No dual wielding, please. Such a fighting style takes a great deal of skill and coordination to use effectively. For trying non-conventional fighting styles, using a spear with a shield would also be one to try. Also, if we sold everything but the tanto, it would be a waste to just get an additional short blade.
Spears are the reason mankind became the undisputed master of killing on this planet. They are the perfect weapon for travel, doubling as a walking stick (and going by the graphics, that's about the length of the ingame spears) and (as our ancestors learned) perfect for dealing with dangerous tasty any animals.
If we sell all our imperial legion armor, we can expect to get, at most, 378 Septims for it, bringing our total to
378+200+44= 632 gold for selling legion armor alone.
If we sold our non-tanto weapons, that would bring us up to 698. This upper estimate is based purely on the item's base values. So, plan our purchases with that amount in mind, expecting to have a bit less due to bartering. Our ballpark is about 500-600 septims available for buying stuff.
Let's settle on an armor style, preferably medium but as long as it's not heavy. Caius says we can't be wearing legion armor around his place, as it's too conspicuous, so keeping it would be a tad impractical. Therefore, we must sell it to buy some more faction-neutral armor. As we're already shedding it, and Mike really needs to be able to move more easily, we should switch to either Medium or Light armor. I prefer medium as it would retain more protection than switching to one of the lower-end lightweight suits, but then again the medium armor available in Balmora is pretty expensive.
Whatever weapon we end up using at the end of bettering ourselves through money, let's find out exactly what a '5' in weapon skills means for us. Does that mean we swing way wide, missing our targets epically as the game tries to represent? Or do we just know how to handle the weapon now, making us capable of using it effectively but not particularly good at it?
We have a few days to prepare for what we do next, but we must make a hard decision:
-We could go to Illunibi to see if Clover's lying crippled/dying/dead there (or taking a few days to get out after being stricken with Corprus), or we could head straight to Tel Fyr, but in doing either of those things we risk missing her, and thus missing the chance to properly meet and observe her.
-On the other hand, if we waited her for her to return from killing Dagoth Gares, we run the risk of wasting our time: if she wasn't meant to be, she might die there and we'd be stuck waiting for longer than intended.
-"Fuck this" and going to Solstheim is not an option.