( OPEN ) | something borrowed, something blue

[indissection]

WHO: Byerly, Sidony and guests (everyone is invited)
WHAT: The best sham of a wedding Thedas has ever seen
WHEN: Now
WHERE: the Toad and Flagon
NOTES: The Best Wedding Ever ft. a kidnapping

You are hereby invited to the wedding of Byerly Rutyer and Sidony Celogera Allegra Venaras. The venue is not quiet nor is it beautiful; the gambling hall is loud and intense, with all kinds of smells and dirtiness to carry along with the strangeness of their wedding. There’s some attempt at draping, some attempt at making it look as though some kind of party is taking place here, but it certainly doesn’t look like there’s going to be a wedding at all. It’s hastily done, hastily put together, but at least it’s something, which is better than nothing. There’s about an hour until the wedding is due to start and both the bride and groom are getting ready - whatever that means to the two of them. Food is not provided. There are no drinks bought. There's a table for gifts to one side, with a little plaque with their names on. Prostitutes and gamblers wander between the aisles and chairs, laughing and making jokes with one another, completely avoiding setting the scene of a proper wedding.

Comments

[cozen]

"It could be worse," he offers. "Seeker Pentaghast and the Nightingale could still be listening to everything we say."

And that's quite enough prodding, judging by his ear tips. He gestures to the empty seats beyond him in silent invitation, and politely remembers to answer the original question:

"I know the groom. He has dark hair a mustache—" An eyebrow. Do you see where this is going? But it's only half of a joke, abandoned unfinished. "—but he is taller than me, much better looking, and very aware of it. I am not sure who they have appointed to collect their gifts. I would not be shocked if they did not think of it."

[murderbaby]

He lets out a sigh, deeply grateful to be left off the hook. "I don't know the man from Andraste, but I found him pleasing conversation. However, I... did listen to his other conversations. There seems to be some commotion surrounding him."

A vague statement, meant to elicit commentary. He'd like to know.

[cozen]

"He is a degenerate scoundrel," Bastien says, with all possible affection, "and the lady could surely do better if she wished to—but who among us is not at least a little weak for scoundrels?"

[murderbaby]

Mhavos shrugs, one shouldered, as if to say, well, me.

"He must be an exceptional scoundrel," Mhavos says, "to inspire such ire over simply having a wedding. I thought standards of matrimony were more lax outside Orlais."

[cozen]

"Perhaps," Bastien says. He only knows so much about anything outside of the Empire, himself. "In the Marches and Ferelden, I would think certainly. Nevarra may be more of a cousin to Orlais. I do not know if there is a noble there who does not have a numbered place in line for the throne. However—"

Can he smoke in here? He looks around the room, quickly, to attempt to ascertain whether or not he would be the only one.

"—I doubt anyone in Riftwatch is bothered by the politics. We recently witnessed an Orlesian lady wed a Tevinter mage with a Dalish officiant, with less outrage. But Byerly is very skilled at causing personal offense."

[murderbaby]

"Ah," Mhavos nods. "That sort."

The rest of the information is important and neatly filed away, but there's not much he can say to it without showing too much a hand to a stranger. A Dalish officiant? A mage marrying? Nevarran royals? All of it is beyond imagining to the man Mhavos was a week ago.

"Is he a noble? This Rutyer fellow. He said he was 'a penniless cad', but one develops a sort of... sense for it."

Byerly activated Mhavos' rich-dar.

[cozen]

“Does one?” Bastien says, with the sort of mild and muted interest that renders a question rhetorical, at least presently—a bookmark. He doesn’t pause before answering properly: “He was scandalously disinherited, as I understand it. Years ago.”

As far as Bastien knows, anyway, from gossip filtered across a continent’s worth of ravenous ears and prodigal mouths. The details varied wildly. He never pressed Byerly for the truth of it, doesn’t believe he would have gotten it if he had, and doesn’t speculate now. Not out loud.

“His father is a—“ He gestures, vaguely bidding a word forward. “The one that is not a teyrn or—the other one that is not a teyrn. I cannot keep them straight.”

(Yes he can.)

[murderbaby]

"An Arl or a Bann." Mhavos supplies, even though he doubts his companion cares. It's just nice knowing things humans don't know. A petty indulgence he's never grown tired of.

"But... yes. That makes sense." He nods his head, before twitching slightly, a reflexive return to propriety. "I'm sorry; I've been terribly rude. All this time talking about other people."

He extends a hand to shake. An elf shaking a human's hand. Kirkwall is a fantastic city and Mhavos is beginning to love it. "Mhavos Dalat; a pleasure, serah."

[cozen]

An Arl or a Bann, and at the second option Bastien snaps once, hand raised and a briefly lingering point toward the ceiling: that’s it, yes.

“All mine,” he says, with a solid grip, a single shake, no hesitation. Elven colleagues (in a sense) are nothing new, and he was fortunate that they only ever beat his sense of superiority out of him—thoroughly, nine times over before he reached twenty—rather than his life.

Or his teeth. He needs his teeth.

Anyway.

“Bastien.”

No surname. But that’s not a symptom of the assumed name. He didn’t have one before, either.

“You have not been rude at all,” he adds, “but if we have gossiped enough for you, you could tell me where you are from, in Orlais.”

[murderbaby]

"Oh, everywhere," Mhavos says with a shrug. His contract was traded in and out of Val Royeaux enough that he doesn't consider it particularly home more than any other place in the country. "But I was born in the Alienage off Rue des Marchands in Val Royeaux."

That alienage was purged twenty years ago. There's no reason to assume his companion would care, or notice.

"And you?"

[cozen]

“Not far from there,” Bastien says, cheerful smile fading into something more restrained, like the pleasant expression one might wear listening to a fond anecdote at a funeral; he had noticed.

His street ran closer to the alienage—ten thousand elves stacked on top of one another in a space the size of a market square, a tidy target for those living sick and hungry in the adjacent squalor who wanted someone to blame and someone to be better than. You could do much worse, the local line went, whenever some freshly misfortunate family crowded into a space too small for them, but only by being an elf.

Perhaps it is a wonder it never burned. Or perhaps it is the opposite, given how much of the city’s cheap labor it would have taken with it. The offshoots and spillover districts could send much the same message for less of the cost.

All of these are things you do not say to a man who might have lost everything and everyone at—a young age. It is hard to tell, with a face like that, exactly which young age it would have been. Regardless, Bastien will not be the first one to bring it up.

He brightens again. “Everywhere. That is a good answer. Mystère insouciant. If I did not love Val Royeaux so much I might borrow it.”

[murderbaby]

Mhavos catches the expression. So the man does have some history in Val Royeaux, and the sort that makes one remember alienage purges. Or maybe he just ate some food that didn't agree with him earlier. The idea that one can read another's soul through their eyes is a myth for poets.

"You love it?" He shouldn't sound surprised. "Not that there's anything wrong with it. Not more than any other Orlesian city, I suppose. I didn't realize I disliked the place until I came here."

[cozen]

"Here?"

Perhaps he shouldn't sound surprised, either. The skies are frequently gloomy if not outraged, the black cliffs and chains and lingering slave statuary foreboding, the history bloody, the wealthy elevated above everyone else very unsubtly, very literally, so that their shit can also very literally fall onto the people beneath them—all of that, yes, but it has its surprising nooks and pretty crannies, and it is almost certainly an easier place to be an elf.

So he irons out the surprise, easily, and settles deeper into his seat.

"Let me guess: it is because we are all so charming."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos lets out a little laugh. "Yes, yes, of course. You've caught me out entirely."

Because... he feels like his real reasoning won't be welcomed. But he thinks he wants to live in Kirkwall for the rest of his life.

[cozen]

He smiles; he decides there's no harm in lighting a cigarette and goes to searching in his pockets.

"It is why we are all here," he says, arch. "Everyone likes everyone else so terribly much."

But there's no way to extend that joke without being a bit of a downer about everyone's competing interests and personalities, and this is a wedding, so he'd rather not.

"What is it you told Byerly your profession is?"

[murderbaby]

"Of course, of course," Mhavos says, something like a laugh in his voice. His light expression changes, though, when Bastien asks his question. The wording is strange, and he can't quite pinpoint how one should react in his position. Taking offense is always safe.

Mhavos arranges his expression in the shape of someone who might have bitten into a lemon, but isn't quite yet sure. "Does that... matter?"

[cozen]

His laugh is quiet and short, more of a surprised huff than anything.

“Only for conversation,” he says. His hands are busy with a tin, papers—he fits in an offering gesture, in case Mhavos would care for one—but it only requires half of his attention. “You were a clerk or something, no? I am a printer, and a musician before that. I understand why we must be so outnumbered by soldiers and spies, under the circumstances, but it is nice to be slightly less outnumbered.”

[murderbaby]

There, back into safer territory. His expression softens. "Yes, a clerk, among other things. A scrivener as well, if you have need of it. I'm hardly against taking on other work."