faderift | closed ||

Entry tags:

closed ||

WHO: Kitty Jones and Nikos Averesch
WHAT: two revolutionaries walk into a bar, aka have you heard the good word about how monarchies are an oppressive and outmoded form of government here read this pamphlet oh wow you've got a pamphlet too, how cool
WHEN: vaguely Justinian after the Rifter arrival
WHERE: the Boar's Teeth, a gross tavern in Lowtown
NOTES: nah

Brusque, and without comment, Nikos stuffs the last of his pamphlets under the lantern sitting in the center of the last trestle table. The paper is not very thick, but it's enough to tilt the lantern a little, shifting the light across the scarred surface of the table.

The Boar's Teeth is grimy in a way that Nikos almost likes, as much as he likes anything. He has spent enough time in taverns like this one. Patrons sitting hunched over their mugs of ale, as likely to be dead silent as to be muttering in conversation with one another. Low-lit, by crude wrought iron chandeliers and scattered lanterns, with plenty of shadows. Not too crowded, and no one too friendly trying to strike up conversation. Music, sometimes, but never by any bards all glittery and obnoxiously showy. When he was younger, he sought out places like this in a desperate attempt to be less-than, to find a place among the lower and working class. Slumming. He was an idiot. He fucking knows better now.

The pamphlets are Caspar's idea. Everything is Caspar's idea. But Caspar's ideas work, usually, so Nikos does as he's told, circulates the information, plants the seeds. Seeds is one of Caspar's words, too, and who knows where he got it from as he's never farmed a day in his life. A simple metaphor, Nikos said, once, and Caspar had laughed, and turned his stupid beautiful smile on him. But it works.

The language in the pamphlet is simple and digestible, written to be read. A short summary of the history of the title of viscount, the Orlesian occupation, the sanctioned process of nobility electing a new line of viscounts from their own ranks when the viscount dies without an heir. A king who is not called a king remains a king, inevitable tyranny. It draws no conclusions but poses simple and pointed questions, questions that the reader of the pamphlet will, hopefully, answer for himself, or at least begin toward consideration.

Or wipe his arse with it, Nikos had said to Caspar. Which made Caspar laugh, which made Nikos, against all odds, smile, because--Maker's balls--he's thirty years old and still besotted.

Not right now. Not on his face, at least. It helps that Caspar isn't in the room. Right now, Nikos is ready to get down to the business of drinking the last of his wine, and going back to the bar for more. That is, until he feels the particular prickle of someone's stare fixed on him, and he turns around to find the source.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At once, her face becomes less alive, the line of her mouth hardening and a bit of the brightness going from her eyes. Is this the game, then? Get her talking, have her caught with pamphlet in pocket, earn a bit of coin for catching a traitor? Because it would be an easy set-up, wouldn't it. He seems a bit of an unlikely sort to really believe in anything revolutionary - he's old, after all...But also, doesn't that make him a poor trap? The people who are set out to trap you, they tend to be young and shining-faced and earnest. They seem likely. They're not grunting and wine-drunk. And you definitely don't know where they come from, they're not people you already know...

Still. Her answer is cautious. "I don't know," she says. "I've never lived with a king before. Nor a viscount." (Proof she read the pamphlet: she pronounces it viss-count.) "So I wouldn't even know what it's like, to build an alternative."

Vicount. He doesn't correct her. Yet. And perhaps he should feel some sense of pride, that she's apparently making reference to the pamphlet, but that's more Caspar's thing. Though he understands caution, keeping quiet when necessary, he feels more swift impatience than anything else, toward that slow answer. He's mentally flipping through possibilities, countries that might be described as living with kings, living without viscounts.

"Well, you're not Dalish," he drawls, as he leans back again, taking his cup of wine with him. "So it's not a Keeper. Which would be pedantic. If this is pedantry, or some attempt at cleverness, I'll tell you now: I despise it." Except when he's wielding pedantry against someone else. "What country do you come from, that you're free of hereditary power?"

Does he not know that she's a rifter? She rapidly reviews her conversation with him to try to remember whether she'd given herself away at any point. Perhaps not. And the shard in her hand isn't always glowing or anything - it's dormant now. So - perhaps he doesn't know she's a rifter, even though she's fairly certain he does...Maybe he's just screwing with her. But also, maybe he's not - and if that's the case, should she give herself away? Reveal she's one of the feared and despised few? Or should she try to blend in?

She hesitates a breath, then remembers - right. This answer can be truthful without giving her away; there's a place like this in this world.

"We've got rule by the magical elite," she responds with a shrug. "With those without power stamped down. No kings there."

Nikos' left eyebrow ticks up. Looks aren't everything--but she doesn't look like a Vint. And her choice of language would potentially exclude her from the ranks of anyone who would rub elbows with the magisters.

"And the alternative is leave?"

His tone--dull, unimpressed--belies that he would be sympathetic to that, as a choice. Staying and fighting is of course much better--to the bitter end, well, maybe not. Nikos isn't interested in bitter ends. He prefers survival. It's easier to keep fighting when you're alive to see the fight continue.

"No," she answers. Mouth running ahead of her brain, unfortunately - the smart thing would have been to lie. Well, what other choice do I have, all that, but she wouldn't leave, and she didn't - if what Petrana told her is true, there's still a version of her back home, fighting the good fight. So even when her brain catches up, she's not able to cover her denial - can't really come up with a good lie.

So - well. She pushes her hair back from her face. Lying is silly in this case. Right? It's definitely stupid. It'll be easier just to tell the truth. So she gathers her courage, and says, "I didn't leave voluntarily. I was taken away. Rifter. I wouldn't have left if I'd had a choice."

Oh. Nikos doesn't shoot a look down at her hand. He doesn't have to. He can see it out of his peripheral vision--not glowing at present, not immediately and obviously sharded.

"I think that's a defining characteristic of most of the rifters. Were you trying to deliberately obfuscate what you are, or was that an accident."

He knows enough about rifters to understand why someone might choose to hide. He knows enough about rifters to understand that most of them have all the subtlety of a drunken peacock on Satinalia.

So the two options are are you a liar or are you a blunderer, is it? Granted, Kitty was trying to conceal who she was from him. But that doesn't mean he has the right to accuse her of it. She bristles, and snaps back -

"I notice you haven't announced the land you're from, either. Are you trying to deliberately obfuscate what you are, or is your silence just dull-eyed idiocy? Or could it possibly be that it's just not your habit to chatter on about every detail of your autobiography soon as you meet someone. Especially when that autobiography makes the people around you awfully twitchy." She shakes her head. "We're talking about kings, and power, and the abuses of power, and that's universal - doesn't matter if I'm from here or elsewhere."

"It does," Nikos shoots back, without bothering to lean forward to make his counterargument. Dull-eyed idiocy is retaliation. He's not taking the bait. "If you're really after a conversation. I didn't ask for your fucking life story. The Tevinter Imperium is the only country ruled by magocracy in Thedas. I imagine there are some differences between that and whatever place you've dropped in from."

And then, with his free hand (the one not clutching his cup of wine), he gestures toward his face, his general bearing and mien. Accent, sullen irritation, a proclivity toward dark colors, blacks and greens. Thedas goth, not as hardcore as Kostos but still in the aesthetic. "Nevarran. Lived in Antiva. I don't have to go around shouting about it because if you were from here, you'd have had a guess at it."

Antiva is the place with the leather. She remembers that much. And Nevarra is separate, she thinks...She seems to remember having read about it. So it's not that he's an Antivan from Nevarra, it's that he's moved about before coming here. A constant exile, then? Reason enough to be short-tempered - though it makes that judgmental tone when he was asking about running away rather rich. Though, to be fair, maybe that's just what he always sounds like.

"And if you were from my world, you'd know I was a Londoner," Kitty responds primly, "but I'm not scolding you for that, and as a fellow immigrant I don't think you really ought to be getting haughty about a lack of local knowledge. I'm quite sure you were in my position, once." She flicks her hair from her face, then goes on, "And yes, there are differences between my home and Tevinter. True. But it'd be foolish for me to base all of my arguments and all of my thinking in my experiences back home, wouldn't it - if you're interested in shaping this world, then we ought to be thinking about how things are here."

But since he did provide some information, it'd be stupid to withhold now and make him clam up. So - "Anyway. Yes. London, which is a city sort of like this one, a bit. Much, much bigger, and much more crowded. And ruled by magicians, who didn't pass down hereditary power - they transferred power to whoever was best at scheming and backstabbing and murdering."

In her position, yeah right. Nikos holds up both of his hands. The one holding the wine, he has to sort of uncurl his grip, tip his wrist so she can see. Empty palms. No shards. "Not your position."

And none of this he will say, but: he's an exile, not an immigrant. Playing a drinking game with himself, Nikos takes a sip of wine. And technically Antiva is half his to claim--another sip. If he subscribed to the notion of hereditary power (another sip), if either Nevarra or Antiva gave a shit about women as people and not family vassals to be pushed back and forth across ledgers and family trees, weighed down by dowries and titles that they shed and don in succession, showier and showier hats. Two sips: that one is depressing.

Also it's funny, that this rifter has moved right on to we. He can't tell if that's accidental, or a word she's chosen on purpose. Very inclusive. Which, he's not sure that he likes.

He leaves it all for now as he takes in her description of the system she's lived under. One more sip of wine, this one just for himself, before he gives comment. "Inheritance by way of blood isn't unheard of. It's dressed differently. Are status and title taken up by the murderer by default, or do they hold ostensible elections?"

That's not exactly how Kitty wanted this conversation to go. She wants to hear more about him, and Nevarra, and Kirkwall, and everything, not talk about back home. Especially since the question he starts out with is one that she has to answer with a reluctant, "I'm...not sure. They never reported honestly on the news back home, so all I know is the propaganda they fed us combined with what rumours said."

So what does she know for a fact? "There are never elections. Gladstone - our Founder - he dissolved the commoners' Parliament over a hundred fifty years ago and took sole power for himself. He ruled until he died, and then his apprentice took over, and then was assassinated and his rival took over, and so on and so forth with all these Prime Ministers supposedly being assassinated by Czech evildoers but more likely they just get stabbed in the back. Or, occasionally, the front." She shakes her head. "But at the end of the day, there was democracy once, and elections, but they killed it as surely as they kill each other."

"At least there's variety in the stabbings."

Assassins humor, a little like gallows humor. Or something. Nikos, still playing that one-man drinking game, takes another sip of wine. A drink every time you hear of a system of power squashing leadership from the people and installing a ruling class.

"And what if an assassin without any magic really did commit the assassination? Would be be allowed to assume power?"

Kitty shakes her head. "No. It's not like - oh, you kill someone, you get their place, that's written into the constitution. Nothing like that. It's more that killing leads to vacuums of power, and people step in to take advantage. It's like - " She leans forward slightly as she talks, getting a little bit into this discussion in spite of her earlier reluctance to speak.

"Just before I left, the streets were being stalked by this beast - a golem. It's a deadly creature, able to absorb magic and crush life out with its bare hands." A little shudder at the memory of it, of that horrible cold... "And no one knew where it came from or who created it. Well, it wasn't actually any great mystery, was it, of course it was one of the magicians - and right at the same time, me and my friends, we were being manipulated and tricked into going after a staff of enormous magical power and bringing it to where one of the magicians could get it. Not a coincidence. This magician, he was working in secret, through both the golem and us, because he never wanted to put his name to it. But he obviously wanted the golem to murder the higher-ups, and the staff so he could have the power to step into the vacuum when it came.

"So it's not even entirely about power, is it - not even entirely about magical ability. It's also about the ability to scheme and plot. They kill because killing makes opportunities for them, and because they can't think of a way to do it that actually involves drawing power from the people and their faith and trust. Or even cooperating with one another. D'you see? And then they pretend like it's all based on merit and not wickedness."

She talks, and she talks, and she talks. And Nikos lets her get through it all.

"Yes," he says, once she's come to a close. His voice has slipped back in that drawl again, "I see. I was being sarcastic." In case she was wondering. And he let her go on because he's kind of an arsehole, and because he recognized an opportunity to glean information, to sift through it later and determined if any of it is worth a damn. Picking out the relevant and interesting parts in the few moments where they appear, coins among sand.

"If it's based on the ability to scheme, then out-scheming seems the straightforward response."

Oh. She flushes as a cold wave of humiliation grips at her. Right. Of course. Sarcasm. And she was just going on. Stupid. So, as he drawls at her, she glares down at her apple turnover, and picks it up to take a great big bite, and once he's finished his comment she shrugs.

"Yeah," she agrees, non-committal, cognizant of the fact that anything more than that will probably get her mocked again. Then, neutrally, she asks, "So how's it work here."

Nikos raises his eyebrows a little higher at her dull response. A hint of a smirk crosses his face because he is, in his heart, a petty bitch.

"How it works here, is authority for the aristocracy. The grand trick is that someone of lesser standing might be able to move his way into those ranks, largely through wealth and buying the best house in Hightown. Mages, as a class of unpredictable undesirables, have been historically left out. With some exceptions. In the Inquisition, power comes through promotions and heroics. Part of the grand trick of the military has always been peasants rising to prominence."

He really was a lot more likable before. Kitty wonders what happened to make him so much worse. She'd thought that he'd be a lot sweeter once he was out of the stupid library, not the other way around...Well, apparently, he's a mean drunk.

"And how about you?" she asks, looking up again to meet his eyes directly, lips pursed peevishly, annoyance making her assessment uncharitable. "You're a fancy fellow. I saw you walking down the street, I'd go for your handkerchief and dagger before anyone else's." Not the wallet. He's almost certainly the sort of fancy fellow whose wallet is constantly empty - but, no doubt, he's got fine things that he hasn't yet hocked. "How'd your family come to it?"

Fancy is not a word often ascribed to Nikos, who passes out in doorways and garden benches when he's missed the last ferry back to his Inquisition bedroom. The dig rankles, despite his attitude. His smirk sours to a slight sneer, a tug at his upper lip.

"I don't have a handkerchief." And his daggers are well-concealed, not that he's going to tout that. Part of well-concealed is not talking about how well-concealed they are. "And I don't have anything to with my family any longer." Except on holidays. And in written correspondence, when he's feeling particularly guilty. When Nikos was younger, he wrote home with vicious condemnations and political diatribes, and his parents wrote back cheerful letters that made him feel stupid and clumsy and angrier than ever. "My father was born into his status. Nevarra, monarchical." One hand, empty, to represent patriarchal inheritance. The hand with the wine cup, then, to represent matriarchal inheritance, and, "My mother is one of the lesser daughters of a merchant prince. Antiva, plutocratic. And then there's me."

He touches both hand and wine cup to his chest. And then he tips another sip of wine into his mouth, as he identifies himself, "Alcoholical."

Damn it. That joke was unexpected enough that she actually laughs, in spite of her resolve to be sour and judgmental and caustic. It's not a loud laugh, more a snort than anything else, but even so, it slips out, which leaves her even more annoyed than before.

"And - what, are you disinherited?" She desperately hopes he says no. Because if he is, someone who got kicked out of his previous status for being too political, that'll be something common between them, and she doesn't really want them to have some common qualities. Commonality breeds sympathy. "Is that why you haven't got anything to do with them?"

It was a joke, bleak and self-deprecating, so Nikos didn't necessarily expect a laugh for it. His audience is usually Marisol. He has to work harder to stump her and block her just-as-clever-if-not-cleverer rejoinder--besides the fact that Marisol is just his cousin. It's different. He slides a glance over at the rifter, reassessing her in those few brief seconds between swallowing his current mouthful of wine and getting another one.

"There's nothing to really inherit." How he wishes he'd been disinherited, is what he would say, publicly. And he does. But there is a knife-edge of regret in him, something that is certain that his parents must dislike him for being the catalyst for the Averesch's flight from Nevarra. The vacuum left by his brother and dead sister, disappointingly filled by stupid sluggish Nikos, only good at numbers and not much else. If he'd been a second son, that would have been fine. Instead he'd been elevated beyond his capabilities, fallen in with a bad crowd, tried to assassinate a king. The usual story. "Solved the problem for me. I haven't anything to do with them because they remain in the upper echelons of a society I would prefer to see razed and--"

He gestures, with his cup. "Complacency. Participation in a system of horseshit. Not my style."

She studies him, propping her chin up in her hand. It seems odd. The implication seems to be that he'd just walked away from them, from power and privilege and everything. Which is not something that happens. No one just gives up on what they have. Do they? She had, sure, but it wasn't as though she had much to begin with; her parents had been born without wealth or status, so when they'd kicked her out, it hadn't mattered worth a damn. She hadn't lost a thing. Even if he says there wasn't anything to inherit, that's clearly not really true - not unless he's being completely truthful about rejecting it. Rejecting privilege.

"So what is your style?" she asks, eyes a little narrowed. "Sounds from all that you ought to be an active revolutionary."

"Does it." Nikos tips his cup forward so he can peer into it, checking for the bottom. It is growing worryingly visible. "How interesting."

He couldn't sound more bored. Far more interesting is his wine, which is why he tips that cup the rest of the way to finish it off, and pushes back from the table.

"My style is, I need more wine to endure continued conversation."

He hauls himself to his feet with only a small stagger, and turns his back on her entirely as he heads to the bar.

"Sit down," she calls after him, though she sighs heavily as she does. She does, at the end of the day, know how this works. There was an informant back in London - a caretaker in the offices of the Ministry for Information who'd kept his eyes open and loved a drink. So the Resistance plied him with drink, filling his cup for as long as he was talking. That's how it'll be here, she supposes, although the value of this particular drunk's information will be far more questionable.

"I'll fetch you a cup," she says, standing, and overtakes him easily as she moves towards the bar. Gives him a little push back towards his seat. She returns a few moments later with wine, which she places in front of him; however, a few moments after that, a serving-girl comes and deposits a bowl of stew at his place. She has no intention of allowing him to pass out before she's learned something of interest.

Nikos glares after the rifter as she moves easily past him. The push makes him want to kick her in the back of the knee. He settles instead for a vague hope that she'll trip on something, or bring him a larger cup of wine to make up for the indignity of being ordered around.

"I have," he calls after her, "two hands," and he holds them up for viewing, with muzzy indignation. Subtext is, go fuck yourself.

All the same, he does turn around and stagger back toward his seat, lowering himself down with some effort. Standing is always the worst, after drinking. Everything seems fine until he's on his feet. A true professional, Nikos can hold his alcohol, drink just about anyone under the Maker-damned table, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel it. He's good at functioning as if he doesn't feel it. The truest skill of the lifelong alcoholic.

Which is to say that Nikos takes up the wine, when it is set before him. Too matter-of-fact in his movements to seem desperate for a drink.

When the stew is set down after that, he's drinking. His eyes find the bowl over the edge of his cup. Then his eyes find the face of the rifter girl, sitting across from him. It occurs to him that she is young. And invasive.

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I've eaten already."

"Before you started drinking?" The lift of her eyebrow is slightly skeptical. The drunks she knows often resist eating - alcohol's effects are stronger when drink hits an empty stomach. Kitty wavers, often, between hating people like this and feeling sympathy for them. It dulls the frustration and pain, after all, a dram or two - and who can blame people who are powerless and frustrated and miserable for wanting an escape? But on the other hand, it is an escape, when frustration and pain can so often be channeled instead into more productive channels. It can be used to motivate powerful action.

She wondered, sometimes, if whisky wasn't an invention of the magicians, to keep people silent and dull-eyed, to put them to sleep at night. Keep the commoners sedated. Keep them quiet. But there's alcohol in this world, too, so apparently they didn't actually come up with it. There's one theory shot. Oh, well.

"Well, if you're not hungry, then don't eat it," she responds, shrugging. "But it's there if you want it, and otherwise it'll just get tossed." And then, because her train of thought has led her to be powerfully curious, she asks him, "Why d'you drink that stuff, anyway?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject