CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

[hassaran]

WHO: Darras & Yseult
WHAT: A random courier mission
WHEN: Before news from Tevinter
WHERE: A road into the Vinmarks
NOTES: Pirate language probable. Maybe giant spiders. Who knows.

[ It's not exactly a glamorous mission, which is fine. The problem--Yseult thinks to herself but does not say when she is handed the assignment--is that it's also not a good use of her skills. Yes, the agent needs to be met in the pass midway from Wildervale, the message needs to be collected and delivered the rest of the way to Kirkwall. But surely they could send someone else, like an actual messenger, or anyone with two legs and a brain, and not a highly-trained spy? At first she'd thought perhaps there must be some other dimension to this, some suspicion about the courier, or some potential threat. But no. This is the Inquisition, and as it turns out their rumored egalitarian leanings are both very much true and also seem extend even to their internal assignment structures. It's all very different than she's used to.

So her horse is not the only one champing at the bit to get going and get this over with as she waits just outside Kirkwall's northern gate. Even this early, the road toward Wildervale is busy, merchants and farmers coming and going, wagon traffic stirring up dust to make the already-sweltering day even less pleasant. Her horse is a big grey mare who immediately ate every green thing in reach and has now taken to snorting impatiently, head tossed as much as the reins tied to a tree branch will allow her. Yseult leans against the trunk out of biting range, arms crossed, squinting at the gate. "Someone from Forces will meet you," she was told at the last second, over her protests (not in so many words) that sending two skilled agents was even worse than wasting one. But it seems there have been reports of animal attacks, and they are taking no chances.

She doesn't expect to see Darras, and even shades her eyes with a hand to be sure (as if she could mistake him). She doesn't expect him to come towards her, either. What are the chances, after all, that out of everyone in Forces, his name was pulled? And that he actually turned up to do the work? Slim, but here they are. She pushes off the trunk and lifts her hand in a little (awkward, ill-advised) wave. ]

Good morning.

Comments

[staysail]

[Darras does follow her, because he's got no choice but to follow her. His eyes are quick to adjust, accustomed to coming up to white sunlight after being belowdecks, or down in the hold in the stinking dark, when he was younger. This isn't even that bad.

The table has two chairs. Cozy, like. Darras thinks about sitting elsewhere, maybe standing up at the bar until the business is concluded. But perhaps there's meant to be two of them. Perhaps if it's just Yseult, alone, the message will never come.

So he sits with her, too. Because he has to. It's like existing in an echo, a simple stupid action he's done thousands of times, and nearly half with her.

The barkeep ambles over, a towel thrown over his shoulder. He's bald and clean-shaven, but sports a pair of thick muttonchops like broom bristles affixed to his face.

What'll it be, he says, expectantly.

Darras holds his tongue and looks at Yseult instead. Expectant.]

[hassaran]

[ He sits and doesn't say anything, which is really the best Yseult can hope for at this point. The barkeep's muttonchops are unmistakable, so she says do you have any Hasmali red? It's perfect for this weather even though it really is not at all, and the barkeep's eyes widen slightly but he replies no, but there's a fresh barrel of Rialto white and Yseult shakes her head and says we'll just have lager and they both manage to look--if not natural, on his end, then at least entirely serious the whole time as if they're not speaking secret coded passphrases that seem silly and unnecessary in the middle of the day in an empty, well-lit room.

The barkeep heads off to collect the message (and possibly also the beer? who knows) and Yseult looks out the window and says nothing, fingers knit together on the table in front of her. ]

[staysail]

[Darras is only half-listening as Yseult and the barkeep exchange their doubletalk. He doesn't quite roll his eyes, but the impulse is there. It's not that he's not used code before. He has; of course he has. This all seems so showy. And that's coming from a pirate.

Once the barkeep has gone, and once he's confirmed, surreptitiously, that she's looking the other direction, Darras sneaks a look at Yseult.]

Lager?

[--He says, eventually.]

[hassaran]

[ Her eyes are aimed out the window but Yseult's focus is much further away, made most obvious by the way it snaps back when Darras speaks. She's slower to turn her head anyway, and doesn't come all the way around to making eye contact.

A little shake of her chin, one shoulder lifted. ] I didn't choose it.

[staysail]

Yeah, I could've guessed that.

[He knows her drink preferences, what she does and doesn't like. You're not given much option in a tavern, but a taste can be developed anyways, and lager isn't Yseult.

But of course it isn't. In this moment, she's not Yseult. She's an operative, someone working on behalf of an organization. The same organization that Darras is here with, more or less--whatever the circumstances, however he came to be here and whatever it means that he is still here.]

Drinking lager is just doing what it takes, I s'ppose.

[It's kind of a joke. But also very real, which strips some of the humor from it, some of what would make it pleasant.]

[hassaran]

[ (She especially does not like warm beer. On certain beaches in Rivain, hedge-mages encase kegs of the stuff in ice, and she has been known to drink a few pints like that in the shade of a cliff or a stand of palms. But even then it's not her first choice.)

On a better day, she'd take it for a joke, despite knowing he only half means it. Today, she exhales, almost a sigh but too restrained, and turns back to the window. The inside of her lip gets caught between her teeth for a moment, jaw tight, and then she smooths her expression back out and says nothing. It's bait, and she won't rise to it. ]

[staysail]

[She doesn't take his bait. And no matter how angry or cruel he is feeling, Darras can't pick a fight with her over nothing. He can't keep after Yseult if she gives him nothing to engage with, no thread to pull to unravel the tapestry that hides the truth of her work.

Silence sucks at their heels, an inescapable mire. It is nothing like the comfortable quiet they used to enjoy. Half-asleep, with her head on his chest and bedsheets tangled about them. On the rocks at low tide, down at the beach. Repairing the well, cutting wood after one of the sparse trees fell after a big storm--all these little domestic scenes that are so far away as to belong to someone else. Yseult, in the cabin of the Fancy, looking out the window at the wake, and the sunset blushing at her skin.

Darras watches her chew at her lip. He thinks, again, about kissing her.

He looks at the table.

The message comes to them presently, delivered with the lager. Darras doesn't see it. A slender tube, inserted into the handle of the beer mug. The barkeep sets down the drinks and gives them a little turn, so the handles are facing them. To Darras, it seems unnecessary. A weird tic.

Enjoy, says the barkeep, with a bow.]

[hassaran]

[ Yseult notices it too and knows where to look, thumbing the message free and into her palm, flashed once at an angle only Darras can see, to let him know, then out of sight again in the space of a heartbeat. She drinks once for show, but there's no one about and she's been given no order to linger just in case, no reason to think this meeting observed, so one drink only and then she rises, finding a couple coins from her purse to leave on the table.

Their horses are still waiting just outside, and she has nothing to say as they exit back into the sun, or as they mount up, or at any point in the long, hot ride back to Kirkwall. ]