There were two goons, one with a knife and the other hidden behind him at the door to the building Soren just passed.
<<Loraine: Second level Apprentice Warrior on the knife. Unranked on the door.>>
The girl had her back against the tannery wall and a satchel held against her stomach with both arms.
The one with the knife had the point of it about four inches from her ribs and was talking to her in the reasonable, patient voice of a man who did this often.
"Just the bag," he was saying. "Just the bag, and you walk off, and nobody's hurt."
"It's the month," the girl said.
"I know it's the month. That's why it's this morning."
Soren stopped at the mouth of the alley.
<<Loraine: You are one street from the cart yard and you have a stolen ledger in your shirt.>>
I know.
<<Loraine: I am simply establishing that I said it.>>
You always are. Soren mused with an eyeroll.
Okay, he's only 2ndlevel I should be equal or slightly less to him in physical capability.
Body cultivation generally provided far bigger physical bonuses, but with just two levels of advancement, it wouldn't be more than what Soren had at 4th Level with a higher grade technique even as a mage path.
He walked into the alley.
"Morning," he said.
Both of them turned. The one on the door came off the wall. The one with the knife did not move the knife, which told Soren everything he needed about which of them had done this before.
They looked at him. Grey linen. Slave band. Thin.
<<Pebble Amongst Dragons: Displayed Rank: Unranked.>>
The knife man's shoulders came down about an inch.
"Walk on, Callowmere's."
"I would," Soren said, "but she's got the month in there and I've got a cart in twenty minutes, so it's going to be quicker if I just take it off you now."
There was a pause while three people processed that sentence.
The girl said, "What?"
The one on the door started laughing.
The one with the knife did not, because the one with the knife was 2nd level Apprentice Warrior and realised a slave had walked into an alley with two men in it and paid no mind.
"Bevan," he said. "Move him."
Bevan came at him.
Soren stepped inside the reach and put Piercing Palm into the middle of his chest.
The force went through the sternum and out the back and Bevan left the ground and hit the tannery wall six feet behind him and stopped moving.
<<Loraine: Down. Two seconds.>>
The knife man's face changed.
He was fast. He was genuinely fast, 2nd level Apprentice Warrior against a 4th level Apprentice Mage was not a joke.
But I can see his movements.
He came off the girl and across the alley with the knife low.
Soren went sideways, dodging the strike and moving toward the girl, and pushed her past out of range and dodging another swipe.
The knife went through the space they had both just been in.
Piercing palm! Soren's palm caught him on the outside of the man's thigh.
Crack! and the man's leg simply stopped participating in the rest of him.
He went down onto the cobbles on his face with the knife skidding away under a water butt.
He tried to get up.
He got about halfway and then his leg failed again and he went back down and stayed there, looking at Soren in despair and trying not to scream.
<<Loraine: Femur. He will walk in four months and badly.>>
Soren stood there breathing deeply.
<<Loraine: That was good. You made him spend his speed on empty air and then took the leg he spent it with. That was not luck.>>
<<Lilith: She's proud of you.>>
<<Loraine: I am assessing.>>
<<Lilith: She's so proud of you.>>
<<Award: 2 Rare Tickets, 1 Uncommon, 200 FP.>>
Soren turned around and looked at the girl.
She was twenty two or so, dark blonde hair coming out of a working braid, ink on two fingers of her right hand, a good coat that had been mended wellat the elbow.
She looked at the man on the cobbles. She looked at the one against the wall. She looked at Soren.
"You're a slave," she said.
"Yeah."
"You're Callowmere's."
"Yeah."
"You just—" She stopped. Started again. "You just did that."
"Yeah."
"How?"
"Badly," Soren said. "Look, I've got a cart in fifteen minutes and if I'm not on it things won't go well for me, so..."
He turned to go.
"Wait."
He waited.
She came off the wall. She was shorter than she'd looked pinned against it, and she came up to him with slow steps.
She just looked at him for a second, up at his face, in the specific way that Soren had learned this week to stop being embarrassed about.
"Iyla," she said. "Iyla Sarn. My father's Sarn the apothecary, on the market road, the one with the blue door."
"Soren."
"I know. Everyone knows." She said it without any weight at all, which was somehow worse than if she had. "Callowmere's book boy who sometimes runs her errands here. The pretty one."
"That's the one."
"They say you don't talk."
"I've been working on it."
Iyla laughed. It came out surprised, like it had got past her.
Then she reached into the satchel, and Soren said "no" before she'd got her hand all the way in.
"I wasn't going to—"
"You were absolutely going to."
"It's four crowns, it's not—"
"I can't hold money," Soren said.
"If a slave turns up at the estate gate with four crowns in his shirt, the question isn't where he got it, the question is what he did to get it and it's going to be whatever the overseer thinks up on the walk to the house."
He shrugged. "So no...but thanks."
Iyla's hand came out of the satchel empty.
She looked at him for a moment longer.
"The blue door," she said. "On the market road."
"I heard you the first time."
"I'm saying it again because you're going to be back here." She nodded at the man on the cobbles.
"That's Herrick. He's Sallow Hand. People will know by noon that somebody put Herrick down, and by tomorrow they're going to know which somebody, because Bevan is going to wake up and he's going to talk."
Ah.
<<Loraine: Ah.>>
"So when you're back," Iyla said, "and you will be back, because Callowmere sends her carts down here twice a month, come to the blue door first," She adjusted the satchel on her shoulder.
"My father sells to half this town including the Hand and people tell him things while he's counting out powders."
Soren looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because you're likely going to be dead in a month," Iyla said, "and I'd rather you weren't."
She walked out of the alley into the dawn market and did not look back, which Soren felt was a bit unfair, because he had definitely looked.
<<Lilith: +6 LP.>>
From what? I didn't touch her.
<<Lilith: Ambient.>>
Lilith.
<<Lilith: I don't make the rules, sweetheart, I just enjoy them enormously.>>
Soren took one look at the man with a busted leg, Herrick and he stared back with fear in his eyes and spoke hastily.
"I'l-I'll keep my mouth shut, I swear!"
Soren only shook his head before using piercing palm on both of their jaws and hands.
Can't write or talk...should buy me some time.
The cart got back to the estate at ten.
Soren walked up the servants' stair with a stolen ledger inside his shirt, a dead man's purse buried under a flagstone behind the feed store, 4th Apprentice, and a broken chastity cage that Vesper Callowmere would be checking in six weeks and one day.
Hmm, should probably get it fixed in case she checks or calls me to her chambers unexpectedly.
He knocked on the study door.
"Come."
She was where she always was, behind the desk that was too big for her, with the same smear of ink on her jaw as if she reapplied it every morning. Sera was by the window. Nobody looked up.
"Well?" Vesper said. "Did you stand about looking stupid?"
"Yes, my lady."
"And?"
Soren put Corben Vail's second ledger on her desk.
Vesper looked at it.
By the window, Sera Delacque came off the wall.
"This is his," Vesper said.
"Yes, my lady."
"This is his actual book."
"Yes, my lady."
Vesper's eyes came up.
And for the first time in three years of inherited memory, Lady Vesper Callowmere looked directly at her slave's face and actually saw a person standing there.
"Soren," she said slowly. "How did you get this?"