[closed]

[katabasis]

WHO: Silver, Flint
WHAT: Two pirates scouring Kirkwall's bookshops in the service of important diplomacy work.
WHEN: Early Drakonis
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Doing their JOBS.

It is their fourth stop. They've wound their way through the more prominent Hightown booksellers, having worked their way from out of the company of skittish shopkeepers anxiously overseeing the systematic scrutiny of their shelves by two alleged pirates and into the clutches of what can only be described as Kirkwall's most peevish old bat:

"I don't care who you think you are; you can't be here this long without purchasing something," she'd wheezed at them in the cavernous old place, one hand trembling at the head of her cane and the other arm wrapped around a ginger cat with large blinking eyes.

Which is why they now own a collection of romance novels with increasingly unlikely love interests, including but not limited to a Chantry sister and a shapeshifting witch, between them. It's also why they're being left alone now to pick through the labyrinthine shop's back room, wading through unorganized stacks of used titles, and--

Choking on dust, mostly.

"Have you considered simply copying the book instead?" This said into his sleeve while scrubbing a thick layer of grime from one of the room's upper shelves.

Comments

[katabasis]

"What are you so concerned that I might commit you to while you aren't looking?"

It's a blunt question, the point of the fire iron setting with a hard snap against the floorboard. If it isn't a question of what he isn't giving away - not what Silver is, not what they are meant to be here for, not the island or everything tied to it -, then it must be in the shape of what they're accomplishing and the direction he has pushed them in to do it.

"Just tell me what part of this you don't want, and I'll see that it's avoided or resolved," he says, the line of his arm and hand sharp and everything else moderated by force.

[hornswoggle]

What can he object to? The longer the argument stretches, the larger the stretch of unknowns loom in John's mind. His grip doesn't loosen.

"My concern isn't for what you may do."

Says John, without knowing the full extent of what Flint has gotten up to in the past months. He'd cautioned Billy against blind trust, against believing too strongly in Flint, but he feels the pull of it again now. It takes on a different shape for John than it had for Billy, or for Mr. Gates, or the crew on the Walrus; for John there is the unshakable, implicit understanding that their objective is the same. That they are of the same mind, even now, so surely there can be nothing too objectionable nor past their combined ability to rectify.

"Is it so hard for you to imagine that wishing to know your mind and share your thoughts isn't born out of distrust?"