Continued from here
"This one is trouble."
Kasoria could not read minds, but he didn't need note to translate the look on the old woman's face. The moment she looked up from her desk he could see her features pinch, the lines around her eyes tighten right before they widened. She recovered quickly, though. Game old bird. The quill stopped scratching on the parchment and he noted the whitening of flesh about it as she gripped a touch tighter.
The curse of fame. Fuck me, I miss being beneath notice.
"This... gentleman, wished to speak to who was in charge."
"Whom."
"Sorry?"
The woman's eyebrow arched as the little man covered in dust, dirt, and sweat cleared his throat and looked up at the man to his side.
"Whom. Not who. Cuz it's referrin' t'the object, no' the subject."
Eva Caers covered her mouth for a moment so Vinc would see the smile flitting across it briefly. The stolid young man blinked a few times and frowned, trying to dredge up what little schooling he'd received. After a moment, it was his turn to surprise Kasoria: he nodded slowly, looking like a man determined to digest what he'd just been told.
"I'll remember that."
"Nae problem." Kasoria turned to the woman and note the amusement flickering there. Ah. Good. He'd hoped that would disarm her a little. Nothing like humor mingled with wordplay to help someone see you weren't just a blade with a bad attitude attached to it. "Yer the... mayor, I guess?"
"Suppose. Not guess."
Kasoria's lips squirmed a little under his beard, and Eva's amusement became a smile she didn't mind showing. But first things first. She stood and nodded to Vinc.
"Do we have any leftovers from breakfast?"
"Yes, marm. Bread, cheese, mutton, wine."
"Please bring it. Mister Kasoria looks like he's crawled through a sewer and smells half as bad. I'm sure he'd be grateful for some refreshment and a wash afterwards."
Again, Kasoria was surprised. He suspected the woman had intended that just as he'd made his own deliberate move to ingratiate. She was showing him she knew who he was, what he was, and yet she was choosing to treat him like a man - no, a guest - rather than a monster that walked upright. Such... consideration, came with a cost, and they both knew it. An expectation married to action. Unspoken but clear between them. He nodded, deep enough it was a shadow of a bow.
"I'd be much obliged, madam."
Vinc left the office and that told Kasoria a lot, too. She wasn't afraid to be alone with him. Didn't feel the need to have swords and muscle around her when they talked. Instead she sat back down and nodded to a chair opposite her. Kasoria took it, glancing about the room as he did. It was as tidy as the office for a mayor could be: meaning to say, the bare minimum as could be attained for a place where new affairs, issues, problems, terrors, opportunities, mysteries, complaints, and changes were piling up. He sat down and enjoyed the novelty for a few moments before speaking. He'd been on his feet for over a trial, after all.
And you ain't done yet. Sitting on otherwise.
"I won't waste yer time," he said, deciding honesty shorn of pretense was a good route. "I came up from out the mine, shaft outside a' town. Went down in Sutton, investigatin' why it ain't open anymore. I found where it collapsed. I moved all the rubble. Found tracks and prints and chains." He paused, gauging her reaction to that word. Then he plowed on. "Folk down there, they dint die. Half of 'em went north, t'the big castle. Other half, which t'my eyes looked like a buncha' kids an' a man, came this way... and their tracks came out where I did... pointed t'Evonshire."
Kasoria spread his arms and a light dusting of dirt shimmered off him as he did.
"So 'ere I am."
"You're tracking them down? Why?"
Kasoria pursed his lips and wondered about that himself. Technically speaking, the Burned Emperor didn't care about those fugitives. He cared about Sutton not sending enough material to him anymore. Kasoria had been down there and seen where the mine collapsed. He could go back to Fraxin and tell him there was nothing to be afraid of, no monster or natural danger waiting. The shaft could open back up. Commerce would recommence. A dozen or so miners already assumed dead, who hadn't come back and thus likely never would... no-one cared.
But here he was. Like a bloody idiot.
"I wanna know how they got out. That's it. Ain't lookin' t'bring 'em back or silence 'em." One corner of his mouth quirked up. Amused but not happy. "Case that was what youse were thinkin'."
Eva Caers, leader and guardian of Evonshire long before she became elected mayor of the village, tapped her fingers on the desk as she formulated her answer.
"That is what you're best known for, sir."
"Aye. But t'ain't why I wanna know what happened to 'em, or where they went."
"Then why continue your pursuit?"
"Told ya. I wanna know."
"Men like you, if I may say, are not prone to acts of altruism, or exertion, unless hired. I find it hard to believe you journeyed almost two trials underground, just so you could have some... mental satisfaction, of solving a mystery."
Kasoria smiled fully now. Not just at her courage or plain speaking, but touching the topic so beautifully. She was right: it made no fucking sense, to a scratcher and sellsword like him. He was making good on a debt, rectifying a stupid mistake by being the Burned Emperor's pawn. He'd almost done that: what he had found out and seen and pieced together would see the flow of stones restored. But he wasn't finished yet. He wasn't headed back to Sutton, eager to spill all to Fraxin then journey back to Yaralon and do the same to Targon.
He sighed and scratched under his chin. Another thin trail of dirt sprinkled from him.
"An' yet, dat's exactly why. Cuz what made the hole they 'scaped from, wunt done wiv' pick or ax, or even magic, far as I can tell. The chains down there? No blood on 'em. No injuries. No bodies. So the shaft came down but no-one got hurt. So either they planned t'escape that way, or someone rescued 'em. Either way? They wanted the world t'think they were dead. Now I know they ain't."
The old woman's expression hardened. "You sound like a man who thinks that knowledge gives you some leverage."
The door opened and the smell of bread and wine entered it alongside Vinc... and the soft clink and scrape of a person in armor. Kasoria looked over his shoulder, just a glance, letting Eva know he wasn't overly-concerned. A woman with flaming hair to match the vicious scar across half her face walked around him and stood next to Eva as she sat at her desk. Kasoria looked up at her, and nodded politely.
"Yeh'd be Selyin, aye?"
"And you'd be the Raggedy Man of Etzos, who now half of Yaralon wants dead," the scarred mercenary leader shot back, immediately making Kasoria like her. "So, now we all know each other..."
The plate was put in front of him, and Kasoria wondered for a brief moment if he had to worry about poison. So he decided to get his answers before he satisfied his growling stomach. Turning his gaze back to Eva, he spread his hands and spoke softly.
"I dun' give enough of a shit about Yaralon, Sutton, the Knights a' that big castle or much of anything else fer a hundreds miles of here t'go around blackmailin' folk. I dun' even plan t'be here come the next season. I jus' wanna know what happened, because I'm a foolish old man who cannae let a thread go without knowin' where it ends."
"And you believed we would just tell you out of sheer kindness?"
Kasoria shrugged. "Never hurts t'ask."
