RP:Only a Matter of Time

Part of the Questionable Honor Arc

Background

Berkedai had traveled south from the steppes to see the sights and experience the differences of the people who lived there compared to his homeland.

Thistle was still out shopping, and not expecting a familiar face.

Market, Cenril

Berkedai strolls along the street in apparent unconcern, ignoring the dirty looks he gets as the small, wiry horse he leads blocks the way of busy citizens. He glances from building to building, giving the impression of idle curiosity, while on the inside, he is astounded, feeling pressed by the sheer size of the buildings and number of people, packed into so small a space. Fighting the urge to mount his horse and cut his way back to the plains he saw just west of the city, he continues into the press, intent on seeing the sea of which the merchants spoke.

It wasn't the first horse Thistle had seen in the market commons. She ignored it at first, having taken it for small by citypeople standards, intent on her own search for sinew to back her bow with. It had been one of those starts to the days that put her in the sort of hide-scraping mood she wielded before her towards any merchants who thought to get fresh with her, and the result was that she had found herself chased off at least one stall. She was near to getting chased out of a second, though the man had the sinew she wanted and she wasn't about to let him go easy. "That isn't worth thirty silvers, much less fifty!" Her voice momentarily climbed above the general buzz of conversations as she faced off with the merchant who had withdrawn his sinew as if he protected a baby from a feral dog.

Berkedai 's ears catch something familiar, an entirely strange sensation in this crowd, full of foreign languages and accents, strange faces and patterns of dress. His head moves slowly from right to left, then back again, scanning the crowded stalls. Despairing, he leaps easily into the saddle, absently soothing the nervous gray mare with a pat on the neck, as he continues the search. He can't quite place what he is looking for, but he is sure he'll know when he sees it.

The stall had a brightly patterned awning over it, which Thistle was presently standing under as she bickered. Her fingers itched to take the sinew and beat the merchant over the head with it until he understood just how ridiculous he was being, but it had taken her hours to find this one stall after the last, and so she tried. Again. "Thirty-five," she said, and tried to dial back the hostility she was no doubt displaying in facial expression and posture. She failed. "Forty, or get ye gone!" The merchant was all indignation. His fat lip almost quivered with it. Thistle's narrowed eyes went to the rings on the fingers holding up the sinew, and she knew without needing to confirm that this man was not and had never been the hunter of any such things. It galled her. "Fine," she snapped, and pulled out a small purse to seek out the proper amount. She thrust the coins out, and he took them slowly from her, rather as if she was diseased. When offered, she snatched the sinew and shoved it into her side-slung bag, giving the merchant one last glare before stalking back into the street, and the crowd beyond.

Berkedai 's attention is drawn as Thistle's voice rings out again, with its familiar inflections, and this time Berkedai is swift enough to catch sight of the woman. Without a thought to the surging crowd, he starts forward on his horse, letting the animal shoulder protesting passersby out of the way as he forges his own path in Thistle's wake, his high vantage point helping him keep sight of his goal, while the horse increases the speed of his pursuit.

Thistle stopped briefly to tuck the remaining, much deflated bag into her sash, well away from any meandering fingers. She adjusted her bag, and started to walk. It was her intention to find a smith of some sort, from whom to purchase lead from, but the only one she could think of was landed in a part of town she wasn't particularly welcome in. Her pace slowed as she mulled it over, and she pulled her cap further down on her head, greasy hair crowding her face enough to keep people from recognizing her. There was one worthless place she could think in the part of town that wasn't so nice, and she abruptly started cutting across the flow of regular traffic to get to a much less frequented side street that smelled very strongly of piss and vomit.

Berkedai pushes his horse even harder, finding himself wishing for a whip; not for the horse, but for the people. He makes good progress, however, and enters the side street just a short while behind Thistle, breathing out in relief to be free of the crowd. On the intake, however, he gags, the unexpected smell of human waste catching him unawares. He coughs, loudly, before regaining control, breathing through his mouth as he looks around for the woman he had followed.

It was the sound of hooves that turned Thistle partially around. Most people on horses didn't take the side streets; it usually wasn't to the horse's liking. It wasn't that she'd been unaware of horse and rider, but that it hadn't occurred to her they might be following her, and in following her that she might know them. Even then, that was still more likely than the sight that met her casual glance. It was a double take, that quick glance over to ensure someone wasn't about to plant something sharp in her back, and the second her whole body spun. She slipped, and fell sideways. She caught herself on a slick wall, her hand smearing the mud and mold that clung there, bare feet sliding through who knew what before she regained enough balance to look up through her hair. Her eyes were wide, her face pale. Her hands shook. "Souls take me," she whispered. The whole of the horse was taken in first, because that was easier. The breed was familiar, achingly so, and the sort that she'd not since since her exile. It wasn't much of a distance up from there to the embroidered and well-tooled boots, the cut and dye of the deel, the face. The familiar face. Thistle stared, struck speechless.

Berkedai reins up when Thistle turns, registering shock of his own when he sees just who he has found. "It's you," he says, lamely. He had hoped against hope that the voice he had heard in the market had been one of his people, and his excitement had grown over the short chase, but this is entirely unexpected, and not altogether to his liking. He schools his features into the cold, unreadable face of a warrior, so that his dark eyes stare down at her in silence.

Thistle had lost some of the polite neutrality that governed her peoples' interactions with each other, and the struggle it took her to wipe the shock, the fear, the shame off her own would be visible to him. It was almost funny how much difficulty she had remembering the names of foreigners, when his name came to her lips, and stalled there. "B-Berkedai," she said. Maybe if she stared at him long enough, the hallucination would stop. She wanted to run away. Her feet wouldn't budge.

Berkedai inclines his head in the briefest of courtesies, stolidly refusing to dismount. "Nameless," he says in return, his tone as neutral as his face. It is clear that his journey from the homeland came about under happier circumstances than her own, for his clothing is relatively clean, his horse well-fed, and he carries his bow, arrows, and curving sword, looking for all the world like he has just rode off the steppes.

Thistle bent her body almost not of her own volition. It wasn't quite a bow between equals, but it was respect in some measure. She held it only two seconds, and when she stood upright some color had returned to her face. It was splotchy, and unflattering. "How--" she stopped, and almost without thought switched to their native tongue. She'd forbidden it among her siblings for all but some few conversations during the long three years she'd been in exile. Yet here it was, on her tongue like milk and cheese and kumis. "How fare your horses?" Ritual, stilted greeting.

Berkedai absently pats the mare on her neck, as he says, "Fat and healthy. These lowland grasses treat them well." He seems just about to ask the same of her, but bites his tongue rather than call attention to the shame of her exile. Instead, rather awkwardly, he says, "The merchants told me of this place, but they never said how foul it is."

Whether or not Berkedai said anything, the shame was visceral and deep. The color in her face intensified, heating her in a prickling wave down her neck and back. "They do not understand honor," she said, without thinking. It was like a nightmare playing out slowly, and her embarrassment only made it the more vivid. Every second seemed to double and triple, and every sensation along with it. She swallowed and added rather awkwardly, "It is like a disease among them, spreading." Her voice went low, almost inaudible against the chatter that followed them like a stray dog from the market.

Berkedai nods his head, averting his eyes from her obvious humiliation. "When I parted with the merchants, I met a woman who drank blood, despite having food and drink aplenty. I think she would have tried to drink from me, had I not frightened her away with arrows."

Thistle struggled to maintain control. "They are like the spirits in the steppes, the monsters that need death. But they have intelligence. They are. . ." She looked past Berkedai to the crowd beyond, "similar to humans. But not to the Tribesmen. This is a bad city. You shouldn't be here." The subject change was abrupt, some small trace of anger in her words. Her mask of manners was weak, but it held.

Berkedai glances around, his nose wrinkling a a particularly foul breath of air. "All cities are bad cities," he says. "And I have my bow, and my horses, and I would see what sights there are to see." He looks back at her. "These seem a poor people. Where are their flocks? I see only few horses, and nothing can graze on these stones."

Thistle was the one who didn't want Berkedai around. He was a bitter reminder of who she used to be, how she used to be. "They don't have any. They eat meat others have raised, and most of them don't have animals to kill. They trade metal, for what they need, rather than share and trade skill and item. They live in their own filth, and hide from the sky. They each only know how to do one or two things. Cast them from the city, and they would die."

Berkedai cannot help but look amazed, taking a moment to stare back at the crowds in the market behind. "Metal? Where does all this metal go? Are there armies that use it for their weapons?" He shakes his head, dismissing the question even as he asks it. "And you live here, among them?" The shock of the sorry life cuts away at his manners, and he asks the question before he can regain his composure.

Thistle swallowed hard and firmed her hold on her nonexpression. "Yes. I live in the stone walls that do not move and cannot be taken down without force and harm. I live in the filth." Her words, like his, were bold. A tiny spark of her anger showed as she lifted her eyes to meet his. Rudeness for rudeness. "Where is Altan Arslan, and his wife, your sister?" She often thought of him with the words of this language, the one she'd had to learn. For Berkedai, however, she used his proper name: the one in the language they'd both been born to.

Berkedai draws back as if slapped, lifting his gaze higher at once in order to break contact with the Nameless' eyes. "I assume they are in their yurt right now, eating the evening meal. We last spoke before I left on my journey." His surprise has faded enough, and he resumes his calm, neutral face, although he keeps his gaze high, just in case.

Thistle pressed her lips together. His reaction recalled her back into a facsimile of politeness. Bitter thing, that. She'd learned many things in Cenril, and one of them was how to be very, very blunt, and rude. It was shameful of her. Her parents, aie, how ill they must rest with a child like her! "Oh," she said. It was like a dam upon the built pressure of the words she wanted to say, but couldn't. She'd never known Berkedai well. "I would offer you the hospitality of my ger, but I no longer have it." What else could she say? She had curses aplenty she could rain upon him, but her sole act of pettiness had only served to make her feel worse, not better.

Berkedai hesitates, unsure as to what custom dictates for such a strange situation. "I brought mine, and it is not far from here. I offer you hospitality, if you would have it. I have salt tea, and some kumis." He invitation is awkward, but perhaps Berkedai longs for home, even enough to share kumis with one such as Thistle.

It was Thistle's turn to recoil. She went so far as to take a step back, her eyes widening just enough to cause embarrassment for the two of them. She turned her face away, body stiffening. She should say no, she knew, and let the Souls take him back to whatever plane of existence he'd come from, but. . . when was the last time she'd stayed in a proper ger? When had she last enjoyed kumis in a proper bowl, made from healthy mares? Proper meat, all the variations of cheese the Cenrili had no appeciation for? A chance to feel like a person, and not some person shaped thing in the city -- dare she take it? What would Katya think? She sucked spit through her teeth. "How far?" Her mouth betrayed her by asking.

Berkedai gestures out westward. "There are some plains outside of the city, and south a ways. They were sitting there, empty, and no one challenged me when I rode in, so it is there that I set up, at least for now. Lush grass."

Thistle inhaled, sharp, and let it out. It wasn't so long a ride as far as the steppes were concerned, no. Were they two camps, it would be too close. But time mattered to Thistle, and right then the distance was too far. She could've laughed at herself for that; the distance would always be too far. For that. She shook her head. "Your offer humbles me. I can't leave the city for that long, there's -- " She closed her mouth over the words, and bowed lower. She held it the length of regret and apology, but no more.

Berkedai glances around at the encroaching buildings, the sea of humanity, and suppresses a frown of confusion. "What is in this city that cannot be left?" It is rude, to be sure, but he is still quite confused as to the whole situation, and manners fall by the wayside.

Thistle tried to keep herself still. She tried hard, but still wound up shifting her weight first to one foot, and then the other. Her eyes slid low, and left. If Berkedai was anyone else, from anywhere else, she would've told him to sod off. "There have been problems within my -- with my siblings." Her voice was heavy. She stalled.

Berkedai 's eyes take on an interested look, and he cannot help but press further. "Your siblings? Yes, how are they? Altan Arslan did ask me to see to their safety. He has not forgotten them." He does not add the other man's sentiments on Thistle herself, but he likely does not need to.

Thistle couldn't keep all of the misery from her face. Still, she did her best, and partially succeeded. "Abdana is dead. Temur has taken Bayatei Unegen and Anggiteni from me. I am trying to find them. Temur is acting with dishonor." She only lifted her chin and head at the last sentence, the misery warping into a hard defiance most noticeable in her eyes.

Berkedai frowns then, his lips compressing to a thin line as he struggles to recall Temur, last seen so long ago now. "He breaks tradition and ruling, and worse, does so in a strange land. For my sister's husband's sake, I will find them for you. Which way did he ride with them, and how long ago?"

Thistle laughed before she could fully hold it back. The single burst of sound was soon cut off, held behind suddenly bloodless lips. She shook her head. "He is here. In this city. I am working to find him. He hides, but I have a plan to find him." It was Katya's plan, and she was doing most of the work. But Katya was bloodsibling, and the omission was fully within Thistle's rights.

Berkedai looks bemused once more. "This place is large, yes, but not so large that it should take long to root him out. I will help in your plan, whatever it may be. Temur should be reminded of his people, and our ways." And by someone who is not a Nameless exile, the pause that follows the words seems to say.

Thistle stiffened at Berkedai's words. Regardless of intent, they were a tacit criticism of her month's worth of slow progress. Her skin prickled with heat. She almost denied him, opened her mouth to do so, but memory intruded. This was how she'd once been, how her people were: help, offered freely in most instances, except where two families might be engaged in blood feud. To turn away such an offer would be extraordinarily rude, and would imply Berkedai lacked the honor to see his offer through. Thistle couldn't do that. She hedged. "Even if that is so, the people here are not like Tribesmen. If you act within the rules of honor, it will be noticed. Like your clothing. I don't want Temur aware of where I am, and what I'm doing."

Berkedai considers her words for a long moment, glancing over her strange clothing once again. "I can see the sense in that, although I do not fear your brother myself. But he does have Bayatei Unegen and Anggiteni, and I do not wish to cause him to harm them." It is apparent that he assumes that Temur is responsible for Abdana's death. "I will change my clothes, but I will not act with dishonor. Not even a city full of these strangers will make me forget the ways of my people."

Thistle tugged her shoulders further back. "I do not have reason to believe he would harm my Bayatei or Anggiteni. He did no harm to Abdana. He has not, before, given me much cause to hurt him outside the yurt walls." Euphemism, that, for the sometimes violent outbursts that occurred within the yurt. What passed in the yurt was private, and not open to be judged by outsiders. What passed oustide the yurt, however, was. "As well, he does not act alone. He belongs to a powerful man, a khan over business and trade here. That is half the problem. Temur alone would not be able to hide for long, but with coin, and influence?" Her mouth worked, and she spat. A huge insult, that. "I will accept your sword and your bow, Berkedai, brother by marriage to Altan Arslan." She sighed, and rubbed the back of her neck. "There are too many eyes here, and ears. Will you follow me to a less open location?"

Berkedai listens to Thistle's words silently, mulling over the somewhat confusing information. But the offer to help was extended, and it would bring dishonor to rescind it now, even had he wanted to. "I will," he says in reply, giving his horse another pat as the animal snorts, startled by an angry customer behind them.

Thistle looked back out into the street at the horse's unease, and she muttered, "And while you're here, you'll have to go on foot. Mostly only rich folk have riding horses, and our horses are very different from theirs." She turned on a foot and started walking deeper into the alley. She'd walk like that for awhlie, taking turns and hesitating over pathways between buildings that were too narrow for the horse. Eventually they'd wind up in a dead end slap between one business that had gone under, and another that had very little business. The back end of the one that caused the dead end was something of a nighttime haunt. The alley wasn't a good place to loaf except to go somewhere out of the way. It wasn't a place people frequented often. Thistle turned so her back was to the dead end, and looked up at Berkedai. "The man Temur works for is named Freyel. I have a . . . bloodsister," that information was very reluctantly volunteered, "who will be going to a second meeting to get hired into Freyel's businesses. She'll be working to find him by gaining their trust. I won't need your sword until we're ready to take him, or unless she needs backup. Though with this rutting place," she shook her head, her lips forming a grim line. "Things go dry quickly, here." Another euphemism, given Cenril's often wet weather.

Berkedai follows without complaint, although he intends to argue the point about riding as soon as he sees a chance to do so. He observes the maze of alleys and streets without comment, taking in every detail that he can and trying not to be overwhelmed by it all. "And this Freyel...he will defend his bondsman?"

"He's not the type of man who will easily let go what he considers his."

Berkedai nods his head. "So be it. Should I stay in the city itself, to be ready when I am needed, or would it be better if I were to stay on the plains?"

"The city. If you stay on the plains you will be unaware when things change." Thistle looked down, thinking. "Do you have coin?"

Berkedai shakes his head. "I do not. But I will manage. I have my sword and my bow, and I can find work."

Honor was honor, and right then Thistle could've done without the reminders Berkedai ushered upon her. "I would open my home to you, though I must ask my bloodsister. She was not . . . raised in many of the same ways." She avoided eye contact.

Berkedai nods his head. "I will go and see to my animals first and, when I return, perhaps you will have your bloodsister's answer."

Thistle shifted, one foot to the other. "Noon, today? Meet here?"

Berkedai nods and offers a small bow, before leading his horse back through the winding streets.