or so the story goes.

[nonsibi]

WHO: Bellamy, Lexa, Leliana, maybe others
WHAT: Bellamy has a prisoner. Lexa has a broken leg. Leliana has mud tracked up the stairs to the Rookery. Nobody is having a good day.
WHEN: Backdated to before everyone left for the Western Approach
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: this explains the injuries. grudges explains the explanation. otherwise we'll just have to see!

At a glance Bellamy and Lexa look as if they’re part of a matching set. Dip-dyed head to toe in mud and blood, a wash of rain-streaked grime now caked on thanks to the colder climes closer to Skyhold. Their mess has a certain permanence that only hot baths and magical intervention might someday wash clean. They leave a trail up the front steps to the Great Hall.

Matching livery often suggests at an affiliation, an association. Bellamy and Lexa have no such affiliation, and the subtler onlooker who views their arrival to Skyhold will be able to tell. It’s very obvious. Here’s the big tell: Lexa, under her mud, is tied up. Her hands are bound behind her back, and she’s wearing a gag. No ropes hobble her steps; she’s hobbling quite well on her own, thanks to her broken right leg, all but hopping after him in her effort not to put weight on it. Walking on it might make it worse, but you can’t ride a horse up the stairs to Skyhold’s inner chambers, and Bellamy isn’t going to carry her, so here she is.

And you shouldn’t, maybe, stride into Skyhold demanding to see an adviser without making some kind of an appointment. Bellamy’s request for an audience was a quick brusque thing: now, and no please. It’s important, a point both stressed and underscored by the way he holds up the lead he’s got Lexa on, a rope looped around her waist and well-knotted. He’s learned, since her escape attempt, to keep her in line however he can. To the casual onlooker it probably seems like over-kill. Who needs to leash a young woman who can barely walk?

Despite his insistence they’re made to wait, while an adviser is informed. Politely standing around an entrance hall isn’t Bellamy’s speed. He does his best to find patience, but anger and weariness and blood loss have leeched his reserve, and after only ten minutes he grabs the nearest servant and gets a name and a location out of him.

Leliana. The rookery. Fine. He knows where that is, and while the thought of directly confronting Leliana -- who Bellamy has heard of; Kaiten might be a spit of a town but he’s read history books and paid attention to news as it’s come, through travelers and bards and the ranks of the templars, and even if he hadn’t, he’s now been near Skyhold long enough that confronting Sister Nightingale might seem, at first thought, intimidating. But it’s hardly in him to be intimidated for long. He’s been around, and this is important.

So Bellamy and Lexa, still badged in mud, take their leave of the hall where they’d been waiting and head for the rookery. Bellamy takes the lead, walking as quickly as he can without outright dragging Lexa behind him. He’s clearly disinterested in how comfortable or uncomfortable she is. The way he favors his left leg leaves his pace a little slower anyways. The bandage around his wound is a piece of fabric torn right off his cloak. The ragged hem slaps at the back of his boots, both of which are thick with mud. Underneath, his colors would show him for a Templar -- a poor Templar, mismatched armor, only a few gleams of steel plate, supplemented by pieces of leather and thick cotton padding -- but a Templar all the same, and one with something to report.

They’re just turning up the stairs into the rookery when Leliana appears before them. Bellamy stops short. His salute is a deferential gesture, one he makes without thinking. He doesn’t offer explanation, but he waits, with Lexa behind him. She has stopped as well, but now steps out from Bellamy's shadow to position herself at his shoulder whether he likes it or not, drawing herself up straight despite the mud and the pain, chin raised back to its usual regal angle. She'd go ahead and start, but for the gag.

Comments

[heda]

Lexa does not like the idea of a "more thorough investigation". Not because it scares her, the idea of it just makes her angry. There's a subtle flaring of nostrils and hardening of her jaw as Leliana suggests it, clear--if subtle--signs that she would oppose such an idea. But she can't quite tell if this is a real proposal from the spymaster or a test of some sort, and so she waits to see what Bellamy says.

It's about what she'd hoped.

"Knight-Captain Kane, his superior," she puts only a tiny emphasis on superior, and again resists the urge to turn to Bellamy with a pointed look to ensure he and Leliana both know that she means that word both ways, "Will speak for me, if necessary."

[fightingale]

"Then the matter is settled." Not spoken with the certainty of one so has settled it or deluded themselves into such an opinion, but rather the manner of one calmly confirming facts, filing informing away. "Very well. I appreciate your.... Illumination on the situation, both of you."

Starkly differing views, but she does make a note of Kane's name. Someone else to remember, something else to keep track of, tensions to potentially monitor. This is a headache, one that Josephine is doubtless better equipped to solve - slashed throats will achieve little, here.

"I sympathise with the losses on each side. Ser Bellamy and Templars and mages across Thedas have suffered much, especially since the Conclave. Much has been stripped of them - the loss of agency... Would be no easy thing. Their losses do not undermine those suffered by your people, and for that I am sorry." Quiet, still, though not so even as before. Emotion hardly bleeds through, nothing so dramatic, but there is something unhappy in the line of her mouth - genuine.

A long pause. "I will not raise this matter with the other Advisors, if I can rely upon your discretion. Ser Bellamy, your determination to see the Inquisition kept abreast of potential threats does you great credit, and I am grateful. However, the Frostbacks are home to the Avvar, and we their newly arrived neighbours. Commander Lexa's actions were prudent for the safety of her people." She looks from Bellamy to Lexa. "I have no interest in inciting the ire of your people, and our cause to see Thedas safe from demons, at the very least, is a common one."

There has been too much loss already, she thinks. There will me more, she will deploy whatever blades are necessary, but here with these two and in this tower, she does not need more blood spilled. They do not need Avvars at their back with a ready knife, and neither do they need Templars and Avvar at each others throat. "You are both welcome in this tower and in this Inquisition. Those within the Inquisition acting against one another is not, however, well favoured."

[nonsibi]

It's not the answer he wants, obviously. It's not as bad as it could be. But it's not the answer that he wants. Bellamy, sitting rigid in his chair, stares up at Leliana rather than look around at Lexa.

She won't look smug. She's too careful for that. He hates that about her too.

Later, the spymaster's words might feel more like a compliment, less like they're laced with the poison of what she says next. Bellamy's mouth tightens, his arms tense, his chin lifts. He barely registers the rest of it, the layer of warning. Don't act against one another? Just wait, he thinks, viciously; just wait, when it happens again.

Instead he nods, once, curtly. Behind his eyes he might be seething, but to Leliana's face Bellamy tries, at least, to keep together. He won't let Lexa be the only one of composure.

"As you say." Practically through his teeth, but not completely uncivil. Not that it would take much to guess his true feelings. Bellamy pushes himself out of his chair, the first of the two of them to stand. "Will that be all?"

Like she was the one that came seeking them. Bellamy's jaw stays tight.

[heda]

Lexa's stays shut. She inclines her head minutely in agreement with the spymaster's point, and then waits in silence until the Templar is dismissed, not sparing him another glance. It's a deliberate cut, how easy she makes it seem to utterly ignore his presence or lack thereof (though of course she's not actually ignoring it at all and everyone in the room knows it).

When he has either gone or been told to stay, she waits a suitable moment and then says to Leliana, "I need to return to my people. There are things I was on my way to do when I was waylaid and brought here. Afterwards I would meet with you or your diplomat, Lady Josephine, to discuss in more detail how your people and mine might assist one another."

[fightingale]

Will that be all? A fine question, indeed. Leliana's brow quirks upwards ever so slightly. He seems proud, Ser Bellamy, tightly drawn as a bowstring at full stretch, a poised weapon. She is not entirely certain whether she thinks that a good thing or not. That is he so vigilant is a fine thing, certainly, and commendable. Another day, another time, and she might be considering whether he might suit as an agent. He had brought the Commander here, after all.

She suspects that perhaps such venom as what he seemed to hold for the Avvar might be offended by the Spymaster's decision. In either case, they have both of them been marked. Both deserve attention, both will have her focus when next they find themselves in her presence, and perhaps even before.

"It will," she concurs, clipped and quiet and even. "We will speak later." Perhaps not this day or even this week, but she fully counted on further conversations with this Templar, and understanding the matters in more detail. The horrors so often lay in the details; simple summaries rarely allowed a proper grasping of it. "Attend the medical tents, if you would, before you return to your quarters." And with that she nods, a polite dismissal, but a dismissal all the same.

Leliana, for her part, remains silent for long moments after the Commander speaks. "Of course. With your leg in its present state I daresay that it would be wise to travel with an escort, to ensure you suffer no further injury. After you medics see to you I can have scouts ready to accompany you at your leisure. Alternatively," and she suspects she already knows the answer, "the Ambassador might arrange a room for you. Allow yourself some days recovery while more forgiving travel arrangements can be made."

The Nightingale is difficult, ruthless, stubborn, and any number of bad things. The offer is not one borne entirely of kindness, but the threads of diplomacy that overlap enough with her suspicion. The Avvar has her consideration, but nothing so close to trust. Still, she is in no rush to shovel an injured Commander back to her people, or cause offence. Her gaze remains cautious, analytical.