OPEN

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa and YOU!
WHAT: Catch-all because I need to stop exclusively inboxing
WHEN: Whenever but mostly now-ish, post-dream meme
WHERE: Around, Kirkwall and the Gallows, maybe in the field who knows
NOTES: NSFW threads will be marked and/or moved to my NSFW inbox, CW as needed, blah blah blah

Specific starters in the comments!

Comments

[cozen]

"Well," Bastien says, and puffs up a bit, like a pompous professor, making fun of himself to perhaps help avoid sounding like he's making fun of her, "the first lesson is: if you find someone change toward you, suddenly, for no obvious reason, make a note of the last few things you said so you can examine them later."

The source of the smell is a street cart. The coffee being peddled out of it is horrendously overpriced, and he's not that desperate. He just wants to smell it, for a bit, so he sits on a bench in range.

"Why do you think he is pretending? If he is pretending."

[sulahnan]

She sits on the bench next to him, leaning back and kicking her legs out in front, crossed at the ankle.

"Well...because he doesn't act like what he says he is. And denies it whenever he does something nice. And after he stalled that messenger that was looking to extradite Laura, when I thanked him... I think he looked kinda... affected by it, just for a second before going back to being... Byerly." The emphasis on his name is important. It makes it more descriptive.

[cozen]

"Mm. Ouais. I meant more... Why do you think he would pretend? It is common enough for men to pretend to be more than they are. More kind, more important, more talented. The rewards for that are obvious. But consistently pretending to be less that what you are is rare."

He puts his head against the stone, shifts course.

"But I suppose the specific reason is less important than knowing that there must be one, and to him it must be worth what it makes people think of him—even if it is only that he enjoys horrifying people, and that is his reward. Or maybe he truly thinks he must be a rake, and it pleases him to have it confirmed. Most people like to be told that they are right about themselves, you know, even if being wrong would mean that they are better than they think."

[sulahnan]

Before she can stop herself, she makes a face and asks: "Why?"

As if she hasn't been calling herself stupid for years. Though when someone agrees, being right doesn't bring her much pleasure. Rather than think on that enough to suffer any personal growth, she returns to the concept of Byerly pretending to be a scoundrel.

"Why would it benefit him to--oh. If he is the best he can be and broadcasts it, nobody will underestimate him. They'll always have their guard up. But if they don't think of him as a threat, they're more likely to let things slide."

[cozen]

A thoughtful hum, toward the sky.

"Non," he decides. "That sounds fake."

(That's a joke. Because it's what he also spends all of his time doing. You know.)

[sulahnan]

At first she doesn't get that he's joking, and she's about to argue, or at least be bummed about being wrong, but then she gets it. Bastien didn't need protection from those bandits, but she'd underestimated him. Fought to protect him. She gives him a look.

"As fake as your mustache."

[cozen]

He smooths the mustache in question neatly with his thumb and finger, in answer, and smiles sidelong.

"That could be part of it," he says. "But it does not really matter. What matters is that if your goal is to..." How to say it. "... suck up to someone," in his bad Marcher accent, "then generally you will want to play along with whatever they seem to believe about themselves. Whatever image they put forward. That does not mean you should call someone an idiot because they seem to think they are, of course. But if you call them a genius, even if you mean it sincerely, they will think you are full of shit."

He inhales deep. He's starting to get scent-blind to the coffee. What a shame.

"On average. Not all of the time. It is an art, not a science."

[sulahnan]

Athessa huffs through her nose, not exactly chuffed to hear that Bastien's advice is to treat Byerly like a scoundrel to get on his good side. It makes sense, in a way, since Byerly only seemed to warm to her once she started playing along, redacting her thanks and playfully mocking Fereldan food, but...

She crosses her arms and sinks lower on the bench, muttering something into her scarf.

[cozen]

Bastien teasingly parrots back her mumbling—accurate to what he heard, incoherent as it was—and stands up to continue walking.

[sulahnan]

Tipping her head up to look at him, she repeats herself clearly:

"I don't want to be mean."

It sounds so childish, and she rolls her eyes at that, but it's the truth. The one thing about her that doesn't change.

[cozen]

“You do not have to be, chérie,” Bastien says. “You do not have to do anything. I might be wrong—and even if I am right, I think it is only the safest path into someone’s good graces. Not the only one.”

He offers her a hand up.

“Anyway, Byerly is a difficult one. It is part of his charm. Between that and the fragrant perfume of wine and piss—it is no wonder he married so well.” And in case she takes that for mean, he adds, “He is an old friend. I would not tell you to do something I thought would wound him.”

[sulahnan]

That ship has sailed.

"He did at that," she agrees, taking the offered hand despite being perfectly capable of standing on her own. More or less. She slips on--what is that, frozen coffee? She manages not to fall, but ends up actually needing that hand.

After her recovery, involving a high pitched squeak and some swearing, Athessa looks at her feet, and then at Bastien's shoes. "Do those make it easier to walk on ice at all?"

[cozen]

“I have never walked barefoot on ice to compare,” Bastien says, on the tail end of his quiet, huffy laughter at the squeak. “I enjoy having toes too much.”

Are elves specially immune to frostbite? Possibly. Something to try to read about later.

[sulahnan]

No more immune than the next person, just more accustomed to weather. Generally speaking, anyway. Athessa hmphs. Perhaps she'll get some shoes and see if there's any difference besides having warmer feet. That...actually might be enough of an incentive, at least in the winter months. These toe-less socks definitely don't help with traction.

A few quiet moments after they're back on course to deliver the bundle of messages, fed up with stewing on what she said to set Byerly off, she braces herself for whatever answer Bastien might give, then asks:

"What did Yseult say when she asked you to train me?"

[cozen]

“That you were a liability,” Bastien says. He isn’t going to start her training by lying to her. But he continues, “That you could be an asset. That you might be good at making people think you are no one they need to worry about,” because he also isn’t going to start it off with the words not very bright. “And that happens to be my speciality.”

[sulahnan]

She takes a short breath through her teeth, the same sound one makes upon stubbing a toe or something. Liability sounds bad. The rest doesn't sound as bad, but it's going to take time to balance confidence in herself with letting people continue to think she's a dumbass.

"In my defense," she ventures, "I haven't been a liability on any actual missions. Just..."

Yeah. Just the one time she conspired with Colin to steal a thing, then threw both the plan and the thing into the sea because she was unprepared, too high, and panicked. She shrugs and crosses her arms tightly over herself again.

[cozen]

“You do not need a defense,” Bastien says, reaching to pat her opposite shoulder as they walk. If they weren’t in public, in Hightown, he might settle it around her more permanently, but he doesn’t want anyone staring. “We are all liabilities in one way or another.”

He holds his bundle of messages toward her.

“When we get to the Keep, I will fall behind you,” he says. “Watch the guards at the doors while you walk—they always have one on either side. Whichever one you think is going to ask you what you are doing here, hold the letters in that hand. It does not matter that they stop you. I just want to see when you can tell.” A beat. “And you have to walk down the middle. No cheating.”

[sulahnan]

It comes as some relief when they get to Viscount's Keep that she doesn't even have the time to think about cheating, and that she doesn't recognize either of the guards. When she's within line of sight, the guard on the left doesn't do more than glance at the approaching elf, but the other guard's demeanor hardens. Athessa keeps the bundle in her right hand, where it already was, and keeps walking with the confidence of someone who knows where she's going.

"What's your business here, knife-ears?" Typical. As expected, the guard on the right steps closer to the center and holds an arm out.

"Messages," she answers, gesturing with them.

[cozen]

—okay, maybe he should have told her to keep the messages in both hands until she had an idea. Notes for next time.

The guard's scornful follow-up questions—messages for who, from who—don't get very far before Bastien catches up to her, intervening with a waved hand and she is with me that settles the matter immediately. Human privilege. Between the door and the target of their delivery, he asks a few questions about what she noticed, how she knew, what it means for a demeanor to harden.

But once they're walking away, leaving the Keep behind them, he says, "Do you remember his face?"

[sulahnan]

"Yeah, but if you're gonna ask me to draw it for you, set your expectations low." She is many things, but an artist she is not. "I'm not gonna be so dramatic as to say I remember the face of everyone who calls me knife-ear, but I definitely remember the guards that do."

They're the ones who pose the biggest threat, after all. Random strangers will rat out other strangers without much thought, but the City Guard are more likely to have benefit of the doubt. Quelling dissidents they might call it, or keeping the peace.

[cozen]

"Good," Bastien says, "because he is our training dummy. When you have time to work on it, I want you to find out everything about him—what he does for fun, whether or not the Guard Captain likes him, what he loves, what he is afraid of, who he is kind to and why. You have a head start on who he is cruel to. You can approach that however you like—"

A deviation, here, from how he was taught.

"—as long as you do not put yourself in danger. If you want to interact with him alone or break into his home or something, let me know, so I can be close."

[sulahnan]

Athessa makes a face, but agrees to the terms all the same. She even goes so far as to think easy enough but the last time she did any surveillance and intel gathering was nearly three years ago.

"I guess you're gonna give me a deadline, yeah?"

Otherwise what would be the point?

[cozen]

"Give me an update in two weeks." A little puffed-up there, as if relishing his little bit of power, but he's only joking. He shrugs off the air of authority a moment later. "You do not have to be finished then. I assume you have real work to do, ouais? But we can talk about it then."

[sulahnan]

"This is real work, innit? Other than chores and fieldwork the only orders I have are to take training seriously." Shoulders heaving in a shrug, she puts her hands in her pockets. They're on their way to the market district, a trek she knows well and doesn't pay much heed to this early. Later in the day you'd have to watch out for street urchins, bumping into people and making off with their coin purses, but at this hour it's just merchants and people getting ready for the work day.

[cozen]

“Sure,” Bastien says, “but is not all we are going to do, n’est-ce pas? You have to get me into shape so I can show you how we fight without messing up our hair, and then—the music is part of it, you know, not only a cover story to get us places. We use the songs and stories to lead people’s minds and moods where we want them without making it too obvious that we are trying.”

The sun’s getting higher. It’s not warm, exactly, but it is warmer, like standing outside the window of a room with a fireplace.

“So think of Monsieur Raciste as a long-term project. It is not about learning his itinerary as quick as you can. It is about understanding him.” He’s going to buy her breakfast, now—not any ridiculously-priced coffee, but something. He’s on the lookout. “You can take your time.”