closed; bring your father to work day

[inagutterson]

WHO: Yngvi, Kit, Petrana, Wren, special guest star Einar
WHAT: Aftermath of investigating missing Carta agents
WHEN: Early Firstfall
WHERE: Location
NOTES: Potential upsetting discussions about the Casteless

Putting it off as long as he could didn't mean he could put it off forever. Eventually Yngvi had to leave the Gallows, and leaving the Gallows meant eyes on him from the family; everyone delivered back safely with their report but Einar is a dwarf of reputation, a dwarf of stature who plans bigger and better. Not entirely legitimate but then the Antivan Crows once did so much business did they not?

So Yngvi walked out the Gallows, eyes tracked him, Darktown swallowed him, and now he's had to come to the highest of authorities here. Trying to keep it out of his face (he's not good at it, certainly not next to the figure his father cuts) once they're ushered in. It could look like a merchant and his son being dragged along for the experience. Everyone knows their part to play in all this.

"Madame de Cedoux, Kit Gandir, Ser Coupe, I wanted to introduce you to the head of the branch of the Carta whose agents we were able to retrieve recently," Yngvi says, the words tripping out of his mouth in an uncomfortable rush. "Madame de Cedoux's the head of diplomacy, Kit heads up Other Projects, and Ser Coupe is part of Chantry relations; her and Kit were part of the group who-- who were involved at the ground level. So to speak." The fumble is embarrassing, how to talk about them, how to even talk about what happened like that.

"The pleasure is all mine of course, I only wished to come along today with my boy to hear his accounting of it away from the noise in Darktown - you can imagine, the ears aren't what they were years ago - and to convey my gratitude in person." Ah, the old charm is laid out in front of these fine folk (Yngvi is studiously not looking at anything in particular, gaze boring a hole through the wall) with a polished old rogue's smile. "A man never passes up a chance to thank the folk who played a part in returning good men and women to him. Not when they were such an investment. You understand, of course. Perhaps to hear too a little of the Inquisition, Orzammar, how you're settling into this fine city if I might be so bold."

(Yngvi perhaps should've warned them about the sort of dwarf his father and patriarch of the Carta branch is but this probably enough, and honestly every time he thought about it he'd rather be back down in the Deep Roads again.)
 

Comments

[ragweed]

No amount of warning could've prepared Kit for this. He won't blame Yngvi for it, though. Seeing Einar makes many things clear, like spotting a skull at the bottom of a well.

He doesn't speak, or can't speak, and endeavours to keep his face as neutral as the Legion's tattoos or his casteless brand can possibly be in front of this man. He defers to both Madame de Cedoux and Ser Coupe in a glance.

[ipseite]

At court, a young lady of standing such as the daughter of a Marquis would not often encounter such a man as Einar-

but court is not the only place that Petrana learned her craft, and in mercenary camps and dockside taverns, there are a hundred pieces of him scattered. She doesn't do anything so gauche and unsubtle as to glance sideways at Yngvi, but she's thoroughly aware of him, his reactions. A weathervane- the canary in the coal mine.

“It is always pleasant to be visited with gratitude,” she says, lightly, we're all in on that joke, aren't we? The reward for work is more work-

She is smiling. Charmed, to look at her. Careful, though, with what she responds to.

“Shall we, Mssr Yngvi?”

She would like to hear what he has to say. And what Einar does with it.

[limier]

She registers Kit's glance from the corner of her eye, doesn't track to it — but behind her back, her fingers unknit to him: A conscious anti-tension, some pointless little invocation of morale. This will be over soon.

Not for long, though. Not forever. You don't forget the sight of things underground, of stones upturned; ugly fragile creatures squirming from rock. Wren keeps her attention to Petra as she speaks, then Einar. Cold eyes, old ones. So the ugly thing's here, damp twisted below the crags of a solid face, a present authority.

Even mountains wear down. But they may require this one whole.

"Of course," When it's her turn to speak, and nothing more. You don't offer condolences for losses the Inquisition can't afford to have bought; to have trotted Yngvi out here, nice and proper, it isn't only his own family the man's flexing against. Whatever the nature of these negotiations (ears to hear, and that might be currency or contract), work upon more work —

There are few shoulders for that to fall upon. Lately they bend, bow.

Her head dips, and she waits for the stone to roll free.

[inagutterson]

Yngvi doesn't choke to hear himself accorded with the kind of title a guard would only use if he was about to be arrested or questioned, asked to be spend a night in the cells. Einar at least gives a faintly impressed little nod of the head. Dwarves hear such chatter in the Undercity about these strange people in charge of things but after the shambles of leadership Kirkwall's had in the past that he's lived through (Meredith, a brief tenure but oh, let none of them forget that time) to have someone with a sense of humour is a change.

Clearing his throat, Yngvi tries and fails not to look at Kit apologetically. "Finding things as they were in Orzammar wasn't...exactly how it was meant to be. There's a new king who instilled a lot of reforms; all castes in the military, lower castes and the casteless have more rights. But obviously what we saw was different to that. Casteless were missing, Kit was the one who got them talking about that."

There's a moment of hesitating before he says the last part, only Kit was the one who got them to talk, and maybe they wouldn't have found the agents so fast if they hadn't had that tip. If he hadn't reached out. Einar shakes his head slightly at the talk of Bhelen's reforms, an old man who's seen these things come and go before, all the talk, all the idealism; distasteful perhaps that it sticks this time.

So he nods to them, a little roll of the eye. "Traditionalists who of course would never speak with a dwarf such as myself or my associates, are unhappy with these reforms. They'd like it all to go back to how it was."

"Right," Yngvi almost interrupts, almost dares, voice tight. "People would know they were missing and turning a blind eye to that so I'm not sure how anyone wants to handle it, it's not really my arena. The fact that red lyrium was involved in it? That's why I needed other people to hear it. Since they were making the Casteless mine it."

(Good to know his carefully planned speech is just scattering to the wind right now and that his throat is dry as some of the deserts he's been dragged through to go hunting stuff for bored, rich nobles.)

[ragweed]

There's a bone-deep ugliness in Einar that Kit recognizes from a different man in a different room, decades in his past. Beraht had the same ugliness in him. Like stains under the fingernails from soaking your hands in blood. Doesn't matter that someone else did the bloodletting for you.

Kit glimpses the small gesture Wren makes, feels something tight in his chest uncoil, but it doesn't loosen, not fully. Not when he looks to Yngvi's face, sees the desperation written in newly formed lines there, the threads of his composure unraveling. Kit doesn't have the head for diplomacy, for maintaining appearances like this, and he starts to take a slight step towards Yngvi, only stopping himself because as bad as it is, he doesn't want to make it worse.