Eavesdropping

As Katya had predicted the day before, she suffered a nightmare shortly after she fell asleep. Vivid images of the violence and the graphic death from her encounter with the bandits still infected her mind, and her brain could not seem to let those memories go. As she struggled to fall back asleep, she heard voices coming from not too far away. One of the voices she recognized as Sir Simon's, but the other was a soft, effiminate voice that was not familiar.

Although she was curious about the identity of the presumed woman whom the other voice belonged to, Katya still felt groggy and all-around disagreeable. Usually, Katya's inquisitive nature would cause her to investigate the situation, but she really didn't feel like moving at the moment.

However, as she lay awake with her mind refusing to shut down, and as she continued to hear the nearby whispers, she began to question her decision to take no action. Although Sir Simon had given her no reason to distrust him up till now, she admittably didn't know anything about the man other than that he had the equipment and the martial prowess of a knight. Was he planning on betraying her?

Finally roused enough to go into investigator mode, Katya tuned her hears to the nearby conversation.

"... and there is little worse in the world than being an oathbreaker."

That didn't sound like the kind of thing someone who was going to betray her would say, but well, she didn't recall him making any promises to her either.

"I can promise you that I won’t be able to eat this second piece, and I hate to have possibly wasted some of your reserves... How long until you switch watch?"

Katya would be interested to hear the answer to this question. Sir Simon had no reason to tell this stranger what their watch plans had been, if the woman he was talking to was indeed a stranger. For now, Katya controlled her breathing and waited as she learned about what was going on outside the tent.