Hunt A Crow

[imbroccata]

WHO: Byerly, Fitcher, Lino, Yseult
WHAT: Hunting down and killing Lino for being a shitlord
WHEN: mid-late Solace
WHERE: Denerim
NOTES: violence and death, but don’t worry; lino won’t succeed in murdering a child

Here’s the sitch:

• Early in the month of Solace, an Antivan Crow by the name of Gio will visit the Gallows. They’ll snoop around briefly but mostly they’ll seek to parlay with leadership. Turns out, Lino is on their shit-list and Gio has been sent to kill him. Gio sees an opportunity for Riftwatch to get some approval points with Antiva and the Crows. Why not just kill him yourselves? Save Gio the trouble, yeah? They can’t offer the name of Lino’s contractor or target, but they give a location: Denerim.


• By the looks of it, Lino barely has a day’s lead, having scarpered as soon as he got wind of Gio being at the Gallows.


• To make matters worse, Denerim has decided to hold a cèilidh, at which all manner of folk will be in attendance. Queen Anora will be making an appearance, and lesser nobility from all across Ferelden will be there. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of assassinatible targets. Byerly will have gotten word of this celebration. Stands to reason that whoever Lino’s target is going to be at the cèilidh.


• Your mission, whether or not you accept it, is to leg it to Denerim as fast as you can and stop Lino. Kill him. Stop him from killing his target. Feel free to get yourselves a funnel cake or two from the shindig.

Comments

[bouchonne]

That's too enticing an opening, though. He quirks an eyebrow, impossibly curious.

[unshut]

She breathes out a laugh, and here lets herself look away. A high flash of humor - he is relentless - and something else less easy. When she looks back to him, she has made up her mind.

"Come below with me."

She touches his elbow, a little thing, then draws back from both him and the rail.

[bouchonne]

He wonders why. They do have privacy up here, of a sort - but, well, it would be quite rude to refuse, wouldn't it?

He tips his chin up, acquiescing, then follows her.

[unshut]

The little passenger cabin is as all little passenger cabins are - cramped, stifled, with the only light afforded there being from a lantern which requires lighting once they arrive. There's hardly room for them both in it.

"Sit, would you," Fitcher says, nodding to the narrow little bunk while dredging the cabin door (which disagrees with being closed) shut behind them.

Then she promptly sets to undoing the series of buttons down the side of her bodice.

[bouchonne]

Ah.

His lips part, and his brows draw down. He finds himself dangerously, absurdly close to protesting, as though virtue is something that concerns him. But - no; he stops himself. If she wants to finally, finally screw, who is he to protest? Even if this is...not precisely the best spot for it. But maybe it helps with seasickness? Perhaps?

He sits.

[unshut]

How good he is, to be so amenable.

"When I married, it was with the understanding that I was doing well for myself. It helped that I enjoyed the man's company, and that I wasn't his first wife and so there was little in the way of scandal. But no tradesman's daughter marries up without being aware of it."

There are lots of buttons. They're part of the appeal of clothes like this - the suggestion that with enough intention, she might open up the wrap of the dress without so much as first peeling out of the high collar and long sleeves. She's brisk about it - about creating that gap down the length of her side, and about shifting closer to take one of his lovely graceful hands and inviting it to find it. It is, all of it, lacking in some patented coyness. Businesslike.

"As I said - not his first wife."

Her side is uneven, characterized less by the warmth of the skin and more by the strange series of whorls tangled into it. The texture of old burns is as notable as the look of them: mottled and odd, running over much of her side and disappearing under edges of fabric yet being held together by her other hand under her arm.

[bouchonne]

Thank the Maker - oh, thank the Maker he hadn't protested, or made some comment that revealed the smutty turn of his mind. If he had - oh, he'd have had to go throw himself in the sea. As it stands, it can just be a little thought tucked away in the back of his mind.

Embarrassment fades quickly, though, at the sight of it. He runs his fingertips over the raised patterns, the old scars. His breath catches; it feels as though winter is throttling him.

What can he say in return? The question he wants to know is, Is he dead? Because his stomach might be too weak to enjoy the act of killing, but he thinks he might derive some satisfaction out of a slightly more elaborate plan. But instead he asks, "He did this to her, as well?" The first wife.

[unshut]

"Not to her, I don't think. But all the ones who came after. I was number seven."

If you say it lightly, it sounds more absurd than terrible - like it is something out of a grimly funny song, or an especially morbid bedtime story. And it was a long time ago. She can afford to be flippant.

"As to the specifics of what he did to them, I can hardly say for certain. But I have a good imagination."

[bouchonne]

Number seven? His gaze snaps up to meet hers, eyes widening. "Why?" he asks, even though that's a foolish question. Even though sometimes, evil men do evil, and there's no way to comprehend it. To even ask why is to put a lovely little gloss on their ugliness: it implies that there's something rational or comprehensible about what they've done.

So he follows with - "How did he get away with it for so long?"

[unshut]

She smiles, not laughing but something near to it, and taps the underside of his chin. "He was rich and married tradesmen's daughters."

And the world is wide and people go missing in it all the time. And who is to say your daughter didn't catch ill in the winter or fall while riding if it happened so far from home?

"But it is a fine question, isn't it? So when that was finished,"—that, like it was nothing and not because she still has the impulse to protect the man in question; he would have thought it amusing, she thinks, to be used like a shield in this way—"It seemed natural to try my hand at finding answers for ones like it."

Her hands move then to find the topmost of that long series of buttons, beginning to patiently close them.

[bouchonne]

"No doubt he was charming," Byerly says, his voice low, "and able to spin a story when need be."

He knows the type. Maker, but he knows the type.

The hand is pulled back from her side; he doesn't think, though, he'll ever forget the feel of that uneven skin. "So then you were not an assassin, truly. You were an avenger."

[unshut]

That does make her laugh, a strangely gentle sound in the claustrophobic cabin.

"How romantic you are, Byerly. It's more or less the same business, isn't it?"

[bouchonne]

"Not at all." A shoulder is lifted. For once, he doesn't look particularly embarrassed to be deemed a romantic. "One is done for money. The other, for retribution."

[unshut]

"So you see. Just a clerk with a soft heart after all."

Halfway through her buttons, she pauses. Under the narrow light the shadow cast by her long hands hovering at her side pitches what opening in her bodice remains and the hint of mangled skin beyond it into shadow.

"I've been rather cold with you. That wasn't my intention."

[bouchonne]

But he shakes his head in answer. His voice is rather low. "How could you be anything else?" He spreads his hands on his knees. His eyes are dark and deep-set in this light, unreadable, but the twist of emotion is clear on his lips. "It is a marvel, that you can abide the presence of a man at all."

[unshut]

"All the same, I both said nothing and expected you to know my mind. Not very sporting of me. Besides," Her hands resume their methodical progress. She smiles at him, with his dark eyes and his sensitive mouth, and hazards a joke. "I would wager that I'm the more dangerous between us."

Take for example a certain willingness to use what is near to hand. My, how exacting an instrument can be made out of a sad story and burns earned two decades after poor Raniero was dead and gone.

[bouchonne]

He lets loose a small, breathy laugh, scarcely more than a scoff. "I should be a poor gambler indeed if I were to wager against you on that front."

True enough. He is not so harmless as he seems, perhaps, but, well, he seems very, very harmless. A little adder with a bit of poison in his fangs, enough to make a wound fester but not kill a fellow. No, not like her, who reveals herself to be a sort of lioness.

"How did you give it up?" Well. He hesitates, realizing he's made quite the assumption. "Have you given it up?"

[unshut]

"Evidently not, given our present heading."

They are currently in pursuit of a Crow and it seems equally unlikely that either Byerly will be the one to handle the business in Denerim or the whole affair will end pleasantly. Even odds to whether she or Yseult gets to the man in question first - or that it won't require both of them.

He is a Crow.

"Let us say that I am between jobs, and that Riftwatch has been such a welcome distraction that it has kept me from looking for another."

[bouchonne]

He studies her a moment. It's perhaps an absurd question, but...After her recent interest, and given this revelation, he really cannot help but wonder.

"You didn't have anything to do with the Grand Cleric, did you?"

[unshut]

Her laugh - when it it full and real and not made either to play at coyness or manufactured to fill a space which might otherwise sting - is such a low, rounded thing. It seems to catch even her by surprise, and so it takes her a moment (in which she does up the final button) to sigh and say, "No. Nowhere near it, the poor woman."

[bouchonne]

That's certainly good. Not grand for his curiosity, his desire to know what happened to the poor woman. But it's good. Good, too, because now he knows what Fitcher sounds like when she laughs for real.

"Perhaps the secret lies in those letters," he says. "You'll have to keep me apprised." It's a joke - a little awkward, with the tension caused by everything that's transpired, but it's a joke.

[unshut]

That laugh is still lurking in the corner of Fitcher's mouth, and when she smiles in reply - the joke is a little awkward indeed - there is something softer and fonder in the lines of it.

"Should Zaluski reach any stunning conclusions, you'll be first person I tell."

She reaches out to smooth back the dark hair at his temple. It's a very delicate thing.

[bouchonne]

He catches her hand before she pulls it back. Lifts it to his lips, and then presses it softly, with exquisite care. No more commentary than that, no more questions; instead, he rises.

"Shall we take in the air once more?"

[unshut]

Fitcher steps back, ceding the room required in the narrow cabin for him to stand. It's an easy thing, as natural as her hand turning softly in his so she might briefly squeeze his fingers. She doesn't say thank you, because it seems a step too far - like a thing she might feel a swift prickle of guilt for today instead of on some other afternoon.

Instead, Fitcher says, "I would enjoy that," which is true. She opens the door and puts out the lantern.