Vito hummed rather tunelessly under his breath, reaching up to rub idly at his goatee with his free hand. The other was currently occupied holding open a book. This one was a recent acquisition—his contact had it on good authority that it was stolen from the Circle in Montsimmard sometime during the mage rebellion. But the river of illicit goods flows parallel to the legitimate, and like all things in Orlais, it was drawn eventually to Val Royeaux. The price was a bit dear, and two months ago he'd never have considered the purchase, but with recent work he found it to be worth the investment.
Unfortunately, it was proving somewhat difficult to crack, as the recipes were buried within dense theoretical notation that he simply had no reference for. A shame, since the formulas would provide him with several new and useful products if he could just figure them out.
"Mari, do we still have the red book, or did we lose it to the fire?" His few textbooks on potion lore all had interchangeable and pretentious names, so he tended to refer to them by the colors instead.
"Well..." Marisol paused from her work of sorting new arrivals to their shelves to crouch down behind the counter a moment. She rummaged through books stacked away for a moment before she popped back up. "We still have some of it."
The cover was less red than it was a charred black now, and clearly at least the outer half of almost all the pages had been eaten away by the blaze as well. It was far from the only thing they'd lost in the fire, and sorting through all of it to see what was salvageable was a laborious, time-consuming process that had a way of wearing on a teenage girl. More often than not Marisol had been in charge of the shop, at least since the fire and all the outside work that came after it.
She rounded her way over to him and set the tome down on the table beside his chair. "I'll let you decide if there's anything worth keeping in there."
He grimaced, pinching a dried-out page between his thumb and forefinger with as much delicacy as he could muster before turning it. There might be something of use still in here, but the constant reminders of their own rather striking poverty were more frequent since the fire. He'd never been a rich man, not even in Antiva, but he hadn't struggled this much to make ends meet since he was a boy.
Marisol had straightforwardly never had this problem. Not before she lived with him, anyway. Vito sighed softly, closing over the new book and the old alike before setting them aside.
"Would you like to go for a walk, Caro? It's warm enough, I think."
She took a glance at the work remaining to her, but it obviously didn't have much pull, as she soon threw her hands out to the sides, letting them fall back until they slapped against her legs. A shrug of sorts. "Sure. I could use some air."
Vito nodded slightly, standing from his spot and flipping the shop sign so that it read CLOSED. They'd not had a customer in hours, and frankly probably wouldn't for the rest of the day, anyhow. That was the pace of business around here, most of the time. Most of what they made came from the reliable, intermittent large orders, like the one they made up for the bordello a few blocks over.
The midafternoon light was bright overhead, weak in the manner of winter sun in the south, but though the air was crisp, it wasn't too chilly for the slightly-thicker linen he was wearing today. Vito held the door for Marisol and locked up behind them, slipping the key into his pocket and striking off in the direction of the docks. He tended to seek the sea by instinct, but if Marisol wanted to go some other way, he certainly wouldn't protest.
He just... didn't want to be inside the shop for this conversation. It was too small, the space too personal. It was where they lived and where they worked, and he didn't want this tangled up in there as well, especially if it didn't go well.
He waited a few minutes, for them to settle into a steady pace and get clear of their immediate neighborhood. All the while, Vito considered how to put his question, and found himself frustratingly unable to think of anything but the obvious. He'd never had trouble talking to people until Marisol, something he thought was probably due to her importance.
He'd never really loved anyone until Marisol either, after all. Well, no one barring his mother, but that was quite a different situation.
"Are you happy?" The question, when it finally escaped him, did so almost too quickly, the words run together in a way that conveyed his discomfort with them rather more effectively than Vito would have liked. He felt like he knew what the answer was, but also wasn't prepared to hear it. "Here, I mean. With me, and... this."
"Me?" she looked up from the street in front of her. She walked with her hands in her pockets, her posture a little lacking. Her normal gait wasn't a saunter, exactly, but Marisol had never lacked for confidence. "I'm fine. This was my idea, remember? And I knew what I was getting into." She'd been fourteen when they came here, and already she knew all about the world, and all about its ugly parts. For better or worse, she knew how to handle just about anything she ran into.
Her mother's doing, that.
But clearly she knew that didn't really answer his question. She listed sideways until their arms bumped. "I'm more worried about you. We're not living in luxury, but we had a pretty good thing going, even with all the troubles we've had getting started. I thought this was the sort of thing you wanted to be doing, but now..." She glanced back over her shoulder, perhaps checking if anyone was in earshot. "Now you're running off to fight insurgents and getting into ambushes. So unless I'm wrong, you're the one that isn't happy. Or at least not satisfied."
As usual, her insight was exceptional. Vito pursed his lips, easing an itch on the side of his nose with the roughened pad of a finger. "I thought I would be." It had certainly been Marisol's idea to leave Rialto behind, but he hadn't said no. Hadn't even considered it, once she'd shown him that the logistics of it were possible. He'd wanted something else for his life, a new start that took him far away from the person he'd been—and perhaps worse, the specter of the person he was becoming. The journey to wickedness had been an incremental one, for Vito; whether or not he'd ever reached the destination, he knew he was well on the way at one point.
This was supposed to be his chance to backtrack a little, maybe find some grey area that was comfortable enough. Do no harm, even if there was no real compensating for the things he'd done.
But perhaps he was more like Corvin than he'd initially suspected.
"The ambushes, though, and the fighting—it feels like doing the things I'm good at again, but for the right reasons this time." And there was something very alluring about that combination.
"You're good at a lot of things," she countered, "most of which have nothing to do with killing and sneaking and criminals and all of that. And if you tried more things, I'm sure you'd find that you're good at them too." They made it within sight of the docks before long; it got a little more crowded than the sparse streets of Riverbend, but they still weren't in danger of being overheard so long as they didn't shout.
"You're a healer in the biggest city in Orlais." She lowered her voice somewhat. "I know you don't like people knowing you're a mage, but it's not a crime anymore to practice outside of Circles. You could be doing so much good without needing to dodge arrows every other week. Might not be as exciting, but..."
She shrugged, relenting a little both in her expression and her tone. "I don't want to tell you what to do. And I like your new friends well enough, they're obviously good people, it's just... I worry, that's all. Just because I could get by fine on my own doesn't mean I want to." She forced a smile, the humor an attempt to cover up the grim nature of the scenario she was suggesting.
Vito sighed softly through his nose. In one way, she was right, he supposed. But he was not the kind of healer that would be put on retainer by nobility, or invited to scholarly events and inducted into the more prestigious—and profitable—circles in the profession. He was a poorly-educated foreigner who got by on scavenged textbooks decades out of date and the best his intuition could do. He didn't think that made him any lesser, but he knew he'd always be perceived that way. The most he could hope for on that front was what he had now: a very modest business that earned enough to scrape by, and helped a few of the people in his proximity.
He would cure no diseases, and save few lives. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't the kind of good he most wanted to do, either. Perhaps it was wrongheaded of him to think about the good he wanted to do, but there it was. Being a better person was still a work in progress, so perhaps he could be excused for his desire for something that was good and lucrative and interesting.
He reached out sideways and laid a hand on Marisol's head, ruffling her hair only gently, and only for about as long as he figured she'd tolerate. Admittedly it was usually a gesture reserved for younger recipients, but maybe part of him would always think of her as the girl she was when they first met: brave, smart as a whip, mature, and so very, very young.
"Perhaps you're right to." He'd certainly been closer to death in the last few weeks than he'd been for several years. He couldn't see that as an advantage, even if there was a certain excitement to it. "And I promise I'll never forget that you do. I don't know if there will be more of this in my future, but if there is, I'll be as careful as I can." He smiled himself, only slightly more naturally than she had.
He couldn't promise more than that, not at this juncture, and he certainly wasn't going to lie to her.
"Thank you," Marisol answered earnestly. She didn't seem overly disappointed with his response; perhaps she'd expected it, or simply needed to air her discomforts, make sure he acknowledged them, was aware of them. "I'm glad you're... finding purpose in it, I guess." It sounded like she was about to say enjoying it, but thought better of the word choice. "And I'm glad your friends have you watching out for them. Maker knows they need the help."
She walked in silence a few more steps, and then suddenly stopped, hesitating before she spoke again. "You don't think... the way you do things, it's sort of unique, you know? How you're self-taught and all. We've been laying low for a while now... but they're never going to stop looking for us." It looked like she wanted to say more, but then shook her head with a frustrated sigh. "Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm worrying too much, and you already said you'd be careful."
It was definitely one of the reasons he wasn't too keen to practice magic in the open, but he had at least one thing going for him in this respect. "I wasn't too open with my magic, even then. Not too many of them would know what to look for, or know one mage from another." They weren't exactly commonplace in the family, either, but her caution was understandable. "As long as I don't go announcing things to everyone I fight, it should be a minimal risk. We've done well so far, and they know I'm a self-taught alchemist, too."
"Okay." It seemed to conclude her worries, or at least push them down temporarily. There was always something or other to worry about for the two of them, and ever more since that fire. "Should we get something to eat while we're out here?" she resumed walking. "You'll need to keep up your strength if you're going to be a big hero around here."
He laughed. "If I'm ever a 'big hero' anywhere, please smack me. But I could eat, regardless. Shall we see how well the Orlesians can do Antivan food?"
Unfortunately, it was proving somewhat difficult to crack, as the recipes were buried within dense theoretical notation that he simply had no reference for. A shame, since the formulas would provide him with several new and useful products if he could just figure them out.
"Mari, do we still have the red book, or did we lose it to the fire?" His few textbooks on potion lore all had interchangeable and pretentious names, so he tended to refer to them by the colors instead.
"Well..." Marisol paused from her work of sorting new arrivals to their shelves to crouch down behind the counter a moment. She rummaged through books stacked away for a moment before she popped back up. "We still have some of it."
The cover was less red than it was a charred black now, and clearly at least the outer half of almost all the pages had been eaten away by the blaze as well. It was far from the only thing they'd lost in the fire, and sorting through all of it to see what was salvageable was a laborious, time-consuming process that had a way of wearing on a teenage girl. More often than not Marisol had been in charge of the shop, at least since the fire and all the outside work that came after it.
She rounded her way over to him and set the tome down on the table beside his chair. "I'll let you decide if there's anything worth keeping in there."
He grimaced, pinching a dried-out page between his thumb and forefinger with as much delicacy as he could muster before turning it. There might be something of use still in here, but the constant reminders of their own rather striking poverty were more frequent since the fire. He'd never been a rich man, not even in Antiva, but he hadn't struggled this much to make ends meet since he was a boy.
Marisol had straightforwardly never had this problem. Not before she lived with him, anyway. Vito sighed softly, closing over the new book and the old alike before setting them aside.
"Would you like to go for a walk, Caro? It's warm enough, I think."
She took a glance at the work remaining to her, but it obviously didn't have much pull, as she soon threw her hands out to the sides, letting them fall back until they slapped against her legs. A shrug of sorts. "Sure. I could use some air."
Vito nodded slightly, standing from his spot and flipping the shop sign so that it read CLOSED. They'd not had a customer in hours, and frankly probably wouldn't for the rest of the day, anyhow. That was the pace of business around here, most of the time. Most of what they made came from the reliable, intermittent large orders, like the one they made up for the bordello a few blocks over.
The midafternoon light was bright overhead, weak in the manner of winter sun in the south, but though the air was crisp, it wasn't too chilly for the slightly-thicker linen he was wearing today. Vito held the door for Marisol and locked up behind them, slipping the key into his pocket and striking off in the direction of the docks. He tended to seek the sea by instinct, but if Marisol wanted to go some other way, he certainly wouldn't protest.
He just... didn't want to be inside the shop for this conversation. It was too small, the space too personal. It was where they lived and where they worked, and he didn't want this tangled up in there as well, especially if it didn't go well.
He waited a few minutes, for them to settle into a steady pace and get clear of their immediate neighborhood. All the while, Vito considered how to put his question, and found himself frustratingly unable to think of anything but the obvious. He'd never had trouble talking to people until Marisol, something he thought was probably due to her importance.
He'd never really loved anyone until Marisol either, after all. Well, no one barring his mother, but that was quite a different situation.
"Are you happy?" The question, when it finally escaped him, did so almost too quickly, the words run together in a way that conveyed his discomfort with them rather more effectively than Vito would have liked. He felt like he knew what the answer was, but also wasn't prepared to hear it. "Here, I mean. With me, and... this."
"Me?" she looked up from the street in front of her. She walked with her hands in her pockets, her posture a little lacking. Her normal gait wasn't a saunter, exactly, but Marisol had never lacked for confidence. "I'm fine. This was my idea, remember? And I knew what I was getting into." She'd been fourteen when they came here, and already she knew all about the world, and all about its ugly parts. For better or worse, she knew how to handle just about anything she ran into.
Her mother's doing, that.
But clearly she knew that didn't really answer his question. She listed sideways until their arms bumped. "I'm more worried about you. We're not living in luxury, but we had a pretty good thing going, even with all the troubles we've had getting started. I thought this was the sort of thing you wanted to be doing, but now..." She glanced back over her shoulder, perhaps checking if anyone was in earshot. "Now you're running off to fight insurgents and getting into ambushes. So unless I'm wrong, you're the one that isn't happy. Or at least not satisfied."
As usual, her insight was exceptional. Vito pursed his lips, easing an itch on the side of his nose with the roughened pad of a finger. "I thought I would be." It had certainly been Marisol's idea to leave Rialto behind, but he hadn't said no. Hadn't even considered it, once she'd shown him that the logistics of it were possible. He'd wanted something else for his life, a new start that took him far away from the person he'd been—and perhaps worse, the specter of the person he was becoming. The journey to wickedness had been an incremental one, for Vito; whether or not he'd ever reached the destination, he knew he was well on the way at one point.
This was supposed to be his chance to backtrack a little, maybe find some grey area that was comfortable enough. Do no harm, even if there was no real compensating for the things he'd done.
But perhaps he was more like Corvin than he'd initially suspected.
"The ambushes, though, and the fighting—it feels like doing the things I'm good at again, but for the right reasons this time." And there was something very alluring about that combination.
"You're good at a lot of things," she countered, "most of which have nothing to do with killing and sneaking and criminals and all of that. And if you tried more things, I'm sure you'd find that you're good at them too." They made it within sight of the docks before long; it got a little more crowded than the sparse streets of Riverbend, but they still weren't in danger of being overheard so long as they didn't shout.
"You're a healer in the biggest city in Orlais." She lowered her voice somewhat. "I know you don't like people knowing you're a mage, but it's not a crime anymore to practice outside of Circles. You could be doing so much good without needing to dodge arrows every other week. Might not be as exciting, but..."
She shrugged, relenting a little both in her expression and her tone. "I don't want to tell you what to do. And I like your new friends well enough, they're obviously good people, it's just... I worry, that's all. Just because I could get by fine on my own doesn't mean I want to." She forced a smile, the humor an attempt to cover up the grim nature of the scenario she was suggesting.
Vito sighed softly through his nose. In one way, she was right, he supposed. But he was not the kind of healer that would be put on retainer by nobility, or invited to scholarly events and inducted into the more prestigious—and profitable—circles in the profession. He was a poorly-educated foreigner who got by on scavenged textbooks decades out of date and the best his intuition could do. He didn't think that made him any lesser, but he knew he'd always be perceived that way. The most he could hope for on that front was what he had now: a very modest business that earned enough to scrape by, and helped a few of the people in his proximity.
He would cure no diseases, and save few lives. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't the kind of good he most wanted to do, either. Perhaps it was wrongheaded of him to think about the good he wanted to do, but there it was. Being a better person was still a work in progress, so perhaps he could be excused for his desire for something that was good and lucrative and interesting.
He reached out sideways and laid a hand on Marisol's head, ruffling her hair only gently, and only for about as long as he figured she'd tolerate. Admittedly it was usually a gesture reserved for younger recipients, but maybe part of him would always think of her as the girl she was when they first met: brave, smart as a whip, mature, and so very, very young.
"Perhaps you're right to." He'd certainly been closer to death in the last few weeks than he'd been for several years. He couldn't see that as an advantage, even if there was a certain excitement to it. "And I promise I'll never forget that you do. I don't know if there will be more of this in my future, but if there is, I'll be as careful as I can." He smiled himself, only slightly more naturally than she had.
He couldn't promise more than that, not at this juncture, and he certainly wasn't going to lie to her.
"Thank you," Marisol answered earnestly. She didn't seem overly disappointed with his response; perhaps she'd expected it, or simply needed to air her discomforts, make sure he acknowledged them, was aware of them. "I'm glad you're... finding purpose in it, I guess." It sounded like she was about to say enjoying it, but thought better of the word choice. "And I'm glad your friends have you watching out for them. Maker knows they need the help."
She walked in silence a few more steps, and then suddenly stopped, hesitating before she spoke again. "You don't think... the way you do things, it's sort of unique, you know? How you're self-taught and all. We've been laying low for a while now... but they're never going to stop looking for us." It looked like she wanted to say more, but then shook her head with a frustrated sigh. "Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm worrying too much, and you already said you'd be careful."
It was definitely one of the reasons he wasn't too keen to practice magic in the open, but he had at least one thing going for him in this respect. "I wasn't too open with my magic, even then. Not too many of them would know what to look for, or know one mage from another." They weren't exactly commonplace in the family, either, but her caution was understandable. "As long as I don't go announcing things to everyone I fight, it should be a minimal risk. We've done well so far, and they know I'm a self-taught alchemist, too."
"Okay." It seemed to conclude her worries, or at least push them down temporarily. There was always something or other to worry about for the two of them, and ever more since that fire. "Should we get something to eat while we're out here?" she resumed walking. "You'll need to keep up your strength if you're going to be a big hero around here."
He laughed. "If I'm ever a 'big hero' anywhere, please smack me. But I could eat, regardless. Shall we see how well the Orlesians can do Antivan food?"