Perhaps a part of him had been hoping, however naively, to catch sight of his peers. Perhaps, though he had chased himself away from the Mors (from his home) for the risk of running into those who were to be his enemy, he had allowed nostalgia to drive him closer than he ought. Perhaps he had been looking for ghosts.

But Anatoly had not been looking for her.

Avdotya, adorned in a well-worn pelt (a trophy if he ever saw one), turns the corner ahead of him and he immediately controls the curl of his lip, the teeth that want to bear. Here is the woman who courted ruin for them all, with her weakness carefully fostered by too-eager soldiers, with her so-called potential, with her gods damned mother. She was looking insultingly well, and he wondered if she even cared for all their brethren who lay dead in her wake.

There is little he would like more than to see her dead in these very halls, than to watch her chest fail to rise and her blood pool on the floor as it should have many years before, but Anatoly is not a fool, however much he would like to be. Killing her now, in this place she knows so well, so surrounded by allies, would make little more than a martyr of her. He must take her apart first, piece by piece, until those who have flocked to her banner turn away in disgust. No, when Avdotya dies it will be public and brutal, and prove once and for all that she is unfit to be Davke.

So he nods his head in passing greeting, face neutral, and steps just enough to the side to allow her passage without weakening his own position. With any luck that will be the end of it. He has already found many interesting rooms, many nooks a clever enough assassin could disappear in, so he might as well find the exit. And that's when her steps stop, and she spins to address him.

Of course, what luck.

And so he turns to face her, no hesitation in a single step, and bows his head a little deeper in greeting. “Of course.” He says, perfectly agreeable. Looking at her for the briefest of seconds, at the harshness of her face and the shift of her body, he calls up how he felt the first few years in courtly halls, smothered and trapped and perfectly willing to murder his way out, and grins at her, all teeth and agitation. “Forgive me Khan, but these walls are stifling, I hardly thought either of us in the mood for conversation.” And still he keeps his body forcibly loose and prowling. “Did you have need of me?”

“I am never in the mood for conversation.” Anatoly could have laughed, could have sneered. There is no fault he can not find in her, in this woman he has set to be his enemy. Never in the mood for conversation and yet she calls, forcing it. Never in the mood to speak with one so lowly as he, soldier of her mother’s people. Perhaps his hatred blinds him to her, certainly it riles him, but that is something for him to pick apart later; when he does not stand inside enemy walls before the very object of his rage.

“I hardly expected you to remember me, having never properly met.” He grins, a little sharp, a little sheepish, affecting acceptance and just the slightest touch of resignation in the tone of his voice. For all appearances it is as though he had hoped she might have heard of his exploits, of his prowess, of the raids he had succeeded in and the glory he had returned to their people. As though he had hoped she might have known of him. “I am Anatoly, and as ever my purpose is the survival of the Davke.” That he does not count her as one of their number is hardly worth saying.

She had failed her trial after all.

“I heard rumours that we were gathering once more, and that you were treating with the King.” He says, as though he had not considered doing so himself and discarded the potential as foolhardy, as dangerous to their continued survival. “I wanted to see for myself.” Somehow, he encompasses the stronghold, the monarch, and this newest plot in the shrug of his shoulders and toss of his head. A dangling gem click click clicks against his horn before stilling, drawing attention to its subtle shine and his senseless adornment.

Soft. He knows how weak metals and useless jewels look on a man, one anyone, when they can be bartered for more useful things. Knows that he used to pick targets based on how the gleam of their accessories tried to hide away the inanity of their personal lives. An easy mark, a glittering show-pony, weak.

It’s at odds with the grin on his face, the prowl of his steps. He presents himself as a tamed tiger; reluctant, but whose claws were none the less filed. Perhaps he might be reintroduced to his natural habitat, perhaps the desert might swallow him whole if they tried. Not quite dangerous (not yet).

He’s always liked to play with truths.