She was still trying to picture this rumpled, distracted, correct Monk of a man as a trouble-making university student as his words implied when he asked after her past. She was probably silent longer than was polite as her mind trying to catch up with all that he’d said and left unsaid before she snapped her mouth, which had been hanging open, with an audible clack. A clack that was hopefully lost in the sounds of travel. She cleared her throat, banishing failed attempts to picture him inebriated and chasing skirts, of all things, and formulated an answer. 

Apprentice? Not as such, but she supposed it was a close as could be explained to how she’d stumbled into the life. 

“Sort of.” She began awkwardly, still a little behind the moment. “I um sort of wormed my way in and it stuck.”

Well that was hardly an answer but she wasn’t certain what to say. He’d been a university student and one who had been able to afford to carouse. He’s spoken of Charles’ lineage but not of his own. She began to think a little differently about this humble scribe before her. Oh she’d serve him to the same degree, it was her way, but she would wonder, and ponder.

None of which was an answer to his question. She’d been a bit of a pest in the guardhouse where her Mama worked as a seamstress. The local pithy lord kept a well-staffed Guard-house thinking it lent him a certain majesty, as if he had more to guard simply by their presence. One of the Guards, Steven, likely bored by activity began to teach the young Kate some of the fighting arts in exchange for errands and to simply pass the time. She was a scrap of a thing at the time, a brat and not clearly of either gender and going by the name of Kit. She let him assume what he would because she loved it all. It was so much more interesting than the stitchery her Mama wanted her to learn so she had a means to earn a living when she was a woman grown. If sitting in a dark room making fancies for ladies and paid a pittance in return was considered a life. 

She worked hard and became the pet of the bored garrison and learned a good deal, though not nearly as much as she thought. When Steven’s brother, Big Jim arrived for a visit with a small bit of his mercenary company in tow, Katherine was lost. She hung around, a little scrap of a shadow with big ears and bigger eyes. She sucked it all in and when the Mercenary crew left a few days later she followed them, a bit of a shadow, determined to join up. All went well until she was caught in the snare they laid for her. Hanging upside down and being told to scurry home little puppy would have sent anyone less stubborn than Kat scurrying home in shame. It only made her more determined. She followed, learned to dodge their traps and was eventually, in a roundabout way, part of the company though she never officially signed on. Big Jim took her under his wing, amused by her tenacity and when he left the company after breaking the nose of the captain over something he would never explain to a then 14 year old Kit, she left with him and when she was sixteen he sponsored her into the Guild and watched as she put her X on the correct line. She worked with him off and on for years as she build up her reputation, until that last, fatal mission. 

But none of that was anything she could easily explain to this rumpled scholar. She was startled to realize how few of her clients had bothered to ask after her past. Even the ones who were unsettled by silence, they simply filled it in with commentary of their own, more important lives and she did her best to ask them questions that would facilitate further chatter. But not this one. 

Maybe this one deserved a better answer than what she’d given. 

“I was never formally apprenticed.” She explained, “Though I did have a mentor. James of Blackend Moor.” He might have heard of the name, Big Jim had a powerful reputation and might have become a legend if he hadn’t… She shook her head to ward off such thoughts.

“He taught me most of what I know and saw me formerly inducted as a Mercenary when the time came. I sort of fell into the life in an effort to avoid needlework.” 

She ruefully touched her cheek and grinned. “Though I suppose there really isn’t any escaping that.”