Had Ishin not just assured her that nothing said in the Retreat can be overheard, she would be disturbed by Villi’s sudden appearance as she steps out into the mushroom garden.  As it is, she’s merely startled, and this seems to please the imp, whose grin has an unpleasantly hungry edge.

    “Keshena, yes?  What a fine new outfit you’ve got.”  Villi circles her, and Keshena feels once again as if she’s on display.  The imp’s eyes are even more ravenous than the other novices’, and unlike them, Keshena doesn’t know what these eyes want from her.  And she recognized me.  No, she didn’t, she can’t have.

    “How did you -”

    “What did I say about that?”  Villi comes back around to her front and adds, “Though in this case, it’s nothing mysterious - I was told you were speaking with Ishin in the Retreat, and as you look nothing like Ishin, I can only conclude that you must be my face-changing little recruit.  You do have talent.  This creature you’ve become is nothing like Miss Keshena Kelly.”

    Keshena winces.  “Can we not say that name anymore?  Even if it won’t get me strung up, I’d rather not hear it.”

    “If you wish.  Come, let’s have a sit and a chat of our own.  There’s a lovely spot over by the lake.”

    As the imp leads, Keshena frowns at her back.  She can’t get a grip on Villi’s intentions.  But maybe you don’t need to, to trust her?  If Ishin is correct.  He trusts Villi, and that’s something.

    They find a bench close to the water, where the sound of the falls washes out their voices, and Villi boosts herself up to its seat, which is roughly level with her shoulders.  The sight of her swinging her feet like a little girl is just one more incongruous detail.  The imp seems to be composed entirely of mismatched parts, which Keshena finds disturbing because it’s far too similar to how she feels herself.

    “So!  Tell me how you’re settling in, hmm?”  Villi’s tone is gratingly cheery, and Den Roth growls in response.

    “Like a wheel into a pothole, I guess,” she says.  “Nice place you’ve got here, though.  When was all this built?”

    “About fifty years ago the caverns were reinforced and expanded quite substantially, but the Kumani have lived in these catacombs since we drove the Lions out of them at the point of pitchforks.”

    “Were you there?”

    Villi gives her a sharp-toothed grin.  “No, rudeness.  I’m a sprightly two-hundred and seventy-six, thank you very much.”

    “So, me, Ishin, and you - is that all the Called in the guild?”

    “At present, yes.  We have had others.  Some are dead, their duty done, and some found their destinies leading them elsewhere.  I wonder if you’ll find yours here.”

    “I don’t believe in destiny.”

    “Do you think that’s why no god wants you?”  Keshena stares at the imp, astonished by her matter-of-fact cruelty, and Villi chuckles.  “A lot of misbegotten things wash up in these caverns.  All things in time, Father would say.  Even if this isn’t your final destination, you’ll be useful to us, and we can teach you a few things.”

    Though the impulse to stalk away from the insufferable imp is strong, Keshena finds that she does want to learn at least one thing Villi has to teach.  “Lin says you’re the best in the guild at illusions.”

    “Aye, that’s so,” Villi says.  She lifts a tiny hand and turns it over, and there’s a glittering black apple in it, seemingly made of obsidian.  There was no word, no gesture that Keshena could see - the thing is simply there.  She reaches out and touches it, and the surface is cool, silky, exactly as it should be.

    “Illusions are not bent light, no matter what others in the guild will tell you.  That is a rudimentary way of understanding our Father’s magic.”  Villi slips down off the bench to stand before her, holding the apple out as she begins to lecture.  “Illusions are magic that works on the mind, not on the eyes or fingers.  The mind can be made to experience anything, even physical sensation, with a little prodding.  Thus, your mind will need priming to assume the postures required to produce an illusion.  We use hypnosis to achieve this state.”

    Keshena blanches.  “You’re going to hypnotize me?”

    Villi smiles.  “I’m going to teach you to hypnotize yourself.  I understand the reticence to have someone tinkering in your head.  It’s a good instinct, and I recommend you nurture that paranoia; it will keep you safe.”  She drops the stone apple and it vanishes before it hits the ground.  Pulling a single gold piece from her pocket, she says, “I assume some of your costuming talent comes from your training as an actress.  Is it too much to hope they taught you some sleight of hand as well?”  Rolling her fingers, Villi makes the gold coin walk across her knuckles, first one way, then the other.

    “Aye, I can do that.”  Keshena doesn’t have any gold, but she has a couple of copper bits, stamped with the bust of Capria’s last merchant-king but one.  She walks one across her knuckles and back, and Villi nods.

    “Focus on the coin.  Watch how the light slips off the edge, across the face, like water.”  Villi lowers her voice to a drone, and Keshena obediently watches the light passing over the rolling coin, trying to take slow breaths.

    “Gather all the threads of your attention here.  Those that touch the past, draw them in, draw them back.  Those that reach for the future, draw them back.  Only here, only now, only this moving coin matters.  What you see is all that exists.  In your eyes, all things in time.  From this vision, all worlds, all possible ends.”

    The dark at the corners of her eyes deepens, becomes velvety and charged with sparks that seem to spin off the edges of the copper piece.  Its repetitive motion soothes her without allowing her attention to wander - just enough stimulation to keep her eyes fixed, while behind their dull regard her mind begins to open like a flower, layer upon layer organizing itself in an array that feels natural, inevitable.  The chattering in her head that never seems to cease is draining away, and she feels those fragmented selves aligning with one another almost by accident as they all focus on the same thing.

    “There are no fingers.  There are no hands, no arms, no mouth or feet - only the coin is, rolling in darkness.  Here, no names, no past, no future.  From this seed, a world of your own making.  What do you see?  Tell me what you see.”

    Keshena can’t find her voice for a moment, and for another isn’t sure which voice will come out when she opens her mouth.  It’s a low murmur, as deep as Den Roth’s gravelly tone, but softer, almost a whisper.  A voice she hasn’t used in a long time.  “Sparks flying.  They leave shadows behind, more dense even than what came before.  The shadows spread - the light only burns away more of the world, leaving more room for the darkness.”

    She can’t see Villi’s face anymore, or the mushroom garden, or anything but the light sparkling off the edge of the coin, throwing shards into the velvet black that vanish almost immediately.  Each one that disappears takes some of her with it, some of the world that she now carefully erases.  Willingly she lets go of her sight, herself, as if her eyes and mind were merely a sensing instrument, taking in this one moment with no judgment or understanding.  Each light that is born dies, and as it does, it washes away the barriers between her thoughts and the world.

    “Good.  In this darkness, the dark of the womb, our Father created the world.  What will you create?”

    “A mask.  A shroud.  A name no one can remember.”  Keshena isn’t sure if she answers or only thinks about answering.  The coin seems to be floating in air now, bouncing back and forth as if its motion were the only thing holding together this little universe.  Her hand is gone, and so are her legs, and so are her feet.

    “As you say, so it is.  Look.  This shroud, this darkness is yours.  You bid it come and go as you please, and in it, you create what you wish.  If you never touched the world before this moment, you do so now, and it melts beneath your fingers.”

    Blinking, many parts of her still clinging to the peace of that darkened place, Keshena looks around, and finds the obsidian cavern exactly where she left it - but now, she’s not in it.  The bench beneath her is visible through the place where she can still feel her legs to be, and the coin rolls in midair - I thought that was a - but… As you say, so it is.  She has disappeared.  She looks at the imp standing before her, and Villi is grinning.

    “Excellent job.  You have talent.  Now, attend to the shape of your mind at this moment, the points at which you’ve drawn your focus.  Remember this posture.  If you dismiss it, let your focus wander, can you return to this place?  Can you envision the moving coin and come back into this mutable moment?”

    It’s hard to let her attention shift now that she’s fixed it - there’s a reluctance inside, the mental version of the lassitude that keeps her in bed of a morning.  This place is comfortable, and warm, and she has such power here.  Then Villi’s hand shoots forward and grabs her nose, hard, and she jolts and pulls away, stars scattering in her eyes at the suddenness of her movement.  The copper coin rings as it bounces off the stones, light spinning around her.  Her hands, her legs are back, and seem huge, her consciousness rattling unmoored in a body that seems all the wrong size to house it now.  She feels dizzy, and her gorge starts to rise.

    Then she catches the gleam off the coin at her feet, a sinuous crescent, and uses it to hook herself back into that place of warmth and mastery, to draw the shroud around herself again.  She can feel the expression on her face changing, and now this trick reminds her of the way she alters her movements and her thoughts to take on a new face, a new role… she can step back into this performance, and when she does, all the subtle features of it are just where she left them, familiar in their foreignness, a change that feels inevitable from the moment it begins, like an avalanche that reshapes a mountain.  

    As Villi watches, Keshena slowly disappears again.  The imp laughs, and claps in delight, like a child.  “Beautiful!  You’re a natural.  You have it now, the way of it?  From that place you can create anything.  While you hold it in your mind, what you create will remain, and grow.  Like our Father, you build upon your vision with your faith that it exists, your certainty.  If your certainty is stronger than that of your audience, they will see the world you wish them to see.  And most people aren’t very certain most of the time, are they?”

    Keshena shakes her head.  She’s only barely attending to the imp’s words, instead feeling the edge of that mental focus, letting herself slip in and out of it.  Her hand flickers before her eyes, blurring repeatedly as if submerged in water.

    “People see what they want to see.  You have only to convince them that what you want is what they want.”

    Smiling, Keshena blinks a few times and finally lets go, sinking back into herself.  The subtle sounds of the cavern rush back in, and before long so do the distracted, ricocheting voices that clutter her mind, and she is real again.  “That… that was incredible.”

    “Yes.  Vanishing is the easiest first step.  You can fool the body as easily as the mind - more easily, in fact.  With practice, a man could walk into you while you’re cloaked and wouldn’t even notice that he’d done so.”

    She feels energetic, as if just waking from a nap.  “If you can do things like this, how have the Kumani not taken over the world by now?”  Keshena can’t stop grinning, and Villi gives her back a grin full of very sharp teeth.

    “Oh, we have.  Many times.  But what’s the world worth, really?  It’s simply a space in which to work.  It’s the work you do there that matters.”

    “What else can you show me?”

    Her excitement seems to please the imp, who climbs up to sit beside her on the bench again.  “If this… costume game of yours is important to you, you can use illusions to supplement it.  Tie an illusion to a physical reinforcement, no matter how basic, and it will be more stable, and require less from you to maintain.  Our minds require only the barest seed of truth to grow a forest of lies.”

    Villi touches Keshena’s wrist, and the powders and cosmetics that color her skin seem to melt a little, to take on imperfections and variations too subtle to paint with human hands.  The scar on her arm, a smear of different-colored inks and wax putty to give it definition, first flattens and then deepens, until she can feel only the faint, taut pull of an old scar, not as pliable as the skin around it.  That elusive quality that makes performances always feel the slightest bit false - it’s gone.  This body is realer than real, more true than whatever true self the costume buries.  Keshena feels dizzy for a moment, unmoored, and relishes it.  Freedom.  Freedom from herself.

    Her eyes slightly unfocused, she can feel how the changes the imp forces upon her are drawn from the same loose attention, and Keshena pushes back, trying to take over the process.  Her strength comes easily - reshaping herself is second nature, and the more adroit she becomes at the mental flip, the more eagerly her body seems to respond.  She blinks, and Den Roth’s dark tan spreads like moss, from her wrist up her arm, down her chest, past the places under her clothes where she always stops painting the cosmetics.  So much cheaper, this!  It’ll save her so much in materials!

    “A wig is an excellent pin to hang an illusion on…” Villi murmurs, and then Keshena feels small hands on her head.  She twists away and stands, hands flying up automatically to readjust the wig.  She needs to practice, to play with this, and she needs to do it out of sight.  Especially out of this untrustworthy sight.

    “Thank you, Lady Selannor.  I’ll work with what you’ve taught me and be sure to find you if I have questions.”

    Villi opens her mouth, perhaps to protest the title, perhaps to get Keshena to stay, but Keshena doesn’t linger to find out - this time, she twists her mind and her body at the same time and manages to occlude herself between one eyeblink and the next.  So this is how you disappear so quickly.  It makes for a theatrical exit, say that much for it.

*******

    She needs a better place to change.  That’s becoming irresistibly clear.  Somewhere to store her supplies… somewhere to hide.  That too.  Back in the barracks, she feels her coin pouch for what’s left.  The Kumani pay a stipend, but it’s not remotely enough to rent a room in the Citadel, even considering how much illusions could save her in spending on cosmetics.

    For a few minutes she works at her costume, building the same face out of light and air and just a little bit of powder.  When she strips off the prosthetic scars, far more realistic-looking ones now appear beneath them, the largest following her finger as she trails it down her face.  It traces the path of the axe that once split the left side of her face from brow to lip, and as it goes she remembers the confusion and blindness of that moment, but not the pain.  Pain fades.  It's what allows us to keep fighting, that we forget how much dying hurts.

    There are no mirrors in the barracks, but the silvered panel in the lid of her case works well enough.  Den Roth looks better than ever.  The illusion hangs easily on the wig, which looks more lush, softer and healthier, than it has since the day she cut the hair from the head of a fallen soldier, a woman she loved for a moment.  The mercenary's one vanity, Den Roth's hair falls in loose red curls to her shoulders.  She often pulls it forward to hide her face, most notably the ugly scar that twists her mouth.  It's another kind of armor - the hair, and the scar both.  Makeup is armor for the parlor and the bedroom.  Who told her that?  Some actor, long dead now.

    She quizzes the novices she passes on her way out of the complex, and though none of them know for certain where Lin is, one knows that she lives in an apartment at the east end of the Atrium, with her husband.  Keshena hesitates when she hears this, wondering if she'll be unwelcome, but Den Roth doesn't hold on to self-consciousness well; it's one of the things that Keshena loves about being the mercenary.  She's making her way through the crowds in the hallway before she's quite finished internally debating whether she should.

    The door she's aiming for is at the southern end of a hallway branching off the eastern Atrium.  This wing is rougher than the one that leads to the Kumani catacombs, the hall lined with taverns and weapon-shops, and even a brothel capping the hall, doing fairly roaring business for an early afternoon.  Beside a small door down a side-street is a plaque inscribed with the address - #4 Thea Way - and a name - Nathaniel Den Bolin.  Keshena knocks, though a voice inside her is certain she's made a mistake.  Maybe more than one.

    There's a long delay before the door opens, revealing a hallway, a staircase, and a very short man in a threadbare tunic and heavy gloves.  "He'p you?" he mutters, squinting up at her face.

    "I'm... looking for Lin al-Akir."

    He nods and steps aside, holding the door ajar and gesturing toward the staircase.  "Sunroom, top o' the stairs."  When she's passed, he closes the door and follows her to the stair, but descends as she begins to ascend, apparently uninterested in where she ends up.

    At the top of the short staircase is a trapdoor opening straight up.  Keshena lifts it aside and enters a warm loft, long on pale sunlight and short on furnishings.  The room must occupy the entire floor, with enormous mullioned windows covering the southern wall from floor to ceiling fifteen feet above.  The view of the spires and, beyond them, the dim fall of the land away to the south is breathtaking, but many of the panes in the bottom eight feet or so are occluded with markings from a wax pencil, mathematical equations Keshena doesn't even try to understand - they're full of Numerological operators, which are numbers, but don't behave like proper numbers should.  The stair continues up in a spiral to an opening that pours sun down a few steps, and Keshena is blinded for a moment as she reaches the top.

    The solarium is empty of furniture except for a faded chaise in the center of the wood floor, baking in the sunlight that pours in from every direction - the roof here is replaced by a glass dome, and the wan northern sun seems to collect in it, achieving an almost oppressive warmth and brightness.  Lin is laid up on the chaise, absorbed in a book and companioned by a stack of them as well as a small cluster of medical accoutrements.  Her bandages glare in the light, wrapped fully around her hips and right thigh, and making her right hand into a fat mitten that lays limp in her lap.  She looks up as Keshena enters, then frowns and painfully straightens.  "Hello, can I help you?  Did Wolfram let you in?"

    "Meaning the squat fellow downstairs?  Aye."  She strides forward, and Lin's expression grows more hostile with each step until Keshena holds out her hand.  "Keshena Den Roth, at your service."

    Something dangerous flashes over Lin's face, and the tiny reflection of herself Keshena sees in the black glass eye looks surrounded by shining knives.  "Wh-what in the..."  She pulls her bandaged hand back, and seems about to rise, but her incautious movement twists her hip, and her brown skin goes a little grey as pain makes her blanch.  Then she digs beneath the pillow behind her back with her left hand, and aims a small dagger - or a paring knife? - at Keshena, the loose grip of her non-dominant hand on the handle just begging to be disarmed.

    Keshena crouches, putting them on a level, and at the same time holds up both hands.  "Only came here to talk, Speaker.  At any rate, it looks like you've lost enough blood already."

    "Is this some kind of joke?" Lin demands.  "If you're Keshena, why were you pretending to be an old lady?"

    Keshena can't keep herself from chuckling.  "Was I?  Or was the old lady pretending to be me?  Or is someone pretending to be both of us?"  She settles both elbows on her knees and leans forward to speak in a conspiratorial tone.  "Tell ya this for free though: I really am two-hundred and twenty-one."

    Lin's frown doesn't soften.  "I don't know who you are, but I've been stuck in this chair for the last two days and I'm very much ready to cut someone, so you'd better start making some sense."

    "Well, that's what Kumani novices are for, right?  Getting stabbed by their superiors?"

    The reproving look Lin aims at her is better than open hostility, at least.  "No.  Not anymore, anyway."  She sighs and twirls the knife around her finger, then slides it back between the cushions of the chaise.  "I'm being inhospitable.  There's tea in that pitcher down there.  Use the other mug; that one’s had medicine in it, tastes terrible."

    Keshena shifts from crouching to cross-legged, and pours herself a cup of tea.  It's quite cold, but the solarium is hot enough that it's actually rather refreshing.  "So what happened?  Ishin said you got attacked by a wolf."

    "Oh no, you're explaining yourself, that's what's happening now.  Explain well enough, and maybe I'll tell you what happened to me."

    Keshena shrugs.  "All right.  What do you want to know?  I'm an open book."  It's not true, and she says it because she knows it's not true, and she knows Lin knows it's not true.  Even to someone who's seen more shifty folks than most, her face is opaque.

    Lin doesn't seem amused by the irony.  "Is Keshena your real name?"

    Nodding, Keshena says, "Sure is.  You might hear me referred to differently from time to time, but when I was born, they called me Keshena.  Or so I'm told.  Don't really remember that part."

    "Are you really from Blackwall?"

    "Yes.  I haven't lied to you, Lin.  And I don't intend to."

    "What do you call... this, then?"  Lin's gesture takes in Den Roth's leathers, her scar, and her slipshod posture, as well as everything else.

    “Not lying.  Acting.”  In response to Lin’s raised eyebrow, she adds, “There’s a subtle difference, trust me.”

    “I don’t trust anything you say, at this point.”

    Keshena shrugs.  “You’re Kumani, I’m Kumani.  From what I understand, mistrust is kind of how we get along, right?”

    “No,” Lin says.

    Keshena regards Lin with an expectant look, and Lin jabs two fingers at her.

    “The goal is a community of honorable professionals serving the people of this city.  You served with the Ashen in Shiel, you said?  Like that.  We’re goddamned knights, Keshena.  Knights in our own context.  We use different tools, but that doesn’t alter our commitment to our duty or to one another.”

    Keshena raises her cup at that.  “That’s certainly not the popular perception of the guild, but go on.  Please.”

    “I don’t doubt it.  We deliberately create an atmosphere of suspicion, and we teach you to eavesdrop, to hide and sneak around.  We expect you to screw over everyone but us.  I don’t mean to rant at you, it’s just that this is so rarely expressed.  Previous administrators of the guild - halls, even our current one - were more concerned with using the guild to advance their position in the city.  I'm trying, with what power I have as Speaker, to bring the Kumani back to our original ideals, not simply train thugs to serve the latest little despot to rule the Council or Nieran's order.  I mean, if we can’t trust one another, whom can we trust?  You can’t live like that.”

    “You can’t live like that,” Keshena echoes.  Though she watches Lin steadily, her eyes are thoughtful, turned inward.  After a long moment, she begins to pick at her face, thumbing the top end of the ugly scar.  With a jerk of her hand, it comes away, the illusion that weaves it into the rest of the work shredding in an instant, leaving a pale but unscarred streak down the left side of her face.  She holds out a little strip of cloth ending in a small bit, her lip uncurling from its perpetual sneer.

    "All right," she murmurs.  "I might need to start slow, but I can trust you."

    Lin runs a hand through her hair, examining Keshena's face with new interest.  "I don't need you to tell me anything that will put you in danger.  There are a lot of troubled pasts between all our novices.  I just don't want to see you become another problem.  Someone who takes what we teach them as a predator's license, sanction to prey upon people, in this city or out of it.  We do what we must with the abilities we have, but it's not because we want to rule the world."

    Keshena smiles.  Even without the scar's bit warping her mouth, her smile is lopsided.  Both eyes curve with it, but only the right side of her mouth follows through.  "That's what Villi said too.  The world is a place, not a prize.  What matters is the work you do there."

    Lin grins in answer.  "Villi, now... I don't always agree with her, but she's got the right priorities.  We're lucky she's leading the order; I'd have no hope of shifting the guild's direction if she was against it.  One of the few old-timers who sees the necessity to improve our culture and attitude, as well as our swordplay."

    "Well, swordplay I know.  Trust is another thing again.  Not something anybody's tried to teach me in the last few hundred years."

    The last of her pent-up aggression has dissipated - Lin's voice is gentle now.  "I like who you are, what I can see of it.  How long have you been doing this... acting?"

    "Ohh, that's a difficult question."  Keshena laughs and scratches at her head, fingers combing through the red curls.  "All my life?  I was raised in a theater.  This face, though, Den Roth - she's old.  I first wore this face in Morrihm before the Quiet War."

    "No wonder you're so good at it.  Is that illusion-work?  It looks so real!"  Lin takes the little prosthetic from Keshena's hand and spreads it out to examine it.

    "Villi showed me a few things about illusions this morning; I was just trying it out."

    "Did you have a scar like this then?  Before you made - er, became?  Den Roth."  Lin hands back the painted wound.

    "No, that one I got in the war.  A battleaxe to the face."

    Frowning, Lin says, "That's a nasty one; looks like it should have killed you."

    Keshena nods.  "Aye.  Should have done.  Lots of 'should have died' behind me, you'll find.  I imagine most of the Called have stories conspicuously not ending in that same way."

    "Not as many as you."  Lin gives her an amused look.

    "I do tend to do the stupid thing.  It's been said that I play the game to lose," Den Roth drawls.

    "It's a game, is it?"

    Another nod.  "Aye, that's a better way of putting it.  Not a lie, a game.  There are rules, and I keep to them because it keeps me sane.  After the first hundred years, your brain starts to devour itself.  You've got to find some structure for your days.  This is mine.  One of mine."

    Lin doesn't seem to understand this.  She's young.  She'll find out.  Hardest thing about living so long is enduring your own company day after day.  After a moment, the Speaker ventures, "How many faces do you have?"

    Pleased by the question, Keshena ponders it.  "At the moment... four.  Three I wear regularly, and one I left in Capria with her murder charges.  I make new ones occasionally."

    "I'd like to see another, sometime, if you're up for it."

    Keshena's face is transformed by delight, and for a moment Lin can see something past the cosmetics and illusions, a ghost of the girl buried by masks and years.  "I'd be happy to.  Nobody ever asks."

    "You want people to ask you to change?"

    Uncomfortable with scrutiny on her face as she reveals herself, Keshena rises and paces a bit along the sun-drenched boards.  "People see what they want to see, and mostly what they want to see is themselves.  Nobody cares enough to even understand what I'm doing, let alone ask for a particular face.  I don't change on my own whim - that's one of the rules - but I'll change at my audience's request, and if you're asking, it means you're paying attention.  Means you give a goddamn."  She meets Lin's eyes shyly.

    "I give a lot of goddamns, about a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn’t," Lin answers, laughing.  "That's why I'm stuck here for the next week."  She gestures to her bandaged hip with her swaddled hand.

    "So you met a wolf who took exception to your attitude?"

    "More or less."  Lin pulls away the wrap that covers her legs, then carefully lifts the bandage to expose the wounds beneath: a savage mess of raking gashes around her hip and upper thigh, the work of enormous claws, and a series of punctures below them, delineating a pair of jaws no less than eight inches across.  

    "Not a wolf from the mountains.  A Wolf, big ‘W,’ from the guild.”  Lin draws a large ‘w’ in the air with her forefinger.

    "I... thought they were men.  The Wolves.  Aren't they the city guards?"

    "The Wolves and the Kumani both serve in the guard, yes.  And they are men, strictly speaking.  Men who serve the Engineer.  She's been improving them ever since the Lions fell.  Now..."  Lin settles the bandage back in place with a wince.  "Now, they're nobody you want to get in a bar fight with, put it that way."

    "This is the result of a bar fight in this town?  I think I just quit drinking."

    Laughing, Lin says, "I won't argue with that!  But no, this is the result of politics in this town.  I told the leader of the Wolves that the Council didn't think much of his new bride, and he informed me that it was none of my business."

    "Is this how he usually communicates his boundaries?"

    Lin nods.  "Again, more or less.  I should have known better."  Meeting Keshena's eyes, she smiles.  "But I also tend to do the stupid thing.  And that's why I'll trust you."

    Though her costume is flawed, the scar still curled in her hand, Keshena feels safer than she has in decades.  This room, those words, these still black eyes.  She smiles back and answers, "And that's why I’ll trust you."

    The silence lasts for a companionable moment or two, and then Keshena remembers why she came.  "Oh - on that subject.  Perhaps you can help me.  I'm... having trouble changing in the barracks."

    "Oh!  Yes, that makes sense.  It's not the most fun place to strip off, even if you weren't stripping the whole of your person."

    "Where should I look for a room in this town?"  Glancing out the window, she winces.  "Where's the poor people's part of the Reach?"

    Lin laughs, then looks chagrined.  "Sorry, ah... well, I don't know that there is one; there aren't many places in the Citadel that often have rooms to let, and outside the walls are mostly estates and farms... the farmers hire hands sometimes, but they wouldn't hire a Kumani just on principle.  You really have to know someone."  She shakes her head, then brightens up some.  "But hey, you know me!  We have a couple of rooms downstairs, off the entry hall, and my husband has been talking about renting them - I could talk him round to a price you can afford with your stipend, if you wouldn't mind seeing that much of me."

    Grinning, Keshena says, "I think I could handle that.  I can’t pay anything like what it’s worth, though."

    "It's not a large space, just the one room, not even as big as this one."

    "That's fine.  All I really want is a safe place to store some things and a door I can lock while I'm changing."

    "I can give you that much.  How's... hmm.  Ten silvers a month?"

    It's incredibly generous, is what it is, even for a single room.  "The novices' stipend is twelve silvers a week."

    "I know what it is; I set it up."  Lin looks quite pleased at Keshena's surprise.

    "All right, if you say so.  I guess you'll expect a lot of me, then - is this a professional investment?"

    "It's an investment, but more personal than professional."  The Speaker’s sincerity cuts past Keshena’s wary awkwardness, making it hard to dissemble while she's looking.  "I like you.  I'd like to understand this... performance better.  If you’ll pay me for the privilege of getting to know you, all the better.  What, nobody's ever done anything nice for you before?"

    Keshena turns away, disarmed.  "I, ah - well, not in a long time, I suppose.  Fine, fine.  I'm not arguing.  You talk to your husband and let me know.  At least then I'll be around if you need anything while you're recovering."

    With a stretch, Lin answers, "Ohh, trust me, I get myself in trouble often enough that you'll never run short of wounds to tend, if you enjoy that kind of thing.  But I'm not hiring you as a maidservant, I'm renting you a room as a friend.  That said..."  She peers down at the pitcher on the floor.  "Now that you've drunk all my tea, you could refill the pitcher on your way out."

    Laughing, Keshena returns to pick up the pitcher.  "Glad to.  This wing have plumbing?"

    "There’s a tap in our kitchen, downstairs.  There's also a washroom on the ground floor."

    "Ooh, y'don't say.  A novice could shit indoors in the Reach; imagine the luxury!"  Trooping down the stairs, Keshena hears a snort of laughter behind her.

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