"I will be greatly disappointed in this place if it fails to deliver."

"Mmhmmm. And how about you, whose toys are you aiming to take away?"

"I don't so much have a specific person who can't be trusted with their toys and more a court that could stand to operate more efficiently and with less infighting. My half-sister, I suppose; she wasn't going to succeed in usurping my position regardless, but," shrug. 

"A tense family relationship? My sympathies. And best of luck smoothing out your court. Infighting can be such a tragedy."

"I'm a princess. Warm family feelings are for commoners. And thank you."

"I'm a Confessor. My sisters are my best and closest allies. No feelings required."

She stands. "It's been lovely meeting you. I look forward to spending the year here with you." With an outstretched hand, "Do they do handshakes in your world?"

"They certainly do!"

She reaches out and clasps the other woman's hand. 

There is a rush of air, a minor shockwave that stirs Ilsa's skirts, that would lift the dust from the floor if there was any.

And all of a sudden, the world is a very different place.

She flinches, first, from the pain, and then is absolutely terrified that flinching was the wrong thing to do. 

She opens her eyes and focuses all of her observational power on the woman in front of her, terrified to miss a clue as to what she wants. 

The woman in front of her is smiling gently. "It's all right," she says, giving a slight comforting squeeze to Jacinthe's hand. "First, I would like your honest answer to this question: do you have any contingency measures that are likely to inconvenience me in this situation?"

"No. The only relevant thing I already knew before coming here was chemicals, and I don't know how to set up anything that complicated yet. I have allies in my world of origin who will get tetchy if they find out, but they can't reach you here and they can be kept from finding out."

She nods understandingly. Her demeanour is still gentle and caring, focused on Jacinthe. "Thank you. My next question is: how are you feeling?"

"Afraid. Uncertain. Relieved. Elated. I do not yet know you and so I cannot anticipate what you'll want and that distresses me."

"We have time to get to know each other," she promises. "I understand that it can be overwhelming at first. Please ask clarifying questions if you're confused about what I want or what I mean by something, and communicate honestly with me, and in time we'll understand each other much better. I intend to take good care of you; I want to understand you so I can understand how best to do that."

"What do you want me to call you? Do you want to know more things about my world? Do you want me to know more things about your world, so that I can help you deal with your war?"

She smiles warmly. "Thank you, you're doing well so far and I appreciate it. I would like you to call me by my name, and I would like to hear about your world and what you have been doing there."

She nods. 

"My father is the King. My mother the Queen died last year, at which point he brought in my half-sister, a bastard from a tryst with a commoner, to threaten my position in order to gain leverage over me. She doesn't know anything about courtly intrigue, so she isn't that much of a threat on her own, but my fiance, a prince from our closest neighbor and ally, is more interested in her than me, so between my father and my fiance I have a lot of damage control to do. My staunchest ally is Lord Vivian Thorne, son of Duke Thorne, the most powerful nobleman in the kingdom after my father. He's in love with me, but he respects my priorities in maintaining my political engagement to Prince William. Vivian is himself engaged to Amalia Muet, a merchant heiress with relatively few connections at court but a very healthy array of capital. Vivian's younger sister is engaged to Lord Hadrian Verbena, with the understanding that his barony will be promoted to a countship when they marry; Lord Verbena has been incredibly valuable to the kingdom and is likely to get less useful fast without appropriate acknowledgement. Duke Thorne's main political opposition is a coalition headed by Count Ramo and Viscount Tige. My father is more strongly aligned with Duke Thorne overall but sometimes favors the coalition to keep him from getting above himself. Count Ramo and Viscount Tige will almost always cooperate against Duke Thorne, but each is also the head of their own faction within the coalition..." 

She goes on to explain the rest of the complicated interpersonal web that is her court. Noteworthy information includes:

-She has a habit of bribing servants to gain blackmail material over other nobles. 

-Despite the fact that public affirmations of virginity are socially critical, she regularly sleeps with Vivian Thorne and has manipulated several other nobles through the use of sex. 

-She has on multiple occasions arranged for marriages to violently collapse to keep political inconveniences occupied at critical moments. 

-Her machinations against her half-sister included arranging for Vivian Thorne and a handful of his friends to gang-rape her. 

-Before Ilsa took her, her highest priority was her own power, and her second-highest priority was the efficient and healthy running of her kingdom. 

Ilsa listens to all this with great attention, interrupting only once, to pause for a moment so she can bring her chair across the room and sit close to Jacinthe to listen. She keeps that same gentle smile, and small nonverbal signals of interest and approval, throughout.

"Is there magic in your world?" she asks eventually, once the summary of court politics has concluded.

"Yes. It's fairly rare in humans and I don't have any. There are magical species, like dragons and fairies and unicorns, and magical places, like the Moonlit Springs or the Cave of the Lost, and sometimes humans with a little nonhuman blood have magic."

"There are many magical species in my world, and additionally some humans are born with the gift of magic. I haven't ever heard that they might have nonhuman blood; that seems like a difference between our worlds. What form does the magic of humans with nonhuman blood usually take?"

"It depends on what kind of non-human blood they have. My half-sister has a little bit of unicorn on her mother's side, and she's supernaturally graceful and can purify food and water. Count Ramo can do some small fire magic; he says he has a dragon ancestor, but it might be any number of less glamorous things. Lord Verbena has the ability to energize and support men under his command; there isn't any known species that can do that, so he must have throwback genes from multiple species."

"Interesting!" she says, with a slightly surprised smile. "The implications of that being possible... very interesting indeed. I believe I will set a long-term goal of visiting your world and studying how its magic works, for after I have accomplished my more important projects."

She settles back slightly in her chair.

"Which brings me to the question of what my goals are. I imagine you want to understand them; I also want that. Let's see if we can make it happen. First, of course, I want to free the Midlands from the D'Haran invasion and reestablish our independency. But the reason I want that ties into one of my larger goals: when I am part of a system, I want that system to function efficiently. When I am part of a system made of people, such as a country or something like the Midlands that is larger than any individual country, I want, as much as possible, for each of those people to be occupied in a role that suits them, doing work they find fulfilling, improving things both for others and for themselves. I want to minimize waste, especially of people, either in the sense of wasting their lives or of wasting their potential to flourish. When I have power over someone I want to use that power in ways that benefit that person as well as myself." She pauses briefly to let that sink in. "Do you have any questions about any of that?"

"What kind of system do you imagine the Midlands operating under, afterwards?"

"It might be necessary to change some things, but for the most part I hope to keep the current system of a coalition of independent countries with very little in the way of central authority."

"What do you intend to do with D'Har?"