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"I ain't been here in a couple of months." she explained patiently, turning down a side street barely wide enough to admit even someone of her size. "And I didn't exactly leave with anyone's good blessing. Too many people in this city that'd be way too ******** happy to see me on the other side of the Styx. So you can't afford a room, either?"

She sighed. "I guess we can go down to one of the bars. Maybe I can find someone who'll put me up for the night."

As an afterthought, she added. "You can come too, I guess."

"Not exactly. That's why I left. I ******** up a job. And the people who were payin' me ain't the type to let anyone stick around after something like that." She frowned at the street.

"'s a bit embarrassing, really."

"Anyways, you don't go after someone like that unless you're getting paid for it." she said over her shoulder, turning left and going down a short flight of stairs. The bar here wasn't exactly what she'd've liked, but it was one of the few no-man's-lands across the city. You didn't bring your grudges in someplace like this. She glanced up at the faded sign. The Provincial Lass. Brothel, tavern, inn, a pusher's haven--you had your pick of poisons in here.

She pushed open the door.

"Hardly." was her only reply, as she scanned the room, searching for familiar faces and filing away the new ones. A pack of slumming flashies and their whores in the corner, a cardsharp by the back room playing Crown of Thorns with themselves, a few of Lilias Marquette's girls looking for customers...the scene hadn't changed much. And Vicky in the corner.

She went straight for him. "Darling." she exclaimed, scooting into the booth. "It's been forever. How is everyone?" Her voice had changed, dropping the gutter-rat drawl and associated cant. She put her elbows up on the table, and suddenly her butterfly knife was in her palm and dancing as though it had always been there.

'Vikky'--a skinny boy with raggedly cut blonde hair that hung all over the left side of his face--looked up. And went dead white. "Malkin!" he said, unable to conceal his surprise. "We thought you was--"

"Dead?" she purred, letting a smile show. The same kind of smile a cat might get right before she gutted a mouse. "Vikky, you of all people should know I ain't that easy to kill."

"Then where were--" he started, before she cut him off. "I was taking some personal time. A vacation, if you will. You know how it is." Saiya let the smile ebb away. "So. Down to business. Where's--" "Who's he?" the boy interrupted, nodding towards Unsane. A brief, ugly silence, while Saiya hit Unsane with a 100-kilowatt glower that said, in short, that if he wanted to introduce himself, to do it now.

Her glare dropped away as she turned back to the boy.
"He's a nuisance." she said shortly.

"Now where's Vivienne holed up?"
Vikky gave Unsane one last nervous glance and looked back at Saiya, although his eyes kept flicking over to her companion.
"No one's seen her since last winter." he said, fidgeting with his fingers.

"Nonsense." Saiya said briskly. "She's got no reason to skip town. What about Perseus?"
Vikky straightened a little, pleased to be able to find a question he could give an answer to. "Still in Southroot. Ain't any jobs anyone can do in this kind of cold, so mostly everyone's keepin' as they can." he explained.

"What's the address?" she went on, hardly mollified by his response.
Vikky took out a pen, scribbled it on the napkin, and handed it over. His expression was somewhat akin to a puppy's that's hoping it won't be kicked if it behaves.

Saiya glanced at the napkin, folded it, and put it in her pocket.
"That'll be all, Vikky. Thank you." she said, quite pleasantly, and stood.

"So we're squa--" he started hopefully.
"Vikky." she stopped him with a cold smile. "This hardly even begins to cover your debt to me."
She gestured towards her nuisance as she turned away and headed for the door.
"Come on."

"He'll put us up if'n he can. I've known Perseus since we were both little. He's reliable."
They had been part of the same pack after Saiya got thrown out on the streets. He was the first one who gave her the nickname 'Malkin'. It could mean either a cat--one of the fierce, wild ones that prowled the docks down at the south end of the Pride--or a courtesan. Saiya hadn't protested. It was expected that she would become one, sooner or later, since that was the way most of the poor women went in Strata.

But she hadn't. Instead, she had fought. She had bit and clawed and kicked her way free of the pack--something Perseus had never forgotten, but he forgave her for it and sort of admired her for it, too--and her pickpocket's fingers had turned to lock-breaking and burglary, and--well, one thing led to another, until she had been commissioned for the mark that led her to flee the city.
She'd kept the nickname, though. Couldn't seem to shake it.
And now she was back.
And aside from Vivienne, who was an actress and gossip and some higher-up's light-o'-love--and if Vikky didn't know where she was, didn't seem likely that nobody else would--Perseus was the closest thing she had to a friend in the predatorial netherworld of Strata.

She headed for Southroot, using the main streets. She hadn't exactly kept a low profile in the Provincial Lass, and if she was coming back to Strata, she was coming back bold as gold frogging on a scarlet coat.
Damn her pride.

She frowned, but answered the question anyways. "Perseus has his own problems to deal with. And down here, you don't ******** around with anyone 'less they ******** with you first. He ain't done nothing to them--it was my own damn fault, not his. 'Sides, he's on pretty solid footing in Southroot. Someone's gonna need him for a job sooner or later. And it ain't like he'd come after 'em for revenge if they saw me to the other side of the Styx. Business is business."

Perseus had taught her that, when she was growing up. He'd taught her what his keeper had taught him. Revenge was stupid and useless in the underworld. If you killed someone in a knife fight, you paid for the burial and prayed for them on St. Philippe's feastday. And none of their friends, none of their lovers or gangmates or kin came after you. Thinking like a hero in a bad play started the kinds of gang feuds like as not to last indictions.

She glanced over her shoulder. In truth, she was surprised he hadn't asked sooner. "Almost." Then, not quite under her breath, "If someone hadn't iced over the rooftops, we'd be there by now..." Almost as though she was teasing him.
They turned onto the main street of Southroot.
Even in the cold and near-dusk, it was filled with people. The round globes-- streetlamps, frosted over, cast a dim, slightly eerie light on their faces as they moved about, in and out of the pools of low light.
Saiya maneuvered through the crowd, well ahead of Unsane. She moved through people, never quite touching a single one of them, keeping her head high. In her wake, more than a few shouts of, "Hey, Malkin!" followed her, but she did not respond to them. Instead, she left onto a small side street. Rows of white-washed housefronts lined either side. They were too old and worn to be called neat, but in the sort of repair that they could neither be called derelict. Their windowboxes were overflowing with ivy and hyperion, the orange blossoms turning brown in frost. The panes of those same windows, though cracked and fitting poorly in their frames, were immaculately clean. Saiya wandered past them all, checking the numbers beside their doors, before she stopped at the last house in the row.
She knelt down, unlaced her boots, and stepped out of them, gathering them up in her left hand. "Take off your shoes," she told Unsane, over her shoulder.

"Yep."
She glanced at him in his bare feet in the snow, giving him an odd look, but said nothing and went up to the door.
Saiya rapped twice on the door. When nothing happened, she tried the latch. It opened, and she went indoors.

The front room was very nearly empty. The creaky old floors were polished, the flaking white walls hung with small landscapes, the windows with faded blue curtains, but aside from a small rug near the door and an old couch by the stairs, it was barren.
Saiya dropped her shoes on the rug and wiped her feet automatically. She stepped to the side, made a deep bow, held it for a moment, then went up the stairs.
"Oh--damn." She turned around, one foot on the stairs, and pointed at Unsane. "You bow too. The landlady follows Myrmeidrin. It's polite."