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

[katabasis]

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—

Comments

[katabasis]

He doesn't smile. But there is something in the flexing muscle of Flint's cheek or about the eyes which implies the impulse toward one of those unpleasant teeth bared kinds.

"Forgive me. Bending to hoist Corypheus on the old beast's back only seems a strange method for raising the thing out from its hole."

[hassaran]

"Is that what they say in the south?"

This time the magister's question comes with a little scoff, and he bends his elbow into his palm, chin perched on fingertips.

"I see. My, you have been misinformed. I shall forgive you the insult of your incredulity. You see, the Elder One seeks to restore Tevinter to vitality. Already, he has raised up men of vision and vigor to replace those content to wallow in the stagnant waters of dissipation. Wealth and breeding need no longer bar those with strength and commitment from seizing the power they deserve. I should think a man like you might find at least some small appeal in such things."

[katabasis]

"You and I both know that the south doesn't care who Tevinter's master is, only that they didn't select it. And if that much is obvious to you, I have difficulty imagining that you would be blind to the fact that your Elder One has hinged this restoration on him being at its head."

He does smile then—no teeth, actually. Rather, it is the paternalistic cringing sympathy of a man watching someone else lift something very heavy.

"If those men to whom you refer exist, then why should they be so reliant on being brought up by his hand in the first place?"

[hassaran]

Tagaris frowns, the re-angling of brows impossible to miss, but there is, again, more disappointment in it than any bristling offense. "Do you despise your crew for their willingness to follow you?" is a rhetorical question, but his pause lingers into an assessment that produces a shrug. "Perhaps you do."

"But all men serve something. A lord, a Maker, gods, some higher purpose, gold. We serve a being whose power we have seen with our own eyes, and who rewards our service in this life. Few can say more."

[katabasis]

Across from him, the spread of Flint's smile is a slow and lopsided thing. Tired, yes; inevitable, maybe.

"You are quick," he allows, a comment as if from this conversation's margins. "I'll grant you that."

But they're not here to debate the philosophy of the thing, are they?

"She told you herself. My history, that island. If there was a time where what I serve and what you do could be reconciled, then we are long past it."

[hassaran]

Or are they?

"Ah, but do we not share an enemy? The old order of the Imperium that stifled your ambitions and your friend's plans, that refused to countenance any change—surely you are aware of Calpernia? Where else in this world could someone of no family and no education hope to ascend to such heights? Perhaps we are not so far apart as you have been led to believe."

[katabasis]

He studies Tagaris as he speaks—the way the man punctuates his point with the tip of his temple, the lay of his hand, the red ring about his finger and the glint of the light as it plays against the shape etched into it. It is an incidental examination over a rigorous one. His head hurts. He has evidently been sitting long enough that he can feel his pulse in the swelling of his knee. What else is there to study, really?

(It occurs to him that he could falter here. Be convinced. But there will likely come a point where he will be required to give Tagaris something.)

"The only thing the Imperium has ever recognized is the power that comes from fear and ambition in combination. The old Imperium ruined my friend because he had the audacity to think he could have one without the other. Yours took my home when it had been poised to have some meausure of that power for itself. Just because your new master has taught you to chew on something else instead of your own limb doesn't mean you've become a different beast."

[hassaran]

Tagaris settles back in his chair with another little sigh, hands settling on the arms, curled about their ends.

"You disappoint, Serah McGraw. I had thought I might find a man of vision. Perhaps when your headache has had time to ease you will see your error."

Ringed fingers flutter in something like dismissal and a little bell hung unseen on the back of the door jangles. And again, as the door opens almost immediately to admit two soldiers in Tevinter armor. One carries shackles for wrists and ankles, connected by another length of chain. The other, a black cloth sack, which he will drop over Flint's head before they bind him and take him away.


Still alone in the cell for the moment, Yseult reflects that her answer was a gamble either way: say Riftwatch would know to look for her and they might not want to risk her alerting them; say they hadn't and her captors might decide no one will miss her.

She doesn't have long to rue the choice before Fidan's hand opens and that crystal catches the light. Yseult lets eyes widen in fear, lip wobble. "He told me to lie," she stammers, "He said if anything happened I should tell people I'm a guide. But I really don't know where we're going. I'm just a secretary, he doesn't tell me anything."

[katabasis]

"Why do you think that is? Certainly not because he trusts you in the way you seem to do him."

Crouched before her, the light becoming fully blocked out by the slim span of her shoulders, Fidan must be studying her. It is difficult to tell in the gloom, though the reflective quality of her eyes suggests it must be so. She is not unkind when she says,

"I will tell you something about this man you followed here, and then I will give you another opportunity to let me help you. I do want to. Above all else, you must believe that. I was once in a place very like where you are now."

There is a soft sound as Fidan collects the crystal from the floor and closes it in both her hands.

"The man you know as Flint once assisted a Magister very like the one I do before betraying him. And you will think, Good. That it was right to do. But I will tell you that the reason was for power. He and the Magister's wife thought they could manipulate him into acting according to their wishes for the simple purpose of advancing their own places. And when their ruse was discovered, they fled first to save themselves and then to a place they thought would be easily made into a weapon. For every reasonable man knows he must have some form of leverage if he should like to still bargain with someone he has made an enemy. Isn't it strange, don't you think? That it was only once that place he'd fled to had failed to do as they'd intended that he came South to pick up the next best available sharp stick."

The shape of Fidan's close-shorn head tips gently sideways in that narrow rim of light. It might be an imploring thing.

"The Magister, his wife, that island, whatever other secret sacrifices he has made. Your Commander has discarded these tools already. I wouldn't like to see you piled with them. But I understand you know very little, so instead I will ask if you would be willing to help me acquire a few answers. I think if you were to do that, that all save him might leave this place satisfied."

[hassaran]

Yseult is careful to keep up the act even as Fidan moves to eclipse her features, sending both their faces into a darkness that her eyes, at least, can't penetrate. Precisely how well elves see in the dark is not something they have tested (perhaps a future Scouting exercise, filed away) but she assumes well enough to make out the transition from disbelief to creeping horror she plays out as the tale is told. Not an immediate reversal, but as if by this story some buried suspicion--of pirates, of vints, of men in general--has been dug out into the light.

Still, she gives Nina a moment of reluctance and fear at the end of it before she swallows once again and asks, in a tone that implies wary agreement: "What do you want to know?"

[katabasis]

What they want to know, Fidan explains, is simply this: Why they came here and what Flint sought to accomplish when they arrived. She tells Nina this before rising and moving back through the darkness to the nearby door through which a soldier in Tevinter armor is summoned. Had there been such soldiers in Drake's Landing? Surely that too is possible.

"I will give this back to you soon," Fidan promises her as she takes great care to remove the chain with the crystal from about Nina's neck without damaging it. "And your eyes will be covered only for a short while." And then she is blindfolded, and the loop which binds hands to feet is undone. Presumably it is Fidan and the Tevinter soldier both who steer her from the store room.

Where do they go? Through what space do they travel? The air is both cool and humid. At one point during their short walk, there is the sound of a nearby cry abruptly stifled. Then a hand is on Yseult's forearm. Fidan says to her, "You must only convince the Magister of your convictions. He is not unreasonable. If he believes you to be genuine, he will see you set free. And you lied so well to me at the start."

A door open. A door closes.

Flint hears a young woman's voice say, "I've brought someone to assist you."

[hassaran]

Yseult counts paces as they go, listening for snippets of conversation from open doors or passing traffic (or screams), alert to any hint of a breeze. There isn't much of use to be gleaned before Fidan brings her to a stop. A length of chain too short to reach the door is strung between shackles and heavy rings in the wall, and only then is blindfold untied. The few seconds between its removal and the door shutting behind Fidan reveal this cell as similar to the last: a small stone storeroom, though the racks that held bottles and casks in the last are all but empty here.

When the door closes behind Fidan, Yseult turns toward Flint in the dark. "I tried to tell her the lie about just being a guide from Wealdstone, Commander, like you said," she says, in a voice not quite her own, more common in its inflection, and above all nervous and deferent in a way the Scoutmaster has never sounded, "But she saw my crystal and knew I was lying. I tried to tell her you don't tell me anything, you don't tell any of the secretaries anything, but they didn't care."

[katabasis]

What was he expecting to follow the squeal of the door? Not this, that much he's certain of. The surprise of it is so sharp that it does nothing at all to strip the tension that had abruptly rewound its way into his shoulders in response to bodies passing into this place.

And for a long moment, there is no answer for Yseult from out of the dark.

Then slowly, even and measured and accompanied by the slow rasp of a linked chains shifting—

"It served its purpose. You had something other than the truth ready to give them at first, and they'll have taken getting this much from you as a point in their favor." A pause. Somewhere in the dark, Flint makes to shift the manacles about his wrists. "Did you tell them anything else?"

[hassaran]

"My name," Yseult replies, with a fainter air of apology, "I know I was meant to lie about that too, but she asked and before I knew it I said 'Nina', it just came out without meaning to. And that you were angry we might be late, that it was something to do with a message. But that's all."

There is a drag and clink of chains as Yseult reaches arms out to find the wall and moves to put her back against it. "I wish I knew what we were doing here. How we're going to stop it. It feels very silly to maybe die for some work I don't even get to know about."

[katabasis]

She is upstairs, dining with my companions—

Untethered by the instant confusion that that Nina and a message elicits, that thought is the one that comes first and most clearly to him from out of the dark. It is uncomfortably sharp-edged. It was possible. It is still possible; that this is some bit of theater designed for the purpose of somehow seeing her safely away. Not a collaboration in the strictest sense perhaps, but one Yseult has accepted because it is a rational way forward—

Stop what, exactly?

He is quiet for a longer, considering moment. This game was more easily played in an Orzammar suite over a shared bottle of whiskey and a mutual sense of— Trust would be a very strange thing to assign to the likes of Rutyer, and yet.

"You're not going to die. Anything I have refused to tell you is to protect you as much as our contact in Perendale." A place that has been resistant to its occupiers, with a recent changing of the literal guard. The convenience of it doesn't diminish that it could be true.

"The less you know of import, the less likely they are to see you as a threat. These people will only be monsters if you give them reason to be."

[hassaran]

It's no real surprise to Yseult when Flint plays along precisely as she'd envisioned—they've always been on the same page in more ways than either of them prefers to admit. There's no point in a smile or a nod in the darkness, a wink or a finger tapped alongside the nose. But she eases her head back against the wall, careful of the tender lump just behind one ear.

"They might kill me anyway once they think I won't be of any use. You can't be sure. Is our contact in Perendale so important? If you told them who he is, they might let us go. He can't be so high-ranking that you couldn't get another."

[katabasis]

High-ranking, she says, and if his head and knee and everything else about their present circumstances weren't such an inconvenience to him then he might laugh. It is a fine means of deflection from Perendale's streets to inside their field offices. Good. It's the direction he might have tilted in next.

"These people aren't monsters. They won't act the part unless they believe they've been given just cause. If they press you again, tell them whatever truths you know. About what we found in Ghislain, or the note we received from Accottanto. That I'm particular about my paper."

[hassaran]

Yseult makes an uncertain noise but agrees as if cowed by this repeated assurance: "Yes, Commander." There is the sound then of cloth on stone and more clank and scrape of iron as Yseult drops into a crouch, and then to sit. She doesn't say anything more in the hours they wait for their captors to return for them.

It isn't very long before Flint is introduced to a pair of more-junior Venatori with the dull affect of career bureaucrats, one to read out a questions, the other to record his answers, even when no part is helpful or even responsive. Their lengthy list of queries ranges from biographical minutae to the inner workings of Riftwatch to details of Flint's current business, but touches not at all on any dealings with merchant princes or high-ranking contacts in Perendale. They are both unwilling--or perhaps unable--to be engaged in any manner of debate or to be riled by non-compliance, simply repeating the questions, word for word, until some answer has been recorded for each. Perhaps this is its own form of torture.

Yseult's next encounter must have similar results, because when the lock is thrown behind Flint once more she waits long enough for the footsteps to recede down the hall before she says: "They didn't ask me about any of it. You?"

[katabasis]

There is an interminable lack of rhythm to this. The being shifted from lamplight and back into darkness, the answering and not answering questions, the being exhausted and too sharp edged to not be aware. The meandering unmeasured quality of time, the inability to tell how long it's been since they were stopped in the crossroads, or even whether it's night or day. They are not, it is obvious, in Drake's Landing anymore. But all that means is they don't know where they are.

His knee requires that he sit and the beat of expectant quiet after requires that he feel the thrum of his pulse in it. It's a relief that there's no reason for the silent to last long.

"Nothing. They're either not listening or extremely patient." And if it's the latter, they have other problems. So. "What did they tell you?"

[hassaran]

"Very little." Yseult sounds like herself again, crisp as if sat in the chair behind her desk, neat stacks of paper at her elbow and a glass of wine dangling from fingertips. Even here on the slightly grubby stone floor she sits with legs outstretched, crossed at the ankle with one iron cuff balanced atop the other, hands folded neatly on the pile of chain in her lap.

"It doesn't seem they know about the purpose of our trip. I was told if I could find out they would let me go. But there's something going on we're not aware of—she asked me how you 'planned to stop it.' We might try to give them some concerns on that front if we knew any more, but they seem content that holding us will be enough."

[katabasis]

His considering hum is a low rumble in the dark.

"I'm not sure that's true."

There is a particular cant to James Flint's voice when he is digging in his heels simply to dig in his heels. It must be a timbre with which she is painfully familiar. There is no mistaking this for that.

"I spoke with a man who called himself a Magister—Ayaz Tagaris. He said you'd given me up in exchange for my freedom and then make some suggestion that I reconsider aligning myself against the Venatori. If holding us were enough, why press on the subject at all? And why make any attempt to keep the thing shrouded? They think we've made something dangerous for them."

[hassaran]

"Then why aren't they already torturing us for it?" is not disagreement, and posed in roughly the same thoughtful tone as one might muse on a traveler's questionable choice of route. "It sounded as if there were some specific thing she feared you were here to disrupt, but if it's imminent I would expect them to push harder than this. Trying to win you over sounds like a longer game."

She mulls that over for a moment before checking, "I don't know the name Tagaris. Do you?"

[katabasis]

He has been thinking on it, and has been frustrated by the lack of recognition. It wasn't due to having never known it; that much he's certain of. No, he'd thought. He'd somehow forgotten it. Maybe it had been only a small piece of an important thing and inconsequential to the greater shape into which had had played, but that empty slot in his memory has rankled at him like the burr these last hours. It feels a little like betrayal. Never mind that it has been closer two twenty years than to ten. Once, knowing every name in that place had mattered so much that he might have recited the slew of them after two bottles of wine and half asleep.

So he is surprised when she asks and he finds that he does. Know it.

"The Tagaris I knew of was an old man. This is a son, or a much younger brother. A cousin maybe, and by my estimation there is little love lost for his predecessor."

[hassaran]

Yseult makes a sound that stands in for interesting.

"I was questioned by an elf named Fidan. She said she was sympathetic to my situation, and claimed to be going out of her way to help me earn my freedom even at risk of her own. I need only learn the purpose of your journey, and the magister will be merciful." That she doesn't believe it goes without saying, clear enough from her tone even if Flint weren't already so familiar with the difficulty of earning the Scoutmaster's trust.

"I'm not certain she believes me. I may have lied too well at first for a simple clerk. It hardly matters." She allows only the barest of pauses to herald a shift in topic. "They told me you'd served a magister, once. It wasn't Tagaris?"

[katabasis]

Were that they having this conversation in a lit room. Imagine that a window has been cranked open to allow some gasp of the sea air off the Kirkwall harbor to come in; that it is warm, the weather close in the way that summer in that summer in the Gallows is, and that there is a bottle on whoever's desk is sat between them. Statistically, that conversation goes poorly. How much of that is due to what is at all times visible in Flint's face?

Can she hear how he becomes a closed thing in the dark? Is the silence that first follows her question indication enough, or is it all contained in the rare brevity of his answer?

"No. It wasn't."