faderift | [open]

A rare clear evening at the end of the month sees an unusual party setting up camp in the further foothills of the Vinmarks, only an hour or two's ride outside the city but far enough to be firmly in the countryside. A goat herd's hut has been loaned for the evening, swept clean and stocked with portable comforts and a blazing fire, but once darkness has fallen in earnest it's out on the high hillside itself that a small camp may be found. A patch of snow has been cleared and packed just large enough for chairs and blanket, and a brazier carefully shaded with clay cover provides some additional assistance against the cold.

Maud, refusing to admit any reluctance to venture back into the snow after her journey to the frozen south, is wrapped in blankets and furs with a smart headband covering brow and ears. Thin leather gloves allow her to flip the pages of a book, before she leans over to show Wysteria the page, other arm outstretched to point toward the stars. "You can just see Visus there now, though the stars of the upper lashes are quite faint. You'll recognize the design from the Inquisition insignia; it's said to represent the Maker's eye. Though I've often wondered why, as it ought to then be closed."

Bundled up in her own mass of blankets and furs with a felted cap pulled very low, Wysteria's own hands are busy folded about a tin mug. It's contents, hot chicory coffee, are steaming prodigiously in the bitter cold of the evening; she is halfway through a sip of the slightly bitter stuff as she turns her attention upward to follow the line of Maud's arm.

"It also belongs to the Seekers, yes? And Judex to the Templar Order." She regards the open page in the book, then the sky above them, then the book again. Rather than punctuate her squinting with various hemming and hawwing, Wysteria fills her study the usual way: by chattering.

"Do you suppose the Divine will rearrange the whole insignia now that the Order has been recalled and reformed? Perhaps new heraldry would help to reinvigorate the whole affair. Have you met any of the new ex-Templars in the company yet? Or!" Wysteria gasps, though her attention remains fixed upwards. "The Lady Seeker. How fantastically mysterious."

"I haven't," Maud says when Wysteria pauses to breathe, "But she seemed very friendly on the crystals. I'd always imagined Seekers being very stern. More than Templars. And older. I suppose they can't always be, it's just that the only Templars I knew were boys in training. Ah there, you can see more of Silentir now-- you see the horn, and then the arm?"

She points again, before reaching for her own mug of coffee while flipping through the book back to the appropriate diagram. The pages catch on gloved fingers and slip away, and she pauses for a moment, fingers pressed to the page. She lifts her head, squares her shoulders toward Wysteria, opens her mouth, and then instead asks: "How goes your work?"

Her attention has lifted again, fixed on the field of stars against their inky black backdrop in pursuit of the various limbs of the constellation in question. And so her answer comes without properly looking round to her companion.

"Oh, well enough. Enchanter Smythe and I are studying synthesizing a poison from Fade-touched fungi. I believe it would be quite useful in the field, and is unlikely to respond to the common antidotes given its the nature of its...mutations, I suppose. And then of course there is the work with Felandaris, and the re-organizing of the Seneschal's filing though I hardly have to explain the latter to you seeing as you are a fellow victim of the work. It is well," she decides is a fine summary. "Quite busy, but that is hardly a poor thing. Oh Maud, you might come with us the next time we locate a rift for study if you like. There is always need of another anchor bearer or two, and I should dearly like to have another lady along. Not that Misters Stark and Ellis and Fitz are unenjoyable company, of course. But it's not at all the same as having a woman about. Between them and the dreadful Monsieur de Foncé, I feel as if I do nothing but manage the temperaments of men all day long and should like some relief from it. Oh! There. I've spotted it now."

This exclamation is in regard for Silentir's arm, reappearing now from behind a gauzy mask of black cloud.

Edited 2021-04-07 06:52 (UTC)

The reprieve feels like a sign, at least for the few seconds it takes Wysteria to skip blithely through her summary before she careens unwittingly back around into the subject again. That feels like a sign, too. If Maud pales a shade the moonlight disguises it, but easy as it would be to let Wysteria divert the conversation once again, she determines to hide from it no longer. Again she turns, closing the book in her lap and setting a hand on her companion's arm.

"Wysteria." She removes the hand once its work is done, back to clasp tightly over the other on the chair's arm. "There is something I must show you. And I will understand if you are angry and wish to discontinue our acquaintance, but I wish you to know that I have not deceived you except so much as I felt it necessary to deceive everyone for a time."

Having ensured she cannot possibly turn back this time, she tugs off her gloves and holds out her hand. Seen up close and steady rather than glimpsed through cloth or peeking out the edge of leather, the green glow of the anchor in her palm isn't quite right. It's emitting a faint light of very nearly the right shade, but looks, on near inspection, like some sort of paint. "You see, I cannot assist with your anchor work."

There are, on occasion, instances in which Wysteria makes a perfectly captive audience. They are not often the times she ought to be paying perfection attention, like say during a conversation with important visitors to the Gallows or while being taught how to fire an arrow from a bow, but the sharing of secrets is almost certainly the sort of instance where her attention may be reliably fixed.

And so her attention lowers and remains very keen indeed, and she herself is very happy to be remain steadfastly mute all through poor Maud's most grievous confession. It is only once the hand has been revealed in full, the smear of paint-like substance identified that she cries out--

"Oh, how excellent!" nearly over top of this very tail end of the other young woman's admission. She promptly takes Maud's hand in both of hers so as to better inspect the state of her palm.

"This is truly very clever! You should alert the Division Heads to this; I think it should be very advantageous if we were to all wear such things in the field. That way it would be so much harder to pick out the real anchors from the rest. Tevinter is fascinated by anchors, I believe, and it would be good to complicate any attempt they might make at capturing them."

Is her first thought, said all at once it one great breath with Maud's hand still firmly in her possession. And then (still without freeing her hand), Wysteria looks directly to her. "But why have you bothered with the deceit at all?! It is hardly as if Riftwatch is so selective, and an educated lady alchemist such as yourself is surely among one of its more qualified recruits!"

Plainly not the reaction Maud had anticipated, though now she finds herself wondering why, given everything she has seen of Wysteria thus far, she thought for even a moment that the science of the thing would not be the rifter's primary concern. No matter how mistaken the fear had been it is a relief to have it over and done, and to instead return to attempting to follow the dizzying speed of Wysteria's mind. Only to find herself fixed almost immediately with the need to reveal yet another secret.

This time she resists both the urge to squirm out of answering and the temptation to offer prefatory apologies, though instead of meeting Wysteria's eyes she looks at their hands. "I couldn't bear the company of my husband's family any longer and this was the only way I could convince them to allow me to leave. There. Now you know all my secrets." She flashes a smile that aims for conspiratorial but falls a little short.

"Mistress Van Klerk!" is the sort of breathlessly scandalized cry of a gossip far more suited to the claustrophobia of a drawing room rather than the open night air, where such gasps travel. "Masquerading as being afflicted with an anchor so as to escape your in-laws--how fantastically inventive. And marvelously daring! Well."

Heroically, she reins herself back to a state of--well, not perfect solemnity, but something far closer than might be expected out of her.

"Marvelous in the sense that I hope very much that they are not the dreadfully domineering sort of relations, of course. And if they are, marvelous in the sense that I am truly delighted you've escaped them."

The urge to wince at that version of her name and the particular tone and volume with which it is pronounced is swiftly balanced by the praise, and Maud permits herself the tiniest upward curlings of a proud smile. It is rather inventive and daring of her, isn't it?

She claps her hand over Wysteria's and squeezes, smiling in greater, warmer earnest. "Thank you. I'd be happy to show you just how I made the paint when we return, but we must keep it secret a bit longer, until I can convince my maid Gerde to return to Tantervale. I'm sure she would tell them the truth immediately if she knew. But Warden Ellis knows," she adds, as if this might ease the burden in some important way. "I know how close the two of you are, I should hate to ask you to keep secrets from him."

"That traitor," she hisses, all faux outrage. "I would like to say I can hardly believe he kept this from me, but the man is mercilessly secretive. Of all people in Riftwatch who you might have trusted with the truth, you selected the most steadfast of them all. But you must tell me the circumstances of how he came to know it, for I can hardly imagine him prying and I would like very much to needle him on the subject. He is often very forlorn and self-serious about honor and oaths and all that and it would be good to make light of the thing just a little."

Oh right. And also:

"And naturally your secret is quite safe with me," Wysteria assures her, giving Maud's hand a last pat before releasing it from her custody. "In fact if you like I will give you one of my own as collateral."

"Thank you," says Maud, after a momentary bubble of laughter after Ellis's forlorn and self-serious merciless secrecy, and a nod promising some further explanation to come. She manages a shade greater solemnity and sincerity in the next breath as she nods, "It means a great deal.

And I would be very happy to keep your secret, too, of course?" Which may be a touch of an understatement as she's leaned forward in obvious interest, as intrigued by this offer as Wysteria might've hoped.

"Well," she begins, grasping her holding chair firmly on either ide of its seat so as to discourage it from collapsing as she shifts it around by a few crucial angles so she might face Maud more directly.

Silentir, utterly forgotten above them, passes mournfully behind some heavy cloud: fine then.

"I will tell you a secret then that no one at all knows about save for myself and a particular gentleman. Indeed I have not breathed so much as a word of it to anyone else, including even the imminently trustworthy Mister Ellis."

Imagine, say Wysteria's raised eyebrows and the theatrical widening of her eyes.

"As it happens, a certain Orlesian and I have made arrangements to be contractually obligated to one another on this coming Summersday. But," she hastens to add before Maud might do anything so ridiculous as offer congratulations. "That is only half of the secret, and indeed I doubt it will remain a secret for much longer. The rest of it, indeed the one which you must swear to take to your very grave, is that it is entirely a financial consideration to slyly navigate around a series of rather inconvenient bureaucratic rulings to which that property in Hightown which I have told you so much about is presently shacked by. In a few months following, once all has been settled, the gentleman and I mean to have the whole thing dissolved and amicably be on our separate ways as if nothing ever happened."

There's a crinkling of humor for Wysteria's drama but Maud's more than interested enough to play along, exaggerating her expectant gaze, the bated breath. And then very genuine surprise, brows leaped upwards before she manages to moderate it into something still surprised but less, shall we say, alarmed? baffled? almost insulting in its degree of shock?

"You're getting married? Is it Monsieur de Fonce? But I thought--." She pauses, and then sets a hand on Wysteria's. "You're quite sure of how things are arranged? That it will all work out in your favor?"

Wysteria, being so rarely the sort of person who manages to keep a secret long enough to shock anyone with anything, can only take the nakedly aghast look on Maud's face in the pale moonlight as the very height of complimentary. It sparks a warm and very genuine pleasure somewhere in her chest. How wonderful it is, to on occasion be so very clever.

"It is the very same," she asserts, spare hand covering Maud's hand over hers, giving all of it a little triumphant shake. "And I am very certain. The laws as written are infinitely clear, and de Foncé himself has said in no uncertain terms that he has no interest whatsoever in Marcher property. So long as we can maintain the ruse long enough to avoid suspicion, everything shall come to pass as it ought to. Granted, to be divorced is no great thing. But I have confidence that it will not affect my future prospects too much. There is already enough against me that adding one more question of eligibility cannot be so bad, and I will be the only Rifter in all of Thedas who properly owns something all her own. Which I am already, technically speaking, but I believe this will allow me a great deal of agency over my finances and I should think the one rather offsets the other."

Maud's confidence in the plan, growing at Wysteria's steady certainty, is stopped short at the mention of divorce. That furrows brow again, though she allows Wysteria to keep talking beyond it (she could hardly do otherwise). A squeeze of her hand then, and a tilt of her head, clearly hesitant to deliver bad news.

"I'm afraid divorce is not an option here," she says, "Monsieur de Foncé ought to have told you. The Chantry does not permit such things, though they do grant annulments on occasion. Will--" another pause, this one more palpably awkward. "Will that present an obstacle to your plan?"

Her laugh is a sharp thing, more akin to a cackle in the cool pitch of the night than it is the pleasant chime of a bell or something more charmingly ladylike. When she has mastered herself with a great patting of hands and so on, Wysteria manages—

"No, not at all. De Foncé and I closer to rivals than to—" She clears her throat, allowing it and her eyebrows to do the work. "Well. Whatever else. No, forgive me. Annulment is surely what I meant. It is what was done in Kalvad before the Second Church recognized divorce, and I imagine it will be what returns when it is unrecognized. But your concern is that of a true friend."

"I see." Maud allows relief to outweigh the twinge of offense at being laughed at quite that hard, since at least it comes with hand-patting and some appreciation of the question's intent. "Well, I am glad to hear you have everything arranged. It sounds very clever of you." With another smile and final supportive squeeze, she withdraws her hand again.

"But why is it a secret from Warden Ellis? I had thought you two were very close. Surely he would be relieved to learn the truth of it? Or do you think he would he disapprove?"

Secure in the her own genius, Wysteria withdraws her hand and pulls the blanket tighter about her until she is little more than a self-satisfied face poking cheerfully from a bundle.

"I will no doubt reveal the details to him eventually. Truly, it is one of those things which I have said little about as if speaking any detail aloud will jeopardize it. A silly superstition. I have no doubt that Mister Ellis would be the very image of discretion and support were I to say something. —But we have gone on and on about my secrets! What is your plan to be rid of your maid?"

That question draws a sigh. "I don't know," Maud admits with a shake of her head, "I was sure the strange dreams would drive her off, but still she lingers despite my hinting that I could do perfectly well on my own. I may have to contrive to go on a mission to somewhere objectionable again--she was very upset for the few moments I pretended I wanted her to come to the icy southern reaches with me."

From her blanket burrito, Wysteria hums thoughtfully. She takes a moment to tip her head back and squint, without really taking in any of the features, at the sky

After some consideration the angle of her chin comes down again.

"Perhaps you could say you have been assigned some secret intelligence work posing as a lady's maid for some extended period of time. A lady's maid surely cannot keep one of her own, and so it would only make sense for her to return to Tantervale until such a time as your assignment was finished."

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thanks notifs

outrageous, dw

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