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It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.
There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.
Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.
Something shuffles downstairs.
And continues to shuffle.
"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.
"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.
The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.
"Oh my god." A third voice.
"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."
"Fuck."
Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.
Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.
"That's different because--"
Why would Katie believe her?
"You'll listen to me--"
No she won't. She'll pout and sandbag, indefinitely.
"Okay, practice your way. See how far that approach gets you in combat--"
They can't afford a Resurrection.
. . . Sigh.
"If you practice using two hands first, your technique will be sloppy and you will die. I do not want you to die, because we cannot afford to resurrect you."
Summoning Teg prediction powers . . .
"I think so. I only know how to teach you hand-by-hand first. I don't know how they teach it in Lastwall but I suspect it's the same."
"After this session you can go to Teg and ask whatever you want. I'm not going to stop you from switching teachers if you want. But I'm not breaking off the session. You should at least try what each-handed, and actually both-handed, feels like, under me. Plus, you're admirably Chaotic about following through on plans and respecting seniority, but the rest of us are stumbling golems, and you'll have to slow down somewhat for us."
"Great!"
"Now if I say hold your sword like a giant pen, do you know what I mean? Grip it with your back fingers and hold it loosely and maneuver it with your thumb and first two fingers."
Demonstration.
She pulls a red ball made of straw, half as high as her knee, from where it was resting on a wall and starts chasing it around, stabbing it unerringly with her swords, one at a time.
"It's stupid, but we don't currently have practice automata."
She kicks it to Katie.