She’d been holding her breath. She hadn’t noticed until he began to speak and sat up straighter in his saddle. It didn’t mean they were out of the woods but it was a start. She turned to face Martin and company as her employer spoke, her face set, determined as she looked over each face as if memorizing it, marking it for something. She had a good intimidation face for all that she was young and a woman. Big Jim himself had even admitted to a shiver at the coldness in her eyes when she donned it. The comment, earnest and heartfelt from the big man had brought a smile from her, which of course had ruined the whole effect. But when she put on her scary mercenary face, it was a thing to behold, cold, flat and monstrous in its lack of anything human. 

It was a sham of course and Martin was not moved by it. He was too much a professional to be touched by it, but he didn’t need to be and he was too intently listening to Alexi’s offer to pay her much mind. His men, they didn’t know her, they weren’t as skilled an actor as their leader and for the most part they were taken in. She was pleased, for Martin’s sake, not her own, to see that few of them backed down for all that they had been unsettled. Stalwart actors cum bandits. Swell. If they lived through this, if a bargain were struck this could be a good connection for her. Not that she was going to go bandit, the spirit of Jim would reach through whatever veil lay between the worlds and slap her for even entertaining such a thought. But a working relationship? That was a fine thing. 

She caught the tail end of Alexi’s offering and she felt a flush of approval fill her. The ink-stained man was clever now that he’d recovered from his flight. He had offered something much, much better than gold in the here and now, legitimacy. She would all but hear Martin salivating at the idea. His expression didn’t change, he was too good for that, but she thought she saw his eyes darken and maybe his nostril’s flare? 

“What the hell good’ll a letter do us?” asked a coarse man in the back who made a point of noisily drawing up some phlegm to spit to the ground. “Mehbee we can wipe our arses with it?” 

There was a round of chuckling at that but Martin held up his hand. Two fingers were aloft, the others folded down, the whole gesture posed and dramatic. Kate rolled her eyes and nodded at Alexi’s comment. 

“I do recall him, rich Lord’s son. A taste for fine things I believe.” She said and raised an eyebrow at Martin her words confirming Alexi’s ability to offer this. 

“A letter of introduction…” He said slowly. She could see him chewing over the words. “is not a promise. It useful only as an ass wipe if there is naught but hot air behind it.” 

He looked to Katherine and he met her eyes and he saw in them her determination to see this through. His mouth twitched. He’d known the girl for years, a little scrap of a thing lurking in the shadow of the bigger mercenaries she hung around with, her eyes watching, taking everything in. She’d been coming into her own last he’d seen her. But then she hadn’t been around for a while, not that he’d really noticed. He came and went and had just assumed she’d done her own thing. Something had happened, something had changed her, melted off the baby fat and left behind something a little harder, more grizzled than he would have expected to find. 

“True,” said Katherine, her smile tight, her eyes hard, the eyes of someone who had climbed over the dead bodies of nearly everyone she loved to reach the sunlight, her guts all but trailing behind her. “but idiots in capes sending you out to do their dirty work are a dime a dozen. How many times have you been offered this?”

She pressed on, her hand drumming lightly on her hilt, the threat clear in her words.

“It’d be a shame if you never passed it by, your troop would have to tell Florie what you turned down.” She would die if it came to blows, she was outnumbered to greatly for even training and skill to make up for but she would see him dead with her. 

Martin understood and nodded. She was right, this was a first for him. He nodded at his troupe, he nodded at her and finally he looked to Alexi and nodded thrice. 

“Well then, Scribe, you’d best get out your inkpot and get to work. I think it is high time we gave legitimacy a try.”