faderift | [OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

[Maker's breath, Vane needs a ship to command immediately. If he's so bored as that and not given something to chase, trouble is bound to follow. Thank fuck Araceli's already made to keep him busy.

Flint gestures dismissively - fine; forget the question of Vane entirely. And even the matter of Nikos Averesch of all people - he'd smelled like the inside of a bottle the last time Flint has seen him, hadn't he? - testing much of anything, much less anyone's commitment to justice. Someone doubting his intentions here is maybe the least surprising thing she's ever said to him.]

This entirely undefined them of Tevinter slaves - how does the Inquisition intend to make contact in the first place?

Don't know yet.

[ She scratches her nose. ]

It's one of the reasons I want in on their expedition north - it'll let me tap into the resources they've got, the contacts they know. Of course, it's possible they don't actually know any, which is part of the reason I reached out to Captain Vane. I don't want to ask him to enter into any situations that'll...You know. [ She gives a small uncomfortable shrug. I don't want to force him to revisit past traumas is, hopefully, understood without her having to say it aloud and impeach Vane's manly courage in front of someone he seems to have a complicated relationship with. ] But hopefully he'll know some.

[ She looks at Flint, then, with his impassive face and his hard jaw. She wishes she'd raised this question in the daylight. He was a little bit more scrutable then, the illumination helping her pick up on the little shifts in expression that hinted at his true feelings. Here, in the dark, she's at a loss. ]

So what do you think of all this? I mean, I'm happy to answer questions all you like, but most of them are really going to come down to I don't know yet. So I want to ask you. You know more about Tevinter than I could learn in a month's worth of eavesdropping. How can I do this? [ She'd meant to ask a more modest question, a could I do this, but as soon as the more grandiose one is out of her mouth she realizes it's the right one. She doesn't want to waste time debating whether something is impractical or whether she should temper her ambition or whether she should keep her head down. She just wants to go out there and smash something to pieces, and what she wants to know is how it can be done. ]

[It is the right one. Because the answer to 'could I?' is no for a dozen, for a hundred, different reasons. Because 'could I?' is a question asked by someone whose hand might hesitate to implement its answer and if it was possible, if there could ever be a hope of a slave rebellion rising in Tevinter, uncertainty would be the first thing ready to smother it.

'Pretend for a moment this is true. What does it look like?' That's a question to arm men with. That question is how true things are made.]

The difficulty of provoking a slave revolt on the continent is guaranteeing that your force will have enough time to find their footing and seeing that they aren't immediately cut off from whatever supplies they might have by the arms inevitably brought to bear against them. The Magisterium may take its time debating over the legitimacy of their new Archon, but there will be no disagreement over quelling a slave rebellion. [ He's speaking deliberately, calm and careful. Yet even so, there's a sense of sharpening here - not quickly, but steadily. He sounds like ambitious steel laid on whetstone.]

So you will need to be ready to promise the slaves a buffer - not with the fall back position of joining our forces, but with the guarantee that the Inquisition will instead militarize the Tevinter soporati against the new Archon's rule. That the Magisterium may hesitate over just long enough to distract from the fact that their slaves are being armed. More importantly, it's your best chance to keep the two from cannibalizing one another entirely when whatever sensible voices might exist among the Tevinter mages are overwhelmed and they begin to rally for a fight.

Oh.

[ The soporati. The citizens of Tevinter without magic. She'd been so focused on the slaves, and on their power, that she'd scarcely even given thought to the role that the soporati might play. She wonders (feeling a twist of guilt) if it's because even she assumes that slaves haven't got anything to live for, that she just thinks they ought to give up their worthless lives. Oh, she hopes not. She hopes that it's just that she's so inured to middle-class apathy that she'd assumed they were a lost cause. Not that...they were worth more.

It's nearly enough to knock her off her stride, that realization of what might well have been her own cruelty. But Flint is talking, and what he's saying is useful, critical - no chance to lambast herself, not while she has him and has him sharing his thoughts. ]

We'll need to find out, then, how the soporati are being treated. What their prospects are. If I know people like that, they won't rouse themselves - [ A quick nose-wrinkle at the unintentional pun on waking up, soporati, etc. - ] unless their prospects for comfort are threatened. We need to get them to think that Corypheus will strip 'em of their...not even their rights; people are happy to give up their rights. Of their safety. Of their nice warm beds and their full stew-pots.

[A low sound - a humorless chuckle.]

Then it's lucky you'll be mounting a rebellion now, when they might so easily be primed to be paranoid of just such a thing. Given the events in Minrathous, you might only need to make sure they know the truth. It's only been fifteen years since Radonis took the chair and a new regime in the capitol might easily mean change. Make it known that a contingent of their precious magisters and Corypheus' Venatori are one and the same, then it's free men and women without magic who might be convinced they have the most to lose.

None of which [he says, hooking his wrist across the pommel of his beltknife] will actually get you face to face with any number of Tevinter slaves. But it at least will give you something to say when you get that far.

Yeah.

[ Kitty feels...energized. She feels lighter than she has felt in a while. There really is something astonishing about uttering radical ideas to someone - to an adult - and hearing real encouragement rather than just sit down, Kitty, you'll just get yourself hurt. She doesn't care about getting hurt. She doesn't care about staying safe. She wants to do something, and have people with her, and fight. ]

But that's something to get figured out when I'm there. When I'm there and in arm's reach of 'em. Are there any on your crew? Former slaves? Aside from Captain Vane.

No it's not.

[This, clipped and firm and fundamentally ignoring all of her questions. There are no doubt Walrus men who once were enslaved, but they aren't here to help her. Fuck - after weeks largely of moldering in a harbor with little to no money to spend and no prospects on the horizon of getting any, it would be a near thing to convince them they are still even here to leverage the Inquisition's aid. No man is going to have shit to say to her about the Tevinter's interior after so many years willfully removed from it, when they've come so far and secured no promises of their own.]

If you want to figure out how to best make use of this reconnaissance mission, you'll need to know where's it going and what it hopes to achieve before you get there. That at least will give you some idea of what's possible to do on arrival instead of just asking every ex-slave you happen to find what they know about being traded.

Why can't I?

[ She tilts her head slightly to the side, considering him. Protectiveness of his crew, perhaps? It'd make sense. He's got a commitment to them, first and foremost. They elected him. They chose him. Of course he'd feel beholden to them and want to protect them. - Not that he's wrong, of course. Having a plan before she goes in is a good idea. But she's curious why he's pushing back there. ]

Ask for information? They haven't got anything to be ashamed of, after all. Nothing to hide.

[Nothing to hide is maybe an extreme view of the situation, though not in the way she means it. He sniffs and glances back out into the fog wall.]

You can do whatever you like. My point is only that if you ask someone and they know the roads in the Northeast and you instead end up cutting across South Tevinter, it won't do you much good. Every slave isn't going to be relevant to you at this stage.

[ Oh. Well - ]

Well - it's less that I want to ask for directions, or something like that. It's more that I want to understand...where they came from. What their lives were.

[ She puffs out a breath. ]

You can't even begin to fight for someone if you barely even understand what they need, after all. [ Not that that ever entirely stops her, but...It's a bad way to go about things. ]

But - yes. You're right. The point's well taken. If you were to do it, how would you? Go about it?

Edited 2018-10-08 23:37 (UTC)

[Hm. He clicks a ring absently against the belt knife, a small metallic tak, tak, tak in the wavering lamplight.]

I [funny, how he makes it sound like 'you should'] would start with the fact that if I want this thing to have meaning, anything I do will need to outlive me.

[There, at last, some tacit nod to the inherent danger in this. Flint looks to her, squinting as if studying Kitty against the glare of the sun.]

Which means my sympathies, however far they might extend, matter less than the question of weapons and support and resources, and that all of those are useless if the slaves don't have a voice near their front capable of pointing the rest in the right direction.

With that in mind, I'd figure out where I'm going. Barring that, I'd talk to merchants and traders who might be familiar with the North and the estates or mines most likely to provide me with the numbers I'd need and find some reason to divert the mission in that direction if not already headed there. Something nearest the Pillars or on the coast would be best.

Once there, my goal would be to make contact with whoever speaks for the slaves - they will have at least one leader - and see that they understand the offer's legitimacy. Which means I will need to have considered how they are to be armed and supplied, where they will need to go after, and what steps will be taken to see that they can. I only have to ensure that the means to improve their tomorrows can be reality. Let them figure out that it will be better if they do this today - that whatever the risk, lifetimes are worth trading a security measured in minutes.

['Tak' says the ring against the knife for the last time. He turns his hand and plucks the lantern from its hook.]

That's our boat.

[And indeed, a shape is spidering out from the dark - gliding almost soundlessly through the fog.]

[ She listens - and, for once, doesn't speak. Instead, she stays quiet, thinking that over - trying to commit it to memory - as the boat approaches. And as it draws near, the only thing she has to say is this: ]

Thank you for the help, Captain Flint.

[ It's funny, or perhaps a bit melancholy, to think back on Mr Pennyfeather. She's still sick with the memory of the Resistance and their failure to do anything for the people of London, the way they wasted their time chasing trinkets and stuffing their pockets. It hadn't started from a place of greed, though, for all that it had gone that way. It had taken years, and the whispering of Hopkins in Mr Pennyfeather's ear, to take them off-course.

Could Mr Pennyfeather ever have been someone like Flint? If he'd been born in different circumstances, if he'd been shaped by the right forces? It's hard to imagine it. The wheezing, hunchbacked, limping old man could hardly pose a stronger contrast to the barrel-chested, booming-voiced Flint. The squabbling disagreements of the Resistance seem altogether unlike the workmanlike competence of the pirates (even if, to her considerable pleasure, the pirates themselves had proven rather fractious and opinionated, as she'd discovered listening to them).

And if Mr Pennyfeather was no Flint, does that mean that they'll prevail here? Because they were never going to win under Mr Pennyfeather's guidance. They were doomed from the start. Are the people here different? Is she different? Or will she just fall into the same old cycles, listening to a man with ideas and confidence but who won't ever help her win?

What awful things to think, Kitty. You were the one who asked him for his help, weren't you? She shakes her head to rid herself of the cynicism, turns a smile on him. ]

You'll not stay out too late tonight, I hope. You look a touch tired.

[His attention tips to her then, parting briefly with the boat as one long lines of its oars lifts and folds in to the murmur of 'ship to port'. It's a moment's study and no more, something in the lines of his face going crooked with neither good temper or concern - a brief flicker of bewilderment, maybe; the disorientation of being reminded of the necessity of things like skin and bone and sleep. It's hard to say in the lamplight.

The boat comes up against the ferry slip with a muffled thump. Callous gnarled sailor's hands catch hold of dock cleats and piling there to hold it fast and Flint cocks his head in a leading gesture for Kitty to step down into the boat:]

Miss Jones.

[Once a place is found, Flint passes the lantern down and steps in after her.] Pull for the Gallows, Dooley. [This said to a man at the stern.

With a whistle, the boat shoves off. It goes as it's directed.]

[OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

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lord god this is some tldr

i was gonna just give you a short one in return but then i decided nah

911 I'd like to report a murder