faderift | closed | i know what i know

It has been more than a month since his return from Ghislain. He ought to have spoken sooner. Not that he's been malingering, not entirely — there was a long mountain hike, then another through city and swamp. There was Nascere.

(The flesh between his ribs has knit smooth, but some days, he swears to feel it: Some stripe of interior defect. It would have killed another man,)

"The March," Isaac knows this corner of his office, and he knows the sensation of eyes upon it. They're unobserved. "Were any of your contacts recruited?"

A more forgiving word than conscripted; it isn't for the sake of kindness. Everyone has second thoughts. Everyone but Marcus.

(Is that what it is? Flesh realigned for its death.)

Edited 2020-11-18 07:41 (UTC)

Knowing when you're being watched was certainly a survivalist skill in the context of Circles. Even more so in the context of the Gallows, when it was ruled by Stannard and a generalised sense of pervasive terror. In Riftwatch, the instinct remains, if to a much lesser degree.

And they're not, and so Marcus is about as relaxed as a Marcus will typically be, enough that someone bringing up his allies beyond Kirkwall isn't met with defense. There is a pause before he answers. Maybe over the word 'recruited'.

"No," he says. "None of mine, that I've heard."

Edited (eh in a sec) 2020-11-18 12:09 (UTC)

"For an organization so intimately tied to our purpose," Ostensibly: Corypheus. "It strikes me that we know little of its conditions."

There were scattered troops still in Ghislain, mopping up the wreckage of Imperial wake. The Inquisition, too —

Did they seem so very different? We brought a Templar, he'd told Matthias, and the resignation on Isaac's tongue hardly new for it.

"We know the Chantry. We know some of its conditions."

Marcus' attention drops to the angle of table between them, thinking back for a moment: his own recent recollections, compromises and failures both. He says, "There was a mage who stood accused for the killing of a Chantry sister during the mage rebellion. Her penalty was to serve on the frontlines.

"Her pardon," is a correction, and the slip isn't for affect. Just a slip. "Beyond that, I haven't had any dealings in the March."

The tip of his head is rueful. Yes, they know some of the conditions for amnesty: The lot of them are fucked. But when you count the ways,

"There have been deserters," Two years ago; two months ago. "From the Inquisition and the March. Some turned coat, others,"

When you count the ways, what's one incandescently angry murderer on the other end of the table? He swallows however that sentence might end.

"We need some agreement of how to handle it. As a group."

Edited 2020-11-21 05:24 (UTC)

When they couldn't forever force mages to choose between pious cleric, quiet academic, or prisoner, perhaps soldiers is the answer. The thought rests uneasily in the foreground. There are days when he feels he is in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Weeks, even.

But he is here, and he says, "How has it been handled? From your view."

"Poorly."

It's self-recrimination if it's anything. He ought to have thought of this sooner. (Everyone has second thoughts.)

"We killed deserters at Ghislain," Is blunt, and the least of it. "That first battle. They turned on us in the field, against an army of observers. They chose the Venatori."

Corypheus remains no friend of the Rebellion. The Grand Enchanter established that much.

"Which of those must mean death? Under what conditions?" If you allow for self-defense, what for the rest of Riftwatch? "Alone, we can be pressured into any manner of decision. If we are not cautious, that becomes agreement. The new terms of engagement."

The change in Marcus's expression is as subtle as ever, but maybe of their few conversations, it's not enigmatic to the man sitting across from him. A kind of shuttering, fine tensions, a very careful recalibration of the sort he's done many times before. Anger, sure, and regret.

If the terms of mage politics are going to come down to a binary between the Southern Chantry and forces of the Venatori, then the cause truly was smothered in its crib that day in Redcliffe.

"Who else was with you?"

"Voss, Averesch," Mages. They're speaking of only the relevant parties — "Julius, Fabria. That Fereldan boy."

The healer, the one that's always fussing. Colin. A hand to the day's stubble (protecting his chin).

"When we returned this autumn, there were more. They'd taken up raiding." Out with it: "Flint, Barrow, a Nevarran. Matthias."

The relevant parties. And Isaac. Isaac, too,

"A dozen dead."

Edited 2020-12-08 03:25 (UTC)

Mention of Flint seems to dull the edge of Marcus's focus; Matthias renews it, a flare of anger that is considered, kept contained.

"Barrow is a Templar," he says, "and a coward, praying to the Maker that everyone forgets who he is, and whatever he's run from." Of Matthias, and whoever the Nevarran is, they don't bear mention.

At least, not here, while Isaac is sitting across from him, and Marcus asks, "Did Flint hold his sword to your throat?" It isn't wholly rhetorical. It is a question that demands an answer, teeth showing on the edges of the Commander's name.

"No."

Would it be better if he had? Certainly, this conversation would be simpler. Near as certain, there'd be a fucking brawl. It's impulse to shrug blame — it's one that need be managed. Some anger is necessary,

Some anger gets it done.

"I was a coward," Barrow ought to be dead, and Isaac thinks Flint would have borne it — might better respect the bargain. "And I cannot take a Templar alone."

Sure he could. Marcus doesn't need to know that.

"I was a coward, and the longer you spend here, the more of us you will find. They've built lives. They have people to lose. We cannot afford these choices to hinge upon the weakness of a single man, the pressure of a moment."

"Or more of us will die before this is through."

Edited (what is word) 2020-12-08 04:25 (UTC)

Marcus does read reports, everyone might be surprised to know. He writes his own, and he hands them in in good order with neat hand writing and not too many grammatical errors, and he peruses all that come publicly available. He's waded through the information generated from the work in Ghislain.

None of what Isaac is saying sounds familiar.

Which doesn't help.

He stands. His expression is like stone, but there is still an energy beneath it, chair scraped backwards with the movement of standing and then table creaking as he puts his weight on it, hands flat. "I hope you know," he says, "that your personal survival and safety lives and dies on the survival and safety of your brothers and sisters. No one mage alone will last long in whatever world is made at the end of this."

But just as quickly, that intensity lifts—and redirects. "This wasn't reported. Did Flint demand your discretion."

"It wasn't reported where you could read it," Isaac corrects, ungentle. "I wager the others know. Rutyer, Yseult."

Cannot say what he expects them to know of Nevarra. If Flint held that secret, it wasn't for the sake of Circle mages.

"We blamed the attacks on Venatori. Had this gone public, there would have been reprisals." He stands, belated, hands tucked behind his back. "They'd killed children, Marcus."

Okay, teens.

"And so that is how mages die for their crimes," Marcus says, immediately, "like Corypheus's dogs, in some Orlesian battlefield."

He takes his weight off the table as Isaac stands. Unhappy, visibly, but less so directly at Isaac. "If they think they can live under the banner of the Venatori," he says, collecting his thoughts, "then that says far more as to the Chantry, and the Inquisition, and Riftwatch, than it does for them. Because they're not the only ones."

And they won't be the last. He'd seen the madness his brethren, as he calls them, were driven to in the Hinterlands in those last days of war. They'd known the deal that was on the table in front of Grand Enchanter Fiona that day.

"You want agreement, you said. Where do you suppose that comes from?"

"Within. There are few of us here, and more alike than we are not. That group of yours —"

The training.

"— Those mages who spar with you know what doing so implies," He doesn't expect Lukas to agree, but everyone needs an enemy. Perhaps Marcus more than most. "The Rifters are a secondary concern. They are not us, and there's little to be gained by arguing their semantics. Presented as a sufficiently united front, they're like to fall into sympathy."

"But secrets leak. You'll need someone for doubters to turn to. Not a mage. Someone regarded at least neutrally by our," The click of tongue in teeth. "Leadership."

Edited 2020-12-26 02:33 (UTC)

'Not a mage' encourages a subtle tic and flex of tension at Marcus's jaw. It's easy to react. He is not as reactionary as he could be, and so listens.

Coming here, he hadn't laboured under the illusion that Riftwatch could be made to sympathise wholly with the cause of mages (pretending for a moment there is only one), not when it's busy with the matter of saving the world. But it had drawn such mages anyway, and now, seeing how such things interact, the pressure applied to one in service of the other—

"As a go between?" he asks. Talking to Isaac means, sometimes, he will just have to ask a question that possibly makes him sound stupid in service of finding clarity in the Orlesian's meaning. It is a good thing Marcus doesn't mind that.

closed | i know what i know

marcus;

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