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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

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?"

He has eaten already. Hours earlier. So there. That means Nikos doesn't have to answer her snotty question, and can just give her a look that very much says who-do-you-think-you-are-and-also-go-fuck-yourself without actually having to say any of it. Another skill, this one particular to him.

"Next you'll be telling me there's starving children in the Anderfels."

In defiance, and as punctuation to that remark, he takes another sip of wine, before answering her question.

"Why I drink wine is because it tastes good. And it is available in large quantities, and is generally more palatable than the beer. Vinegar piss that grapes have sat adjacent to being generally better than straight piss."

"It does not taste good," she says, wrinkling her nose. She's tasted wine before, and beer, and whisky - little mouthfuls smuggled to school, her curiosity overwhelming her good sense. It's nasty stuff. All of it is. No, give her a good cup of strong tea any day. Or a milkshake - that'd be fine, too.

"And I'm not asking why you drink wine. I'm asking why you get drunk." She reaches out one hand, fingers spread, to indicate the pamphlet sitting before him. "Haven't you got better things to do?"

"Uneducated palate," Nikos drawls, unfazed by her assessment of his favorite pastime. His relationship with alcohol is his longest, far outstripping even whatever it is he has with Caspar.

A little hazy now under its influence, he actually looks where the Rifter girl is gesturing, and comes face-to-face with his own pamphlet. Caspar's pamphlet. Andraste's tits. He rubs the heel of his hand against one eye, with a scowl that is a notch above slight.

"Any man incapable of drinking and accomplishing better things is lazy. I have years of experience at both. A true and consummate professional. Not that it matters to you," and he lifts his cup a little, sort of a toast, "transient here as you are."

She narrows her eyes, lips pursing in disapproval. "What does my being transient have to do with anything?" She assumes he probably is talking about the fact that rifters often don't stick around so long. He's probably not calling her a transient. She isn't looking her sharpest, no, but she certainly doesn't look like the sort of person who sleeps under bridges. She hopes. She'll have words, if he is implying she looks like that.

"You're trying to take some sort of action to help people. Aren't you? I'd have to be a heartless person not to care whether or not you succeed." A beat, and then she adds, "Unless you mean that your drinking doesn't matter to me, which, all right, it doesn't really, but I still think it's stupid."

"Thank the Maker I don't give a shit what you think. Or else I'd feel really bad right now."

In truth, she's right: he is taking action to help people. And yet he hates people. People. Selfish, stupid arseholes, milling around living in shit conditions, and yet largely content to remain in those conditions out of tradition, out of ease, out of allegiance to rulers that could also give a shit about them, outside of taxable workhorses, bodies to be used as arrow fodder. Going about wearing blinders and telling themselves they're happy in their lots. And worse than the stupid poor are those in the middle, that help keep everything in order, handing down the leavings from the high tables and pretending they're worth something, playing games with chairs and hats and crowns. Moving up and down ladders of petty power. Keeping their kings and queens in the seats so long as it suits them.

Nikos pushes the pamphlet away from himself with the end of his cup.

"Heartlessness hardly comes into it. You could have the biggest fucking heart in all of Thedas. You could also be gone in four days."

"Being rude," Kitty says primly, "and having a foul mouth are not doing anything to drive me away. So you might as well save your breath. You've little enough breath as it is, given how you're intent on drowning yourself."

She takes advantage of his batting the pamphlet away to pick it up and draw it nearer to herself. With one hand, she smooths it over. She scans it absently as she thinks, her eyes picking up only the third word but her mind taking in the whole shape and scope of it. Such an odd thing, isn't it, for someone like this to talk about revolution? Stan was more abrasive than he, and he talked about revolution, but...Stan wasn't a cynic, either. Not exactly. Nor any of them. They all believed. It's hard to get any sense of belief from this man.

But it's got to be there. Otherwise, why would he be doing all this?

"But you're right. I could," she allows. "Vanish. But so could you. You could take a tumble down the tavern steps and break your stiff neck and die on the street. But you're fighting, aren't you? What - do you think I'm weaker-willed than you? Less brave? Because if you're one of those men who thinks that girls are weak-willed and cowardly, I'll pop you in the eye so hard you won't see for weeks. Who cares if I live four days or four centuries? What matters is what I do."

"I'm sorry. Are you threatening me."

Flat, a little sarcastic. It's not really a question, because that's not really a threat. Not that she couldn't be an unexpected threat, beneath her fresh face and Rifter status and her adorably bedraggled haircut. Nikos has gotten this far in life because he has learned, through trial and error, not to underestimate people. Assume too much in either direction--lend someone too much credibility, not enough credibility--and it could mean a noose. Or some other properly dire outcome.

Playing at sarcasm, acting a cynic--well, it helps, that these facets are true to Nikos' core. He is cynical. Even if he weren't, it's hard to find truth in anyone. Natural skepticism makes him fills in the rest of him with distrust.

A general skepticism and general distrust, mind. The cause is a burden shared equally between men and women. There is very little of Marisol in this Rifter girl. She's scrappier, more alley dog than elegantly avian, the way that Marisol holds herself. And certainly his cousin has never threatened to pop him in the eye. All the same, Nikos looks dully at her and thinks, Well.

Maybe. If spoiled silly Marisol can grow toward revolution.

"It's a point," he allows, after a beat. A point. He's not generous enough to couch it in anything close to a compliment. "What is it you would be doing?"

That...is a very natural, logical question. A good question, even (because Kitty is perfectly capable of admitting when something is a good point, not just a point, because she's completely reasonable unlike this proud, stuck-up arsehole who frustratingly makes lots of good points, whose pamphlet is just too interesting to ignore). Unfortunately it's a question whose answer has to be -

"I don't know." This is really frustrating, because it makes that completely arbitrary four-day deadline he set for her actually rather potent. Who could ever learn enough about a place to fight for justice and decency in just four days? - Not that she thinks she's going to disappear that quick. She doesn't think she's going to disappear at all. Death's inevitable, yeah, but that doesn't mean it's coming for her anytime soon.

Of course, she could always listen to someone who knows more about the world than she does. Do what they advise. But listening to people who seemed older and wiser and more worldly was what led her down the wrong path, wasn't it? If she'd thought for herself a little bit more, known a little bit more, maybe she wouldn't have gotten in so deep with the Resistance - or maybe she'd have been able to point them in a different direction...Well, too late to think that way now.

So she looks at this guy (who does not have the charisma or charm of Mr Pennyfeather, that's for sure) and says, "I don't know enough yet to know what needs to be done. I've been reading, and talking to people, so I'm learning. And I'll keep learning. I'm not going to jump into something without really understanding it. But - " She tugs at a strand of hair. "There are things which are straightforwardly good, I think. That I can do to help people. Closing rifts, for one - because I bet you anything that it's not the rich and powerful who are out there getting killed by demons, it's poor farmers and travelers who can't afford bodyguards. And - Well, I'm a rifter, which means that some people are afraid of me, but it also makes me important - I get to catch the ear of people who would never listen to ordinary poor folk. So I can talk - " And boy, can she ever talk - "And maybe people will hear me if I speak up for - you know - treading carefully, when livelihoods are about to be trampled, or when fields might be burned.

"All of that's small stuff, but - " She shakes her head. "It matters. If I'm real, if I'm fake, it doesn't matter. What matters is what I leave behind here. Which is true for everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from."

"Mm," says Nikos.

Which is not anything even remotely like an adequate response to everything she's just laid on him. Everything: it wasn't that much, truth be told, but it merits more of a response than what is basically a grunt.

He looks bored, or at least dispassionate. Behind that, he's thinking. Is this worth telling Caspar about, or not. Do they really need Rifters. If it was up to him, Nikos would say fuck no. What matters is what she leaves behind? Sure, only her staying expectancy is nothing she or anyone else can guarantee. In the grand timeline, in the history books, in the events that really and truly matter (big ones, small ones), she'll matter about as much as a fart.

But. Nikos is a cynic. Sensible, is what his mother said, practical, and because she is his mother and she meant those words kindly, she didn't add to a fault. Before he was a revolutionary, an assassin, a professional drunk, he worked best in numbers. Lines and figures, sums that moved back and forth across ledger lines. He was good at it. Caspar measures differently, has tried to show Nikos how to measure differently, worths that have nothing to do with actual physical worth and values that have little to do with anything you can write down in an equation or ledger book.

And it might be worth it to have someone expendable. Someone without connections. Someone who might disappear any day. Practicality agrees with that summation.

"People will hear you, but will assume your opinion is uneducated," he tells her, dully, "because you are from another--whatever. Country. Read and learn, and get used to dismissal running the gamut of friendly to unfriendly. Fortunately within the Inquisition, you're at least likely to be considered a valuable resource. As you've rightly guessed. Something to leverage."

Kitty's expectations, perhaps, have been so lowered by the man's sourness that the vague affirmation - you've rightly guessed - sounds a bloody enthusiastic encouragement indeed. She brightens just a bit, pulling further out of the sullen funk he sent her into earlier, and says, "Believe me, the day someone assumes my opinion is worth anything is the day I swoon and hit my head and die. I'm used to fighting an uphill battle."

Well - that's partially true, at least. She reflects - it's not as though she did much talking or convincing of anyone with Mr Pennyfeather. The Resistance took material action; they didn't try to change hearts or minds. That was part of why she'd liked it so much. No more struggling against prejudice and cruelty; that was replaced, instead, by quite literally burning the system down, one building at a time. But...That's not her way anymore. And she can do this.

"I mean - I can't imagine that anyone treats you and your cause with respect. Do they?" She cocks her head at him. "I bet you're constantly getting laughed out of the room - on the occasions you're not chased off at knifepoint."

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