faderift | SHOULD GLORY COME AT SUCH A PRICE, Part II

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SHOULD GLORY COME AT SUCH A PRICE, Part II

WHO: Characters in Minrathous
WHAT: Daring escapes
WHEN: End of Solace
WHERE: Minrathous
NOTES: OOC plotting post!

It's become a running joke that wherever the Inquisition travels, disaster follows. It stops being funny somewhere around mid-afternoon: not long after a cadre of Inquisition representatives departs to speak with the Archon at a secretive location, the atmosphere in the palace shifts. The staff is watching the Inquisition's movements more openly, and guards are watching their own colleagues with more interest. In the late afternoon a woman arrives with a small entourage, and while she doesn't visit the visitors' quarters where the Inquisition is housed, she might be glimpsed through a window or cracked door, with twin blonde braids looped behind her ears and serious eyes above a gap-toothed smile. Only those who were at Haven would recognize her for certain.

In the meantime, back doors and side exits that were previously open and unguarded begin to close, here and there, with enough subtlety that it would be easy to miss at first, until the scattering of guards throughout the palace suddenly doubles. Most remain tight-lipped, offering only the most cursory explanation: routine security response. A few are willing to offer more, but their stories vary: rumors of a potential intruder on the grounds, a visiting petitioner causing trouble, unrest in the city over a recent vote, some sort of controversy in the Magisterium. It's increasingly clear that something is happening, but equally that those in the palace willing to speak of it have no idea what it is.

The main doors remain unbarred, and members of the Inquisition are not stopped from leaving, but warned that once they do, they're on their own. Those who venture out will find the city in a similar state: thrumming with unfocused anxiety, gossip flying, wild stories about attacks on the city gates, the harbor blockaded, a purge in the assembly, a slave revolt, armies on the march, fires on the mainland--too much to parse through and find any kernel of truth before it's too late.

Thankfully, there are sending crystals. Eventually, there comes a whispered warning: leave the city, now, without anything that might slow them down. There is no way for the entire delegation to safely meet, so instead spots are chosen both within the palace and without, places that small groups can congregate without drawing attention to arrange an escape toward the city gates.

It's as much advance notice as anyone could hope for, but it still isn't enough to make this simple.

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Titles. Curiosities. The way Radonis looks at each of them in turn has something in common with the gaze of the cat, standing on the bench behind him, tail twitching. He saves an acknowledging nod of his head—something that always looks precarious, in the hat, but isn't really—for after the last of their introductions and careful bows.

"It would have been a pleasure, in other times," he says. Perhaps that's a lie, for elves and Orlesians in particular. On the other hand, they do get so few foreign visitors here. It would at least have been an interesting diversion. He might have asked about the anchor.

In these times, he declines to be diverted. He gestures toward the house attached to the garden, to usher them in ahead of him toward a room that would be comfortable for two but has no room for four to sit. The important thing is that it has walls. No echo into the street beyond.

"We had always assumed that if there was trouble on our Southern borders, it would be because your Chantry had decided we were no longer a useful shield against the Qun. I hope you family is safe, Duke." But he doesn't care enough to wait for confirmation. "I would have liked to offer assistance."

I would have liked to offer assistance. An interesting choice of words. Herian watches him with a sharp, watching neutrality.

"Your hand has been stayed from assisting," she says, carefully. The Qun might not be the concern, as that is a long-standing threat. The same might not be said of the Venatori, for all that some celebrate them.

A pause, considering. "You have taken considerable measures towards discretion, Archon. Are we to believe your position perilous, or the Inquisition's reputation damning?"

Romain inclines his head at Radonis' comment, more an acknowledgement than a response. Whether he believes that the archon's wish is sincere (the perfect continuous conditional is a remarkably slippery verb tense, even in languages other than Orlesian), the form has been at least lightly observed.

"You have taken a great deal of trouble to speak frankly with us, one way or another," he simply adds to Herian's framing of the situation.

Thranduil is thinking of the Qunari; what they might offer Par Vollen in return for a cease fire, if Minrathous might be held to it, if diverted troops from both sides might be convinced to turn their attention to a different front. He has a question on his tongue about troop numbers when Herian speaks, and he considers their surroundings. A walled-in garden, no view of the street, Radonis in full robes of state although there are none to witness him in it and he might have worn less for ease.

Two Division Heads, and a Duke.

He recalls the Winter Palace, and turns his head to look at Romain. He had not been there, but his son-in-law and daughter had, and the incident could have hardly escaped his notice. The tight quarters had made fighting difficult, the fire worse, the surprise worst of all. It would all be, he thinks, so utterly in line with the southerner’s view of Tevene character if the same happened here.

Edited (grammar ) 2018-08-07 18:29 (UTC)

“Both.”

His position has been precarious since before he took it, he does not say aloud, because there is frankness and there is foolishness; he has survived this long because he has excellent balance.

There is only room for two on the settee, but he gestures to it, for whomever might want it. Not him. He moves across the short span of the room, opening a panel in the stone wall with silent magic while he speaks.

“Your enemy would have my seat, and I have done far worse than cooperate with the South to keep it. But I am running out of hands. To extend one to you I must withdraw it from someone else.”

From the panel comes only wine, goblets, a tray—all safe from poison, where only his hands can reach. But now he cast a glance toward the garden and pulls a bell on the wall, as an afterthought, to summon the slave still outside the gate.

“I know who they are. These Venatori.”

Half of the ears in the walls belong to him.

“Your people have killed several this week. They are efficient. I could give you the rest, but sympathy for their cause reaches beyond those who know their secret handshake.” Dry. He has little time for cultists. “Interference creates more of them. It is a dilemma.”

The wine sits unpoured. In the garden, the cat has scaled the wall to look down into the streets. The slave hasn’t entered.

“Caesennnia,” he says, voice not quite raised to call for her.

Herian is fairly sure that, on a good day, she is better with a blade and her magic than with words. Oh, diplomacy is essential, indeed, power is meaningless without parle, but it does not come to her so naturally as it might to some. She considers each movement of the Archon, the gesture to the seat, and wonders what possible things could be deduced from each small movement they all make. Certainly there are those more sharp and analytical than herself, and she almost considers taking the seat just because it's wearisome to be concerned with posturing when there is such business to be focused on.

No, she stays standing, gaze following the Archon.

"From whom, then, do you draw a hand?" The Venatori themselves, or is she missing something? "From what else would you propose?"

Her gaze narrows very slightly, watchful, as she stays entirely controlled and still.

"I would propose," Radonis says slowly, still gazing out the open windows, at the cat on the garden wall, "that you provide me with another hand. There are those would see our our glory restored. Our borders corrected. Most are not so particular about the details as the Venatori."

Slowly, he gathers the tray and carries it back across the room to the table beside the settee, like serving guests is something he's done himself sometime in the last decade.

"I can make opposing the Anders a matter of national pride. But I want Tallo—" A port city, a back door if there's trouble with the Qun in the Nocen Sea. "—and I want your word, whatever it may be worth, that your Chantry will not come for it afterwards."

It is not a small request. For a moment it looks like there might be time to think about it, at least, while he turns back to the window, to the garden where Caesennia still has yet to appear.

But then he says, quietly, "One of you indulge me and move there," he says, pointing one long finger. "You can see the front door."

Tallo, which skips in Thranduil's memory before he's able to recall the approximate location. He hopes for all their sakes that Herian and Romain are far more familiar with the particulars of Anderfels geography than he. But what he can do- and he does so as requested- is move to see the front door.

The glass is nearly opaque, but his sight will not fail him at so short a distance, and he sees movement beyond the panes. A limb here, a whole figure there, and he keeps his eyes on the spot as he takes a half-step back out of the direct pathway from the door. He is fast enough should he need to move, but why not be careful now.

"Were you expecting more guests?" Thranduil asks.

Opposing the Anders, stopping the chaos in Orlais, stymying the spread of Corypheus support by redirecting that Tevinter pride to another opportunity. Does it boil down so neatly to acrificing the Anderfels to save the world? A port city, facing the Colean Sea, a possible point for Tevinter's power to fall back to.

A means to redirect Tevinter, opposition to the Anderfels, but what of its people? People who no doubt were being sent to die in battles that did not benefit them, so much as the nobility seeking to spread their influence and take up foul opportunities. It was the common folk of the Anders who might even suffer more, should Tevinter spread, enslaved by masters they had sought to escape over and over again.

"I cannot hand the territory of another land to you. Nor can I promise how the Chantry might respond; we negotiate with them as we negotiate with you, and I cannot imagine they will relent to a devout population being shackled and enslaved."

It seems so simple, tidy, to sacrifice territory that the Inquisition has no stake in for a chance to disrupt the Ander advance and undercut Corypheus opportunities in Tevinter itself. But where is the compassion in it? Where is the justice in punishing sailors and merchants and fishermen, who have doubtless spent generations dreading the loom of Tevinter, for the actions of those who benefit from invasion?

Was it punishing those of Orlais, to refuse the offer? From Tallo, how would Tevinter tighten its grasp? Would the Inquisition'd compliance undercut any good they had done, would it make them seem all the more terrible in the eyes of Nevarra, Antiva, Fereldan and the Free Marches, would all those others who had once been under Tevinter's heel turn against the Inquisition? Would this drive others to inaction and apathy at best, Corypheus 'cause at worst?

"What would become of the people of Tallo? Slaves?"

Better to ask. To know, though she feels cold crawling up her spine.

Tallo, he thinks, is a neat play -- a port, a city of importance, but by the Imperium's standards a less outrageous demand than they might have made. The truth is that the Inquisition is at a disadvantage here; it needs Orlais, where it has already secured an alliance, in a way it simply doesn't need the Anderfels. But of the three in the room, he is the one with the least authority to actually make such a deal, especially in any way the Chantry would respect. Herian had invited him for support, not to put him in charge, and it would do him little good to try to wrest it away.

Still, he says, "You know our influence is considerable, but the Chantry is unaccustomed to being dictated to, even if it would be sometimes convenient were it otherwise. In this, they would take substantial convincing, I suspect."

His eyes flick to where Thranduil has taken up position, evaluating, though the mask makes it hard to notice when he doesn't so much as shift his weight.

"Whatever your word may be worth," Radonis echoes—answering the Orlesian, skipping the matter of slaves, but his brief unflinching and unapologetic look at Herian might be answer enough. Tevinter citizenship is never free. "I understand your position. But for now, you have an army. Your Chantry does not. Nor does it have a Divine to raise one."

He folds his arms behind his back.

"Mine does. And there is a reason we are the horror story you tell your children. If I put my people to this task on your behalf, they will not fail. If I wait first for your resources to be exhausted and for the Anders to crawl over Orlais, they will not fail then, either."

Perhaps there was more to that speech. An oblique threat, perhaps, to take more than Tallo if more than Tallo is there for the taking. Or a more regretful implication that he may not be able to hold his people back from it, without a good reason why they should restrain themselves, and still keep his position, which he fully intends to do.

But the elf's comment requires attention.

"I was not," Radonis says, carefully. Guards outside the door would be a beacon. Guards within the house would be a leak. He doesn't move to check the front door—insulting, and unnecessary—but toward the back, instead, for one more attempt. "Caesennia."

The call isn't sharp or impatient. If anything, it is concerned. A slave, but a favored one, who is due at least the reciprocating devotion shown to a favored pet. And this time it's answered, not aloud, but by her bloody hand gripping the gate and pulling the rest of her into view. Whatever blood may have bloomed from her abdomen is masked by her black robes, but the hilt of a dagger is unmistakeable.

The movement makes the cat leap down to meet her, sniffing through the bars, tail flicking. Radonis has the same impulse: a step out the back door, into the garden, moving for the gate. But he has the presence of mind to keep his voice low.

"The front door will not open. Do not open it for them."

There is much to say, and more to keep quiet. What answer is she to summon?

We are the horror story, he says. Seeks to intimidate them, to scare them into accepting this deal that would see innocent people enslaved. Even in the same moment, though, even in that moment she dreads that not accepting it might condemn all.

Her hands stay perfectly still. She wishes she could curl her fingers inward, claw the inside of her palms with her nails, but the action and the pale turn of her knuckles would betray her. Only when Radonis moves to the back door does she look overtly to Thranduil.

What do we do?

They are without two division heads, and she suspects Radonis is handing her the same rope that she might throw to someone to save them, and bind another in to drown them.

But then there is Caesennia, living, bleeding, and Herian moves after Radonis. "I have no healing arts," she starts, looking past Caesennia, and going to reach for the crystal that normally hangs from a leather band about her neck, except— she was requested not to bring it.

"You say that you will not fail, even as one of your own comes to you with a dagger in her gut and you watch the door sharply. I wonder if the hand you offer is more desperate than you claim, Archon."

Whatever Romain had been about to say, he pauses at the state of Caesennia. Herian's point is a valid one; this is, at the very best, an embarrassment to the archon when he is attempting to negotiate from a position of strength.

What worries Romain is that this is a more immediately urgent problem than that.

"Who are we keeping out at the front door?" he asks, equally quiet but edged. He's not agitated, but he is alert. He is not a young man, but he was a soldier once, and the instincts have not died completely.

Thranduil, ever practical, shakes his head by the barest of degrees when Herian looks to him. She is making the wrong arguments. Keeping the moral high ground will be well and good when they lose the literal, and line their coffins with good thoughts. Keeping Tallo will require Tevene ships to sail awfully close to Seheron to supply a city that has a mountain between it and reinforcements by land.

That is assuming that the Chantry gives a damn about any of their words, and does not use it only to condemn them--

To Radonis, also in low tones: "Are they here for us, or you, or both?"

Radonis doesn't turn back to address the gloating, not even with a cold glare, and for the time being most of those questions go unanswered. Caesennia is alive—silent as ever, too ashamed of the sounds she makes without a tongue even to cry for help, but that was never his doing, he found her that way, he's elevated her, he's trusted her—and the matter of Tallo can wait until the fact of her living is more assuredly permanent.

"There are easier places in this city to kill you," he hisses, civility slipping, from across the short distance of the garden. He keeps his hands up, prepared to work the kind of magic that makes a man a king here, but when he opens the gate the alley beyond it is empty.

Caesennia is small—elven—and easy enough to lift from the ground and move to the bench in the garden. The cat follows with one inquisitive meow. He lays her out flat, kneeling in front of people for the first time since the Black Divine blessed his reign, back to the house and attention back on the gate long enough to cast a shimmering barrier over the entrance.

"It's dwarven. The door. It's warded against magic. They cannot—"

Disjointed. Multitasking. He's also wrapping his hand in his sleeve and swiping it over the portion of the blade that's still bloodless, jutting out of Caesennia's abdomen, to smell the residue that comes away.

Her breath shudders, but she's breathing, and he guides her hands to press around the wound while he twists where he's kneeling to look back at his guests.

"There are bottles in the cabinet. I need—" Does he trust them to know? No. And there's rustling behind him, the sound of Caesennia moving, trying to sit up, and she's tough, and stubborn, and he needs to warn her not to remove the dagger. "—all of them."

Even with those abbreviated orders, though, even turning back to her as he says them, the blade sinks between his ribs before he's finished. Of course. Of course. The closest anyone has gotten to him with a dagger in a decade, the furthest down he might let his guard drop.

Her jaw is clenched, her eyes hard, but she's crying. She wasn't before.

It may well be pointless to restrain the woman now (far off, he admires her, hopes this was her choice and not the request and arrangement of some Venatori) but he does so, keeping her down to the bench with her hands immobilized.

If the archon dies, they cannot lose the murderer too.

“Romain,” he says, but his eyes are on the garden gate. He has no skill at healing, but he can hold the door— make it appear to those outside the door that there is no door at all— and he waits for the barrier to falter, to replace with his own. “Fetch the bottles. Herian,” temporarily at a loss, the girl does not need to be searched if they are in a bind for time; she has done her part, and he has a free hand to do so. Herian has been in battle before, she has steady hands, Caesennia is likely to die anyway so he needn’t mind that. So only her name, and a request at that, they are equal in rank here.

But they will need to make some choices very soon. He cannot die with only them as witnesses or they will have another Anderfels, another Nevarra, whether this is only the tip of a spear or the actions of one lone elf.

Maker. Herian exhales, without knowing that her breath was held.

She is at the Archon's side without realising, tearing a section of her robes, pulling it away in a strip to bind the Archon's wound. She is truly not certain that Caesennia is in the wrong in this, but their dealings here are with the Archon. If he should fall, they will fall under suspicion, and the Inquisition entire would be put in jeopardy.

The Duke is already seeing to the bottles, if he is listening to Thranduil, and she reaches out to steady the Archon, and start to at least bind the injury to make sure that the dagger doesn't come lose, make the bleeding worse.

"We must leave," she says, and it sounds very even despite the way this has gone quite rapidly to shit. "Archon, are there papers, anything we should collect hence?"

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SHOULD GLORY COME AT SUCH A PRICE, Part II

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sorry sorry sorry