The cock crowed with alarming volume and Camilla jolted awake. Even in her sleep her hand had found the hilt of the sword propped against the straw filled pallet she shared with Cydric. Her eye pierced the gloom well enough to see and she frowned at the sword. Privately, she had asked Dietricha to look her over for any ‘lingering effects’ of her sojourn to the North. The sorceress had touched her temples and spoken some words and then assured Camilla that she could sense nothing of Chaos. The answer struck her as vague in a way she couldn't articulate, but ‘vague in a way you can’t articulate’ was a pretty fair description of Dietricha herself.

“Va bene,” she whispered to Cydric as he groaned beside her, she leaned down and kissed his forehead trailing her slender fingers through the tangled hair of his chest absently. It was still dark outside, the days were short at this time of year and dawn came late. The dinner had run down pleasantly enough, though Oleg had drank enough Vodka to be slightly slurring his words by the time his wife ushered the out. The merchant had provided them with some gold, small enough, but a veritable fortune in their current impoverished straights, as well as a letter of credit to a local tailor with whom he had a long association and thus was fairly sure he could trust. It seemed like there was no end to the corruption and infiltration of Imperial society by cultists of the Ruinous Powers. She wondered if it were the same in Tilea, only less visible, or if the forces of the enemy were focused on their most immediate opponent.

The rooster crowed again rousing Cydric to half awakened. Camilla frowned peering into the darkness. A figure crouched by a post below, swathed in a grey cloak that looked ungainly and deformed. She sat up with a start and the figure flinched and tossed back its cloak. Cydric yanked her down to the pallet a moment before the crossbow twanged, the bolt logding into beam behind their pallet with a thunk, passing so close to her she felt the wind of its passage on her bare shoulder. Camilla screamed, loudly, to raise the alarm and shoved herself up off the bed and the struggling Cydric. She backflipped gracefully over the wooden railing at the edge of the loft and landed naked save for her sword on both feet and one hand in a collapsing tripod to spread the shock.  Camilla pressed herself up, the tip of her weapon held parallel to her body and rotating horizontal incase she needed to parry but the figure was already fleeing. A big figure, Yantz, wraped in a horse blanket but otherwise naked, crashed through the side of one of the stalls they had converted to a bed. He leveled his pistol at the fleeing assassin but Camilla struck his hand hard with the flat of her sword jolting it free. She snatched it from the air before it could hit the ground.

“What in the name of Sig...ma,” Yantz trailed off as he realised Camilla was completely naked. He pursed his lips for a moment before going on in a more reasonable tone.

“What is transpiring here Frauline,” he said, his voice husky with amused innuendo.

“Someone just tried to shoot Cydric or me with a crossbow,” she said, making n move to cover up. Attitudes towards nudity were markedly different among Tileans than they were among stody Imperials.

“Ah and you stopped me from shooting this would be marksmen because…” Cydric returned from the street, having somehow gotten his trousers on and given chase. He held the big wolf pommeled sword in one hand, with negligent power. He blinked at the naked Camilla and the nearly naked Yantz and then picked up a blanket and tossed it to Camila who gratefully wrapped it around her. Modesty or not it was bitingly cold.

“I lost him,” Cydric admitted, “every one is on their way to the market.” Camilla nodded and sighed.

“So the not killing part?” Yantz persisted. Ivan emerged bleary eyed saber in hand. A dark haired girl many years his junior who Camilla recognized from the working girls above the tavern, looked about with scared dark eyes. Camilla dropped her voice into a whisper that only the two Imperials could hear.

“Bouncers are supposed to keep trouble away not bring it to the door,” she explained, “it isn’t much of a job, but I’d just as soon not be looking for somewhere else to lay my head.”
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