WHO: Kostos/Alistair/Jehan/Silas & Various Others WHAT: Miscellany WHEN: Kingsway WHERE: Probably Kirkwall NOTES: See comment subject lines! And if you would like to do something feel free to just drop it in here.
Kostos isn't really sure how he got to this point.
Not the point of being surrounded by donated animal bodies and carefully stitching up a dead dog while the possessed corpse of his great great et cetera aunt stalks angrily in a dungeon cell behind him. That part makes sense. But the point where the Grey Warden mage who blew up Kirkwall's chantry and the oddest rifter he's yet encountered, which is saying something, are both watching him do it—that point he isn't sure about. He isn't sure he likes it, either.
He hasn't said anything to either of them in a while. When Audra enters he looks up from the last stitches on the dog to gesture one-handed to the two observers, a jerky motion accompanied by a sort of aggressively confused expression, altogether an attempt to silently convey there are people here and it is not my fault. Even though it sort of is.
Anders, for his part, is fairly cheerful despite being surrounded by dead things and a mobile dead thing. This isn't the sort of magic he's had opportunity to observe before. And somehow he's cheerful enough to not keep a running commentary going on Kostos' stitching - he had promised to talk less. It's hard to talk less.
When Audra enters, Anders waves. It's a nice break from twiddling his thumbs.
She's been here - Jesus Christ, has it almost been a month? It absolutely has - but for some reason this place is harder to get to understand than any favela, even the City of God, and it's making her cranky. She spends hours watching people, going from place to place, wandering around the damned city, and most of the time she's lost. There are no signposts in favelas, she should be used to this.
She is not.
It's even worse inside the building, because the smells of this place are overwhelming. The magic, well. That's even worse. She thinks she's got a handle on it, which is why she's standing outside what she thinks is where the mages do their magic.
Whether or not that's true has yet to be seen. It might also be a fancy bathroom. Or a library? Hard to tell. Or the entry to a dungeon.
She is biting her thumb absently when she hears someone coming, and straightens up a bit. Looking at people here it's hard to tell if they're magic or not; she has never been good at this particular act of shifter talent. Instead it's an attractive-ish guy. She bites her thumb a little more. "Hey."
The Broken Chain is one of Kirkwall's newer establishments, built up out of a section of rubble from the Chantry explosion that lingered for years until the Inquisition's arrival more recently began boosting the local economy, but it's not one of its nicer ones. A month in business and the sharp scent of cut wood and stone from its construction has almost entirely faded under sweat, smoke, and stale bodily fluids. It's more metaphorical new-tavern smell is still fresh, though, and the floor is packed with people still here for the novelty of somewhere new to go.
Kostos doesn't care about novelty, but he does care about places where the barkeeper isn't yet wary of his unpaid tab or tendency to cause trouble, which is why he's braving the crush of bodies around the bar. He turns away from the counter with a metal tankard in each hand—both for him, so he doesn't have to come back anytime soon, but maybe that's negotiable—and right into a face that's familiar.
(Not familiar enough.)
He doesn't smile, and he doesn't apologize, but the sharp interest on his face isn't hostile. After a second, he offers one of his mugs.
Meat is meat the worlds over, and butchery is butchery; while it is not a task proper to the Priest's caste it is nevertheless familiar and the Priest has little squeamishness about watching. Though were it only butchery it would not be worth watching with such hawk-eyed intensity as the Priest now gives Kostos; the specific preservation of intact corpses--for trophies or necromancy or honorable burial--is not known among the djur.
It is a rich world that can spend useful flesh so.
The Priest does not look up as Audra enters; Kostos' work is far more interesting. Only when he is through with the last of the stitches does the Priest lift eyes to regard the arriving necromancer with a faint frown. This ritual had all the air of something sacred (albeit makeshift, field-hasty): Why, then, do none of these women (men, a silent amendment; strange as it is to see men going about work,) bear any but passing association to each other?
"Then you probably are," Kostos says, without initially looking up from the thin journal open in his hands. They're someone else's research notes, someone with frankly horrific handwriting, and the annoyed furrow between his eyebrows is threatening to become permanent.
When he does lift his head, a few seconds later than manners say he should have, to see who exactly he's being a dick to, it lingers. Most likely a rifter.
Well, that's not fair. Everyone smells. Everyone smells a little, like people. He smells like himself, and she takes stock. Ana Luisa says that learning to memorize smells can save a shifter's life. She thinks it's probably a little extreme, but it doesn't matter. She looks right at him, her eyes dark. Where is she attempting to be. "What are you reading?" she asks, instead.
Audra is genuinely surprised by the other presences when she arrives to assist Kostos. She does smile and return Anders's wave before shrugging her shoulders at Kostos, moving over to him while tying her hair back.
"We have an audience?" this isn't something she expected, but it doesn't bother her. She had students of her own when she was in the Circle, she's used to people watching her perform magic.
Is it too late for that, if they're already in the door? It doesn't seem like it should be too late. Some people present—not naming any names—have debts to pay soon, or else functional kneecaps to lose. One or the other.
But he doesn't actually demand it of them, or acknowledge them further at all, before he's gesturing to the table and speaking to Audra. "We can put Berenike's spirit—" The spirit in Berenike, more specifically, but that takes longer to say, and he isn't here to teach anybody. "—in the dog for now. It should last a while, and it will not be able to move too quickly if it escapes. And we can summon new wisps for the others and put them in cages at different distances. We have not tested whether or not it is catching."
Here he is, not talking. Working hard at not talking. All the same, he's pushing off the wall and looking at the different corpses Kostos has, desire to ask something written all over his face. Which he gives in to a moment later.
"Does the type of corpse ever matter? Is a smaller animal more prone to, to catching? than a larger one?"
That much is within the Priest's expertise. The little beast had been easy enough to catch the first time; there is no spirit that could inhabit it that would change that. That thought in mind the Priest steps away from the wall to prowl closer to the table--perhaps crowding Kostos; what is personal space--and examine the dog in more detail now that the stitches are done.
Doesn't have any other idea what to do with his hands — smoking was a fine plan outside, but shit in here, where it's cramped enough to set any given body alight. And so it's a delayed bit of business to swipe up an empty glass (protest from the sot still nursing its nothing), and pick out average-dark-and-surly from the crowd once more. Old friends. Or what passes for them in a dark and vomit-scented room.
"Saving on candles are they," Muttered. He takes a moment to look up and find Luca. An elbow edges lightly into Kostos' ribs, "Back in town already?"
Not that he, you know, takes note of certain faces that come and go from the Gallows. That'd be weird, possibly creepy. Particularly without a name.
The house is quieter than it might normally be. One single servant opens the door for Kostos, eyes him for a long moment, and using her better judgment decides to let him in. She is not one normally on the door. In fact, Kostos might recognise the older elf woman as one who has served the Vivas family for many years. He might even be aware of the five knives hidden on her person, if he notices that sort of thing, although none of them are in danger of being pulled on one of the mistress' dear ones. The servant - Corzon, that might be her name - leads Kostos through the atrium, her paces long and even, and she is still the only member of staff that seems to be present.
When they are not far from the entrance to the sitting room, crashing can be heard. Corazon does not flinch or seem especially surprised, but lets Kostos approach the entranceway alone, with a bow of deference.
Welcome to the Vivas estate! Nothing says my home is your home like a vase smashing on the doorframe one is walking through.
If they had more Wardens here, maybe even only if he were more confident Teren could be relied on right now, Alistair might not have taken this to the Inquisition. He might have exploited the grey (ha) area—not sure they're the enemy, not sure they know what they're doing—to keep it firmly in the category of Warden business, which is a synonym for nobody else's business.
But they're spread too thin, those of them that are alive and reliable, between here and Skyhold and the outposts in Orlais, so there's no room for that sort of posturing, and there is room for one of Beleth's new acquisitions to join him on the road to Starkhaven.
On the way it's all business, an explanation of what's been going on with the Free Marches' Wardens—the metaphorical friendly hand they extended, the metaphorical knife that appeared to be hidden behind their backs, their interference with goods shipped to the Wardens in Kirkwall, their contact with the Anders—that's not overly professional, because it's him, but is focused.
But by the time they reach the city and settle into the back corner of the tavern where the focus of this specific excursion was last known to be staying, he's run out of information to provide, and he considers her properly. Yseult. Marcher. That's—that's all he's got. Except for a moment, at a given angle and in a given light, he thinks he recognizes her. His eyes narrow and his mouth opens.
Then the angle and the light shift, and he's certain he doesn't.
Still stuck there with narrowed eyes and an open mouth, though.
He has to do something.
"Has anyone ever told you," he says, "that you have kind eyes?"
All business suits her well enough, and Yseult spends the journey listening as Alistair catches her up on the story so far, interjecting only occasionally, during obvious breaks in his narrative, to ask a few questions that make clear she's paying close attention, targeted to flesh out key details or clarify some nuance of Warden politics. Otherwise she's content to ride in silence.
Content to continue that way once they reach the tavern, too, not much acting required for them to play the parts of road-weary travelers just here for a quiet drink after a long day's ride. She's watching the room with the flat, open gaze of someone bored and lost in thought, though in reality she's keeping a careful eye on the door and the stairs. She turns back slowly at Alistair's question,one brow arching.
"Not that I recall." Her head tilts slightly, and her mouth does too in subtle amusement. "And you?"
He might smell—like magic, the crackling ozone of lyrium and the Fade, and like death, like a hundred year old mummy and a half-dozen more recently deceased animals—but only under the usual signs of good (for semi-medieval fantasy) hygiene. And for a moment he doesn't answer. He's deciding how annoyed to be by the question in lieu of response.
"What am I attempting to read," he corrects, echoing himself. Not very annoyed. There's amusement, too, as faint and buried as the smell of magic. "Reports on efforts to clear red lyrium from Emprise du Lion. Observations of rifts there in the interim. "
Kostos was braced before he stepped through the entrance, but not entirely prepared for this specific scenario. His head ducks down, his forearm darts up to shield his face and eyes. He's been at war too long for a barrier not to go up along with it, so when the pottery has finished falling around him and he looks for Marisol, the look of bewildered offense on his face is also shimmering blue-white.
The room is in disarray. Items swept off bookshelves, a houseplant slumped over the floor with earth spilled around it, a glass decanter and what one can only assume to be a horrendously expensive liquor pooled across the floor. She exhales, and her lips are faintly blue, breath misting strangely.
It takes her a moment to register that someone is there (unusual) and another to assume Kostos, from the barrier that is risen. One of her hands rests against her abdomen, and she is not at all composed.
"Are you hurt?" Concerned, though without the gentleness that normally comes naturally when she speaks to family.
“No,” he says, without any hint of reassurance, the syllable lobbed like a vase of his own, or a rock, or at least a dirt clod. No, he isn’t hurt, but that doesn’t mean this general situation is acceptable—
and he’s horrifically hypocritical, he knows; their tempers might spring from the same bloodline, for all the punches he’s thrown, the fights he’s been dragged out of by the hair, the days he’s spent cooling his heels in Circle cells. But it’s also flashfire. There and then doused by fifteen years of heavily supervised self-control. Or covered, at least, and left to simmer.
He brushes pottery off one shoulder and surveys the wreckage.
She squints a little, curious about that smell, and tilts her head just a little, to look him over. "Red lyrium," she says carefully, wondering if that's some kind of weed. That sounds like something that would grow in coffee, which is something she is depressingly versed on, because she had to move to the ass end of nowhere.
Red lyrium.
"That sounds like something you pull out of the ground and burn before it infects the rest of your crop, and you don't look like a farmer."
Luca'd been on his way to the bar to get exactly what Kostos just returned from it with, and when suddenly finding himself presented not only with just what he'd had in mind, but a lovely couple of faces attached to it, the look of mild surprise and lofted brows, turns to a warm smile (that borders on a smirk, because pretending at wholesome takes more energy than he wants to spend in a tavern) to Kostos.
"My thanks, serah. Here I feared I'd have to brave the crush of overly-familiar drunks." You know Kirkwall drunks - the huggy ones, the handsy ones, the ones who don't bathe. After accepting the mug, brushing his fingers against Kostos' as he does, Luca turns outward to gestures towards a table he'd secured not far, against a wall. Since Kostos shared his drinks, he'll share his table with the two of them.
He knows their faces, both of them, like he knows practically every face in the Inquisition, because it's his job to. Mages, if he recalls correctly, but beyond that, he can't say he knows much personally about either, which is probably for the best, as it means they don't likely know much personally about him. Since they're both painfully nice to look at, Luca figures it's as good an opportunity as any.
"Luca Montalis." He introduces himself, offering out a hand to shake.
“Has anyone told me—oh, sure. All the time,” Alistair says. “That’s how people point me out in a crowd. That one, over there, with the kind eyes.”
It’s not the most outrageous lie he’s ever told. His eyes are as kind as they can be while also being perpetually smirky at the corners. But he isn't drawling the way he usually would, voice pitched lower and quieter than even his fairly quiet usual, because his voice might be more distinctive than his face, and he can't guarantee he's never met this man before. He's met a lot of Wardens.
He has his back to the door for that reason, but he can see vague shapes moving behind him, like spirits, in the cloudy, dented reflection on the side of his mug. Enough that no one is going to walk up behind him—not that anyone would be able to anyway, with Yseult watching the room, but he doesn't trust her with his entire back just yet.
So she can see it, but he can't, when a man in plain clothes who matches the description, down to a distinctive handlebar mustache, comes down the stairs and pauses to have a word with the barkeep on his way toward the door.
"It's because I've never done anything wrong," Alistair is adding in the meantime, "in my entire life."
Businesslike, she steps over a smashed bottle on the floor, skirts skilfully avoiding the streaks and puddles of wine and the shattered glass, and she collects intact glasses.
Her tone is light in a way that is overtly deceptive and false. "Oh, yes. My aim would be better, if not for the Circles."
She isn't even sure she wants a drink, but she holds one of the glasses up as she looks to Kostos with a silent question. Drink?
Less silently: "It has been— as though foundations have been pulled away from us."
For what it's worth, Kostos doesn't begin to tense up any sooner than anyone else would—anyone else with standard Thedosian standards for personal space, or perhaps even slightly lower standards—but that is still, definitely, too close, though he's loathe to cede ground to anyone at any time, and when his shoulders can't bunch any tighter without it becoming an issue, he steps smoothly away.
"We do not know," he says, distracted by looking over his handiwork with the body. "Catching—whatever is wrong with the spirit from the Necropolis, I mean. We have not measured whether it will spread to other spirits on its own, with proximity or contact."
He's a little sorry that he has so many questions, but at least he's not apparently chasing Kostos around the table. The answers have brought another question to mind, though.
"Are there other things that you've seen spirits catch? That's contagious to them?" A second later there's a wave of his hand. "Disregarding the blood sharks, of course."
Though that does make him wonder if he would have had issues if he'd still been possessed. But as he's fairly certain no one in the Inquisition is currently possessed it can be a question tabled.
Dry, but not sarcastic. That was a compliment, right? Surely. Even farmers don't want to look like farmers.
He considers her for a moment, looking thoughtful in a habitually irritated way that doesn't actually mean he's irritated, then looks back at the journal in his hand. "Red lyrium is an alternate form of—lyrium." Obviously. But he doesn't know how to describe lyrium to someone who appears not to know about it, anymore than he would easily be able to describe air. "It's a mineral. It's magic. The essence of it. The red version destroys people." He turns the open journal in his hands toward her. The handwriting is atrocious. "Can you read this?"
There is no pursuit; when Kostos retreats, the Priest does not follow. The object of interest is the dog and the Priest only looks up from it once there are no more details worth studying.
"Your spirits may fall ill." It is not quite a question. "Explain these 'blood sharks'."
It should not be a surprise to hear this world has spirit-sickness and pneumavores as well--but a strange disappointment twinges in the Priest's breast even so. Surely a promised world should not share the horrors of a dying one. Had they not earned better?
She takes the journal and looks at it, and squints a little. She's not very bookish - she only went to school regularly up to the age of 14, after which it was sort of give and take - but she knows how to read cursive, and Ana Luisa makes her read old documents that were written by hand in worse handwriting than this.
She reads out a bit of it, but it doesn't mean anything to her, saying the words aloud. Things that probably mean something to this dude. "You know," she says, looking up at him. "Magic isn't this complicated where I'm from."
Kostos answers her silent question by coming closer, within drink-handing distance, without so much as a nod. He doesn't try to avoid crunching glass and pottery beneath his soles on the way.
He asks, "What foundations?" and it's both a genuine question and arid pessimism: when have any of them ever had solid ground beneath their feet?
Kostos absorbs the questions with the same silence and sinking feeling that he would absorb bad news. This is worse than teaching apprentices. At least most of them were afraid of him.
In case there's any hope for instilling similar fear in these two, he doesn't answer, only lifts his gaze from the dog to give them the same sort of look he'd fix on a misbehaving thirteen year old.
They do mean something to him. The most important thing they mean is that, since they made sense, she can read the handwriting. That means he needs her to not-hate him enough to agree to help him, after this, and that means he shouldn't say that where she's from is the Fade and whatever world she believes she remembers does not actually exist.
(That is, also, only his opinion. But good luck convincing him he's not right.)
"Where you're from," he repeats—and it sounds skeptical, despite his total awareness that he should avoid sounding skeptical, because he just can't help it. "What is magic like?"
He returns Kostos' look. "Unanswered questions make more, you know. I'll answer one, you answer the other?"
Not like he can actually answer his own. Maybe helping the woman with her questions will get Kostos to help him with his, though.
"I'm Anders, by the way. I don't believe we've met, madam. And the bloodsharks... We'd a Rifter come in, already ill. There was something in his bloodstream that spread to other Rifters and the Templars. Since it was lyrium-based, I'd theorize that it could spread to any spirits. Or any harboring spirits."
"That is what all the stories say," Yseult replies, teasing tucked into one corner of her mouth, a crooked little smile.
She's looking past him, though, eyes over his shoulder and then sliding away, focus softened so it's less obvious. "I think this is him leaving," she says as she's raising her own mug, quiet words hidden behind it before she sips, half her face, too, just in case. "Huge dark mustache waxed to a curl, pock-mark scar on his right cheek. He's talking to the barkeep."
She takes a moment and reads to herself, and nothing in this book makes sense. However, that serves the purpose of making it so that when she answers him, she sounds distracted. "Only the priestesses do it, and the Caipora, I guess, if that's what you call what it does. They can make things happen." That's not very descriptive, so she looks up and tries again. "Mostly illusions. And some like. Magic that doesn't seem like it's magic but just really coincidental coincidences."
A quelling look is a quelling look the worlds over. Kostos' expression invokes neither fear nor submission from the Priest but a polite inclination of the chin. This is his ritual and the Priest does not yet know the rules. Information might be sought later--
Though here is this "Anders" giving it anyway. Nuances of expression in Trade are opaque still to the Priest--who is yet certain madam is a category error as a form of address.
No matter. "You will relate the rest of this after." Matter-of-fact.
"I thought—" An exhale, exasperated with herself, and tired. "I thought that Tevinter might hold some kernel of hope for us. A place where mages might retreat and not suffer, if things should begin to slip back to what they were before."
Marisol shakes her head, and holds out the glass in offering. "It was naive."
"Yes," Kostos says, without any softening or sympathy. It was naive.
But he'll take the wine, and take a long drink, because the thought of somewhere they could retreat is. Not pleasant, exactly. More like nostalgia, only for something that they can never have at all instead of something they had but can never have back.
"If we ever tolerated Tevinter, Marisol, we would be what everyone believes we are." He looks down and pushes a piece of ceramic with his foot, absently, toward nothing. "And do not say we would improve it. We would be indentured for years before we could even begin to have a say."
Very, very naive. She pours herself a glass, and swears under her breath before draining the whole thing, and refilling. Will refill for Kostos, as well, if he makes any indication of needing it.
"I know." Which makes it more galling, almost. She knows, she knew, she understood. Even marrying into Tevinter would keep her shackled, because that is what this sort of thing always means. Another sip of wine, but at least now she isn't throwing things, and her hands are steady.
"I hate that we are... monsters. And the only place where we are not seen as monsters, we become them."
That’s better. Depressing, of course, as always, but she’s steady, and he rewards it by clinking the edge of his glass against hers. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a hint of levity in the corners of his mouth.
“Monsters,” he echoes—with more underlying agreement than she might want, when there are several days each week he thinks it’s what they are, not only how they’re seen—“but very good looking.”
That gets a smile from. Not that it's ever hard to get a smile out of Marisol, but they came at differing magnitudes. This was— slight, a little sharp, but fond. "I'll drink to that."
If they have nothing else, they are very dashing. She sips from her glass, exhales a slow breath, and takes a moment to remaster her composure. It is probably less convincing when in a sea of chaos of her own making. She picks up a book that had tipped over, straightening it on the shelf.
"Sometimes I think I should hate my magic, but I never can. It'd be like hating my heart for beating. Too vain for my own good, maybe."
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necromancy: audra & an audience. (cw animal & human cadavers/zombies)
Not the point of being surrounded by donated animal bodies and carefully stitching up a dead dog while the possessed corpse of his great great et cetera aunt stalks angrily in a dungeon cell behind him. That part makes sense. But the point where the Grey Warden mage who blew up Kirkwall's chantry and the oddest rifter he's yet encountered, which is saying something, are both watching him do it—that point he isn't sure about. He isn't sure he likes it, either.
He hasn't said anything to either of them in a while. When Audra enters he looks up from the last stitches on the dog to gesture one-handed to the two observers, a jerky motion accompanied by a sort of aggressively confused expression, altogether an attempt to silently convey there are people here and it is not my fault. Even though it sort of is.
no subject
When Audra enters, Anders waves. It's a nice break from twiddling his thumbs.
magic is for losers
She's been here - Jesus Christ, has it almost been a month? It absolutely has - but for some reason this place is harder to get to understand than any favela, even the City of God, and it's making her cranky. She spends hours watching people, going from place to place, wandering around the damned city, and most of the time she's lost. There are no signposts in favelas, she should be used to this.
She is not.
It's even worse inside the building, because the smells of this place are overwhelming. The magic, well. That's even worse. She thinks she's got a handle on it, which is why she's standing outside what she thinks is where the mages do their magic.
Whether or not that's true has yet to be seen. It might also be a fancy bathroom. Or a library? Hard to tell. Or the entry to a dungeon.
She is biting her thumb absently when she hears someone coming, and straightens up a bit. Looking at people here it's hard to tell if they're magic or not; she has never been good at this particular act of shifter talent. Instead it's an attractive-ish guy. She bites her thumb a little more. "Hey."
It's a good start.
"Hey," she repeats. "I think I'm lost."
bad decisions: luca & isaac.
Kostos doesn't care about novelty, but he does care about places where the barkeeper isn't yet wary of his unpaid tab or tendency to cause trouble, which is why he's braving the crush of bodies around the bar. He turns away from the counter with a metal tankard in each hand—both for him, so he doesn't have to come back anytime soon, but maybe that's negotiable—and right into a face that's familiar.
(Not familiar enough.)
He doesn't smile, and he doesn't apologize, but the sharp interest on his face isn't hostile. After a second, he offers one of his mugs.
no subject
It is a rich world that can spend useful flesh so.
The Priest does not look up as Audra enters; Kostos' work is far more interesting. Only when he is through with the last of the stitches does the Priest lift eyes to regard the arriving necromancer with a faint frown. This ritual had all the air of something sacred (albeit makeshift, field-hasty): Why, then, do none of these women (men, a silent amendment; strange as it is to see men going about work,) bear any but passing association to each other?
no subject
When he does lift his head, a few seconds later than manners say he should have, to see who exactly he's being a dick to, it lingers. Most likely a rifter.
"Where are you attempting to be?"
no subject
Well, that's not fair. Everyone smells. Everyone smells a little, like people. He smells like himself, and she takes stock. Ana Luisa says that learning to memorize smells can save a shifter's life. She thinks it's probably a little extreme, but it doesn't matter. She looks right at him, her eyes dark. Where is she attempting to be. "What are you reading?" she asks, instead.
Why focus on her own needs?
no subject
"We have an audience?" this isn't something she expected, but it doesn't bother her. She had students of her own when she was in the Circle, she's used to people watching her perform magic.
no subject
Is it too late for that, if they're already in the door? It doesn't seem like it should be too late. Some people present—not naming any names—have debts to pay soon, or else functional kneecaps to lose. One or the other.
But he doesn't actually demand it of them, or acknowledge them further at all, before he's gesturing to the table and speaking to Audra. "We can put Berenike's spirit—" The spirit in Berenike, more specifically, but that takes longer to say, and he isn't here to teach anybody. "—in the dog for now. It should last a while, and it will not be able to move too quickly if it escapes. And we can summon new wisps for the others and put them in cages at different distances. We have not tested whether or not it is catching."
no subject
"Does the type of corpse ever matter? Is a smaller animal more prone to, to catching? than a larger one?"
no subject
That much is within the Priest's expertise. The little beast had been easy enough to catch the first time; there is no spirit that could inhabit it that would change that. That thought in mind the Priest steps away from the wall to prowl closer to the table--perhaps crowding Kostos; what is personal space--and examine the dog in more detail now that the stitches are done.
no subject
Doesn't have any other idea what to do with his hands — smoking was a fine plan outside, but shit in here, where it's cramped enough to set any given body alight. And so it's a delayed bit of business to swipe up an empty glass (protest from the sot still nursing its nothing), and pick out average-dark-and-surly from the crowd once more. Old friends. Or what passes for them in a dark and vomit-scented room.
"Saving on candles are they," Muttered. He takes a moment to look up and find Luca. An elbow edges lightly into Kostos' ribs, "Back in town already?"
Not that he, you know, takes note of certain faces that come and go from the Gallows. That'd be weird, possibly creepy. Particularly without a name.
no subject
When they are not far from the entrance to the sitting room, crashing can be heard. Corazon does not flinch or seem especially surprised, but lets Kostos approach the entranceway alone, with a bow of deference.
Welcome to the Vivas estate! Nothing says my home is your home like a vase smashing on the doorframe one is walking through.
with my little eye: yseult.
But they're spread too thin, those of them that are alive and reliable, between here and Skyhold and the outposts in Orlais, so there's no room for that sort of posturing, and there is room for one of Beleth's new acquisitions to join him on the road to Starkhaven.
On the way it's all business, an explanation of what's been going on with the Free Marches' Wardens—the metaphorical friendly hand they extended, the metaphorical knife that appeared to be hidden behind their backs, their interference with goods shipped to the Wardens in Kirkwall, their contact with the Anders—that's not overly professional, because it's him, but is focused.
But by the time they reach the city and settle into the back corner of the tavern where the focus of this specific excursion was last known to be staying, he's run out of information to provide, and he considers her properly. Yseult. Marcher. That's—that's all he's got. Except for a moment, at a given angle and in a given light, he thinks he recognizes her. His eyes narrow and his mouth opens.
Then the angle and the light shift, and he's certain he doesn't.
Still stuck there with narrowed eyes and an open mouth, though.
He has to do something.
"Has anyone ever told you," he says, "that you have kind eyes?"
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Content to continue that way once they reach the tavern, too, not much acting required for them to play the parts of road-weary travelers just here for a quiet drink after a long day's ride. She's watching the room with the flat, open gaze of someone bored and lost in thought, though in reality she's keeping a careful eye on the door and the stairs. She turns back slowly at Alistair's question,one brow arching.
"Not that I recall." Her head tilts slightly, and her mouth does too in subtle amusement. "And you?"
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"What am I attempting to read," he corrects, echoing himself. Not very annoyed. There's amusement, too, as faint and buried as the smell of magic. "Reports on efforts to clear red lyrium from Emprise du Lion. Observations of rifts there in the interim. "
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"What the fuck, Marisol," he says.
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It takes her a moment to register that someone is there (unusual) and another to assume Kostos, from the barrier that is risen. One of her hands rests against her abdomen, and she is not at all composed.
"Are you hurt?" Concerned, though without the gentleness that normally comes naturally when she speaks to family.
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and he’s horrifically hypocritical, he knows; their tempers might spring from the same bloodline, for all the punches he’s thrown, the fights he’s been dragged out of by the hair, the days he’s spent cooling his heels in Circle cells. But it’s also flashfire. There and then doused by fifteen years of heavily supervised self-control. Or covered, at least, and left to simmer.
He brushes pottery off one shoulder and surveys the wreckage.
“Is this what they teach in Antiva?”
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Red lyrium.
"That sounds like something you pull out of the ground and burn before it infects the rest of your crop, and you don't look like a farmer."
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"My thanks, serah. Here I feared I'd have to brave the crush of overly-familiar drunks." You know Kirkwall drunks - the huggy ones, the handsy ones, the ones who don't bathe. After accepting the mug, brushing his fingers against Kostos' as he does, Luca turns outward to gestures towards a table he'd secured not far, against a wall. Since Kostos shared his drinks, he'll share his table with the two of them.
He knows their faces, both of them, like he knows practically every face in the Inquisition, because it's his job to. Mages, if he recalls correctly, but beyond that, he can't say he knows much personally about either, which is probably for the best, as it means they don't likely know much personally about him. Since they're both painfully nice to look at, Luca figures it's as good an opportunity as any.
"Luca Montalis." He introduces himself, offering out a hand to shake.
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It’s not the most outrageous lie he’s ever told. His eyes are as kind as they can be while also being perpetually smirky at the corners. But he isn't drawling the way he usually would, voice pitched lower and quieter than even his fairly quiet usual, because his voice might be more distinctive than his face, and he can't guarantee he's never met this man before. He's met a lot of Wardens.
He has his back to the door for that reason, but he can see vague shapes moving behind him, like spirits, in the cloudy, dented reflection on the side of his mug. Enough that no one is going to walk up behind him—not that anyone would be able to anyway, with Yseult watching the room, but he doesn't trust her with his entire back just yet.
So she can see it, but he can't, when a man in plain clothes who matches the description, down to a distinctive handlebar mustache, comes down the stairs and pauses to have a word with the barkeep on his way toward the door.
"It's because I've never done anything wrong," Alistair is adding in the meantime, "in my entire life."
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Her tone is light in a way that is overtly deceptive and false. "Oh, yes. My aim would be better, if not for the Circles."
She isn't even sure she wants a drink, but she holds one of the glasses up as she looks to Kostos with a silent question. Drink?
Less silently: "It has been— as though foundations have been pulled away from us."
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"We do not know," he says, distracted by looking over his handiwork with the body. "Catching—whatever is wrong with the spirit from the Necropolis, I mean. We have not measured whether it will spread to other spirits on its own, with proximity or contact."
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"Are there other things that you've seen spirits catch? That's contagious to them?" A second later there's a wave of his hand. "Disregarding the blood sharks, of course."
Though that does make him wonder if he would have had issues if he'd still been possessed. But as he's fairly certain no one in the Inquisition is currently possessed it can be a question tabled.
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Dry, but not sarcastic. That was a compliment, right? Surely. Even farmers don't want to look like farmers.
He considers her for a moment, looking thoughtful in a habitually irritated way that doesn't actually mean he's irritated, then looks back at the journal in his hand. "Red lyrium is an alternate form of—lyrium." Obviously. But he doesn't know how to describe lyrium to someone who appears not to know about it, anymore than he would easily be able to describe air. "It's a mineral. It's magic. The essence of it. The red version destroys people." He turns the open journal in his hands toward her. The handwriting is atrocious. "Can you read this?"
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"Your spirits may fall ill." It is not quite a question. "Explain these 'blood sharks'."
It should not be a surprise to hear this world has spirit-sickness and pneumavores as well--but a strange disappointment twinges in the Priest's breast even so. Surely a promised world should not share the horrors of a dying one. Had they not earned better?
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She reads out a bit of it, but it doesn't mean anything to her, saying the words aloud. Things that probably mean something to this dude. "You know," she says, looking up at him. "Magic isn't this complicated where I'm from."
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He asks, "What foundations?" and it's both a genuine question and arid pessimism: when have any of them ever had solid ground beneath their feet?
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In case there's any hope for instilling similar fear in these two, he doesn't answer, only lifts his gaze from the dog to give them the same sort of look he'd fix on a misbehaving thirteen year old.
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(That is, also, only his opinion. But good luck convincing him he's not right.)
"Where you're from," he repeats—and it sounds skeptical, despite his total awareness that he should avoid sounding skeptical, because he just can't help it. "What is magic like?"
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Not like he can actually answer his own. Maybe helping the woman with her questions will get Kostos to help him with his, though.
"I'm Anders, by the way. I don't believe we've met, madam. And the bloodsharks... We'd a Rifter come in, already ill. There was something in his bloodstream that spread to other Rifters and the Templars. Since it was lyrium-based, I'd theorize that it could spread to any spirits. Or any harboring spirits."
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She's looking past him, though, eyes over his shoulder and then sliding away, focus softened so it's less obvious. "I think this is him leaving," she says as she's raising her own mug, quiet words hidden behind it before she sips, half her face, too, just in case. "Huge dark mustache waxed to a curl, pock-mark scar on his right cheek. He's talking to the barkeep."
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That's so much better.
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Though here is this "Anders" giving it anyway. Nuances of expression in Trade are opaque still to the Priest--who is yet certain madam is a category error as a form of address.
No matter. "You will relate the rest of this after." Matter-of-fact.
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"I thought—" An exhale, exasperated with herself, and tired. "I thought that Tevinter might hold some kernel of hope for us. A place where mages might retreat and not suffer, if things should begin to slip back to what they were before."
Marisol shakes her head, and holds out the glass in offering. "It was naive."
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But he'll take the wine, and take a long drink, because the thought of somewhere they could retreat is. Not pleasant, exactly. More like nostalgia, only for something that they can never have at all instead of something they had but can never have back.
"If we ever tolerated Tevinter, Marisol, we would be what everyone believes we are." He looks down and pushes a piece of ceramic with his foot, absently, toward nothing. "And do not say we would improve it. We would be indentured for years before we could even begin to have a say."
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"I know." Which makes it more galling, almost. She knows, she knew, she understood. Even marrying into Tevinter would keep her shackled, because that is what this sort of thing always means. Another sip of wine, but at least now she isn't throwing things, and her hands are steady.
"I hate that we are... monsters. And the only place where we are not seen as monsters, we become them."
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“Monsters,” he echoes—with more underlying agreement than she might want, when there are several days each week he thinks it’s what they are, not only how they’re seen—“but very good looking.”
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If they have nothing else, they are very dashing. She sips from her glass, exhales a slow breath, and takes a moment to remaster her composure. It is probably less convincing when in a sea of chaos of her own making. She picks up a book that had tipped over, straightening it on the shelf.
"Sometimes I think I should hate my magic, but I never can. It'd be like hating my heart for beating. Too vain for my own good, maybe."