faderift | open.

Entry tags:

open.

WHO: The ex-bard currently known as Édouard & you
WHAT: Moving in, making friends
WHEN: Mid-Haring
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: :V

I. CENTRAL TOWER

Another casualty for the Inquisition's records: a type case belonging to Édouard Almary, which, after scandalously bumpy journey from Val Royeaux that wore without mercy on its rickety old joints, expired in the corridor of the Gallows' central tower in an overdramatic explosion of rune-stamped tiles, mere feet from its final destination, leaving its owner holding only two narrow pieces of its frame.

Très tragique.

He is sure that the various pieces of the type case are now pieces small enough he can carry them himself, however, and the printing press is already where it's meant to be. So he drops the two sticks in his hands onto the wreckage, flips the dockhand who'd been waylaid to assist him him a silver for his service, and sends him on his way.

The he stands there for a short while, frowning at the riot of sorts and splintered wood. One of the long, shallow drawers has skidded several yards back toward the stairs, like it was making a break for it. Is this a bad omen? Does he believe in omens? No, he doesn't. Yet—possibly.

But there isn't anything to do about it now. He's here. He isn't carrying the damned press back down the stairs. So after that short while of frowning he begins picking up the pieces, beginning by pushing the drawer that made a break for it along the floor toward the rest of the mess with one foot, sweeping tiles along with it, and humming "Girl in Red Crossing" to accompany the sound of skittering metal bits on stone.

II. DINING HALL

"Were you there, in Ghislain?"

The question is Orlesian-accented and aimed at whoever is closest: someone he sat down next to for lack of empty seating elsewhere, someone he sat nearby because they looked like they could use the company, someone who is left in his vague proximity after the other people around them have finished their meals and left. When he asks it, he glances up, long enough for a flicker of a friendly but appropriately muted smile for the subject matter.

Many deaths, as he's heard it, and a disheartening degree of chaos. Asking about it is possibly not the best way to go about making friends. But on the other hand, they are soldiers and spies; it might be the only way.

III. TRAINING GROUNDS

It is not so cold here, in his opinion, especially in the fortress, where the walls break the wind. On one of the brighter days during his first week he spends midday outside, watching those who don't have the luxury of letting their training lapse for the winter practice swinging swords or loosing arrows while he reads through a short stack of documents.

He's a safe distance away, but not so distant he can't make a single pitying tsk when one of the cloth and straw training dummies is thoroughly obliterated.

"Brutal," he says. "Did it have a name?"

IV. WILDCARD

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Byerly had come in mid-crash. A decent fellow would have probably rushed to help, gathering up the stray pieces or sweeping up the splinters so some unfortunate wouldn't step on them. Byerly, of course, simply watches, arms crossed - not merely unhelpful, but having actually paused in his journey specifically to spectate.

"I hope it wasn't expensive," Byerly offers. "Or if it was expensive, that someone else will buy you a new one."

Bastien finishes humming out the verse, waiting by the chantry to marry me, because his very rude spectator isn't worth leaving it unfinished, but also sweeps the tiles the last few feet into the pile with added flourish bordering on dance steps, because his very rude spectator is still a spectator.

That done, he says, "The sorts are where the money is," stepping on the edge of one of the larger tiles to stand it on end and put it on illustrative display. That's when he properly looks up, too, to see who exactly is being a useless bastard—looks up, and swiftly tucks any recognition and surprise into a ten-degree tilt of his head before it can bleed onto his face. "The rest is a funny-shaped chest of drawers. But if you are volunteering—?"

Ah - Byerly's eyes narrow just a moment, flicking over the man's face. The voice is familiar, certainly, but at times it's hard to tell Orlesian voices apart; the thick vowels make them all sound roughly the same. And the moustache (new, isn't it?) changes the contours of his face. So he might be excused for not recognizing him immediately. But it is him; that little tilt of the head is so familiar that Byerly might as well have seen it yesterday.

"To replace it? No," Byerly responds cheerily. "But I believe I may know of a man who has something rather like this and who isn't using it. We could pay him a visit."

Bastien tilts his head further, this time intentionally, narrowing his eyes and smiling at once in cheerful warning. Visiting people who aren't using all of their possessions is a young man's game, and Byerly, however many years younger he is, (two, it's two,) is welcome to it, but Bastien—

"If the seneschal will part with any coins, perhaps," he says, and crouches to begin tossing sorts into one of the less-destroyed drawers lying in the wreckage. He'll have to arrange them later, "but I would hate to become an unforeseen expense an hour after arriving. I read in Judicael Martin's latest that six hours is the absolute minimum, in polite society."

He offers one hand up to shake, from where he's crouched, while the other continues shoveling metal tiles.

"Édouard Almary."

"Is that so," Byerly murmurs, eyebrow ticking upwards. To an outside observer, a comment about Martin; to Byerly, and to Bastien, a comment about Edouard Almary. But Bastien's games have always been a pleasure; By is loath to kill this one, particularly when it is so fresh and new.

So: he takes Bastien's hand, and bows over it, and presses his lips most impudently against the man's wrist. Then he lifts his eyes and privileges the fellow with his best smoulder.

"Byerly Rutyer. What a pleasure it shall be to have such an honest man in the Inquisition."

Because Bastien knows something about these tricks, regardless of who's playing them, and what he knows about Byerly from their misspent youths doesn't lend it any additional credibility, he raises his eyebrows and arranges his mouth into something unimpressed.

But because he has a pulse, and because Byerly's face is, you know, the face that it is, he also blushes.

It's very faint, but nonetheless: bastard. Bastien takes his hand back at a good clip without quite stooping to snatching it back, and says, "Has it been lacking?"

There are days when Byerly reflects on his advancing age with a bit of worry. Am I losing my touch? he thinks. What will happen once my looks fade? Do I still have it?

Every once in a while, it gives him great succor to remember that: yes. He still has it.

"Desperately," By says, his grin openly mocking and blatantly pleased. "Oh, there are people telling little truths, here and there - petty, inconsequential truths - and can you consider a man truly honest if he's only engaging in petty honesty? But then, here comes you. My dearest and most esteemed Edouard. With the ability to print." He waves broadly at the busted equipment at his feet. "Now, that is honesty at scale."

It's nearing dusk, the temperature beginning to drop noticeably, as Yseult makes her way toward the target to collect the half-dozen knives stuck in its torso. (She'd had to wait until the archers were finished, unwilling to risk standing downrange of them to get within throwing distance of the dummies.) She swings her elbow out in a circle as she walks, reaching across to push a thumb into the muscle. A couple more sessions with the mage healers have mended the damage, but it's already stiff.

She turns at the question, about to say no, but something in the voice catches at her ear, and she turns to look, first. "Bastien," she replies, and after a second gestures with a thumb to indicate she means the dummy. They're more or less alone, but it's not late enough to rule out people wandering past and besides, it's just professional courtesy. "After a man I worked with once or twice."

Bastien, she says, and his eyebrows tic upwards in preparation—if they are going to not pretend, at least long enough for some things to be established—but it blends easily into a smile when she clarifies. Or obfuscates, from another perspective. Obfuscation by ostensible clarification. There ought to be a word for that.

"He must have a fast worker, to have offended you so badly in such a short time," he says, sitting further back and crossing one leg. "Or is it a broken heart? —a fast worker, either way."

"The opposite. Terribly slow," Yseult replies with a shake of her head, "Unreliable. All manner of bad qualities." She pulls a folded up piece of leather and unrolls it, tucking the knives into their slots one by one as they're freed from the dummy. When she's collected the whole set she crosses the yard toward him.

"What brings you to the Gallows, Monsieur...." She lets it hang deliberately, a line drawn beneath the space where he should fill in a name.

"Almary," Bastien says, setting aside that horrific slander, for now, because she's slandering someone who definitely isn't here. "Édouard."

He's had better. The name is not one he ever fully intended to take up this way, for this long—but it was the only safe bet, in the end, the paper identity that he'd had in his back pocket long enough for it to require more than scraping the surface with a single fingernail for it to fall apart, and there was nothing for him to do except curse his younger self for thinking that hiding money under a boring name would make it less likely to come to trouble. If he'd known he'd wind up somewhere where every third person (gross exaggeration) knew him anyway, he could have been Augustin.

—anyway.

"I have come to help save the world, of course," he says, "however I might, when I do not know one end of a knife from another." He doesn't wink. Winking would be ridiculous. But still, work with him. "After Ghislain—you understand. Going about life and waiting to be rescued by an army does not seem so tenable."

And normally, that would be more than enough talking from him, but to make sure they're on the same page:

"By trade I'm a printer."

Get it? Page?

"I've been assigned to assist with diplomacy." He inclines his head, looks toward the thoroughly murdered dummy. "Not your division, I assume."

She turns to follow his gaze back over her shoulder, and then shakes her had, confirming with a smile, "No. Scouting." She closes the distance enough to offer him a hand. "Yseult. Pleased to meet you, Édouard."

It's still odd to give out her name so freely, but never more so than now. He'd known her as Sophie Reynard of Val Royeaux with the accent to match, and there's a fleeting impulse to take that name up again, or offer another alias in its place. Not that he has any means of knowing that this name is a true one--or that she'd even be very concerned if he did. But this unexpected intrusion of an associate into the already-confused commingling of personal and professional that is her Inquisition service has her off-balance, even if it doesn't show.

"Forgive me if this is too bold on such short acquaintance, Monsieur Almary, but would you care to have a drink? I'd be interested to hear more about what you will be printing for us."

She doesn't look like a Yseult, he decides without much in the way of careful deliberation. She looks like a Sophie. Thinking of her that way first has nothing to do with it. It's just her face, an objective and obvious fact, so she'll have to change one or the other to match—

"Of course," he says, standing up and tri-folding his papers in on themselves. They're only old reports, meant to get him up to speed, but still something he wouldn't take into a tavern for no good reason. That isn't something he feels the need to explain, to Yseult, in any more detail than is conveyed by holding them up as an exhibit. "How far away is the drink?"

Yseult (which he will just have to get used to, as she's not inclined to change either just at the moment) tilts her head toward one shoulder and then rocks it back toward center, equivocating.

"The best options are in the city, across the water. But we could see if there's a quiet corner of the dining hall if you'd prefer."

He taps the folded paper to his nose in consideration, then points the tapping end vaguely in her direction.

"I have the press set up in the—" He turns to gesture wordlessly, like a hapless new arrival, which is half correct, at the largest tower rising over them. "—but in the basement." Still using the papers as a pointer, he turns the upwards gesture down. "If you find some wine and meet me there in twenty minutes, I can show you the machine. It's dwarven. Fascinating engineering."

And an excellent plan, so of course she agrees to it, and twenty minutes later he’s sitting on the floor beside the press, sorting through the letter tiles he spilled on arrival. It’s an ongoing project. He might die before it’s done, because he might walk himself into the frozen sea.

When she arrives, he looks up, and his smile is a different smile than before.

“Yseult.”

Edited 2019-01-05 05:01 (UTC)

"Bastien," she replies, with a similarly different smile: warmer, wider, curled at the corners in amusement no longer hidden. She carries a bottle of wine and two cups, pewter handles dangling from her fingers, clinking together as she lifts them in show.

She agreed for the ease and the privacy, but she's curious about the press, too, especially now she's seen that it actually exists. She vaguely recalls mention of printing when they'd met previously, but she's never been much for allowing a mission to be waylaid by small talk when companionable silence will do. But this isn't a mission, so she makes her way over to fold herself to a seat in a clear space nearby him, a single letter--R--scooped up and handed over. Cups are set on the floor, and the wine uncorked.

"What actually brings you here?"

Edited 2019-01-05 06:59 (UTC)

“Honestly?”

Wayward R tossed in with the rest, Bastien digs his heels into the stone floor to push away from the mess and closer to her. That way she doesn’t have to play along when he beckons and leans in with the sort of conspirational I’m about to tell you a secret eye contact that often gets him places.

“Printing.” And on the way back to being perpendicular with the floor, he adds, again, with contemplative skepticism, “Yseult.”

He’ll stop saying her name weirdly once he’s used to it. Maybe. Maybe not. But not in public. He’s polite that way. Not so polite as to keep his hands off the wine bottle, but polite enough to pour wine for her first.

“I retired,” he says. “Years ago. I print gardening manuals now.” It isn’t even a lie, though also not the whole truth. The stack of said manuals he gestures to is only the unsold stock nobody wanted because it’s all hideously dull. “And for the sake of my eulogy I would be very grateful to not be tracked down and murdered before I’ve found a more interesting niche.”

"Retired," she echoes in nearly the same tone with which he's been repeating her name, cup hovering just before her mouth for the moment it takes and to let him see the closed-lipped half-smile that comes with it. The wine is Antivan, and good but not great, though better than he'd have gotten in the dining hall. "So it is possible. At least for a few years."

She glances back over her shoulder, and nudges one of the crates to a better angle before leaning back, an elbow propped up on one knee and the wine dangling. "I suppose printing propaganda for the Inquisition is something of a compromise between your previous career and garden manuals." She tips her head in a contemplative moment of her own. "It does sound like a career for a man named Édouard."

He's midway through mouthful of wine, and he finishes it in an offended rush so he can say, with faux stern stuffiness, "We have all made choices that we regret."

He imagines they all do, at least. Perhaps she has never taken a wrong turn or a life that could have been spared, or chosen a hideous false name and then had to live with it longer than expected, and perhaps her inscrutable smiles hide nothing in particular. Maybe this time around he'll have the honor of finding out, one way or the other.

And if she has ever had a terrible name, then she's in trouble.

In the meantime: "What are you doing here? Where have you been? You do not have to tell me everything—" Wouldn't, he's sure, regardless. "—but you have to tell me something interesting, or I will start reading from the manuals."

She laughs, at his offense and his hurried retort and his threat to read from manuals, all of it. Light and easy and washed down by a liberal mouthful of wine as she shrugs. "I've been in the east, for the most part," which narrows it down not a whit, almost all of Thedas being east of Orlais, "And now I am here to help save the world. Obviously." She's also more pleased with herself and that answer than she should be.

She should be pleased. He's pleased, the same way a bored child given a puzzle might be pleased as well as frustrated to find it more difficult than expected. (That's a very specific analogy, and very nearly literal. But it's a very specific feeling.) It would be disappointing if she were too straightforward.

"And it is not saved yet?" he says, whirling his wine glass and looking toward the wall, which doesn't have a window, but will have to substitute for an illustration of the world anyway. "When you have been here for at least an hour? Perhaps it is time for you to consider retirement."

"I know, I know. I've grown slow in my dotage." She sighs heavily, "I've been here months. Perhaps this is my retirement." She drains the remaining half-glass of wine with a loose-wristed tip of the cup, everything about it playing up long-suffering endurance.

She holds it out for a refill after, letting her other palm thwap against her thigh. "But now you're here, nearly doubling the number of seasoned professionals on the payroll. I would be grateful for your help."

Myr looks up at the question--from his meal--then over at the man asking, then down at the arm he's not using to spoon up soup, still bandaged over livid-red scars. (As if to ask: Did that give it away?)

"I was," said not unkindly, and he looks back at the bowl to fish an errant pea out of the broth and set it aside with a little pile of its fellows. "Didn't go down well for us. Looking for stories about it?"

The man looks and sounds unfamiliar; the former's not so strange (half the Inquisition at Kirkwall still looks unfamiliar), but the latter is.

"I suppose so," he says, which means yes, though that isn't how he would have put it. It makes him sound a bit like a gawker, is all, when that's only a third of it. The second third is that he works here now, and has a job to do. The last is that he's Orlesian to his marrow—never mind whatever dingy Marcher rookery his parents grew up in, he's never seen it—and the loss makes his bones hurt.

But there is the gawker part, or more romantically the part that's hunted and collected stories since the first time a tale of Remi Vascal set fire to his nine-year-old heart, and he smiles a little wider, in a way meant to encourage, before the smile vanishes into something more serious and he sets his spoon aside.

"It is why I've come. I had not thought—I am not a soldier." He gestures to himself, in the fleeting way of someone who doesn't actually want to draw that much attention, just illustrate a point. "But the time for us to wait for fighting men to save us seems to have passed by while we were not looking."

He returns the smile, his own native cheer encouraged despite his brooding; nudges his bowl away from him and turns more toward his table companion. "It has, hasn't it? Though I don't know this was ever something that could've been won by force of arms alone."

Though Myr had hoped, something in his tone seems to say; Ghislain was a graveyard for many a hope alongside all their dead. "For all the time I've been here, we've had as much need or more of those who aren't soldiers. What do you do?"

"Diplomacy, now, I have been told. But I am a printer by trade," Bastien says, which is true, and holds out a hand to add, "Édouard Almary," which is not—

but neither is Bastien, by a given measure of truth.

The day is sleety and everyone at the market stalls is ornery as a result, but at least there are fewer of them than usual and the majority are servants. Fifi is one such employee, swathed in a heavy cloak and scarf with her thin little white hands peeking from beneath, gripping her shopping basket full of ink bottles, parchment, and an assortment of Thor-preferred snacks.

She stops in the mustached man's way without intending to, but sets herself up for a collision either way: her slippered foot has landed in a freezing puddle, the damp of which is now spreading over the entire shoe's fabric.
It's the worst.

He might have been quicker to recognize her, but for the scarf. With it—and with the fact that they're running into one another, and Bastien's strung-together books and papers are dropping out of his hand and into the same puddle that's ruining the woman's shoe—he doesn't feel the tickle of familiarity until afterwards, when he looks her in the eye, and then it's only a tickle.

"Ah," he says.

He doesn't move to collect the books just yet. They're garbage, actually. Leftover gardening treatises and some noble's novelty project, which he's tried everything to get rid of short of using them as kindling (practically sacrilege!) or paying one of the merchants lining the street to take them, please, and they can use them as kindling, as long as he doesn't see it happen. Now they're soggy, hopefully with their ink running together beyond repair, and it's a relief to have them both literally and figuratively out of his hands. Fate has spoken. Etc.

Her slipper, however.

"You must position your foot how you like it best, quickly," he says, "in case it freezes that way."

A gasp, hissed "merde," and Fifi has set down her basket to recover the papers, snatching them up as quickly as she can and giving each one a shake in turn to rid it of droplets. She doesn't even notice the man right away, apologizing too profusely to look up, and only when she turns to his face to offer her sincere regret does she realizes she recognizes him.

Tilting her head, she steps back out of the puddle and gives her foot a balletic little shake, and keeps her eyes on Bastien as she bends to pick up the basket once more.

"I know you," she says, and her voice is a bit wary, but not frightened. Where has she seen his face before?

"Oh, no, don't—" he's beginning to say, because having anyone fuss over the books is faintly embarrassing and fully unnecessary, but then he sees her recognize him, and merde indeed. He starts running through his mental catalog of faces: allies, rivals, marks—or the servants of marks, most likely, in the case of an elf—and considering what he will do if it comes to that. Leave, most likely.

But he smiles like it's nothing, and before he's finished trying to place her face, she shakes her foot, and he places that.

(Not in a weird way.)

And that's a relief. He says, "You do," and dips forward a few inches. Not quite a bow, because this is Hightown, and she's an elf, and he doesn't want to draw attention or spark gossip at this particular moment—but the cheerful suggestion of one. "I once collapsed—" slight hyperbole "—trying to keep up with you in a bourrée."

Her eyes glaze over as she attempts to recover the memory, and little by little, a smile creeps onto her face. "Ah," she says lightly, fully grinning now, "yes. Though so few people can, you should hardly blame yourself."

She steps safely away from the puddle and looks Bastien up and down, smiling fondly. "What brings you to this lovely place?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open.

i

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

iii

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

ii!

no subject

no subject

no subject

IV Hightown??

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject