You Both Meet in a Jail Cell

I lay on the only cot in the cell as she paced it. At first I'd sat, leaving room if she wanted to sit, but she had given the impression of not wanting to and of being able to ask if she wanted to. (Also of being able to push me off, if she wanted, but she would ask first, and I would move if she did.)

"Back home, I am..." She flexed her hand once, twice, looking at it as if it held some answer. "Like a scalpel under the armor, or a scalpel under the skin. So sharp you barely notice I'm cutting. Precise."

"And more than capable of healing you or tearing you to shreds," I said.

She grinned at me, fierce and reflexive in the way that true reactions are. "Yes." Her expression flickered, then fell to something closer to neutrality. "Here, I don't have the weapons I prefer. But even if I don't have my knife on me, I find myself quite capable with a needle."

"Surgeon-seamstress. Nice."

Her lips twitched. "Storyteller-trickster."

"Wordsmith would be the brief way of saying that," I said, one hand curling to my chest in a pompous gesture. "We must be precise." She threw a small stone at me and I caught it and tossed it back. We started playing catch with it as we talked.

"Any ideas for getting out of here?" I asked.

She shrugged and tossed the stone back. "Be charming at the hearing."