As she stormed through the alleyways, lungs burning, muscles aching, clothes slick against her skin, dampened with sweat and water and blood, her mind kept circling back to a single question:
“If I tell you to kill a man, what would you say to me.”
For every single detail racing through her head -- distance to the bar, sound of angry voices and their distance from her, scents of gun oil and metal -- the fact that missing just one might be the difference between making it to safety and bleeding out in a pile of trash somewhere, she kept looping back to that memory of her sensei, and the question he’d asked her just after she’d graduated from his training. Honestly, sensei’d be pretty pissed to see her like this, bloodied, busted up and fleeing like a rat through the mazelike slums of Sandorn; about as pissed as she would be if she weren’t trying not to die as she continued her flight to the Garden Row, the only safe space she had any hope of reaching in her current state.
There was just too much to keep track of to spare time for anger directed at anyone but herself: blood loss, listening for footsteps aside from her own, keeping an eye on the end of the alleyway ahead of her, making sure the street remained clear and the occasional a glance over her shoulder to check her pursuers hadn’t caught up yet. Trained as she was, big as she was, she shouldn’t have been running, but she hadn’t been ready for them. A pack of footfalls, breaking through the rhythm of the crowds, more urgent, more angry than the rest and right in front of her. They were circling around, cutting her off, because of course they were. Glancing left, then right, she snatched hold of a fire escape ladder and swung herself around, jumping up to catch a rung well off of the ground as she began hauling her considerable frame skyward.
Tempest could hear them below as she reached the third floor but she kept moving, even as the bullets and ether bolts from their repeaters pinged off of the metal around her. Making the rooftop, she stumbled into a crouch, soaking in the wetness coating her body and filling it with something else, turning that cold into heat as she burst forward, tearing across the roof with the inhuman speed gifted to her by natural talents and training both, reaching the edge and hurling herself into the air. Below her, the crowded streets of the row teeming with so many bodies milling about aimlessly, blissfully ignorant; in front of her, the edge of another rooftop she wasn’t quite going to clear.
She swore loudly as she caught the bricks shin first, flipping head over heels as she rolled into the gravel, sliding a fair distance further than was comfortable to be covering in a miniskirt and leggings (read: any). Brushing rocks and blood away from her thigh she forced herself to her feet and got to running again as the voices called across the rooftops behind her. Bones in her shin were screaming at her but she couldn’t listen, had to keep moving if she wanted to make the most of this lead.
Garden Row was a few blocks away and if these guys had half a brain they wouldn’t bother chasing her any further than the vine-wrapped street lamps that marked the boundaries. Even if they didn’t, there’d be hells to pay for them if they caught her. Thankfully, Tempest didn’t have to find out either way, as the rest of her flight to safety was unremarkable save for that whole issue about running for her life. As she spotted the gaudy neon sign hanging above the front entrance of the Gilded Lily, she hollered as loud as she could.
“Hey! HEY! I need to see Ryk!” There was bound to be a girl on call outside the door, and the sight of a lady in distress was sure to get her in the door, even if it wouldn't keep her safe inside. Tempest didn't recognize the skeptical face that peered out at her past the doorway, but the girl saw her, and that was good.
“Hey, I dunno who you think you are but you can't just call up for Ryk off the street.” Bouncer was human, a fair bit shorter than Tempest's six-plus feet, but there was a sharpness in her movements and a bulge in her jacket that suggested she'd been chosen for door duty for a reason.
“I used... to work here, shortstack... tell Ryk Amaryllis is here.” Breath coming in gasps, Tempest finally came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, hands on her haunches as she doubled over. She couldn't hear anything of note over the sounds of the streets and her own breathing. “If nothing else I'm beat and bloody and hurt and I know the Gilded Lily always helps girls off the street.”
She knew there'd be no arguing with that, and the silence from the bouncer confirmed it. In short order she was ushered inside, cleaned up, treated, and shown upstairs to the office in the penthouse of the old building, to await the arrival of the manager. The Gilded Lily was the cornerstone of the Garden Row, a bar-cum-brothel that serviced a diverse clientele from all walks of life provided they could afford to be served, a safehouse for girls and johns (and jills) alike, so long as they played by the rules and -- like all of the businesses that called themselves Row Houses -- a front innumerable criminal activity, the perfect place for an assassin down on her luck to catch her breath for a hot minute.
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And as Tempest sat in that big comfortable chair, staring at the bigger, even more comfortable, empty chair behind Ryk's desk, she came back to her Sensei Olman's question again.
“If I tell you to kill a man what would you say to me.”
Her sensei had always had a way of asking questions that weren’t really questions at all, but still necessitated answers that weren’t always easy to suss out.
But given that Olman had just declared her a master of his arts, she’d figured she had this one in the bag:
“I ask you who it is--”
The heel kick that had come her way in response was a surprise, but not so much so that she wasn’t able to roll back from her seated position to avoid it, but as she came to her feet he was already upon her, the old cat’s gnarled claws snatching her by the throat and slamming her flat on her back.
“No, Tempest, the first thing you ask me is why.”
He had let her up, turning away and crossing the dojo to take up his seat across the mat from her in that empty room, devoid of weapons, plaques, or banners.
“The power to take a life is far from unique; among humans, beastkin, demons, plants, animals, there are an endless number of deaths awaiting each and every living thing,” the King had continued. “Even beastkin such as ourselves cannot even claim to be good at what we do, next to predators born and bred and raised solely to hunt and kill. We need training, and tools and time and planning and opportunity, money, a target, and a reason. The wolf kills because it is hungry, but no proper man needs to kill to eat. I found my reason in the pursuit of perfection of my martial art, and so I fought, and even killed as needed, until I stood before the God of War himself, and now I offer my skill not to those seeking to buy corpses, but to others, like me who seek the knowledge I have attained, and while I took you in believing in your skill, and your desire to learn, I see now that what brought to you was not passion at all, but boredom...”
As the door opened behind her, Tempest stood and turned to face Ryk Tamashin, the Madam of the Gilded Lily, the one who gave Tempest her start. Like Tempe herself, Ryk was beastkin through and through, for the obvious traits in her navy blue hair, golden eyes and long, leaf shaped ears, and she was older than anyone knew. She wasn't as big as Tempest remembered, but maybe she'd just seemed bigger before. No taller than 5'8”, well over 200 pounds, but anyone who mistook that all for fat was a dead man if they tried her, not that they stood a chance of reaching her if she didn't wish it.
Every girl in this place was ready to kill for her, and every girl walking the streets of the Row was a potential soldier in hiding, same as Tempest had been, and Tempest would have been lying to say she hadn't been banking on that old working relationship.
“Ryk--”
“Save it.” The madam dismissed her with a wave of her hand, making her way around her desk to sit down in her big, comfortable chair. “Take a seat.”
“You know, then.” Tempest frowned and did as she was told, sinking gingerly into her own seat and shifting carefully to lift weight off of her bandaged thigh… and her shoulder, and her back. She’d given up her party dress, jacket, and bloodsoaked undergarments for the bar’s working uniform, a t-shirt, skirt, and a borrowed pair of panties that was a size too big, though she was surprised they’d had anything remotely in her size.
“You know better than to ask what I know around here. I found out immediately, same as everyone else.”
“Everyone else--” Damn it. Tempest sat forward, running her hands through her hair. She’d already been burned, of course the news had already reached the slums. She looked up, meeting Ryk’s gaze. “I didn’t do it, you have to know, I’m being set up--”
“Enough.” Ryk dismissed her worries again, as she laced her fingers together. “You’re not some dumbass who can’t pay his tab, you’re one of my girls, and I always help my girls when they’re in trouble. I knew you were innocent the second you entered the Row, because if you’d carved up that cop and those other folks the way they said you had, you’d have known better than to come back to my place where I’d have killed you myself.” She smiled, her face void of friendliness or mirth. “Now slow down, take a breath, and tell me what happened.”