[closed]

[katabasis]

WHO: Flint & Yseult
WHAT: Talking shop
WHEN: Early August, post-abomination
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: N/A

"If we weren't about to start burning our way through Antivan shipping, I'd suggest we start with finding some connection willing to smuggle goods into Tevinter on our behalf alongside their legitimate shipments. To Carastes or Neromenian."

It's too hot to have this conversation in either of their offices; neither of them have windows pointed in the right direction to catch the breeze at this hour, and there has been enough sweating and misery in the Gallows this week that it seems imprudent to solicit more. Instead they've taken to one of the ugly narrow ramparts where the wind can suck away any delicate parts of this conversation long before it reaches any ear other than their own, and they have room to move with shadow as the sun slowly tracks around in its attempt to catch them.

From here, they can see Kirkwall and its harbor with all its shipping in miniature. The island chain to the west and south is a smudge on the horizon. And though they are on the wrong side of the Gallows entirely to look East, he can pretend he feels it like a tugging thing: the pull of the Amaranthine, and the Northern Passage and everything which lies beyond it.

(He's tired. He looks it.)

Comments

[hassaran]

Yseult looks windswept and irritatingly comfortable, though that may this once be attributed less to natural poise and more to the pair of perpetually frozen magic stones she wears on a chain around her neck and occasionally shifts to rest against this bit of skin instead of that one. Sternum, pulse, slung around to the back of her neck. The other chains shift as she leans down to plant elbows on the parapet, a tangle of gold, silver, and leather, an arrowhead and a man's ring with a wine-dark gem, not new but rarely glimpsed, now just barely held back by a button.

"To the rebels? Do we have much in the way of goods that they couldn't get closer to home? I think we're more likely to buy them with help than supplies."

[katabasis]

"The question," he says, from his place against the parapet's interior wall. The stones are cooler there and he can lean all his weight against them - cool blue midday shadow across the back of his neck. "Is what help most closely resembles. Any uprising in Tevinter will require numbers, or mage support, or both. Or to be timed with an incursion from beyond the Imperium's borders to either draw attention from any action within or to arrive in support of it."

He rubs his brow absently; it isn't so strikingly hot as to insufferable, but he can feel a headache thumping away behind his temples regardless.

[hassaran]

Yseult makes a wordless sound in response, a placeholder marking where some manner of not-quite-agreement will shortly be raised. The breeze ruffles at her collar, linen the shade of dry sand on northern beaches that only emphasizes the unfashionable tan of her skin, sun-browned as a sailor and sprayed with freckles. After a minute's consideration of the waterline, she fills in the gap.

"Even if he raised every able-bodied slave in the Imperium I can't see how they would take the place without a coordinated invasion. And until the time for that arrives, numbers are as much a hazard as a help. We might be best-served to build on what we began with his rescue. Make use of our unique resources to take on things their pack of amateur activists haven't the skills for. Demonstrate our commitment to their cause in the process."

[katabasis]

"So, what?" He drops his hand away, looking at her.

"We run information? Slit the occasional vulnerable throat? Trade a personal favor with some genteel noblewoman in exchange that she write to her cousin who is a Chantry Sister in Antiva City and will petition the Grand Cleric there to write a firmly worded note about the evils of slavery so that some Merchant Prince's devout wife will threaten to blackmail him if he doesn't sever his ties with some Tevinter silver mine?"

This is how they work, isn't it? In painstaking, backward facing increments.

[hassaran]

She turns to look at him with head cocked, the angle dragging her shadow fractionally into view above the wall's like a head peering over the parapet at the enemy position below.

"We can do more than that, but no, not much. Don't tell me you came here hoping to raise an army fit for a counter-invasion."

[katabasis]

"I came here with the expectation that we do more than just make it convenient for half of Thedas to sit by and do next to nothing."

Is not patient per say, but has no heat in it and bears little resemblance to a door being pulled shut. That wall isn't cool enough to matter. He lets his head bump back and settle against it anyway.

"The Inquisition has been the only thing standing against Corypheus for six years and it's lost more ground than it's gained. Why are we following the example it set for Kirkwall's work when it hasn't gotten us anywhere?"

here it is definitely worth the wait

[hassaran]

"Because without the Inquisition we'd all be growing red lyrium by now," she says, dry still, not that impressed with his sulking so far. "And because no one has yet suggested a different path that didn't sound worse. But if you'd like to try, by all means."

i'll do you one better

[katabasis]

The look he gives her is exceptionally flat.

"Don't tell me you're satisfied with any of this."

[hassaran]

She matches it.

"It has been a few months since anyone here tried to convince me that perhaps we should let Corypheus win if we are not prepared to immediately and completely free every elf, mage, rifter, slave, et cetera. I consider that a form of progress."

[katabasis]

That flat look sharpens by a half degree, turns sidelong. Don't lump him in with Nikos Averesch.

"So then what does success in this look like to you? If we had a contingent of Tevinter rebels in our hands right now, what would you expect we be doing with them? Folding them into the Exalted March? Clearing the way to Minrathous? Encouraging them to lie down so Beatrix's forces might trample them without incident?"

[hassaran]

Her head tilts even further into irritation. Don't lump her in with whatever idiots he thinks would suggest that.

"By the time Tevinter has been pushed out altogether there will be no stomach or funds to continue. The Tevinter rebels help destroy the popularity of the Venatori and dampen enthusiasm for war, so that when the March steps over the border there is a government willing to negotiate. A few token concessions, and everyone goes home."

[katabasis]

His barking laugh is a humorless thing.

"I can't decide which sounds least likely - that Tevinter rebels will support a few token concessions from a government happy to shove them right back where they came from, or that Divine Beatrix will be content to simply step back over the border."

The abrasive quality of those thoughts finally shifts him from heel to toe and partly free of the interior wall's shadow.

"Those people,"—the rebels; the Divine; pick your preference—"Are hungry enough to recognize this as an opportunity to change what the Imperium is. If we want Valeriantus on our side, we need to put money and resources in the pockets of that rebellion so they recognize both that they're better off with us than otherwise and that they have enough power to not be discarded after."

[hassaran]

"You misunderstand me," is Yseult's reply, dry and bare. She doesn't move so much as a muscle when he does. "If you have an actual suggestion I am happy to discuss it, but perhaps this conversation would be more productive if you stopped alternating between treating me like a fool and spinning fairytales about launching invasions or having money and resources to give away."

[katabasis]

"Leverage Ferelden," is clipped back. "We have a Denerim spy at our fingertips who almost certainly can be made to see the value in committing aid to a rebellion in Tevinter if it means someone other than Orlais will walk away from Minrathous with contacts and trading partnerships with what replaces the Imperium. Establish smuggling routes - not to secret things into Tevinter, but to enable anyone looking to escape the Exalted March the ability to flee it and so collapse the markets of those places they leave behind. When Valeriantus and his people move in to make changes, they appear as heroes to anyone left.

"Meanwhile, find a soporati in Carastes who the city respects and sway him to support the effort. Or, fuck, murder them and lay responsibility at the doorstep of one of the Houses in residence there who the Magisterium dislikes so that the only ones dissenting will be the people the street sees as responsible. If what we can do is limited to granting favors and slitting throats, it must be with the goal of motivating people the Inquisition and Chantry have either failed to or discarded."

[hassaran]

"That would spread us even thinner," Yseult points out. Her irritation has lingered--'tell me how to do my job' wasn't what she meant either--but she's at least thinking about what he's said.

"If we divide our efforts further from that of the Inquisition and the Chantry, we will likely all accomplish even less than we are now. And risk setting us at odds with them in the process. Smuggling out people who wish to escape the March would see us transporting Venatori, or at least their more cowardly sympathizers. Boats full of Artemaeus. Whose shores would we be dumping them on?"

[katabasis]

"Why not be at odds with them? Or at least be willing to question them? Or, better—Convince them that it's to their own advantage that we pursue what they cannot while they turn a blind eye. If we're not doing what the Inquisition and the Chantry either isn't prepared or able to do, then what point was there in separating to begin with? Surely the Chantry has more than enough hands able to slit a throat or charm noblewomen in its employ already."