faderift | [OPEN] you don't know my brother he's a broken bone

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[OPEN] you don't know my brother he's a broken bone

WHO: Flint, Marcoulf & YOU
WHAT: Catch-all for Solace
WHEN: Solace generally, backdated or forward-dated as is convenient.
WHERE: Kirkwall, various
NOTES: N/A, will update as necessary.

FLINT
i. a tavern

Kirkwall rises out of the sea, shaped like Tevinter and the Qun both. In the shadow of the Gallows, there can be no shaking the reminder of either nation. Flint thought it first from the Walrus' quarterdeck as the ship had made its way into the harbor under full sail and no colors at all. The city which finally greets them looks for all the world as if it could promise only one thing. You do not matter, whispers every old stone in Kirkwall - even the ones under the shadow of the Inquisition's banners. But maybe if the stones can't be convinced, there are people in the city who might be. That's the trick.

--and the trouble, seeing as they can't very well show up and start making demands of the Inquisition's local leadership. No, his job at present is to seem non-threatening enough so as not to induce panic and so pointedly ever present so there can be no choice but for someone who should to pay some attention to the anchored ship, to the men on it, and to Max and her money and to what she will eventually ask for.

To that end, Flint's acquired the use of the back room of one the grimy taverns along Kirkwall's docks. He keeps the dividing screen between it and the rest of the floor poorly extended so that he might go about his work - perfectly legitimate bookkeeping and discussion of revictualing - in sight of the other patrons and vice versa. Surely it takes no time at all for gossip to do its business:

There is a ship in the harbor which flies no nation's flag. Her crew has only been allowed ashore in small numbers which must mean they have a secret worth guarding and tongues loose enough to ply. Meanwhile, her captain does business from The Boar & The Bat. He speaks with the unmistakable accent of a Vint, asks lots of questions, and might just be persuaded to pay for the answers.

ii. the library

It's late, but there's a light burning in the library yet. It illuminates a table where Flint has seemingly taken up permanent residence, presiding over a mountain of charts, pamphlets, papers, and reports deemed unimportant enough to be shelved rather than locked in someone's desk drawer. Given the prodigious range of reading material at hand, it's not immediately clear what exactly he's looking for. It must be of some importance though as he's been at it for hours tonight and in days prior has combed through more than his fair share of the stacks.

He keeps a small ledger at hand, noting down names and places and figures as it pleases him. In the rare intervals where he steps out for some much needed fresh air, the light is left burning to ward off any ambitious late-night clerk from clearing away his collection and the notes are taken with him - folded twice and tucked away into his pocket. When not bent over his work or stretching his legs in the nearest half-lit courtyard, he can be found picking through the library's collection: pulling books out, then re-shelving them if they don't suit.

MARCOULF
i. the training grounds

The flash of his sword is one among a dozen in the yard. Marcoulf works quietly and systematically with the rapier, running himself through a series of lunges and pulls and side steps against his own shadow as the sun rises high and hot over the Gallows. For anyone with an eye for swordmanship, he's not poor with the blade; and for anyone familiar with an Orlesian chevalier or two, the exercises are like enough to doubtlessly be informed by some sensibly trained hand.

Marcoulf's clearly no teacher though despite the smattering of green hands swinging swords and maces around their more experienced peers in the training yard. He's too tight lipped to be useful to his neighbors, largely reliable only for trouncing unsuspecting victims and for accepting any challenge.

ii. notice board

The Inquisition might house, feed and clothe its ranks, but mostly what that boils down to is a lot of linen for washing, potatoes for peeling, and seams for mending. Even given the toll the delegation to Minrathous had taken on the stabels' population, Marcoulf's found plenty to busy himself with. Today that means patching shirts in the shadow of the Gallows' notice board. He's made himself perfectly comfortable on the stone step with a cushion that looks suspiciously like it might belong to one of the more well-appointed state rooms and has been steadily working his way through the basket of linen with his ear tipped toward anyone grousing about whatever they find posted on the board.

He's far too busy diligently closing holes from pulled threads and reinforcing fraying cuffs to read anything himself, you see. And it takes his attention to thread a needle, of course. And naturally it's much cooler in the shadow cast back here than standing in the sun squinting at tacked up bits of paper. All very logical reasons for why he might ask the next person who happens to examine the notice board's postings:

"Anything interesting?"

WILDCARD
(( shoot me a pm or throw me a starter; y'all know how this works. [okhandemoji] ))

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Six spends a great deal of time watching people train and practice in the Gallows; she's one of the few that seems content to help and offer aid to others, her instructions short, clipped and to the point, but tied hand in hand with gentle movements to adjust posture, stance and stride. She's careful as she moves around, her own greatsword on her back and her hands heavy with a borrowed long blade, content to find her own place to start to practice and train when she catches sight of a familiar face jabbing at a training dummy.

She cannot avoid stopping by; she wonders if she seems changed to him, grown in age as she has, though perhaps her appearance had not altered. She does not spend enough time looking at herself to recognise the shape of her face or the growth of her features, only noticing herself when her hair is too long and requires cutting.

"Do you train alone today, or would you tolerate a partner?" At her heels, a mabari puppy wiggles, staring up at the stranger with careful, intelligent eyes.

Edited 2018-07-24 22:04 (UTC)

It takes a particular kind of person to have their portrait etched alongside their inflammatory political opinions. It's the sort of thing that more or less demands to be remembered, an inescapable mental note made when he'd come across a stack of pamphlets tucked alongside inside a book of otherwise little consequence - one of many evidently brought from Skyhold, the pamphlets stowed away with it. Left to his own devices, Flint might have asked after the name. If she was still in Skyhold maybe he would have even written a carefully worded letter.

He isn't afforded the opportunity.

Instead, Flint finds himself pausing at the top of the stairs leading from the Gallows down to the ferry slip to stare at a woman arriving there. Her hair is a different color than he might have guessed, but even from this vantage he can tell the face is exact. Whoever had done her portrait had known what they were doing, he thinks, already moving down the stairs.

Under different circumstances and given his leisure, he might still have just inquired after her. Written a note. Asked for her opinion on some inconsequential matter to see if he could tell if she was really the author of those pamphlets or just the face of them. After all, if he and the rest of the pirates from Nascere are meant to be mistaken for easy allies rather than potentially explosive ones, any blatant association with a woman recognizably behind some prickling propaganda writing might not be in anyone's long term best interests. But the circumstances aren't different. The circumstances are that the Inquisition has gone to Minrathos. There can be no affording gentle handling.

So he closes distance.

"Excuse me." Brusque, like he isn't used to that particular combination of words except as a substitute for 'fuck you very much.' His accent too is obvious from just that, laying at bizarre odds with the rest of him. "You're Mademoiselle Vauquelin, is that right?"

It hasn't been so long since the last time she was called so that she doesn't answer to it, but there's a pause; if he were further away then the pause might have been for a different reason altogether (where did your hair go, Uncle Gervais?) but he comes near enough quick enough that she has no opportunity to be so jarred. Instead, immediately cataloging details: accent, demeanor, dress. Accent. Gwenaëlle is not as unfamiliar with the particular way Tevene speakers shape their words as most young ladies of Orlais, but she is not (as he has already observed), most young ladies of Orlais.

“In another life,” she says, as if she hadn't missed that beat at all, and offers him her hand.

(As a lady might, for all that.)

“Baudin.” A brief pause. “If my lord owes a debt, you can take it up with Celene and see how far that gets you.”

Speaking of her inflammatory political opinions.

A moment ago, he'd been playing under the illusion of being as peacefully unobserved as was possible in a training yard. Now the line of his arm, halfway through a lunge, goes sharper. Marcoulf stills. He lowers the sword's point and fixes her with a stiff, crooked look. Scuffs the back of his free hand absently across his scraggly cheek to wipe away the prickle of sweat in his beard.

She looks like she hasn't slept well, is what she looks like.

"If you like, Ser." His eye line flickers toward the greatsword on her back, then slides to the blade she carries in hand. As long as she doesn't have plans to take his head off, then sure. Why not.

She doesn't mean to disturb, truly, but she steps up to him because he is a familiar face and one she would like to spend more time with, if only because he has been kind to her without reason. She's still on the edge of uncertainty about that, uncomfortable with the knowledge that kindness came because of some illusion rank or title, but if it means that she can begin to make something like friends in this world she can hardly dismiss it.

"Only if you'd like to. I wouldn't force you if you'd rather train alone."

Six wouldn't be offended if that were the case; Marcoulf has certainly done enough for her that she would give him that without question. She moves to heft her greatsword off, stepping around to a space to place it down, giving a sharp command to Two to settle down by it.

Well, that answers the first question.

He takes her offered hand (like the sensible sort of man who knows how to), but lifts it only a few degrees. No sweeping gestures here; instead he fixes her with a direct, cataloging look and nods. "Baudin." An easy correction. He releases her hand.

"I'm not sure the Empress would know what do with being thanked for the diversion of a few hours' worth of reading. But, the author's picture is exact. She might eventually put the pieces together if a copy was sent with." Said so dismissively that it would take real effort to hear it like a threat. He does shift the line of his shoulders then. It's not really any kind of bow, but the sentiment of turning tack is there in the ghost of the gesture.

"Captain Flint of the Walrus." If he were to motion to her, the ship might just be visible from here as a dark shape in a harbor otherwise buzzing with summer trade. "Some of your pamphlets found their way into a copy of coastal maps."

There's work to be done, and part of that work is seeing to it that they aren't blind here. It's all well and good to fold themselves in under the proverbial shadow of the Inquisition, but he's under no illusions how weak their footing is. Max's cache buys them little more than a place here. If there's to be any hope of cutting through the messy politics of the Inquisition and her allies, they'd need more than just a fortune and vague promises of arms with which to leverage. If there's any hope in inspiring some interest in the liberation of Nascere, the threat of the Corypheus' forces there must come hand in hand with information.

It always comes back to who knows the most, doesn't it? Fine. He can use that.

Which is how Flint finds himself on the docks in the early evening, waiting along the jetty for the arrival of someone he knows only by the description supplied by an evidently mutual contact. 'Contact,' he thinks and huffs out breath. More accurately: a deckhand of one of the trade ships in port who made a second trade out of being a rumormonger. He's as likely waiting for a cut purse with a sharp knife as he is a pretty brown-haired woman with an upturned nose, some knowledge of the coast, and an interest in doing business.

"It's fine. I could use the practice." He's lapsed into what must be clearly a habitual flatness, a stiff-jointed stiltedness laced into the lines of his limbs and the hinges of his joints where moments ago he'd been perfectly capable of smooth, decisive action. It's not unlike a wary dog: an obvious competence couched in a consistently tipped head and perked ear.

He walks far enough back from the practice dummy to give them both some room to maneuver in - and some distance from which he might have a moment or two in which to judge that long sword at the end of her considerable reach. He'd seen her at the tourney and before, working in this self same yard, but observation is a different animal from being on the receiving end of her blade.

Regardless (of the over-calculated thinking, of his lopsided everything), Marcoulf stays light on his heels. Shifts absently, wrist flexing. Light glints up the length of the fine rapier.

"Whenever you're ready, Ser."

“Ah, I've personally offended you,” she suggests, freed hand upon her bosom, widening her eyes like the ingenue she never really was—a jest, because she thinks she has not, actually, but Gwenaëlle doesn't need to exert herself so much as some to hear the whispered possibility of a threat and attempt with her very particular, if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing sort of charm to defang it. So much her father's daughter, in both thought and response to it, only she has spent much of the past month acutely aware of how far out of the Empress's easy grasp she was not.

Now and then her writing served its original purpose, drew in those who might be inspired to fill the gaps she had artfully outlined; she thinks that is not, in fact, why Captain Flint of the Walrus is interrupting her return. It would stretch credulity near to breaking if she were to presume that the man before her had been so moved by her words as to bring his ship to the Inquisition's cause, for all stranger things might have happened. This is possibly some other strange thing entirely—it's already interesting enough that when the tall, gaunt gentleman clearing her belongings from the ferry pauses at her elbow (silent, his gaze settled upon Flint and not his mistress), she says, “To the Provost's office,” without making any move to join her belongings or, indeed, her gentleman.

He acknowledges the instruction with an inclination of his head, expressionless gaze committing Flint's face to memory, and withdraws. (He will not personally deposit her things there; discretion is the better part of valor. Gwenaëlle will be present, the next time he crosses paths with her husband.)

“I'm afraid if you were looking for more light reading, Captain, I ceased publication after the—” debacle, “—business at the Winter Palace. But I'm happy to discuss my work.”

For a moment, Six doesn't know how to react to him; their interactions thus far haven't been the most easygoing and she still finds him one of the most confusing people she's ever had her eyes laid upon, but she shakes that off and instead focusses on the fact that she might get a good fight out of this. She had been travelling alone for so long before waking here once more, which is a benefit rather than a hinderance.

Two settles down, at least, and Six is gentle with him, curling a hand under his jaw and stroking his head gently. She is not someone made for tenderness, she thinks, but she is determined to be a better trainer and mother to this hound than anyone had been to her in her childhood. It means when she steps away and commands him to guard he sits, intent, before her greatsword, watching her with a fierce intelligence that still surprises her even now.

Turning back to - dare she call him a friend? - Marcoulf, she nods her head, holding the shorter blade in one hand.

"You do not have to call me Ser," she corrects, voice stern. "Six will be enough."

The delegation to Minrathous had left that morning, tracing the highway with a rising dust column that had remained visible long after the party themselves had turned invisible. He'd been there to see them off, a shadow among a mix of Inquisition members saying their farewells and Kirkwall denizens looking for the cheap entertainment of a line of horses and flashing armor or the chance to sell an overpriced toothbrush to any victim who was only just realizing they'd forgotten to pack theirs.

It had been impressive in its way: two dozen plus mounts of every size, shape and color under the Inquisition's listing banners. The flash was for show, but to even afford the luxury of putting one on was worth something. And had they been pointed in any other imaginable direction, it might almost be reassuring.

As it is, it's trouble. Nevermind every other blighted thing, there will be difficult questions among the men on the Walrus shaped along the lines of 'What the fuck do you mean they're going to Tevinter?'. Worse still, there will need to be an answer for them that isn't, 'Mind your business.' There's already not enough of it to go around with the ship at anchor.

Fuck, Flint had thought as the delegation had finally wound its way out of the vast courtyard to the sound of clattering hooves and jingle of metal.

"Fuck," he snaps now in the narrow shared quarters as his hand knocks and overturns the inkwell at the corner of the table. It's quickly righted, but does it damage anyway: black splashed over the corner of the ledger he's been scratching at, spreading to touch a series of papers he's borrowed from the Inquisition's library. So much for taking and returning them without anyone noticing. Growling, Flint hurries to rescue everything else on the desk. Swears again when he finds the smear of ink on his forearm has transferred to the other side of the open book.

A retired essayist in a traveling coat who now has her things being delivered to the office of the Provost? Interesting is one word for it. Tactical manuevers could be two others. Useful might be one too under particular circumstances and with the right encouragement. 'Necessary' is undeniable and unavoidable in any case. Flint glances after her man as he goes. By the time he looks back to her, he's decided:

"That's considerate of you." The polite question to follow should be something along the lines of 'But I've interrupted you. When would be convenient?'. Fuck that though. "I was curious as to how much of it was fiction, but I think you've answered that already." In so many words - that faux dismay, the contents of what had evidently been her very last essay, the tawny fur at the collar of her travelling coat. "In which case, I wonder if Orlais can really be the your only concern and what good your pride for it could possibly still be doing you here."

It's a real, genuine curiosity scored by some flash of fervor. Maybe by that merit, calculated though it is, he skirts just this side of interrogation.

His hand at least is steady, the line of his blade decisive where his expression - briefly and unmistakably pained - is anything but. Still, she can hardly be the first person of some kind of rank or significance (whatever it is and however she insists otherwise) to want to pretend at being anything but. If that's what she wants today, in this moment, then who is he to argue otherwise?

"Whenever you're ready, Six."

She wonders if she will ever understand the rank and title he has offered her when she knows well enough she does not have one - she is no knight, has no position of power within the Inquisition, barely has a name of her own. The title of 'Six', too, isn't truly hers, and she bites her tongue to stop herself questioning him and his actions, to query why he gives her more respect than she is due. She certainly doesn't feel as though she is entitled to it.

"Thank you." Moving forward, she adjusts the blade in her hand before she draws herself up, tall and careful, eyes taking in the shape of his body and his movements. "Rules?"

Tavern shifts don't pay good money, but the goal isn't earning coin. Or at least the primary goal isn't that. The goal is learning things. No one minds their tongue around a barmaid, after all, especially not a young harmless-looking barmaid who has the ability to listen while seeming entirely disinterested. It's the best place to learn about this land, to hear people talk, listen in as they reveal things about their attitudes and their assumptions and their biases and blind-spots.

And, all right, it's also the best place to snoop. In her work so far, she hasn't managed to learn anything really useful, just vague information about where troops are being deployed and some speculation of who's sleeping with whom amongst the Inquisition brass (ugh) and talk of Corypheus' followers disguising themselves as refugees (yeah, right, like they even need to). But the problem so far has been that she's also been working the tables. No one discusses anything really juicy when they're out in the open.

So on this evening, she's feeling good, because she's been assigned to some of the back rooms. That, she's quite certain, is where the good stuff gets discussed - where deals are brokered, where shadowy men meet other shadowy men. Two rooms are empty, and the third occupied only by a single man; so she decides not to wait until someone shows up to talk to him, and instead decides to peek at his papers when he steps out. So she dithers until she sees him step out to use the toilet (and he looks a bit familiar, doesn't he? oh well), then goes into the room and sets down his drink and then leans over to examine the ledgers on the table, studying them for any signs of anything she can use.

There must be work that the Inquisition puts into motion that they manage to successfully play close enough to the chest to keep news of it from spilling out past the Gallows. Accepting an invitation to Minrathous is not that work. It's the sort of gossio that is so easily parsed that half of Kirkwall will have heard a rumor or a rumor from a friend or a friend by the day's end; news reaches Flint's ear by mid-morning. Which likely has something to do with the two Walrus men who manage to track Max down by the afternoon, Flint wants to see her, one of them explains. When? Right now. They wait until their escort is unavoidable.

Flint is clearly expecting her - not in the quarters the Inquisition has provided him or in the rented back room of a public house, but in the cabin of the Walrus proper. If the long looks from the crew are anything to go by, maybe some whisper of the Inquisitions's trip has reached the ship at anchor too. The welcome in the cabin is no warmer.

"Well?" Snapped out the moment the door shuts behind her skirts. If it sounds like a demand from behind the desk where Flint sits in that awful high-backed chair, then it's meant to.

Droll in expression, Gwenaëlle turns her bare left hand palm up for him; the dull green of her anchor-shard a wrong note that explains itself. “Absolutely fucking nothing,” she proposes, mock bright. “Unfortunately, my personal concerns haven't had much to do with where I spend the bulk of my time for the better part of the last three years. As a guest of the Inquisition,”

guest, yes, and she says it so dryly but she knows the difference between prisoners and the situation with the anchor-shards well enough by now,

“I've been obliged to find my own occupation.”

Propaganda, for instance, but there have been many months between now and that last dramatic send-off. She doesn't have the look of a young woman at a loose end, precisely, and if it were all as simple as that then she might not be as easy with his unexpected company.

Fastidious correctness obligates her, though: “I didn't agree with everything I felt it was necessary to write.” The Dalish can fuck off, for a start. And then, because it's still not that simple, “At the time,” a concession to some of the opinions espoused that she did, in fact, come around to.

Like, rifters might be people.

"Whichever ones you prefer," he says automatically. Though a moment later, Marcoulf offers a delicately worded addition purposefully made to sound like an observation rather than a suggestion: "Most matches between people with skill here seem to either be until one yields or is disarmed. Blood to be avoided, of course. And most fight clean, but that may be more to do with the space than a lack of ingenuity. Respectfully."

He'd rather she not throw dirt in his eyes, but maybe that's just him.

The strangeness of this assignment hasn't worn off in the few weeks since she arrived in Kirkwall. Working openly, with known goals, under her own name--it all flies in the face of instinct and habit built over decades. Yseult may technically still have two masters, but one of them has all but abdicated his oversight, and following a single agenda just feels wrong. Like she is missing something, some plate in the air she set spinning and then forgot to keep watch of, and now who knows where it will land.

So it's something of a relief to run into an old contact, a deckhand out of Salle who knows her by a different name, but recalls her business well enough. She's more in need of contacts inland, these days, connections lost or misplaced through the neglect of the last two years, but it's a starting point. Something to do, some way to make herself useful outside the basic preliminaries she's tasked with while the Inquisition decides how much it trusts her.

And she'll admit to some curiosity about the man she is to meet. She'd heard the rumors of the Tevinter captain who'd set up shop in The Boar & the Bat, and made a brief stop by the tavern one night just to see if it was a face she'd ever seen before. It wasn't, but it's easily picked-out now, the lone figure on the docks, the telltale ginger of his beard in the waning light, that thing in his posture that causes foot traffic to divert with question around him. She drifts in with those crowds, sticking to the trailing edge of a knot of people and dropping off when she reaches him.

"Flint, I believe?" She's lifting a brow at him, and otherwise as described: brown hair, pretty enough, nose--debatable. Of just over average height and dressed simply, shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms as freckled and tan as her face. She sounds like a Marcher, except not quite, something odd in the accent that can't quite be placed.

Clearly, politeness comes before thought in this man and that makes Six stop, listening when he speaks. He seems not to he the type to say what is on his mind in front of her, and she can't fathom why; she can't wrap her mind around what she has done to inspire this from him, when she has done no more than ride in a joust and fight in a tourney. Hopefully, she thinks, they can become friends of a sort and he will no longer see her as someone so high.

"A clean fight, with no blood. Respect should be given no matter what the rules." She hefts her sword, nodding her head. "Until yield, then, with no blood. An honourable match."

Simple enough. Nodding in mute agreement, Marcoulf shifts the grip on the fine silver rapier by some minor degree. With his spare hand, he draws the long parrying dagger from his belt. The two weapons are clearly at odds with one another. The rapier's much repaired hilt remains a stunning silvered metal, its pommel and guard laid with curling leaves and lilies; the dagger is plain steel, its grip wrapped in leather cord. However his hands are easy around both, some invisible certainty finding his fingers even if it can't reach as far as his face.

It's only when he's certain she's ready that he moves: a swift lunge forward meant less for striking and more for closing distance as rapidly as he's able. Her arm and sword are considerably longer than his, her height his better by nearly a hand. To hope for any chance of striking, he will need to be very near indeed.

The usefulness of information is a funny thing, isn't it? It depends entirely on the owner and the audience. Words on a page can as easily disguised as so much chaff - charts of the labyrinthine channels leading between the Ferelden coastland and Brandel's Reach; a detailed account of two ships by the names of Lion and De Grasse, their descriptions and an estimation of their crews - rather than steel sharpened and waiting for the right target in a dark room - a ledger, kept meticulously, detailing a number of men versus an account of what must be rapidly dwindling cash and stores. There are other papers as well: a pamphlet on the Inquisition's rifter population with the portrait of a dark haired woman printed alongside it, a much folded piece of paper with a list of inland cities and a small sum of money noted beside each, a small book printed in Nevarran with pages so thin they might let light through.

Left to the eye of a quick reader, it might take only fifteen minutes to sort through in any reasonable way. After all, the handwriting is legible in most places and though the accounts are concise to the point of being vague they're hardly written in any kind of code. Unfortunately, she doesn't have fifteen minutes. Kitty's hardly allowed five before there's the sound of footfalls and the man who's meant to be occupying the back room resurfaces there in the doorway.

Flint stops short. He's midway through rolling his right shirt sleeve to the elbow and for a moment he must see only the apron behind her clothes. He nearly continues into the room unbothered. Then he double takes. A hard line furrows across his forehead.

"You."

Oh. Well. So...As she sets eyes on him, she can't exactly play harmless illiterate barmaid like she was planning to. This is the man from the library, she's certain, who'd recommended books to her - good books, too, useful books. Ones she'd enjoyed reading. Honestly, under most circumstances she'd be pleased to see him again, to deliver her evaluation of their quality, but - Snooping on someone who has the tools necessary to see through her lies isn't the best situation ever.

Honestly, though, this is interesting. She'd taken him for a wandering scholar, but he's one of the pirates who'd come in, wasn't he? Which is strange; he seems different. On a superficial level, sure; he's not nearly so witty or charming as Max, rather easier to get along with than Charles Vane. But it's true on a deeper level, too. He's different from what a pirate should be, in deep ways, philosophical ways...

Well. No time to reflect on that now. She shifts a few dishes to her tray, moving like she was already in the process of doing so, and then smiles suddenly like recognition just came upon her. "Oh, hullo," she greets, all good cheer and casual friendliness. "How funny, running into you here. D'you come here often?" There's a little shiver of nervousness running through her - will he see through the lie? and if so, will their previous friendliness be enough to give her an out? Or is she selling it well enough that he'll dismiss any suspicions?

Six's sword - the borrowed one, at least - is not even close to being on the same level as the fine rapier and she's well aware of it. It doesn't make it any less well made, true enough, but it is also not something that she could boast having the best and finest craftsmanship. It's something impressive, something she makes a note to ask him about later - or, at least, to gently pry, to see if he is willing to discuss it. Neither of them are the kinds of people to speak idly of things that are important to them, after all.

Six shifts and moves, twisting her body to avoid the strike before she adjusts her weight. There's no point carrying a shield when you're more accustomed to two handed warfare, so she adjusts with her single sword, pulling it forward and arcing it to bring it down towards the side of his body, aiming for his midsection as she pushes forward with her feet.

He moves forward into the arc of her swing, rapier hand flashing around to parry the stroke against the solid perpendicular line of his blade. --Though, Maker, she's strong, isn't she? He'd meant to strike out at her middle under the squared angle of his arm with the dagger and instead finds himself throwing his weight into the block more than he does the secondary lunge.

As tempting as it is to fall back, Marcoulf forces himself to stand his ground - to press the advance. No other part of him is any kind of brash, but his footwork at least and the line of his sword is stubborn to the point of daring. At the same time, it's easy to see why he might have only lasted one round in the tourney'd individual bracket; it's the kind of enthusiasm that's unsustainable.

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[OPEN] you don't know my brother he's a broken bone

m - training

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Flint, i!

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