Nothing Qunpares 2 U

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura, John Silver
WHAT: Favours for the Qunari, dinner with the de Talaveras, prisoner release: a quiet night in Treviso
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Antiva
NOTES: HERE is the assignment, will edit for any potential warnings

Wealth, fortune, friendship are what the bouquet indicated to a student of these things (as bards end up being) but there's little enough time to enjoy Antiva for all that it's been months since she last had the pleasure. A favour for the Qunari. A complicated favour.

It doesn't do much to improve a mood since the last orders from Skyhold came as she pours a drink for herself and for Silver (these things go better eased with a little brandy, or it makes it somewhat more palatable) with the options to be considered.

"Pleasing the Qunari because we're in such desperate need of friendship that they look like our best option. And everyone wants something because of course they do: Gennaro wants weapons and information, Armat wants his freedom, Nereza wants Armat locked up forever," she takes a drink, taps her fingers against the glass. "So it's which one we're not going to have blow up in our faces while we get the best out of this situation."

Comments

[hornswoggle]

This mission would have been a tricky situation for him even without his own entanglements with the Qunari hanging over his head. He can at least appreciate the irony: him, here working to broker a closer relationship with the Qunari for the Inquisition when they'd likely be very happy to see him dead.

Which was all the more reason to keep his own enjoyment to himself. There's a limit to the trust he can place in Araceli. He's aware of the many factions weighing on her. As much as she might enjoy Vane's company and as well as John gets on with her, he can't assume she'd chose their interests over her own.

And it makes everything simpler. Considering the problem at hand, it's actually a relief to consider a tangle of problems removed from the pressure of Nascere's affairs.

"I'm not certain we can't manage to keep everyone happy."

Or relatively happy. John tips the cup, watching the liquid slosh before he takes a sip and continues.

"Suppose we could convince Nereza to let Armat serve the rest of his sentence out at Kirkwall. As long as Armat is confined to the city, she doesn't need to know one way or another how he's spending his time."

Or if he's kept in the city at all. John isn't above an outright lie, so long as Armat is smart enough to carry it off.

[foxsays]

If Flint hasn't already told him Araceli's going to have to: there's a dreadnought to go collect that's been left abandoned, orders out of Skyhold that no one is going to be happy about. Because it's going to have to sit in their harbour as if nothing's amiss.

How to make friends and lose them in an instant. (How to find out how many Qunari spies you might have lurking about in the city. Or people just as willing to sell you out to them, not that Araceli's paranoid.)

"Do you imagine Armat would be able to keep his mouth shut? It's a neat solution - if we can convince an Antivan matriarch - though it could come with a list of terms and conditions longer than you or I. Gennaro took long enough to persuade in the first place." This is part of the problem with families in and over and on top of each other; they get in the way but you still have to go about appeasing them on pain of then offending someone else who might still be upset by going about it.

To think that hanging out with the Chantry had been a more relaxing experience.

[hornswoggle]

Y i k e s.

But that's a tomorrow problem. A today problem is finding a way to navigate this without alienating someone. John's current investment is still far enough removed that he can consider it like a fairly interesting puzzle: how does one lie their way to the best outcome?

"If he doesn't have the good sense to keep his mouth shut, then I'm not sure he's worth the effort we're undertaking to retrieve him," John remarks, leaning back slightly in his chair. He presses his thumb against a dent in the cup until his fingertip goes white.

"We should at least propose it, and hear her conditions. They might not be as reasonable as you think, especially if we promise he'll be miserable." Which Armat likely would be; who wants to be stuck under house arrest? "Armat might not be pleased, but it has to be preferable to rotting here. And I'd be happier to leave with Gennaro's friendship. He strikes me as less fickle in his friendship than the Qunari."

Or more specifically: a more promising foothold in Antiva. John sees more long term benefit there than he does with the Qunari. The Qun tends to curtail negotiations, in John's limited experience. Not that he'd ever made any attempt to get more familiar than he had to. John had enough sense to know that for someone hiding his own magical ability, turning to the Qunari would be flinging himself into an open blaze.

[foxsays]

"If anyone could demand politely and make sure it was never a demand in the first place, it'd be the Qunari. After Herian and Coupe went off with a group to go dragon-slaying before them this shouldn't be so daunting but if you get freedom and drink into someone then some things run roughshod over common sense." She clicks her tongue--

She isn't going to think about a Tal-Vashoth boy who was Qunari with another namAge lurking beneath, disappeared off but somewhere. Somewhere in the world. Araceli doesn't enjoy not being able to clearly see all the exits when someone could be waiting to shoot her in the back of the leg then stroll after her while she's trying to limp off.

"I agree though that it can't hurt; if she's the sort of old woman who'd see someone locked away, she'd certainly not see him happy and we can easily promise him misery in spades. Someone to practice the lute outside his door at unsociable hours." Easily arranged by a bard who does indeed do that and keeps odd hours as is or a fox to caterwaul, spice it up. "Deny him his wine, whatever rations the mages got on strike. Gennaro wants our friendship. Weapons and information both ways make him an easy man to please, if we can get out of this without upsetting him I'd do it. We don't have allies here to speak of."

Not outside immediate members of the Inquisition which makes it somewhat less reliable in her opinion. Better to have people here. People who can tell them what's going on between the Merchant Princes and the King whenever that finally decides to come to a head.

[hornswoggle]

"It's too bad it seems as if the best way to please him is to please Nereza."

Though that's what comes of dealing with families like these, John supposes. Familial ties are a near-curiosity to him. His observations of Madi and her mother were the most illuminating illustration he'd had, and stood in stark contrast to what he'd experienced before. Gennaro and Nereza are a few shades removed from that dynamic; John is fairly certain of where the power lies in this arrangement, and it seems Gennaro had less autonomy than Madi. John isn't confident that Gennaro could appeal to Nereza's softer sensibilities.

"Which would you pick, if we can only take one? Antiva or the Qunari?"

John fully intends to come away with both, but he's interested. Araceli's opinions interest him. He sits up slightly, leaning an elbow on the table. John thinks it won't matter overmuch if Armat is happy in Kirkwall. That's a detail to work out later on, once they've extracted him and made a friend of Gennaro. Nereza won't live forever. The question of just how much freedom is allotted the dwarf can be worked out once they've given Gennaro a taste of what Inquisition friendship could offer.

But still. If there could only be one or the other, what would Araceli want to bring back with her?

[foxsays]

"I went to parties with the children and grandchildren of Nereza," John will take her meaning to be at home, three years and more with a strained fondness more for the circumstance. "They spent less of their time enjoying their night and more of it apologising to someone else where discretion allowed for whatever thing the relative said to offend and running around trying to keep them sweet enough that they wouldn't be forced to entertain themselves stirring the pot or trying to have someone cry or offend them enough to force a duel."

Simpler times and again that somehow a rift might open to messily spill out the queensguard who know her, who understand the way all this plays with these families when it goes as easy as breathing around one another. But three years is three years: no one is coming, Araceli has fashioned another family. Still merchants and rich men are familiar in a comforting way where only the fashions and particulars of their politics have changed, little else.

"Antiva," in the space between heartbeats that still allows enough time to sting as a tiny betrayal. This demands a certain honesty and if they're all weighed in scales by the Qunari, Araceli thinks a rifter would be found more wanting than a mage. "Antiva is a better known quantity than the Qunari and they don't have designs on the whole of Thedas that place many of the Inquisition and more in danger after. Qunari agents can move more carefully, I understand, than most others and with the information we have and gather, the idea of them having access to it isn't one that allows me to sleep easily. We could use Antivan allies for more trade than we're likely to see from the Qun with fewer strings attached."