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

The sound he makes in reply is low, a non-committal hum of acknowledgement left to hang for a long moment in the fuzzy lamplight. Maybe that is what the lesson had been; or maybe it really is a fool's errand to attempt to derive specific meanings from a Fade-touched dream whose only confirmed motivation had been that of a spirit reaching out. Or maybe the only thing worthwhile in those dreams had been that abstract glimpse of want. Regardless—

He has been giving the shape of it a great deal of consideration. a passing impulse; moments of thought here and there, stacked together to make a small mountain.

"Something usually does. But that was true even before Corypheus took Tevinter."

Did his grandfather mean to haul nets until he could no longer?

Edited 2021-08-11 08:34 (UTC)

Yseult had thought of little else in the days following the dream—in every moment not taken up by work thoughts had wound back to the looming specter of it on the horizon, a chimera of wants and fears. The memory of that little weight on her chest turned heavy with dread. And the dream that came before, blood on the snow and two small figures alone on the sea—. Maybe it's easier to see portents in nightmares.

A few days, and then she'd put it all away. None of it seemed to change the work to be done; nothing to be gained by dwelling. Now, in the waning light she lifts a brow at Flint, arched high enough to become a joke. "Are you suggesting we may have missed our window?"

In some other place—one of their offices in the Gallows' central tower—, he would act on the impulse to make the thing into a sharp point. Not to cut her with specifically, just to cut at something.. No, he would say. I'm suggesting that the world has always been very good at making it very hard to decide to do anything differently.

Here, he laughs. Fuck it.

"I honestly don't know what I'm suggesting. Do I seem like much of an arbiter of happy endings to you?"

Surely not.

"Do I?" Yseult doesn't laugh beyond a huffed exhale, but it's there in her tone. "No, you strike me as a man who'd shut any open window he happened across."

In the flickering shape of the lamplight, some line in his expression slants. It's no ill-tempered reactive flicker, but a moderation of that flash of black humor. He doesn't laugh again, instead trading it for a low hum and the tip of his eyeline from her.

Well.

(Would it matter? Silver had asked once. If he were tired. I'm sorry, but no.)

"I'm holding for a door. They're far easier to pass through."

A crooked look flashes back in her direction—dry humor like a cracked bone. And then timed as if to punctuate it, a key is turned in the storeroom's lock. Two soldiers pass into the room.

One corner of Yseult's mouth twitches upwards in the moment between his look and the turn of the lock. As the door opens, she spreads a hand in a gesture smooth enough despite clanking shackles to still clearly say: after you. It was his wish, after all.

So it was. The pair of soldiers see to granting it briskly enough in what is now a familiar show of force. He is hauled off up the floor and jostled from the room to the clink of armor and chains, and behind him the door is pulled firmly shut.

When Fidan comes, her clever little knife is set to heat in the fire but rather than ply it, she sits cross legged on the floor before Yseult like a child and asks dozens of questions. Tell her about the South. Tell her about where you came from in it, Nina. Is your family large or small? No, I promise I'm not asking to be cruel. I am only trying to use the time we have been allotted. Now, what did you wish to be when you were small? Have you ever met a free Dalish elf? Are there any in Riftwatch? What about Riftwatch's griffons? Have you ridden one? Will you tell me one of their names?

"I like animals very much and I read about them in a book once," she explains as she stands to take the knife from the lamp's flame. The hot blade is quenched directly into the waiting pitcher of water and tucked back into her belt. She leaves without incident, leaving Yseult with only quiet for company rather than some new stinging wound.

It is a strange exception to an otherwise most monotonous application of misery.

Nina comes from Kirkwall, an only child who wanted to be a dancer as a child and has never ridden a griffon but has been close enough to describe them and seems puzzled by the notion that they'd have names. (It's strange how a bit of Yseult revolts at the idea of sharing their names, at least as much as she would any actual colleague's. She tells herself it's because Fidan might use them to pose as someone acquainted with Riftwatch and talk her way in.)

That she's more willing to speak of elves really is strategic, nudging gently at the suggestion that Fidan might be interested in--or wish to seem interested in--defecting. There are a number of elves in Riftwatch, more in the Inquisition. Some Dalish, she thinks, some not. Her eyes flick to the knife in the flame every few minutes until Fidan tucks it back into her belt. Brows rise at that, but Yseult waits til the door has shut behind the elf before sitting back to consider what the game was there.

Tagaris adopts the opposite approach. When Flint is shoved into the usual room, he will find the tub in its usual location, but the desk along the wall empty of its magister. The shackles around his wrists are connected to the hook in the ceiling, hoisted up high enough to strain shoulders but not so far that feet leave the floor. The mage guard then hands his staff to his counterpart, who flips it around in his hands like a club and with two casual swings obliterates Flint's knees. And then returns to his post. After an hour or so they move to the table and begin a game of cards.

The first ten minutes between strained shoulders and battered knees is agonizing. But the hour that follows is unendurable. It is spent senselessly oscillating between the two miserable points off which he might bear his own weight, heels scuffing at the now familiar grate in the floor for purchase. But not too much purchase, while clinging to the possibility that there would be questions to follow. Or the tub with the freezing water, which would at least replace the shooting pain with a different kind.

That there is nothing for it is maddening; the hot flare of furious determination (to say nothing) cedes into bitter exhaustion, and tears, and flattens into a single urgent impulse. Just tell them anything, it says, and instead he counts the stones visible in the lamp lit floor and informs the one guard when the other cheats at cards. Or makes it up.

(The gesture is not appreciated.)

When they eventually return him to the storeroom, it is almost certainly not under his own power.

The guards make him attempt it, first. If he doesn't want to walk back to his cell he can just return to hanging there, it's no skin off their knees. (They both laugh harder at that than it deserves.) But after several attempts, or crawling or wailing or whatever ensues, they do get bored and drag Flint, low enough to ensure that feet bump along the floor to whole way, back to the storeroom, and drop him unceremoniously.

Yseult takes in the state of him and shifts as the door closes to offer a hand in rearranging himself upright or prone or whichever of his options seems least unappealing at the moment. There isn't really anything else she can do, short of assisting him into unconsciousness, and she doesn't pretend otherwise. Doesn't ask, either, what they did or what he told them after they did it. (If he's at all inclined to say, she assumes he will.)

There's no palpable relief to be derived from the impromptu reintroduction to the stone floor. Is it much better than being strung up, or dredged along the corridor? Logically, it must be; but the gradations of the thing are fine enough that it seems nonsensical to attempt to rank them. So for a time, Flint lays on the cool floor in simple unexamined pain. He sweats through his shirt and so is gray from all the delicate dust on the storeroom's floor when he makes some grunting effort to—

No, never mind it. He's not sitting up. The floor suits perfectly well.

What he is eventually inclined to say from there is, "We need to find out where we are."

Yseult returns her hands to her lap as Flint elects to remain where he is. Speaking of--

"Yes, I've been thinking about that." And perfectly happy to change the subject to something more her strong suit than comfort. "It's too large and dry for Drake's Landing, and given our state when we first woke I don't think they'd kept us unconscious more than half a day or so, a day at most. And they're too unsettled here for Tevinter, they haven't been here long. But they're not going to hold this many prisoners on the front lines, it must still be somewhere they feel relatively secure."

Which all adds up to...??? She runs out of track rather abruptly, and disguises it behind a gesture Flint can't see anyway. "That must narrow it down. But I'm not sure to what. Somewhere in the mountains? Antiva?"

He closes his eyes, lapsing into the kind of labored silence which is more rattle than quiet. It is a relief to let her direct the turn of the inquiry—to let Yseult organize some part of the thoughts churning around in the back of his mind into enough of an order to suggestion reason and logic. Dry, large, a day's travel. A compliment of soldiers to hand, and a half expressed anxiety over Riftwatch meddling with something.

"Solas is too far overland," sounds like agreement. "Nevarra City," like a suggestion. It stretches believability, but with a fair wind and a swift boat on the Minanter—

"With the undead?" sounds like a dismissal of that suggestion, no attempt to soften it in deference to his condition.

"We can't be too far north of the river, it's not that dry down here. And no one's tracked in any sand. The first room we were in there was a symbol on the wine casks, three crossed keys. I can't place it." The niggling frustration of that adds a little edge to her tone that won't require explanation.

"I could ask for something. Sweets, fruit, something an army doesn't stock. See how quickly they can get it to dangle in front of me."

If there is a justification for Nevarra City waiting behind his teeth, it's forgotten in favor of—

"Three. You're certain?"

"Yes." She could draw it in the dust of the floor, but he'd have to sit up to see. She doesn't move. "You know it?"

He starts to lift his hand driven by the impulse to press against the bridge of his nose or work free some of the tension held sharp across the span of his forehead and is drawn short by the shift of the chain between his wrists. It occurs to him in that moment that he's been dumped onto the floor rather than reshackled to the heavy racks built into the store room's smooth stone wall. If he arranged to get his feet under him—

What? He might hobble free of this room? And then what?

"They belong to a string of trading partners along the Minanter. I don't recall the names." Rare finds in the Nocen and virtually meaningless by the time they might have travelled so far North. But.

"As cargo passes through each house, it's marked with a new key. Nevarra, Hasmal, Starkhaven—" After only a moment of struggling after the fourth, Flint makes a small noise of frustration and settles for, "Ansburg, let's say. You said it yourself; Nevarra City is in no position to trade. The only place to fetch a third key is Hasmal or Ansburg."

There are finer points to this. How a cask that had made its way to Hasmal might travel anywhere from that point, including east again. There, his rationale gets fuzzy and aimless. It's true that they could lie just west of Hasmal. But what the fuck would Venatori be doing there? Beyond what they'd already demonstrated in Drake's Landing.

"That doesn't mean where it was stamped is where its journey ended," is not said as sharply as the reminder about the corpses ruling Nevarra City, "But Hasmal fits with the general region we've in mind."

She lapses into silence for the stretch of a minute or two, forgetting perhaps that some portion of this exercise was intended as distraction. "So either we are in Hasmal itself or near enough to make no difference," she says when she's put her thoughts silently in order, "Or we are along the river to the west, or we are in the country to its north in some isolated place between the Imperial Highway and the Hundred Pillars. Our arrival in Drake's Landing concerned them, and if they were working on the border or in the Pillars, they could easily take prisoners to Solas. So along the river, or in Hasmal. There have been no reports suggesting activity in the area large enough to need a facility like this. But Hasmal has been distracted of late."

"Hasmal has been overrun by Tevinter as of late, you mean. Refugees make convenient cover for the Venatori to enter the city, or," he allows. "Near enough to make no difference, and find friends there."

There, he says, a thimble of reservation held in check. It's reasonable. It's also one of four reasonable arguments he can muster while laid flat.

(Her point regarding the lack of sand is a better one than the dead, he thinks; and it's true that at least the ache in his shoulders is less evident in the face of semantics.)

"Hasmal is convenient if they mean to take Nevarra. With the March looking toward Perendale, the bulk of any resistance there and in Hunter Fell, and an easy way across the border and to the river—they might sweep the unguarded length of the Minanter behind Van Markham and Pentaghast's backs."

This time Yseult makes a considering sound to signal her intention to think that over before she quiets, apparently still disinclined to work through thoughts out loud.

"With Nevarra City empty, they could be at least halfway to Cumberland before they met any real resistance. Hold both the Highway and the river at the great crossing. The troops at Perendale and Val Chevin discourage or slow any potential counter-attack from the west. What need is there for Hasmal?"

"Supply is a possibility. With Hasmal in hand, goods from Antiva might skirt the Pillars."

Bodies are easy to move; seeing them kept would be another matter with Val Chevin isolated. What does he recall of overland trade out of Antiva? Is there some minor route which slithers along the foothills already waiting to be exploited? He wills himself to picture that great map in the Gallows' central tower, unsatisfied with the strung together shape of the speculation.

"Or they mean to cut off aid that might come most easily by way of the Minanter to Nevarra," is as much of a stretch. Why would the Marches concern themselves with that business now if they haven't already? Why bait them at all by nibbling at their edge? Why give up Ghislain? Why hold Val Chevin.

"Or they're looking to divide the March further. They've successfully split the force once already."

An unconvinced hum is the response to his first few thoughts, Yseult occupied more with sitting up onto her knees to scratch the outline of a map into the dirt with a splinter, sketching out relative distances with the length of her thumb. She hovers over it, a maker minus the all-important omniscience.

The timbre of that thoughtful sound changes at his last suggestion, head angling as if she might find some new dimension of the map to consider. "Looking east from Hasmal, Tantervale could be stubborn but has no great force, and it sent men to the March with Prince Vael. Orlais would at best hesitate before sending its forces so far abroad. They might think they could take Starkhaven before serious opposition arrived. Is control of the river worth creating new enemies?"

"Yes," is his instant answer. It requires no consideration whatsoever.

With a soft rasp of metal (and a low growl of discomfort), he shifts then toward his side. Toward getting an elbow under him, toward not lying prone on the ground where he is largely aware of the length of his spine and little else. It's a slow process of rearrangement punctuated by the low 'ha' and hiss of whatever various pressures are exerted on his knees. He should shift himself to the wall. Something to lean back against would be preferable, but the prospect of dredging himself the few inches to the stretch of empty cask racks at Yseult's shoulder to accomplish it is discouraging enough to warrant some delay. Instead he leans forward, rounded shoulders and dust streaked, and examines the shallow grooves of her map in the low gloss of the lamp light.

"Orlais can only support the Exalted March for so long. With the river and Val Chevin in their control, Tevinter would force all other supply bound for it to come overland through southern Orlais or Nevarra. To say nothing of the fact that Cumberland and Val Royeaux are perfectly respectable ports both. Which means," warrants a sidelong look in her direction. "They're outrageously expensive for the landing of cargo."

Has the Divine considered the tactical advantages of piracy and smuggling?

She watches only for a moment, out of the corner of a low-lidded eye, as Flint hauls himself into a different position. She could help him--would--but elects not to raise it as he seems to have a serviceable pose in mind for now, turning her focus politely back to the map.

"That would mean increasing naval operations in the Waking Sea," is not disagreement. "Putting Val Chevin to use at last? But it could draw out Hercinia, Ostwick, maybe Wycome." She taps each Marcher capital as she names it. "There is some precedent for naval alliance there, against the Amaranthine pirates. Antiva would not be best pleased by so much disruption in trade."

"Do we really think increased presence there would induce Hercinia, Ostwick and maybe Wycome to be aggressive enough to jeopardize their relationship to Antiva? With the Minanter indisposed, any Marches port city stands to make a tidy profit when trade is rerouted. Dangers be damned."

In an hour, his shoulders may be recovered enough to use the empty storage racks to pull himself up to standing. Maybe the hook on which the lantern is suspended can be worked free from the ceiling. It might be fit to split a chain with. And then?

"And even if they did, would the loss to Antiva be significant enough to outweigh the danger they will have committed themselves to by having Tevinter forces on all sides save the one which the Qun occupies?"

In this hypothetical, Rivain should be concerned.

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