closed | Venatori Gone Wild

[keenly]

WHO: Bastien, Colin, Leander, and Nikos
WHAT: Tracking down Venatori who got deep into Orlais at the invitation of some idiot noble
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: Southern Orlais
NOTES: reference.

Comments

The Return of Colin the Sneak

[cozen]

Sending Colin in alone does make sense. The return of one face is less likely to be noticed than the return of several; Colin is unobtrusive and didn't do much of any talking the first time, and he knows his way around a kitchen in a way that will let him sell the bit better if he's pressed into justifying his presence.

But it does mean a very dull wait, in the meantime, in an inn down the road from Arcenaux's estate.

Bastien has been spending the last several minutes of it making a coin disappear and reappear and roll across his knuckles, keeping on past the point of boredom not because he needs the practice, but because someone's little girl—probably the barkeep's, the way he occasionally looks over to check she's still there—is sitting under a nearby empty table trying to copy him with a copper. Bastien is pretending not to notice.

Then Colin appears in the door, and that's the end of the demonstration. The coin disappears more permanently, and Bastien stands up with a questioning eyebrow raise: Colin can come to the table, or the rest of them can go outside. It depends on whether or not he's learned anything that can't reasonably be discussed in earshot of other people.

[keenly]

It was a bit of an adventure. Some people might find it stressful, but those people haven't had a Harrowing, so. Really, the worst it got was this fifty-year-old woman who kept trying to touch his hair, but once he managed to ditch her, it went smoothly enough. He went into each room with a dustmop to reach the spots the elves couldn't, and made sure he was extremely thorough. So thorough, in fact, that he was dusting under the floorboards. The instant he had what he needed, he left everything and booked it.

Now he peers through the gloom and smoke of the inn until he meets Bastien's gaze. His chin jerks up, and he steps back out through the door, into the night.

[cozen]

Bastien's quick to follow, or as quick as he can be while also being casual and unrushed and taking a slight detour on the way out to flick the coin down onto the ground for the girl beneath the table. Only a short one. And then he's found Colin in the dark, which he shortly makes a little less dark with bits of flint and then a cigarette, while he says, "Did you have fun? Make friends?"

[keenly]

"It was interesting," Colin replies honestly, before patting one of his pockets. "The one who really made friends was A., though. Friends his da didn't approve of."

He looks away and up at the road ahead.

"We might want to book it back home," he says quietly.