OTA | isn’t it a pity?

[limier]

WHO: Wren Coupe + Herian Amsel + You!
WHAT: Investigating the Inquisition's shady neighbours
WHEN: Backdated to the beginning of the month.
WHERE: Kirkwall - Hightown, the Gallows
NOTES: Feel free to jump in even if you haven't signed up, but please remember to sign up if you do choose to do so! ❤

When a squall blows in, Kirkwall could drown for it.

Hightown rain starts sea air, ends up somewhere around piss by the time it trickles into the lower city. Over rooftops and through gutters, every drop acquires the particular taste of the streets it crosses. Here: The mineral grit of old stone, the sour spill of new money.

Someone with a better nose for filth might trace each cocktail back to its source. But this is the Inquisition. If you want to know something, you inquire.
 

Comments

real talk why doesn't starbucks do a brownie frapp

[limier]

Put all your cousins in the same Circle and perhaps we’d have found out,

A terribly unkind thought, quickly-quashed. She’s grateful for Amsel’s assistance — truly — but the space between them still bristles. It’s crossed her mind more than once: The positions they might be in now, had the Spire held out but a short time longer. Distant, impossibly so, yet nearer to this than anything else has been.

"I imagine that depends upon one's family." Less paperwork involved then. She stretches one hand against the other, knuckles clicking. "But odd, no? For so many, to command such wages at it."

A long, appraising look to Herian. Only one of them was raised to worry of money; still, only the other need worry of it now. The past few years have been hard on everyone — significantly harder on a mage alone.

"Were we to inquire, how would you approach the matter?"

An honest enough question: She knows how she'd pursue this, knows what information she wants, but Amsel’s a knight. Whatever her intentions following the war, the Inquisition requires her wits be sharp now. Best the girl get some practice at it.

i feel inspired to make my own but also i would just want to eat the brownies :C a crisis

[dashing]

She's almost surprised that she is being asked, rather than simply issued orders. Herian examines the list again, scanning for some logical pit trap she might fall into, something obvious that her associate might chastise her for.

I would round them up and cut them down when they were at their most desperate, she might say, if she were in a mood to antagonise a Templar. Her respect for the order does remain, even if it is not intact, even if its crimes weigh heavy on her. Mages are not without blame, the need for checks and control cannot be dismissed without a person's sense also being put sharply into doubt, and judgment is flung all too easily and gleefully.

Herian stares at the paper a moment longer, before setting it down. "Research, first, to avoid a blunder. Ensure an adequate understanding of standard trade practices adopted, so we have some basis for comparison. Were we to approach directly with claims of concerns but without sound knowledge, they might attempt to dismiss our concerns as lacking familiarity with such businesses." It's cautious, but: "They may well dismiss Inquisition forces as a collection of brutes better prepared with our blades than our minds. It could be a matter for some advantage. It was always easier for my fellow apprentices to make mischief when our keepers thought them dense or docile."

[limier]

This isn’t a fight she’ll have today. This isn’t a fight, Maker, remember your instructions —

"One without the other might signal danger." The dim and powerful were ever abominations waiting to happen. The clever and sedate,

She puts those thoughts aside.

"But one will need to do." Neither of them is about to pass for docile. She considers, "A mage will arouse suspicion. My accent, as much."

Outsiders see only the masks and intrigue; not a nation of the poor and striving. Education will be assumed of them both.

"Some attention might be diverted by playing to the recent conflict. Kirkwall has never known easy relations."

This isn't a fight; it could be made to appear one — some petty tug of war between errand boys. It would aid the appearance of incompetence.

[dashing]

"I can play the part of not being a mage," Herian replies, carefully keeping her voice from sounding too cool. "It is a necessity, for some of us, to conceal what we are for the sake of survival."

She may be a Loyalist (is she, though) but she is a Loyalist (???) carved from salt drawn up from the very deepest of salt mines. If salt were a specialisation, she might be its master.

"Such tactics played their part in my recent mission for the Inquisition. However, if you deem other diversions to be preferable, I will follow your orders."

[limier]

She lifts a pen, taps it twice, debates the least contentious way to ask --

"Please demonstrate."

-- Herian you talk like a fuckin nerd.

(As though Wren has any room to throw stones.)

[dashing]

"My ability to follow orders, or acting as one other than a mage? We are people as much as anyone else. As far as I know there is not a particular walk that I need master. Unless you sought confirmation of my ability to follow orders?"

Ah, there she goes, letting the edge of her temper start to sneak under the careful control she maintains.

[limier]

A sharp gesture with the pen, she opens her mouth to reply; reins herself in. Easy.

There is a vocabulary, a diction, common to Circle education, to say little of their own, peculiar cadences — bound tight away by formality, by the strain of shifting language. None of it is useful to tell her; Herian already knows.

There's knowing, and then there's caring. This is still too wrapped up in all else about them. Maker, she needs,

"Why don't we get a drink," Improper to suggest, but an inn's as practical a setting as any to observe. "As people other than ourselves."

If they must both stand out for sore thumbs, best to know how badly.

[dashing]

There is a retort about the propriety of sitting down to have a drink with a Templar that she bites her tongue on. She seems to need to caution herself all too often, of late, as though certain bruises have been pressed upon often enough to spread, and flesh that had been uninjured was now tender to the touch.

You could be a mage, some terrible part of her suggestions, more joke and jest than anything she'd consider giving thought, for even a moment. Instead, Herian compliantly tilts her head to the side, contemplative, before nodding.

"Well enough. Shall we go directly?" Or would the Templar sooner shed her scales?

I mean, armour. Shed her armour.

[limier]

"I’ve something less conspicuous," She gestures to herself: Black coat picked out conspicuously with the Chantry sun. May as well walk about screaming of lyrium. "Half an hour’s time, by the gate?"

It’ll give her time to recollect her patience.

The Blue Dragon is passably clean, won’t bankrupt them to buy a round — and most importantly, it’s near enough the docks. Wren won’t ever be mistaken for else than soldier or mercenary, but the plainclothes she’s acquired are loose enough to hide some bulk; the recent rains lend cover to the ozone which lingers about her.

"Your mission away," She asks, as they walk. The one that Amsel won’t detail, which Wren won’t press. Not beyond: “Do you intend to take another?"

To volunteer to it, rather. They're both bid by duty.

[dashing]

"By the gate," she agrees. And, predictably, she is two minutes early of their appointed meeting time. Part of it is the desire to keep to a strict schedule, and the other is out of a desire not to allow Coupe any room to criticise her.

She arrives without her staff, with a sword hanging by her side. It's not unfamiliar; it was safer to travel this way, before she came to the Inquisition. Now she wears plainclothes, just as Coupe does, less severe than the dark colours she normally leans to; smokey blue and grey. She's not likely to be mistaken for a warrior, but certainly not a mage, either.

"If that is what my superiors would wish of me. Were it left to my own preference, I'd sooner be present here. I've more reason particular to staying, now." She looks to Coupe, curious. "And you?"

[limier]

"I've seldom spent so long in place," She admits, knows how it must sound to someone whose life largely confined itself to stone walls and practice yards. But they both saw her absent enough, in the end; she can no more hide fieldwork from the girl than any other aspect of her career. "Still, I cannot claim to miss the southern winters."

Snow and mud made tracking a sight easier — for all sides.

"A particular reason?"

For her reason to be particular.

[dashing]

"Cosima Niehaus. We've something of an attachment."

Isn't it great that she can say that without them being reprimanded, punished, confined or one of them taken to another Circle? It's great. Of course, who knows for sure either way in terms of the reprimand, that could be a bit less clear cut.

"I'd wager Kirkwall is much different to Val Royeaux," she continues, as if what she's said is not a matter that might need to be discussed. For someone who lived there a good portion of her life, she can't really claim to have seen much of it. For once, it isn't a deliberate dig. "Do you miss it?"

[limier]

We’ve something of an attachment.

Wren keeps walking. It’s a delayed sort of alarm that freezes her features, keeps her pacing ahead. It’s the same step that carried her straight past that equipment room years ago: The faces (titles) within. The hitch of breath from between two throats.

Those aren’t the same now, are they. So little of this is the same — she knows —

"In the summer, the whole city reeks of warm sewer," She begins. Words are their own pathway. "Even the gilded quarters, where the wealthy titter. In the winter, the wind off the harbor cuts your skin to bleeding. The street food will make you sick. Thousands live and work in shadow. She is an excessive sprawling labyrinth, and the world sees only the rings upon her fingers."

"We’ve something of an attachment." An echo, a truth. She misses it. Her eyes cut at last aside: "In what manner did you become acquainted?"

It’s a pointed sort of neutrality. The kind that promises anything but.

[dashing]

"Like so many cities, then. Just more gilded than most."

But the next question, or rather the answering of it, her manner changes a very little. A very slight smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. A little spark, though she keeps it contained enough.

"Cosima was attempting to gather plants for the Inquisition in the valley, near Skyhold. She had not realised some of the more dire effects of rashvine, so I advised her gloves might be appropriate for further gathering." It is a fond recollection - albeit fondness with Herian-level filtering, which leaves it recognisable for what it is, but possibly questionable in terms of its intensity to those unfamiliar. (She was not quite so good at containment, before the annulment.)

She has some suspicion as to what the Knight-Lieutenant's own containment might crumble into. "She thinks of the world differently from so many others of my acquaintance, so we talked a great deal before I was sent on assignment. I was greatly relieved to see she was still hence, on my return."

[limier]

She's silent a moment, and perhaps that’s answer enough: The creeping tug-of-war between lips and will (quite different from Amsel’s own battle —). To frown would only encourage her, and one more fucking fight for it. If Wren doesn’t see another way out of this, she’s no more eager to speed the collapse.

"I am fond of her myself." The manner need hardly be specified; all else aside, she must have fifteen years on them both. Her voice is too still, "I would not see either of you come to harm."

There it is. There's the frown.

[dashing]

"I am not surprised. Cosima has the type of countenance to win friends wherever she might attend." Such are her charms and wonders. That Coupe is fond of her is hardly shocking. "You imagine me a danger to her."

It's not a question; it does not need to be.

"I assure you, I have no intention of harming her in any manner." Ah, the tavern. She holds the door open for her delightful companion.

[limier]

"It is not your intentions which give me pause."

Only history. But that would be a lie, wouldn't it? For all her thoughts — feelings — of the matter, for all the blithe indifference of their little enclave here, for all possibilities past three years have opened,

Chantry law existed to reason. There was practical purpose behind the discouragement of relations: To avoid abuse of power, true. To avoid bloodlines, of course. And as with so much else of the Circle, to avoid risk. Waking, sleeping (alone, together).

She presses her own hand to the door, waits in place to catch Herian's eyes, and blocks the frame like a total dick. A passing drunk bumps her elbow and into the other direction without seeming to notice.

"Has there been anyone?"

Since Vipond, she doesn't say —

[dashing]

Not her intention; the nature of her, her being. Mage and disappointment, which she suspected were interchangeable words in the vocabulary of Knight Lieutenant Coupe. Herian's intention weren't the concern, only Herian herself.

"I fail to see how my engagements," a word deliberately chosen for ambiguity, "romantic or otherwise concern you any more."

The nature and degree of the love and the entanglement all rather depended. "Will you move?"

an ok place to wrap this maybe?

[limier]

For a moment she looks about to refuse. At last, peels off, within.

There was a suicide here, She almost catches herself speaking — repeating, and the story dies on her tongue in a little smother of doubt.

She's said that already. She's said these things already.

"So be it." It's distracted, where else might it rise to anger. Her frown tips elsewhere, distant. "So be it."

sounds good to meeee

[dashing]

She is surprised that Coupe relents. Moves, at least; has Luwenna Coupe relented a single day in her life? Herian watches her, brow furrowing just faintly, as she tries to assess whether that was a victory or a loss.

No matter. It was done.