He kept up with her, that was good. Not that she’d set a grueling pace. But he didn’t seem out of breath nor was he struggling as he walked at her side. She nodded, appreciating his willingness to accompany her. So often she had been steered by people who didn’t know what they were about. People who thought that coin gave them rights to dictate how a task was done, no matter that they’d hired her to do it. Presumably because they couldn’t. It was the frequent curse of the hireling in any occupation, but for her it was a double edged blade in that she was a woman and often the male client felt even more entitled to direct her at her work. 

The Locust wasn’t far, as she’d promised, a few turns away from the main thoroughfare. Quiet music drifted out the front door when someone exited the tavern and she smiled, it seemed that Florie’s on again, off again lover Martin was on again. It meant the place was probably a little more crowded than she would have liked but even so it wasn’t going to be hard to talk. She strode forward and held the door for him, gesturing him in respectfully and looked around. 

The Locust was pretty typical, polished wood everywhere, darkened by age and bearing the marks of being a well frequented establishment. The chairs mostly matched which said something about the number and intensity of bar-fights, or it said something about the endurance of the chairs. Either way she grinned when she stepped into the dim, quietly bustling place. 

Behind the bar stood the owner, a broad, blousy woman with a surplus of flesh that somehow stopped just short of being unappealing. Her impressive bosom was well contained in a tightly laced bodice with mounds of soft flesh drawing the eye to the deep crevasse between them. Her hips and bottom were equally epic and when she moved things shifted and shook like great tectonic plates beneath the earth, movements so primal that many a man found it hard to look away. Florie’s face was pretty enough, curls framed a sweet and dimpled face and though she wasn’t particularly bright she was shrewd in her way and she could cook like no one’s business. The smell coming out of the big black pot over the stove was heavenly, making her stomach rumble again in protest. Florie’s stews were incredible and that was only one of the options. 

“Galt!” she shouted when she spotted Katherine, it was accompanied by a wave that made several of the nearby patrons stop talking to watch the resulting shock-waves ripple over her expansive flesh. “Where you been?”

“In Dervishire, for a season or two.” Katherine called back, not wanting to go into the why’s of that in front of a possible client. She pointed to one of the back tables, a little further from the skinny red-head with a beak of a nose who was strumming his lute. Florie nodded at her and Katherine looked to her Client. 

“Mr. Dumont, care to lead the way?” she asked and gestured toward the table.