[closed]

[unshut]

WHO: Fitcher, Byerly, Lexie
WHAT: Playing cards in the sick room
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Kirkwall, The Grippe War(ehouse)d
NOTES: n/a, will add if necessary

"And that, I'm afraid, is the end of the trick. It seems I've won again, Ambassador. Would you like me to explain where you went wrong, or shall I simply deal again?"

As far as venues for card games go, this one is truly the height of misery - a narrow bed in a line of them, surrounded by other wheezing and coughing sick, and the whole state of the infirmary kept almost unpleasantly over warm in what must be an attempt to sweat the sickness out. But this is hardly a card game, either. If the last five hands are any indication, Fitcher is making up the rules as she goes along for her own pleasure.

Which she is perfectly entitled to, thank you. There must be something done to keep her in good spirits as the illness - perhaps by some combination of her rather less than conservative lifestyle or the fact that she is, simply put, old enough to get murdered by these sorts of things if she isn't mindful - has done its work to draw her rather thin and pale, to make her dark eyes very dark, where she is laid up in bed. Her knee, beneath the terrobly casual line of Byerly's arm, might almost be described as sharp.

Comments

[bouchonne]

"Wicked woman," he groans. He groans it (alas) a little too emphatically, for the stimulation to his lungs causes some dreadful little bubble of something in there to choke him; he turns his head aside in a coughing fit severe enough that he ends it with a struggle for breath. He ends the fit elegantly enough, however, resting his head against his shoulder and looking at her, eyes all the darker above the feverish flush of his cheek.

"You wouldn't be winning all these hands if I were a well man." Which isn't true; the cheating is quite blatant. But the reminder of his frailty gives him an excuse to slump down a little lower, pressing more of himself against the comely length of her calf.

[unshut]

"Perhaps I've been going easy on you all this time," she suggests sweeping the cards up from the blanket and beginning the tedious task of reshuffling in her lap. Fitcher looks at him, all arch and faux chill. "And the fever has only succeeded in burning all the sympathy out of me."

[bouchonne]

"Oh," he murmurs, clearly full of feeling, gazing up at her with utter devotion. "Please let it be so. And please stay so cruel even when you've recovered."

[unshut]

She regards him for a beat, all thoughtful and fever bright, then ruins the effect with a waggle of eyebrows as she squares the deck.

"I have a personal rule to make no promises while in a sick bed, Messere. I find it makes one prone to exaggeration."

The whisk, whisk of cards as she deals is a soft sound under the hack of their immediate neighbor's newest coughing fit.

[coquettish_trees]

For a moment, upon her entrance to the room, she cannot see the man she's come to visit. Raising briefly to her toes and tilting her head curiously yields a leg she recognizes, which she can follow up to where he settles his body. Comfortably. Against another errant limb. From there to its owner—Fitcher, isn't it. The woman she'd sent along as a clerk with the expedition to gather rumors about Rolant's return. Who had killed the mage who'd ensnared Athessa.

But the thoughts are interrupted as her eyes travel, because Byerly is long, and lax, and loose despite the cough in a way she has not seen in years, and he is looking at the woman in a way that used to be hers and it is genuine, and for a very still moment Alexandrie is as wild inside as a cat that finds itself suddenly backed to a corner, drawing Emile's voice into her head unbidden to, kind and stern, remind her how to breathe.

Briefly, she thinks she will leave while she remains unmarked. But there is something small and petty in its hurt inside her that wants him to know she saw.

And so, "I thought to come and entertain you," Alexandrie says pleasantly on the formal glide of her approach, placid water over a riptide, "but I see you have company enough."

[unshut]

Fitcher doesn't straighten - she is quite comfortable where she is propped against her pillow, and in any case her leg is presently irrevocably trapped under the edge of Messere Rutyer. She does however manage a smile to and to pause the dealing out of cards.

"Ah, Madame Asgard. What an unexpected pleasure. I would offer to deal you in, but I suspect that goes against our new regulations for how to handle the ill."

[bouchonne]

"It would be unforgivable if we were to get you sick," By agrees, turning towards Alexandrie. His smile is welcoming. All in all, he looks quite content for a man languishing under the effects of a dreadful illness. And why wouldn't he be? He has one lovely woman to lean against and another to entertain him.

"But perhaps you might look over my shoulder as I play," he says. "Provide me advice. I'm losing most dreadfully."

And he lowers his eyelashes and pouts up at Fitcher. The expression is openly artful.

[unshut]

Fitcher clucks her tongue at him, the low sound so synonymous with You poor thing, that it all but gives him a conciliatory pat to the cheek. Luckily, she is a woman who does very little by half measures and so follows through with her hand at his jaw.

"How else am I to make up the debt you've put me in?" To Alexandrie, cheerfully as she withdraws her hand and resumes dealing: "The Ambassador was to have quit his post by close of Wintersend. I have a not insignificant sum riding on it with a half dozen people. —Messere, have you considered expiring of your grippe? There is still some time."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie braces for the fury of the wild thing that lives in her, but... it doesn’t come. Somehow it is different, with Fitcher. Perhaps because the woman’s easy affection doesn’t feel like the bright flaunted displays of possessive intimacy Sidony is prone to. This is quiet, easy, missable. An open hand Byerly’s bird has lit on, not a grip.

The thing does flick its tail in sulky pique at Byerly, however, for the crime of lighting on it. In front of her, no less. (The interruptive thought Has he not seen you sewn adoringly to your husband’s side? is summarily discarded as smoothly as the cards fall from Fitcher’s hands as she deals.)

“Pauvre homme,” she clucks at the offending gentleman as she moves to look over his shoulder at his cards with an obliging air. “Tell me what you are playing so I might advise you on it.”

Regardless of the answer, she will begin to surreptitiously signal the content of his hand to his opponent as soon as she can catch her eye.

[bouchonne]

"Maker," he says, drawing cards from his hand, "I don't think that Fitcher told me the made-up name for this made-up game of hers. Quick, my lady, invent something."

As soon as Lexie looks at his cards, of course, he assumes that she's going to be cheating in some way or another. She's Orlesian, after all. It's in their blood. If this were a serious game, of course, he would invent some diversion to move her away from her current position...But it's a game for fun and nothing else. And there's pleasure in allowing Fitcher to walk all over him.

So - he tilts his hand obligingly towards Lexie, face as innocent as that of a young and callow Fereldan country boy come to Val Royeaux for the first time, utterly overwhelmed by the court and capital life, disastrously trusting. Just to pick a point of comparison at random.

[unshut]

"Just because you haven't heard of a game doesn't mean I've made it up, Ambassador Rutyer. In fact, I would guess the Lady Asgard to be well acquainted with Queen's Bluff. It is a game played very commonly in women's salons, you see. Come to think of it, that may be part of why you're losing so terribly." She gives him a frank look as she rearranges her hand. "It requires a soft touch."

The game is absolutely made up. That much is clear from the very first series of plays. On the fourth exchange, Fitcher hums judgementally over the state of the cards and shoots Alexandrie a significant glance. "You see what I mean."

[coquettish_trees]

It being fabricated in its entirety, and Fitcher and herself currently allied in its construction, it will little matter what she says. They will be correct, and Byerly—judging by the open affect of naïveté he displays to her along with his cards—perfectly happy to be their entirely willing victim.

"Just so," she affirms, immediately thereafter making a noise of admonition that would be judged subtle only on stage as Byerly's fingers close on a card to play it.

[bouchonne]

"Oh?" He looks around theatrically at Lexie's noise of warning, then nods sagely. "Oh, I see." And he moves his fingers from that card to a different one - one that is altogether random, the playing of which has no strategy involved in the least.

"But I'm a very soft man, you know," he protests mildly. "Possessed of a full suite of womanly virtues. Indeed, I think I may be softer than either of you."

(There is no question that he is softer than either of them.)

[unshut]

"I'm afraid that is the trouble, Ambassador. A soft touch is very different from a truly gentle one; a lady is made of iron and chooses to moderste herself, whereas I'm afraid you bear a closer resemblance to my favorite goose feather filled pillow," she explains, placing a series of cards over his as if she has made some very clever play off his choice. "But I would be delighted to hear what womanly virtues you believe you possess.

"Although, it occurs to me that the Lady Asgard might not be here expressely to play cards or discuss your habits, Messere." She looks to Alexandrie then. "You must say the word if I'm causing any delay to your business, Madame."

[coquettish_trees]

"Her business was to be the entertainment of the Ambassador, and so she is on it." Alexandrie eyes Byerly, still in his comfortably stretched slump against Fitcher, and of a sudden hates it again. And so she considers the pile of cards on the bed instead, and is not entirely successful at keeping the needle tip of hurt from peeking through the cover of of her light and unconcerned tone.

"Although she finds herself unnecessary."

[bouchonne]

"Yes, yes, entirely so," By says, his voice rather dry in response to her playacting. The little quaver of unhappiness in her voice is an unsubtle touch, he thinks. "I find all my joy with this lady now."

He taps a finger on Fitcher's ankle.

Then, "What was your plan for entertainment, dear Lexie? Surely not this card game which was most certainly invented but a few minutes hence."

skippin' cause immediacy! 8D

[coquettish_trees]

The cultivated looseness freezes in place and Alexandrie is, of a sudden, on her feet and brushing her skirt as if the last moments were unwanted folds in the cloth she could dismiss with the same precise briskness.

"What matter that?" She asks, as airy as her shoulders are stone, "I shall take it back to Hightown and entertain all my joy." A dip of her chin to Fitcher. "Madame."

She has already turned towards the door and taken a step before "Ambassador," follows.

[unshut]

Given the tap to her ankle, Fitcher glances up from her hand of cards fully prepared for a bite of sly humor or something like it and finding-- well, not that. The Lady Asgard rises, all sweeping skirts and perfunctory goodbyes; the look Fitcher throws Byerly in the wake of it is a question without concrete form.

[bouchonne]

His lips part in confusion. It's taking the joke a bit far, it seems to him. It'd be one thing if it were done with just him, but Fitcher is here as well, and she doesn't know Lexie's sense of humor.

"Oh, come now," he says, and though his brows betray his confusion with the way they're knitted together his voice is light - "I apologize from the depths of my heart. Come back, my lady, come and bring me joy."