faderift | closed || nothing sacred, all things wild

There are four parts of the plan, and they go like this:

Marisol's part is simple. Get to Fabria. Get in his quarters, his office, anywhere that correspondence might be found. Kostos had told Nikos to look into Fabria, though not in so many words, and Nikos is loyal. It is especially fortuitous when his loyalty might be used for dual purpose.

The grandmother's letters. A cache might contain a word on the movements of Grand Cleric Agathe. A well-connected woman will have made this her business to know. If the letters can't be found, the handwriting might at least be imitated by their clever rifter, the tone copied. After all, how hard can it be, Nikos had reasoned to Marisol and a glass of her Antivan red, to be Ilias Fabria?

The design is up to Marisol. It will no doubt be flamboyant.

And later, in Kirkwall, Nikos brings the code to Carla to copy. Their rifter is not his type. He can deal with her, if she will be as good as she says. And as the plan has started to come together, each piece a fit, he might be found to be less sour in turns. This will work. It has to work.

The code is not an easy one. Caspar had given the cipher to Nikos just last night, delivered straight from the Spider's Sons in Antiva. Rolled into a thin scroll, secreted inside a thin tube like a single strand of pasta or a very long stick. They'd worked out the letters together, with Nikos writing and Caspar dictating, and now their product is here for Carla to look through: twenty pages of letters, to be written in the hand of six Antivan merchants and merchant princes.

"It is chaos," Nikos promises, when he makes the delivery to Carla in the tavern. And he looks tired--darker circles smudged beneath his eyes--but happy, or at least as happy as he ever looks. Caspar might even be with him, getting wine at the bar, or else tucked into a booth somewhere else at the tavern.

[OR anything else connected to the forging part of this can go here!]

No one tends to like her, the idea of it-- if it even occurs to her --rolls off of her like so much inconsequence. She doesn't live for approbation, she lives for her own charming amusements. Those amusements are fewer and further between in this backwards little world. This game of intrigue is the most interesting thing to come to her since she's arrived. She's eager for the letter, snatches them up and sits back to read, drawing her legs up into her seat like a child engrossed.

She touches everything, running her fingers over the impressions of the letters and texture of the paper.

"Anything special in the ink..." she asks absentmindedly.

"It was probably expensive."

That doesn't quite answer the question, but like Nikos will miss the opportunity to shade the rich by calling attention to their stupid luxuries. Expensive ink. Does it write? If so, why spend extra coin, except to say that extra coin was spent?

The letter is written in a neat hand, its code contained within the ruled parameters of the page. Whoever wrote it was taught how to write well, without smudging or obscuring the lines with poor penmanship.

In truth, it is close to how Nikos writes, which is proved when he lays the cipher onto the table, too, for Carla to next look over. His penmanship is good, too. Someone spent a long time with him as a child, going over letters and margins and the rules of composition.

"Otherwise I have ink from Antivan. Someone with a keen eye might be able to tell the difference. Could you, if it was presented to you?"

Like how worried does he have to be. Does the enemy have a forger? Probably. Is there another word for someone who can tell the difference between inks if presented with the opportunity?

"I could, if I took the time," she answers. Her rambling is authoritative as she says: "Whether it's a pigment or a dye, the amount of water and solvent in the solution. If the pH is wrong it will grow fungus, although that would take time to show itself."

She looks up from the papers then, "And I assume someone has checked it for any little magic charms."

As much as she hates magic and finds it an excuse for anti-intellectualism... the idea of encrypting things with its specificities excites her in its own way. Makes her think of the little eleven artifacts they sometimes let her fiddle with like a child twisting a rubix cube. There was the suggestion of some logic in there; geometry and mathematics which in turn built language and command.

Edited 2019-04-22 22:37 (UTC)

"No magic in the ink."

A small benefit to having mages on the side is being able to confirm for that sort of thing, nearly definitively. A small benefit to Marisol being one of those mages is that Nikos doesn't have to worry about someone thinking him an idiot for asking questions of what might be actually impossible to have done with magic.

With the papers successfully delivered, he can pick up his cup of wine and take a sip. It's a small reward, sort of.

"P-H," he says, repeating the initials she'd spoken aloud. "You're first, as far as I know, to have asked after-- whatever that is. Maybe it's not a thing, in our ink." After all, stranger things have happened. "If we have any luck at all, there will be such a confusion in what follows that no one will be so detailed as to wait for fungus to grow. Quick action should follow. Chaos."

"Everything has a pH." She would normally make some comment about how backwards and useless the 'science' in this world is, but she is focused. Now that she has the letters in hand, much of her nettling bullshit has been discarded in favor of focus, sharp and analytical.

"But that's work for a chemist," lips licked, setting one letter aside to compare its contents to the others, checking between writers for any further little marks or stains that would add to the authenticity. "If no one else is doing it, we should."

Then no one would be playing this same trick on them.

Nikos grunts, which is something halfway between agreement and dismissal. He doesn't easily do we. He doesn't easily do collaboration. Then again, he is interested, despite himself. Wherever this next leads, whatever they would use this PH for--it interests him. There's a competitive instinct in him. Always seeking the next step.

"If no one else is doing it, they can't be looking for it, either. It buys us nothing. If it could somehow prove useful, it might be worth it. What would be needed, to do the work of creating it?"

It's certainly not her enterprise. Maybe one day she would feel differently, but here in this moment it's all just throwaway. Little projects to amuse her lest she light this whole fucking town on fire for the fun of it.

"You would create a custom litmus test," she answers with distraction. "They're made with plant dye that's sensitive to acidity. They turn certain colors depending on the acid level."

She looks up then, and seems to realize it might behoove her to explain herself. "They test for it, in paint. You won't fool any inspector with a counterfeit painting if the chemistry is wrong. Counterfeiting can be as much a game of organics, as appearances."

A little hint of a thing: that she faked more than just signatures. That one, Isaac, had asked her are you sure you're a good liar? Yes. Yes she was.

Edited (I left some weird shit unfinished there my bad) 2019-04-30 01:20 (UTC)

There is a lot to pick apart in there. As it does, actually, pertain to Nikos' interests, he pays closer attention than he might otherwise. Interest also grants him the patience to wait for the rest of the explanation, without interjecting something sharp as likely to end the conversation as it was to prompt more out of Carla.

Counterfeiting. His interest piques that much more. A little smirk twists at the corner of his mouth.

"Is there any ink-based deception you aren't gifted in."

It's rhetorical. Mostly. How many other ink-based deceptions are out there, outside of forgery and counterfeiting? More seriously--

"Who do you work for, where you are from?"

Is someone inviting her to flatter herself? She almost laughs, chokes it off, and just smiles instead. "I haven't worked for anyone since I was an apprentice."

A nasty, prowling teenage girl looking for something, anything to sink her teeth into as she realized that the world disappointed her and there was only so much joy she could out of wrecking the people around her. She'd found Cotnari because he was the type to keep teenagers around, clever or not. He was disgusting in that manner, but he'd had something she'd wanted. Knowledge and finesse and contacts.

"I'm a contract worker. Smugglers, drug runners, art dealers..." she makes a lazy twirling motion with one hand. He gets the idea. "I'm also a con artist, pick pocket, embezzler, hacker, bounty hunter, and when I really can't find anything else to do I, a mechanic."

Perhaps that resume sounded disjointed, but in Carla's mind it all centered around a few key concepts. Details and mechanisms, understanding systems of finely granular nodes that one leveraged to create results. As for the question he'd asked though:

"Organic materials -- inks, paints -- they're much more difficult to fake in the future, the challenge is most of the fun."

He did ask. Sort of. But the list starts to grate on Nikos as it goes on. Useful, all of them, or at least those that mean something to him seem to be. But like his initial objections, how does he know anything about her? It's word alone. The word of a braggart, or the word of someone truly skilled, and it would only be by contracting her that he would find out which, probably.

He lets himself take a generous sip of wine and stares down into the cup. Gives it a swirl, half discontent and half thoughtful.

"This--" The letters; he lets the swirl of the cup indicate them-- "will not involve fake ink, or anything but the forging. But there may be more. What we do will change the outcome of this election, if we are successful. And much will change with that. We will have the opportunity to do more, and contract workers could benefit. And help the cause."

More important is the second part. Nikos' mouth twists a little as he admits it. Ardent speech still doesn't agree with him, unless he's in an argument. Then it comes almost naturally.

"If you don't work for anyone, what do you work for. Money," and while that's a guess, most bounty hunters work for bounties, so it can't be too far off. "Chaos. Does anything else make the list?"

Her lip curls, irritated by this question. She has been working for nothing more than survival for a long time and she taste it in her mouth. Being stuck in that cramped shuttle scavenging forgotten cargo and ship parts out of graveyards when there weren't any bounties to drag down. Even before the ship, she had been clawing at the labyrinthine politics of the space stations looking for opportunities and footholds where she might find the comfort and agency she'd had on Oscyria.

She had tried to remake a life that was dead in an ecosystem that played by different rules. She worries the very tip of her tongue against the point of one sharp tooth. She's changed since then, in subtle ways, the damage of escaping her homeworld's destruction has blossomed in her over time and experience. Her indolence now wears a shade of rage.

"Does it matter?" she finally decides, quirking one of her full eyebrows.

In Antiva City, Kitty has been given the use of a little apartment over a fishmonger's shop: two rooms, one for sleeping and one for entertaining and receiving, furnished sparsely, with a well-made sofa and a sturdy double bed outfitted with a good mattress. The wardrobe has no personal effects. If this is a home, it is inhabited by ghosts who wear no clothes, eat no food, and have left no living trace of themselves to be glimpsed by the curious.

Outside, there is the street, cobbled in the Antivan fashion, and the paper lanterns strung from building to building, making a kind of fanciful canopy to walk beneath. And on the corner, there is a little tavern, decently close--and the water, two blocks one way, and three blocks the other, the homes and apartments and villas of some certain merchant princes. Marisol will have told all about them: their names, their gossip, their wives, lovers, children, debts, their embarrassing childhood nicknames, a full accounting from a woman of equal social standing who has known princes all her life. Supporters of Benedetta, all.

Kitty was sent early, to find the right time. And the letters were sent with her, a cache secreted in the false back of a book of Antivan history from the Storm Age, each letter written in the particular code and hands that Carla gave to them. Grand Cleric Agathe is named all over their lines, while the blessed Benedetta is heaped with praise, named as hope, hailed preemptively in tell-tale places as the Divine. Plans, coordinates, locations, dates.

And all of this is being held, right now, by a fucking monkey.

Crouched on the writing desk beneath the open window, the monkey cocks his head at Kitty. He is adorable, all bright eyed and close-cut fur, clad only in a little purple vest. The open window is behind him, streaming in the evening smells of the street and the sea breeze and freedom, above all else. The monkey makes a noise of curious inquiry and peels off the first page from the letters and holds the page out to Kitty, his leathery little hands clutching creases into the careful code.

[OR anything connected to the botched frame job can go here!]

This -

This is almost too ridiculous to understand. Under normal circumstances, if a breeze took the papers, or if she'd been spotted from the street because she'd strayed too close to the open window, she'd be utterly furious with herself. It isn't good security practice, after all, keeping the window open, and it was probably a mistake. But the fact that the open window didn't invite in a stray wind or curious eyes, but a bloody monkey - her brain can't even fathom it. She can't even be angry. It's too much.

"Hey now," she says, and then takes time to wonder how one speaks soothingly to a monkey, because she has to speak soothingly to a monkey. "Here. Give that here. And I'll - give you sweets. Or something." Do they understand human speech? The little ones in the hats that dance for organ-grinders in London seem to. So this one must, too, right? "D'you eat sweets?"

Edited 2019-04-17 02:29 (UTC)

The page rustles as the monkey presents it again, with a cheerful but still curious chatter. He tips his head the other way. Is he listening? Does he understand? Is he proposing a trade?

Or maybe he's a monkey, holding a precious piece of paper, by an open window. The breeze rustles the pages he's not holding, teasing at the corners.

Decisively, the monkey settles back and rests his ass on the stack, effectively holding them in place. He flips the page around, upside down, like a man settling in to read a newspaper. Upside down.

All right. That's good. It looks like it's settling in.

Kitty eases a little closer, holding out a hand. "Don't be scared," she says as soothingly as she can, even though the monkey appears to not give a solitary shit about her. "Come on, give that back." She takes another step - two more, and she'll be close enough to grab those pamphlets back.

The monkey is not scared. Also, he does not give a shit about Kitty. Like anyone with a good juicy bit of reading to do, he's quite settled in. His little hands crumple at the page as he turns it around--sideways this time--and consults what is written there from the new angle. And then around again, to another new angle.

The wind ruffles at the corners of the pages trapped beneath his slight weight. Outside in the street, a woman's voice rises in anger. Someone has run their wheelbarrow over her foot, and she is letting the owner of the wheelbarrow (by her account, a bastard son of a pig too ugly to eat, rude and unmannered, couldn't get paid to suck cock) and the entire street know how she feels about it.

The monkey is as captivated as the crowd that is starting to gather outside. He turns his attention out the window once more. The paper is still clutched in his hands, tantalizingly grabbable.

It's as good an opportunity as any. Carefully, carefully - Kitty approaches - trying her best to make not a sound (and her best is, if she does say so herself, quite good). The first step, the second -

And then she reaches out and, gently, grasps at that paper.

The paper rustles, and the monkey's ears prick, and it swings its head around to look--first at Kitty's hand, and then up into her face.

And then it screams.

It's really more of a scream than a screech, which helps to make it off-putting. A screech might be expected. A scream, almost human, and it pulls back sharply on the page, ripping it out of Kitty's grasp. Angry, it screams again, shaking the page at her, giving her a good scolding. The shaking does put it back in her range again, though she'll need to be quick to get at it.

Kitty gives a little yelp of her own. That noise sounds so - human - and for a moment, she's reminded of that green monkey, coming after her and Jakob - which is a stupid thing to think and a stupid thing to be afraid of because that thing was a demon the size of a man and this is just a stupid little animal. But it still throws her off enough that her reflexes are just a little too slow. She just misses her chance to grab at it.

"Wait - " she cries as the monkey starts moving, like it's going to listen to her pleas.

There's no waiting.

The monkey, spooked and possessive, screams again and darts past Kitty. Not out the window, which might, perhaps, come as some surprise. That was the easiest escape route, after all. The monkey takes the dash at a lope, because the page is still clutched close to its chest, which leaves it with just one hand and two feet, and the tail for balance.

As it leaps off of the window ledge, the force of its kick-off jostles the stack that is the rest of the letters. In almost a solid block, they begin to tip over the window ledge.

The monkey, meanwhile, is on the carved back of the sofa, chattering angrily like Kitty needs scolding.

The slender neck of Grand Cleric Agathe is a wet ruin. Blood soaks into her gossamer veil, and into the dirt of the road. There is blood on her lips too, and her hands are clutched around her necklace, holding to the symbol of Andraste like a child with a talisman.

There were four escorts that had come with her. Three are dead; one is dying, her hat fallen from her head. She coughs, and it echoes around the copse of trees. Nikos, wiping his knife against the inside of his robe, shoots her a glare.

The road to Val Royeaux is dangerous. Everyone knows that. And Agathe had come prepared. Her guards are over the hills, and the camp, all of the Chantry brothers and sisters that traveled from Nevarra with her, or else joined up along the way--and the camp of pilgrims, the devout that wished to see the election of the Divine. The cookfires make a blue-gray haze over the hills, hanging like a shroud. It had been easy to join the train, especially for a group wearing the robes of the Chantry.

Nikos hates robes. He looks stupid in robes. Caspar, of course, looks amazing, and others look fine. He wipes his knife again on the backside of the tabard, the part that will lay flat against the plain gray robe and hide the crimson stains of Agathe's blood.

The dying Chantry sister coughs again. The towels that she was carrying have tumbled onto the ground and are thick with her blood. The little pool is cloudy with blood too, half surrounded by the screens that the sisters were hanging to conceal the Grand Cleric's bath.

"Someone shut her up," Nikos says, tightly. "Before they hear."

They have to move, and move quickly. Escape is the next objective, now that the Grand Cleric lies dead.

Marisol steps towards the dying sister, and kneels. Soothes her for a moment, gently murmuring words of reassurance. It will be alright. Help is here, now.

Ice bursts in the sister's throat, tearing it open. Ending her life with a quiet, wet gurgle, before Marisol looks back to Nikos. It's done. Quick and effective as this has been, that doesn't mean this will a go smoothly. Her brow is furrowed a moment, as she walks back to her cousin.

(Somehow she's managed to keep herself from getting any blood on her. A special skill, apparently.)

"How far off are they?"

"Same as before. I don't hear anyone coming." Nell is alongside one of the trees at the edge of the copse, half-hidden behind it, looking beyond. She had looked back at the direction from Nikos, but made no move toward the sister herself, and doesn't watch Marisol end her life. There's blood splattered down the front of her robes, but they're red, anyway.

"We should go before they do. It's done, isn't it?" She looks to Nikos, then at Caspar. "Do you have something from Benedetta's people to plant, or can we go?"

Caspar doesn't return Nell's gaze, busy pulling a small throwing knife from the guard at his feet.

The scene's inevitably a mess, given the corpses, but it's hardly messy. Whoever finds it will have little to go on, but there's such a thing as too much framing. Any politician worth their weight would hire professionals to deal with an opponent, and anything less might contradict the narrative they've already set out in letters.

"It's done." His tone is steady. Focused, not urgent. He secures his knife in borrowed robes, gesturing downhill with a short nod. "And it's time we get to the river, quickly."

In all things, they've been quick. Quick to move in and quick to kill and quick, now, to leave. Even the plan had come together quickly. The flat-bottomed boat that is waiting for them was engaged for only a few coins. They have time enough to get out of the robes once they've reached the rendezvous point, so the boatman will never see the Chantry robes, just as the pilgrims in the camp had never seen their plainclothes.

Nikos' mouth twitches into an expression a little too severe to be a smile. He shoves the knife in at the belt that is beneath his robes--fucking too clumsy, too hot--and grabs for his own stupid hat that he'd shoved off when they'd started.

"Let's go. Keep a watch behind."

The pool is fed from somewhere underground, so the ground to the south of it is soft, sucking at their boots as they leave behind the corpses and the clearing. Their first tracks will be mostly obscured. There's mud enough that a fresh slough fills quickly all but the firmest of their footsteps. Nikos' steps are heaviest. If they get tracked, it will be his fault. The ground slopes down, gets firmer. Around them, moss hangs low like weaving draped across the branches of the trees, which grow further and further apart as their path leaves behind the rich mud around the pool. There's still enough for cover, should they need it.

Agathe had been expected to take the Imperial Highway, but Fabria's letters told a different tale. In her piety and sympathy for the people, the Grand Cleric had diverted to the Fields of Ghislain, to pay tribute to the dead and pray for the war on her way to the election. Blood still painted the grass, and the carrion crows were growing fat, picking from shallow graves. They're somewhere between Arlesans and Montefort, where the finger of the river reaches up from the Waking Sea. Val Chevin will be a safer port than Val Royeaux, where news of Agathe's murder will reach quickly.

"It was well done," Nikos says, eventually, low. They moved quiet, to start with. But there's no one on their path yet, and if anyone's found the scene, they've not kicked up a commotion that could carry this far. No one among them was appointed rear guard specifically, but he's been keeping an eye out. A front of moss brushes against his cheek and he flicks it away. That minor irritation isn't enough to discourage the feeling high in his chest. Any blow successfully struck against an established power is something to take pride in. "I'm not saying we celebrate when we get to Val Chevin--better to get the fuck back to Kirkwall--"

But it was well done. He wants badly to take a drink, but they don't have time. He wants to say something, to make this meaningful. There's no words that fit--at least, none that he could say. He looks back over his shoulder. The hills and the camp are farther off now, the smoke a pale haze. Agathe is laying on ground made soft with her blood, and they did that.

Edited (oops sorry to inboxes) 2019-04-23 19:17 (UTC)

Part of her wonders if they have done the right thing, if their gamble will pay off, and if they need to kill more people to ensure the best outcome. An unravelling of thoughts that she can't give her time or energy at the moment, quite frankly. They don't have room for doubts, it would serve little purpose when the act was already done, and in the end if they didn't take risks there would be no progress. The sacrifice was necessary, even if it made things more high stakes in the election.

Marisol looks as relaxed and at ease as ever she does.

"Nikos being against celebrating. Be still my heart."

"We're only half done," Nell points out, with a hard look flicked from Nikos to Marisol. She's been mostly silent throughout the lead up and the crime itself, and the set of her jaw looked likely to stay that way through the rest of this walk, too, til now. It doesn't slow her pace, which pushes the group to go faster despite the mud and the unfamiliar terrain.

"There's nothing to celebrate until the work in Antiva is finished and Elise elected."

Caspar, in turn, cuts a measured look towards Nell. She isn't wrong. Slightly demoralizing, perhaps, but not wrong — assuming Elise is the only victory being counted. But Agathe is dead. Nevarra will feel it, fresh kindling on the slow churn of infighting and rivalries. There's no wild, lurching thrill in knowing this — not as it is for Nikos — but the satisfaction is there, as tangible as the weight of a well-balanced blade.

Which is to say: there will be celebrating. It'll just be later, and Nell won't be invited anyway.

"Half done, yes; but it's a half well done. Perhaps we can spare a modest toast and save the bottle for the rest."

"I've always loved when people state the obvious," she replies, breezily. "Does so much to buoy the spirits."

She doesn't cast a look to Nell, hard, flat or otherwise. Certainly she can understand the tone, respects the caution, but surely they can allow themselves something, if only to make it a little easier to keep going.

"Let's just make sure we stick together."

Nikos, glaring forward, takes just the smallest comfort in the defense from Caspar and Marisol's deliberate blitheness. He considers, for a moment, letting it go, considering the argument postponed. He finds after only that one moment--jaw clenched tight, as if to hold back words--that he can't.

Idealism is deserving only of a self-conscious shame, nothing he can allow himself to feel for very long before being overcome by the need to smother it, hide it, a light shielded from anyone's view. Caspar and Marisol, they've seen that stupid flame in him. Nell is the unknown here, a critic's voice.

His next step is particularly hard, and squelches, loudly, in the mud.

"Do we earn extra points for returning in total sobriety? Killing Agathe is half of what we meant to do. And the rest will fall into place, and a measure of chaos will follow, and that is good, besides what we wanted. Nevarra unsettled, turmoil in Antiva, the Chantry at its own throat. If Elise steps to take the power in that moment, the cause will have advanced."

"Oh fuck off," Nell snaps at Marisol's back in instant retort, too tightly wound to share their enjoyment of this. It's different, killing outside of battle. Even Templars caught unawares were still Templars, soldiers, with arms in sight if not in hand. Civilians caught in cross-fire were regrettable, but that's what battle is, sometimes. It's not just the cold blood or the speed of it or the quiet. Five unarmed women dead in the grass without the slightest hope of defending themselves, enemies only in the abstract. Potential allies, just not the strongest. A necessary sacrifice, so long as it works.

"You can all go jerk each other off about how stabbing a bunch of middle-aged women in the back is some great victory for the revolution," she says, with a roll of her eyes, "but at least wait til I'm out of earshot."

"Their blood is still wet on your robes. I doubt they'd put much stock in your respect."

The empathy isn't misplaced. It's something he would've related to strongly, about ten years and many more bodies ago — but you can only kill so many innocent people before the narrative wears thin. Repetitive at best, narcissistic at worst. Eventually, playing at higher morality feels like its own disservice.

Outright disrespect and mockery is a stretch on that logic, perhaps, but Caspar doesn't seem particularly interested in prayers for the dead. The trees here are larger and farther apart. It's easy to see a clear path ahead, which makes the pace easier to keep and does absolutely nothing for cover. Easier too to see the slope leveling off more thoroughly, and the trees gathering more tightly even farther ahead, thinner and more tangled, clustered along the promise of the encroaching river.

"We can debate the finer points in Val Chevin."

Which isn't a shut up, but he trusts everyone else to understand that they've hit a more vulnerable stretch. Maybe.

The road is there before them, clear, and the need to get out of the area is urgent. But Nikos' mutinous look lingers. His jaw clenches again, tight with the effort of not continuing.

He's not stupid. He shuts up. For now.

When they come out from the trees, into the open, the river shimmers ahead like a ribbon, marking their clear goal. Better than the uncertainty of tromping through endless woods and fields.

But the way isn't entirely clear. The path out of the trees joins the well-trod road to the dock that juts into the river. And a little ways ahead of that is the toll booth.

Two men are outside, tending a little cookfire. The bluish smoke that hangs about it is reminiscent of the smoke over the camp the party has left behind. They've caught sight of the party coming out of the woods. One of them is shading his eyes against the sunlight, which has broken strong and clear now that the morning is settling in. The other is reaching for a pike that is laying in the grass, but then he stands without it, and raises a hand in greeting.

"Greetings, in Andraste's name!" It's bright, enthusiastic. He seems genuinely pleased to see four members of the Chantry coming out of the woods, and hasn't yet thought twice about why. "So it's true? We heard it--that the Grand Cleric and her train were passing by. You're with her, aren't you?"

The other fellow is squinting at them, still uncertain. Nikos cuts a look over his shoulder, first, looking for pursuit. There's a shout, behind them. Maybe coincidence, but probably not. He looks sidelong at Caspar, waiting for direction.

Now what.

They have options up until Caspar hears that shout. After that, they really only have one. He gives Nikos a quick look and a very small nod, then he turns back to the men, stepping forward and raising a hand in answer.

"You've heard correctly, yes. We are here in service of the Grand Cleric. You may be with her as well, if you're willing— we've come seeking help."

He speaks loudly enough to be distracting, gesturing liberally as he does; it's a very good impression of friendly modesty. His accent sheds a full decade of exile, thicker than it was a few seconds ago, and each step forward puts him farther ahead of the group. It will be difficult for their suspicious friend to watch all four at once.

"Perhaps you've also heard that our trip through these woods was not planned. A worthwhile diversion, paying tribute to the dead. But we've run into some trouble with the wheels in all this mud. We were hoping your smoke might lead us to more bodies, admittedly, but one man more might be enough."

With her and more bodies are, of course, the direction.

Behind all this, Nell sighs. Doing magic without a staff is harder--harder to generate power, harder to control it once you do--but something she's been practicing since the rebellion began. Even so, it's no neat Knight-Enchanter spell but a blast of pure force that whips out of her raised hands, lifting the two unsuspecting toll-collectors up into the air and slamming them back into the ground with a heavy thump and muddy squelch that don't quite cover the sounds of bones cracking.

"Make sure to stab them or something so it doesn't look like magic," she says as she strides ahead toward the dock.

Nikos doesn't startle easily. Then again, Nikos doesn't often witness two men picked up and slammed to the ground by invisible force. Startled isn't the word for the look on his face as Nell pushes past them, but it's his version of it. He lets that look slide over to Caspar then, for half a second. Years of cooperation and learning each other's tells puts plain what he's thinking: okay, then.

The warier of the two toll-booth keepers lays, perfectly still, with his limbs splayed at weird angles. The one who had greeted them is making a noise like a wounded animal--ragged, desperate--and his eyes are very white in his muddy face. This, at least, doesn't disturb Nikos.

He yanks the tabard off over his head and draws his knife as he moves toward the closer and clearly dead one. Three quick strikes, in the back. The push of his knife into meat is easy. It's a good sharp blade. He wipes the flat of it on the man's roughspun shirt, and grabs hold of one of his dead weighted arms, to arrange him into something more natural. As natural as a surprise stabbing could ever be.

There's four boats tied up at the dock, looking like children's toys if one has in mind the larger frigates and merchant galleons that typically put in at Kirkwall. One of them has a little stick of a main mast, without sail. The other three are flat-bottomed, poled along before a crude sail would be erected once the river widens. Only one of these shows signs of life. Too shallow for any kind of a cavernous below-decks beyond its smuggler's bolt holes, the boat boasts instead a central structure almost like a cottage--two floors, one sloughed on top of the other, and a flat roof of wood and tarpaulin. There's even a chimney, which has a thin line of blacker smoke streaming out of it.

Just before the docks, there's a few small daub-and-wattle outerbuildings, no more than sheds, which could serve as a space to duck behind and change out of blood-spattered Chantry robes. Or anywhere, really, so long as it's done quickly. From back in the woods, the shouting has doubled, and is joined by other sounds that carry on the wind through the mossy trees--a bell of some kind, more voices, alarm. The toll-booth keeper drags one of his arms out to his side. His fingers squeeze at the mud of the road, and he makes that noise again, high and horrible, adding to the chaos that is swelling in the moment.

Edited (secret clothes changing first loutish boat guys second + SORRY) 2019-04-29 17:49 (UTC)

closed || nothing sacred, all things wild

stealing, forging, stuff.

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failure to frame

bonobo oh no

god that's such a better title why didn't i hire you

why DIDN'T you

because i'm a fool

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assassination

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hi we voted on a boat ride. 2 of you missed the vote so it was rigged sorry

good thing i love boat rides

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