[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]

"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."