Zouken's face splits into a sickening grin. Not that it wasn't sickening already. "With what you had you did well." His voice rasps and gurgles, dry and phlegm-soaked all at once. "It would be better if we could have acted at once, but our family is nothing if not patient."

He takes several lumbering steps, an abortive pacing, before continuing. "We have been given an opportunity beyond what I anticipated. The opportunity to defeat a pair at the very start of the war..." His laugh would be mistaken for a cough, if Zouken would ever show that sort of malady in front of his servants.

He looks directly at Kaede, all but ignoring Lancer's presence. "We will claim to accept the alliance, and lure Saber's master into the open. And then...." He cracks his walking stick against the floor. The echo is like the snapping of some unimaginable insect's mandibles upon its prey.