faderift | [open]

He tilts his hand to indicate he'd followed. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her yet, but I'll keep an eye out. I can't imagine she'll be hard to miss, under the circumstances."

It would be easy, then, to slide back into (companionable?) silence. Instead, though, he offers, "Is she looking for any particular sort of training, or just seeing what's on offer?"

"You'd have to ask her," could be a full stop. But. "She's been at it with some Warden. Ellis something."

She lifts her tankard—and pauses.

"Why, are you offering?"

He's not not offering: "I don't presume I'm the only available option, or even the only one apart from the Warden. But I have taught swordplay before. I wouldn't mind doing so again, if she'd like." A brief pause, and then, deadpan: "I do, in fact, have skills beyond shoveling."

Edited 2021-03-13 19:00 (UTC)

All of this is accepted as fact with a nod and a certain air of unflinching seriousness.

"Right," she says. "Overthinking too."

Her resolve holds right up until she tips her drink. When it happens, Miriam's laugh is an undignified and half-quashed snort across the lip of the tankard. It comes seemingly standard with a pacifying gesture from her spare hand--so automatic that the two things practically overlap.

"Sorry, no. Don't offer; she won't appreciate it. I'll stop tugging the hook in your cheek."

Her laugh gets a smile from him. It's a good smile, warm. (Underused.) "I appreciate you saving me the embarrassment of taking you at your word. If it helps, you are far from the first person to make a note of the overthinking. Temperamental hazard, I'm afraid." He has, at least, relaxed a fraction.

After a moment, he adds, "I would like to know more about you, if you would like to say. It's only ... it is hard for me to not worry about misstepping. Prodding a wound out of ignorance. I know it can make me seem stiff."

He relaxes a fraction and as if in sympathy to it, her brief flash of humor and contrition both are smoothed away—made effectively invisible again in the span of her taking a drink.

"Are you accusing me of being wounded?" Is so reflexive that the beat which follows is visibly devoted to course correction in the name of stop tugging. So across the table from him, Miriam straightens. Squares her shoulders a little, both hands wrapping around the tankard.

"I know how to say no. Ask away."

"Accusing is not the word I would have used," before she can correct too much. The smile fades, though he's less stiff than he was when the conversation started; two steps forward, one back. And he does, at least, ask:

"What were you and your sister doing, before she caught an anchor shard in the hand?"

As reward, her answer comes readily. It's a simple question.

"We were with the Inquisition. She did alchemical work for their Research division. I mostly mucked around in Orlais. Helped recapture Montfort." A tip of the head is like a shrug, the curtain of her dark shifting. "Field work."

He considers and immediately rejects the idea of asking whether she and Antosha had crossed paths; neither answer leads anywhere he's inclined to go. So, instead, he says, "I'm inclined to field work myself. And seeing your prowess against the snow, I'm hardly surprised."

It's not quite a tease (he's not sure he's allowed that), but it's firmer ground.

"I suppose it's not so surprising we did not encounter each other then," he adds. "Larger organization, plus both of us out on field assignments frequently."

Prowess. The line of her mouth curves, a polite kind of smile. She neglects to mention his skill with a shovel and the countless ditches dug around northern Orlais, but she thinks it.

"Not surprising," Miriam agrees. "But a little strange to think that over the hill someone else was doing more or less the same thing."

More or less.

"I do suppose that's often the way." It skirts a bit something that he's not eager to touch, regardless of how she feels about it. He doesn't entirely pivot, though, still touching on the Inquisition to say: "It made me feel very provincial. I'd mostly been in Nevarra, before deciding to join the Inquisition. It was ... an adjustment." He hadn't expected the culture shock to the degree it had existed, even if he's some years past it now.

"Which Circle?" Has the shape of a well practiced, and therefore thoughtless question. It's only after she's said it that Miriam visibly hesitates, then gently revises: "Where in Nevarra?"

There's good sense in practicing that alternative.

"Cumberland." To both. "I spent most of my life there, though I was born in Nevarra City. I was lucky, in that I got to travel a bit, but not outside Nevarra itself. I never felt any particular wanderlust, before, but I do think I'm probably the better for having seen more of the world." Maybe not happier, but at least in possession of greater context.

"What about you? Where, before the Inquisition?" He leaves it to her to determine how long before.

Some line in her face goes crooked with amusement for Cumberland and slants more so for Nevarra City. Oh yes, very provincial indeed, she manages not to say.

(A shined shoe scuffs easily, says the distant voice of Enchanter Hennigar in her ear.)

"Between it and Markham—irregulars attached to an arm of the rebellion." Straightforward. As if this is a thing she has no reason to he cagey about. And why not? Surely this is the natural assumption.

"Scouting and small action fighting until we managed to get far enough to slip in under the wing of the Grand Enchanter's main force. Run and hide duty," she says, with the air of someone who has called it so before. What kind of fight can be put up with a half dozen children tethered on your apron strings?

(Enough of one.)

The war is hardly a surprise, but it feels like it has a center of gravity that sucks their conversation toward it despite Vanya's effort to steer around it.

(He thinks, briefly, that maybe someday he truly won't care what anyone thinks of him, but this seems somehow unlikely.)

"To be perfectly honest with you," he says after a short pause. "I'm not sure how to talk about the war. People so often just assume and I let them, but. I have no idea what it was like here in the Marches." So why should anyone else know things they weren't there for? Or just an invitation to continue, perhaps.

Miriam takes it as the latter. Further, she seems untroubled by aiming straight for the heart of the thing:

"More scattered than down south, I'm led to believe. Kirkwall was real and immediate to these people, and so was Dairsmuid. And with so many First Enchanters removed to White Spire and the bulk of the rebellion effort further south—" She tips her head, dismissive. "Up here it was just everyone jumping at everyone else's shadow from Hercinia to Tantervale."

She takes a drink, then adds, "Say what you like about the rest; at least now everyone more or less knows where everyone else stands and who's in charge of the decision, I suppose."

"I suppose." It's mostly agreement. "My unit didn't leave Nevarra, at least while I was still with them. I think there was a faction in the leadership who believed that if the Order could just keep peace within our borders, the war would blow itself out south of us, which struck me as foolishness even at the time. It was never going to work like that."

He seems like he might stop there; he takes a drink. But then he adds: "You're right, though. The clarity lets people make the decisions they need to, instead of deciding that whatever outcome they liked best or feared most was most likely to arrive any day."

Between the curtains of her dark, bluntly cut hair, a flicker of humor tugs at the corner of Miriam's mouth. If it reaches her eyes, the associated glint is too quick to see but apparently passing beyond that flat fixed look is a rare thing, and she's already laughed once. Better not to set too generous a precedent.

"I'll have to write the Grand Enchanter herself and share the good news. 'Madame, a Templar told me I was right about the war—'"

The expression that flickers might almost be a smile, but it doesn't linger long enough for certainty. It's deadpan when he says, "Only a former Templar, it might lose you a point or two."

Her "Can't have everything," in response is immediate, as if it were prepared in the wings and only waiting on that predictable cue.

With a rise and fall of her eyebrows, Miriam drains what remains in her tankard.

"If you'd like I could rejoin, tell you you're right, and immediately quit again." Very polite.

"If you would," is said in some similarly well-mannered tone, vowels all rounded toward some imagined version of high bred respectability. "That would be very considerate of you."

And then with a quirk of the head, Miriam's dark sheet of hair fanning along her shoulder, the faux air of quality is stripped away; the empty tankard is thunked for effect on the table top.

"Are you a second round sort, Ser Orlov?"

There's a moment where it seems like he might say no, but only briefly. "I could still do with a bit of warming up. Why not?" Probably a lot of reasons, but that's an affirmative to staying all the same.

[open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject