“What happened?”

"A storm, probably... we'll likely never find out."

That could mean they’re doing something fine and not Evil (there’s nothing wrong with two people who knew each other and got along moving in together), and at the very least the woman who brought her here isn’t doing anything so terrible that Sofia is already dead, like some of the terrible stories she’s heard from other delegates since she arrived. But just because it might be fine doesn’t necessarily mean it is. She’s probably not going to get a good sense of whether it is or isn’t fine just from asking more questions with the woman who brought her here standing right here, but she should definitely keep an eye on things just in case.

She nods solemnly at the reply and tries to stay out of Sofia’s way. It’s not safe to assume people will be upset about their parents dying, but it also isn’t safe to assume they won’t be.

"Do you like pasta? Sofia is pretty good with her hands, makes great paccheri." And if you're not used to eating pasta for dinner you'll probably be more malleable after the meal.

“Pasta is fine!”

(It’s not like eating pasta is more dangerous than eating anything else you were given by someone who magically teleported you into their house.)

Sofia is done cleaning the nettles and tosses them into the now-boiling water.

"Going to be ready soon."

"I'll go grab some herbs from the garden, I'll be right back."

“Sounds good to me!”

Victòria waits until she’s out of earshot, then turns back towards Sofia, lowering her voice slightly. “What’s it like working for her?”

(Even with her out of earshot, there’s still no guarantee Sofia would actually be willing to tell her if she’s a terrible boss, but at least this way she’ll have the chance.)

"Most of the time it's pretty boring, cleaning, washing, cooking, the usual stuff. It's kind of a lot doing everything on my own but... there are good reasons for that."

"How did you get acquainted with my lady?" And what do you know about her jobs.

“Boring” is probably a good sign, actually. It means she doesn’t have Sofia so scared she feels like she has to pretend she loves the work when she doesn’t, and it almost certainly means she isn’t doing things like using her servants for target practice (seriously, what the fuck??? Even her lord didn’t do that!)

“She brought me here with magic! I’d never been here before today.”

So she knows her Mistress has magic...

"Depending on who the circle calls, the nights can become significantly less boring."

She smiles and blushes a little.

Blink blink — oh. “I’m, uh, not that kind of Calistrian.”

(And also… she’s a woman? Maybe the magic can’t tell the difference, but everyone here has eyes.)

"Ah, such a pity."

She walks to the kitchen's counter and drops some leaves on it.

"So you're more about revenge? Seems reasonable to me, the world is full of assholes that could use some stinging."

(—Since when is she back from the garden?? She really hopes she didn’t almost get Sofia in trouble!)

“Yeah, exactly! There’s loads of people who deserve to be punished who’ll never face any consequences just from the law, especially since the archmages couldn’t even be bothered to deal with all the really obvious ones like the leftover Evil Asmodean nobles—”

"The archmages? Leftover Asmodean nobles? I thought all of them were Asmodean."

“—No, the old government got overthrown by some adventurers last year. They put in a new queen who’s not an Asmodean, but she’s still a queen, you know? And the queen replaced some of the nobles, there’s some from other countries and a few who are back from the dead, but lots of the Evil ones are still around. …I think they’re mostly trying to say they aren’t Asmodean anymore, no matter how many innocent people they had tortured to death in the name of Asmodeus, but that doesn’t make what they did okay.”

And for some reason Archmage Cotonnet won’t even let them make laws to punish them for all the awful things they’ve already done, only laws saying that if they keep doing those things they’ll be punished for it.

"Last year? I heard northing about it!"

"Me neither, which is confusing. Chosen Merena seemed pretty spry last Oathday."

"...It took a little while for us to get the news back home, but nowhere near a whole year. How often does this place usually get news from other towns?"

"I mean, I'd expect we'd get some daily, but unless it's urgent enough to warrant a Teleport it probably comes with the regular post, so delayed by a couple weeks."

"When was the last time there was news by Teleport?"

"I wouldn't know, it's not as if he-"

She turns towards Sofia. "The last time he brought a scroll, was it two weeks ago?"