faderift | [closed] if you're here and I'm here then who's flying the plane

Entry tags:

james flint,
yseult

[closed] if you're here and I'm here then who's flying the plane

WHO: Flint & Yseult
WHAT: Trust exercises
WHEN: Immediately pre-hasmal invasion
WHERE: Near Hasmal
NOTES: will include content warning in subject lines if applicable

It's almost guaranteed that their contact has utilized the flow of refugees across the border and toward Hasmal as a cover to pass into the South, though they aren't meant to meet them in that. Doubtless every breed of intelligencier currently peddles their trade there, for if an agent of one secret network might slip in that direction then why not agents of all?

Rather, after crossing the broad width of the Minanter on one of the point-nosed ferries (in the company of a pilot with a near supernatural skill for weaseling extra coin out of pocket, but who tactfully neglects to intervene in the debate his passengers are engaged in), they hire a pair of horses and turn west toward what is allegedly an all but forgotten trading post by the name of Drake's Landing which is said to boast such luxuries as a nearly empty inn and the cheapest drink in the political tri-corner.

At some point—perhaps after the fourth or fifth narrow bridge that they have to coax the horses across, for the landscape is threaded through with twisting offshoots of the Minanter—Flint remarks, "If we come this way again, it would be faster to row in."

Maybe that's how the Venatori beat them to the Landing. Or maybe the ferry pilot had a raven in the little cabin at the back of his boat who had carried word of a certain notable captain of Riftwatch swiftly North.

Regardless—

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's right. There is no question that it would have been faster to make this trip over water. Yseult doesn't say that. She says, "Only because of all the rain this last fortnight," as if that's an important distinction to draw, as if she's some expert in western Minanter water tables. It's been that kind of trip.

She's been to Drake's Landing before, the kind of place where it's hard to go unnoticed but it doesn't cost much to bribe everyone in town to forget. That there's no one else on the road and no real signs of life as they ride in doesn't exactly set off alarm bells.

"The ferry lost more time than the bridges. Let's get this over with."

"The ferry," he snips back, heels digging fruitlessly into the hired horse's sides. The animal had decided on its pace the moment they'd left its picket, and no amount of encouragement has compelled it to lengthen its stride.

"Would you have preferred we swim across the river?"

It has been that kind of trip. The disagreement which had spurted them both in this direction has fed a half dozen minor 'negotiatons' since, including sich minor points as the acceptable rate for the horses and the character of the weather—

A figure has stepped into the crossroads. Flint hardly glances in their direction.

"We could have crossed nearer to Hasmal, as I said." There's just something about him that now demands a pettiness Yseult did not otherwise know she had in her. Maybe this constant urge to snip and snipe is just an effect of exposure to the miasma of it emanating from Flint. That feels right.

A figure has stepped into the crossroads, and Yseult gives him only a cursory scan, nothing immediately leaping out as wrong, but then her attention's already divided between the inn where they're to meet Valeriantus's man and the will required not to scream. Her horse continues forward more or less of its own volition before slowing to a stop before the hitching rail. It's not that smart, there's just a water trough beside it.

Soon enough she's on the ground, heading for the steps up and looking over her shoulder ready to be annoyed that Flint is even the slightest bit behind. That's when the figure in the crossroads is joined by a half-dozen or so others. There is no mistaking it for anything but coordinated action, nor their intent for anything but unfriendly. In the space of a heartbeat Yseult has a throwing knife in her hand and aimed at the throat of the Venatori who's just stepped out of the inn, but the mage's spell stops her where she stands, arm out and wrist curled just short of releasing the blade.

The quiet deteriorates rapidly.

Flint, having only just dismounted, is afforded the luxury of throwing down the hired horses reins and drawing the sword at his belt before the contingent in the crossroads closes in. The horse shies back in reply either from the initial hiss of the blade or the flurry of motion which follows. The first hacking swing of that sword is so heavy that it knocks loose the grip of the leading Venatori or hired mercenary or bounty hunter. He struggles to recover, deflecting the upward return of Flints sword seemingly by dumb luck. But then Flint has a hold of the man's forearm and the power to simply divert his sword manually, and there is no avoiding the successive lance.

The spooking horse has judiciously removed itself from the situation in the matter of seconds it takes for the remaining armed force to overwhelm a single man with a sword. Flint is driven back into Yseult's seized still shadow, the crack of steel on steel bizarrely bright in the otherwise seemingly vacant crossroads. When some cudgel cracks a knee hard enough to drop him, it's at both Yseult's feet and those of the Venatori mage who has descended the stairs to patiently pluck the throwing knife from between her fingers.

The mage buffs the blade of Yseult's knife against his robes, fine white silk and linen suitable to the arrival of summer in the north. They'll have a moment to contemplate the fabric up close as he circles past them, his hem passing close enough to Flint's nose to note that the edging looks like actual gold thread. Just as he's about to pass out of the fixed range of their vision, he lifts a hand. Two cudgels crack down this time.

When he wakes, Flint will find himself seated in a wooden chair before a wooden table. The room, not large, is stone on all sides, with the barrel-vaulted ceiling and lingering humidity that suggests a cellar. Across from him at the table sits the Venatori mage, his pristine white costume with its elaborate hood—pushed back now to reveal short dark hair precisely combed and lightly oiled into shape—at odds with the more rustic surrounds. He looks to be somewhere in his 40s, smooth-shaven with naturally arched brows and hooded eyes that lend a weight to his attention that in this context can only feel menacing.

He smiles. "Captain Flint. Or do you prefer Commander now? It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last. I have heard such things." An upward shift of those brows exaggerates a tone that hovers between scandalized and impressed. Such things.

Edited 2021-07-03 16:58 (UTC)

He is first aware of the ache in his shoulders and neck, a hum of pins-and-needle prickling that passes through his arms. There's a heaviness—first a clumsy lack of coordination followed by sharp jabbing fingers of pain as he straightens from the slouched shape the chair had allowed him to collapse into. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust in the confines of the stone room, or maybe to blink back the film better attributed to the headache pulsing high in his forehead. Maybe there is a bruise forming somewhere on his head. It feels like there must be.

A short, compulsive inventory: hands, fine; shoulders, stiff; left leg, sound; right leg, a swollen knee that protests the idea of sitting much less bearing weight. And then of course there is the man across from him, and the very quiet room which surrounds them, and the fact that they are alone.

After a long beat, he says, "You seem to have me at a disadvantage."

Which, while something of an understatement, certainly might be equally applicable to how Yseult wakes. She has been bound hand to foot and dumped with little ceremony onto a brick floor. The room is cool, faintly humid. A shuttered lantern on the floor some paces away spills only the barest slat of light. Otherwise it is mostly-dark, the claustrophobic quality of the room written in the stillness of the air.

"I can see you've woken up," says a voice from the gloom beyond the covered lamp. A pair of faint cat's eye sheens glint in the dark. "You're welcome to try sitting up if you like."

Yseult's waking is too sudden to have disguised, stealing the moment she might have spent in feigned stillness acquainting herself with her surroundings and deciding on a plan. She takes back as much of it as she can by first tugging at her bonds and then rolling awkwardly into a sitting position after a failed first attempt. Her eyes have adjusted a little by the time she is faced in the direction of that voice, and she looks around the small, dark space with open dismay that appears to mount as facts sink in.

"What's going on?" she asks, a bit tremulous, as if valiantly holding back panic. Her accent is still Marches, just slightly broadened into something more generic. "Who are you?"

Down the hall, the man smiles, with his eyes and everything. "I am Magister Tagaris, but you may call me Ayaz. Perhaps in turn I may call you James? That would simplify things nicely, I think. You may find it presumptuous when we have only just met, but I am sure we are about to become much better acquainted. Tell me, James: what brings you to this part of the world today?"

Tagaris.

The Magisterium is a strange, living thing. It's possible there was no such Magister when he last had been in such a position where he might be expected to recognize the name. It's equally possible that Ayaz had been unremarkable to slip from his memory. Or maybe he has yet to fully smear back the grimy layer laid over his thoughts by the—recent? How long since they were in that crossroads?—blow to the head.

Regardless: he can't immediately place the name or the smile, eyes and everything included.

"I would prefer you didn't," he says first. Slowly. James. After a long, aching moment, he supplies: "I would have expected you to know already. Unless you're telling me our meeting is uncommonly good luck."

And in the dark room, there is a scrape of soft soled shoes on the floor and the whispering of rustling clothes. Maybe that voice in the dark has risen from some invisible seat, or shifted forward from against the place where they have been leaning, or—

"Don't worry. You're perfectly safe. I'm only waiting for permission to release you. I didn't want you to be alone when you woke up."

The woman that drifts into that bar of light is slight and small and in the thin illumination she seems quite young. She is dressed in simple leathers with her hair cropped so short that it is more like a dark layer of down on her skull; it does nothing at all to disguise the elven shape of her features and ears.

"You can call me Fidan if you like. Do you know where you are?"

Perhaps, when his mind has had time to clear, out will trickle some thin stream of recollection: an old man, a seat in the Magisterium chamber more often empty than not, a name down a list of likely votes against them. Not this man, clearly. He smiles again, the bend of his brows almost theatrical in its expression of puzzlement.

"No? But it is a name you prefer, is it not? Else you would not have kept it all this time. No matter. You may choose another, if you like. As for our meeting, I would not call it luck that someone has been speaking out of turn."

Fidan's assurances appear to have some effect, though Yseult doesn't play it as total relief, not this fast, not still bound and in the dark in more ways than one. Some slight easing of incipient panic at her words, a few degrees of tension released at her appearance as she offers it. "Fidan," she repeats, as if grasping a hold on a slippery thing, and then looks around again, shaking her head shiver-quick. "We were at Drake's Landing," she remembers, swallowing to wet her mouth. "Before. Are we still there?"

From the liminal space at the light's edge, Fidan says, "Yes, that's right. We're in the basement of the inn there now."

It's possible that's true. In the dark and the quiet, who's to say? Maybe the inn at Drake's Landing has somehow contrived to dig themselves a basement despite lying so close to the water.

"Will you tell me your name?"

"Flint," he says. "Will do. We both seem to be familiar with it."

He finally shifts his hands up off the arms of the chair, rubbing first one wrist and then then other—flexing his fingers, then making a fist as his attention travels briefly around the room. It isn't difficult to be a little slow. Between the thump thump thump of a headache and the thud thud thud of his pulse slowly catching up to the present circumstances, it would be more of a challenge to seem fully in possession of all of his faculties.

"The woman I was with. What have you done with her?"

Yseult bows her head, attempting to get it low enough to feel at the side of her head where the lump has formed, fingers touching at the crust of blood already dried. Another point against Drake's Landing. She holds her head there a moment, balanced on bound hands as if it pains her to move it; that at least requires no deception.

"Nina," she decides, a name that both decreases the need for improvisation and provides options for later, depending on how this goes. "Where is my client? The man I was with?"

Ayaz watches Flint's hands, not with wariness, but with avid attention, as if there is some information to be gleaned from how he balls his fist. The question draws his eyes up with some degree of reluctance.

He shrugs, clicks his tongue against his teeth. "She is upstairs, dining with my companions. I am afraid you have misplaced your trust in that one. She has told us a great deal about you."

It inspires a strange split impulse. The urge to laugh cut with— some more basic impulse. A flicker of uneasiness like a whispering crosswind. The corner of his mouth slants up all the same.

"Such as?"

"You mean Commander Flint?" Fidan sways faintly further into the slip of lamplight. There is something shadowed in her expression. "He's with the Magister. I don't think you'll see him again. I'm very sorry."

Her head tips faintly. It's a small thing—unconscious maybe, as reflexive as the sharp point of her study.

"What service were you providing him? I don't see why they should care to keep you if it isn't necessary."

The Magister wiggles fingers in vague indication of 'many things, too many to list', rings glinting. "Your identity, to begin. Your career and your sad history, your island of Nascere, your work with the Inquisition. That is to say, Riftwatch. She has been particularly forthcoming. Was changing the name your idea? You have, as they say, form."

Maybe just for a second Yseult feels a real chill at the claim that Flint is dead or about to be. Either way, eyes widen and some of that tension returns, curling limbs a little closer to her body.

"A guide," she explains, "To Drake's Landing. He hired me at Wealdstone, said he'd never been and there might be some secretary work for me when we got here. You work for a Magister?" She says it like she's cursing in a Chantry, voice low and quick, mouth trying to touch the word as little as possible.

It's possible she knows all that.

There are inquiries that might be made—that have been made, if what Byerly thinks he knows is any indication. It's possible they had consulted one another in some closed room in the Gallows. Maybe he had filled her in on whatever parts she didn't know. Or Yseult had gone looking herself, and the only difference between the head of Diplomacy and the head of Scouting is one displays the knife and the other carries it in unseen on her person.

Flint's attention has drifted absently upward. It returns as if recalled by the question, though he doesn't answer it.

"Can I ask what I'm being traded for?"

Somewhere else, Fidan gentles just a little in turn. With the air of a person well used to slipping along the margins of a place, she makes some minor step sideways that brings her fully into the sliver of lamplight. She crouches so they might be level with one another. And like a wary cat, she doesn't give Yseult's bindings enough credit to come within arm's reach.

"I don't have much choice in the matter." Then, more tentatively: "Did he say anything about why he needed to come here? What sort of secretary work? Any detail at all you remember might help in seeing you released."

Edited 2021-07-11 18:04 (UTC)

'Nina' tenses as Fidan first moves closer, not quite a flinch, and eases again at her tone. She frowns in thought, as if wracking her brain for anything that might buy her release. "I think there's a group he works for? He mentioned them--complained, really. That he couldn't trust his people with even things like this, he had to do everything himself." Always easiest to build a lie from the truth wherever possible, and so on.

The Magister lifts one thick brow at Flint's question, as if mildly puzzled by it. "Her freedom, of course. We do not really need you both. But she has not quite earned her prize just yet. You might still claim it if you liked. You are a man who knows many interesting things, I think."

It is easy to imagine that these conversations occur perfectly parallel to one another; that Fidan gently asks What do you remember? while somewhere else the Magister says Tell me what you know. But it is conceivable, isn't it? That one might lag behind the other. Maybe somewhere in this inn at Drake's Landing, Flint has already said something to spoil her ruse. Would he tell them willingly, or will they have pried it out from under his skin?

Fidan breathes in, a soft sound in preparation for reply. And then from somewhere in the mostly-dark, there is a knock on a door. Straightening, Fidan slips from the sliver of lamplight and melts back into the anonymous shadows of the room.

From surprisingly close, for it seems the room isn't large at all, a door opens and a slash of light illuminates the smooth seamed masonry of the the storeroom's far wall and a rack of dusty bottles and a heavy cask, stamped with the trade mark of—

And then the door's opening is drawn nearly shut, Fidan having slipped through to the other side to hold some brief and muffled conversation.

"—Yes thank you. I will tell her."

Once more, that bar of light on the wall widens (—with the trade mark of three keys on a ring—), narrows, then closes entirely. From the heavier darkness which follows, Fidan says,

"Do you know how dangerous it is for me to offer to help you like this? It is very important"—she lowers her voice. Soft footfalls suggest she has moved from the door, lest someone beyond it overhear—"So it is very important that I be able to trust that you are telling me the truth. Do you understand that, Nina?"

Edited 2021-07-15 20:29 (UTC)

Yseult doesn't move. It's not worth risking the sound—carrying, or covering some scrap of conversation she might otherwise overhear—or that Fidan peeks back in too quickly and catches some hint of movement or even posture that doesn't fit. But she can slide fingers along the knots in her bindings to get the shape of them, and skim eyes from door jamb and the silhouette of a lock to the masonry and that rack of bottles, the cask with the keys, file it all away. At some point they will leave her alone here in the dark, and these things will be good to know.

When Fidan returns, Nina's brows lift, some uncertain wobbling between frown and fear. She swallows, head bobbing. "I understand. I'll tell you what I know but I don't—he didn't talk to me much. We argued. He didn't like the route I'd chosen. He said it was too slow, we were going to be late."

Whatever that conversation was about, whatever has led Finan to detour this slight distance from any detail at all to it is very important that I be able to trust you, it doesn't matter. The implication is clear, and it may even be true that they know she's lying. Flint might have let some hint slip, or traded her away for a new island, or perhaps some unknown traitor in their ranks has given them her name and face already, or they just recognized the crystal on its chain around her neck for more than one bauble among others. If that's the case, they'll make it clear soon enough. Until then, Plan A.

"Did he give you any indication as to why the timing was so important? What he meant to find? How he planned to stop it?"

The shape of her voice from out of the dark is hushed and small, drifting as she pads in a quiet circle about the woman bound on the floor.

How he planned to stop it. It's easy for Yseult to push on the puzzled frown of a person deep in thought, attempting to think back through everything she heard for some half-ignored snippet of information that will now reveal itself on a second look, some tiny glimmering facet newly catching the light as the angle shifts.

"I don't know," she says, teeth bit into lip, head shaken. Her expression screws more tightly together, as if more desperate in that hunt for something useful enough to buy her freedom. "Something about a message? 'In time for the message,' he said that once when he was grumbling."

"Good," Fidan whispers in urgent reassurance as she circles behind her in the mottled near-dark. The air is cool and humid and if there was a hint of light seeping in from beneath the nearby door, it has gone now.

"That's very good. What else? Did he say where the message was coming from, or who might have sent it perhaps?" And then, more carefully still, "I promise I have almost run out of the questions they would like me to ask you."

Edited 2021-07-16 00:28 (UTC)

Fidan's circling sends a prickle of wariness down Yseult's spine, as does the prospect of her questions coming to an end. The danger of trying to convince someone you know very little is that success can mean they see no further value in keeping you alive. And if there is something in motion that might yet be stopped, the chance of them releasing even the most harmless of prisoners is low.

So Nina continues to visibly wrack her brains, but the shaking of her head this time sees it dropping into her hands with a little groan. "I'm sorry," she says, swallowing again, voice wavering more noticeably, "I'm trying to think but my head is pounding. Please, can I have some water?"

"Just one more question," the voice assures Nina, floating forward around her shoulder as the elven woman completes her circuit.

When Fidan passes back into that little sliver of light and comes to stop before Yseult again, she makes no move to lower herself to the other woman's level before addressing her.

"Does Riftwatch know he was with you? Would they know to look for you, I mean. Should he disappear and you return to Wealdstone."

"Riftwatch. That was it. The group he mentioned."

Still bowing her head, knuckles pressed into her brows, Nina considers this question and shakes her head again, a smaller movement than the last but accompanied by a shrug, as much as is possible bound as she is. "I don't know," she says, "I don't think so? I only saw him speak to my father and he didn't pass on any messages to him."

Fidan doesn't move. She has settled there in that narrow bar of light which slips from the shaded lantern, blotting it out.

"That's poor luck," she says, shaded with sympathy. Poor thing. "I think the Magister might have been convinced to set you free. Your freedom in exchange for helping him to expose a few more members of Flint's company."

Fidan bends down. On the ground in that narrow slip of light between them, she sets a sending crystal which matches the one about Yseult's neck. Her smile is not unpleasant.

"Tell me again, Nina. Are you sure that's the story you've decided on?"

And somewhere else, right now or hours ago, Flint tells Ayaz Tagaris, "I'm afraid nothing comes to readily mind."

"No?" Tagaris cocks his head at an angle, and then rocks back, hands spread. Heavy rings glitter on his fingers—a flame-shaped emerald, a pair of blood-dark garnets, a carnelian signet engraved with what might be a tree, its base a tangle of roots.

"Perhaps it is the blow to the head has disordered your thoughts. Begin with something simple. Tell me of your journey today."

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