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]

"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."