[Mekatra]

The man in the tub let out a laugh when he heard the exchange. "It would do you well to not let Joane hear you call her a guard. She is a knight of the realm, and fought hard for the title." He snickered and waved his hand. "Arnof, let the boy bathe. Joane will have his head if he comes back to her filthy."

The bath boy nodded and flushed a bit. "My apologies, now that I know who you are in the service of, I will not bother you again." He bowed his head slightly and pointed to an alcove. "There are soaps and scrubbing sands there, along with cloths if you need them." He sort of faded back into the background again while the man in the tub looked over his shoulder at him. He was blonde and grinning, with a scar running from his left eye all the way across to his right cheek. "You must be the thief. Word got around quickly that you're a bastard of some cousin of her majesty and Joane's expected to civilise you."

[Crystalkitsune85]

Trevor twitched internally as he was spoken about as a bastard. "I wouldn't know anything about my paternity, I just exist. And apparently, I exist to be an assassin now." he said. He shrugged at the blond male and moved to the other end of the tub and stripped down. He grabbed some soap and laid a towel nearby and just sunk into the tub.

He wasn't afraid of warm water that he could touch bottom on, but he wasn't a fan of cold water such as lakes. Large rivers didn't do much for him either. He usually avoided bathing since those were his two options being homeless. He sunk down into the water up to his chin and sat there a moment with his eyes closed. He heaved a content sigh of pleasure, from the hot water all around his dirty body.

[Mekatra]

The man's eyebrows shot up when he mentioned the word assassin. "If..." he dropped his voice down lower. "That is true, you might not want to be throwing it around so freely. Assassins with no discretion tend to find themselves in the coffin rather quickly." He shook his head and slipped out of the water. Arnof handed him a towel and he wrapped it around his hips before leaving the room without even getting dressed.

The bath boy sighed softly. "Um... you see... normally one would wash their body before getting into the water, so you don't sully it completely. Many use this tub..."

[Crystalkitsune85]

He opened his eyes "of course there has to be a "process" to all this." he said and slipped out. "I guess I contaminated the water with all my filth eh?" he said a bit bitterly. "So how does one 'bathe' here then," he asked.

He sat down next to the bath boy and let him explain the whole process of how to bathe here in the bathing room.

[Mekatra]

Arnof seemed horrified at the thought of having to teach a grown man how to bathe, but patiently explained that one usually soaped their body off and used scrubbing sand if they had a lot of heavy dirt on them like he did, and then they would rise it off with the buckets. He pointed to drains in the floor and explained that the pipes went under the castle to the sewers. "Then once you're clean you get into the water. That way the tub stays cleaner and you're not just soaking in your own filth."

[Crystalkitsune85]

"Forgive me, but when your only bathing options are rivers or lakes, you don't really get clean unless it rains..." he said "But here." he said taking a bucket of water and getting the excess dirt off with the sand and then soaping up with the water from the bucket before he turned over the bucket on himself and then rinsed off.

"Is this appropriate?" he asked Arnof. "I'll try to remember to clean off before I get into the bath," he said. He waited to get the go-ahead before he went back into the tub.

[Mekatra]

Arnof gave him a hesitant nod and then went back to his chair. "You should probably hurry though, didn't you say that Lady Joane is waiting for you?" He looked around a little nervously. "She can be a bear when angered. She made em scrub all four bath houses with a helm shining brush once because we threw a bucket of icy water over her and Lord Ermi once." He chuckled. "Was worth it though..."

[Crystalkitsune85]

Trevor huffed and finished cleaning up at much to his dismay. He got out of the tub and wrapped a towel around his waist. He got dry with the fluffy, and slightly scratchy towel. He handed it off to Arnof and got into the clothing that was handed to him when he headed out of the room.

The clothing was a bit loose but that was to be expected. Most of the clothing he acquired during his life was always too big for him because he was skinny. He gave half-hearted thanks to Arnof and then left the bathing room. He headed back to Joane's quarters and saw that there was food on a tray, on the table and all fibers in his being screamed to him to just lunge at the food and devour it. He had to exercise restraint, lest he'd get yelled at for it later. The food did smell heavenly though.

[Mekatra]

Arnof waved him off with an equally half-hearted smile. "He's not going to last a week..." he muttered to himself and started the process of draining and cleaning out the tub.

Joane wasn't even in the room when he arrived, but came in a few moments after he did. "Sit, eat, we need to talk. You're apparently a bigger idiot than I thought. Did you really think it was a good idea to go advertising the fact that you're the king's new thief and assassin? What part of that post seems like it would be something you should let everyone know about?" She rubbed her temples as she spoke, clearly irritated. "Have you absolutely no sense of discretion about you at all? You're lucky it was Ermi that heard you. Nearly anyone else would have ended in your death. You realize that, right?"

[Crystalkitsune85]

He went to the table and let his eyes eat the food first before he took some bread and and started tearing into it hungrily. "I figured it was a guard and knight bathing room, so it'd be fine. Isn't it common knowledge around the knights that I'm an assassin now?" he asked. "You're the one in charge so I'm sure not just you know about me. But it's okay I'll be seen and not heard from now on," he said and grabbed some sausage and took a bite of one and had a foodgasm in his mouth. It had been ages since he had hot food. "This is heavenly. A cat boy can get used to this...though I shouldn't since I'm already pegged to be dead within the week right?"

[Mekatra]

She sighed and shook her head in disbelief. "No, no one is supposed to know who you really are. It is not common knowledge, not among the knights... not even among the king's chief advisors is it commonly knowledge that he keeps a highly trained thief and assassin on hand to deal with his problems." She snarled softly to herself and hung her head into her hands. "Why? Why did it have to be someone with absolutely no sense of subtlety or secrecy? Why did it have to be someone with no common sense?" She looked back up and him and shook her head. "The week? You tried to get yourself killed today!"

[Crystalkitsune85]

He looked at her softly. "I'm still alive though aren't I?" he said with his head tilted. "Look, I know you don't want me here, and I don't want to be here. So let's just say we hate each other and move along. Just teach me what you need to, and then we can part ways. I"m not stupid and if I make the cut I won't be in your hair anymore. I'll try not to make you want to pull your hair out....doesn't look like you can spare too much more..." he commented as he stuffed another sausage into his mouth.

[Mekatra]

"That's my problem though... you keep insisting you're not stupid, but you also insisted you weren't a thief." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't hate you, though, I just wish I hadn't been saddled with you. You're not smart enough to keep your mouth shut when you need to. You ego outweighs your ambition, and in several cases now even your interest in staying alive. I don't think you're suited to this, to be honest. I think you're going to have some little snarky comment to make on your first mission and you'll have a knife in your back before it gets fully out of your mouth." She clucked her tongue and stood. "You don't take this seriously, so I don't want to waste my time on you."

[Crystalkitsune85]

He stood up finally after stuffing his face. "I really don't have much of a choice in the matter though, do I? It's death or this. I really rather be alive and finding something else I could be good at, then becoming a trained assassin. And no, Maybe I didn't know that me stealing could have harsh repercussions as you have mentioned in the past, but I'm not stealing because I wanted to.

At this rate, I think I much rather just be a house pet. At least that'll ensure me a place to sleep, food and nice clothing..." he muttered. He looked away from her for a brief moment. "But I'm sorry, I'll try to be less....snarky as you put it. If I'm meant to be your charge, I'll try to act as such." He said firmly.

[Mekatra]

"You're aiming low, and once again not seeing the big picture. This could be your gateway to bigger and better things. Yes, being an assassin isn't glamorous work, but don't try to tell me it is any less noble to kill the enemies of the empire than it is to steal the jewelry of the nobility. Do your job well and you'll be rewarded handsomely. The king will create a reason for you to be in the palace, which means you'll be elevated to nobility, has that not sunk in yet? You may not have had a choice in the matter, but you do have a choice now. Give up and die in the dungeons like you would have eventually anyway, or succeed and reach heights you had only previously imagined. You keep looking at this as a punishment instead of an opportunity... and I can't understand that." The knight stood up a little straighter and put a belt about her waist. "Do you think you'll spend your time in the king's employee sleeping on the floor and eating kitchen leftovers? Have an eye for tomorrow."

Joane was trying to keep her temper in check, but the longer this went on the more she was sure the noble that had "gifted" him to the king had done it as an act of sabotage. "How did you evade capture for so long if you're this bad at keeping quiet? Or were you paid to get caught?"

[Crystalkitsune85]

He honestly didn't see in his mind, being anything but a worthless peon to do the work of some nobleman. "I really had no idea that, I could get that high. I figured I'd just be like the king's dog...well...cat in this situation. Taught to go 'fetch' and if I was a good 'dog' I got to eat and sleep inside. I never even imagined that I'd be...seen as someone important. Important enough to have a title and rank." he shook his head still not believing it. "And I'm noisy during the day...when I'm sneaking around I'm quiet as a mouse. Feels like a menagerie with all this talk of animals."