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The door opened wide enough for the pale, blinking face of Miriam Jacobs to be glimpsed, as well as a sliver of her body. She was all in white, clearly fresh from fencing practice. Serenade had seen her plenty of times before, Hero's quiet, prissy roommate who was anything but her friend, but anytime Serenade came to see Hero the Captain of the Cavaliers promptly excused herself for parts unknown. God only knew what "parts unknown" were. As far as anyone can tell Miriam did not have any friends, apart from Larissa Duncan who was, well, Larissa Duncan, and therefore possibly either taking pity on Miriam or turning her in for an extra-credit community service assignment.

Miriam curled her fingers around the doorframe. "Barrett's not in right now," she said.

"Oh." The door opened a little wider. "Of course, ma'am. Come in."

Ma'am was a peculiar turn of phrase that the Captain had adopted whenever addressing the Princess in any conversation that acknowledged she was a Princess at all: when they were their normal selves, Serenade Soriano and Miriam Jacobs, she was addressed with a crisp Serenade, but as soon as Miriam became Captain Serenade became ma'am. Sometimes Princess if she was feeling especially formal. Miriam was not known for being polite, but for someone so notoriously impolite, she was very... civil. Courteous, perhaps. Courtly. She did always hold doors.

Hero and Miriam's room looked like it always did, albeit the wall calendar that Miriam had pinned up was turned to a new month now, depicting a waterfall and an art-nouveau mermaid playing with her long blue hair within it. Miriam motioned for Serenade to sit down, either on Hero's bed or her own, and wouldn't sit until she had; she just stood with her hands clasped on one of her bedposts before taking a more uncomfortable seat in her wooden desk chair.

Miriam cleared her throat. "I've heard about the attack," she said. "I'm very sorry."

Miriam had not mirrored Serenade's posture -- both of her feet were touching the ground and her back was ramrod-straight, with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed slightly. It was briefly reminiscent of the white-haired Captain she had been a very long time ago, who kneeled and kissed Princess Chronos's hand dutifully when they met: a somber military man. Miriam Jacobs was no military man, but she was somber.

She spent some time collecting her thoughts. Eventually she said, "Ma'am, I need you to tell me what both of these people looked like and what abilities -- to your recollection -- they had." She was very somber. "Please make an effort to be precise."

Miriam listened to all of this silently, without a go on or an I see. It took her a while to be sure that Serenade was finished, but once she was she looked away herself and folded her hands in her lap, an oddly faraway look in her eyes. She appeared to be staring at some undefined spot on her wall, but this was unlikely -- it was more likely that she was thinking. She had never been known to be a snappy thinker. She took her time of it this time, perhaps due to the gravity of the situation, and when she was done she looked back at Serenade and cleared her throat, like she expected her eyes to be met while she spoke.

"I've never heard of such a woman," she said. "I can only hope that she's an impostor. The way that you describe her powers reminds me of -- Queen Beryl more than anything," Miriam looked troubled, "but I can't imagine what she'd have to do with Queen Beryl. All the same, I don't know who else could be responsible."

She fixed Serenade with a level stare. "And this man spared all of your lives?"

"I can't imagine his and Charonite's goals are the same, then," said Miriam with a far-off look in her eyes. "Not that this is a surprise. Charonite's a Cavalier; he doesn't hold with wizardry, he never did." It was sometimes easy to forget that the dark-haired girl was, in fact, a long-lost acquaintance of General-King Charonite's, and spoke of him with casual aplomb as a result. "And I can't imagine Beryl permitting an individual more powerful than herself in her Kingdom except directly in her service. And even then." She stood up suddenly and paced to the other end of the room with her hands clasped behind her back, agitated. "Then who is he? Why? We know the sum of the threats that plague us," she gestured in frustration, "or I ought to, I once was one of them."

She was silent for a while with her back to Serenade, standing rock-still. "If only the Dark Kingdom were fighting an honorable war," she said. "I'd call a meeting between officers to discuss this. As it stands we have no guarantee that he'd follow any of the rules of war, even if it stood to benefit him."

The rules of war was a concept that no one apart from Cavalier Kunzite really appeared to believe in any more. She still sounded resolute about it.

"You can't assume anything," said Miriam sharply, glancing back with her arms crossed and her chin in one hand. She looked like she was in a war room. She then relented and went on, "But we have to operate on some kind of conclusion, and that'll do for now. The Dark Kingdom consists of Charonite, Beryl, and a veritable armada of idiots recruited out of some attempt to replace myself, Nephrite, Zoisite and Jadeite. If your people and the Lunars get their act together, they shouldn't be hard to overcome." Only Kunzite really would ever say this kind of thing without the slightest touch of irony. "As for the others -- we'll find them," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I need to speak to Captain Aries."

There was a long and awkward silence before Miriam went on, looking at the ground, "As always and as ever, you know you have my sword when you require it. Ma'am."

Miriam gave her an odd look. For all her deference, she didn't exactly seem liable to hide it when she thought someone had asked her an odd, obvious or unwise question. "I wouldn't know. I'd take it up with him if I were you. The Charonite I knew was a Cavalier called Mortalitas, and he was a very different man; I can't speak for his reasoning now. I was very different under the influence of corruption." She shrugged. "And I know little at all of the Barren Pines incident, save that it took many lives and that you and your Guard, regrettably, numbered among the fatalities." It was a bit strange to have one's death boiled down to a regrettably. But the Captain of the Cavaliers, too, had lived and died more than once.