( closed ) on the move collecting numbers

[indissection]

WHO: Sidony + Byerly
WHAT: Awful agreements being made
WHEN: The day of Byerly's news post
WHERE: A study off the main hall
NOTES: Terribly flirting. Byerly. Talk of dead bodies and so on.

The hardest part of the whole situation is making her handmaiden stay behind. It's not as if she minds, particularly, if the girl comes along - surely the woman has her best interests at heart - but the truth of the matter is that this agreement is something that must be made in private. Sidony is more than aware of how the Chantry views anyone with an inkling to dissect or inspect the dead too closely, and this sort of arrangement could get her in a handful of trouble with the religious folk. She's just arrived to the Inquisition - she wouldn't like to be sent to the prisons just yet.

Perhaps in a few years, when she has written a book on her discoveries. Perhaps then she will admit herself to the jailhouse for her 'crimes'.

It doesn't take her long to decide on a dress and a cloak to wear - it doesn't matter who she's seeing, she has to at least try and look her best, especially for a first acquaintance - and then she's slipping out of her room. She's not foolish enough to be ignorant of the danger she is putting herself in, wandering off to meet an unknown man in the middle of the night, but she has a small knife at her waist and more wits than most people might credit her for.

It takes very little time for her to make her way to the small room, parchment and quill in her arms. If she's to make an agreement with this man - who, judging by other reaction on the crystals, has something of a reputation - she will make sure she has it in writing. Signed. She will not allow herself to be made a fool of, no matter how eager she is to have access to the dead. The things she can learn - she knows it is a great risk, but to be able to do the things she has only ever read about...

Slipping into the room, shutting the door quietly behind her, Sidony begins to light a handful of candles, just enough that she can see to write. Not enough for a dim glow under the door, she hopes.

Comments

[bouchonne]

His lip turns up in a smile. He wonders where this will go. But, obediently, he closes his eyes - keeping them open just a faint, faint crack. He's not exactly about to close his eyes entirely around someone who is that enthusiastic about having corpses to cut up.

[indissection]

She’s no fool either, but she trusts the closing of his eyes. Her dagger is close, should she need it, but she thinks she will not be in any trouble here. Men often want one thing, and she is no use to him dead, not when keeping her alive has benefits for him. Leaning close, Sidony allows him to feel her face close to his before she takes his hand, with those fine fingers, and leaves a kiss on his knuckle.

[bouchonne]

He laughs at that - and it's a rare sound, because it's none of his normal chuckles through his teeth, none of his low snickers, but a real warm hearty laugh. His eyes come open, and the flirtatious posing is gone. Instead, he presses his kissed hand to his heart and flutters his eyelashes, doing a very decent imitation of a lady at a joust.

"Good knight," he says, "your chaste favor will give me strength to keep my own virtue through the coming days."

[indissection]

The laughter delights her and she feels warm from it, watching as it shapes his face. This is company that she thinks that she might be able to tolerate in the future - he is not intolerable. He’s charming and his laugh does not grate on her, does not make her want to tear her hair out. It’s a warm thing, her responding laugh, and she offers a low bow, eyes never leaving his face.

“Take care of it, dear one,” she says. “I would hate for you to give anything to someone unworthy.”

[bouchonne]

"I cannot think of anyone worthy," he replies. "Except for you, my lord. Everyone else pales in comparison to your manly firmness."

[indissection]

That has her laughing without shame, leaning back with a hand on her stomach as she tries to contain herself. It doesn’t work as well as she might’ve hoped, pressing her lips together to muffle it. “Anyone else would consider that to be an insult.”

[bouchonne]

He doesn't laugh quite so loud, but he does grin, unselfconscious and broad and actually rather sweet. "Ah, but that's my secret," he says. "I don't care about insulting people. But you've earned my respect, that you don't consider it to be."

[indissection]

"I am sure there are some women who might consider firmness an insult, but I am not most women." She moves, leaning against the table, looking down at him with a tilt of her head and a soft smile. "Should I be pleased that I am given such respect, Byerly?"

[bouchonne]

"Heavens, no," he responds. His own smile in return is crooked and wry. "The respect of a scoundrel? A respectable young lady like yourself should shudder to receive that dubious gift."

[indissection]

"I'm finding that the word of a scoundrel means far more to me than the word of someone respectable. I'd rather have your respect than theirs, for now." Sidony turns her hand, as if idly glancing at her fingernails, as if unconcerned. "They've never done much to earn my favour. You are quite beyond compare."

[bouchonne]

That, of course, is a statement that ought to earn a quip in return, a laugh and a flutter of his eyelashes. But something about it hits him just a little sideways, catching him unexpectedly like an arrow that just happens to sink into the joints between plate armor. There's no way that the archer had enough skill to aim at that little vulnerable spot - the injury was undoubtedly accidental - but there he is, suddenly bleeding. It's all a combination of a number of dreadful things: that she looks a little bit like his sister, that she has his sister's firmly practical manner, most of all that her words unknowingly echo things Nadine had said during the worst of times. But it catches him in the soft place between the pauldron and the breastplate. Poor Byerly. Poor slain Byerly.

"Ah," he says, abruptly without words, abruptly breathless. Practiced liar that he is, though, it only takes a moment for him to gather himself up again. And then he's smiling easily, even as pain plucks at the place where his heart is rumored to be. "I've always thought so, yes. It's so good to hear another finally acknowledge it. So the deal is made, and I am quite satisfied. I don't suppose I could watch one of your ghoulish endeavors?"

[indissection]

If she knew him a little better she might be able to catch on to the way that he changes, the strangeness of his reaction to what, in her mind, were very simple and meaningless words. They don't mean much and she said them more as a tease than anything real, anything serious, and had she known the impact... Well, she might have been a little more careful about the matter. As it stands, Sidony is thinking with her mind rather than her heart; a deal to get her what she wants, even if she has to tease and flirt a little to get it.

Frowning, her head tilts, a crease in her brow, but then all goes back to what it had been moments before.

"If you would like, but it is hardly ghoulish. Dissection is a science, a delicate one, made to discover more about the human body. How can a physician treat it if the body is a mystery to us?"

[bouchonne]

"Ah, but the human body is inherently horrendous," he counters. Not his strongest or cleverest line of joking, but - well, he's still off-kilter. Just a bit off-kilter. A smile, and an elegant lift of his shoulder - "Don't you think? All full of wretched smells and foul functions and fluids. The business of being a physician, I should think, is an utterly horrific one. Grotesque."

And then, for good measure, he flashes her a winning smile. "So I would very much like to watch. I love horrors."

[indissection]

"I think it's marvellous." Sidony turns her head away, a small smile curling on her lips. "Don't you think it is remarkable? All the different parts of ourselves somehow come together to function, to twist and shape and make sense. We have a heart and a mind that controls it, blood and veins, and all the organs that somehow work together to keep us alive. Have you ever seen a human heart, Byerly?"

Turning her head to look at him, her eyes soften, fond. This is clearly her passion, what she loves more than anything in the world, and she had been denied it for some time. It was not her place to be a physician, but she is one all the same.

"Remarkable things for being so small and so weak."

[bouchonne]

"Oh, certainly," he says agreeably. "I've been given many a heart in my day. And somehow, I always manage to break them. Small and weak indeed."

He smiles at her winningly, then sighs and kicks back in his chair. His next words are droll - his aim is not to make her fall silent, or make her ashamed, but simply to provoke. To test. To evaluate just how much trouble the dear girl might get herself into.

"One could protest, of course, that there's nothing remarkable about the systems the Maker fashioned. Of course it would be clever and perfect - it comes from His hand."

[indissection]

"Small and weak, but strong, too. Hearts can be broken, but they can be mended just as easily." If they want to be mended, of course. Her heart had been broken when her brother had stolen her throne, but... She refused to consider that repair. She didn't want to think about it for even a moment.

Her eyes follow him as he moves, drinking him in, sharp and sure. He's very different from most of the men she had met before, but she imagines that most noblemen do not act like a man of the Inquisition might, especially since most were quite a few years her senior. She likes Byerly all the more for, that he is not afraid to quip and speak to her plainly.

"It's hardly perfect," she shakes her head. "The body is a mess of a thousand different problems and mistakes. The Maker would have us learn more about them - I doubt it's his will that stops physicians learning more about those ills."

[bouchonne]

"Hah," he says, touching his lips. Then he lowers his head in a half-bow - "Well spoken." An able retort against possible accusations of heresy.

He meets her eyes directly, then, his mouth curling in a smile. With an arch of his eyebrows, he asks her, "So how would you go about mending a heart?"

[indissection]

"I've had much time to consider my answers, Byerly, and many years of teaching to show me how best to speak." She had learned that from her mother, alongside her fashion sense and her determination.

Her own smile is soft, careful, her own brows raising in a mirror, watching him.

"That depends on the circumstances. Tell me a story, Byerly."

[bouchonne]

That earns a lift of his eyebrows. He'd expected her to charge forward with veins-this-and-surgery-that - certainly not that question.

"With pleasure," he responds. "A story on what theme? Broken hearts?"

[indissection]

The urge to fall into science is before her, of course, but it seems a touch foolish, especially when he looks at her like that, as if curious and judging all at once.

"Why is the heart broken? That theme. Then I shall tell you what can be done."

[bouchonne]

"Let us say, hypothetically..." He touches his cheek, and turns his head towards the ceiling, as if deep in thought. A long breath out through his nose. And then he resumes -

"Let us say, hypothetically, a lovely noblewoman fell for a rake with fine fashion sense and a virtuoso skill on the violin. Let us say that she invited him into her bed - and then awoke the next morning to find the cad gone and gold missing from her room. How would that be repaired?"

A true story, or nearly-true. It wasn't gold that ended up missing, but sensitive documents - documents needed for the good of Ferelden. The patriotic motivations, however, certainly didn't reduce the cruelty of the act.

[indissection]

"Ah, hypothetically." Sidony watches him, her eyes drinking in the movements of his face, the shape it makes as he ponders, her own settling into something thoughtful and curious.

"That depends entirely on the noblewoman, I think." She pauses, considering lifting herself up so she's sitting on the table, her legs swinging just a little bit.

"If she is the kind of noblewoman who is used to spending a single night with a rakish man then I doubt her heart will need much more than an evening of wine mourning the loss of her gold. If it is her first time and she thought herself in love... It would take a little more time." She smiles softly. "A woman who thinks herself in love is devoted indeed. It will take time, a few tears and likely some rather unkind words spoken about the man for her to heal."

[bouchonne]

He nods, mock-thoughtfully. "I see. So that would be your surgical technique? Go in and apply a tincture of men are the scourge of all Thedas?"

[indissection]

"Oh, no. Something a touch stronger than a tincture, surely, and it cannot be said that all men are to blame. I'm certain that there is some charming young gentleman just waiting to sweep the broken pieces of her heart back together." Her nose wrinkles; such a childish, idealistic thing. "One rake does not all men represent, just as one noblewoman does not all women show."

[bouchonne]

He catches that, and lifts an eyebrow inquisitively. "You disapprove of charming young gentlemen?"