(closed) heist hula

[exequy]

WHO: Freddie, Nikos, Kostos
WHAT: Burglary!!
WHEN: Early-mid Harvestmere
WHERE: Ferelden
NOTES: The title is Mica’s fault.

Lord Maeslin’s personal chambers smell like wet dog and boiled carrots. The wet dog part is easily explained: there’s a spot of discoloration at the foot of his bed, like something gray once stained the blanket, that on closer inspection is in fact a week’s worth of short dog fur built up in a favorite position for naps. The direct cause of the boiled carrots remains a mystery, but the indirect cause is probably that Fereldans are afraid of strong flavor and generally disgusting, and that has embedded itself permanently in the heavy tapestries and barely-varnished wood they pass off as distinguished decor.

Kostos was not so judgmental when they first walked in, but it’s been an hour. An hour passed with his brother, the Orlesian who was for some reason put out that he wouldn’t electrocute her (or whatever) for pleasure, and that carrot smell. Now he’s made a list. He hasn’t shared that list with anyone but the wisp hovering around him, who does not fully understand it but is delighted at the attention anyway.

The mirror is the only thing in the room that isn’t awful. It’s sort of beautiful. Ancient and magic-imbued enough that the air around it feels different and smells like nothing except cold, like the first blast of air upon opening the door on the first real morning of winter. But because it’s the reason they’re here, the reason they’ve been hiding in this room waiting for the sun to sink lower and bells to signal rotations and opportunity, it’s also made the list. Who decided it needed to be so large? Elves are usually short, and skinny besides. If it were half as tall as it is, it would be easier to disguise, and they could just crawl through.

“I’m going to find whatever Tevinter bastard is shrinking animals,” he says, from his end of the mirror, which has been covered and is being held upright to make it easier to quickly turn corners or press into small spaces with it on the way out, down the stairs and through the servant’s quarters that they can all only hope will be empty—“and have someone put him on the rack until he explains how to shrink these fucking—”

Never mind that they will probably never be in this position again. The bell is sounding now—one, two, three, slow and spaced out—and on ten, plus a silent count of ten more, they will have to go.

Comments

[exsecutus]

"If we break it in half, to make it manageable. The Inquisition will then have two."

Nikos has always gotten on with his brother best when united by hatred or dislike. A common enemy, someone to close ranks against.

Nikos does not like Orlesians. He would burn down a mansion by hand if it caused suffering for a member of Orlesian nobility. He is, unfortunately, a little charmed by this one that he has been forced to spend an hour with. Glittering, self-possessed, witty. Things he likes, which is a thing that he hates about himself.

So he has steadily ignored the fucking baroness, but now they are, the three of them, on their way to carry a massive and magical mirror down a narrow servant's stairway, down to a narrow servant's door with a tricky fucking lock, which Nikos had worked to pick open while the fucking baroness stood behind him, watching--and just when he'd removed his hand from the lock-pick to stretch his fingers, she'd leaned down to say, just there, and reached over his shoulder to twist the lock-pick, and the lock had clicked, and the door had drifted open.

Her perfume had come across, subtle, in that gesture. Cut irises and a streak of something smokier. So, fuck her.

The bell continues. Six, seven, eight, each toll throbbing in the air. Nikos grits his teeth. To the baroness:

"Check the stairs. Quietly."

Can Orlesians do anything quietly? Not the ones employed by the Inquisition, it seems.