open.

[cozen]

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

Comments

[cozen]

“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.”

[hassaran]

"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."

[cozen]

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."

[hassaran]

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.

[cozen]

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."

[hassaran]

"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."