The Lodge was pleasantly quiet and cool, a low hubbub coursing through the wide space as Aloy and Ikrie stepped through the doorway. Aloy always found it a pleasant break from the city's bustle. Not that it wasn't impressive in itself. It couldn't be otherwise, with a Thunderjaw carcass mounted at the centre of the room.

That stopped Ikrie in her tracks, gawping in a way that would almost certainly mark her as a rank outsider. But she clearly couldn't help it – any more than Aloy had when she first entered, she reminded herself. "How?" she asked Aloy, gesturing bewilderedly at the towering Machine.

"With several carts," Aloy said.

Then a new voice broke in. "And a good few days of back-breaking labour for the slaves who then served the Lodge, while the Sunhawk stalked around and berated them for not handling his prize better."

Aloy caught Ikrie's questioning look and gave her a reassuring smile before she turned. Talanah, armoured in the same manner as Aloy, approached them.

"Sunhawk?" Ikrie started, hesitantly.

Talanah shot Aloy an amused look and smiled. "Not quite so formal as that. Talanah Khane Padish at your service." She gave Ikrie that kind of look that didn't seem to scrutinise, and turned to Aloy. "Won't you introduce me?"

Aloy grinned and gestured. "Ikrie of the Banuk, lately of the Cut."

"Ah, another from the frozen wilds." Her eyes swept quickly over Ikrie's Blazon ensemble. "My, you've adapted to the climate rather quicker than your countryman." She nodded to a broad-shouldered Banuk man who, unlike Ikrie, was still wearing his native gear. "I guess you're less of a traditionalist than Ardik, not least if you're ranging with Aloy."

Aloy smiled, and put her arm around Ikrie's shoulders. "Ikrie's a rather unique Banuk, and one of the best friends I've found anywhere. Not to mention a damn good hunter."

Ikrie shuffled awkwardly, a bashful expression on her face. "I hope good enough to find a place here. If you'll have me in the first place," she haltingly added.

"Oh, fear not. You're exactly the sort of person I'd like to welcome in," Talanah said. "I can't help noting what looks like a sack of trophies. But come, grab a drink with me for now. Nectarwine as usual, Aloy?"

"Yes please. Ikrie, can I tempt you?"

"I could hardly say no," Ikrie murmured, her eyes still on everything around them.

Talanah led them to a small table and three cups were brought out for them – polished brass, the very best for the Sunhawk. Aloy took a sip of her drink; as with the food, she savoured the rich produce of the Sundom. To her relief, Ikrie seemed to like it too.

"How do you like the Sundom, Ikrie?" Talanah asked.

Ikrie smiled. "Too early to tell, but so far I like the look of the Lodge. Seems a good place to me, all the more so if a woman like you is in charge. Admittedly I took the liberty of finding a Hawk to sponsor me."

"And you went and got your trophies in advance. A woman of action." She leaned forward a little. "I approve."

"The Banuk ways don't allow for words. You need deeds to get anything done. Just ask Aloy how she became Chieftain of a Werak."

"I beg your pardon?" It came out as a yelp, and a few heads turned in their direction. "Aloy, I need that story this very moment."

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

That story then ran for a good hour, peppered with interjections from both Ikrie and Talanah – each of them had questions, though at other points Ikrie piped up to corroborate Aloy's tale. At points, she also went to her pack, picking out a trophy from one of the new breeds of Machine they'd fought out there. Talanah made noises about possibly coming with them if they ever ventured back.

"And then, when you'd completed your search, you just handed the title back to Aratak?"

"Absolutely. No way I'm getting tied down to one place, and certainly not one that cold. I mean, the best company I found in the Cut is still with me now."

Ikrie flashed a bright smile of her own, before a nervous look came into her eyes. "Uh, not to lower the tone, but where can I… Aloy tells me you have them in doors…"

"The toilet?" Talanah gave a small smile and pointed fractionally to a door in the corner. "That way, Ikrie. You'll see the markers for women and men."

"Thanks," Ikrie breathed. "I've seen away a lot more water than I usually do today." With that, she slipped away and made hastily for the door in question.

Talanah just about suppressed a giggle. "Culture shock?"

Aloy thought about it, and shrugged. "Not as much as I expected. Then again, she's pretty rootless. She doesn't really fit anywhere back in her homeland, and I can relate to that."

"And she's pretty." Talanah's eyebrows rose cheekily, which was when Aloy knew that her burning cheeks had given her away. "Hey, there's no shame in that. She is very pretty, and I'm sure she's more than that if you're hunting with her."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Aloy said warily as she reached for her cup.

"I think you know that. You've always been something of a lone hunter." Talanah leaned back, gesturing with her own cup as she regarded Aloy. Was that amusement in her eyes? "Even when we handled the Glinthawks at Lone Light, I knew you'd be most comfortable being solitary."

"Fair points, all," Aloy conceded. She sighed. "You really have rumbled me. I ran across Ikrie in a Banuk trial of endurance."

"Which you disrupted." Aloy gave Talanah a hard look, and the Sunhawk spread her arms with a broad grin. "Come on, Aloy, it's you! What else should I have expected?"

Aloy sighed. "Guilty as charged. And I suppose you'll want to know how?"

"I can guess. Ikrie was in trouble-"

"She wasn't," Aloy interrupted. "At least, she wasn't directly. She fights so damn well, Talanah… but she'd gone with a companion, a friend. Mailen. And Mailen took a fall somewhere up on this glacier and broke her leg. Fell into a fever."

Talanah took a fruit from a silver bowl on their table. "Good thing she had a friend to look after her."

"Ah, but there's the thing. The trial is that you can't seek or even accept from another during the trial. You go together, but on the glacier you fight on your own. Mailen wanted the initiation so badly she'd drive Ikrie away. She was willing to die rather than betray the spirit of the text."

"Now I think I begin to see how much you and Ikrie had in common," Talanah mused. "Let me see if I can work out the rest. You found Ikrie beset by Machines and helped her destroy you. She told you all of this and you both agreed that a life mattered more than the rules, so you went with her and fought your way to Mailen's side. At this point, however, I'm sensing a but." She gestured for Aloy to continue.

"You're not wrong. Ikrie splinted Mailen's leg, but of course Mailen couldn't thank her for it. Ikrie had violated the rules and destroyed, so she thought, any hope of her joining the Werak. Which was where I came in again, because Ikrie's solution was to never go back herself. So I returned to the hunters and told them that their second initiate was dead, lost on the ice."

"A hell of a sacrifice."

"Hell is right." Aloy tried and failed to keep the emotion from her face. "She said at the time that she'd always wanted to be an 'ice ghost', but I saw how much it hurt her that night. There was no mistaking it. So I sought her out a while after that, up at the hunting ground, and we ranged together."

"And you decided that you liked looking at those pretty blue eyes," Talanah prodded.

"No – well, yes. Partly that," Aloy conceded. "But the bigger thing is that I know that pain of hers. I had it as well when Rost left me, because I was to cease being Outcast. Couldn't leave Ikrie to stew in that hurt, not alone in the cold."

"So you took an ice ghost, and got a snow thrush." Talanah looked up and smiled. "Speaking of whom…"

Ikrie rejoined them, slipping back into her seat.

"Trust that wasn't too strange?" Aloy asked, mindful that one of the reasons that traditionalist Banuk thought the Carja decadent was their insistence on keeping matters of hygiene indoors, if they could help it.

"Are you kidding?" Ikrie responded, all but bouncing in her seat. "I can actually still feel my-" She caught herself. "Too much information. Sorry. Not used to refined Carja company. It made a nice change from home, is all."

Talanah's eyebrows looked to be at risk of flying away entirely before she resumed her usual reserved expression.

"I think I see how you two came to fit so well together. Which is just as well, because I have a contract for you, Aloy, and for Ikrie here."

"A challenging one?" Aloy asked.

"There are rarely any other kinds, but absolutely in this case. Your Thrush needs a chance to prove herself, my fiery little Hawk. And I got a contract just this morning which needs a smart, resourceful hunter or two." She caught the curiosity in their faces and leaned forward conspiratorially. "Ever heard of a Clawstrider, Ikrie?"