He’s been around himself for thirty odd years and some change, which is enough to recognize that his stress response was same response that one had for a fire. Stop, drop, roll off. He didn’t like sticking around folks when the going got tough enough to get the Gonnof. He had a reputation to preserve. It’s too cold to go wandering out by the fire, so he opts instead to climb back to the old haunt of Isador’s house.
He hardly uses the door of the place, even after the debacle with Stakh. The second floor window is much more accessible to him anyways than waltzing into the yard and asking for a quiet spot in the back room to think.
The window he’s always used is now haunted by Sticky. He’s caught him almost every time the thing has been cracked open, and has never told a soul.
“You’d be a good thief in law,” he tells him this time. He’s told him before, but the kid’s stubborn.
“I’d be a better doctor, obviously.”
He can’t argue with that. He trades Sticky some incredibly rare glass beads and a wooden toy soldier for a new lockpick and some rumors, and leaves him to his own devices. There’s no leather hide on his back this time for a guise, so this time, slipping off to the kitchen isn’t a matter of potential life and death.
Artemy moved things around for his kids, but he kept the kettle in the same accessible spot. Grief sets it on his stove, adds a few logs to the fire and takes the other half of offerings from his heavy coat to slip in the kitchen: buckwheat despite the rationing, salt, and a handful of seasoning herbs.
It’s an uninterrupted stint. He makes himself thieves’ porridge in one of Isador’s old and chipped bowls, nipping at it while Artemy’s girl toddles into the room to find what was cooking, and immediately leaves upon seeing him.
He’s almost offended until she comes back with a box of treasures. Shotgun shells, a riffle round, a whole scope.
“Okay... where the hell did you get this?”
The little sprite shrugs and pulls herself up to the counter while he’s perched on it too, a spoon in his mouth. It has him digging through his pockets again and pulling out a single item. It’s a comic, written in the King’s English, but the pictures are fair quality and survived the hellish trip here. It’s gold in these trading terms, and she’s not a fool. She knows that.
She’s also like five, Grigory.
Which landed him with a box of munitions to peruse through, and absolutely flabbergasted by it, and Murky reading a comic upside-down. It’s a fair bit of company, because she says nothing to him this morning.
