[OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Marcoulf, Flint and OPEN
WHAT: Open post/catch-all/buries myself in top levels
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Kirkwall and misc
NOTES: Prose or brackets are a-okay. Feel free to hit me up on DM or discord if you want something specific that isn't here. Just posting a wildcard and winging it is awesome too.

Comments

[katabasis]

There can be no giving up, are the words he doesn't say though they are as true now as they were months prior in the North. The Inquisition, for all its failings, remains their best hope for an ally in this fight. Maybe there had been a case to be made for the Amaranthine Fleet before, but now? With Llomerryn's current affairs? Anywhere but Kirkwall would require establishment and time they do not have the luxury of.

--though there is no shaking that his thoughts have been turning East for some time now. Moreso now, in these recent days as the Inquisition's eye has turned toward Orlais. Best to act with the right hand while the left is distracted.

"I'm of a similar mind," he says, settling there with his hand idle on the tiller as the boat is rocked by the sea. "There's no telling what decisions the Magisterium will make over the events in Minrathous. The men won't stand the wait and I wouldn't either."

Isn't planning to, clearly. Otherwise they wouldn't be out here at this hour.

But first, Flint looks to Silver, head cocked faintly. He thinks, You look comfortable there, despite the weather, despite the damp and the cold, despite a jangling restless he recognizes for its familiarity. But that's obvious too, isn't it? Not worth saying either. Instead:

"What are you thinking?"

[hornswoggle]

The sentiment doesn't need to be said. John can sense it, read it on Flint's face even as he speaks the possibility into the air. It's expected. John knows even now that the idea of leaving the Inquisition would never be acceptable unless John could think of something better to return to Nascere with, and there is currently nothing better to offer.

So they will make this work. John must make this work, as he's recognized the hurdle they are going to continually butt up against: their usefulness here alone will not get them what they need. What they'll need is a moment where the Inquisition can do nothing but to act.

"So long as there is a path for the Inquisition to avoid moving against Tevinter, there will be a chance they'll opt for it. They're worried about perception, and I don't blame them."

Because John is always very aware of the way people react to the way they perceive things. It governs their time here. Of course the movements of this massive entity is subject to it. John folds his cold hands in his lap, leaning forward, closing the space between them though there's no need to keep their voices low, no one to overhear.

"I think we need to find a way to force their hand. Everyone's hand, really," John says, as if it isn't ambitious to talk of manipulating the entirety of Thedas to their own purposes. "But the Inquisition's first and foremost. If we can find a way to give them not only an excuse, but open provocation....well."

The silence stretches, fills with implication. Well, they get what they need. Well, the necessity of debate and doubt, even with the objections of the most outspoken Tevinter members of the Inquisition, are removed. Well, they are given an opening and that's all that's necessary. All anyone ever needed was a plausible reason to do what they wanted. With he and Flint offering convincing and heart-wrenching accounts of the suffering inflicted by Tevinter upon their subjects, it would be like spark to kindling.

There was the matter of how. But John feels how reality bends between them, growing mutable with possibility. On this miserable, cold little boat, they can think of a way, and return to shore with a course of action. John knows this beyond doubt.

[katabasis]

Well, the world ends in indecision unless good men see that uncertainty made into an fiction so unbelievable that no one might see its use.

"It may be possible," he says, selective and slow despite their isolation. "To find some use for Rogers' papers despite their current state." No need to let them sit idly until they their code can be cracked open; Who's to say where you got those papers?, Gwenaëlle had said. Which isn't useful because the answer that had first occurred to him is unchanged: Lots of people. A better question is: "Who's to say what other papers might be written in the same cipher, in a similar hand, and where they might be found? Should we find ourselves on some Tevene ship, it wouldn't be beyond belief to recover documents like it from some drawer or logbook."

Which reserves the question of how they might come by such an opportunity with enough honesty to not cast the papers into immediate suspicion, but--

Breathing in through his nose, cold air knife sharp, Flint straightens and casts his attention off the skiff's bow. His hand there at the tiller is quiet still, but the one laid across his knee nearest John picking contemplatively at some seam while he studies the sea. The wind is shifting out there, the tell tale sign of rippling water running cross wise to the pull of the tide. Eventually, he knows like instinct, that gust will find them here too. If he looked long enough, he might track its path all the way to the point it catches this small boat then blows past them to the coast. If he cared to, he could raise the sail in this lull and be ready when it found them.

"There are hungry crews in Llomerryn." Said abruptly, as if it naturally bears some relevance. "There might be some open to direction."

[hornswoggle]

It has taken some time to arrive here, at this moment, where the unspooling of Flint's thoughts end in the connection between the two of them snaps taut. John unfurls slightly, expression sharpening, eyes lit at the contemplation of the prospect as it sparks in the cold air. They have learned the rhythm of each other's thoughts. John no longer misses the beat of Flint's speculation.

There is a missing link. The restless motion of Flint's hand illustrates that for John, whose hands are still, folded together. They come alive know as John leans an elbow on his good knee. His hand doesn't grasp the tiller, but the edge of the boat alongside Flint. What gets them aboard a Tevinter ship? What use can they make of water-logged papers?

"Correct me if I'm wrong," though John doesn't think he is. "But you're suggesting that we take it upon ourselves to give them something to hunt?"

But not only that. John feels a spike of adrenaline. There is always a moment of exhilaration when the fringes of a wild and improbable plan comes together beneath his fingertips. His grip tightens on the side of the skiff.

"Outfitted, of course, in way that benefits our case."

And in the meantime, they work to become trusted. That is certainly nothing new for John, who has made it his business to become essential. He can be essential here.

[katabasis]

An hour ago, minutes even, some restless itch had lived under his skin - a loose rope flogging after some unclear end. Something needed doing; they couldn't survive untethered like this. But somewhere in the angle of John Silver's arm and the sound of his own thoughts being spoken back to him more complete than when he'd first thought them, that cable draws tight and is tensioned in some telling direction. The itch comes a hum.

(That wind does find the skiff - a cutting edge which first slices about them then hacks inland.)

"If there's to be a fight with Tevinter, they must first be seen as the undeniable aggressor." Flint's looking at him directly now, his shifting hand having stilled. "If Tevene ships were found making raids on certain coastal towns and interrupting wealthy trade while the Magisterium stalls with debate over the new Archon's legitimacy, no one would have reason to doubt the obvious."

[hornswoggle]

John's knuckles go white against the wood as wind catches the sail. Possibility is unfurling as Flint speaks. John thinks, this will work.

"So we make Tevinter the aggressor. And I'm sure in time, they'll oblige us by doing it themselves."

By that time, it wouldn't matter. The wheels would already be in motion. John smiles, shark-sharp. There are logistics to consider. They'll need to find these crews. They'll need to outfit them properly. And they'll need to point them in the right direction. But the outcome—

"You know, if we find the right men, we won't even need to pay them."

It's the kind of joke born out of the giddiness of realizing they've struck upon a perfect course of action. It will take time, surely, but once it began gathering momentum, it would demand a reaction. By that time, the pair of them would be trusted. Reliable in some way. John knows he'll have to carry that weight more than Flint. But it can be done.

[katabasis]

It's a joke, but it isn't. Throw a stone in Llomerryn as it currently stands, and he bets you'll hit five crews hungry for the kind of rich prizes that might fall out of the Inquisition's spy network if shaken in the right direction. Something is happening there that demands sharp steel and deep pockets and anyone clever or desperate enough will know the opportunity when presented with it from the correct angle..

"We find the right men," Flint is saying to him, certain as daylight. Here, as always, in this drawn thin space, they are knife to whetstone. They sharpen each other. "And they'll recognize the opportunity to be had from the kind of intelligence we might provide."

He could be talking about Llomerryn pirates, or a half dozen lords or bannons or merchant kings who might invest in the promise of Minrathous cracked open as an egg. He could be talking about the Inquisition itself. But first and most foremost--

"It would be faster to make your way to Llomerryn overland. Arriving by a gate rather than the sea could obscure your connection to the account long enough to secure reliable connections with two or three likely crews."

i'm so mad

[hornswoggle]

The crews will need to be dealt with eventually. They will need to be converted or disposed of. They will need to love John the way Billy has taught the whole of Nascere to love him, or they will have to be removed before they can endanger this venture once their work is done. That thought passes through John's mind as Flint speaks, an unspoken weight to temper the inevitable selection of who best to bear out this mission.

There is no stutter in the beat of conversation. There are moments when John is taken aback by how well he has come to know Flint's mind. It is strange to him to realize that he understands his place as an extension of Flint; no objection rises in the wake of the realization that he is the one who will go to handpick these crews. Flint's hand is as steady on the rudder as his tone is as he speaks this plan into existence, setting John's path the same way he has done as he directed the skiff to carry them here.

"I know how to stay unnoticed."

It was not so long ago that John was anonymously making his way from land to ship to land again. It might not be so easy considering his leg, his crutch, but John thinks he can manage it.

"I'll find us two, to start. We'll see how that goes. If we need a third, we'll have a better idea of who to use by then."

John does not reach for the rudder. He clasps his hands in front of him, body still bowed towards Flint. What does it mean, that this measure of trust, this shared duty, no longer weighs heavily upon his shoulders? When did he grow accustomed to it? Of all the things that have become a responsibility and worry, this partnership is not one of them.

:'^)

[katabasis]

I know how to stay unnoticed, he says, and at once it's both truth and fiction. You know how to stay, Flint thinks. How to act in whatever capacity that requires. It's why John Silver is suitable to this.

(Going to Llomerryn. Being the Walrus' quartermaster. Playing the grim spectre in Billy's fictions. Sitting a handspan apart in a small boat being battered by the wind and cold, discussing what's required to bend the world to meet them.)

"We'll want crews not yet entrenched in whatever affair Llomerryn is presently engaged in. Fresh faces, or ones that haven't seen the kind of success we could offer them who are now looking for some scrap of legitimacy to float their name up the list while the rest are killing each other." But-- "I trust your judgement.

[hornswoggle]

Trust.

The profession of it, spoken aloud, burns like an ember. John feels it as if Flint has set a hot coal on his chest and let it burn it's way through John's ribs. Flint's trust is a peculiar thing. John finds value in it. He finds he would rather not part with it. He holds Flint's gaze for a long moment, letting the searing heat of that word subside before he replies.

"We're going to need a taste of something to give them right at the start."

John is skirting around the idea of asking Max. He will ask her eventually. But it's better to get this venture started without her. It's better for her not to be their sole source of information. Her assistance came with strings, and John isn't secure enough here to be able to navigate that in a way that ends in mutual benefit.

[katabasis]

"Kirkwall is one of the biggest trade ports in the South; I don't doubt we can send you off with something of value to barter with." Whether it comes from the Inquisition's own books or otherwise. There will be rumors enough to be found on the docks to keep any Amaranthine pirate worth much of anything in stock and trade for months. He'd done some fishing himself when they'd first made landfall - a small list of ships, their home ports and destinations, what they had carried in their holds.

"The trick," Flint says, and none of his heat has subsided. He is intent, leaned forward across his knee. Compass needle twisted away from North and toward a magnet. "Will eventually be to supply them with intelligence their own spies would have no possibility of feeding them. But that's something we can make inroads toward."

Better, he thinks, to start with what they're able. To not let this opportunity as the world is waiting with baited breath for Tevinter to make decisions about its path forward slip through their fingers.

[hornswoggle]

Flint's words are hot coals. This moment is electric. John feels the way he does before he picks a pocket, before he tells a lie, before he snatches at something beautiful that was never meant for him. Flint leans closer and John is aware of all the places where they are just nearly touching, leant together as they murmur, and he has the same sense he'd had in the dark across the fire: if he and Flint were to meet in the middle, it would be like open flame touching dry kindling.

There is great destructive power in these words. It is slow-going; it will be like the kinds of spells John had once painstakingly taught himself, the kind that were wrought of layer upon layer of murmured incantation. But the end result—

The end result will be bloody. But John couldn't flinch from that now. He watches Flint's expression and he nods, finding no flaw in his reasoning. John's fingers lace together as he draws a breath, mind ticking over possibilities.

"And I'm well-placed for that. When we get back to shore, I'll see about tallying which of our contacts could be promising in a few months time and after a little work."

Diplomats hear plenty of things. John will simply have to take on some work. And there is always Max, who hears all things, but who he knows Flint will be reluctant to utilize.

"This will work."

John says it with quiet marvel, pleasure with what they have wrought outweighing the faint trepidation over the end result. He raises his eyebrows at Flint, trying to find some echo of that surprise without any expectation that he'll see it echoed back to him. Flint's moments of doubt are few and far between; John doesn't imagine he'll be privy to all of them.

[katabasis]

There's no semblance of it to be found in him. Not today. If he'd been in possession of any trace of doubt, it had been as the Walrus had first passed into the unfamiliar waters of the Waking Sea, guided by outdated charts through its dreadful irregular channels, and it had felt something like sailing down the throat of a world built on making it infinitely clear that it had no interest making a place for them; weeks ago, as the Inquisition's forces had made their way to Minrathous; or early yesterday in Kirkwall before he'd resolved on this conference between them. Today, he had risen certain. Give the two of them a few moments in conversation with a fixed point on the horizon and agreement between them and they would find a path forward. He has committed himself to that.

This will work.

He doesn't grin at Silver, but the sensation of it flashes in his face. That belief turns him bright and sharp, all adamant momentum and wildly unsatisfied. Thrilled by it. For a moment, it's as if he's running toward two inexplicably equal things - undecided which he means to chase, but certain of his speed and footing. And-- Then Flint straightens from this, and it isn't a disappointment to do it (two inexplicably equal things). The conspiracy curve of his shoulders shakes free as his hand returns to tiller and sheet. The cleat is undone. The sail is trimmed in consideration for wind and direction.

In the cutting cold, the skiff heads up into the weather.