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—

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"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."

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."

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."

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."

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?"

Edited 2021-07-19 01:21 (UTC)

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?"

"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."

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."

"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?"

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."

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?"

Edited (too many words) 2021-07-19 05:45 (UTC)

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."

It is more than enough, and Yseult finds she can easily picture the flat, shuttered look that would accompany the words, the comingling of derision and affront beneath the irritation. It's remarkable how poor Flint is at disguising when things like this threaten to prick him, how plainly he signals the sites of chinks in his armor by drawing a shield up over them. It begs to be needled, and even now there's an urge to press the advantage and score what hits she can while she's caught him by surprise. There's value in knowing his secrets, and more in him knowing she knows them--in providing these little reminders that he is not the only one capable of knowing more than he says aloud, or of setting people off-balance.

If they were in the Gallows she might do it, poke and pick at it and file away the reactions. She has no doubt he would, given the same the opportunity. But it isn't the time to tap the wedge between them any deeper.

So "She spun a tale about it," is in no way a question. "His wife, a betrayal. If it's true, you may expect them to use it. Should it become necessary to give them some further story about me, Nina will become a member of your crew. You picked her up in Antiva years ago on your way down from Nacere the first time."

Somewhere in the dark, there is a soft rasping of linked chains as Flint rearranges the set of his hands or shifts his leg as if a variation of degrees might somehow make the stone floor and his heels relationship to it more comfortable. Somewhere, he waits for a question and then must acclimate to the space he finds himself in when none is forthcoming.

"Do you think it wise that we make Nina such an adept storyteller?"

Or ask his own. It has the tenor of a real question—not a lowering of the shield, but neither using it as a blunt instrument for bashing with.

"It's not ideal. But if they become convinced the current story is false, or that Nina the secretary can be dispensed with, I may need to give them something else. Most would believe a pirate capable of such deceit, and it would explain our association without suggesting any great knowledge of Riftwatch."

There is silence from her side of the cell, her typical stillness maintained. It's barely been a day.

"But the hapless secretary as long as possible. I told Darras where we were bound. They may manage to trace us from Drake's Landing."

Edited 2021-07-22 22:30 (UTC)

"Between him and Mister Silver, there may be just enough rational voices in the room to dissuade the Ambassador from whatever paranoia he will be most prone to."

It is an uncharitable assessment of Byerly Rutyer—who knows just enough that he might find this a fine excuse to indulge his suspicions regarding Valeriantus and this nebulous contact from inside Tevinter—, but for some strange reason he is in a less than generous mood.

"I trust Darras has kept you well appraised with the account's work on the Amaranthine? That may help should it become necessary to authenticate our story. We considered Llomerryn before Kirkwall."

Edited 2021-07-26 00:35 (UTC)

"Enough," is not precisely true, but, "I'll manage," is. The details of her knowledge of Amaranthine piracy and especially how it was gained seem irrelevant at present.

Whether she is about to say something more or not is interrupted by boots in the hall followed swiftly by the opening of the door. Soldiers hustle Flint roughly to his feet, held beneath the arms as his chain is loosed from the wall. He is permitted to walk down the hall under his own power only in the sense that his feet remain within reach of the floor and he is able to paddle at it as they go if he wishes--he will be borne along at a clip regardless.

The room in which he is deposited is very similar to the last, except for the lack of a second chair set opposite the table. Instead he is dropped onto a tripod wooden stool, chain looped through the bars of a narrow grate in the floor and a ring overhead, but left loose enough to permit a natural posture. Tagaris joins them once this arrangement is complete, pausing at the corner of the table, fingers tented on its surface.

"Now that you have had a chance to consider the matter, would you care to explain your presence here?"

There is an inevitability to this. It is the logical next stage in the pattern of their holding. If they were first treated with some degree of civility, then the path forward inevitably leads away from that.

There is very little point, he thinks, in making himself comfortable on the low stool. Yet he can't help but to shift the angle of his battered knee until the ache from being hurried along the corridor has been somewhat minimized.

That it is only the first day and that Tagaris doesn't strike him as the kind of man who takes pride in impatience is a strange kind of consolation.

"Perhaps we might begin with discussing where 'here' is," is a no.

Not long after Flint's departure, the door to the storeroom opens once more. In what must come as no surprise, the figure which passes through it is no soldier but Fidan. She carries an open sided lantern, the warm glow of the flame casting the room in a full and pleasant light as it is hung from the hook seemingly designed for exactly such a purpose at the low ceiling's rounded apex. In her other hands she has both a pitcher and cup; a generous measure of water is poured into the latter and then set carefully within reach of Yseult.

"I don't know that we have much time so let us be direct. Have you learned anything, Nina?"

She reaches for the water as Fidan retreats, taking a quick gulp first as if wary of having it snatched away again. "I'm trying," she says after another sip, "We were finally talking but they took him. As soon as he comes back I'll try again."

Tagaris certainly does not look as if he is pleased with this development, a sigh of disappointment but no surprise accompanying the gesture that rings the bell at the door once again. "You know as well as I what comes now, I think," he says. "In the general sense, at least. You are a man who knows both violence and pain. I have no doubt that you believe your endurance formidable, and perhaps it is. It will not matter. All that you gain by delay is further pain. If you will not think seriously on anything else that I have said to you, think on that."

The door opens, and several additional soldiers carry in a large metal bathtub filled with water before filing out again. Tagaris lifts his staff, and the surface of the water begins to freeze. After a moment, when a healthy crust of ice has formed atop it, Tagaris gestures, and the two remaining soldiers take Flint up again by the arms and drop him face-first into the tub, hands on his back holding him under.

"I believe the hope is that he will be more happy to talk to you after some time spent with the Magister," Fidan reflects absently as her attention shifts about the room. For a moment, the chained woman before her seems to be the least of her concerns.

(In another place, Flint goes rigid against the grasp of those shoulders—straight backed and balking as he is thrust past the frozen surface of the water. The force of the cold is so shocking as to bite directly past the rind of well-reasoned composure. A sense of dignity is the rational thing to first strip from a person.)

With a soft sigh, Fidan takes the little working knife from her belt and sets it into the open sided lantern with the blade over the fire.

"I've been ordered to give you similar encouragement. If you submit willingly to it, I will be able to be kinder to you. But if you struggle, I will need to call in someone to assist me. So refrain from kicking out if you please."

This as she bends with care to release the heavy binding from around one of Yseult's ankles and warily begins to undo whatever lacing her boot may possess.

There are two calculations made as Fidan's intentions become clearer. The first is by now so instinctive as to be practically instantaneous. Even half-shackled, she can see how she could get legs around the elf's neck, crush the metal edge of the cuff into windpipe, and use her rare weight advantage to end it. Unless of course Fidan is a mage after all.

That possibility gives her pause, and it's the second calculation that keeps her still. She knows too little--nothing, really--about where they are and how to contrive escape from more than this room. Perhaps she could creep through the halls and find her way, but she could just add easily run into troops of guards or magical security and be re-captured in minutes having accomplished nothing but ensuring harsher security measures. Any attempt to find and free Flint would guarantee it. If she were confident of getting free and quickly alerting Riftwatch she'd simply leave him behind. But as it is, the chance of success is too slim to warrant the risks. There will be other chances. It's barely been a day.

"Please." She bites her lip, looking from the knife to Fidan. "You don't need to do this. I'm trying to get what you want, I swear it."

Elsewhere, Flint is held beneath the freezing water until he sputters and chokes, just long enough for numbness to begin to override the painful shock of cold. Then he is hauled back up, this time by the jerk of the chain dragging arms first out of the water and torso thereafter. Tagaris, now seated behind the table, looks up without expectation.

"I trust you will tell me when you have rethought your position."

A gesture, and the soldiers repeat the process. Every so often, Flint is allowed a few moments out of the water to ensure numbness never quite sets in, to feel instead the needle-sharp burn of hot blood into limbs, while Tagaris contributes another ice spell. Barring any interruption from Flint, this continues for an hour or two.

Edited 2021-07-26 18:10 (UTC)

An hour, two. He begins with holding a ticking clock—a heavy dwarven thing that had a long time ago lived in a now very distant place—very forward in the mind and recalling the pace at which it had marked the minutes. It makes sense to do. It should be easy to simply keep count. But here is the burning cold, and the struggle to fill his lungs after, and the scorched and swollen sensation that gnaws after both and those things are shockingly immune to rational measurement. As so the clock slips away, memory forcibly muted by the present tense.

"I know and I'm very sorry. I'm only doing what I've been told I must," Nina is assured as boot and stocking are stripped away and the heavy manacle replaced at bare skin. There is a swaying moment where it seems Fidan should move away again then—but then she pauses. She studies her directly.

"Do you think there is any way in which you matter to him? Consider the question carefully and tell me the truth please."

Three hours. Or half of one. "Wait—" doesn't stop him from being submerged again. It is natural for the body to struggle. When he is at last dredged out again, he makes some small gesture with his hands in their heavy bindings while spluttering to clear his lungs. Wait.

"Was it your father who held your seat before you?"

(Presumably this doesn't discourage the soldiers on either side of him from their work.)

The soldiers are not discouraged. Back into the tub Flint goes, shards of ice scraping across brow as he's thrust under.

The next time the chain pulls him upright, it then goes slack, and Flint is dumped back onto the stool. One leg is wedged deeper into the grate below, leaving the others just shy of balanced. One of the soldiers leaves the room.

"Yes," says Tagaris from behind his desk. He looks up at Flint, smiles. "And no. I was adopted. At times he was my father, at others still a distant cousin."

The soldier returns, bearing a large wooden lid with a hatch at one end. The chains jerk Flint to his feet and then off of them, and the other soldier gives him a push, directing his swing toward the tub. Whatever encouragement is required to put him bodily into it is given in the form of rough, silent hands.

"You see, I too know the fringes of society. Food for thought."

He flicks his fingers, and the first soldier holds Flint down while the second fits the lid to the tub. It is snug and heavy and leaves only an inch or two of air between water and wood. They close the hatch.

Back in her cell, Yseult reaches for her boot, the motion not exactly casual but thoughtless, the instinctive drawing close of a posession. If permitted, she'll hold it tightly.

"Yes," she says first, without much certainty, "I think so." Her last answer is the most honest: "Maybe a little?"

Fidan, untroubled by the prospect of letting Nina keep her shoe, nods encouragingly.

"Then perhaps you might consider appealing to that."

That innocuous knife heated by the lantern's open flame is fetched down. The chain between Yseult's ankles are pinned under Fidan's boot and the clever little blade with its amplification runes for turning a low heat into a vicious one is pressed to the sole of the foot.

No questions are ever posed. The wandering application of the heated knife seems to have just one intent: to derive pain from whatever gentle places it is introduced to.

Nina flinches, as far as Fidan's grip allows. Not far. Nowhere near far enough. When the blade lands she struggles harder, shackles jangling as legs fight, too constricted to pose any real threat. She doesn't scream right away. Silence comes more naturally to Yseult even now, and she presses teeth to fist and bears it a while with no more than the harsh scrape of labored breath. Eventually, screaming comes easier.

And in the tub, ice begins to creep out from the sides.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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oh my god i can use this icon

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should have saved that icon for this one

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