[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]

A warning, a promise; the gradations of the thing hardly matter. What's true is simple—that they are most likely to leave here together, either under their own power or at the hands of some rescue, or they won't leave at all. They will slip away, spirited off into the dark toward some unknown place inside the Imperium where the value of them in combination will quickly become inconsequential.

He thinks of that black pit down which they'd thrown Valeriantus and feels some vague stirring of resentment for the idea of it.

"Not in this fashion, no," is what he eventually answers when Yseult finds her way back to asking. You? he is meant to ask then, an easy deflection disguised as conversation.

"I was once held and tried in a Seheron outpost. The workings of that and this are remarkably similar."

[hassaran]

Yseult, who has read reports of that episode (and was about to say as much), tips her head as if puzzled. "In what respect?"

[katabasis]

A turn of the hand; a low rasp of metal.

"Both rely on the idea that you will feel some"—what? He searches for the word—"Obligation to return yourself to an earlier state. One in which you're the only person in control of defining who or what you are rather than some monster on a gallows or a prisoner at their mercy. That eventually, you will use whatever justification you can in an attempt to exert control. Which they will then happily use to hang you."

Or lever information free with. Or, or, or.

[hassaran]

It sounds good, so it takes Yseult a few minutes to work out what part of that comparison it is that niggles at her, the wrong note hidden in seeming harmony. "The trial cannot have relied on that; they were going to hang you no matter what you said or didn't say.

"But you are right about this. If they were more crude, or in more of a hurry, they would just flog us until we talked or died. But these two are more subtle than that. Our food comes in irregular intervals, the lantern filled with a different amount of oil each time, the banging on the door at random times. Disorientation to speed the sense of helplessness."

[katabasis]

"Executing someone isn't the point of a trial anymore than making us miserable is the point of this," is a mild check. "Both are concerned with the effect produced. The person at the center is only as important in as much as they can be leveraged."

Tagaris, making a point to remind him why he is there with Riftwatch to begin with. It's the illusion of a foothold in the same way the invitation to speak there in that square had been.

(If all goes according to the the Magister's intentions, they'll no doubt be stripped of what they know and eventually killed in this place too.)

[hassaran]

"My point," speaking of torture, time to argue, "Is that your experience being held for a day and paraded to the gallows is not as relevant to this as you suggested. What mattered there was the effect produced in the crowd, not in you. That was the focus of any manipulation. You were a prop. This is the opposite."

[katabasis]

Mildly, in the loose way someone might deal out cards very late at night (or in the way that someone who is tired of a great many things, but particularly matters of semantics might say)—

"It's more relevant than you're insisting. What reason is there for putting us together if not to shine a light on the current discrepancy between us? I'm here so you can see this," with a gesture to his knees. "And so I can it when they heal you. But by all means. If you can think of some alternative purpose, I'd be very interested to hear it."

[hassaran]

"Of course that's why. And we would both know that anyway because we're not stupid." Sharper, quicker--if he's going to play her part of irritating placidity, she will fill the space vacated. "I wasn't asking about your familiarity with the philosophical theory of torture."

[katabasis]

The look he tips in her direction is all shaded by the lamplight—flat, because no illumination finds what might otherwise ordinarily appear to be some low spark of irritation. So. Patiently:

"What you asked is how I thought the two things were similar. Listen or don't."

[hassaran]

"My mistake," is in no way an apology, "I assumed you had brought it up because it was useful." Keeping them in the same room does have its benefits for the Venatori, even if they're not the ones expected.

She doesn't really believe that's going to be the last word, but is done regardless. She sets her head back, rearranges shoulders against the rack and, in just a few minutes more, has dozed off with remarkable ease.

[katabasis]

His reply is brief—an exasperated huff of air that is half frustration and half disbelief expressed as humor. For fuck's sake in no words at all.

She sets her head back. Beside her, Flint makes to cross his arms and then decides his shoulders would prefer otherwise. So he sits and he waits and he doesn't fall asleep at all much less with her ease thanks to the thrumming of various and the stiffness which has begun to settle in. In the quiet, he entertains the idea of drawing a bend into his legs but subsequently abandons that too. Thinks instead about Hasmal; about the Minanter; about what he and Mssr Holden had briefly discussed while they'd sat in that field above Val Chevin; about the bizarre truth that if he is comparing this storeroom to that forsaken outpost in Seheron then at least the company he'd found himself alongside there had understood certain fundamental commonalities between them.

Somewhere, Charles Vane must be very fucking pleased with himself (though Flint doubts his perception of the man figures at all into Charles' self image—or even that Charles entertains the past time of self-evaluation. It seems largely out of keeping with his habits).

When next the door opens, it's to permit a guard to refill the flickering lantern. Presumably some invisible rotation of duties has reset and begun again.

[hassaran]

Yseult's eyes open as footsteps arrive outside the door and she watches the guard until his work is complete. Then she shuts her eyes again and goes back to sleep, untormented by thoughts of Flint's opinion of her.