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Skyhold wrote. Not that their orders don't come from there but this one is enough that Araceli's lost track of the time going over it, a document that's not hurriedly stuffed back in the drawer when Flint arrives because that smacks of guilt or suspicion but shoved in there with something not unlike disgust. Last time she was out that way she finally saw a cetus and it tried to eat de Foncé.

From a large glass bowl on the desk several black arms reach out imperious and demanding. The remains of a wooden ship mostly crushed, the sails billowing sadly with the jostling of the body as it starts to haul itself up and out--

"Fernando enough. Ignore him." Araceli shifts the bowl to keep Flint out of the firing line, judges the distance, then moves it another inch. The range judged. "Of people in this project only three of us have the experience to do it: you, myself, and Charles. Everyone else is some level of sailor or swimmer but that's it. And you've the Walrus. Although I can hear it: either the rifter leader takes the ship or she gives it to a pirate out of Nascere barely arrived, I can sell it but this place falls over itself to shine up all sorts as if it doesn't know how the world works."

Or rather it doesn't want to know. Who wants to know what goes into the sausage after all?

"Fair enough." And it is. "I can see how neither is easy or politic."

They've certainly made the matter of appearances in relation to her job any easy. Improved the prospects of the Inquisition at sea? Certainly. But its reputation? For all that he's personally evaded saying the word pirate aloud, he's more than done his part to cultivate the murmuring of it. This without even acknowledging that sailors can't keep their tongues from wagging to save their own hides; with the Walrus' skeleton crew roving the Kirkwall docks these many weeks, no part of their occupation prior to entering the harbor can still be much of a secret.

"All things being equal then, it might benefit the project to give Vane something more to do than teaching swimming lessons and how to pull a line. In the sense that it would occupy him. The man doesn't do well at anchor. But," --and here really is his point; Charles can advocate his own captaincy if he cares to-- "That's not unique to him."

"When has anything been either of those things for most? Until a few months ago my personhood was a matter of debate, it's the way that this goes you just have to guess at everyone else's hands at the table."

With pirates there's an honesty to knowing exactly what a pirate is compared to say chevaliers who might preen and prance and be held aloft as gleaming and glittering things who have bloody initiations in alienages. Or Templars bound uncomfortably tight to a Chantry where more of it than Araceli's comfortable with was written after the sainted lady was martyred. It's getting people to see it. Hold their faces in the damn water and more than half of them would have it go up their noses before they'd take a drink.

"There's something coming up, I'd rather you'd hear it from me before it does the rounds: there's a Qunari dreadknought, the orders just came from Skyhold." If this is-- well if it's an exercise in trust then so be it, the rescue mission was one thing but Araceli's head was in no better state than his perhaps so there's this that she can extend to him. "This one hasn't sunk or exploded, it's abandoned, run aground from what the scouts have reported between Alamarr and Brandel's Reach. We're to recover it."

It's work, as she lifts her glass to take a healthy swallow.

He's planned how this conversation will go in his head. How could he not? But the dreadnought is a turn so sharp that it shocks Flint into silence, smothering whatever prepared line had been waiting there at the tip of his tongue. It must show on his face too - the lines of his expression rearranging sharply behind copper whiskers. A long pause follows. He takes a drink himself.

It's specifically not the kind of work he really needs, but it certainly is something.

"I don't suppose Skyhold mentioned how likely this is to be some kind of Qun trap while they were at it, did they?"

Edited 2018-10-03 21:23 (UTC)

There's always something enjoyable about neatly kicking the conversation away somewhere else, seeing how it falls especially when the other person is older; Araceli is under few illusions when it comes to life here and other people and what they might see. A girl, a young girl, a young strange girl in charge of something. There are always thoughts that come into the head.

"I'd have been a poor student there if I wasn't expected to weigh that possibility myself." How many bard teachers would they have had for a thing that she doesn't advertise but comes as an open secret? "But all the same we've made a recent overture with the Qunari not so long again. Ambassador Amsel was away with a team including Commander Coupe, something to do with slaying a dragon before an audience, a glorious one. They're no friend of Tevinter either, far from it, it could be an opportunity. If we're smart about it."

Right now she isn't entirely sure who the opportunity is for, but that'll be for posing to everyone then...it'll land how it will. You can make plans, you can make the back-ups of the back-ups and it can still fall down around your ears to leave it to whatever thing in your bones screams at you when it all comes rushing with the tide.

Abruptly, he's laughing. It has an off-putting and barking quality, equal parts startled and revolted. "An opportunity," he repeats, as if they're words in a foreign language. "Yes, I expect someone in the Qun is saying the exact same thing."

What a ludicrous fucking notion. Dragon hunting for the pleasure of the Qunari. For fuck's sake. Are they meant to be a salvage crew at their behest now too? He set his glass on the desk and by the time he speaks again, he has moderated his tone into to the tune of 'But sure, let's pretend we're talking about this rationally.'

"We'll need volunteers from the other divisions to get it anywhere. Better if the Inquisition had coin to spare to hire some actual seamen, though I somehow doubt Skyhold wants anyone outside the Inquisition knowing about this even if there were room in the books for hiring hands."

"Last time they came to Kirkwall it was disavowed, hushed up embarrassingly but the memory is a long one for the people." Certainly to be kept in mind as she smiles back, a hand playing with a chain that has half a dragon's tooth swinging on it. "Three heads there and now we've kicked the hornet's nest they'll have decisions to make."

She never did get to go so far as Kont-aar on her Rivain trip, unfortunately for her. It might've done her well or not but they've a Venatori ship to learn as much as they can from, more pirates and there's definitely Fonce with his vast education she might pry out. That or his adventures.

"We needn't hand it back. Not immediately. Things happen." Not that she'd decide alone but let him take the measure of it, let her measure him with it though the idea clearly intrigues and discomforts her in equal measure with the tooth flipped up into her palm. "We're on our own and I'd hear the opinions of the Division first, honestly I don't know how much I'd trust others to secrecy when there are plenty with reason to hate the Qun but not the sense to shut up about what they're doing. You haven't happened to have sailed a dreadnought? We've none out of the Qun these days."

She doesn't look to a scrimshaw on the desk but her eyes dart to it. You don't stop missing family. Phantom limbs itching, demanding you scratch to the bone.

"Dreadnoughts aren't much for sailing. IF you want to recover it, our best bet would be to man whatever ships can be mustered - the Walrus, the Tevene ship, whatever boats the Inquisition has access to - and tow it. The alternative is to hope it retains its oars and man those."

Nevermind that if she means to delay the dreadnought's return, those crews would need to be highly selective. If words of the salvage somehow found its way back to the Qun, he can't imagine the repercussions would be especially pleasant. The recovery might be managed with a some willing volunteers guided by more knowledgeable hands, but it'd be a near thing. Taking a ship of that size through the Waking Sea's circuitous channels is asking for ruin.

--Still, to his mind, a better option that returning it. Fuck the Qun and fuck appeasing them.

"If it could be recovered," --and the implication seems to be that it's a big 'if'-- "Where would you even put it?"

Kirkwall hardly tolerates the presence of one raiding ship in its harbor; he can't imagine it'd be pleased to have a Qunari ship there.

"People see that many ships leaving the docks again so soon and they'll be thinking we're at war with someone else. I'm wary of causing any sort of scene, especially when I have no idea how long our guest's presence is going to stay a guarded secret." They've had Venatori get into the Gallows before, she went after one, if she's had a nightmare of waking up to blood in the streets then that's between her, Korrin, and a carefully worded lie about why she's leaning out the window at three in the morning to see for herself that Kirkwall is very much Kirkwall and nothing especially terrible has happened.

None of it is good, there's a resentment at Skyhold handing her this - it's her job, yes, but it's also a fucking nightmare thanks - as her stomach tightens itself into a knot.

"There's not anywhere we can leave it safely. I know pirates. You know pirates. They're as likely to take if they could and we can't, there's an opportunity to learn from it, equally I wouldn't have the Venatori or any Tevinter forces getting hold of it either." Maybe that's an argument she can use even if it feels clumsy but Flint hates Tevinter, she'd not have them anywhere near a conveniently bereft Qunari ship if she can help it. "Kirkwall will have to deal with what's in its waters in the short term for what won't be there in the long term if it helps us win a war."

Not a popular argument to make with the people but there's time to refine it. Probably time to go to Madame de Cedoux with a 'how would you word this hypothetical situation if I had this in my lap not that I do but if a bitch did'.

Just because it's a clumsy argument doesn't mean it isn't true. If there aren't Tevinter ships - Venatori affiliated or otherwise - to be found in the Amaranthine this very day, then it's only a matter a time. And she's not wrong that they're better served by the dreadnought in their hands than in anyone else's, but--

"I somehow doubt anyone will tolerate a dreadnought's presence in the harbor here. And if Kirkwall could be convinced to abide by it, I can't imagine the Inquisition's friends among the Qun would accept anything other than a very prompt return. So it might be best to settle the matter of what we're meant to do with the thing after its recovery. I imagine that will somewhat dictate the terms of engagement."

To make a very dry joke.

"Calling them friends is overstating it, I'll have to talk to Coupe and Herian, probably Thranduil and Beleth too to figure out what, exactly, we say about it all. Since it's going to be coming from the Inquisition and I'll need to ask the rest of naval presence their opinions just to get a feeler for it."

Even if she's willing to ultimately disregard bullshit opinions because you don't pass up a Qunari dreadnought but she's trusting the influx of pirates as well as the general ill-feeling towards the Qun to sway opinion to the we're keeping it camp.

"Maybe we need to start looking into having somewhere a little out of the public eye for situations like this, it's not going to get any better in the future. Say we get to the ship, we manage to work out how to sail it, bring it back here, it might give Skyhold ideas. Or there's just having all our ships in one harbour. If anyone decides to torch it then that's our navy."

Kirkwall being Kirkwall it went up in flames twice before the Inquisition showed up she's not made of faith.

Then as long as she's polling for opinions--

"If it were me, I'd see that dreadnought conveniently disappear somewhere between here and Brandel's Reach and have no further word spoken of it until it makes sense to. What the Qun doesn't suspect we have can't hurt us, but the minute word travels North that we've recovered one of their ships-- there will be expectations then that will do the Inquisition no good in any direction." Either the Qun resents them for keeping it or the Marches do for giving it back. "There must be some place along the coast it might be tucked away, along with whatever other ships you might care to keep secret."

How close is anyone's guess. The Waking Sea isn't exactly known for its easy navigation and he can only make an educated estimate as to the depth of a dreadnought's hull. But seeing as they are currently speaking purely in fantastic hypotheticals, why not?

"Last time I was in Brandel's Reach there was a Cetus that has eaten a Chantry brother, what waters are safe when those aren't meant to be there." Flint do you regret coming to the Inquisition? (The Qunari, of course, have their own name for those, her stomach sours with the drink in it.) Go investigate this for us and almost die-- on cue the kraken hurls a bone carving out of his bowl. "I might have words with Lady Vivas about keeping a ship of hers tucked out the way, especially if things in Antiva resolve themselves one way or the other. Making friends with the Qun-- on the one hand I can see where the decision comes from, we're short of friends.

"On the other? How many of us would the Qun take without destroying utterly?" And here it is; the part of her that cases the building, watches as many days as she might for the guard patrol to change, climbs up, over, plans her ins and outs. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless-- abhorrent, going against everything in her bones to hear those words said to her face, that belief, that certainty. "Open the door, invite them in, allow them a seat at the table. The door is opened. There's the gap beneath. Where the hinge won't sit right. The space you make so you have elbow room without spilling wine on your neighbour's plate. They disavowed the last Arishok but here we are again, perhaps, and worse. Everyone we ask we have a begging bowl in hand."

She would rather allies who'd have better terms and would fuck them over simply: Llomerryn, Nascere, Antiva, Rivain. Less traditional, more cutthroat, a more delicate dance. Perhaps if they hadn't disgraced themselves they'd have had Nevarra.

(Regret? He doesn't know the application of the word as well as he should.)

"That may be," he says. It is. "Which is all the more reason for us to make certain decisions before we find ourselves in the position of having tried to pursue both possibilities in hand and having made legitimate progress toward neither. The one way to make unknown waters more secure is by charting them, and the Inquisition - Thedas, even - has neither the time or the resources to split its attention as often as it tries to."

"All the more pity that we lost our ally in Llomerryn who was meant to give us news of Tevinter though there's opportunity for somewhere closer I think." Charles is willing, more than willing if she judged the look on his face right and if they had a ship of their own in Nascere (she needs to speak to John about it more, still has to introduce herself to Max then see how this lands) but sounding Flint out if they're going through this doesn't hurt. "This is all the Inquisition tries to do. We're one Inquisition, one banner but no single leader, everyone with their own agenda who think their agenda matters more. It's--"

The glass set down she leans back, looks both older and younger than twenty-three in the way you do when you end up doing this sort of thing and you've been here three years and want to hiss seriously at people more times than you can count.

"It's a nightmare at times. The things you find yourself arguing about in the first place. Everyone could do with a spell on a ship to teach them some focus and discipline on working together and getting the job done but you'd want to throw half of them overboard."

(She's being charitable at calling it half.)

Speaking of why he's here in the first place-- Vane has clearly been loose with conversation. Or the men have talked while they've been in Kirkwall. Or, or, or. Either way, Nascere and there investment in it can hardly be a secret. Still, some flickering look passes over his face at the sideways reference to the place. If Bonaventura is at once older and younger, then for a moment the man in the chair across from her is both heartsick and blade sharp.

He makes no mention of the place. Instead--

"Let them argue then. In the meantime, the rest of us can go about our business while they're otherwise occupied." It all must come square at the far side of things.

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