"Balesi Baine?" Veriss finally spoke. He had an eyebrow raised, and his face appeared to be saying 'I'm worried about your sanity', but really it was saying 'what the fuck do you think you are doing in a skirt and guns?'.
"Veriss. Councilmen." She gave a low curtsy, her skirt bunching up awkwardly because of the low weight of the guns.
Veriss gave a nervous laugh. "What do you think you are doing?"
She stood back up and smiled. "I suppose you could consider this my resignation from the Balesi of Archein. I quit. I don't want to be a Balesi any longer."
One of the men laughed, assuming it must be a joke. Something Lane talked her into, no doubt, just to get the Council worried about what she might do again. "You can't quit!" he guffawed, "the position is for life!"
Shrugging nonchalantly she let her arms fall back down to her sides easily. "You told me I couldn't be a Balesi in the first place, and I did that, so I guess I can quit being a Balesi too."
The Council was speechless. They looked at each other, until another man spoke, "but no one's ever quit being a Balesi before."
"Well," she said with a smile, "there's a first for everything. You can consider this your first." She winked and the man spluttered in his seat, unable to come up with anything else to say.
Veriss, however, had started to grin coldly. "So, that's it; you quit. After everything you've done to get your guns?" He raised an eyebrow at her and she read his face quite well.
"Indeed." She smiled back without the cold, hard look in her eyes that usually joined one of her serpentine smiles.
He was stunned. What new trick was this? Was she trying to get them to beg her back? "And what about Robert? What do we say about him?"
She shrugged, "I guess you should say he quit."
Veriss pounded a fist on the table. "We can't just go around telling the town that he quit!"
"Then I suggest you make something up. You're very good at lying; not the best I've ever come across, but you're fair good liars." She smiled again, "it wouldn't be the first time now would it?"
"What about you?" another man asked, "What do you propose to do now that you've quit, as you put it? Surely you won't come back to Archein as Rebecca."
Looking down at her unbound chest, her skirt, and the curls that fell down into her vision she smiled as she moved her eyes back to them. "I think I already have."
"But you are wearing your guns!" Veriss roared.
"Oh," she said as if mildly surprised, "so I am." Deftly undoing the straps, she grabbed the guns and holsters in each hand and looked at them. "What does one do with guns they have no one to pass on to? Surely you have a vault or collection or something? Or perhaps I should keep them, as a memento of my Balesi days?"
Veriss's face had turned purple with rage. "A memento! I'll give you a memento you fucking bitch!" He pulled his gun, but he was old and fat and Rebecca was quicker. She dropped her left holster, the gun still in her hand and fired, catching Veriss in the right shoulder and making him drop his own gun.
She frowned down at her hand, "See? I was never a very good shot to begin with. Can't aim for the heart worth a damn." Shaking her head to herself in disappointment, she bent down and picked the holster back up. "I guess I'll just keep it as a memento then."
Everyone aside from Veriss watched her walk away, and then they turned to their screaming, bleeding head-councilman. They were all too stunned to do anything but watch him writhe on the floor in pain for a moment, until one of them recovered his wits and went for a medic.