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WHO: Fitcher + You
WHAT: a new face
WHEN: early Solace
WHERE: the gallows
NOTES: n/a, will add if necessary

i. A STAIRWELL (closed to whoever gets there first)
Climb a particular back staircase of the Gallows at a particular hour of the too-sweltering afternoon and there, as if waiting, is a woman in a mottled blueish cloak tossed over her shoulder and a pipe tucked behind her ear. She is in the company of - indeed, is sitting on - a great dark trunk bound shut with two heavy leather straps, however it can't be very good company as she seems relieved when someone appears above or below her.

"And here I was beginning to think it was hopeless." She's an older woman with a voice that sounds like a rich, dark wine - low and earthy, accompanied by some bursting ripe red fruit. "I don't suppose I could tempt you into helping me carry this the rest of the way, do you?"

Thump. The woman gives the dark trunk a sturdy pat and her new assistant an encouraging smile.

ii. THE FERRY
"Had you been to Kirkwall before your time with Riftwatch, or was it the Inquisition which first brought you here?"

It's small talk of the highest order, made as the ferry creeps across the chopping water of the harbor toward the city proper rising in ugly multicolored steppes above them. Fitcher, seated with one ankle hooked across her knee, isn't actually looking at it. She has her hand raised to shield her eyes and her face, discolored by a faint sheen of sweat from the dense heat, is turned low.

"You must forgive my curiosity," she confesses from the shadow of her hand. "It's this or focusing on my stomach, I'm afraid."

She does seem slightly green about the gills.

iii. WICKED GRACE (single thread please, no tagging order)
Night draws in. Every other lamp and candle is extinguished to save the oil and wicks, and what few fires are required to burn in Gallows hearths during summer are
stoked up in turn. It's a grim and grimy place by day, hollowed and painted with shadow at night. The dining hall is no exception; it is far too large for the sparse smattering of people in it, and would seem somehow both claustrophobic and intolerably cavernous if not for the evening's entertainment:

It's Fitcher's turn to deal. She does so with good cheer, flicking cards deftly toward their respective players around half eaten plates of cheese and bread nicked from the larder, the discarded skin of a cut apple, a bottle of wine (or two) and a series of cups, well attended or otherwise.

"Tell me it isn't always this quiet. I'll be disappointed if we don't live up to the rumors."

iv. WILDCARD
You know the drill.

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"Why," Byerly responds cheerfully, "that would depend quite heavily on what you tempt me with."

He shoots her a white-toothed, sharky smile. He's not out of breath - he was descending the stairs, not ascending them - and so he's able to be perfectly collected and smug as he speaks to her. Quite deliberately, he takes a position against the wall beside him, folding his lanky length into a little alcove.

"I've sworn to avoid hard work. I don't violate my oaths lightly."

"Hard work?" She sets her chin on her knuckles, that easy half smile fixed firmly in place, though here the sway of her voice takes on some faux wounded tenor. "Why, shared between the two of us it would be nothing of the sort. You see, it isn't heavy. Only an awkward shape for one."

One corner of his mouth curls up, unbidden. There's something intensely charming about a woman with a proper sense of drama, isn't there?

"All work is hard," he responds in a rakish drawl, those drawn-out vowels that useless men are born knowing how to produce. "Otherwise, it'd be fun. And that doesn't look like much fun." He lets out a sigh, and pulls his hand through his hair so that it comes loose and falls fetchingly across his forehead. "So what shall be my reward?"

Here, with her chin still propped across her knuckles, her expression sharpens from would-be damsel into hawkish study. It's just as put on as the former - some joke she is telling through set of her brow and the serious line of her mouth -, but in the end she must reach some legitimate conclusion with which she is satisfied regardless of how over played her observation of him is, for the woman dusts herself off and rises to her feet in a swirl of the mottled blue cloak.

"Oh, a token of my gratitude, I should think," she says, preparing to lift one side of the trunk. She looks to him expectantly. "Barring that, I may have a bottle of something drinkable in here. We can share that too."

And in response, he overplays his own transparency, arranging his features in an exaggeratedly droll expression, sauntering down the stairs with an excessively foppish air. "Why didn't you say so from the start," he demands with a mockery of petulance. "We'd have had to exchange but three words, and I'd help at once."

He meets her, and seizes the other end of the trunk. And then he lifts - and makes a great show of struggling with it, groaning and straining extravagantly.

Smiling still: "My mistake."

The trunk isn't light, but she wasn't lying either. Between the two of them, it's a simple enough affair to haul up the stairs.

"How lucky I am. I was afraid I might find myself in the position of bargaining with someone with something better to do."

Hah. How rude. He flutters his eyelashes at her as he hauls.

"You may rest assured, madame, that I never do. You're fortunate to meet an idler like myself."

Yes, well. She absorbs the flutter of his eyelashes into that crooked smile, and doesn't drive him along with the trunk before her (though in theory, the option is there on the table if she weren't presently ever so grateful).

"I didn't think I'd find many of those here. But it's somehow reassuring to know the type exists everywhere, don't you think? One should never turn up their nose at job security."

"Oh, you'd be surprised," he responds cheerily. "I could scorch your diligent ears with tales of shirking. Don't be fooled by the reputation we have for courage and bravery - we're a sorry lot, in truth."

He shoots her a wink.

"So what did you come here to do, fair madame?"

"To put my feet up, apparently. I thought I might join the Inquisition proper; imagine my surprise to arrive and find its arm in Kirkwall having lopped itself off. But there again is another lucky turn. I suspect your old friends will soon find themselves living in tents on battlefields and I don't much care for sleeping on the ground. --It's this one."

A tip of the head, gesturing to the doorway off the landing they've just wound themselves up to.

"And yourself?"

"To get myself behind an army," he answers easily. "I'm part of the diplomatic corps here - such as they are - ah, here we are - " He thumps his heel backwards to swing the door inwards, then scoots inside to set the trunk down. "And diplomats are, gloriously, defended. Quite helpful for my coward's heart."

He dusts off his hands, and sighs, and adds, "Besides which, it's a living. Most certainly better than sleeping on the ground."

"How very prudent of you."

She straightens from her side of the trunk and takes a moment with her hands at her hips to survey the shared room. Whatever she sees must satisfy her, for she fetches the trunk up again and dredges it to one of the empty beds and begins to undo the its heavy closures.

"Please, take a seat. My home is as yours, my noble hero. I'll be just a moment with your prize."

"How kind you are," he says, and sits, and wonders if she'll poison him. It seems like a dreadful lot of effort to go through - sneaking into the Gallows, feigning to be a new recruit, having a poisoned bottle on the off-chance that her helper would take wine - but it's not impossible. Lesser crimes have been committed to strike at the enemy's leadership.

"What's your name, fine lady?"

"Fitcher."

It's a fine name, she thinks, and lifts the lid on the trunk. The contents are packed neatly: squares of fabric which must be shirts and light trousers and fair undergarments; a thick stack of leatherbound notebooks bound with bits of twine, and a big square wooden box inlaid with paler wood in the shape of animals and leaves; a big ugly knife strapped to the underside of the trunk's lid; and a series of slim bottles with glass so dark that the contents of most must remain a mystery.

But not this one. One she draws free, pops the cork, and sniffs. She takes a swig for herself, then holds it out to him. It smells like dark and fruit, a somber winter wine.

"And yours, sir?"

She wouldn't kill herself to get to him, belike. He takes the bottle and drinks it, and hums thoughtfully. A fine bottle. A little sweeter than is his usual dry preference, but still, quite a pleasing vintage.

"Rutyer," he answers, and then - so as to not slime himself with the brush that might be applied to the fouler members of his family - "Byerly Rutyer. You're a lady of Antiva, if my ear does not deceive me?"

Her possessions give no clue as to her profession. They give some clue as to her character, he fancies; it's not many women who would let a strange man catch a glimpse of her underthings.

A pause. She tips her face to him, and her expression is warm - pleased, maybe, to be recognized. "You have a good ear, Messr Rutyer. Have you spent any time there?"

"I had a dreadful lover from Antiva," he answers cheerily. "A monster of a woman. And there are a few - hm - well, Nevarrans-Antivans here. Plus there was this play I adored back home, about an assassin who fell in love with the Merchant-Princess he'd been sent to murder...I fear that the Anteevan accents soundeeeed rather laik deeees, but still, one does sometimes recognize the cant of the speech, no?"

Another slug from the bottle, and then he offers it back to her.

She takes the bottle back by its slim neck and clucks her tongue. "You've seen none of the best parts, then. When this is all over and you have no more need to hide behind an army, you must go to Afsaana. You can spend your whole day in the public house varandas above the spice markets and the Rialto is as clear as a sapphire there. You'll forget all about your terrible lover. I swear it."

She takes a pull from the bottle, then turns it back to him in favor of rummaging through the top layers of the trunk's clothing. A stocking is draped across her shoulder.

"I should warn you, however. You may never care to return to Ferelden after."

"Ah, Ferelden," he says with a wrinkle of his nose, and trusts that communicates...well, precisely what it is useful to communicate. Whatever the woman wants to read into it. Contempt, most likely, and dismissal, and none of the very complicated emotions he feels in truth.

"Would you show me, madame?" he asks, resting his hip against her table and leaning his weight upon it. "Would you be my guide?"

"It would be my pleasure, Messr Rutyer." It's an easy, immediate answer - not dismissive, but too casual to be serious. She shoots him a sly sidelong glance and shrugs. "I'll keep my fingers crossed for us."

Ah, here is what she was looking for. Fitcher produces a little square of yellow fabric, bright as tumeric, from the trunk. She holds it out to him.

"My token.'

"Ah," he says, eyes glittering, voice mirthful. He takes it, and bows over it - somehow, a gesture simultaneously mocking and graceful.

"Your token. May I be your champion, then, madame?"

She laughs then, and it's a pleasantly low sound in the old stone room. A good sense of humor should be appreciated.

"Tell me, how long have you been with-- well, however you would refer to it?"

The stocking is stuffed back into the trunk; the box and bound journals are removed and set aside. She doesn't bother to pull the lid shut again.

Edited 2019-07-06 19:27 (UTC)

"I had barely been outside Nevarra City," Ilias admits, the way one does a black thumb, or two left feet. A natural disinclination toward travel, as if he'd had the choice, or it wouldn't have mattered if he had. (You grow to fit a shape; it ceases to matter which.)

Obliging, however, the Mortalitasi leans to prop elbows on grey robed knees against the cresting of their little craft, sea spray darkening the fabric with its fine mist; at least she need not look at the waves to look at him.

"And yourself? You've not sailed the Waking Sea, I hope." Considering how this stretch of it is treating her.

There's no worry there. Her attention is firmly fixed to a point between their feet in the bottom of the boat. "No. Can you imagine?"

There is water sloshing around in the bilge under the foot boards, tilting back and forth with every slap of water against the ferry's side. She promptly lifts her eyes to him, hand still used as a shield to block out as much of the harbor as is possible.

(Why an island fort of all places?)

"I've been to Kirkwall. Just once - as a girl. I was thinking of how strange it looked without the Chantry."

"Ah." —might, under other circumstances, be all Ilias has to say about that subject. This is not his city, and the rebellion hardly his war to speak of, one way or another. But these aren't other circumstances; this is a woman trying desperately not to vomit on his shoes, and it seems cruel to pass up the opportunity for distraction. Not when one is waiting at the tip of his tongue, beside the memory of a certain sharp smile.

"There is a garden now, in its place. Rows of flowers that must be blooming themselves into dust in this heat, and a grove of shade trees at the center. A smooth stone wall at one end, to carry the names of the dead."

"It is— not beautiful." Sheepish, "Forgive me, I do not think there is a word in Trade, for the sort of clarity that comes from time spent amongst the dead. It seems an important place for reflection, I suppose, even if that takes another form now."

"Ah. I suppose that's one way to make do. Flowers though - in this heat! The Viscount must pay a small army of gardeners to fetch water day and night to mind them."

Which, in turn, might be all she would say on the matter herself were it not for the rise and fall of the boat about them. Or is it the sea doing the wobbling? The horizon, maybe? Don't think too hard on the subject; it's unpleasant in every direction.

"Do you find you have more appreciation for such places than most? Being Nevarran."

"Being one of the Mortalitasi, perhaps. I suppose there is a professional interest." Apologetic, again, for getting his death nerdery all over her terrible ferry trip. "I don't imagine being Nevarran makes anyone appreciate death any more than Antivan, wine. Or sailing, for that matter."

Which they're not talking about.

"--Sorry. Have you come to meet with someone, or are you join us? At Riftwatch."

No one vomits on the ferry for a diplomatic visit, surely.

Edited 2019-07-23 02:57 (UTC)

"Joining up, I'm afraid. I don't suppose anyone would be amenable to moving the whole thing to the mainland, would they?"

A thin joke - one which she moves away from with all the grace the rest of her present state is lacking. She's pointedly refused to touch the little boat's combing to steady herself. Sitting on the ferry's bench is bad enough - planting a hand to feel the rise and fall seems somehow disastrous.

"Does Riftwatch have much need for a man of your profession? I was unaware of any demand in the Marches for it."

No offense.

"Not as such, no." The quirk of his mouth is wry; he's had far worse offenses, since coming to Kirkwall. "But we have need of researchers, and combat mages, and— I suppose diplomats, now. I assist in liaising with the Chantry."

Which ought give an idea how understaffed they are. At least he seems in good humor about it.

"Have you an idea which division might suit you?"

Liaising with-- she laughs, a low bark of good (and blatantly bewildered) humor. Yes, that does put things into perspective, doesn't it?

"I wasn't aware that I'd have a choice in the matter, to tell you the truth. I don't suppose you might have any recommendations? Naturally, my preference is not to toil away under a tyrant if it can be at all avoided."

"We?"

Isaac isn't drinking. He isn't usually gambling, and it shows in his cards (the cards show in his eyes). Good-natured enough through a series of losses — half a day's wage, several cigarettes, a well-carved teak rook — he's down to betting the bread. Gamely:

"Miss Fitcher, are you proposing to lead some iniquity?"

Bastien is content to play not so well as he's able to, if something that mattered were on the table—except for when that rook joined the pile, then he pulled out a few extra stops under pretense of pure luck—which is good, because he is drinking, and he's nearing a point where it would become a hinderance.

"Sometimes," he says, arch philosophical, "you must be the ruckus you wish to see. If you knock over enough of the crates in the storage rooms, I am certain something will eventually try to kill us all."

"Or someone." Byerly is, unsurprisingly, a damned effective player. He's also a cheat, and a very good one. He's not cheating right now, but he might, though, later, if a passion for dishonesty takes a hold of him, or if whimsy does.

"I'm fully certain there's a murderer lurking in the heart of the Seneschal, just waiting to be loosed."

"Really? I don't think I've made the acquaintance of this particular murderer lying in wait yet." In a hushed voice for effect, leaning forward over her cards: "Is he very threatening? Or especially tall and handsome? I always find exceptionally good looking men slightly off putting in the right light."

She smiles benificently about the table, then draws a card into her hand. Fitcher isn't a spectacular player, but she's up from Isaac which is really all one can ask for. It's certainly keeping her in cigarettes.

"What a rude thing to say about me," Byerly murmurs, and then draws another card.

A sly look. She's aware.

Yseult doesn't quite roll her eyes, but there's something in the tilt of her jaw that suggests the urge. She rearranges her cards with deft fingers, and then discards and draws two.

"He's tall," she says of Salvio as she settles the new cards into her hand, "But doing his best not to be. I can almost credit him turning killer; I can't imagine how he'd have survived this long if there weren't something hidden beneath all the--" she can't find a word, so does a quick impression of Salvio's hand gestures when alarmed, familiar to anyone who's ever attempted to submit the wrong form or asked him any sort of even slightly direct question.

"He must have blackmail on half the Gallows,"

The complaint box. Now that they've wider handwriting samples (those books, another initiative of his), how anonymous is it, really?

Isaac discards the Knight of Roses — in any light, he looks like a bit of a prick.

Between Byerly and Fitcher’s exchange and Yseult’s uncanny impression, Bastien has been left with no option but to duck his head to an angle designed to virtuously obscure a smile at something one considers slightly mean, but funny, but mean.

It means he nearly misses that Knight. But only nearly. He pays attention in time to snatch him up. Not a good play, at all—the Angel of Charity he discards in its favor was more useful—but he likes the look of the Knight, thanks very much, and those are currently the rules he’s playing by.

“After we have won this war,” he says in the meantime, with unwarranted optimism, “we must clearly turn our attention to defeating the Seneschal.”

Edited 2019-07-15 16:17 (UTC)

"Seneschal for Riftwatch must be a very unappealing occupation. Otherwise, I can only assume we'd all have our tar and feathers out and ready to take to the man in question."

This said as she fetches up the bottle, dividing its meager remaining contents between all attended cups.

"There is a particular kind of security in doing a job no one else cares to."

A less subtle man would wink at Yseult in response to that question about job security in unglamorous, undesirable jobs. He is a subtle man, so he does not wink.

"It seems like the worst job of all," By reports, and reorders the cards in his hands. "Why would you want a lifetime of security in a job that's driving you mad?"

"A familiar madness." He draws. "Can you not relate?"

They're each still here, for the Inquisition's withdrawal. Isaac is not a subtle man — he doesn't wink at Yseult, either. That has less to do with wit, and a great deal more to do with the Queen of Roses now in his hand. Ah, fuck.

“Shh,” Bastien says. He’s examining the beak on his teak rook with one hand, holding his newly-filled drink with the other. “We are all honored to be here.”

And it’s his turn, he realizes, and puts both objects aside to pick up his cards again and discard a serpent, just for being grotesque.

"My, aren't we all just bursting with enthusiasm," she chuckles, snatching up that serpent in lieu of a particularly mournful looking Song of Autumn. "I gathered already that argumentative and opinionated must be standard issue, but the droll sarcasm is the a pleasant surprise."

And you live with these reprobates? says the look shot in Yseult's direction - all exaggerated and meant to be seen.

"Surely it can't all be miserable."

Edited 2019-07-25 06:10 (UTC)

Unwinked-at, Yseult can remain focused on her hand, picking up that Song of Autumn and setting down in its place the Knight of Dawn, affecting an expression of exceptionally bland incomprehension at Fitcher's eyebrows.

And she shakes her head at the question. "No, of course it isn't." There is a pause as she exchanges cards for wine glass, leaving it hanging in midair a moment to add, "Occasionally people we believe have been abducted and murdered turn out to have only been abducted," before she drinks.

See? A perfectly happy place.

Edited 2019-07-29 05:33 (UTC)

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I. I got here first

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ii.

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wicked grace;

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