'You're too slow,' Beatrici keeps telling him. It's not his fault. She is a head taller and a couple of years older, and built like a windhound.
When they run, he can barely keep up, his feet pounding against the cobblestones until painful shocks race up his legs through the threadbare soles of the shoes he will surely outgrow next season. He does well enough when on his own, remembering the turns of the twisted alleys avoided by reputable citizens, preferring to get out of sight and find a place to hole up over the sting in his side and sweat-soaked hair in his eyes.
Corvo has his father's hair and brows, coarse, thick, and dark, and his strong jaw, slightly crooked to the left. Beatrici takes after their mother in stature and looks, and in temperament. While Corvo is quiet and pensive, his sister's blood runs hot; she is easily bored.
Beatrici loves the thrill of the chase, her brother would rather not to be branded a thief and have his hand nailed to the pillar of shame.
They are a team – a mismatched one – but on a good day their separate strengths and weaknesses balance each other out nicely. Beatrici makes for a great distraction when she lets a vendor see her pocketing a few his wares. While she takes off with all attention focused on her, and a cursing merchant hot on her heels, Corvo with his short build and unremarkable looks will sweep all the goods he can carry into his pack and make off with no one the wiser.
At first they only take food, but as the months pass by and winter approaches, they begin to realize the direness of their situation.
Rain. Wind. Darkness. High Cold. Ice.
The sleet and the frost have them shivering in their rags, and hunger gnaws at their insides. Beatrici, when in a cruel mood, will tell him he is holding her back. Without a useless baby brother she could be so much more, in Dunwall, where there is progress and opportunity.
Corvo hangs his head and says nothing.
In his mind's eye the capital of the Empire is jagged metal suffocating in dense fogs, and eerie blue fires that burn cold.
He misses the green fields and the sparse pine forests they used to play in, with moss between dirty toes and laughter on the wind. When they had been allowed to be children, with not a care in the world and a home to return to. When they had run wild during the days and fallen into bed dead with exhaustion from exploring strange foreign continents and fighting highwaymen, in the evening.
When the stains on their clothes were from grass and earth, not the accumulated filth of the streets and skinned knees and hands blistered from all the trees they climbed was the only hurt they knew.
When there had been a fire burning in the hearth and always plenty of wood to feed it, thanks to their father's profession.
Back when they still had a father.
It had been just the three of them, ever since their mother had passed away. All that remains of her is the fading memory of her throaty voice singing them to sleep, and the faint smell of lavender. Their father had been sun-warmed wood and sawdust, machine grease, and soft worn shirts.
Corvo has to fight to breathe past the tightness in his throat every time he thinks about papà.
He never mentions it to his sister, croaks 'I am fine' in the mechanical voice that means he is anything but whenever she notices. Beatrici is angry with their father, as if the accident had been his fault. Like he had wanted for the saw to–
She says he should have been more careful and not stayed up late, that he should have thought of his family. She blames him, and it makes Corvo want to punch her. He doesn't. She's all he's got left anymore.
Karnaca is familiar yet strange at the same time, bigger somehow now that they have to face its trials on their own.
They spend less time in the outer districts than they used to. Same are the colourful sheets of canvas spanned over broad streets and marketplace to keep them cool and shady. Unchanged are the people crowding the streets in the morning and evening, and the lazy afternoon lull.
The tidy one-storey houses with their red-shingled roofs and small benches next to floral arrangements spilling out onto the streets no longer feel welcoming. Their inhabitants' eyes are full of mistrust as they track their every move, and the siblings hurry to escape their gaze.
Instead they roam the poor quarters, staying clear of the established gangs and their ceaseless turf wars, venturing into the richer districts only when driven by need. Too great is the risk of being picked up by the city watch.
So they fight and run, they stick to the masses for cutting purses, and to the shadows for stealing, and the days all blend together. They survive. And eventually, the ice thaws and winter turns to spring again.
When Beatrici takes off, chasing after some new thrill, or scheme – she is the one who comes up with their plans, her mind restless – Corvo is told to stay behind. He waits for her next to the statue of Fernán the Voyager, wondering what it will be this time. The market stall trick is becoming old. Burgling an estate is the most dangerous thing they have done so far – but also the most profitable one.
Corvo drums his heels against the stone in boredom as the hours pass and the shadows wander. She doesn't come back by midday, as she had promised she would. It's hardly surprising. He has enough coin to buy a skewer of meat of questionable origin, and he nibbles on it, saving it for as long as he can. Corvo falls asleep sometime in the early afternoon to the coo of pigeons, and rises with the orange glow of the sun bleeding out over the horizon.
Four days later, Beatrici is still gone.
When the guardsman asks him why he doesn't go home, Corvo cannot think of a good lie fast enough.
When he tries to run, he is caught.
When they take him to live with the other orphans and street kids, he doesn't resist.