Katja held back judgement, maintaining her neutral poise as the woman chattered. She did not return the loner's smile, just continued to regard her with cool appraisal. "Your family seems to be quite... prolific," she said instead to Surreal's words. There was little else that could be said about them without giving offense, after all. She had seen little to impress her in what she had observed of Sonticus and Fiori.
Her eyes drifted shut as Surreal awkwardly segued into an at a trade. "We manage well enough," she murmured neutrally, a faint distaste in the back of her throat that the woman would think Yfir so weak as to struggle in the north. There was much to be found there, moose and caribou and the mighty musk oxen there to be feasted upon for a wolf strong enough to take them, and a clever wolf could find smaller game anywhere. Still, she held her peace until Surreal ceased to speak, eyes slowly opening once again to fix icy silver upon her.
"No," she said simply, calmly. But perhaps she would need elaboration to understand, as she seemed to understand so little about who Katja was. For a wolf to be so frightened of spilling blood to seek to bribe a pack to not attack them? She was as foolish as her kin Arian. "Even were you a legitimate pack, no. We do not barter over raids. Refraining from battle is not a trade good, nor a service, it is dishonest and dishonorable. No, if we have need of your hunting or your herbs we will take for ourselves." Soft-bellied Alacratian wolves - did they really think a trade agreement would mean peace? That letting wolves have their way with a pack's resources would convince them to not take more, and more, and more until the pack had fallen apart in sickness and starvation? Fools to think that showing how weak you were would convince someone to leave you alone.
"Why did you seek Hellstrom's destruction, Adravendi?" she added with studied disinterest. A shot in the dark, in a voice cold as steel being drawn from a sheath. Free of direct hostility, but a pointed query none the less. "Why seek to risk the lives of your allies in a battle you did not take part in? Did Hellstrom not take your trade of peace? Or did you not extend it to them at all?" She did not care about Hellstrom; Hellstrom was foolish and weak, but more foolish to be so arrogant as to think they could take with no consequence. No, she did not care about Hellstrom. But Surreal Adravendi cared about Hellstrom, and it would do her well to know why.
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