"F-FOUR TALLIES?! What am I, a charity shop!?! Ye'll break me! Leave me starvin' an' alone...cheatin' an old man like me... takin' all 'is medicines for a measly, tawdry, four tallies." Shook's hands seemed to shake even more than usual, although his eyes were as sharp as ever.

"Five an' no less. An' ye'd best tell all yer friends about us. What with th'deal I'm givin' ye today."

"It won't be me that breaks ye today," Sophie said, unruffled. He had made the mistake of swearing "no less!" before. "Four and a hat, else you'd be cheatin' me. Why, it's almost too much ging for just a measly, tawdry bit like what I'm getting."

She kept her money rather separately across her person; three tallies she produced from the basket, but the fourth and the hat came from a little pocket sewn in the seam her topmost skirt. Sophie jingled it in her palm and waited.

He'd been shambling quietly as possible around the shop (which wasn't very quietly at all, not really, damp boots making a racket against the floorboards), seeking out an athame or a tea kettle or both preferably. He'd kept his head low, hiding below the counter to hide from all their noise. Havek liked inside voices. He was painfully frugal himself – he agreed with her. Those bitter little flowers were hardy things, bristling up like weeds. She could just as well graft a few of them into some clay pot heavy with dirt and keep them around always, and not have to deal with stingy old apothecaries. How he could tell her this without getting lashed by Shook was the problem. And Havek hated problems, so he kept his silence on the subject.

He peeked owlishly over the counter, blinking up at them both for a moment before straightening and gently setting a procured tea kettle and a slender knife on the counter top. “Hava, yes.” He spoke the name as if it were something familiar yet detached from him, like a man referencing an amputated limb.

He suddenly seemed cautious, slices of the knife quick yet precise as he beheaded the flowers, even though his gaze was focused on Sophia. Freckles and eyeliner and dresses were good things to keep around. The fact that he'd taken to her so quickly should have worried him, and it did, but he told himself firmly that it wasn't really her that grabbed his attention. Just small things about her, Ekua curry scent and witch mama fortunes, that reminded him of rich and pretty memories.

She ent anything special.

He closed his eye tight, lashes fluttering and head nodding as if the once over had confirmed something for him. Havek opted for looking over to Shook, raising the kettle questioningly.

“Ya gots a place to boil up some nice tea water for Missus—Madam Sophia here, sir?”

Jasper suddenly moved and slammed his fist on the table, apparently as tired of the argument as Havek. "He said five, witch. Did ye not hear 'im or wot?" He was bristling, and he looked half a wild man, very threatening save for the lack of a weapon. It was him that brought money into the shop every day and this dumb lugger of a witch wanted to cheat them out of a few measly coins?!

Shook waved a dismissive hand, "Four and two hats, or I'll have me boys excort ye out o'thstore." He glanced at Havek and pointed to a cracked clay oven at the edges of the room.

Jasper might have mumbled something that sounded like 'en't yer boy', but it was probably just the creaking of the wood.

"You keep your tongue, boy, I ent speaking to you," Sophie snapped, icily. She dug a fifth out of her bodice. She wondered if she should have bothered to walk out; her headache stabbed her again and she decided that she could part with a tally for today.

"I hope he's treatin' me special," Sophie said to Shook, with a complacent sigh, handing the coins off. "I'd hate to think he talks to all the girls like this, it'd break my tender heart."

She stepped back and found a space to lean up against. For the first time, Sophie actually bothered to look around. There was a great quantity of dust and dimness. How this place ever made money, she didn't know. It wasn't through medicine, that was for certain.

“Yer actin’ a right mess, y’know. Ya ent got no right nor reason to be spittin’ at ‘er like a tomcat.” Havek piped up softly, like a little snake hissing in the grass. The same little snake that would make a quick break for it whenever someone took a step closer, admittedly, but a snake none-the-less. He tried to affix a glower on Jasper, tried to square his shoulders, but both were half-baked, as if he’d thought better of it just a moment after he’d done it. “Sir,” he tacked on flatly, the faint spark anger fading from his tongue quick as it came, hugging the blackened tea kettle tight against his chest. His eye strayed down to scars on the countertop, head bowed, servile.

There was a slight temptation to mumble something about the boy’s…unpleasant temperment to Sophie, but he gave nothing beyond an apologetic glance. All this talking was bad for his health, was going to get him hurt one of these days, if he kept thinking it necessary to prod fuming young roustabouts with notes on civility.

He scampered away from the counter after binding the herbs up in Sophie’s pocket kerchief, petting the old porcelain of the kettle all the while. He filled the kettle to the brim with peaked-looking water before shuffling off to the little clay stove.

"Yeah, goney? Well soon as yer done o'er there I'll help ye read some numbers and show ye how much goddamned money th'fockin' shop brings in on its own, orright?! Then you kin bawl at me all ye want, one-eye." Jasper snarled.

Shook sighed and took the money from the witch with a bow. "Oh aye, very special. 'e's a true gentleman o' his kind. En't you got things t'do, boy?"

Jasper glowered at all of them.

"Fine. Fine! Y'know wot? I can see when I'm not wanted. I got things t'do. I'll be 'spectin' full pay from you, Shakes. Let's outterere Parrot." He growled and stormed out of the store. Parrot lifted his hat at the three of them and may have mumbled something that sounded like 'scuse me'. He followed Jasper out, closing the door carefully behind him.

As the pair left the store, there came a rough purr from the doorway, sounding like a mocking farewell to the boys. With the slinky ease of an alley-cat turned housepet, Mirella slid into the apothecary, spicy-but-musky scent already clashing with the more natural aromas of the herbs and unguents. Her liquid eyes flashed over to the counter, halfsmile curled on her lips.

The henchwitch flicked her hair off her shoulder, the burgundy and ocher strands floating away to remove heavy jewelry, a thick collar of what looked like garnets, then trailed off into the duskiness of her skin, unmarred until meeting the very, very low cut of her Blouse. She didn't seemed bothered by her tight clothing, and moved with an ease that her under bust and low slung waistline would not seem to condone. She was, however, Mirella. and therefore nothing was impossible for her multitude of talents.

After a moment of merely perusing the wares, more a chance for stares and glances than any interest in redwort or even her blooming namesake, Alioeleander, she smiled with a friendly smirk at shook. "Hesta, dagka." It was somewhat less brazen than normal for the unapologetic witch, though the brassy confidence returned when her glance drifted over to the younger people within the shop.

"Got m'order for sage, Shooky?" Though she addressed the shops namesake, her eyes lingered on Havek. Hmmm. So the rumor mills spun true.

Shook stared at Mirella under bushy, white eyebrows. His blue eyes scanned her figure, and not in the way that one would usually expect. It was as if he was looking for weapons, or injury.

They found nothing. "Aye." He said finally in a quavery voice, heading back towards the counter and beginning to rifle through boxes.

He plucked a small, inconspicuous box from the closet and put it on the counter.

"This here's my new employee, Hava. Hava, this witch be Mirella."

He didn't specify that she was one of Hawke's witches. He had always disliked doing that.

Havek could have growled softly, a quiet little noise, but it was drowned out by the clatter of the porcelain kettle against the clay stove. He hadn’t slammed it down per se, but he was close. He’d gone so cold his gaze could have extinguished the guttering flame curling up in the belly of the stove. He’d turned to face her – his shoulders were already hunched enough for it to be considered a bow, if a lukewarm one, when he finally raised his head. A cold eye flickered up from the woman’s feet and dragged upwards over the rest of the mess. That’s what he decided all of that was. A hot, shameful mess. Heavy hips and breasts and honey-colored skin were looked over with same sterility a surgeon would glance over a particularly ugly gash.

Whores – because what could she be, other than a slinking prostitute -- littered the harbor like so many dead fish on a beach, but that didn’t mean he had any desire to be near them. Perfume and brassy voices and oiled skin made his flesh crawl, because they were dead and over-with, across-the-water things that had no business coming around here anymore. He was immune to those wiles, always had been, viewed it all as trite and messy business. All summarized in opium-addled ramblings over a game of cards adrift a cloudy sea, he’d speak of clean, moral women and fruitful families and most of all, he’d speak of love – and the other men would crack up over how Mugrobi boys liked their sweet reminders of the penitentiary, so his aversion to the womanly catch'n'lay was understood, oh yes. But unique as Havek thought this made him (or undeniably queer as the other sailor boys said), it wasn’t exceptional. Any man who saw his mother in every painted lady’s smile would surely cringe at any invitation.

“Greetings,” he mumbled after a tense moment. A trite utterance of ‘sana’hulali’ had come on his lips for a moment, but he’d swallowed it back down. There were no blessings for whores from him today, it seemed. The previous morning’s beneficence had faded thoroughly. Glowering down at the floorboards, he resigned himself to just ignoring her. She couldn’t linger too long, could she? He risked a quick glance to Sophie. There was solace in ribbons and dresses that covered more than what was absolutely unseemly.

“…’pologize fer all the riffraff, Madam Sophia. One kin only hope ya usually keep sweeter company ‘an this.”

Sophie grimaced inwardly. She wondered what sort of person Hava thought she was; she knew exactly how low down she was and would always be. Mirella didn't look any better a witch than Sophie, though she was a sight prettier. Tumbles were generally alright company so long as the work hadn't ground them down, and they were prone to superstition. And always in need of a good seamstress.

"I ent seen any riff nor raff since that vile ol' kov left," Sophie murmured with a shrug. "I never liked sweet things anyway."