[closed] test flight

[doneisdone]

WHO: Marcoulf, Nikos, Teren
WHAT: ostensibly subterfuge, in truth a lot of shitfighting
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Perendale
NOTES: stupid

"I've got a lead," Teren says in a low voice, tugging off the middling-quality Orlesian mask she's taken to wearing in the guise of a wine merchant (it covers the scars on her eye, makes her less memorable). She shuts and latches the door behind her, enclosing them in one of their inn rooms where they can speak with some privacy.
They've been here for several days now, conducting their 'business', listening to surrounding conversations and gauging the state of affairs in Perendale. These are Teren's old stomping grounds, and she knows the gathering places where sound doesn't carry, the shady haunts where the respectable and loud-mouthed don't dare to go-- but with this in mind, it's all the more vital that she conceal her own identity.

"There's some sort of meeting happening tomorrow evening," Teren continues sinking down onto a stool and tugging off her terrible Orlesian boots, "if we're lucky, we'll meet some faces of the resistance."

Comments

[exsecutus]

"I hope we can do better than luck."

The griffons don't like Nikos. Or rather, Nikos doesn't like the griffons, so he has decided that they don't like him back, perhaps more than he dislikes them, which makes the fault theirs. So he has happily stayed away from them, leaving their tending to, probably, Marcoulf. Better him to visit the beasts where they're sequestered. Better him to keep them quiet than Nikos.

Nevarra is arguably his country, and it's shit. Perendale is not his city, and it's shit. But no one looks twice at him in a crowd. And it's familiar shit, besides, so Nikos has managed to fit himself in, absorb himself in the news and the gossip and the sharp sour wine that no one outside of Nevarra manages to get right.

He's drinking it now, and the smell of vinegar and dense herbs is thick in the little room. It grows thicker when Nikos uncorks the slender bottle and pours a little into a cup. He pushes it toward Marcoulf. Friendly.

"We should make sure we meet these faces, or we might as well get out of town now and save ourselves another night in this inn. Who are you talking about?"

[esquive]

The cup is accepted, sipped from, scowled over and immediately set very gently aside under the pretense of simply taking his time with it as opposed to mild revulsion. Nevarrans shouldn't be allowed to do such things to grapes, is a private thought before his hands return to their work. One of the griffon's harnesses had lost a buckle on the way in. He's doing the repairs now.

There's a rhythm to the task which defines what might otherwise be a too quiet room: the heavy needle working back and forth and finally pulled through with pliers, the distinct hiss as the waxed cord is pulled tight. From his perch, Marcoulf cocks his ear toward Teren without raising his attention from the mess of straps. Go on, the tilt of his head says.

[doneisdone]

"A 'Ratface Martindale'," Teren explains, unhooking her cup from her belt as she crosses the room and picking up the wine bottle, uncorking it with her teeth and pouring herself a serving without batting an eye. "I expect that's not his real name. I hope not. And Horace Becker. Those are the names I've heard bandied about the most, can't say for sure if they're truly the leaders or just the loudest."

She sets the bottle down, corks it with her free hand, and sniffs the cup's contents before taking a healthy drink of it. "Not bad."

[exsecutus]

"Glad it's to your taste." Nikos leans back in his chair, as careless a slump as ever, fuzzy at the edges from the wine. He swirls his cup to mix in the vinegar before he takes a big sip of his own. "I heard Martindale's name mentioned. I'd at least guess at some legitimacy there."

There's a hypnotism to the whisper of the needle, something familiar. Industrial needlework, like the sound turned up on something more domestic. Nikos rubs irritably at his eye, trying to forget it.

"What do we--" We, he's generous with the word; he knows his answer-- "intend to get from this meeting."

[doneisdone]

It's for Marcoulf's sake that Teren remains civil, ignoring Nikos' sniping as she goes to take a seat on one of the beds and sip from her own wine.
"What d'you think," she asks, clipped, "thoughts, plans, tips on weak spots in the regime that only a civilian would notice. Hopefully they've already got something underway that we can back, give it more muscle."

[exsecutus]

"And we do this on the Inquisition's behalf, and nothing more?"

He applies to them both with an expectant look. Though in truth Nikos does not expect very much. The still waters of Marcoulf run very deep--underground streams, that no one can see--and if he has passion, he doesn't show it easily, something Nikos respects as much as he hates. And Teren is Teren, with a face of carved wood and a heart to match. Where the fuck will he get with them?

"Or Riftwatch, acting as their hand that will get a little dirtier? But not enough. If we have the opportunity, we should encourage something real in them. Not just what the Inquisition would have us say. Something more. This is where opportunity is."

[doneisdone]

Oh, here he goes.

"Something real," Teren intones, cocking her head, "like what, pray tell."

[esquive]

The pause from Marcoulf's margin of the conversation isn't strictly irregular. It's true that the hiss of heavy stitching thread dies, but it's in favor of resetting the block between his thigh and the leather strap so he can tap the heavy needle through the latter. If the interruption of the rhythm is also characterized by a sidelong glance split between Nikos and Teren-- well. Why shouldn't it?

He's very careful about how he tap, tap, taps the needle with the head of the pliers in the interest of drawing as little attention to himself as humanly possible. It would take an idiot not to have picked up on the spark of tension running between the two of them, humming slowly hotter with each passing day in Perendale.

He's mostly not one.

[exsecutus]

Nikos' chair scrapes against the floor as he pulls it closer to the table, and to Teren. A jarring note slicing through the regular rhythm of the pliers. It's not so late in the day that he's dulled.

"This group. They have an opportunity, now. An opportunity to affect something real. If we don't fuck it up. If we can help them--really help them--and lead them toward an act of real rebellion. They have been working in the dark until now. Unsupported. Cut off, the fucking walls keep them in. And now we--" The three of them, but it's always we, that we was half of how Nikos first bought into the rhetoric, inclusive like an arm around the shoulder. The other half was an even split between the fervor and Caspar's mouth, forming the words. Caspar isn't here, so it's left, ineffectively, to Nikos. Fine. "We can help them toward their chance. And we won't have a chance for it ourselves, not here, and not again. This is it. We can do as we were ordered and still do much, much more."

[doneisdone]

With her cup partway to her mouth, Teren pauses to scrutinize Nikos, then takes a thoughtful sip. He's talking a big game, and she can't say she's surprised, based on what she knows of him.
But he's also potentially speaking of things that, were the higher-ups at Riftwatch to find out, could mean a great deal of terrible outcomes in addition to the maybe one or two good ones.

"You've already got a plan," she says in a low voice, as if to say 'I should have known'. "Out with it, then."

[exsecutus]

"General-Mayor Gosleus." Nikos is immediately ready with this name. Not a difficult one to have learned, considering the current situation in Perendale. "We go for him."

He wants, badly, to take another drink. His mouth feels dry, and there's a feeling behind his eye that aches, makes him want to press the heel of his hand to it to stem the feeling. No time for that shit.

"While here, we have learned that the town is not under strict martial rule. Good, for its people. But the signs of its new masters are everywhere. Soldiers. Banners. A new ruler to dictate life in this city, under orders from Tevinter. What orders have been issued so far have been lax enough--hold the city, keep some manner of tense peace by sword and by gallows. Signs of the resistance have surrounded us. Someone graffitied the fucking wall of this building last night. Vints go away: not the most inspiring of slogans. But it was there. It will be gone. If they catch who did it, maybe he'll get off lightly. Maybe they'll take a hand if they've been pushed enough. They'll be there, soon. Because the Vints aren't going anywhere. They've dug in here. And whatever orders Gosleus is receiving, whatever he's sending out--it's here, in this city. And we can get it. For the resistance, here. Give them a leg up on the bastards. Let them see behind the curtains of their rulers and expose what's there, what's planned, what they know."

[esquive]

From the margins, a pause. Hands hover over their work, then Marcoulf takes up the cup again and swallows a mouthful of sour wine.

[doneisdone]

“And how will we get it,” Teren asks evenly, her eyes still narrow and shrewd, watching the young man’s every twitch, every tic of excitement or discomfort.
“We go for the General-Mayor, do we leave him alive? His guards, his aides?”

After the Meeting

[doneisdone]

Teren's hopes had been high, or at least moderately positive.

Now she looks despondent, still sitting at the table in the little back room of the alehouse where the meeting is taking place. These organizers are anything but. They barely seem to know their own names, let alone what they're doing.

It's shambolic.

She sits very still with her head in one hand, eyepatch covering half of her pensive gaze, as she tries to strategize. These fools can't be trusted with anything useful-- they were right to discover this, but it's difficult not to perceive the whole operation as a waste.
She finds herself watching Nikos, gauging his reaction.

[exsecutus]

Nikos does not look despondent, if only because his normal expression is already two shades away from a sulky sort of despondence. Difficult to read, he is sitting with his arms folded over his chest, staring down at a fixed point on the tabletop.

Since yesterday's confrontation, he has been sullen. And a little childish, really, in his refusal to speak more than a few words here and there. Today's meeting had pulled him out of himself, a little--at first. The longer it had gone on, the clearer its direction had become, the potential and capabilities of the resistance and its leaders shrinking further, and further, to nothing.

It's humiliating, to have fought so fiercely for this horseshit. And to know that they have been ordered to leave, that this is where the road ends, that Perendale will be snuffed out on the map, one more Vint city, and its people will be drawn under that banner without so much as a chance. Because of idiots. Because he can't stay. Because there is nothing to work with, here, at least not on paper, and that will go into the report that they carry back to Yseult, and no one cares, and it is with this thought that Nikos stirs, his jaw tight with anger, and grabs for the weak ale they'd been served.

"Say it," he says to Teren, without looking at her. "Whatever you're thinking."

He finishes his cup. He'll have to get up, to get another.

[doneisdone]

"We'll come back," she grunts. Picking up her own cup, she swirls the wine around and takes a sip without a trace of enjoyment.

"They're dead in the water. They need guidance." Her eyes flit from Nikos to the leaders, then back to him. "Careful guidance."

[exsecutus]

"We're leaving them dead in the water," he counters, as he hunches his shoulders, settling down into his stare at the tabletop. He turns his empty cup in his hand, once, the dull quiet scrape of earthenware on wood. Lets the cup settle again, resting on its base. "When we come back, they'll more likely to be dead than waiting on our late intervention."

[doneisdone]

"Stop," Teren hisses, her eyes closed as if in a wince, and she holds up one hand as if to quiet him.
"If we equip them now with what we know, they'll get themselves killed. If we act now, against orders, we leave them to face the consequences, and they'll get themselves killed."
She squares her thin hands on the table in front of her, staring between them as if hoping for an answer.

"We need a strategy, a real strategy, and we need Riftwatch behind it."

[esquive]

Which is when Marcoulf reappears at the table with a fresh pitcher of the not-quite-swill being served in the stuffy back room where where this meeting of would-be rebels is taking place.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," he says, topping off both their cups before sliding into the free chair. "The whole number is dumb as a bag of rocks."

Because he's been loitering on the far side of the alehouse to get another angle on the conversation happening across the room and has just listened to three people discuss the merits of digging a big hole and tricking prominent Tevinter captains in the city into falling into it.

[exsecutus]

"And if stupidity merited death, the world would be very fucking empty. This table," their table, "would be very fucking empty."

And Nikos is not excluding himself from that. He lifts his cup as soon as Marcoulf has refilled it--though he manages a grunt that might be some form of a thanks before he takes a drink.

"I am historically disappointed by people. Have been, will continue to be. But these dumb rock bags are the ones who are here. Living here. And how do we say, be patient, we'll come back with a strategy. When do we come back? We leave it open, they get impatient, and," he stabs his thumb down at the table, squashing something invisible. "It ends. We don't even know we will be able to get back here."

[doneisdone]

"We say nothing," Teren cuts in quietly, "we equip them only with what won't hinder them further. At the moment, they don't know who we are. They don't need to. Not yet."

She wrinkles her nose slightly at the sight of Nikos drinking even more; does he ever do anything else?

"We'll get back here." The cogs are turning in her mind as she looks at Marcoulf, then out at the remnants of the meeting. "I'll accept nothing less."

[esquive]

This, he thinks, gets them nowhere at the exact same pace as the evening past's discussion. Is it better or worse that they're not broadcasting it to the entirety of Riftwatch this time?

Marcoulf takes a small sip from his own cup, surveys the rooms, then supplies: "Messr Averesch is correct. They should know who we are." If only because they'd let three virtual strangers walk into their seditious back room meetings. "They need little jobs to do that won't harm them while they're waiting. The Inqui--" hm. "Riftwatch can give them little things to puzzle over. To keep them occupied."

[exsecutus]

Nikos' mouth twists. Only his closest friends (all two of them) would know to read that as a kind of reluctant surprise.

Instead of acknowledging it, or saying anything that gets at that being a good idea, he slides his gaze over to Teren. Flat, dark.

"Does it help you to justify hearing them spoken of like children, or stupid animals?" Little jobs. But there's a kind of good to it. Acknowledgement of that point is conferred by how he's not glaring at Marcoulf.

[doneisdone]

Teren is silent as she considers, and doesn't even look at Nikos when he jabs at her. She's too tired, too annoyed, to deal with him right now.
But Marcoulf has a point. She offers him a single nod of agreement.
"Shall we, then."

[esquive]

A curt nod; Marcoulf swallows another mouthful of ale and then rises again from the chair. He shouldn't have bothered with sitting down in the first place. "Let's not begin with those three," he suggests, motioning with his cup toward the cluster of rabble-rousers he's just slipped away from. They're still discussing their pit. One of them is making hand gestures suggesting the presence of sharpened sticks at the bottom.

All things being equal, there must be better options in the room. Marcoulf trusts either Nikos or Teren has already picked them out.