love how Sophos has way more in common with Berrone than he realizes. look at the way Sophos talks about Berrone:
I hoped all that afternoon and through dinner, because I knew about Berrone. I knew she spent a fortune buying songbirds at the market and then setting them free...She brought stray animals home from the streets, and the maids had to put them out. She’d convinced her father to outlaw the drowning of kittens because it was cruel, and for a year the port of Hanaktos was overrun with starved and mangy animals, until finally the townspeople had revolted and spent three days on a massacre that upset everyone and the baron revoked the injunction.
and the way Ochto describes Sophos:
He shook his head slowly. “You were never a slave,” he said.
“Berrone bought me for gold,” I said honestly, but Ochto shook his head again.
“Gold doesn’t make a slave, and it doesn’t always buy one. You stop work every time a woodcock sings. I’ve watched you move the mother scorpion out of the way when you should be setting stones in a wall and waste half a morning watching a grasshopper. You have no sense. What will you do out there in the world, Bunny?”
two rich kids who are so inconveniently soft-hearted and so willing to help others that more practical people around them (Sylvie, Ochto, Dirnes) can’t help but feel a little protective:Â
“I will get her in terrible trouble if anyone finds out she helped me,” I confessed.
“Hush, there is no trouble I cannot bring her out of, and if I tell her to keep silent, she will. It will be her secret and keep her warm for weeks.” She looked me in the eye. “You will remember what you owe her.”
I lifted the lightweight stable boy on my own, even as I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.
“Helping you,” said Dirnes.
They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. “Because I know nothing about kings and princes, but I know men.”
