[CLOSED] don't believe me if I claim to be your friend.

[minrathousian]

WHO: Atticus Vedici, Benedict Artemaeus, Petrana de Cedoux
WHAT: Madame de Cedoux pays a visit to the Gallows dungeon, and Atticus answers her questions.
WHEN: Now-ish.
WHERE: The Gallows dungeon.
NOTES: (CW: brief mention of child death.) Set sometime after the arrival and imprisonment within the Gallows of the Venatori prisoners.

It has become difficult for Atticus to confidently track the exact number of days he and Benedict have been prisoners of the Inquisition, but if nothing else, this upstart organization ensures he doesn't have much time to dwell on it. He is never bored due to lack of work--not even in his cell, during the hours he would prefer to devote to sleep.

This evening (which is an especially cold one for dungeon residents), a number of texts have been brought to him accompanied by "requests" (translation: demands, on pain of additional unpleasantries) to translate, annotate, or decode information relating to ongoing Venatori projects. Without a desk to speak of, Atticus has rendered one stiff-backed book into a makeshift writing surface, and is frowning pensively at a line of virtually illegible script in an intercepted message.

He is either studiously ignoring his apprentice, or is so absorbed in his work that he has temporarily forgotten that he is present in the cell across the corridor from his own.

(Standing nearby, perpetually on guard, is a templar.)
 

Comments

[ipseite]

Her requests are not immediately approved; seeing what it involves and the foreign magic employed, she's obliged to submit a full explanation and justification for what she wishes to do and why. Still, it is done, and so her arrival is preceded by a guardsman bringing in a small table and low bench ahead of her. She surveys the cell, her cool ease with it at odds with the softness of her round face, the quiet way she thanks the guards, how she carries herself.

Like a lady, for all that she wears a plainer dress than the rich velvet of her dream. No recognition stirs at Atticus, not at once, but her gaze holds for a moment as if it might.

"Please sit," she says, courteous. "I will require your cooperation for perhaps an hour. And your quiet, thank you," to Benedict.

[minrathousian]

His first indication that something is amiss comes when a guard approaches his cell and unlocks the door.

"Back against the wall, messere," the fellow barks at him.

If there's a mutter of 'Vint bastard' under his breath, Atticus elects to ignore it. Decorously, he sets aside his reading and writing materials, rises to his feet, and complies with the order, standing still with his hands folded neatly behind his back.

And that is where he remains as he watches with growing curiosity as both table and bench are brought into the cell and arranged in such a way that they obviously are intended to be used by him. Briefly, he wonders whether someone had the bright idea to provide their captive researcher with slightly more suitable working conditions, but he stops considering it once Petrana enters.

"Please sit."

There is an instant, just a hair's breadth of a moment, in which Atticus' expression could rightly be described as spooked. Then it is gone; perhaps the color hadn't drained from his face; he is standing in shadow.

Courteous, he dips his head. "As you wish." He approaches the bench and seats himself, then regards his guest with sharp eyes.

[ipseite]

Too sharp-eyed and too attentive to this situation in particular to miss it, Petra is momentarily thrown by a reaction that she wouldn't question in Lamorre delivered to her by a perfect stranger who, she is sure, has no good reason for it.

Perhaps she imagined. Perhaps she's missed something.

"You will this evening be teaching me to read Tevene," she explains, taking the seat beside him and arranging blank paper before him, a pen and inkpot that have a subtle tell of enchantment about them. "The work will mostly be mine. What I require of you is a clear mind, a steady hand, and to follow my instructions to the," a small smile, "letter. It will not greatly tax you."

Probably.

Courtesy costs her nothing at all.

[minrathousian]

It is with some unusual discomfort that Atticus realizes he is having difficulty excising the vision of a child lying dead in her mother's arms from his thoughts. ("Come to me, Veda," she had said. Was it a memory?)

He takes advantage of the seconds Petrana requires to arrange paper and pen before him to clear his throat and focus his eyes on the task as it is being presented to him. At discovering the nature of this work, he smiles thinly and turns some in his seat to watch the young mage in profile. "Shall we begin with declensions?" he suggests, his tone a touch wry.

Drawing a breath, he continues, "While I am willing to assist, these," and lifts up the magic-nullifying shackles that confine his wrists, "may present us with some difficulties." To do this work, the shackles will need to come off.

[ipseite]

Her gaze drops to his shackles and she frowns, momentarily, considering her options - inclines her head to the guard by way of instruction. The habits of power are not quite so easily shed as the garments, but while she is no great authority here, what permission she has is sufficient to see this done: the Templar releases his bonds, albeit only after shackling his ankle and that of his apprentice instead with plain, heavy iron that won't interfere with Petrana's casting.

And with clear reluctance. She is immovably patient, throughout, thanks him quietly and with a touch more warmth than she's shown Vedici or Artemaeus, though she isn't cold overall so much as she is somewhat remote. She is, she often thinks, what she is required to be when she is required to be it, and so.

The secondary measure is explained in the fact that this time, now his hands are free, the cell door does not close. Their Templar guard takes up position in the open space, hands folded neatly over his weapon, a sterner mirror to her serenity.

"We will begin with the lettering," she says, pleasantly, sliding her thumb along the pen, an odd metallic flare rising in her wake, before she sets it in his hand. "Then numbers. Then I will dictate to you, and you will write for me the words in Tevene. Will you need me to go slowly?"

For the sake of translation. She asks it as a simple logistical question, with no particular judgment attached to his skill or where it might be found lacking. There is no sense in beginning the cast before she knows how it needs to be performed.

[altusimperius]

"I don't even know you," is Benedict's first irritated reply, when his 'quiet' is demanded; he's working on some translations himself, mostly less urgent missives and references to high-ranking political figures in Tevinter. It's dreadfully boring and he's glad for the distraction, even if she's decidedly unpleasant, and he ends up being manhandled by a Templar again.

Somewhat surprised that he's to be part of this, Benedict is led to Atticus' cell and seated next to him, where he sits and hunches his shoulders with a rebellious scowl. "Who is this?" he asks of his mentor, incredulous but also clearly intimidated. Just when he thinks nothing can make this worse.

[minrathousian]

With his hands free, Atticus takes a moment to slowly rotate his wrists, flexing them and stretching the tendons and muscles. He rolls his shoulders, his neck, deriving no small amount of relief from finally, after so long, being able to stretch out his limbs again. There's a sweetness to the pain the movements cause him; he grimaces through it, but looks almost grateful for it simultaneously. Simple creature comforts. Benedict's question is ignored, though he cuts his eyes towards his apprentice with a look of cold warning in his eyes.

"...I will dictate to you, and you will write for me the words in Tevene."

Atticus takes the pen as it is placed in his hand and lifts it to examine it, his expression lit with subdued curiosity. What a peculiar enchantment; he can sense its foreign nature against his fingertips like a strange texture he cannot place.

"Will you need me to go slowly?"

He looks to Petrana and smiles a closed-mouth smile. "I think that will be unnecessary," he replies. He reaches out to dip the pen in the inkwell, then prepares to write at her instruction.

[ipseite]

The removal of Artemaeus from his cell surprises her, but the expression clears; easier to control them together, she supposes, not be obliged to leave Vedici unshackled if his apprentice needs dealing with.

"I require quiet to work," is her only acknowledgment of his objections, plain and matter of fact.

Vedici's swifter acquiescence speaks volumes; easier to deal with and to be under no circumstances trusted, too smooth by half. He will do for her purpose, though, and she breathes life into the spell binding the pen with a word, laying her small and warm hand over his, resting too lightly to restrain, fitting to his shape. She'd worn the diamond that glints up from her finger in her dream, too, though the heavy jet locket at her throat had been absent.

So she'll write Tevene with her left hand at first. Very well.

"First the letters."

[altusimperius]

Benedict rolls his eyes. "Could've fooled me," he grumbles, meeting Atticus' gaze for a half-second before averting his own.

[minrathousian]

"Be silent," Atticus commands Benedict brusquely, fixing him with a harsher stare this time. The boy has taxed his patience well beyond their limit; at this stage, if he doesn't cooperate, Atticus has no intention of interceding on his behalf.

Imperceptibly, Atticus' fingers twitch when Petra lays her hand across his. His eyes dart quickly to her, then down, then back again; was this contact truly necessary? "First the letters," she says, and he reaches for his focus, for detachment from the gentle, intrusive hand fitting itself to the contours of his own.

He breathes out slowly. "As you wish," he replies, and puts each letter to paper. His script is precise and neat, lacking embellishment or artifice.

[ipseite]

The subtle pull of the spell she's woven into the pen and ink becomes something slightly different at the contact of her hand and the beginning of his writing; her hand moves neatly with his, adjusting subtly to better accommodate motion, magic twisting between their fingers and glittering curiously in her large, light eyes. She is learning his muscle memory as much as she is observing what he writes, embedding it back into herself with magic -

Marius could have done it far quicker, with far less bother, but Petrana has only ever studied this spell, and not performed it. She takes her time.

The dictation she gives him to take is a carefully chosen subject: the etiquette of young ladies in Lamorre, passages from a book she was obliged to study in her youth that she could at this point doubtless recite in her sleep. Both the familiarity and the dullness are purposeful - something that will work well for her to use as a translation reference in how well she knows it, something unlikely to cause them to trip in translating it now over unfamiliar words or concepts difficult to parse into a foreign tongue in an entirely foreign land. It is almost aggressively banal, and she recites it low and steady, a lullaby voice habitually fallen into when reading aloud.

Fine tracery of light mirrors the light in her eyes, skittering up and down the pen as he wields it.

[altusimperius]

There is something going on here far beyond someone teaching someone else letters, and Benedict's gaze locks onto the pair's hands as they touch, the cogs clearly turning in his mind as he slowly lifts it to Atticus.
"What is this," he hisses, sounding almost more afraid than incredulous-- what if this is some ploy, what if Atticus going to get himself out through this woman, leaving Benedict behind?
"Atticus," he says insistently, nervously.

[ipseite]

The light fades, replaced by the pinched beginning of a headache between Petra's brows - this is magic that takes more effort to begin with and dropping and picking it up again doesn't help. Her voice is steady when she says, "I am afraid I cannot ask you again to keep your peace."

Her gaze shifts to the Templar. "You observe the prisoner was given multiple opportunities to cooperate peacefully."

An inclination of his head.

"If he interrupts me again, please gag him."

"Madame." His tone is grim; his demeanor that of a man very ready to carry out that request. Test him, Benedict.

She murmurs a temperate thanks and refocuses--

"Let us resume."

[minrathousian]

It might come as some surprise to Benedict to learn that Atticus also has no fucking idea what is going on. It might, that is, if Atticus felt compelled to reveal the extent of his discomfort with the uninvited (and yet not wholly unwelcome) sensation of Petrana's hand resting on and moving in tandem with his own.

Benedict's persistent interruptions at last earn him a savage-looking scowl from the magister, who is clearly almost at the end of his tether in this situation, but before he can lash out, Petrana beats him to it. He clenches his jaw tightly shut and shuts his eyes, his hand shifting but not yet moving to dislodge hers, as she exchanges her chilling words with the Templar. Perhaps under other circumstances, he would have felt some modicum of revulsion at the threat to bind and gag a mage, even one as petulant as Benedict. Right now, it's a struggle just to maintain his façade of chill.

"Let us resume."

Wordlessly, he clears his throat, and does just that.

[altusimperius]

Though it's true Benedict has never had any close friends, he has at least always had the luxury of knowing there is someone on his side, who would come to his defense if he needed it. The longer they remain here in Kirkwall, the clearer it becomes that this is no longer the case; the person responsible for him transparently loathes him and quite possibly wouldn't even care if he died, which is the thought that immediately strikes him when Atticus gives him such a look.
He looks from his mentor to the woman to the Templar, feeling a fear of them for the first time and hating himself for it. He feels small and fragile and uncared about, each of which would be horrifying in its own right.

He holds his tongue for now, unable to hide his anxiety or deal with his racing thoughts, periodically glancing to the Templar as if waiting for him to lunge.

[ipseite]

It is perhaps in her willingness to make such a threat that she's most foreign to these parts - a witch of some manner, self-evidently, but one without any particular shadow attached to that binding of a mage. They deal differently with magic where she comes from, after all -

At his proximity to her, Atticus will feel the deep sigh that she breathes out before she raises the spell a second time. Her strain is more evident now, and the Templar's close scrutiny is possibly as much wary of her unfamiliar practise as to be sure that her wearying is not somehow the magister's fault.

They resume.

A lady must be always sweet of temper--