the wine of friendship

"Before. Heidi looked after me when it happened, actually. It's...kind of what led to us getting more serious, then having to get married when her dad found out." Adam idly traced a finger down from his face now, over his jaw and neck, just a little into the covered area under his shirt. He supposed if he were anyone else he'd be fascinated by such prominent marks too. Adam's opinion of Wessex was a quiet respect, though he thought they'd likely never get on. "You're not a fan, then?" He asked with an amusement tilt to his lips, sipping. "She seems like she'd get shit done, but like that shit would only be shit she wants done." Jigano seemed like someone who would actually try to be a good King, as much as such a thing was possible; he probably didn't like someone as blunt as Wessex being in charge. He could agree to the remedied toast. "Yeah. I'm sure she's doing fine...you leave anyone important behind?" A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

"Ah, a swordpoint wedding?" he asked with a knowing grin. It wasn't hard to imagine Adam despoiling maidens fair... but then, Heidi sounded like she might have done some despoiling of her own, when it came to the rogue. "Are they from an animal's claws?" A line of five like that could have come from clawed fingers, too, though he didn't know what sort of beasts - two-legged or otherwise - walked Adam's world.

He snorted at Adam's sly question, taking a moment to savor his cider as thoughts clashed and swirled in his head. He was glad he had when Adam spoke again, and Jigano nodded soberly. "She's Queen of the Ascended," he said with a shrug. "She'll help out everyone else as a side-effect of that... but her loyalties are to her goddess first, her race a close second, and everyone else? A very distant third, I'd say. And she's shit at any attempt at actual diplomacy or negotiations." He held back the lingering anger with help from the booze warming and relaxing him from within, and the shift to talking about lost loved ones quenched it before it could ruin an otherwise-enjoyable evening.

"Mmm. My parents died several years back, and I didn't have any other blood family that I knew of. But... yes. Some close friends who I walked away from in an attempt to punish myself, without realizing how much I was punishing them as well." He sighed, swirling the liquid in his bottle before taking a longer drink. "Isuma is named after one of them. Hiraku was another. Val. Casandalee..." He trailed off with a sigh, raising another toast to them before turning his attention back to Adam. "What of you? Any good friends or companions on the roads you traveled? Brothers in arms, or in trouble?"

Adam snorted, shaking his head. "No, not really. We'd just been together for a few years when she decided to go back to her family and as a show of really wanting to get back into all the posh noble shit, she asked me to marry her so she'd be more honourable for them. Y'know, when her parents found out she'd been dating some random highwayman who'd been with - gasp - men! too, as well as slept with her....well, I had to change into a little Lord real fast to be acceptable. Problem is, I'm not made out for fancy dinners and dances and all that stupid snob crap." This was an oversimplification of a much greater and more traumatic experience, time spent being laughed at as a poor freak in the houses of people with opportunities he had never dreamed of...but he wasn't going to get into all that. At least not only this many drinks in. Same for his scars. "Nope, not an animal. You can keep guessing, but I promise you you aren't gonna get it and I'm not telling." He smirked and tapped his nose, but there was an uncomfortable, sickly feeling spreading through his chest at the thought of speaking about the scars. "So...what is it the Queen's done for the Ascended, you reckon?" Adam asked, genuinely curious; he did not know much about their wants and needs. As for her diplomatic skills he could only laugh and nod. Wessex was intimidating, intelligent, but charismatic? Not particularly. Jigano listing off the names of his friends was a pretty depressing sight. Adam supposed that every Outlander probably had a good few people left behind in their old worlds; people they would likely never see again. "What's so special about Isuma she gets something named after her?" He asked, gently prompting the bard to speak more about his companions. As for himself... "It's...kinda silly, but the best friend I ever actually had was one of the city guards near where I used to hang out. She...arrested me a lot. I nearly shot her once. But there was something...I dunno, we just understood each other. We liked each other, despite it all. ...I hope she's okay. Oh, what the fuck am I saying, of course Mallorie's okay - she was the toughest goddamn person I'd ever known." A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

Jigano listened to the tale of Adam's marriage curiously, tilting his head to the side in foxlike confusion at why the highwayman's being with men would cause issues, but keeping quiet. Remi had mentioned something similar on his world before, so perhaps it was just an oddity of other realms on occasion. "It's a shame they couldn't just accept you for who you are... but if wishes were fishes, there'd be no more room in the sea," he finished with a wry smile. Which didn't stop him from trying to coax out a little more information about the scars that marked Adam so visibly and uniquely.

The hard line about 'not telling' though was enough to get him to leave the subject well enough alone, and he grinned at the other man. "Ah well, it was worth a try."

Talk of the Ascended tended to make Jigano unhappy these days, but he shrugged at Adam's question about Wessex. "Spun things so that people weren't upset at the Ascended for invading the Greatwood against the Fae's direct ban on them so they could desecrate their sacred site and kill its defenders, getting everyone banned from the Greatwood in turn so it wasn't just the Ascended who were singled out, and killing Rae's servant in the Spire to allow the Ascended to pass through that portal, when the other races could do so without harm. The sort of thing that would have gotten people pretty riled up in the past," Jigano said with a sigh. "But while she was Queen she used her position and power to make it so that the Ascended involved faced no real consequences of their actions." Any other ruler would have called out the invasion of the Greatwood and tried to imprison or punish those involved, both to maintain order within the Grounds and to try and rebuild goodwill with the Fae, but Wessex had been imperious and haughty about ensuring that if the Ascended were to be punished, then everyone would be, and that their friends among the Fae would be barred from the barrierlands.

He smiled wistfully at the question about Isuma, turning to look at her namesake and coffee near the fire. "She was the only one of her kind on my world. Unique... and alone. She was also the first to stand by my side when I realized that my friends were slipping into shadow... becoming like the very thing we were fighting to overcome. She was my right hand, my confidante, my conscience... but she never abandoned me." No, he had been the one to walk away from her, taking the blame onto his own shoulders and unable to face her in the end, even though she had agreed that what they had to do was necessary for the sake of their land and their world.

His lips curved up in a returning smile as Adam spoke of his own friendship, however unorthodox it was. "Ah, yes. 'Friends may betray you, but you always know where you stand with an old enemy,'" he quoted wryly. "I hope you can find another friend like that here... or even some better ones. You seem to get on well with Amalia?" It was a question as much as a comment, his tone urging Adam to fill in some of the blanks there.

Adam smiled, amused at Jigano's folksy phrase and at the idea that the rich nobles he'd known back home could have ever been accepting. "It's part of the gig of being a rich cunt. You gotta only accept people you can use or who have a good reputation. I ain't no use to no Lord and my reputation was...good with the wrong people. There was never a chance." He was glad Jigano seemed to accept that it was a red line, at least for the moment, to be asked about his scars. Maybe later, maybe drunker, but not right now. When Jigano actually listed it all out, Adam supposed Wessex did sound pretty bad. Never having really been one to pay attention to politics, he hadn't really put it all together in the way the bard had. "So...what kinda punishment do you think the Ascended should get, then?" He asked, genuinely curious: he'd always felt a little lost when it came to matters of justice and law, given he was always working on the other side of it. "She sounds cool. Sounds like it was a tough time, though." 'Slipping into shadow' was a hell of a dark phrase. Adam didn't ask anything else of it for the time being, figuring if he didn't want his angsty past brought up, Jigano might not want his aired out either. He smiled fondly at Jigano's words on Mallorie, taking a drink. When the conversation turned to Amalia though, his smile became a grin and he nodded. "Yeah. She's great. I didn't think we'd get on at first but...somehow it just works." A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

"Fuck 'em," Jigano said succinctly to Adam's previous rich and snotty former-peers, raising his bottle and then frowning slightly at how light it was. He finished it off and reached for the next bottle in Adam's little gift basket, popping the cork with a deft twist and pull. The past had its shadows, both recent and distant, but for the moment there was decent drinks, good company, and no looming catastrophe (if you didn't count all the preparations for Fiat Lux that needed to be done in the next few days - but no one would die if they weren't quite finished in time, unlike LongNight). Jigano was content to relax and not press with uncomfortable questions after the source of those scars, especially since they didn't come from a threat that could hurt anyone on Caido now.

The turn to Wessex and the Ascended soured the bard's mood somewhat, and he raised a brow at the question. "Well, they primarily hurt the Fae, so I'd say they should face Fae justive. Since the Fae seem content with banning them from the Greatwood I am... perhaps not content with their judgment, but I can respect it," he said slowly. "For killing Rae's guardian - a thinking, intelligent creature capable of communicating - I would argue imprisonment for a time," he added, thoughtful. "But... again, the creature's spirit called to us shortly after and offered forgiveness for what had been done to it." He shrugged. "And imprisoning Wessex is likely impossible at this point anyways, since she pulled that little teleporting stunt at the meeting." That didn't mean there weren't other possibilities, but it did make it significantly more difficult to punish her even temporarily for any past or future transgression. It would likely be all or nothing, now... and if he knew the Grounders, that meant 'nothing.'

Isuma was a more welcome memory, the Kasathan woman holding a place of fond affection and respect in Jigano's thoughts. He nodded simply at Adam's opinion of a tough time, but let the subject lapse for many of the same reasons. Besides, Amalia was just as good a topic, and one they could both share as he steered the conversation in that direction, and he grinned back at the dark-haired man. "She is great," he agreed happily. "And I suppose the same could be said for us?" His teasing was light as he toasted Adam once more, sipping more slowly now that he was on his second cider.

Adam widened his eyes at Jigano's rather bold swear, his mouth caught in a delighted grin as if he had caught a parent saying a naughty word. He was sure he'd heard the bard swear before, but the man seemed so above that sort of thing. Suppressing a giggle he drunk the rest of his own bottle and reached for another, pulling out the cork with his teeth. He listened carefully to Jigano's ideas of punishment. The Fae matter seemed fair enough and honestly Adam didn't know enough to question it. He'd only been in the Greatwood a handful of times and had never even met one of it's people. As for the guardian though, he'd actually been there. "Seems a bit unfair to punish all of 'em for just something that Wessex did. Or do you just mean to get Wessex to pay for that? Though, as you said, there was that whole forgiving...thing. I felt kinda bad, actually. Taking the scale it gave us. S'not like I did anything." This was not the kind of thing Adam commonly admitted, but his guard was down. He blinked for a moment at Jigano's question, thinking whoa, not best friends, yet, bud. After that though he realised Jigano likely meant their unlikely relationship at all and he smiled, returned the toast. "Yeah. Normally at home I didn't talk to anyone that had a...book sorta job. They usually didn't like me or thought I was dumb cos I couldn't read. I just never had a chance to learn. I didn't have a tutor or whatever the fuck they did; I grew up in a brothel. You learn a lotta skills there, but...book-learning wasn't one of them." A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

Jigano had to admit - he enjoyed overturning expectations from time to time. Though he often presented himself as cultured and refined, and that was how he wanted to be seen, he was still the son of a smith in a land ruled by barbarian tribes. As a bard it was his livelihood to blend in with the seediest of taverns and the table at a king's court, and when he had traveled across Numeria he had presented himself accordingly depending on where he wished to spend the night. With the barrier and then the divine storms there had been little opportunity to continue his nomadic ways, and he had settled into one way of presenting himself. His desire to explore was still strong, but now that Rory was in his life his wandering was behind him.

"Just Wessex," Jigano agreed wryly. "Though I felt bad as well, for not being able to save the creature from her." A strange and uncomfortable situation, considering it had thanked her for freeing it from its duty.

He didn't expect Adam to pause quite as long as he did, but the other man quickly recovered before the silence could get too awkward. "Two of my traveling companions when I was younger were illiterate," he explained wryly. "Rizz later did learn to read, but Yohgel never did. Written language was anethema to their people; they passed everything down in an oral tradition. Rizz was one of the smartest people I knew, even before he learned to read," Jigano added with a shrug. "So it doesn't matter much to me. Though... even in a brothel learning to keep the books would be a good skill." He chuckled, considering how tight the account books could be in such a place.

"Yeeeaahhh, sorry I kind of...uh...left. What was on the other side of the portal wasn't even worth seeing, honestly. Just cold and there was some dickhead who was Loren's long lost brother or something?" Adam shrugged and shook his head, having no real patience for the various weird twists and turns of the Launceleyn family tale. "I hope next time we get to find some new mystical place, its a hot beach or something." It was comforting, in a way, to hear Jigano speak fondly of his friends with the same lack of reading skill as Adam. In his home it had always been a thing of shame, something he had hidden deeply. Though it seemed Jigano did not have much experience of brothels (or at least not the seedy ones Adam had come from). "Well. If you're the owner, you wanna be able to read the books, but it's great if your staff or whoever lives with them can't. Then they don't know to correct you when you start fucking up the numbers to stiff them." He took a long drink then smiled, looking to the fire and letting his mind wander. "Y'know, when I started working there when I was old enough...you'd be surprised how many people go to them cos they're just really fucking lonely and want someone to hang out with. I learnt more about the world in those bedrooms than any of the nobles did with their tutors or whatever." A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

Given that Adam had seemed entirely willing and eager to shoot the snake, Jigano waved off the apology with a chuckle. "I understand the desire to explore. I would have been through the portal as well if I hadn't been concerned about Wessex trying to kill the snake as soon as we left. Then again, running into a Launceleyn first-thing on the other side... that would put a giant damper on things," he agreed with feeling, wrinkling his nose at mention of the family. "Loren's managed to rise above them, but I wish the landshark had gotten Zariah instead of Edy. Gods least fortunate, that would have solved a lot of problems." And saved his friend as well, no small consideration.

Adam was right that Jigano's skill with brothels was limited, to say the least. He knew about them more in the abstract than from practical experience, so when the other man explained the reasoning behind keeping the staff in the dark the bard wrinkled his nose in distaste at the trickery of it, but nodded in understanding. "That makes sense. Terrible sense. But it does explain things." About brothels in general, and Adam in particular - or at least, why he had never learned to read. "How are you with sums?" he asked after a moment's pause to let the information percolate through the cider. "Do you want lessons in maths, too?" Nothing excessively complicated, but it seemed like the sort of thing that could come in handy in Adam's line of... not-work. If he did such things. Which he definitely didn't.

"You were a whore?" The question wasn't really surprised, not given Adam's fashion sense and the history he had just shared. Still, he could have been a stableboy for the brothel, or a servant of wine and drinks, or even one who cleaned rooms, rather than one who served between the sheets. "How long did you stay there?"

"Ugh, yeah." Adam agreed, probably with far more feeling than Jigano expected; "Zariah can go fuck herself." He took a long swig of his drink that was somehow angry. At least Jigano wasn't mad at him for running ahead into Halo...he'd honestly been completely out of his depth in regards to the morality of killing or not killing the snake guardian and was glad he'd been out of the situation too. Most people didn't consider ways to cheat or lie until they were in the position to do so, but Adam had unfortunately both been the victim and the perpetrator of many such schemes."I'm actually pretty good at numbers. I can't...write them down right all the time, but I've always been able to add up and all that shit. It's a lot easier than just...words, because there's real amounts and answers and stuff." It was hard to explain, but he'd always found that numbers had made sense in his head in a way that the written word never had. He gave out a snort of laughter at Jigano's question: had he really not guessed, with Adam's open-to-his-navel shirt and knee length boots? "Well, yeah. I got to sixteen and I was expected to earn my keep. I stayed til I was about 19, but then I got the scars and uh...they didn't want me there anymore. After that I got new work, anyway." With a smirk he leaned in a little closer. "You got any questions about it?" A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

"With something rusty," Jigano added to Adam's 'toast,' with equal feeling. It hurt even more to think that Edy would have taken the 'curse' as a friendly suggestion - and likely asked for company in the bargain. She had been a far better Launceleyn than Zariah could dream of being. Gods least fortunate, but he missed his friend most when he was drinking. He regretted never giving her the chance to get him drunk now, almost as much as he regretted not apologizing to her over the whole kingship mess.

"We can add in some number practice if you want," Jigano offered after another long drink. "Getting them down in the right order. I think that's fairly common - mixing them up when they're written down," he clarified. It would be fairly easy to add it into their writing lessons alongside the reading ones, just a few minutes at the end to work on getting the numbers down in the order Adam wanted, instead of swapping them around.

"Questions about the scars and the new work, yes," Jigano agreed, smirking right back as Adam leaned forward. "How long after that did you meet Heidi?"

Adam laughed, glad that they had a healthy dislike of the Launceleyn in common. One of the best ways to make close friends was joint spite, after all. "I uh...yeah, maybe. I dunno. I've always had this...thing." He squinted into the fire, having to look away to admit this; he'd always found it embarrassing. "I look at stuff when it's been written down and it ...jumps about. The letters all swap places and don't stay the same and I have to really focus to try get them to stay still. S'always been like that. I dunno why...maybe I'm just not that smart." He laughed, but it was hollow. "I meant questions about the whoring. Y'know, favourite positions of clients and stuff. That's usually what people wanna know." But while he wouldn't tell about his scars, he could talk easily enough about the 'new work'. "I got a horse and started going up and down the roads looking for carriages. All you really needed was a couple guns...not that I ever actually used them...and some charisma. Mostly you could just chat the money outta rich dicks." He shrugged, having become relaxed enough to fully admit to his crimes. "I never took anything from anyone that looked desperate." A D A M Do you wanna dance? Do you wanna fight? Do you wanna get drunk and stay the night?

Jigano listened to Adam’s affliction with growing understanding as some of the other man’s difficulty with his reading lessons suddenly made a lot more sense. ”Ah! I’ve heard of such a thing before. It has nothing to do with smarts,” he was quick to reassure the other man. ”But it does give me an idea for something to try with our next lesson. If we space the letters apart and make them a little thicker it might make it easier to see them in the right positions.“ He was hopeful that it would be enough to ease some of Adam’s struggle until he became more comfortable with reading and writing, at least, even if he didn’t know of any specific longterm cure for the issue.

Jigano snorted as he leaned back to savor his cider, grinning at Adam’s correction. ”I know what you meant,” he teased. ”But since I don’t know any of your clients it’s not much good for gossip here.” Not that he’d ever misuse information against anyone who wasn’t doing harm. But even just salacious gossip could be amusing (and educational) in the right circumstances. He arched a brow at Adam’s description of his work, relaxed with the drink and amused at the use of the word ‘chat’ for highway robbery. ”A gentleman thief, sir? A noble highwayman? Alas, I’ve yet to see a carriage here, and horses are far more dear than Outlander coin. Have you considered a life of sheep-herding and making alcohol, by chance, as an alternative?” He was grinning, his joking comparatively gentle. ”Think of the wool fashions you could set!”