Zhou raises an eyebrow at the mention of a challenge, but puts it out of mind for the moment.

"That may be precisely the problem, Skandi." He says flatly. "Exactly why should we risk our lives for her soldiers? You keep speaking about how we need to prove ourselves and give her reason to trust us, but given that we were sent here to kill her - with no actual evidence save wild theorizing that maybe that wasn't the real intention behind our orders - I truly do not give two ****s whether she likes or trusts us. She tried to bend my mind. For that, I should kill her and spit on the corpse, and it is only because she is family and may be able to help Lookshy that I have not... well, that and I admit I would probably lose a one-on-one confrontation."

He shakes his head. "If Lookshy wanted an alliance, they would have sent an actual diplomat... or at the very least they would have told us that. Deniable operations are all very well and good, but you still give your operatives orders - you just lie about it later if required. You don't tell them to do precisely the opposite of what you actually want, and then hope that they'll piece things together out of a dozen fragmentary clues."