RP:The Perils of House Hunting

Background

Katya and Thistle go hunting down a safehouse.

The Moral of the Story: Don't let Thistle get hired into the Real Estate sector.

In a scungy part of the southern slums

Thistle turned to glare at Katya. It was one time out of many times she'd had cause to do exactly that throughout the very long morning, as they'd set out from Gerard's place with the set goal of finding a place to stay that wouldn't be easily noticed. It was important to Thistle, and thought she thought she'd explained numerous times in different ways to imprint necessity for subtlety on Katya, there appeared to be a leak somewhere between Katya registering that Thistle was talking to her, and understanding the words she'd heard. Thlag had warned her as much. Of course Thistle, in a poor mood ever since visiting the possibility that she couldn't find Jerica because the other woman was somehow trapped somewhere, was not helping the matters with Katya. Really not helping. She stopped moving, turning her body fully so they were pointed at each other. They were both dressed in overworn, stained clothing: something Thistle had insisted on once they'd reached the poorer section of the city. She wore a pack for that purpose, that barest, somewhat clumsy attempt at anonymity within the parts of the city that clean dress and appearance were abnormality. Katya had gotten mouthy with her, and Thistle had left it at that. But now that they were deeper in the guts of the city, she'd becoming acutely aware that Katya's manner of walking was almost as much an issue as the clothes. "Why," Thistle said, her expression thawing from its customary mix of cold irritation into something much more resigned, "do you stick out so badly? Why do you have to walk like you're the toughest son-of-a-bitch in the whole city? Why." The feeling like something sharp was going to enter her body through the soft parts of her back began in a prickling wave of sweat. People wouldn't mind seeing her dead. She wanted to hide from them, not invite them in for a bowl of kumis and sweet cheese!

Katya arched her eyebrows in mock affront "But, darling, my mother was being kind and gentle woman, or so my uncle was telling me. I am only bitch in entire family, and certainly not being a son. That I am being tough is perhaps the only accurate thing you are saying!" Katya pulled the large and shabby cloak around her again, the loose grey tunic sitting awkwardly over the leathers she had pointedly refused to discard. Katya had even insisted on modifying the tunic for easy removal. That too, would have spoiled Thistle's mood somewhat, but Katya's logic of "At least one of us needs to be ready to fight if you are taking us for tour of slums. And I am being best person for that. There. It is done, no pouting." had ended left that argument at something of an impasse. Back in the present, though, Katya was whispering - her second concession to stealth on top of the cloak and tunic "I am sticking out, darling, because I am not being shabby city person. I am not going to be thinking or acting like shabby city person. A warrior is facing danger with straight back and resolve! Not cringing in shadows like scared little child. We are finding stupid place to stay which will not be as comfortable as Gerard's. Fine. I accept this, if only because it will save future travel time across city. But this cringing skullduggery, tcheh, it is so boring. I would almost welcome an attack. Are we being there yet? Are we even near?"

Thistle turned away from Katya. Grinding her teeth was of no purpose, and it would give her a headache later. She had to remind herself that, because the only other person to give her cause to grind her teeth as if she was some stupid cow had been Harmony after she'd started to get her woman's bloods. The thought chilled some of her frustration, and she sucked air in through her teeth. She tried not to breathe through her nose in that part of the city. Much the same way she tried to remind herself continually that Katya was her bloodsister and a skilled fighter besides, and backhanding her was not the right way to go about things. Insulting her would only be a waste of breath. Patience, patience. Thistle intensely regretted her sobriety. "Unless you want to burn down the whole city to find Iron, we need to be careful. I know you can fight. I've seen you. But if I draw too much attention it'll make finding him impossible. And no, we're not burning down the city or challenging every asshole with an attitude and a sword in the hopes of getting the right one." If her shoulders were stooped, at that moment it was caused by an effort to keep herself moving forward without glancing back every three paces to ensure Katya wasn't doing something stupid. They were walking in the middling place, the ones too shorn of anything but people to be useful to such persons as would claim it for 'territory'. But it did contain people, and many of them desperate. Many of them thieves. It was unlikely any of them would belong to any group or gang -- there wasn't really a reason for them to come to this particular street -- but that didn't stop Thistle from worrying. "And before you start again, yes, we're near enough for you to stop nattering at me," she snapped.

Katya responded with amusement "Walking upright, darling, is not being same as challenging everybody in city. That is being inaccurate description caused, I am thinking, by your being annoyed at me for not doing things your way, Qarashenka." Katya further noted "That I am having hood up, and am reducing my vision and hearing is being major concession to your whims as it is. Looking like a poor person has never been a protection from attack, and you are knowing this. It is only because you are sibling that I allow myself to be limited in this fashion. Because otherwise you would pout." Katya felt the moment had come to drop the statement she'd been holding back for a very special occasion. "And, on topic of being very careful, darling, I am still not understanding how you are planning to keep this 'getting a house' transaction secret. What is stopping person you are getting house from trying to sell the information to every local purchaser of gossip and information? Poor people are all Zagovorshchiks, darling, out for any way to earn money, food, or drink." Katya smirks "Or am I along to kill somebody so they cannot be talking, and you were forgetting to tell me?"

Thistle stifled the sigh that built up in her chest. "It's not the question of attack, it's being noticed. And I don't -- Souls take it, talk about something else. Anything else." Thistle didn't pout. She absolutely didn't. To even hint that she might was clearly a ploy to get her to bicker with Katya, because pouting was not an expression Thistle would allow onto her face. She could and did, however, scowl. Much like she was at that very moment. Katya changed the subject. Sort of. Thistle did sigh, then, because it was still within the range of things she didn't want to talk about with Katya, because Katya was not helping. Especially because the same question had been one Thistle had wrestled with. What did she have that would ensure compliance? What could she get that would ensure compliance? Her steps slowed, because it wasn't much of a choice at all, really. "I was waiting to bring it up," she said. "But yes, I want them killed. It's an old man and his two sons. No wives. No children. They're not on good terms with their. . .neighbors." She spoke rapidly, because this was a line she'd never crossed before, and she didn't want questions, didn't want to know what Katya thought of it even as she did.

Katya paused, her demeanour turning icy. That her intuition had been correct was of little surprise to Katya; she was accustomed to dirty work. But there was an etiquette to such things, especially among family. Katya turned away a moment, composed her facial expression into one of glacial calm, and spun back with lightning speed to grab Thistle's shoulders and gave her a sharp shake. Her words hissed out with chill fury, green eyes blazing "This is being the last time I will accept secrecy from you, sibling! Do. You. Understand?! If you are wanting someone dead, you are discussing it with me ahead of time. You are explaining the whos, the wheres, and most importantly, the whys! I am not being assassin, Qarashenka. I am not one who kills for pleasure. I kill for duty, whether it is being the duty of honour or duty of gold, or I am killing in the honesty of open combat. There is glory and honour in open combat, blade on blade, blood to blood. But to murder a family whose only crime is to be mudak'suka neighbours living in house you want... that is not the right way." Katya released Thistle, and took a deep breath, holding up her hand if Thistle tried to begin talking at that point "I am not yet being done. This is important." Katya spared one arm to push her head sideways, loosening the knot of tension rapidly building in her neck muscles "I am accepting that you are person being brought up to rule household. It is in way you speak. But ours is bloodbond of equals, and you must never be forgetting that. You must not be thinking of me as servant, as hired killer. Because sister, bloodbond or not, if you are keeping secret like this from me again I am promising that I will bloody your nose." Katya paused to let that notion sink in. Given how the elf interacted with her closest confidant, Thlag, it could not be taken as an empty promise. Katya took another deep breath, facial muscles still rigidly set in a neutral expression despite the furious light in her eyes. "Now. Is there being anything else you were 'waiting' to tell me?"

Physical contact between family was a normal thing. The reservation often served between strangers was wiped away in privacy, in the solid grounding of trust that family provided. Though Thistle knew, instinctively as well as logically, that Katya was different in temperament and manners in every way that mattered, it still bit at her when Katya turned away. Warning of its own kind, really, but even so Thistle was stepping forward, hand outstretched, when suddenly Katya's hands were upon her. Her teeth clattered together, and it felt as if her brain had been jarred loose and set to float within the unhappy containment of her skull. She stared at Katya, a little wildly, her own hands coming up to grab uselessly at Katya's forearms. It was half as much to steady herself as some stupid measure of self defense: it was the first time she'd seen Katya angry. It was shocking. The words Thistle might have lashed out with guttered in the face of that sudden cold, and something she hadn't realized had been birthed within her withered at the outpouring of disgust. In some ways Thistle'd expected it. Different though they might be, they still had some similar sense of honor, and Thistle knew it to be wrong. Wasn't that why she'd kept it from Katya? But even as a bloodsister, as family (and Souls, oaths or not it seemed so wrong to declare that of someone she so barely knew), she did not know the other woman. She liked the idea of it. That was it, wasn't it? She liked the idea. Her real siblings were in danger, and it was her fault. Thistle steeled herself against Katya, and the introduction of Katya's hand as Thistle drew breath only solidified her defensive indignation at the lecture. The release only made her step back: literal to back up the metaphorical. However, there was no blocking her ears to Katya's words, and something deeper than shame flooded through her. That time though, that time she held Katya's eyes. Because it was important. "Honor was the only thing I wasn't willing to give up," she said, and her voice was so rough it almost wasn't hers. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Souls, she was so tired of it. Of all of it. "I didn't want to talk about it. But -- " It was Katya's eyes that choked her off. Green eyes were never seen among her people, and she'd never seen any quite like Katya's. Boring as they were into Thistle's, the intensity of it bowled into her gut, and she swallowed down the resulting emotion as it surged up her throat. She was so wrong she couldn't even get angry in return, couldn't deny what she saw in Katya's chosen expression, in the small things she couldn't hide. That, more than anything, cut. "No. That was it. I -- " Thistle clamped her mouth down on the words, on the possibility of exposing vulnerability to Katya at that moment. At the thought of showing it ever. Her own face was shut down into frustration, and she turned it away.

Katya ran a hand over her face when Thistle turned her face away. Aya, the steppeswoman really was like a dikobraz, all spiky on the back but soft at the belly. Still, the elf recognised the pain of regret well enough to know Thistle wasn't acting, that the regret for her transgression was genuine. Katya stepped forward, put a comforting arm around Thistle's shoulder, and said "So long as it is not happening again, Qarashenka, all is forgiven. You have stayed in city too long. You need to clean your head of citythoughts and city secrecy. We will rethink this, decide on new plan." Katya's lips quirked, never one given to long bouts of anger "Just do not be making me break your nose, da? Future husbands might complain, be chasing Katya for vengeance when you snore at night like Thlag."

Thistle jerked out of Katya's second touch, that comforting arm, almost automatically. As stiffly, she said, "I'm not getting married." There was no explaining it, the discomfort of accepting any casual, soft or friendly touches since her sisters had gone. And in the wake of Katya's anger? "And you don't understand. I'll do whatever I got to t'get my sisters." Her voice was quiet, but no less intense for it, the studied perfection of her speech slipping with her own wash of emotions. "I'll not risk getting 'em back. For anything."

Katya simply stood still when Thistle shies away, filling that moment with an uncharacteristic silence. The elf kept her face calm, her body relaxed, and waited.

Thistle turned away. Turned back. Ran a hand roughly through greasy hair, and after some time got around to staring at Katya. The silence was unprecedented. The cutting sensation twisted. "What. What now? Y'got somethin' t'say? Out with it."

Katya let her calm gaze fall upon Thistle. It didn't have the same impact that an elf raised in elven society could manage: her uncle had always had a knack of letting his eyes calmly convey his centuries like a splash of cold water in the face of Katya's frequent childhood tantrums. Katya, admittedly, only had decades under her belt, still barely out of adolescence in elven terms. But that was still a lot of time in the saddle, at war, at peace, and out in the world. She had lived those decades, not meditated them away in seclusion. Katya knew also that, at this time, there were no right words to say, and so she said nothing. There was no judgement in the elf's eyes, or trace of the earlier anger. Just a patient sense of 'Katya waiting' - nothing less, nothing more. Only the gaze, and the silence.

The silence was overwhelming. Terrible. Full of all the things Thistle imagined Katya to think. Full of all the things Thistle thought of herself, for that matter. The emptiness Katya showed her, for all its serenity, was almost insulting in its sheer depth; as if you could suffocate within Katya's silence should you fall in. Fall you would, to crushing depths. "What?" Thistle's voice was still soft, but the edge that was in her had started to show. The shame and anguish had begun their inward curl, presenting anger to cover the confusion and doubt. "I already know. A'right?" Thistle struggled to blank her face out, to show nothing. Katya was right in one thing though: you didn't hide from family. Whatever Thistle had planned, whatever she'd wanted, there was a little space inside of her that had wholeheartedly accepted the elven woman as bloodsister in truth: drunken night nonwithstanding. You didn't question oaths. Even still. Her voice grew louder. "What? Stop looking at me like that." But Katya waited, watched. Thistle's face heated, and energy started up from the place she'd pushed it down, rushing through her until she wanted to throw things, to haul off and slug Katya's oh-so-calm face. Suddenly, the frustration fell hard upon her, the weight of expectation and the fear of failure. "Y'think I'm done, that it? Think I can't do it? I can, and I will. Souls rot you, stop looking at me like that!"

Katya responded simply, calmly. "Qarashenka, it is simply that you must stop trying to do it alone." There was subtext there, of course. Katya was aware of all the people Thistle had gathering information, mentioned by Thistle herself. But in Katya's opinion it was the act of one who is isolated to decide on using all people as tools and resources, rather than allies and comrades at arms.

"Souls," Thistle said. Anger was there. "I'm not doing anything alone."

Katya shakes her head "I wish that were so, Qarashenka, for then we would not be sharing these words. But you are thinking "I am alone in this, I must be using people to achieve 'My' goals, to get 'My' family. I must be keeping my plans all so very secret."" Katya raised her left palm, the pink scar visible "How can you say you are not doing everything alone, when you cannot even tell your sibling of what you have planned? People have become like hammers and ropes in your mind, Qarashenka, not people. This is not being a good thing. And so I am saying: You must stop trying to do it alone." Katya lowered her arm "What good is family if you think of people as tools or livestock? You must find yourself before you can find your family Qarashenka, or in finding them, you may very well be losing them. I have seen something like this before, many years ago in Stanitsa, and it is a heartbreaking thing."

Thistle didn't want to listen to Katya. She even turned her face away, her mouth thinning into a stubborn line, and lifted her chin. No matter what she wanted -- or thought she wanted -- she still listened as Katya talked. The scab had fallen away. The mark was still there, twin to Katya's, a dark line across the brown of her skin. Those words weren't something Thistle even wanted to consider. She couldn't make them fit within the experiences that had shaped her, marked her, since her exile. "It's not the same thing," she said. Hard, sharp, and stubborn.

Katya nodded "Nothing is ever the same as something else, but I am happy to be hearing the differences, sibling."

Thistle glared, and her hands fisted. Her face was flushed, and her attempt at a blank facade was slowly eroded away towards a curious mix of anguish and fury. "You don't get it."

Katya had somehow been expecting this. There was an irony that the two women were at their most similar when having tantrums. Once again, memories of her uncle's deft handling of such situations came unbidden to the surface "Of course I don't darling. Otherwise why would I be asking?"

The calmness was infuriating. The questions? Almost more so. Thistle couldn't claim it wasn't any of Katya's business, as she had with other strangers who had dug into the scope of her behavior and flipped it up for the world to see. She couldn't walk away, and what was left with a hollowness, and the things she didn't want to talk about. More than that, though, it left her with the vague sense that she was somehow wrong. Behaving badly. That was more galling than anything else. "I'm doing what gots to be done." The flush had spread to her forehead, down the back of her neck. The whole of her face was hot, burning. Prickling. "Who knows what he's done with 'em. If he sold 'em t' men who don't deserve -- who knows who -- who has them." Her voice cracked. It went up high, and just caught up in her throat and stuck there. She was staring at nothing, seeing the bodies in the plains, her sisters' faces when she'd told them of Leaf's death. It was the last time she'd seen them, the shock immobilizing them until slowly, achingly, it turned to tears. As if in response, her own rutting eyes started to sting. It built up in her chest. She shoved it back down, brutal, and blinked rapidly. It gave her a need for control, to control. "I'll do what I needa, use who I gotta. I'll do anything." The words came out almost a growl, throaty and raw.

Katya wondered, for a stray moment, if gelding Thistle's brother Iron would strain the relationship. But certainly, the man would not be escaping this without a decent beating. Katya spoke, still with the calm voice of one who is used to dealing with skittish horses "Qarashenka, it is not being I. It is being We. And you do not use me. I am here to help whether you are liking it or not. Because that is how it works." Katya added though, with a hint of cold steel in her voice "But just as you have a responsibility to those who you seek, I have a responsibility to you. And that responsibility is to make sure you perform these things as a steppeswoman, with honour, and not as a broken citything, senses drowned in citypoison. And though you may scream at me, fight me, or even try to kill me, I will not falter in that responsibility. For I am not easy to kill, and not easy to budge from my path." Katya threw off her cloak, and ripped at the tunic, the pinned fasteners at the back coming loose easily to reveal the elven mercenary's leathers. "I reject your plan of murder, and reject your reasoning for it. I shall try something different, something more honest" Katya looked around, and picked a house at random, one with solid enough walls, and near a sewer grate. The elven woman strode up to the front door, and prepared to knock.

Thistle hung her head, hung it because there was just too much in her head right then, and she couldn't hold it in. She let Katya go without her, didn't even see the woman go. Her ears were still functioning. She heard. But there was space given in Katya's actions that Thistle needed some of, right then. Turning away, again, she wrapped her arms around her middle and stood there staring down at the ground. What emotions passed over her face, what she looked like as she stood there wasn't important, because Thistle made damn sure she was up against a wall where no one could look at her. Privacy. Privacy to her thoughts, to her struggle to get herself back under control as her shoulders trembled. Anger won out, as it so often did when she was confronted with failure. "Rot you, I'll do it myself," she snarled, and started again down the street, leaving Katya to her farce. Her face was a mess, but so was she.

Katya, hand raised to knock, heard Thistle. The next moment, gathering the air around her in a moment of chilled fury and spiraling mana, Katya took several running steps and leaped, vaulting high in a neatly twisting somersault to land directly in front of Thistle, left arm extended with palm raised "You will not have this tantrum, sibling. You will stand, be quiet, and watch another way of doing things before you commit yourself to the path of common murderer. You will do this and calm yourself, or you will vent the emotions poisoning you now, on me, with your fists." Katya locked her gaze on Thistle's grey eyes "One or the other. Choose."

Thistle had never been much for melee combat. She was small for her people. Her reach was abysmal. She'd never been much of a match for the men she eventually wound up becoming part of a team with, and though they'd gotten her early, the man who'd trained her in combat had decided for her that her efforts would be best placed within the realm of ranged weapons. Particularly bows. Therefore, it wasn't that Thistle didn't know how to punch. It was that she'd never been quite fast enough, strong enough, or have enough confidence in herself to do more than engage in drunken scuffles that didn't tend to end well for any involved. So the punch that evolved from her fisted right hand wasn't particularly devastating. It was an awkward and sudden lunge of motion aimed blinding towards Katya's middle, without a thought for strategy: without a thought for anything much at all beyond her anger and uncertainty and need to have done with everything and have back her sisters.

Katya didn't flinch away, merely tightened her abdominal muscles, letting them and the leathers shield her from any real damage. Katya's voice was cold. "Hit harder, Qarashenka. I am beginning to doubt your resolve. Either accept my help, sibling, or prove to me that you are strong enough not to need it."

Thistle had hit Iron, before. Had scrapped with him (and usually come out the worse for it, until the weapons came out) on numerous occasions when his temper and hers and come to a head. But never, in all of Thistle's life, had she hit one of her sisters. No matter that Katya was a warrior through and through, unlike the other two who though proficient with sword and bow were still intended to be wives. It was the shock of that more than Katya's baiting that made her hand unclench, the fingers to spread and then retract into something that wasn't quite a fist. She took a step back, and then another. Her hands went up to her face, pressed in over her mouth as she stared at Katya wide eyed. Abruptly she bowed, deep enough that her body angled down towards the ground. Her hands slipped up to cover the whole of her face, even though it was terrible form. She stayed like that five seconds, eleven, eighteen. Somewhere between twenty and half a minute, a long time for such a bow, she straightened, and stared. Her face was wet, and frustrated, and angry and scared. And there, under all of the careful affront, the careful walls, was something like defeat. "I hate you," she whispered, her throat too thick to talk. Her voice was strangled. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Katya offered Thistle a wry smile "See darling, you and Thlag are likely having something else in common now, da? He is saying that all the time." Katya motioned for Thistle to move into the shadow of the alley. "Now, what we are doing is getting a safehouse. Let me show you how to do it without there being concern of stealth and security or murder. But you must not be seen, so be quiet, Qarashenka. No more outbursts or movement." Those were explicitly orders. No threat woven into them save for the knowledge that ignoring them would likely foul up the elf's plans. Katya once more strode up to the house she had picked earlier, making no effort to conceal her appearance, and knocked loudly on the door. Then again. And kept it up until a grouchy man came to the door with a muttered "What th'hell d'ye want, y'damn dockside." Katya smiled brightly, and held up a gold coin "I am being a mercenary, darling. A sword for hire." Katya patted the restored scimitar which hung at her hip "And I am needing a residence. I have picked yours." The man, burly and balding, examined the coin, and held out his hand "Lemme look, first. Ain't fallin' fer no tricks." It was more money than he'd seen in a while, and might be worth more to him than what was shown if he played his cards right. Katya handed over the coin, and spoke as the man bit into it "My name is Katya. Remember it, because I am expecting you to spread the word to the information people that I am looking for work, da? I am taking small holiday from guarding caravans, you understand - is good time for such holiday - but I am not wanting to be without income or excitement. So when you are spending this coin, and people are asking, you tell them that the mercenary Katya is in Cenril for a few weeks, and available for local hire. References can be obtained through caravan masters Baldwin, Tulgrek, or Gola whenever they are in Cenril." The man looked at the teethmarks in the gold. Katya produced several more "These are for accommodation for a month, for you to be elsewhere for a month, and as a way of saying thank you for being my advertisement. Are these acceptable?" In any other city, Katya would not have had it so easy, but in the slums of Cenril gold spoke loudly. The man looked at the gold, spent several long moments mentally tallying up the costs of accomodation at his local drinking hole for a month compared to the loss of not taking such a bizarre offer. Searching for something more, the man asked "What's yer angle, miss?" Katya smiled "Your house is defensible, and has a basement, and chances are I will be pissing people off while on hire, and am likely having to pay for damages to the house as well." Katya produced another gold coin "Damages which I am of course paying in advance." In the end, greed won out, and the man gathered together some belongings and passed Katya one of his keys. Katya nodded "And please understand that the house will remain inaccessible during my stay. But if you are forgetting anything, leave a note under the door with where you are staying, and I shall come visit with what you require, and a silver for your difficulty. But do not be presuming on my goodwill too much, darling. Ask me for such more than once a week, and I will break one of your fingers for each wasted trip, da?" Katya smiled winsomely, as if she'd just asked him to the dance. The man nodded "Dolan's the name, miss. I'll be at th'Stripped Lizard, a few blocks over, if'n y'need anythin'. Locals know th'place." Katya smiled pleasantly "You are a darling man. Now remember: Katya, sword for hire, here for a few weeks. References with any of Gualon's caravan masters. They know me." When the man eventually left, Katya would beckon Thistle over from the shadows "Inside, quickly now. Let us inspect our temporary home!" Bustling Thistle inside, Katya would close the door behind them, slide the deadbolt into place, and grin "See, now you are like ghost! Nobody knows where you are. And everyone knows that Katya is mercenary who bosses men around. And even better, bait will be laid within a day, thanks to Dolan and his drinking" Katya pokes Thistle in the shoulder. "Are you feeling any better, darling?"

Without any form of acknowledgement, Thistle did as Katya bid. She shuffled sideways, wiped her face with her grimey sleeve without any more emotional fireworks, and then stood there. The only move Thistle made beyond that shuffle, as a matter of fact, was to very simply wrap her arms around her midsection once more. For a person who routinely left her arms to dangle at her sides to be always ready to draw some sort of weapon, it said something about her state of mind. But even standing there like a stick solidly planted in the narrow alley, she was listening. Unseen, her face warped and changed over the course of the conversation, until she was staring at her feet with a heavy weight of bitterness. She'd been prepared to kill a man, and his two sons. Unnecessary now, and they'd go on living their poor form of life. But, even poor, they'd have their life same as Thistle'd her own hardscrabble life with her siblings in the slums. No one had needed to die. The transition from alley to street was like a haze, until suddenly she was standing inside, swaying a little from the force of Katya's poke. She looked up to the tall elf, arms still wrapped around her middle, and just started to talk. Without stopping, without pause, the words simply flooded out of her in a mostly comprehensible stream. She told Katya of Ranok, and the deal made there. Of Jerica, the woman she'd hired. Eboric, and his promised men and women. Vehara, whose prowess was mostly untested but whose ability to act as muscle valuable nonetheless. Seriis, the strange drow brat with whom Thistle had really first seen Byechni's mark, had first learned of them. Krice, to whom Thistle had reluctantly told of Jerica's sudden disappearance. Given her expression, that was one she wasn't so sure of. She remembered none of their names, gave them her own callous version of nick-names (save Eboric, who she remembered as Boar King). Then Brindle-eye, Rat and her rats, Thonmet -- on and on. Eventually she got around to Freyel, and how she'd been working piecemeal as a laundry-worker in one of his businesses cleaning bloodstains out of clothing for the hope of learning something, getting somewhere. In the wake of everything, she hadn't been going frequently. Her job had probably been given up. Still, she talked, spinning out all the things she'd learned, all the things she'd done in her frenzy of panic at finding her sisters gone. It's possible she would have babbled on all day and night if Katya didn't somehow make her stop.

Katya blinked at the sudden and unexpected onslaught of words. But Katya didn't interrupt, merely nodded at the right moments, and resolved to let Thistle talk until she had whatever it was out of her system. No more secrets, she had said, and it seemed her bloodsister had finally agreed. At the end the elf merely says "Ayaya, Qarashenka, no wonder you have been so cranky with all those things being bottled up inside. Is bad for health, keeping that kind of pain constrained. Alright, darling, we will rest for now, da? You have been having rough afternoon." Katya started looking around the house with a critical eye as she says "Then, when you are rested, we shall plan, and hunt, and wait for the fish to bite at my lures. Because ask yourself, sibling, in this time of strife and hired muscle you speak of - which factions do you think are likely to hire a reputable caravan guard?" Katya grinned at her logic.

Thistle turned a little to slump against a handy wall near the door that, despite the way it looked, was strong enough to hold her weight. The stains were questionable, but no more so than any other hole she'd slept in. She shook her head, took in a deep breath, and just let it out. Her throat hurt. She was thirsty. "The one that's already been hiring," she said, voice all dried up like the steppes in the dry season. Belatedly she rid herself of her pack, similar to ones most poor people carried along with them, the weight of all their worldly possessions inside. Thistle found her bedroll, pulled it out. It was a cramped abode, as could be expected from something found in that particular area, and though there was a doorway through which was likely another room, Thistle didn't find herself particularly caring. She settled her bedroll near the door, against the wall, dragging the pack with her. She pulled out her small bronze idols, representative of the Souls, and arranged them neatly around her and began to clean them systematically. It was a soothing task. When she'd finished with the first one, the one that had been dented, she said, quietly, "You have my honor, bloodsister."

Katya nodded seriously as her initial response. It was a ritual saying different to those she was used to, but she understood the sentiment. But Katya had exceeded her desire for seriousness that day and added with a smile "See, and all it took was a little scuffle! But that is how family is working, da? So you will be forgiving me, I hope, when I am breaking the nose of Iron?" And maybe a few other things, Katya mused.

Thistle snorted, but didn't look up as she rubbed at the second idol. "I wouldn't mind if you had a turn with him. Just as long as I have the last." He was where the rage, the confusion. . .everything, really. He was where all of those ugly emotions should go. He was who they should be spent on. Not her newest bloodsister, who had more than proven herself. Who had, really, been a partner. Someone to have at her back. Someone to trust. It was an odd feeling, and despite how drained Thistle felt, she found she had a small smile in her (pathetic though it was). That, she did aim up at Katya. "Later is good, I think. Later, and I won't try to hide anything."

Katya grinned "I will leave the gelding rights to you, Qarashenka."