faderift | Write clear and hard about what hurts

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Write clear and hard about what hurts - Ernst H.

WHO: Athessa, Bastien
WHAT: Rescuing or retrieving an informant
WHEN: Post-Monster Mayhem
WHERE: Free Marches (Hasmal and the Silent Plains)
NOTES: Athessa and Bastien go on a sad field trip and have a great time.

“You know, I seem to recall having a conversation not too long ago,” Athessa is saying as she inspects the tear in her shirt. Luckily the blade that did the tearing caught only shirt, and not flesh with it. Barely even a scrape. The bandits can’t boast as much, unconscious or worse here on the side of the road to Tantervale. “About how looking for humans was a dangerous prospect.”

Technically speaking, they’re looking for an elf, but they seem to be finding the right sort of humans to enforce their little joke. Athessa is, at least, true to her word that she takes protecting Bastien very seriously.

The road from Kirkwall to Tantervale is a long one, and it’s looking to be just as sweltering as staying in the Gallows has been. Sweltering, tedious, treacherous, a veritable grab bag of unpleasant adjectives stacked like pancakes. But necessary all the same. Word is, an informant was making their escape from Tevinter and hit a snag. (The mission briefing was not brief, and Athessa is not a great reader and only skimmed it.) They didn’t make it to the rendezvous, so now it’s up to intrepid adventurers Athessa Sulahnan and Bastien Last Name to rescue...The Informant.

Look, nobody’s going to hire this particular elf for virtues such as reading or name remembering, anyway.

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"This particular species is known for its aggression and its stupidity," he says.

He could have helped. If things were dire enough, if she'd looked like she had less of a handle on the situation, if he'd seen any blood belonging to her rather than the bandits—in that case, Bastien could have eased up on his commitment to acting like, if he threw a knife, it wouldn't embed itself in approximately the area of the body he was aiming for, or at least not miss by very much. But look! She's fine. No need. He is content being useless and sweaty.

There's sweat in his mustache. It's times like these he considers shaving it off.

He knows she's all right, but he asks anyway, eyeing that tear: "Are you all right?"

"Yep," she confirms, tearing the bottom quarter of her shirt off where the tear is. Well look at that, a crop top! The scrap of cloth gets wrapped around her wrist as a fashion accessory (or for safe keeping) and she pats her side. "Not a scratch. What's Riftwatch's policy on looting bandits?"

She grins. These ambushers clearly don't have anything worth taking, except maybe their boots if you're someone who wears shoes.

“That the shortest person in the party has to carry whatever we take.”

Official policy. Check it.

He is checking the bandits, just in case—but with the distance and nerves appropriate for someone who is alarmed by the possibility that they might be dead and that he might be touching dead things. He nudges one with the toe of his boot, the nudges the man’s jacket specifically, in case it causes anything to jingle.

“But look at them,” he says, increasingly confident now that he’s sure this one, at least, is only unconscious. “Poor and desperate, and now beaten by a single woman on the side of the road. They have suffered enough without being robbed as well.”

"Well that seems a little unfair," she mutters. She's often the shortest person in any party unless they've got a dwarf with them.

She checks the pockets of the few that might be dead, to spare him touching a possibly dead man, but she generally doesn't fight to kill unless she has to. As Bastien points out, poor and desperate, the lot of them.

"Maybe we should give them something for their trouble?" She suggests, unable to get the words out with a straight face. Yeah, as if.

Bastien’s face isn’t exactly straight, either, but he does rifle through his own pockets and produce a half-dozen copper coins with an expression that suggests he will absolutely hand them out just for the joke. He is, in fact, putting one into his unconscious bandit friend’s hand right now.

She's laughing when she retrieves the coin and gives it back to Bastien, giving him a friendly nudge.

"Come on, the last thing we need is one to wake up and see us pitying them. Just think how embarrassing that'd be!" Embarrassing for them, of course. To get your ass kicked and then to be shown pity by your ass-kicker? Yikes.

It takes only a few minutes to track down their errant horses--a skittish little gelding and a gluttonous nag interested only in grazing--and get back on the road. It would've taken even fewer minutes if Athessa didn't have to chide the nag for making a mess of the bit in her mouth by eating grass.

The rest of the ride to Tantervale is reasonably tame. Some near-misses with more bandits, a detour due to the road being blocked, that detour leading past a small camp of people who needed help and who, as representatives of Riftwatch, Bastien and Athessa couldn't really refuse. Oh, and three instances of horse-spooking.

Almost four, judging by the horse's reaction to the city guard stopping them outside of the city.

"Has Tantervale always been so exclusive?" Athessa asks, once the guards are behind them.

“I could not say. I have never been here before,” Bastien says, patting his horse’s neck in a way he hopes is soothing rather than irritating. The poor thing has had a trying day and, unlike him, hasn’t enjoyed a bit of it. “They are very close to Tevinter, though, no?”

Not really a question. He looked at a map, and brought the facts he knows about Tantervale to a total of three: large, religious, close to Tevinter.

"Close enough, I guess," she agrees with a shrug. She looked at a map of the streets, not the broader geography. It would make sense for Tantervale to set up checkpoints if they were worried about traffic in and out of Tevinter, but surely the checkpoint wouldn't be on the Free Marches side of the city? Perhaps they're trying to stem the flow of people headed to Tevinter?

Athessa steers her horse down a side street, assuming their most reasonable course of action is to head to the location of the missed rendezvous. Their contact in the city will be able to fill them in on where they need to go next, if nothing else.

"What does rendezvous mean, anyway? It's Orlesian, right?"

“A meeting,” he says, “but with an extra syllable, to make it sound more important.”

The horse hooves are muted, off the cobblestones, and he eyes the building with some interest. Not too much interest. Marchers aren’t known for their appealing architecture. And he isn’t really thinking about the shape of the windows, anyway.

“I hope we are not too late,” he says. Too late for what, it is hard to say—because the list of possibilities is long, not because there’s no telling what might have happened. If their informant has been taken back to Tevinter, alive or otherwise, going after them might be beyond anyone’s power.

"We won't be," she says, as if her determination alone will alter the outcome of their mission.

The Pewter Pot is much like any Marcher tavern, which is not a glowing appraisal by any standard. There are four walls that drunks lean on, a roof that leaks, a window broken from the inside that hasn't been repaired yet, and a less-than-charming stink emanating from the hitching posts where the horses let their leavings fall where they stand.

But the important thing isn't the smell, or the aesthetic nature of the dive. They've got a mission.

"It'd be suspicious to not get a drink while we're here, right?"

"Absolument."

Suspicious, a waste of their discretionary funds for the endeavor, and unforgivable neglect of the opportunity to speak with the barkeep—all unforgivable. And he's already having to scrape horse shit off the bottom of his boot, so not having a drink would be inexcusable.

"Do you think the wine is any good? No," he decides for himself. "It will not be good. Ale."

"I don't think the wine anywhere is any good," she says, somehow avoiding the horse shit as she dismounts. "So yeah, ale."

Bastien presses a hand to his grievously wounded heart, but discussing the merits of wine and anyone’s reasons for disagreeing can wait.

“Ale it is,” he says. “I will buy, if you would like to look around.”

"An excellent plan," she nods, and--still avoiding the equine leavings because even for someone who never wears shoes anywhere, that's disgusting--leads the way into the tavern.

It isn't peak hours for tavern patronage, leaving many a table and even more chairs vacant. Those that are in residence are talking quietly among themselves or too interested in reaching the bottom of their glasses to care about a Dalish elf and an Orlesian walking in like the setup of a bad joke.

Now, how stealthy to be is the question. Athessa doesn't know what their contact looks like, but it seems imprudent to barge into a tavern saying you're looking to meet an agent. A spy. Especially with the city so strict as it is about checkpoints. So she settles for a cursory glance from the doorway, then picks an empty table where she'll have a good view of the rest of the ground floor. Upstairs is...what? Rooms to let? The back door behind the bar leads...where? An alley? Seems likely.

Bastien could ask the bartender for information, but he doesn’t. Not yet. He orders the ale, makes some small talk during the pouring of it: charming place, and he heard it was the best drink for the price in this area, and has all of that fuss at the border been hurting business? He can wander back later to ask for real information, if they need it, but looking desperate for information often means looking willing to pay for it, and he would rather save their money to buy silence instead, if it comes to that. Silence is more expensive than information.

Anyway: he finds Athessa with a drink in either hand and slides one in front of her before he sits down.

“Perhaps we should have worn carnations,” he says, “or distinctive hats.”

Athessa pauses with the drink halfway to her mouth. "Oh. I thought you knew what the contact looked like," she says. She taps her finger on the side of the glass a few times before taking a sip and returning it to the table. "I guess whats-their-face will just have to rely on how much we look like the start of a joke."

How many mustachioed Orlesians and Vallaslin-less Dalish elves go wandering about together, after all?

"Or," Athessa sits forward, crossing her arms on the table top. Unintentionally, her body language seems more akin to someone very into the man across from her than someone suggesting sneaky snooping. "I could poke around, see what's upstairs."

He makes a helpless little gesture at the first part—he knows nothing! except race, age, gender, which may be enough—but then smiles, because they do look like the start of a joke. He's still smiling when Athessa leans forward, and he leans forward to match her, elbow on the table and chin in his hand, because perhaps it isn't the worst thing for the answer to what are an Orlesian and an elf doing here together to apparently be having a mildly scandalous romantic moment.

"If you think you can do it without attracting suspicion," he says, "though I do not know what you would expect to find there."

"Probably nothing," she says with a little shrug. "Rooms to let, most like. Maybe a secret meeting room where our contact is. Who can say?"

Worst case scenario is they get thrown out because of her snooping, or they actually have to pay for a room for a while. If she were playing lovestruck intentionally, she might consider paying for the room as means toward snooping because it'd work perfectly well with this impromptu cover.

“Who can say,” Bastien says, as if she’s just said something profound that requires further reflection.

Or something very cute, while he’s pretending to flirt—but not really pretending to think she’s cute, in a different sort of way.

“Alright, Fauvette,” he says. The hand he’s using to hold up his chin and casually smush the side of his face would serve well to obscure lip readers, if anyone were paying them any mind. No one is. But it’s a habit. “But if you take long enough for me to start worrying, I may make a scene.”

"That's a good way to make me take my time," she says, grinning.

But before she can push her chair back to stand, the front door to the tavern opens and a tall, slim man swans in. There's no other word for it, and wouldn't be worth mention if that very same man weren't crossing the room with long, purposeful strides.

"Ah! My dear friends I'm so sorry to keep you waiting, I'm sure you both have had quite a journey, such an ordeal," the man speaks fast and open, a performance if there ever was one. He claps a hand onto Bastien's shoulder and his other to his chest. "And what strength it must have taken for you to stand up to your family before your elopement!"

"Our--" Athessa tries to protest but this strange man talks over her, consolingly:

"Oh, never fear, you are quite safe here, and I won't tell anyone that you've absconded. Now, I have a room upstairs and can have a bottle sent up for us while we discuss your lodging and job prospects in our wonderful city, or travel arrangements if you're on your way further south."

Edited 2019-10-15 21:10 (UTC)

"Keep your voice down, Cuthbert," Bastien says without a missed beat.

He says it both with the shrinking-in of shoulders and nervous glance at the rest of the room that any self-respecting, self-contained man would exhibit when confronted in a public space by such a loud and embarrassing person, but also with the weary fondness and familiar endurance to indicate this loud, embarrassing person is an old friend he's actually very fond of.

The Cuthbert is revenge.

This is probably their contact, possibly a clever fake. Either way, going upstairs it is. Bastien takes a last drink before he stands and offers Athessa his hand—expression still mildly chagrined, for acting's sake, but with his back to the room's other occupants he pulls a yikes face, for hers.

Athessa is pulling her own yikes face by way of downing her ale in a few industrious gulps, much to Cuthbert's amusement.

"Oh, she'll fit in fine," he says, waving some signal to the barkeep and leading the way up the stairs. For the audience, his last line before they disappear into the room is "I really wish you wouldn't advertise my middle name quite so openly, I'm trying to maintain an image here..."

In the room, which is of course just a room to let in a pub, their new friend's attitude settles into something far less theatrical, but no less friendly. He ushers them in, and after the barkeep has delivered a bottle and received a discreetly palmed tip, he pours three drinks and raises his glass to them.

"Thank you for that delightful performance, friends. Haven't had the opportunity to entertain like that for quite some time. You're luckily not an unprecedented pair," The man gestures between Bastien and Athessa with his glass. "A surprising number of young fools from Tevinter are looking to legitimize their sordid affairs with slaves. You'd think there was a war on making them nervous or something."

"Mmm," Bastien hums, non-committal, as he peers into his glass, and then holds out a staying hand toward Athessa in case she's planning to drink hers. "Or something, yes."

He could be subtler about it than this. Or skip it altogether. There are only so many reasons someone would recognize them. But while one of those reasons is he's our contact, another is he's been trailing us from Kirkwall and this is a trap, and the role Bastien is playing—here, today, and also nearly every day of his life for the last five years—is one of a man who wouldn't know how to be very subtle about wondering whether or not he was about to be poisoned.

"You have not told us your name," he prompts. Overcaution, perhaps, but talking so much no one notices the information that's missing is a familiar tactic. He read the book, he wrote the sequel.

The tip of his head isn't unfriendly, though.

She's not going to drink the contents of the glass she was handed, and not merely because she's not so stupid as to accepts drinks from strange men in pubs. Her stomach is churning and full of ale and sure it went along nicely with the theatrics but it tasted foul and feels fouler. So she sets her drink down next to the bottle and leans against the wall next to the door just beyond their new friend's periphery, based on how he turns his head slightly when she does so.

He's probably thinking she's dividing his focus in case one of them needs to act, to get the drop on him, or to stop him from making a speedy exit. She's thinking she's that many steps closer to freedom in case she has to vomit.

"Have I not?" the man asks, genial, as if he's merely forgotten himself. "It's Waverly. Very nice to meet you, etc. and so on." He knocks back his drink, then picks up the glass Athessa abandoned and raises it briefly before downing it, too. "Which makes you Bastien, and you--my dear girl you look a bit green about the gills. Not that I can blame you, that swill you imbibed so hastily downstairs is tantamount to swamp water. But no matter, I am the one who knows who you are seeking and where they were last seen."

"That's, ah," Bastien says, for all appearances watching Athessa more than Waverly. "Good."

He refocuses, takes a polite but small drink of his wine now that it's probably not poisoned (but not definitely not poisoned, poisoning drinks with something one personally has immunity to is an elementary-level spy plan), and sets it down again to sit back and consider the man.

"If you tell us quickly, she might not throw up on your floor."

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