The lady from Violl showed up the night of the fight with Khaled Anders.
Gowri was drinking down the block where she could get drunk enough to take the hits without raising suspicions, and Dunne was back at the Al-Trosk watching Anders sweat through his shirt hitting a sandbag. Omni got there and then left sometime after seven when Dunne sent him back to the house with a box of papers from Monterro. He said to put them in the floor, and he'd give Omni ten jin. Omni had done a lot harder things in his life for ten jin than walk five blocks with a bag of paper, so he went. Besides, Gowri's fight didn't start until nine. He had plenty of time and no desire to watch the early fights.
When he got to the steps of Number 7 Yilmisk, it was late evening. Even the North Sun was nearly gone, but there was just enough dead light left to see without streetlights. In front of the house, there was a woman. She sat in the shade of the overhang, on the top step that constituted a porch, and smoked something that smelled like lorrel. The smoke wasn't the same usual murky, brownish purple, but a thin cyan mist, though the smell was the same.
She looked up when Omni approached, and he hesitated because he didn't have much in the way of self-defense skills and he was certain he'd never seen her before.
"Who're you?"
He lingered in the middle of the yard and held the cloth bag of paperwork close to his chest. Maybe she was there for the papers. Maybe they were important papers. Maybe it hadn't been worth ten jin, after all.
She looked startled. Her eyes were black and huge, like one of those giant rats that lived around the docks who you only ever saw as eyes in the moonlight.
"My name is Arnica."
She tapped her cigarette out and stood. She had a suitcase and a shoulder bag piled beside her.
"I'm from Violl. I work for the Unified Ministry. I have a letter to deliver to Mr. Volkov. I was given this address. Was I mistaken?"
"I..."
Omni didn't know what to say. He had a lot of ideas, but none of them seemed correct. He looked at her for a moment longer. Her clothes looked like a Viollan Minister. At least, they didn't look like anyone from Misk, minister or otherwise. But Mr. Volkov was Dunne, and Dunne hated Violl, and Omni had been, until that exact moment, very sure that Violl hated Dunne.
"I...I thought Violl didn't communicate with traitors...with...um...Mr. Volkov."
"I've come on behalf of King Maathen himself. I'm his personal secretary. My name is Arnica. Arnica Ecstaire. I can show you my credentials if that would be helpful. It seems you do know Mr. Volkov."
She reached for the shoulder bag and began rifling around in it. She didn’t seem as professional as her demeanor or visage implied. In fact, Omni thought he heard her mutter curses into her bag. He stepped closer.
"I'm sorry, I have too many things in here today. Here we go--"
She pulled out a small leather folio embossed with the Seal of Violl and opened it, but Omni didn't really know what authentic credentials actually looked like and if they looked any different than fake ones, so he shrugged and shook his head.
"It's fine."
He tried to smile.
"I'm not really sure. You got the right address, but he's not here, and I don't know...what to..."
"I see. I understand."
The woman put the folio back in her bag.
"Then, could you just please point me in the direction of a nearby hotel and I'll come back tomorrow, if he'll be in, then? I'm afraid I haven't been to Misk in a very long time and it's getting dark and I...I'm not very good at navigation in daylight."
"Oh...you're coming back..."
Omni wondered how long a long time was. She didn't look very old up close. Or at least, younger than she seemed from afar, but she held herself as if she were his mother's age.
"Fuck, um, okay, okay, look, I'll take you to him. But--but, if he gets pissed about it, that's on you, nto me. You feel me? I don't want to get chewed out. I gotta put some shit inside and then we can go..."
He stepped up onto the porch and began to unlock the three poorly installed bolts that held the door completely closed.
"You might wanna...are you staying here for a while or something?"
He gestured to her bags and cringed when she nodded for he knew he shouldn't say what he was about to. But he was nice and he had never been able to do much about it."Goddammit...okay, just let me put your shit in here cause you can't walk with it where we're going, yeah? You're already a walking target for the dock kids as it is..."
She smiled and handed him her things. They were heavy, and he struggled not to look weak.
She wasn’t acting like she’d come to call on an exile and a traitor, at least. She was there for some very serious reason, he was sure, but whatever it was, it came with some kind of respect. Omni wondered for a moment as he carried everything inside and trekked upstairs to bury the papers in the creaking floorboards, if exile could be lifted, if treason could be pardoned, and if so, would Dunne leave?
She was still standing there when he returned, fidgeting with the buttons on her jacket. It looked like velvet, but it was thicker and woolier than velvet, and he wished he could have touched it, but he was trying to maintain a particular façade, and that façade would never have cared to touch a jacket. She thanked him again, and they began to walk southeast towards the Al’Trosk. He tried not to look at her too much because you weren’t supposed to look at people who were better than you, but she was very pretty, he thought, even if he wasn’t sure if she was his age or Dunne’s. He had heard everyone in Violl was on [[Ice->Ice]], so maybe she was even older. But he had also heard everyone in Violl was smarter, prettier, better, and more important than everyone else, and so maybe even nineteen-year-old Viollans carried an aura of prestige.
"May I ask your name?"
As they turned the corner off Yilmisk, Arnica the Secretary asked.
"Though, I suppose I don't need to know, if you'd rather decline."
"I'm Omni."
He smiled and decided he was going to assume she was harmless until she did something to make him think otherwise. The niceness was winning again.
"It's nice to meet you."
She was polite and it felt forced, like it was exhausting her.
"Are you his son?"
"Whose?"
Omni asked. Did she know his father? Was his father alive?
"Oh. Dunne's."
He realized her meaning too late.
"Fuck no. No. Sorry. Just no. He's...my boss...kinda? I don't know. He's friends with my sister and I run errands for him sometimes is all."
"Oh, I suppose that makes sense."
She nodded and they walked silently for another block and a half. The wind from the ocean was cold, and the streets were less busy than they might have usually been but hardly empty. The woman dug her hands into the pockets of her fancy coat and kept her head down as if she realized exactly how much she must have stood out.
"Could I ask where we're going?"
She broke the silence again.
"To the Al-Trosk. He’s there with my sister. Or...she’ll be there soon. It’s a gym, sorta, she’s a fighter.”
Omni bit the inside of his cheek. He was an idiot. Gowri’s fights were illegal. Everything that happened in Misk was illegal. He was bringing a Viollan minister to an illegal fight. If he was lucky, he’d be thrown to Khaled Anders himself for it, and if he wasn’t, Erivan Monterro. He tried not to show weakness, but she didn’t seem to care and was instead distracted by the Ghonis Lanters and the green men who stood under them to drink and smoke in the brown grass of the park square.
"So, you're really from Violl?"
Omni asked to change the subject. Maybe she hadn't been listening before at all.
"Yes."
She didn't smile.
"Have you been? To Violl, I mean?"
"No."
He shook his head, embarrassed.
"I've never been further away than Rioth, and that was only once."
"So you've always lived in Misk?"
She asked and he nodded.
"That's not so terrible. I'd rather spend my whole life here than in Violl. Of course, that probably sounds horrible to everyone outside of Violl, I do realize."
She smiled that time, in a different way, as if she almost meant it.
"Anyway, my point is, I was happy to leave for a bit when I was asked."
"To bring the letter?"
He asked himself.
"Is it really from the the King? Like from him from him? From him directly, I mean?
They were on Ultermisk in view of the Al-Trosk and the smell of molten metal, sulfer, and belach filled the air.
"Sorry about the smells here...Misk...well, not all of Misk smells bad, just here specifically. It's a factory that makes nails and screws...which...are...th--"
"It's alright. I can't smell anything."
She smiled again and he held hte door to the Al-Trosk open for her because that's what you were supposed to do for Viollans.