Swamped

"Right. Rivers, you're coming with me. Everyone else, stay here."

Rivers glares at you.

"You trying to prove something to me, Boss?"

"Not at all. I just think it's become abundantly clear we need to have a talk, and we can't hold off on it any longer."

"What if the Bogknight gets away again while we're talking?"

"Seems to me that's more likely if you stand around here arguing," Feldspar says as he moves on to a new door. "Your boss has a plan, go with it. You can yell at him after he screws up."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," you mutter, running off. Rivers follows you, no doubt still angry.

"I don't see what we have to talk about," Rivers grumbles.

"We have to talk about whether you can work with me as squad leader. You don't like me, fine, nobody has to like their squad leader. But if it's going to interfere with how we work together, it's a problem. So we'd better bring it out now and find out if you're going to need to be assigned to another new squad."

That has her attention. If she gets reassigned, there's little chance Starling will switch squads with her. And she's already been on five other squads.

"It's not a problem," she says, more than a little defensively.

"Hold that thought. Hey! Anyone seen Crook?"

One of the Marshguards lingering in the hall points in a direction, and you follow.

"Well, I hope it's not a problem. But things like that have a tendency to become problems very suddenly. It'll be a lot easier to be sure if you actually tell me what's wrong."

She doesn't say anything. Ugh. Maybe this was a bad idea.

You don't even see Crook, which is probably good considering you don't actually want to catch him. But you've got to make a good show of it, and...

...hang on one moment. You're pretty sure Mudviper's room is down this hallway.

Now, if you were actually trying to catch him, you'd head straight there to intercept. But you're not. So how should you handle this?

And while you're at it, how can you encourage Rivers to open up?