Terrible Company - Chapter 11 - Part 2

Chapter 11 - Part 2

"How's the patient?" Katsa said, leaning back and looking over her shoulder as Mathilda stumped into the room.

"Ah hate him."

"I don't think I've ever heard you pronounce so many H's," Val laughed, as she refilled her cup.

"Yeah, wouldn't that normally sound like she 'ate' him?"

"Ah hate him," Mathilda repeated.

"Alright," Katsa said, holding her hands up, "alright.  Do you want to play?"

"Play wha'?"

"Truth or darre," Katsa said, betraying the fact that she'd had a little to drink with an untimely slur.

"Pass."

"Boooo."

"Is it my turn then," Val asked.

"Yeah."

"Truth."

"Booo," Mathilda sniped.

"If yer not gonna play," Val said, shaking her head, and Mathilda rolled her eyes.

Katsa scratched her chin and frowned in thought.  "Alright.  Give me a second."

"Is Ivy still talking to the guy?"

"Ya," Mathilda said, as she pulled out her hip flask.  "They 's workin' ou' details."

"I got it!" the arcanist shouted.  "What was it you were looking for.  Wait-what what is it you're looking for."

Val drained her cup and leaned back.  "So..."  She rolled her eyes.  "Had to say truth.  Ok.  Here goes.  I'm looking for a killer."

"Whoa."

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"I don't really know."

"How do you..."

"Ah ah ah."  The big Orc shook her head as she refilled her cup.  "Your turn.  Truth or dare."

Katsa drew herself up, neck extended and chin high.  "Dare."

"Alright!"  Val grinned and tilted her head to the side.  "Top off."

Katsa's eyes grew wide, and she looked just far enough to her right to verify that Mathilda was, in fact, still sitting right next to her.

"Go on," Val prodded.  "I wasn't blind when I said it."

The arcanist huffed as she arched her back and wriggled her arms and shoulders.  Her dark top slipped over her head, and Katsa dramatically tossed it onto the table.  She left her elbow-length gloves on and tried to keep her arms down at her sides, but the urge to fold her arms across her chest was too strong to resist for more than a few seconds.  "Happy?"

"Very," Val chuckled.

"Truth or dare."

Val's smile slowly slipped.  "Dare."

"I dare you to truthfully answer a question about the person you're chasing."

"That's cheating.  You can't do that."

"Can too," Katsa insisted.

"Everyone knows you can't use a dare to ask a question.  Back me up, Tilly."

Mathilda glared at Val, eyes slitted.  "Ah'll allow i'."  

Val threw up her hands in frustration, and poured herself another drink.

"How do you not know who the person you're following is?  Like, do you have a description?"

"That's the problem," Val said, just before she took a long sip.  "Too many descriptions."

"Conflicting descriptions?  How... like... "

"Three people saw..."  Val stopped and frowned.  "Well... shit.  Might as well get this over with.  You know who ShieldArm Inc. was, right?"

"Um... yeah," Katsa said, squeezing her arms more tightly around her chest.

"They took down the-"

"I know who they are," Katsa barked. Interrupting.

Val nodded.  "How many of 'em were there?"

"...Five," Katsa said, sounding significantly less sure of herself.

"Have you ever heard it that there were six or seven of 'em?"

"...yeah."  Katsa had heard some conflicting descriptions of ShieldArm Inc. herself.

"That's because there were seven of us.  Before the war."

"Us?"

Val nodded and drained her cup.  "Before, and yanno, for most of the war, I was one of 'em."

Katsa's jaw fell slack, and such was her shock that her arms fell away from her chest, and her eyes grew wide.

"That second winter, our um..."  Val swallowed hard.  "We had two arcanists, and one of 'em..."  This time, Val paused for even longer.  "Ellie.  Her name was Ellie."

"Oh."  Katsa licked her lips nervously.  "You... you and her were...?"

Val nodded.  "Yeah."  Another deep breath.  "We were attached to a contingent of dwarves, and Ellie headed off to this little town to pick up some components and... just..."  Val bunched her fingers together, and then spread them out wide, as if dispersed.  "Town got hit by the dead.  For a while, I thought she'd died with 'em, but then I found a survivor who told me she'd been killed beforehand."

"By who?"

"First one said it was a... 'a fire breathin' monstrosity'. Just after the war, I found two more survivors.  One said it was a tiny woman, and the other said it was a man with limp."

" 's'no' much t'go on," Mathilda said, breaking a short silence.  Katsa jumped, having truly forgotten the dwarf was beside her, and even Val appeared mildly startled.

"They're basically dead ends, but the three of them did agree on one thing.  The killer showed Ellie something like this."  Val reached her hand into the neck of her shirt and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.  "Here."  The pattern in the opened paper sent Katsa's eyebrows racing upwards.  "Something like that."  The black ink formed a kind of closed loop triskelion on the page, with several flourishes around the edges.

"Not ringin' any bells," Mathilda said.  Val nodded thankfully, albeit tacitly.

"I know what that is," Katsa croaked.  "Or at least, I think I do."  She cleared her throat and traced her finger along the flourishes.  "It looks a lot like a sigil some arcanists use to identify each other.  Sort of like a secret handshake."  She tilted her head, looking at it from a different angle.  "Some sects within the guild use a lot of the trappings of secrecy.  Clandestine meetings at certain phases of the moon, and so on."

Val leaned forward.  "Is that what this is?"  Her voice low, intent.

"Well, it's really just an inert helper sigil.  It doesn't do anything, not by itself, which makes it safe to write, or inscribe, on pretty much anything.  You could put it on paper, or you could etch it into wood.  Pretty much anywhere."

"Who uses this symbol?"

"Well that's what I'm saying," Katsa said, blinking and leaning back.  "It's not any kind of official sign.  It's more like... something common, but not so common that just anyone would know what it is."

Val slumped a little, staring distractedly down at the sheet of paper in her hand.  "Did you know Ellie?"

"Dark skin?  Coarse hair?"  

Val nodded.  

"I knew her.  I'm sorry to hear that she's dead."

"How well did you know her?"

Katsa shook her head.  "Enough to pick her out of a crowd, but she was older than me.  She only came back to the guild campus... once while I was studying?  Maybe twice?"

 Val nodded, refolded the piece of paper, and tucked it back into her shirt, but it was clear she was only doing so out of routine.

"When you asked me to take my top off, you were hoping to change directions, huh?"

Val nodded again.

"I'm sorry."

"It's ok."

"Is there anything... is there anything I can-"

"Tell 'er about yer tattoo," Mathilda interjected with a smirk.

Katsa paled.  "My... oh."  

Val perked up a little.  

"Well... it's..."

"It's not just something you got while you were drunk?"

Katsa sighed, and cast a sidelong glare at Mathilda.  Mathilda chortled to herself, and kicked her feet up.  

"So, just to be clear, I'm not actually an arcanist."

"What?!"

"Ah knew i'."

Katsa curled in on herself, staring longingly at her top and wishing she could be covered for this.  "Technically, The Guild grants that title to students who, you know, progress to a certain point and go through some trials, or suck all the right dicks."  The last, coming out as a harsh whisper.  "I, um... I didn't do that.  I mean, I-I-I progressed, you know, far enough, but..."

"But?" Val prodded.

"...but some of the staff... disapproved... of an experiment I undertook, and... I... left."

"Ah'm sure 'at's true-"

"It is true," Katsa squealed.

"-from a certain poin' o' view, but-"

"But you're not playing," Val said seriously, and when Mathilda looked to be on the verge of adding more, she repeated, "You're not."

"Fine," Mathilda grumbled, as she stood up.  "Ah can take a 'int."

"And now we're back to not pronouncing our H's."  

Mathilda mumbled angrily under her breath as she headed toward the door.  

"Your accent is all over the place, you know."

"Oh shut i'" Mathilda barked.

The two of them waited in silence, listening for the sound of Mathilda's footsteps to carry her well away through their perspective client's house, and shared a surprised smile when she went back into the room where Ayen was resting.

"So what's all that got to do with your tattoo?"

"Can I at least put my shirt back on?"

"Nope."

"It's cold!"

"I can see that," Val laughed, gesturing with her chin toward the arcanists hardened nipples.  "Go on."

"Anyway, the experiments I did were... They kind of..."  Katsa rolled her eyes.  "They're a little bit illegal, you know, according to some stodgy old morons who think they know everything."  She took a deep breath, and centered herself.  "After I... left... I kept on experimenting.  On myself."

"On yourself?!"

Katsa nodded.  "I had some runes marked into my skin to... to...  make a few improvements."

"Like what?"

"Um... well..."  Katsa thought for a moment.  "I heal from minor wounds fairly quickly."

"Okay," Val said, brow down low.

"So like, if I were to get a deep papercut, it'd be gone in a few minutes.  Scrapes disappear almost immediately."

"Is that why you're always so tight?!"

Katsa blushed, her cheeks igniting.  The rash of color extended down her neck, and across the top of her chest.  The most she could manage was to nod.

"That's incredible!  Do you know what that means?  Do you know what you could do with that?"

"I do," Katsa said, still blushing, "and I also know that other arcanists who've tried things like this in the past went too far.  With the right runes and the right formula, the body can theoretically heal from anything, but that doesn't mean the mind will heal with it."

Val sat back and let that sink in.  

A couple minutes passed in silence while the two of them sipped their liquor and stared out the window.  A storm had moved in, much to their luck, further hiding their tracks from anyone who might still be attempting to follow them.

"So you've got your arcanist letters all jumbled in that mess on your back."

"Yep," Katsa said, nodding.

"And you've tested that healing thing pretty extensively?"

"Yep."

Val paused for a beat.  "Wanna test it again?"

Katsa smirked, looking over at the swell in the front of Val's pants.  "Yep."  

Val leaned back in her chair, grinning as the thin, blushing, topless Human straddled her.  

"Remember how we were talking about using a... a-a shorthand?"  

Val nodded.  

"Make it hurt."

"I can do that," Val growled.

Continued in Chapter 12

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