( 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]

"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?"

[indissection]

"I don't necessarily disapprove of them," she hums. "I just think the idea of such a winsome match is somewhat like a fairytale."

[bouchonne]

"What a cynic you are," he says with more than a hint of approval. "So am I to believe, then, that you've never had a handsome young man quicken your fragile, intricate heart? You've never had a spirit of love come and whisper in your ear, this one, waste your time and your youth on this one?"

[indissection]

"A cynic? Hardly. I think myself realistic." Her smile grows, something pleased. "There are not as many handsome young men in Nevarra as you might think, and I was not inclined to encourage them. My future was not in the hands of some youthful vagrant." It was in the hands of her mother, which was only part of the reason she had left.

[bouchonne]

"No? The representatives here are fine enough." That's said just a little more lasciviously than is perhaps proper - not that, given their conversation to date, he suspects she's going to go out and get him in trouble for lusting after the less-than-fair sex. He's learned rather more scandalous things about her than she's learned of him.

"But - so it goes, I suppose. Will you be pursuing any fine specimens here in Kirkwall? Now that your future is in your own hands?"

[indissection]

"Are they? I've not had much of a chance to meet too many of them." Slowly, her eyes flick over his features, as if judging his worth, as if she cares for what he might be to her, what his features might tell her. Her eyes drink him in, assessing, before she hums. It's not as if she minds, and her own thoughts are twirling around one another - if he lusts for - well.

It doesn't matter, her fingers flexing.

"It's not something I've considered." Said absently, airily. "I've never... Thought about the pursuit."

[bouchonne]

And he smiles, pleasant - and then, without warning, pulls an utterly hideous face at her as she studies him. Something to utterly disgust her, with any luck.

Then his expression returns to normal, and he returns, pleasantly - "Too in love with the literal heart to think about the metaphorical one? Worse reasons to become distracted, I think."

[indissection]

For a moment Sidony seems to do no more than stare at him, but then her nose wrinkles as she bursts into a laugh, lifting a hand in a practiced move to cover her mouth and her amusement, tucking it away.

"Oh, something like that." She peers out from behind her hand. "That or I have never found anyone captivating enough to draw me away from my work."

[bouchonne]

He grins at her, and winks, pleased by her laughter. Then, rather than picking up the rather obvious threat of flirtation, he offers her a cheerful shrug. "Well," he says, "if you never do, then at least you have found happiness and purpose. That's more than most people do."

[indissection]

"Purpose is enough for now. That makes me happy." It's fun, she thinks, to play this game, to dance around it and not be too fearful of what might happen. It had been far more dangerous in Nevarra, where the promise of more had hung on the lips of every man she had met. "And you have aided in that."

[bouchonne]

"To serve you brings me the greatest of pleasure." From where he sits, sprawled, he manages a bow that somehow manages to look reasonably elegant and fluid. "Therein lies my happiness. So I thank you, desperately, for giving me the opportunity."

[indissection]

"If only more people were like you." Her body tilts towards him, legs still swinging a little gently. "I would do the same again, to bring you that happiness and that pleasure."