Chapter Text
It takes Yasha some time to remember that other people can be kind.
They visit Zuala on the banks of that bleak fire-scarred river, then she and Beau travel through the wastes alone. They avoid any signs of people through the swamps and the mountains. After the Dolarav and the welcome they got, it feels safer to be alone. And Yasha isn’t really paying much attention to where they are - how far they’ve traveled. The scenery on either side of the Ashkeepers isn’t all that different in late winter; all dead grass and mud. It’s not until Beau suggests a stop in Allfield to catch up with Bryce that Yasha realizes how far they’ve traveled into the Empire.
Yasha agrees. She’d like to meet Bryce, and she thinks she might need the practice learning how to people.
Again.
As much as she ever knew how.
Yasha has only heard stories, and the rest of the Nein aren’t great at sharing information. But Bryce sounds like they had taken the Nein’s weirdness in stride, and they seem friendly enough. They probably will make a good starting point, like learning to track rabbits before moorbounders. She doesn’t know what moorbounders would be if Bryce was a rabbit, maybe Rexxentrum’s clerics of the Dawnfather.
Still, easier doesn’t mean easy. Yasha hangs back when Beau knocks on their door. She waves awkwardly when introduced and sits quietly clutching a mug. It’s warm and smells amazing, but nothing like Caduceus’s tea. She’s wondering how many crackers are polite to eat. She doesn’t know the rules.
She feels overly large and clumsy inside the half-elf’s kitchen, in a way she didn’t feel in Veth’s halfling-sized home. Nothing in Bryce’s home is recognizably expensive the way that Vess’s or Trent’s house was, but it all seems nice. Personal. Well cared for, or at least well loved.
There’s a shelf filled with painted pottery, only a little chipped, a section of a wall covered in small portraits. The table she’s sitting at has a small groove from a knife, the chair a slight wobble and the accompanying spot on the floor where it’s been worn in. They’ve spent too many weeks sleeping in the open air or curled up in a canvas tent, she’s not used to being surrounded by so many precious, breakable things.
Beau seems to be settling in just fine. She’s recounting the peace talks now; Bryce had heard rumors of the Mighty Nein’s involvement, and Beau is making it sound as boring as possible. She seems at ease, unworried about the space, even though she’d grown up in a house that was filled with items considered more precious than herself. Maybe her comfort is fueled by spite, or maybe Beau has really outgrown her childhood home. Yasha hopes it’s the second thing.
Or maybe it’s Yasha’s continuing discomfort that’s strange. She’s spent her life keeping only what she could carry, learning that everything could be lost or discarded. She doesn’t know if she’s ever been invited into a home like this, filled with so many things that couldn’t be replaced.
Bryce is polite. They ask Yasha easy questions, all about her likes and dislikes and nothing about where she’s from or how she’s spent the last year. She answers some herself, haltingly, and lets Beau brag about her for the rest. Then Bryce asks where they’re headed to next, and Beau falters just a little, so Yasha assists.
“We’re going to Rexxentrum. Beau has some appointments she needs to keep, and we’re going to be staying there for a while,” she says, then hesitates, “Probably. Or maybe camping outside of it, I don’t know if that’s allowed.”
“It’s likely to be permitted. Though some members of the watch can be a little too cautious these days. I’d consider camping further out from the gate, just to be careful.” Bryce is quiet for a second, considering. “You know, my sister has a property she’s trying to get rid of outside of Odessloe. It’s probably too far out of Rexxentrum, but if you’re hard up, I can talk to her and see if she’d let you stay there.”
“Oh, that sounds nice, having a little place outside of Rexxentrum,” says Yasha. She hasn’t said anything, but she’s been worried about moving back into the city. What she would do if someone recognizes her one day. What she would do if she recognized a place from before.
Bryce catches their looks and starts to hedge. “It’s a little far if you’re planning on being in the city most of the time ...”
“How far?” asks Beau.
They pause, looking a little startled. “About a half days’ journey on foot, or with a good cart, I think.”
Beau does some quick calculations in her head. “Nah, that’d be a nice hour run, get some morning and evening exercise in.”
“She’s really fast,” Yasha says, helpfully.
“You said she’s looking to get rid of the place?” Beau asks.
“Um, yes. It was a friend’s, who passed. No family, Alys was the closest she had.”
“That sucks, sorry for her loss. Think she’ll want to sell the place to us? What’s a good asking price for a house? Veth paid what, 1,000 gold for her place?” Beau starts rummaging around her bag for her ledger.
“That was an apartment in Nicodranas, though. This has so much land around it, wouldn’t it cost more?” Yasha thinks that’s how it works, getting to pay more for more land and fewer neighbors.
“Good point, babe.” Turning to Bryce, she asks “Do you think your sister would sell us the place for 2,000 gold?”
Bryce’s eyes are wide, probably from their good fortune at someone willing to take a place off their hands. “I... probably? She might still need some time to get it ready for that sort of money, it might need some repairs ... I’d have to ask her.”
“Oh, don’t worry too much about repairs, we spent time on a pirate ship, we learned some carpentry.”
“It would be nice to have something that keeps the rain off but doesn’t collapse on you if you try something fancy in the middle of the night,” says Yasha.
“Oh, hey babe, if we get something with a ceiling we can get some mirrors for the bed, like in Caleb’s tower!” Beau says, and Yasha gasps in delight. She’s been fine with the tent, but she can’t deny she’s missed some things about the tower.
“I’ll have a message sent to her, she can tell you the right price,” Bryce interrupts.
“I could probably get Jester to send her a message if you want? She’s scheduled to message us in like a day or two, if you give me a description I could pass it on to her. It’ll probably be faster.”
“I don’t know how useful that would be,” hedges Bryce. Which Yasha wants to object to out of love of Jester, but on a moment’s thought, is probably fair.
“Yeah, good point. Well, uh, thanks. Yeah - send a note, I guess? Or just send us with a note, we’re traveling pretty fast,” says Beau.
Bryce furrows their brows. “I’ll do both, just to be safe.”
“Sure, thanks again. Hey, did they ever rebuild the inn in town?” Beau starts to move the little dishes all together in a way that Yasha has realized means that she’s trying to politely signal she’s done - not really for any utility.
“Yeah, but the food’s about the same.”
“Well, maybe it’ll taste better in comparison to what we’ve been eating. Man, do I miss Caleb’s tower. Oh! Caleb has a tower now - definitely ask him to show it to you if he ever visits.”
“The tower is ... portable?” questions Bryce. Which seems very strange to Yasha - of all of the things that she’s seen wizards do - create a cat’s paw, make inky black tentacles appear, open up all the windows with a bang - being able to carry a shelter around without taking up very space seems very practical.
“Yeah! Kind of! It’s on another dimension. You ever been to another dimension?” asks Beau while snagging another of the crackers off the cheese plate.
“Not that I know of.” Bryce says, sounding a little faint.
“Well, Get him to explain - good seeing you!” Beau says, then goes to make a break for the door.
Yasha hangs back, just for a moment, and Bryce seems to suddenly remember that she’s also in the room.
“Thanks for having us. It was great meeting you,” she says, because she remembers Molly once saying it was polite in the Empire - and because it was true.
“I feel honored you all remembered me, it sounds like you’ve met a lot of exciting individuals.” Bryce says with a faint smile. They sound like they’ve managed to recover from a stumble off a cliff and are testing their balance.
“True, but most of them try to kill us, not offer us a drink. It’s been nice, being inside a place this warm. Not like temperature wise, but you know. Friendly-warm. Well loved. Do you know if your sister’s friend’s place is the same?”
Yasha thinks the look on Bryce’s face means that they’re flattered. Maybe a little charmed - she doesn’t think they’re laughing at her, but they look happy. “I can’t say for sure, really. But I hope it is, for your sake.”
As they leave, Yasha turns around and looks back. It’s a small house, nothing special. Nothing setting it apart from the other houses nearby on the ramshackle lane; except for the friend encased in the candlelight warmth of the doorway, watching them grow smaller.
It takes them nearly three weeks to get to the cottage: two weeks’ travel to Rexxentrum, then Beau had immediately found herself immersed in meetings and discussions for three days, barely able to get to her room, much less leave the Cobalt Soul.
Yasha ghosts the halls, the too-big unwieldy feeling an unwelcome companion. She wonders if any of them recognize her from Zadash. Who was friends with the ones she’s killed. The rest of the Mighty Nein had been quick to forgive her. She knows not everyone would be so kind or understanding.
She is free to go out into the city, and so she does. But the streets are crowded, confusing, and as filled with potential ghosts and bad memories as the Cobalt Soul. Only these people wouldn’t be able to fight back, and none of these people would have any way of knowing that she was not in control when she became their nightmare.
She avoids the Cathedral, the fighting pits, a dozen alleys that suddenly look familiar in a flash of memory, and returns to Beau’s room in the Soul. There’s a moment of fear as she approaches the gates that the guards would recognize her and bar her entry, but they only glance at her papers and let her pass on by. It’s only been a few months, but security is getting more lax.
She spends the rest of her time in Beau’s room, organizing their things, packing and sorting and cleaning and doing all of the maintenance she’d neglected on the road. She lays everything out, end to end - a little like Caleb used to do. It’s soothing, being able to check that everything is still there, down to the statuette Beau gave her. Still, there’s not much - not really, just what fits within a small pack and a bedroll. it’s not enough to fill the hours, and she’s glad when Beau finally has the time to leave.
Yasha breathes freer when she leaves the gates and buildings no longer surround her. She hadn’t realized how heavy the city was until she was no longer carrying its weight. There’s still people on the road and the occasional homestead, but she knows how to pass someone at a crossroads better than how to pass them at a market.
They had been told to meet Bryce’s sister at the local tavern and inn. It’s not hard to find, the only building that’s not a farmhouse on the road. The entire tavern notices their entrance; about a half dozen faces come to look at them. Beau stares them all down, and Yasha quickly flashes through how to take out anyone in the room, who the greatest threats are, where weapons might be held. Then she takes a step back, lets Beau take all of the attention. It nearly works.
An elven woman notices them, downs the rest of her drink and moves to put some coin on the bar. She looks older than Bryce, her hair longer and skin tanner, more weathered. She’s wearing the same sort of gear they’ve seen on countless other traveling merchants and messengers; sturdy and practical.
She walks up to Beau, her stride quick and efficient. “You Bryce’s friends?”
“That’s us,” Beau says. “I’m Beauregard, this is Yasha.”
“Alys. Let’s get this over with,” She takes their offered hands one after each other, pumps once, and continues out the door, the same assured stride she’d had before.
Alys leads them about half a mile down the road to a small cottage with intricate cut trim and brightly painted shutters. There’s a cobblestone path, some plants peeking through between the stones to the front steps. A stone bird wearing what looks like a fish costume, the fabric worn, sits on the porch by the front door, along with the type of swing bench Yasha had only seen in idyllic paintings during her time with Fletcher and Moondrop. The cottage doesn’t look real, and she has a hard time believing that someone wouldn’t want it, that Alys isn’t going to take another look at it and decide that she didn’t want to keep it for herself.
But no, Alys walks right up to the door, opens it, and motions them inside. The interior looks like it’s been cleaned and dusted recently, but there’s still the stale smell of a place that hasn’t gotten enough air. There’s a kitchen wall lined with the ghosts of pans, only the jars filled with carefully noted spices left. A main room with a selection of small carved spoons and painted plates with various Empire cities stamped on them. Two other rooms that smell of cedar, one with a bed and a collection of wooden bird and fish figurines, the other only filled with boxes. There’s some discoloration on the walls from things being taken down, some empty spaces where it looks like a piece of furniture might have been taken, but to Yasha’s inexpert eye, it still looks lived in.
“What’s with the duck?” asks Beau, breaking off some slightly melted candies from a bowl on the table, and motioning towards the bird near the door.
“I think it’s a goose. Ingrid had it dressed up for the local fair before she got ill, and I wasn’t going to change it. There’s other costumes in one of the boxes somewhere, if you’re really interested.”
“Okay, but why would you have a duck - I’m sorry, goose - if you’re just going to dress it up as anything but a goose?”
Alys shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just what people do.”
“Fuckin’ weird, man.”
“Noted. Any other thoughts on the place?”
Beau looks at Yasha, who can’t help but smile while looking around.
“I like it. The bed looks sturdy. Can we pay you for it now? The whole house, not just the bed.” Yasha thinks there’s probably a lot more than a handshake required, but she only has some vague notions of what that might be. Signing something? She hopes she doesn’t have to prove her worth to the community. The Dwendalians in the Circus made it seem like small towns would run you out for just about anything. Maybe their neighbors would take a vote, like the Doloravs would when allowing a random adult Wastewalker in.
“Well, I mean, do you want me to clear out the junk that’s here, first?” Alys asks, “You’re welcome to it, if you want it. The Raven Queen’s people have taken what they think they can give away; everything left here are things that aren’t worth moving into the city that nobody wants. It’s more than I was expecting, guess there’s a lot on hand these days. I was going to let the folks at the Lucky Fish have free reign.”
Yasha’s confusion must have shown on her face, because Beau mentions, “It’s tradition that anything that isn’t wanted by the dead person’s family goes to the Raven Queen’s priests - they sort through it, take what they think they can sell so the family doesn’t have to deal with grandma’s spoon collection on top of everything else.”
When people in the Dolarav tribe died, what little they had was dissolved among the tribe. Yasha can’t imagine what it would be like to have so much that there was a house with plenty even after strangers had their fill.
“Not from around here?” Alys asks, somewhere between suspicious and curious.
“No, she’s not.” says Beau, a little hard the way she gets when she thinks someone has a problem with someone she cares about.
Alys does her best to look disinterested. “Suits me fine. I try my best to not be around here at all.”
“Aren’t you taking anything for yourself? She left it all to you, didn’t she?” Yasha tries not to sound concerned, but she thinks she fails. It seems so strange, to be given so much by someone you loved and then giving it all away.
“ ... yeah. She did. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken some things that mean something to me, but I travel pretty light. Can’t take your entire house with you everywhere you go, right?”
“Not unless you’re a wizard.” Beau agrees, which makes Alys give her a look.
“We could keep some stuff for you, if you want,” offers Yasha. She likes Alys, and she knows what it’s like not to be able to have things.
But Alys steps back quickly with a frown and says, “No, no. It’s your space now, or would be. Do what you want with them, I need to be able to walk away.”
A voice calls out from outside, and Alys visibly deflates and motions for them to head out onto the porch. An older halfling woman is waiting there, pale and plump and blonde, holding a plate of cookies with small jam hearts in the middle. Yasha is pretty sure she’s one of the faces from the tavern, but she can’t say for sure.
“Hi, Cordula Haybuck, I live right up the road over there.” She pointed in a direction that, to Yasha’s eyes, looked like a bunch of trees. “I’d heard you’d arrived and just wanted to offer you some of these cookies I had lying around” she turns to Alys “Of course, not as good as Ingrid’s were, but I think they’re still pretty good.”
Alys mutters something about not caring about a cookie war while Beau helps herself to a few of the cookies with a smile. Yasha takes a cookie for herself - it still tastes a little too sweet, like a lot of Empire food does, but the jam adds a little bit of tartness to it, and there was at least more to the taste than the candy.
“I know you found your way to the Lucky Fish - that’s where you’ll find most of us in the area in the evenings, feel free to pop in. A good number of folks nearby worked there at some point. Ingrid was the tavern’s baker, though she also had a market booth.”
Yasha nods, happy to not be expected to contribute to the conversation. The past few days have felt like a lot of people staring at her and expecting something, it’s kind of comforting to be ... not ignored, not exactly, but Yasha has the sense that she could not react at all and Cordula would continue all the same.
“You know when the market day is, don’t you? Oh, of course you don’t - you just got here, and it’s not like Alys would tell you.” Cordula continues, as Alys stares stone-faced at the halfling. “It’s on Grissen, but honestly you can’t miss it - there’s going to be a bunch of little stalls around the tavern and a lot more people on the road than usual. We timed it to get all of those people traveling between Rexxentrum and Odessloe on the weekends.”
Beau makes the grunt that she does when she wants to prove that she’s listening but not sound like she’s interested. Yasha is going to have to figure out how to keep track of the days of the week; she wonders if any of the stalls sell flowers she can plant, or if that’s a strange thing for a market stall to sell.
Cordula has apparently moved on, surveying the room and moving further into it.
“So, what do you think of the place? I understand it might not be to your young tastes, but it’s got good bones,” she says, rapping on the walls for emphasis.
“I think it’s great. I could maybe add a garden?” Yasha says, still thinking of the market stalls.
Apparently that’s the right answer, because Cordula’s nodding and smiling. “Oh yes, Ingrid used to garden, but then her knees started getting bad and she had to stop. There’s still some great space for it, especially in the back. You know, I’ve got some hostas and lillies I was going to split, do you want some?”
“Are those flowers?”
“The lillies, yes. The hostas - some of them have flowers.”
“Can you eat them?”
“I wouldn’t, no. Don’t eat the flowers.” This was apparently disturbing enough to Cordula that she cranes her neck up all the way to look at Yasha.
“As entertaining as this is, I think that’s my cue to go,” Alys says, then turns to Beau and Yasha, “I’ll give you the night, then bring the papers in the morning. We can sign everything then. It has been a pleasure working with you, Cordula.”
Cordula gives a little harrumph at that, and Yasha gets the idea that maybe they don’t like each other much.
It only takes Cordula a second to recover, turning her attention to Beau and Yasha. “Well, now that she’s gone, do you mind if I take a look at the kitchen?” she asks, and then immediately pushes her way inside. Yasha’s not sure what’s special about it, but she hasn’t spent much time in kitchens. There’s a lot of storage space, that seems nice. Cordula is mostly inspecting a metal cabinet near the fireplace that’s as large as she is, peering inside.
“It’s a ten plate,” Cordula says excitedly. “The newest and best that Rexxentrum has to offer. I’m pretty sure Ingrid had it enchanted, but I don’t know how.” Cordula looks back at Beau and Yasha. She’s gotten some soot on her nose from sticking her face in the box. “I don’t suppose that either of you cook?”
“Man, I don’t know if I even have to eat anymore,” Beau says, jokingly. Yasha thinks it’s a joke. Cordula takes it as a joke.
“I was thinking of trying my hand at cooking. More complicated cooking, I mean. I haven’t had much of a chance to try anything that can’t be done using a shield and an open flame before, and most of the time I didn’t have a flame,” says Yasha.
“You’re going to serve me dinner when I get home from work?” Beau asks. She sounds really into the idea. Really into the idea. The fireplace isn’t currently lit, but Yasha’s getting hotter by the minute.
“I’m going to try,” Yasha says in response. They haven’t had a chance to really look into the size of the bed yet, Yasha hopes it’s large enough.
“Well, it’s very good that you’re going to get some use out of it, it’s a very fine piece of work. I had Soren look at my house, he told me it wouldn’t fit in there. I’d have to get a halfling one of my own!”
“Yeah, it looks like ripping it out would leave a kind of awkward hole in the wall,” Beau says, motioning at some large metal pipes.
“Do you want to just use ours until you get your own?” Yasha offers. It was a lot like the offer she had made to Alys in her mind, and it almost seems fair. Something about finally having some space of her own makes her want to share it with everyone else, just to make sure everyone has enough.
“You’d ... let me randomly come into your home to use your oven?”
Oh. It’s an oven. That explains a lot. Though the ovens that Yasha was used to were much larger, or at least attached to a fire.
“Well, I’d appreciate it if you knocked first, just to make sure I wasn’t naked.”
“Oh, don’t be naked in the kitchen, you’re likely to get some burns in unfortunate places while cooking and the other activities are very unhygienic,” Cordula says, and then looks a little surprised at herself.
“It doesn’t cost us anything to let you in.” Yasha explains, just in case that wasn’t clear.
“You should definitely pay us in cookies, though,” Beau adds, sneaking another cookie from her pocket. She must have palmed a few when they were in the other room.
Cordula shifts her weight from foot to foot, her blonde curls bobbing slightly as she glanced between the oven and Yasha. She bites her lip. “You know, I’ll think on it. Bring back an answer with the hostas.”
Apparently the way to leave her wrongfooted was to be nice to her. Cordula takes another look at the weird tiny oven, sticking her entire hand in there (which doesn’t seem like a great idea with an oven, if you ask Yasha), then finds her own way outside the house. Suddenly, it’s quiet. For the first time in a while, Yasha doesn’t really have anywhere that she’s supposed to go.
“You wanna break in the new bed?” Beau asks, and that seems like the best idea in the world.
Afterwards, as Beau is cleaning up, Yasha looks up at the small wooden statues on the bedroom’s (her bedroom’s) windowsill. She takes a moment to go through her pack, and pulls out her clay dog figurine. It fits next to them just fine.
They purchase the cottage - of course they would purchase the cottage - the next day; signing the papers along the bar of The Lucky Fish, the bartender, Angus, acting as notary. Alys quickly pockets the heavy sack of platinum someplace where Yasha can’t track, and spares no time in leaving.
Then Beau goes to work, and Yasha is left alone in her new home. She unpacks their belongings, finding new homes for all of their items. The Magicians Judge and Skingorger are propped nearby the door for now, Ingrid not having had any swords - or sword storage- of her own. She sorts through some of Ingrid’s old possessions, separating those that she thinks they’ll need to use or repurpose from those whose utility currently escapes her. The goose costumes are at the bottom of a box in the second room; she asks Beau to explain which costumes are for a certain Empire holiday and carefully labels them so she’ll remember. She’ll have to get a calendar so she can keep track of days.
Cordula comes by, two days after they purchase, a comically oversized pack filled with ingredients and a wooden crate with plants as payment.
“I see you haven’t gotten around to unpacking the kitchen yet?”
“We have,” Yasha says, pointing to the two cups, two plates, two bowls, and a pot that were set on the shelf.
Cordula frowns, but sets up her own items, taking up exactly one third of the available space, before chasing Yasha out of her own kitchen. By the time Yasha is done planting the hostas, digging the hole with a spare dagger, one of Ingrid’s more sturdy decorative plates has two slices of fruit pie resting on them. They’re still too sweet, but the tart berries help.
Cordula begins to show up every other day, excepting Grissens when she’s apparently taken over a stall selling baked goods at the local market. She brings Yasha different plants and some seeds, along with a couple of gardening tools once she spies Yasha stabbing the ground to soften it. In hindsight, that wasn’t the best for the blade. She’ll tolerate Yasha’s presence in the kitchen for a little while for gossip (Cordula complaining about the other locals) or advice (Cordula telling Yasha how she should do things), before chasing her out, and Yasha will spend the time gardening instead. She loses herself for a little while, fingers coming through soft dirt, then Yasha returns to the house and find Cordula gone, a few sweets left behind.
On the other days, Yasha wanders. She learns the land that surrounds the cottage, the pines and the deer trails and a creek that swells up after a rain. Sometimes she takes it slow, trying her best to spot each brightly colored bird and insect and budding flower. Sometimes she rages and runs, fast as she can, not caring about the noise she makes. She needs to, from time to time, to help her feel like she fits into her own skin. It’s more difficult to remember where she is going when she rages, but it’s easier to follow her own tracks to find her way back home.
The weather is cool and rainy, with mists that remind her of the Xhorahssian swamps, and there's an impressive amount of mud on her boots whenever she returns. But the grays only seem to make the greens deeper, the small new buds more precious.
She doesn’t know if the land she’s running on is her own - she’d learned in the circus that Dwendalians can care deeply about such things - but she sticks to the woods and tries to keep an ear out for anyone else - she doesn’t want to scare anyone who might happen upon her.
She doesn’t go unnoticed, though - she gets dragged by Cordula to the Lucky Fish one day by the sheer force of Cordula’s personality, and one of the other patrons gives her a hard look.
They’re tall and thin, with stringy graying hair kept in a simple plait and a strong nose. The only color that sticks to them at all are half faded splotches of red, blue and green creeping from their spindly fingertips to halfway up their forearm. It’s not like Caleb’s ink or Jester’s paint, not quite, but the sight of them still makes her wish her friends were there.
Yasha and the stranger are quiet for a moment, staring. There’s something angry in that gaze, something dangerous and sad. She thinks she could take them, even if they end up being a caster - even if Yasha is mostly unarmed. Break their hands first. She hates herself a little for the thought.
But instead of attacking, the old stranger snorts and says, “Guess you’re the forest spirit or Sasquatch that Col has been talking my ear off about. Just try not to encourage him to be running off too far on his own. I’m too old to be chasing young things out in the woods.”
Yasha had been ready to react in some way, she’s sure. Only Cordula forcefully pushes her into another round of introductions with the redheaded bartender, the one other person she had met before, and then continues her own conversation - something about baked goods and pricing. Yasha does her best to be invisible, after that. And for their part, Greer doesn’t seem to pay Yasha any mind, preferring to sit quietly after throwing some barbs at Cordula and a dwarf in the corner.
“Greer’s just tetchy,” Cordula says, when they’re walking home. “Their daughter died in Rexxentrum, but honestly, they were tetchy before that, too.
Rexxentrum. She’s made her peace with the fact that Rexxentrum would be a time and a place for her - that she’s unlikely to ever walk by that Cathedral without thinking about Beau’s desperate crawling body leaving a path of blood on the floor. It might always be that way, no matter how long she lives nearby; even if Beau runs past that Cathedral on her way to and from work every day. It still came to a surprise to Yasha that Rexxentrum is a time and a place for other people, too.
The same time and place, even - if from a different point of view.
Cordula continues, barely looking behind her as she walks. “Sad story, really - part of the Crownsguard, and had the bright idea to figure out the Crick force was a diversion and followed some special folks out to the Cathedral. Died for her efforts.”
She means nothing of it, or at least not more than she usually does. Cordula likes being able to be the one to share all sorts of gossip. But Yasha has to work not to freeze in place. She remembers, suddenly, the lone Crownsguard that followed, the order given to dispatch her quickly. She doesn’t remember if it had been her or Jourreal who had killed her - but she isn’t sure how much that mattered. Had Greer recognized her, somehow? Will they tell everyone else? Is there anyone else to tell?
Yasha walks along the road more often after that; not wanting to be a bad influence on a child and attract Greer’s attention. There are still plenty of birds and trees and wildflowers along the main road, but everything seems a little more skittish and scarce. She has spent a lot of time walking on roads already, and it seems so limiting to be constrained to the same stretch of packed dirt. She’d never understood how Dwendalians could limit themselves to so little land back then, but it never occurred to her to leave the road, either.
On one of those days, she passes by a farm and sees a pile of large rocks near the end of the field. They’re pretty; some a dappled tan, some ringed, most glittering a little in the afternoon sun.
For a second, Yasha is transported back to a time before the Dolorav, surrounded by comforting pillars of the now-faceless clan. There wasn’t much in the wastelands, but there was stone. Most of it was a dull gray-brown, stretching as far as one can see, but there were always spots of interest: the glittering spark that hinted at opalescent treasure or scars from the Calamity; strangely shaped tubes of bulbous glass that recorded a lightning strike. She remembers trying to create a collection, stuffing as many interesting and pretty rocks in her pockets before being caught by her elders and receiving a scolding.
“Carry what you need, and use what you can carry,” they had said. Her treasures had been useless things, and heavy - weighing her down.
Well, Yasha isn’t going anywhere, not anymore. She doesn’t have to worry about the practicality of carrying them, or at least not very far. She could take them home and fix some of the cobblestones, or she could just have a pile of rocks she could enjoy.
Well, except that these are private property, and that’s something that Dwendalians get up in arms about. Urban Xhorhassians, too, she supposes.
She spies a man attacking the ground not far away, a bored looking Ox and cart next to him.
“How much for the rocks?” She shouts, pointing at the pile.
The human: dark skinned, thin but still a little soft looking with hair braided close to his scalp, walks over to her instead of answering.
“The rocks?”
“Yes, the rocks - what do you want for them?”
“You want to pay me for the rocks in my field.” He sounds a little doubtful, but mostly tired. He uses his shirt to wipe off his brow, revealing a small, soft belly and a skinny chest - no hint of muscle to be seen. Each of his braids is surrounded by a puffed line of hair, like the mounds of a plowed field.
“Well, they’re yours, aren’t they?”
He considers her for a second, looking her up and down, and shrugs.
“I’m Torbin,” He says, and holds out his hand for her to shake. “Help me get the rest of them out of this field, and they’re all yours.”
It takes them a better part of the day, working together, not talking much except to talk strategy and request water breaks. Yasha rages a few times against some of the stones that are closer to small boulders, but for the most part, it’s light, steady work. Well, light for Yasha, anyway. Torbin looks a little worn out, and he’s been doing the lighter work since Yasha showed. Seeing him reminds her a little of Fjord and Caleb trying their best to act strong, and that is enough to make her want to take on more of the work.
“You’re the one who moved into old Ingrid’s place, right? You and that blue woman that runs all the way to Rexxentrum every day?” He asks her as they take a water break.
It takes Yasha moment to realize he’s talking about Beau’s clothing and Jester hasn’t been sneaking up to just run around their house without saying hello (though she does think that she should check for any dicks when she gets home, just in case). “That’s me, and the blue woman is Beau - she works for the Cobalt Soul. She’s very fast.”
“Yeah, she seems it. How are you planning on getting these rocks home?”
Yasha hadn’t really thought about that. “Can I borrow the cart?”
Torbin frowns, looks over to the ox, who doesn’t look ready to move anywhere except maybe into the stable. “Bess is a little bit of a stickler. . . .”
“Oh, I don’t need the ox, just the cart. I can run it back to you after”
Torbin looks at her, then looks at the pile of rocks she’s planning on taking. He has a look on his face that a lot of the people who encounter the Nein get; like the path of least resistance might be just to adjust their sense of reality.
“You probably will want to take two trips with the cart - try not to overload it. If you do break it, you can get Soren to mend it again.” he says. “Can you bring it back tomorrow night?”`
It takes some doing and careful balancing, but she gets it all in one go, Torbin anxiously looking on all the while.
Beau greets her from the porch steps with a book and a bottle of wine.
“Hey babe. This what you’ve been up to?” she says, getting up to meet her with a kiss.
“Just today. I just realized - I could have them. I’d only have to carry them once, and nobody can stop me.” Yasha said, suddenly nervous. She didn’t think that Beau would be mean about it, but she didn’t know if Beau would understand, either.
But Beau took it in stride. “Cool. Need some help unloading all that?”
“If you can,” Yasha says, with a bit of a challenge.
“Oh, you bet I can.” Beau smiles, and Yasha takes a moment to admire her form as Beau does her best to not look like she’s struggling to pick up a rock.
They leave the pile next to the porch. She’ll figure out if that’s their permanent home later, there’s more pressing things for her to do now.
The next morning, Cordula makes a point to stop her before Yasha could escape outside. It was impressive how someone so small could do effective area control.
“You got big plans for the day?” Cordula asks.
“Not really. Should I?” Yasha asks. She didn’t think she forgot any holidays.
Cordula gestures outside. “It just looks like you’ve managed to gather a pretty big rock collection.”
Oh, that was what was the reason. Yasha nods, willing to claim the rock collection as her own - or at least not willing to fob the blame on Beau - but not up to trying to explain to Cordula.
“So, you got plans for those rocks at all?”
“Not yet.”
Cordula squints up at her, and then her shoulders roll back, like she’s about to throw a punch.
“Nobody made you pay for the rocks, did they?”
“Oh, no. I just asked Torbin for them. I guess I helped him get them out of the ground, if that counts as payment.”
Torbin’s name immediately calms Cordula down. Yasha would swear that even Cordula’s curls lay flatter on her head.
“Well, good on you for helping him out, Goodness knows someone has to,” she says, surveying the field and making the decision. “You can make them into a rock garden, keep the raspberries in place. You can get started without me; I’ll just be a few minutes getting these into the oven.”
During one of the breaks - Yasha working, Cordula directing, Cordula lets her know all about Torbin.
“He came back north little over six months ago; his parents passed last year and his sister was killed at Ashguard garrison. Had two brothers who died doing something risky years ago - one for the crown, one not. Spent years avoiding everything north of Zadash, then comes up with some books and some fancy ideas about importing Tal’dorei crops. Doesn’t matter that the soil’s bad, doesn’t grow anything but pines. He’s got some ideas about potatoes and can’t be stopped. Really a shame, his mother was always so particular about their front garden, even if she was a little too fond of hydrangeas.”
Yasha thinks about that on the way back to return the cart to Torbin - how the soil is supposed to be bad, but everything she’s transplanted has grown well enough. Maybe food is harder, except the raspberries seem to do all right. Maybe Dwendalians only consider things that are tough to grow worth eating.
She thinks about what it would be like, to have a land you could leave and come back to, even after your family is dead. She understands not wanting to live next to family - plenty of the circus folk had stories, not to mention Beau. But she’d felt an ache in Xhorhas just from the wind and the light in the sky at sunset, even if there was no way that she could stay. The idea of staying in one place in the Wastes felt wrong, or at least foolish - there was a reason why her people were always moving. But there is now a grave that she can return to, if she wants.
Yasha is still thinking about Torbin’s situation when she returns his cart.
“Cordula said you grew up here?” she asks as he steps out of the door.
Torbin looks around at this, as if he’s expecting Cordula to jump out from behind a cartwheel. “You talk to Cordula? You know anything you say will be told to anyone who enters the Fish, right?”
“I guess.” She doesn’t think she does anything exciting enough to talk about.
“She just terrifies me, is all. She has since I’ve been a kid.”
Yasha smiles at this, and it feels a little sharp. “I’m used to being the terrifying one. Maybe it gives me an advantage.”
“You’re not really scary,” Torbin says, and for a second that Yasha is tempted to Rage in front of him to prove him wrong. “I mean. I can see how people could find you scary - the running through the woods thing - but to be honest, the couple of times I heard you I thought you were an owl. But you’re not Cordula scary. Do you go to the Lucky Fish often, then?”
The mention of the Lucky Fish makes Greer appear in her mind. She hasn’t been back since she met them. “Oh, no. Uh, not that there’s anything wrong with anybody there. It’s just. Uh.”
He takes some mercy on her and cuts off her rambling. “Hey, look. Newcomers terrified of some unnamed members of the establishment solidarity. Do you want to show up on the same day?”
“I -“ She did and she didn’t. She didn’t want to have to have help, but she hadn’t been successful in getting herself to go back to the Lucky Fish since she’d run into Greer. And Beau was great and all, but she missed sitting in the middle of a group - to be included but allowed to quietly and let everyone else talk around her. Beau would be happy to go with her, but Yasha didn’t want to worry her, either.
He must see something on her face, because he quickly adds, “I’m saying this because I need a buddy. I really do not want to be the only one walking in and trying to make nice with people who have known each other since the Calamity and knew me when I was in diapers but I haven’t seen since I was in my obnoxious teenage Ioun worshiping phase. Want to help me out?”
And yeah, that made it easier.
“Okay, Sundown, on Miresen. Shake on it?”
He hold out his hand, and Yasha feels honor bound to take it.
She tries for early, but Torben is waiting for her a little ways outside the Fish, looking ready to hide in the bushes at the first opportunity. He relaxes and waves when he sees her. It’s been a while since anyone outside of the Nein has reacted to her with any sort of joy, and she’s overwhelmed by the emotions that spread from her chest and throat, washing over her body to the tips of her fingers.
Yasha thinks she’s holding it together by the time she actually reaches him. If she isn’t, he doesn’t seem to notice. They walk together to the outside of the Lucky Fish, and Yasha takes a peek through the leaded glass window. Four people are seated at a table near the bar; she thinks one of them might be Greer.
Torbin grabs the large metal door handle, sighs once, says “Here goes nothing,” and opens the door.
It’s not that they don’t get welcomed when they walk in - Cordula is there, for one thing, and looks overjoyed to see them - especially Torbin.
And that’s their downfall. Cordula makes an immediate beeline towards Torbin, acting like a three-foot auntie and asking him to bend down so she can admire his braids. Then she's peppering him with questions on whether or not he's braiding it himself, and uses her uncanny abilities to separate the two of them. She’s so small, she uses her body like a wedge and then uses the force of her personality to push everything else away.
Yasha shifts into her bouncer stance and pitches her voice louder and lower. “Hey. I need Torbin to stay with me. For emotional support.” She takes a look at Torbin, who is nodding enthusiastically behind Cordula.
Cordula laughs and peels Torbin away, leaving her alone.
It’s hard. She doesn’t know anything about these people, except for what Cordula has said about them when she's complaining. She’s never been the one who was expected to talk to anyone. That had been any of the other members of the Nein, or Molly, or Zuala. Without anything else to do, she sits in the chair directly in front of her, watching as the rest of them seem to slowly begin to sit at the same table.
“Hey,” says the dwarf sitting right next to her. He’s weathered, with a complection that reminds her of Beau, hair somewhere between red and gray and brown, and has one of the thickest dwarvish accents she thinks she’s ever heard.
“Hi, I’m Yasha. I live a couple miles up the road?” Maybe she can do this. That was a normal introduction, right?
“I know. You look strong. You’ve got good swords?”
“A couple.” Oh good. She can handle sword talk. She thinks she can, anyway.
“Dula said so. Said you don’t have a place to keep them. You should take care of them, I can make you a thing. You drink beer?”
“Yes?”
“Good,” he says, and motions to the bartender -Angus? - to bring one for her, and then goes quiet.
They drink in companionable silence through the first beer. It makes Yasha let her guard down, a rookie mistake. Before the second beer could arrive, Cordula engages Soren in a question about his beard oil, pulling him into whatever conversation that Torbin is in and away from Yasha. She looks for an opening, something that would make her feel less like an eavesdropper, but the positions of the chairs are against her, and she can only hear half of what's going on.
Her concentration is broken by a generous mug of beer set in front of her, and she turns to see the bartender sitting next to her. “How are you enjoying old Ingrid’s?”
“Oh, the house? It’s nice.”
“Glad you’re setting in - and happy you came back here. Hope Cordula didn’t scare you away.”
“No, she’s fine. I don’t really get why people complain about her so much.”
Angus softens a little. “Yeah. Cordula’s fine. She just can be a little … intense. About things. Especially when she wants something.”
Yasha doesn’t know how to respond to that. “I was talking to the dwarf?”
“That’s Soren.”
“He seems nice? Quiet?” she ventures.
“He is. But he understands everything fine.” Angus had an edge in his voice that reminds Yasha of Beau, when she thinks that someone is going to look at Yasha the wrong way.
“I like quiet.”
Apparently that was the right thing to say, because Angus sighs. “People can be … not so understanding. Moved here from Grimgolir a century ago, he just still has an accent. And likes being quiet. A few years back a group of us had a hare-brained plan to take Dwarvish lessons from some traveling merchants - thought maybe he’d be more comfortable speaking that to us. Couldn’t even last two sentences before Soren would switch back to Common.”
Soren snorts, suddenly returning to their conversation. “You all speak common, it’s not right for you to speak Dwarvish. Messes with my thinking.”
“Ingrid too? That explains all of the Dwarvish murder mysteries Beau found.”
“Oh? Can I have them?” Cordula peeks her head around Soren to pop into their conversation. She never had any trouble, it seemed.
“Oh, you’d have to ask Beau that. She’s really been getting into them.” Beau had been spending most of the time complaining about the detectives and writing notes in the margins, but it seems like she was having fun.
“Beau reads Dwarvish?” Cordula sounded surprised.
“Beau reads every language. I think.”
Cordula frowns, but instead of arguing, she makes Yasha tell the story of the rocks she’d taken from Torbin’s fields, and then gets asked a lot of questions about Beau. It’s not very hard to talk about Beau, compared to everything else, and suddenly hours have gone by and people are ready to leave.
Cordula grabs at Torbin’s coat as they’re leaving. “Come back next Whelsen - I’ll make sure that Soren gets some extra oil to give you.”
Torbin nods automatically, and then a look crosses his face that Yasha can’t quite read.
“I guess we’re coming back then?” Yasha asks.
“I think I have to. She knows where I live.”
“You could always run away, change your name. Or maybe just your accent, that’s what worked for a friend of mine.”
Torbin sighs. “No. I mean, I’m bad at accents, but also I don’t want to run away yet. Besides, it wasn’t that bad. You can save yourself, though.”
“I won’t leave you behind.”
And just like that, she had a place to go and a thing to do.
It takes around two months for Caleb and Essek to visit. They were traveling, then there were assassins, then there was some sort of infiltration needed for the Trent investigation, which lead to more, different assassins…
Time slips by, even with the best of friends and intentions.
Still, one day they walk home with Beau, arriving close to sunset. Yasha waits for them on the porch steps and tries to not appear too anxious. She knows that everybody has their own lives, but she misses them.
Caleb’s face brightens as they get closer, but then looks even more excited as he looks down. “Ah, you have a greetings goose!”
“Wait, what? You know about this shit? It’s not just a weird Odessloe thing?” Beau stops in her tracks and holds a hand up, which means that Essek has to bob a little to the left to not float right into her.
“We didn’t have one, growing up, but the Becks did,” Caleb says, fingering the strings on the goose’s spring bonnet with a smile.
“Wait, like Astrid’s parents?”
“Ja, her mother was the village tailor. Astrid and the goose might have had matching dresses for a while.”
“Oh wow. That’s. Huh. I’m definitely bringing that up to her in one of the Cerberus Assembly coordination meetings just to see what happens. But, okay. Can you explain it to me?”
“Explain what?”
“The Greetings Goose.”
“What’s there to explain?”
“What isn’t there? Okay. Wait. Why a goose? Geese aren’t friendly. Is this like an old forest spirit thing? And why dress them up in people clothes?”
Caleb shrugs. “They’re just geese. People find them cute.”
“Some mysteries are truly not meant to be solved, Beauregard. Now, maybe we can get a tour?” says Essek.
“Oh, maybe you can look at the oven for Cordula! She’s got so many questions about it,” says Yasha, and Essek immediately looks intrigued.
“Cordula’s our neighbor. She’s kind of an awful person, but Yasha’s been rehabilitating her kind of like how we rehabilitated you, only instead of making her teleport us everywhere, we’re just having her make us baked goods,” Beau explained.
“Ah. How is that going?” Essek is hard for Yasha to read at the best of times, but he’s definitely having some sort of reaction to being compared to Cordula.
“I mean, we’re getting a lot of baked goods out of it.” says Beau.
“They’re all Empire sweet,” says Yasha, and Essek makes a disappointed frown in response. At least someone understands what she means. “I think she’s nice, but she might just enjoy telling people what to do. She’s helped a lot with the garden.”
“You have a garden?” Essek actually floats slightly higher, he perks up so much. Yasha tries to hide a smile at it.
Caleb makes no such effort and grins broadly. “Let us finish the tour first, and then you and Yasha can talk green things outside.”
In truth, the tour doesn’t take that long - they take a dutiful look at the oven, determine whoever did the enchanting was rather pedestrian in their approach, and decline to cast identify on it in favor of moving towards the gardens quickly. Other than the kitchen there is just the bedroom, the main room, and the room with Ingrid’s boxes and Yasha’s bone harp. There were a lot of things in the house, but very few of them were theirs, really. And what they did have Essek and Caleb already know about, so the rest isn’t very interesting.
Thinking about it, Yasha’s not really sure what a house tour is supposed to accomplish anyway. Maybe it makes more sense if you’ve lived in a place longer.
Essek takes the walk out the door as permission to talk. “Reani was very enthusiastic, but her growing methods do not translate as well for my skill set. I did find some books, though,” Essek says, and then gets a little hard to follow, the way the wizards do when they start talking about books. It’s something about acid in the dirt and something called nitrogen and it’s apparently the reason why he’s been having a lot of coffee and eggs?
Yasha shrugs. “I don’t know, I just planted some seeds and got plants from Cordula and waited for them to do their thing. Sometimes I water them.”
Essek stares at her, and then looks around the blooming garden around him. “Indeed,” he says, sounding a little faint.
“I think it may be a little harder to grow flowers in the Greying Wildlands. More preparation may be needed,” Caleb says, putting his arm on Essek’s. “Essek has also modified his floating spell so he doesn’t have to kneel in the dirt.”
“Oh, that’s nice! I don’t mind the dirt but it’s hard on the knees! And I can imagine - there’s stuff here that I don’t think I could kill if I tried. And stuff that just sort of showed up one day? Oh! You should see the visitors, they’re usually out around this time.”
Yasha leads them over to where the mint Cordula suggested has taken root, and sure enough, there were a couple of orange and black spots leaping through the leaves, with the extremely fluffy triangle of their mother acting as both minder and climbing equipment.
The cat in the mint had been unexpected. Her tribe hadn't kept pets - not really. There was the occasional beloved goat that they’d choose to keep for milk instead of the slaughter, but there was always the understanding that if times got lean enough, the goat had its place (as they all had their place). It also meant they hadn’t had the concept of strays.
She’d asked Cordula about The Cat, which had started to accept bits of rabbit as an appropriate tribute and would now allow Yasha to come within a few feet of them.
“Probably some offspring of some farm cat or another. It probably doesn’t belong to anybody.”
“Maybe it is taking care of the mice, it’s awful fat,” said Yasha.
“Oh, is it?” Cordula had said.
And sure enough, a week later, the mother was thinner and there were six kittens among the mint. The Cat was indulgent when Yasha would come to visit, apparently the weeks of rabbit had taught her that Yasha was an acceptable babysitter.
The kittens seem to really like the mint, too. Maybe next year she’ll plant real catnip.
Caleb’s eyes widen as he sees the kittens. He slowly approaches, then crouches down, holding out his hand. The boldest one, a bunch of orange, black, and white fluff like their mother, comes to sniff and then climb onto his hand. Caleb stares transfixed as he, gently as possible, settled down into the ground and the other kittens.
“What’s their name?” Caleb asks.
“Oh, we haven’t named them. We’re not going to keep them, and Beau said people will just rename them anyway.”
“But the mother?”
“We haven’t named her either. Cordula said she doesn’t really belong to anyone and I don’t think she belongs to me, so it feels kind of weird to give her a name.”
“We’ve just been calling her The Cat.” Beau shrugs. “It’s not like we don’t know which one we’re talking about.”
The boldest kitten took an exploratory nip to Caleb’s fingers, and he howls, flopping down to the ground as the kittens scatter. Essek is halfway to casting some sort of spell - arcane energy dancing around his fingers, and only stops when he notices that Caleb’s putting on a performance. Everyone stays silent, and the boldest of the kittens start to creep back. Slowly, the bold biter pokes at Caleb with one paw, then goes in for a headbutt when he smiles.
Caleb notices the rest of them looking at him. “You’re supposed to exaggerate your pain with kitten bites. To train them.”
“I do not think that you need to be so dramatic,” Essek scolds, acting as if this is for the kitten’s benefit instead of his own.
Caleb’s smile only gets wider. “True. But it is fun.”
“So you’re taking one, right? Yasha’s got the guys at the local helping out with homing, but you definitely got dibs on any or all of them.” They look around at Beau as if they’re just realizing she’s there.
“Ah, I don’t know.” Caleb looks conflicted.
Essek picks up the mighty warrior and holds it. Main Cat watches him carefully, but seems to allow it. “Hmm. Well. Maybe I would like one, especially since it defeated you so soundly.”
“Uh. Sure?” Beau says, and Yasha has this sudden image of Essek fighting off assassins with a kitten hiding in his components pouch.
“I would need a place to keep her, though. Would you be so kind as to watch after her when I am away, Caleb?” Essek turns to Caleb, smiling while brandishing a small kitten. He slowly, carefully, sets the squirming kitten into Caleb’s lap before standing up again. The kitten immediately starts to climb up Caleb.
“Ah, o-of course.” Caleb’s eyes never leave Essek, even as the kitten approaches its summit. Caleb never had a chance.
Beau smiles knowingly at both of them, and slaps Essek on the back hard enough that he floats forward a foot. “Hey man, if you want more than one, just let us know.”
“I think just the one to start.” But between the way that Caleb handles that calico and Essek is staring at Caleb, nobody seems to think it was only going to stop at one.
They return the cat and head inside for dinner, which goes smoothly enough. It’s not until afterwards that Yasha starts to get anxious again.
She’s not sure where Caleb and Essek are in their ... thing, but they’ve been traveling together a lot. She doesn’t want to ask, it’s not really her business unless they want it to be, but she doesn’t know how many beds to offer them. If she’s offering two beds it sounds like she disapproves of them sleeping together ,which she doesn’t - she’s very much for it if they’re for it! But if she only offers one bed, it seems like she’s pushing them together, which is also awkward.
Yasha is halfway considering suggesting a floor slumber party when Beau mentions that there are two places for them to sleep and they have their choice of either, only for Essek to turn them down - Caleb had an early day in Rexxentrum, they really shouldn’t stay the night.
By mutual agreement, they silently start on chores - it was a lot of socializing for Yasha, even for people she likes. They’re quiet until it’s finally time to sit back down.
“You know, they can summon like five unseen servants a day. Why are we the ones that have our shit together enough to host, and they couldn’t offer Schmidt to help clean up?”
“They’ve seemed pretty busy.”
“Yeah, with the same trial I’ve been working on, or running from their mom,” Beau snorts.
“I don’t mind hosting. It feels more real somehow, inviting someone over.”
Beau seems to deflate a little in the chair, and Yasha sighs, too. “Yeah, I don’t either. I just hate the dishes. Maybe the next time we invite people over to our place, you can cook and they can do the dishes.”
Our place. It’s been months, and it still sounds nice.