open.

[byblow]

WHO: Alistair, Kostos, Other People
WHAT: Open posts for Alistair & Kostos, catch-all for other people doing other stuff.
WHEN: Justinian, vaguely backdated or forward dated to work around plots, whatever.
WHERE: Kirkwall.
NOTES: If you want a specific starter let me know! Or if you want to drop something in here, do it. Jehan, Silas, and Tomek are available too, I just didn't do open prompts for them.

ALISTAIR

I. THE GALLOWS

The Wardens have their own money and technically their own food. Or they could have their own food, if someone told them they had to have their own food. No one has yet. So here Alistair is, well after midnight, rifling through the stocks in the kitchens beneath the (former) Templar tower for whatever doesn't look like it's necessary for a planned meal in the coming days and doesn't require him to put significant effort into eating it.

He's found an apple. And a hand-sized loaf of dark bread. And a cookie. And raw carrots, which are good enough for horses and therefore good enough for him, and which he waves at whoever comes in, saying, "I saw them first."

II. DARKTOWN

Alistair isn't frequently accused of being too clean, but in Darktown he stands out—because he's had a bath sometime this week, maybe, probably, and because he definitely has been accused of carrying himself with more noble-mimicking confidence than a scullery maid's orphan ought to. Got his head held down in mud puddles over it and everything. But he never learned. Never learns.

Exhibit Q: he is absolutely being mugged, right now, cornered by several armed and obviously hungry Darktown denizens on his way down to the clinic, but while he holds his arms up to let them pat him down their blighted selves, he's saying, "Yyyes, my money," in his usual quietly animated drawl. "My money that I brought with me. Here. To shop."

Identifying himself as a Warden might be easier. Or it might get him stabbed faster, since he's not carrying proof of that anymore than he's carrying coins, or a sword, or anything else that would be useful in this situation if they decide letting him walk away with his tongue and all ten fingers isn't in the cards.

Talking them to death is clearly his best option.

"My lady requires jewels, and I thought, where else for rubies but Darktown?"

KOSTOS

I. THE GALLOWS

The Ander invasion isn't Kostos' personal fault, probably, but for a while he takes it about that hard. When he isn't out drinking and fucking and gambling his way into unpayable debt like they're all going to die any day now, he's almost always in the central Gallows tower, scowling at paper.

The type of paper varies. Maps, lists, letters, notes, books. Scraps of anything that might contain anything that would stop anyone in any of the countries he's meant to be keeping an eye on from acting up in the future. His desk becomes a disaster zone, and he indefinitely borrows a somewhat frightening number of books from the library to store in the Northern Powers office instead, in case they're necessary at some point. Most of them haven't been yet.

He'll narrow things down after a week or so, around the same time he stops considering it a personal moral failing that he didn't see it coming; organize, delegate, all of that. But before that time arrives, his stubble grows to rival his brother's, and he can periodically be found sitting slumped over asleep on a map or standing leaned over and nearly asleep with his forehead pressed against the books on a library shelf—

II. THE DOCKS

—which absolutely does not stop him from going out at night. And usually he knows where his line is, how to drink enough to feel his limbs loosen and for talking to stop being quite so difficult and for punching people to seem like a better idea than normal, but not so much he can't convince people who don't know him that he isn't drunk. Even on bad nights, if he's with someone whose opinion he cares about (or someone he intends to sleep with, which is not a complete overlap), he stays on the right side of the line.

But this is a bad several weeks, and he doesn't wind up with company every night, and after at least one of those nights he staggers back to the ferry's slip alone, shortly before its first departure for the morning, and has to sit down on the edge of the dock to keep from falling in. And then lie down, while he's at it, with his feet hanging over the water.

He sits up abruptly once, thinking he might vomit, but changes his mind.

It's very sexy.

Comments

Kostos, I

[rathercommon]

"Excuse me."

Kitty could, of course, go to another part of the library. It's not like she's looking for exactly-that-book on exactly-this-shelf. Her selection of volumes has been near-random, trying to consume knowledge as varied as possible before she settles into delving deep into a topic. And also, Kitty probably should go to another part of the library, because it's definitely not a good idea to draw attention to herself because she didn't ask permission to use the library and probably if they notice she's been reading they'll come in and chase her off. But this is the third day in a row that Kitty's found this guy using library shelves as his personal spot for napping, and the first two times annoyed her but this time is really pissing her off.

And so she says again, a bit louder, "Excuse me. Do you need help back to your room?"

Alistair I

[onlyhymns]

It's been a while.

"I won't fight you for them," comes a vaguely irritated reply, but its bearer pauses in the stairwell, silhouetted by the dim light from above. Cade isn't normally in the Gallows after midnight, with only a few exceptions. He hadn't thought to find Alistair here.

"Hello," he says, as though only now remembering his usual awkwardness.

for adalia, gwen, and nell

[byblow]

"If any of you kill me," Alistair says first—not the first thing he's said at all, given the long walk to the beach outside the city, but the first thing since arriving and sitting down the basket of snacks (and wine, you're welcome) he brought along—"I want Gwenaëlle in charge of the cover-up."

She knows him best, of the three women here. She'll know how to hit the right notes, how to make it sound both like his own damn fault and something he would plausibly do.

And this is not a legitimate concern at all. He's smiling, while he stretches one arm and then the other.

"No offense. I'm sure you're all fully capable of getting away with murder."

Kostos, 1

[misdirection_hex]

Better that Kostos be the one checking out half the library for the project's use, because his record with these things, unlike his new assistant's, is untarnished. Vandelin does his best to make use of the fruits of that labor, but there's only so much that old books can do for current events.

His expertise with Nevarran politics is mostly too secondhand to stand on its own. Under other circumstances, and in a more complacent time, he might have tried to keep to himself nonetheless, just to prove that he could--but the project's effectiveness can't afford to be compromised now, and neither can he afford to risk the last professional safety net that stands between him and the unwashed Inquisition rank and file.

He seeks out Kostos for a chat, having gone unsuccessfully to the office and eventually been directed to the library, and finds him pillowed on a map. It is rare that fortune affords Vandelin the oppotunity to loom over anyone, especially anyone human. He can't quite bring himself to pass it up.

"Enchanter?"

Alistair, II

[galvanising]

"There you are!" Nell steps out from around the corner, gesturing with the apple she carries in one hand, a single bite mark strangely white against all the Darktown grime. She does not, it should be noted, have her staff with her, but she is on her way to a tavern rather than back from it, so that's something.

"Thank you, sirs," she says, quick steps taking her to Alistair's side before they have a chance to think about what's going on, wrapping an arm about his shoulders as if to guide him away, "I'm so grateful to you for finding my poor half-wit brother. Is he going on about jewels and ladies again?" She clicks her tongue against her teeth, "He's always wandering off, this one. Can't trust him with a copper."

kostos, ii

[esquive]

"Don't fall in. The stipend doesn't cover swimming."

In the washed out tones of the gray pre-dawn, Marcoulf might more closely resemble some Lowtown scrounger than an Inquisition soldier. Yet the accent is unmistakably Orlesian, the insignia there at his shoulder is unmistakable even in the near dark, and he is technically attending an assigned post. --Well, more or less. He's definitely sitting on one of the dock support posts more than he is actively patrolling much of anywhere, but his shift is nearly over. Anyone else might do exactly the same at the end of a late night.

If you're going to slip into the harbor for some drowning, have the courtesy to do it after he's finished here.