faderift | [closed] test flight

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."

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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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

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.

"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."

"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."

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."

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.

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."

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.

[closed] test flight

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