standard housekeeping. Camilla watched it seal with the expression of someone who had mostly made peace with the arrangement but retained the right to find it philosophically uncomfortable.
Beside her, Kurapika registered the shift in her eyes and understood what it meant. He straightened slightly.
The woman standing across the room was tall, built with the solid efficiency of someone who had spent years training a body for sustained combat, and she stood with her hands clasped behind her back and her attention forward in the posture of someone who had learned military discipline from the inside out. She had been standing like that since she entered the room. She would stand like that until dismissed.
Her name was Ellie Abby. She was, according to Camilla, the highest-aura individual among the second prince's Nen-capable private soldiers, which made her the most practical relay option.
Liam surveyed her the way he surveyed all borrowed bodies: taking inventory before committing to anything. He reached into the side of her mouth where the fresh Star Mark sat against the soft tissue of the upper palate, activated it, and passed the possession forward.
Camilla felt herself resume.
She glanced at the soldier in front of her.
"What's her name?" said the voice from Ellie Abby's throat, entirely conversational.
"Ellie Abby. She won't receive unexpected visitors while you're using her. I've ensured that."
Camilla added, with a precision that served as both information and endorsement: "Among Camilla's soldiers with Nen ability, she does not have the highest combat capability, nor is she the most versatile. But her total aura is the highest. She should serve your requirements."
Liam cycled through the basic forms inside the borrowed body quickly: Ten, Zetsu, Ren, the Nen gears engaging with the practiced ease that came from substantial conditioning. He tracked the aura levels as they moved. Seventeen thousand, give or take. Transmutation type, which was convenient. The body was well-trained and the aura was organized, held by someone who knew what she was doing and had been doing it for years.
"Peak junior combatant range," he said. "She'll do."
Kurapika, who had been watching from the corner with the patience of someone who had learned that watching was frequently more informative than talking, unfolded a map of Kakin's capital across the table without being asked.
"You want a briefing," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I want a briefing."
Kurapika sat down. Over the next several minutes, he walked through the past several months in the efficient, sequential way he walked through most problems: what he had attempted, in what order, with what result. Approaches that had been planned and then aborted when the fourth prince moved unexpectedly. Surveillance positions that had been established and then emptied before he could use them. Three separate occasions where he had been positioned to make contact and Tserriednich had altered his schedule without apparent reason, the change too consistent to be coincidence and too early to be response.
"He never sent anyone after me," Kurapika said. "After each failed approach. No pursuit, no investigation of what Camilla's private soldier was doing nearby. He knows something is wrong. He chose not to act on it."
"Waiting for a complete picture," Liam said.
"Or confident that any threat can be avoided when it becomes specific enough to act on."
Camilla, who had been listening with her arms folded and an expression that communicated restrained frustration, said: "When he first became aware of Nen, he had no trained Nen users among his personal guard. Two of his existing guards happened to be natural users, but neither ability was relevant to forewarning."
"So the forewarning is him," Liam said.
"That is Camilla's assessment."
He sat back in the borrowed body and thought about it. A Specialization-type ability that predicted incoming danger. The fourth prince's character, which ran consistently toward the predatory and self-serving, was precisely the psychological profile that produced that kind of Hatsu under natural development. The Nen beast had manifested early, already formed from accumulated character before he'd ever consciously tried to direct it. A danger-prediction ability from a man who spent his life arranging for other people to be in danger was, in its own dark way, logical.
"And you can't use Revelation without seeing him," Liam said to Kurapika.
"I need direct visual contact, or an object with significant connection to him. I haven't achieved either." A brief pause. "If I could even locate one of the Scarlet Eyes, I could use Revelation to trace it. But I don't know where he stores them."
"Can you locate him with Revelation? Just position, not the eyes."
"I can try. The divination works better with more information, and I have months of attempted surveillance, enough to build a fairly detailed profile of his patterns." Kurapika looked at the map. "It's a stretch. The accuracy may not be sufficient for a useful result."
"I can help with that."
Liam smiled in Ellie Abby's face, which produced a slightly unfamiliar expression given that Ellie Abby's default setting was not one that smiled often.
He pressed the palm of the borrowed hand flat on the table and drew a mark: the five-pointed star and the sun symbol layered, rose-gold against the skin, the two systems braided together. A talisman materialized between his fingers, a small square of yellow paper with dense patterns in dark ink.
The Ginseng Fruit Gourd, in talisman form.
He had been refining into it for months, every day that he had a spare moment. The Beyond clone's two hundred thousand aura had gone in first, converted at the standard rate. Then the regular refinement of the death energy he carried: nineteen units, steadily processed, each one adding thousands more to the reserve. The gourd's storage capacity was, by Blinky's design inheritance, effectively unlimited.
At this point the amount stored inside it was, by any practical measure, quite a lot.
"Kurapika," he said. "Use your best divination. Don't hold back on aura. When you need more, tell me."
He set the talisman on the table between them.
"This is a refueling option," he said. "Think of it as a battery that happens to taste like ginseng."
Kurapika looked at the talisman. Then at Liam in Ellie Abby's body.
"How much is in there?" he said.
"Enough," Liam said. "More than enough. Don't be polite about it."