"Well, I've been staying at the Grey Stallion." It's an inn, seedy but not very seedy. "...But someone on Rights is getting his friend to summon an azata for me to talk to after everything wraps up today, so your school'd have to be after that."

"Oh, yeah, after dark like I said. I wouldn't want to disturb any kids at their lessons."

Nod nod. It hadn't occurred to her that there might be students inside but she suddenly feels very grateful that he's not planning on, say, murdering a school full of children.

"In that case... I don't actually know where his house is. It'd probably be fastest for me to meet you at the school?"

"Dead end of Fig Street. Nearest cross-avenue is Levaloch if they haven't changed the name. What's the azata for?"

"I think he's hoping it'll give me a lecture or something? He's been having the wildest takes over on the Rights Committee, he keeps trying to tell me that actually it would be Good to just let people get away with murdering innocent children— speaking of which, did you hear that the Queen pardoned people for everything they ever did before a few months ago?"

"Yeah. Slightly inconvenient for the project of finding a bigger guy to beat up a guy for you but useful if one happens to've ever committed any crimes oneself. Speaking of I'd be obliged if you didn't bring company to the school."

"Yeah, of course not."

"Oh good." The gesture he's looking for is a fistbump but he doesn't know what that is so he just smiles. "If you get there early I'll be visiting my mother at the Fig & Honey. You can get into the yard if you go around the back of the Peony St. laundress, but hopefully it'll be dark enough nobody'd see you even if you went in the front."

Oh, that explains what a guy is doing being a Calistrian priest. 

"Sounds great, see you then!"

"See you!"

When Victória makes it to Fig Street, Raimon is already at the school; she can hear his voice, Creating Water, over and over and over.

She's not sure exactly what time it is when she leaves Delegate Ardiaca's house, but she's pretty sure she's running late. She jogs halfway there before she has to slow down and walk, and is only a little late when she arrives. (It seems like there's some other groups of people out on the street, but none of them pass very close to her route.)

"Hi! So, uh, what's the plan?"

"I was starting to think you weren't coming! The plan is that we get everything around the school very wet. Then we break in, take a look around - I see in the dark, we don't need to be too obvious about this - steal any books anybody might want for themselves and get them out of harm's way, I'm thinking drop them off at the temple of Nethys later? He probably likes books? And then once there is nothing of value in danger we torch it and fuck off."

"Sorry!! Talking to the azata took longer than I expected, I hope I'm not too late to be helpful." 

(If you set fire to someone's house sometimes there's someone else living there who doesn't get out. Sometimes you set fire to someone's house and the fire spreads. Sometimes you get the wrong house.)

"The water is to make sure it doesn't set anything else on fire?"

"Yeah, my mom lives five doors down if nothing else. It's a residential neighborhood. I'll probably stick around for a while making sure it goes smoldery and not sparky."

And they're checking the inside before they light it on fire, and he's not going to get the wrong school. See, it's not that hard not to hurt innocent people, as long as you're trying not to.

"Alright! Where do you want me putting the water?"

"I've left all the spots on the ground and the walls that the streetlight hits for you, since you can't see the rest of it!"

"Oh! Thank you." And she starts creating water. It's the spell she's got the most practice with; the water mostly goes where she aims it.

Eventually Raimon calls, "I think that'll do the trick, or if it doesn't it'll fail at it in some way that'll be more obvious when there's sparks to watch. Come around back, shouldn't be anything to trip you on the way, the staff door's thinner than the front."

She follows him around back.

It takes him a few kicks, but the door comes down.

In they go.

"Six classrooms that might have books in 'em," he says, shouldering open an interior door that isn't locked at all. He offers Victòria a sack and starts sticking his hand into the desk compartments. "I haven't been here in so long but I remember all of it... Francesca used to sit right there every day.  It's got a view of her old apartment, out that window, sometimes her little brother would wave to her before he was in school all day too.  She gave me her geography notes for walking her home every day, because there's fences in the way of the direct route, it actually takes ten minutes to get all the way around to that building and it goes through some riskier spots.  She came in last at math a few times and one of them she got infected.  She lived but couldn't walk after that and they let her stop coming to school since she wouldn't be able to get in without help.  Her family moved out of the neighborhood at some point."

She fishes out books and puts them in the sack. She absolutely cannot read the titles in the dark but probably once they've actually set the school on fire Raimon can check whether they're Asmodean propaganda.

She doesn't know Raimon's teacher but she's suddenly deeply upset on behalf of this little girl she never knew, this little girl who deserved better than this. (She hopes someone's tracked down the teacher and put them through a fraction of what their students suffered, but she doesn't have a good angle on that if they haven't.)

"I'm sorry," she says. It feels deeply inadequate but she doesn't know what wouldn't be.

"Tomorrow, some little girl like Francesca is going to wake up and drag herself to school, and - ta-da! It won't be there any more!" he says. "That's really - if someone had burned this place down when I was twelve it would have made my year... oh, they still have this desk with the carving in it... you probably can't see it? I don't know what it's like to not be able to see in the dark - it's got Abril's initials. Abril gave me half her lunch for a month, when Mother wasn't well enough to work and at the same time Abril's orphanage was in the habit of packing everybody's lunch pail with raw corn on the cob that made her sick to her stomach.  One night I was out for a ramble and I spotted a kobold making off with a bag of pears from some shop and I scared it off and took the pears.  I gave her most of them, and she tried to kiss me.  Didn't take rejection great.  I think it would've amounted to nothing, except then I turned in the worst essay and she had to hit me even if she'd never have come up with the idea on her own.  Got a bit too into it.  They marked her for a wizard a bit later.  Haven't seen her since.  I think she was proud."

"I can see that there's a desk there...? I can't see the carving."

She is not entirely sure how she feels about Abril. It's — upsetting, obviously, but the shape of it's more confusing than it was with Francesca.

"...My mom was a wizard. Or, half a wizard, she got kicked out before she managed anything but cantrips, ended up doing laundry and mending for a minor nobleman a ways north of here. She was hoping I'd be one too, she was so upset when I didn't make the cut."

"Did you want to be one?" he asks, confirming the room clear of books and moving on to the next.