He had never come to know Mariol half so well as he might have wished.
Yet Vilon had never needed years in a man's shadow to make out his true shape. In the handful of hard days they had shared upon the road, Mariol had proved a creature of easy moods and quicker warmth, the sort who could turn a cold miserable evening into something a man might almost remember fondly. It was his sharp tongued japes, his cheeky inappropriate hands where a man has no business putting his hands, and above all that wide irrepressible grin, that had gradually thawed Vilon's guard without ever asking his leave to do it.
