Katarina fingered her chin as she tried to make heads or tails of the map.

"'Tis the second time you come to 'look at yon map." The man at the counter observed. "Might I he'p ya find sommin?" she asked, and Katarina turned to glance at him briefly.

"The mayor said that your Beltane was going to be held at the lake. Was looking for a way to get there. I wanted to see your pavilion."

The man snorted. "'Twon't be onna map." He replied. "It's na good." He pointed out the other entrance to the shop, back where she could hear the bellows of a forge being worked.

"Head yerself down that rud 'bout half a day's journey. Ye'll see a stone post with a dog onnit." He described patiently. "Ye'll wanna hook right an go up the hill thar; stick to the path and ye'll do jus fine. Once you get over the hill ye'll see the lake."

Katarina nodded. "Seems risky to take a trip so far." She observed.

The man grinned, a flash of white in his brown face. "Well, when the Wardens show up with the spring caravans, we get 'em to check over the trail once or twice..." He trailed off. "Alls it takes is a couple casks of ol' Henry's applejack." he shrugged. "most times the Wardens don't find nothin'. They've foun' wingsnakes a couple times though, so ye may wanna keep an eye out."

"Wingsnakes?" Katarina replied, and he nodded. "Ayup. Great winged snakes."

"I'll keep an eye out." Katarina's eyebrow twitched. "If there was ever a drink to clear the vapors from a long winter, applejack would be it." She said with a smile, and the man nodded with a grin. "Ayup, I can't say boo to that." He gestured for her to wait, and disappeared into the back of the store for a minute, leaving her to wander about the store. He returned a moment later with a small cask, about a foot and a half tall and about six inches wide. he settled it on the counter.

"What do you say, Lady? A cask like this'll do you right good for a week."

Katarina smiled. "I have some furs I could trade, or I could give you payment in Urthan coins, if you like."

"Well, depends on the furs. What have you got?" He asked. Katarina shrugged. "Some badger, some squirrel, some beaver." She offered, but he shook his head. "I'd've traded for some wolf or bear because I know I could use those, but those..." he shrugged, and she nodded and dipped her hand into her coin pouch and brought out a small handful of coppers.

"Can I make it out there and back before tonight?" Katarina asked.

"Yuz jus goin out there ta look, right?" He asked, and she nodded. He shrugged. "Mayhap. If'n you don't dawdle none." he allowed.

"What is that map for?" Katarina asked. "It doesn't look at all like the lay of the land I've seen 'round here." He nodded at that.

"'s not here." He replied comfortably. "It's where we came from, 'fore we came here. Our old homeland." Katarina blinked at that and then nodded. It made sense, of a sort.

Katarina stepped out of the general store as Sasaki showed up, leading Katarina's horse. She glanced up at Katarina with a sour expression. "I brought it." Katarina nodded. "So you did." She hefted the small cask of apple brandy. "I got something while I waited."

As they traveled together, Sasaki spoke up. "So this is what you do? Travel around from one hamlet to another, hunting Witches?" She asked mostly to fill the silence.

"Sort of. This is the first sign of civilization I've seen in... a very long time." Katarina replied drily.

"'Civilization'." Sasaki mocked drily, and Katarina nodded. "Just so. But it has a roof, four walls, a bed and hot baths." Katarina observed.

"Point taken." Sasaki acknowledged. "So how long were you out there? Weeks?" Sasaki asked curiously, but Katarina shook her head.

"Think longer." She urged, and then paused. "I wintered in the woods south of here."

"Wintered?" Sasaki's almond-shaped eyes widened. "You spent the entire winter in the woods?" At Katarina's nod, she gasped. "How is it that you survived?"

"By the grace of the Golden Lady." Katarina replied casually. "Also with the skills I've learned." She added, as if it were inconsequential.

"An entire winter?" Sasaki repeated. Katarina nodded.

"I can't even imagine." Sasaki breathed.

"I had a small lean-to, plenty of firewood, and I was able to hunt and fish." She gestured at her horse. "This one had a harder time of it."

"How is it that you know so much?" Sasaki asked.

"I was trained by the best trainers in Darnell, the Jewel of the Empire." Katarina replied easily. "Weapons, languages, customs and lore, wilderness survival, song and dance, etiquette and poise." She ticked them off on her fingers.

Sasaki regarded her with suspicion. "You dance?" She asked skeptically.

Katarina chuckled. "I know how to, yes." She replied. "The line, the rings, the fox-step, the Ur Vogel, and the two and four-step waltzes." She ticked them off her fingers and glanced down at the smaller woman. "You don't believe me?" She asked. Sasaki shook her head. Katarina laughed. "That's fine. I don't plan on dancing anytime soon."

"Not going to participate in Beltane?" Sasaki asked. Katarina shook her head. "I'm unmarried, which means I'd have to dance in the 'maiden's circles' which basically mean I'd be advertising my readiness to marry." She chuckled darkly at that. "I'm not getting married."

Sasaki raised an eyebrow. "Are there no male Witch Hunters?" She asked. Katarina shrugged. "More men than women are called to be a Witch Hunter, but... all of the Witch Hunters from my class are dead." She tipped her head to the side. "That's besides the point, though. I just can't see myself wed. Settled down... a squalling babe on each hip." She shuddered. "Likely I'll end up like the rest of my contemporaries: a meaningless, empty death in some village or in the wilds." She smiled. "Strangely, this is soothing to me. I like the idea of dying in my duty to the Goddess of the Dawn."

The pavilion was essentially nothing more than an immense roofed deck that jutted out over the lake. There were several firepits and many simple benches. Towards the lake it dropped down to a series of docks that held small fishing boats. As Katarina strolled, she pulled the bung from the cask and dipped her finger into it for a taste.

"What're you doing?" Sasaki asked, her face marred with disappointment and disgust.

"Having a taste, what does it look like?" Katarina replied.

"You're doing it wrong." Sasaki replied, and Katarina sighed in frustration. "You know, I'm getting really tired of your shit." She announced, but Sasaki only smiled.

"You're supposed to use a cup." Sasaki continued. "or I suppose if you're some sort of simpleton I guess you could drink from the cask directly." She continued. "But to just dunk your finger into the cask itself?" She shook her head. "Intolerable. Absolutely intolerable. Who knows where that finger's been?" She asked rhetorically.

"Where are we supposed to find a cup here, wiseass?" Katarina replied, and Sasaki smirked. "Really, you should be grateful to have someone like me to save you from barbarity." She rummaged in a small pack she kept at her back, and withdrew a pair of small ceramic cups, smaller than the palm of Katarina's hand and about as deep as the first joint of her thumb. Katarina burst into surprised laughter at that.

"Really though, it's just luck all around that I managed to have these." She added, and gazed out over the lake. "Or stupidity." She turned back to Katarina. "I was in a pleasure house when some men came for me." She laughed, then, a full-throated laugh that was lovely to hear. "I did the only sensible thing I could at the time: I grabbed my sword, my bottle of sake, and scooped up some cups and ran." She shook her head. "Silly." She pointed at the cask, and filled the two tiny glasses after Katarina passed it over. "They were more persistent than usual, and I was faced with the choice of killing them or stowing away on a boat. I chose the less onerous of the two and here I am." She picked up one of the cups. "Health to you." She toasted, and knocked it back quickly, and then smiled. "Ooh, I like that. Sweet, but earthy."

Katarina picked up her cup and drank hers a bit slower than Sasaki. "You were in a brothel?" She asked curiously.

"Don't look at me like that, Witch Hunter. Yamato pleasure houses are not at all like your Anglish sluthouses." Sasaki snarled. "It's a pleasure house, bound and operated in accordance to the Five Rings. It's not just a place where one goes to rut. There are artists there. Musicians. There are smoking rooms, drawing rooms, rooms for chanting, rooms for drinking and discussion, rooms for games of chance." She took a deep breath and gestured imperiously at the cask. "Life is hard, and responsibilities are heavy. If you take your duty and obligations seriously, should you not also take your relaxation seriously?" She asked rhetorically, and knocked back another slug.

"I had no idea that peasants could brew such an amazing drink." She marveled at her second cup, and thrust the tiny cup at Katarina wordlessly, who filled it again.

Katarina frowned. "You're saying that your pleasure houses are also beholden to the Five Rings?" She asked. "That doesn't make sense to me."

Sasaki snorted. "I just explained why: Address your work, your pleasure, your relaxation, your family, and your government with the same drive." she replied dryly, knocking back her drink quickly.

"Why were they trying to kill you?" Katarina asked, drinking her second cup.

"Hmm?" Sasaki asked curiously, placing her hands on the railing and looking out over the lake. She listed to the side a little. Was the smaller woman already drunk?

"The men in your story." Katarina repeated.

"Oh, that." Sasaki replied and flapped her hand dismissively. "You don't want to hear about that." She thrust her cup at Katarina again, who filled it again. Sasaki made it disappear just as quickly as the previous three.

"I asked, didn't I?" Katarina replied, fitting the bung back into the cask. Sasaki had clearly had too much. Katarina could stand to drink more, but she was in unknown territory with someone that was unpredictable. Anything could happen, so she decided to wait until she was back at the inn to continue.

"Your gun." Sasaki replied instead and held out her hand.

"Excuse me?" Katarina asked, eyes narrowing.

"Your price for hearing my story. Let me see your gun for a bit." She seemed a little unsteady on her feet.

Katarina eyed her for a long moment, but drew her gun and unloaded it. After the loads were safely stored, she handed the heavy piece over.

"Such a strange device." Sasaki murmured, turning it over in her hands. "Musashi is obsessed with English firearms, you know."

"Musashi?" Katarina asked.

"Oh, he's a right ass." Sasaki replied. "Always going on about this, that and the other. He's a great teacher of the Five Rings. I guess by Anglish standards he would be a philosopher or theologian or a priest of some sort. Very important. He studied and preached the virtues of the Five Rings as if he'd written them himself." Sasaki replied, waving her hand lazily. "In truth he's a pompous ass, and a lover of boys." She glanced at Katarina. "Boys." She repeated. "He would go on and on about diligence and honor and duty and obligation in the courts by day, and by night he was sticking himself into whatever boy one of his followers would procure for him." She dropped her head for a moment and then raised it and handed Katarina her gun back.

"Oh, by law everything must be by consent, but in Yamato, What your family says is also law, and above them are the temples and the government... so if someone says, "I am seeking a young boy for the great Musashi-sama's relief" then the family will think, "What of the prestige we will get if we offer our own son?" And then they'll go to the young son and they'll say, 'Think of the honor and prestige when he sticks his dick up your ass!' or some such shit, and then they'll say, 'Your family has commanded it.' so of course this boy will do it, he'll let a fat old man stuff his ass with cock, and it's all one hundred percent perfectly legal and consensual." Sasaki explained. "But I stray from my point: Musashi said that the Anglish gun was peerless on the battlefield and no amount of steel or arrow could face itself against a rifle." She gestured at Katarina's gun. "Maybe he wasn't wholly wrong. That thing is raw malice, Katarina. There's no elegance to it, no art. Just murder. Who could stand against such a thing?"

"You didn't tell me about the men." Katarina replied.

Sasaki dragged her hands down her face. "Ugh, let it go. I don't want to talk about it."

"I want you to talk about it, Sasaki." Katarina replied.

"What, you think you can just tell me what to do?" She replied angrily. Katarina smirked a little bit. Sasaki got irritable and cranky when drunk? Interesting.

"We had a deal." Katarina reminded her gently.

"Fine, fine." Sasaki grumbled, and lowered herself to the deck and sat gracefully.

"I was visiting my- a friend. She had-" Sasaki stopped. "She worked there. She played an instrument. Earlier, I'd gotten into a fight and killed a man, and I had hoped I could convince her to come with me."

She glanced up at Katarina. "When you have a powerful family, you don't attack another family directly. You have retainers. People that aren't part of the family but want to join the family through deed or service or marriage. A man pissed me off, so I killed his chief retainer." She shrugged. "The good part was that if I killed that man... and I did, then the marriage was off." She smirked at Katarina. "But the bad part was that the responsibility would fall to the next in line, my sister." She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair.

"Everything is always so fucked up." She whispered. "In any case, I killed the chief retainer because he was a prick and the man- his lord- was a prick, and when it was over I realized that I would either have to slit my own stomach in shame or leave... and if I left, then my sister would have to marry that prick to make up for me killing his retainer and cancelling the marriage- so I went to ask her to come with me, and that's when they ambushed me."

"So was she a friend or was she your sister?" Katarina asked, sitting down next to the smaller woman.

"Huh? Oh. My sister. My little sister. She'd been working there to make up for one of my other screwups." She sighed. "Everyone there is always so stiff and rigid and everything is all orderly and everything fits into little boxes." She shook her head. "I can't stand that way of living."

After a quiet minute, Katarina smiled. "Well, you've come to the right place. If there's one thing I can say about the Anglish lands, they're far from orderly."

Sasaki glanced at her. "Your responsibility is to impose that order, though, no?"

Katarina shook her head. "Masaka." she replied in Yamato, and Sasaki's eyes widened. "My responsibility is to hunt the witch. Everything aside from that is secondary." She shrugged. "Sure there may be cults to the Elder Gods lurking about, or mutants, or beastmen, or elves, or someone has fallen from the path of the righteous." She smiled suddenly, teeth showing predatorily, "Or there's a mayor that's behaving suspiciously; but ultimately my responsibility is to bring the Witch before the Goddess, either taking them to the church or directly by way of my gun."

Sasaki nodded at this.

"So what are you going to do about our mayor?" Sasaki asked curiously.

"I've already set the wheels in motion. Hopefully when we get back to town I'll have my answer."

Sasaki glanced at Katarina. "You're very good at getting people to talk." She remarked, and Katarina smiled a little. "Oh, right. It's your job. Stupid me." Sasaki added a little sulkily.

"Think we should head back." Katarina replied. "The clouds are looking pretty mean, and I don't want to spend the night here." Sasaki nodded.