faderift | And in the sea that's painted black

Saints help them all, she thinks, if — or when — this man meets Nikolai. Their senses of humor are entirely too similar, and she's not sure she wants to be present for that level of absurdity.

"As long as you keep your tentacles to yourself," she says, dry, "then I won't even judge you for the horns."

He grins, delighted by her playing along. He lifts his hands from the water and places them upon his forehead, fingers curved into the shape of horns.

"Thank you, thank you," he says, wiggling those fingers at her. "You're too kind."

He knows the woman is a new arrival, and knows she is a Rifter. Her name is - Zoya, he thinks? He's not sure enough of that to speak it aloud. Dreadfully embarrassing if he's wrong. But he's sure about her being a Rifter.

"So how are you finding our squalid little home?"

"Don't get used to it," she says, less threat than statement of fact. Kind and Zoya aren't words that tend to go together.

Perhaps a case in point: she considers his question only briefly before answering,

"Horrible." Let Nikolai charm and flatter. Blunt honesty is Zoya's way. "I can only assume this place is called the Gallows so people know to expect nothing from it. The incessant smells of the sea are foul, the architecture is atrocious, and the tea is worse than the filth they sell in our smallest peasant towns."

His grin broadens when he hears her brutal assessment. Charming. Very charming. Is she always this mean? Maker, he hopes so. He's desperate for some properly rude people around the Gallows, rather than the passive-aggressive rudeness he's generally stuck with.

"Good tea can be found," he says, "if you make friends with the right people." A little tap of his nose gives some hint to who the right people are. "As for the atrocious architecture...The city was built, originally, by our enemies. By Tevinter. So it's actually good to be located here, because we look around us, and see these ugly buildings, and we let it fan the flames of our zeal to defeat the monsters."

"Defeat Tevinter so they can't conquer your country and fill it with bad taste," she considers aloud, before shrugging. "I've heard worse pitches."

Tevinter, she thinks, then Corypheus. A hopelessly ancient creature of darkness with an interest in rupturing the fabric of the world, in domination and conquest, in using merzost. Abomination.

Typical.

"So how did we come to inhabit one of Tevinter's castoffs?"

"It's a good story," he says, a bit of good humor creeping into his voice. He settles back into the water, setting his shoulders against the bath behind him, clearly moving into a storyteller's pose.

"Once," he says, "this was a city of blood and pain. In the ancient days of the Tevinter Imperium, this was a center of the slave trade. It was known as Emerius then. The City of Chains. A million enslaved, at the height of this place, they said.

"But then a slave named Radun stepped forward. And he said to Tevinter, dear masters, why don't you go screw? Pardon my language," he says to Zoya, even though he'd be quite surprised if she minded. "And they said, we won't. And so Radun nodded, and led a grand rebellion, and murdered all of 'em."

He grins. "It's why I don't mind the architecture too much. It's a remnant of a history that did not turn out well for those with such dreadful taste."

A flick of her fingers, dismissive.

"That sounds like a children's tale."

She can imagine it easily enough: Sankt Radun of the chained city, an illustrated page in the Istorii Sankt’ya alongside the tale of Sankt Petyr or Sankta Anastasia.

"It's a matter of history, recorded in reputable sources," he replies, pressing a hand to his chest in mock-offense. Then, after a slight pause - "Well, the general outline of the story, at least. I may have taken liberties with the dialogue."

She scoffs, frowning skeptically. For all of her disbelief, there isn't much heat in it; cynicism, rearing its head.

"There was a slave rebellion against a powerful empire, and they got to live happily ever after?"

Is she going to challenge a Theodosian on his own history? Apparently.

"Maybe I should've said it sounded like a story to tell gullible rifters." A beat, then, "It's good propaganda. I'd do the same thing."

"Oh, I said nothing about living happily ever after," he says, his smile turning crooked. "Violence followed the uprising. Then, in the centuries that followed - the Blight came in force, and the Orlesians, and any number of other misfortunes. Slaughtering one's enemies - alas! - does not mean finding peace."

Then, his smile straightens out again. "But if you'd like, I can pretend the propaganda for Rifters is the real story. I'd prefer it to be."

There it is. There's some grim satisfaction to the way she tilts her head, acknowledging.

Slaughtering one's enemies does not mean finding peace. Zoya's still testing that theory, but it's telling to the kind of man he is that he says so.

"I prefer the truth. Wishing the world better doesn't make it so, in my experience."

"No," he agrees, "not unless everyone joins in and does it at the same time. Unfortunately, people tend to have very different ideas about what makes the world better, and so we are left always at an impasse."

He gives a shrug, half-wry and half-mournful. Then -

"Was your home like this? Or did you all manage to find peace?"

There's a flicker of bitterness in her eyes. But when she speaks, her voice is level.

"Peace is as fleeting as a passing cloud." Said like she hasn't devoted the last three years of her life to just that, to rebuilding her country stronger than ever before. "But my king is dedicated to the cause. We have enemies at our borders and untrustworthy allies, but no new civil wars. Which is as good as it gets for Ravka."

No new civil wars yet, at least, whatever West Ravka may intend.

A sympathetic cluck of his tongue. "Well," he says, "welcome to Riftwatch, which has enemies at its borders - as much as we have borders, I suppose - and untrustworthy allies. But at least we do have the advantage of a very clear enemy who's direly in need of some murdering."

She tosses her head.

"Then count yourselves lucky to now have Ravka's general among your ranks."

Her spine is straight, her head held high with pride as if she sits at a war table and not in a steaming bath.

His eyebrows tick up very slightly at that declaration. Not in disbelief, just in surprise. It's no shock that she's military, with that martial bearing - but - well. General seems like a very high rank for someone so young.

But Rifters are all dreams anyway. So if this woman has dreamed herself a general, who is he to disagree? Particularly if she's dreamed herself with the concomitant skills.

So, after that brief flicker of surprise, he lowers his head in a slight bow. "Fortunate indeed," he agrees, before lifting his head again. "I suppose I should presume you'll be in Forces, then? Flint's division?"

She's seen worse than an instant of surprise. Men, typically expecting other, similarly aging men, who refuse to take her seriously. Fjerdan otkazat’sya who call her position a result of her unnaturalness, the Grisha witches sheltered by Ravka. This is, by comparison, barely noticeable.

"You presume correctly." She's still drawing her conclusions about the Commander, but the conversation about Nikolai's nightly accommodations could've gone worse. "It was the division best-suited to me. Which one is yours?"

"What, you can't guess?" he says, fluttering his almost uncannily long eyelashes at her. "Narrow shoulders, thin chest, weak arms, an abundance of good looks and charm?"

He presses a hand against the side of his face, in the manner of a fawning starlet absorbing the admiration of an adoring crowd - then drops it, and says, slightly less facetiously, "Diplomacy." Then, even though he doesn't exactly enjoy dropping this tidbit, given how often it causes a decidedly unfun shift in the way people treat him - "Head of Diplomacy, to be more precise."

"Last I checked," she says in that space between faux-fawning and answering, "'Jester' wasn't a division."

— which is an interesting last thing to say before he admits to being one of the division heads. Someone else would probably consider walking that comment back. Zoya simply shrugs.

"If you're telling me the division heads have no other options for hot baths than public pools, then the war is clearly going worse than I'd thought."

"If you think I seem like a jester now, wait till you see me in my newest suit," By answers with obnoxious, unoffended cheer. "The current fashionable colors would make an Antivan mime blush."

Then, "But aren't you charmed by it? The baths? It's so egalitarian."

She groans, rests her head back against the edge of the water. Saints damn you, Byerly, you're not going to have the satisfaction of making her laugh.

To the ceiling, she says,

"Charming and egalitarian don't belong in the same breath." First of all. Second of all: "Put the baths outdoors, offer me a glass of wine, perhaps some scenery, and then I'll consider charming."

"Yes, I fear that scenery can't really be provided in Kirkwall," By admits with a rueful shrug. "Just another reason to fight harder. After the war is through, perhaps we can all go to Antiva, instead."

Then he says, slightly less facetiously, "My quarters are at the top of the tower. I could have a servant bring hot water to me, but that feels quite unkind. Besides which, I quite enjoy the company of others."

"And," she observes, "you depend on no one for information about general sentiment."

It's a strategy she recognizes. Let the people see your face, know you, remember why they support you; keep a pulse on what they're saying, what they're thinking, and hear with your own ears instead of through any person's agenda.

Or maybe he does just like others' company. It's not what she would do, but, y'know. And it's a better topic of conversation than the idea of after the war — a war that isn't hers and she has no desire to see out.

He gives a wry smile and taps the side of his nose. A got it in one kind of gesture.

"And," he says, "I get to hear the best gossip." He sinks down in the water, letting out an ecstatic little sigh. "I love gossip."

Well. She has to ask,

"What's the best thing you've heard recently?"

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bouchonne - 2021-05-09 14:42 (UTC) - Expand

And in the sea that's painted black | OTA

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