It's a sweet spot of a season, where late summer is starting its honeyed slide into the colours of fall. There's still plenty of weeks before there's a real chill in the air, and therefore, plenty of weeks before relaxing in the gardens of the Gallows becomes impractical. It's sheltered enough that the wind whipping off the ocean won't bother Gwenaëlle or her sewing.
What might bother her are other people, and neat-sounding footfalls on stone pathway indicates that this inevitability is imminent. The man that comes to a halt at a respectful distance has been among Riftwatch long enough that they won't be complete strangers to each other—Loxley recognises who he's set out to find, anyway.
Umber-toned leathers are a bright spot even in the late summer gardens, and he sketches a shallow bow. In one hand is a thin leather binder for documents, but he's not drawing attention to it immediately as he says, "Lady Baudin?" but still all a little more windswept than buttoned down, manners or no manners. He's seen her do a lot of swearing on the crystals already.
"Could I infringe on your—" He gestures. Whole situation. "—for a moment?"
The words Lady Baudin catch her off-guard; sharpen the laugh that they startle out of her, laying her needle down and her hands flat over what looks like it's probably mending. Not embroidery, presently, although there's a hoop for it in her sewing basket next to her and if she made the shirt she's mending she did a fine job of embellishing its collar.
“Wow,” she says, “I think I hate that almost as much as she did. Is this a general misunderstanding or some kind of political kink?”
This is borderline friendly, which is why that comes out as a sincere question rather than as snide as it might have done. Even if she is relatively certain of what the answer probably is. He doesn't look like the type to jerk off to the idea of installing elves in high places, but you never can tell.
“It's madame if we're standing on ceremony, but I certainly don't outrank you here enough to warrant it and I'm sure if you know my surname you must know my first name.”
The gesture she makes at the other end of the bench is an invitation, or at least indicative of having resigned herself to some sort of interaction continuing to happen because he's holding a binder and if he were here to serve her with some kind of legal action he'd have addressed her differently.
His eyebrows go up at, literally, all parts of that, and to his credit, takes this fairly low-key level of bollocking with good enough grace to then move to the end of the bench as indicated, undeterred. It's a side-on sit, one leg folded, the other foot braced on the packed earth.
"Well, very glad to have amused you," Loxley says, the corner of his mouth turns up. "I can never tell what to do with names when there's more than one of them, with titles and everything. I imagine it a little like dinner placings somewhere fancy. Start from the outside, work your way in."
His accent sort of lists fancy too, in a Tevinter sort of way, but it sounds more like theatre than the true thing. Then again, who can say.
"'Gwenaëlle' it is. I was hoping you might help clear something up for me. It's to do with your grandfather."
Her head tilts sideways as she evidently decides she is satisfied with his pronunciation and lets it stand, and considers the rest of that. She pinches her needle into the fabric of the shirt she's mending and sets it aside, because if she's going to be startled by anything else this involves she doesn't want to start tangling herself up in sharp objects and thread—
Because that just immediately feels like it can't be going anywhere good.
“The rest of his grandchildren do have titles accordingly,” she says, “but he only lets me still call him that now everyone knows we aren't related because I remind him of my father's mother.”
This may or may not actually be true; she's never asked. It had taken some time for her to accept that his determination to remain her grandfather was sincere, and without obvious strings attached, and she's still easily derailed by it. This is, however, her best theory. Emeric had told her once or twice how she favoured the late Comtesse de Vauquelin; she had seen it for herself in portraiture.
“What's my grandfather got to do with anything after the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden?”
The intricacies of the situation don't appear to land for Loxley, who is working off a high level of hearsay and conjecture, but this information is absorbed, and he nods to it. Noted. And the next thing he can tell is probably a joke, so he doesn't allow it to derail him as he goes to flip open the binder.
"It's really about what he's not involved in, ideally," he says. "And you'll have to bear with me a little, because there's actually a fuck load of paperwork involved that I couldn't possibly bring about to you down all those stairs, but I'd be happy to walk you through it—"
The document he produces is a single sheet, stamped with some emblem of a Hightown family. Likely recognisable as just one of the many viper pits in the neighbourhood.
"This, though, is a letter, signed by a Lady Cora Fiske, referencing the Duke Romain de Coucy's financial ties to the Tevinter Imperium. Well," Loxley tips his head, "it doesn't come right out and say that, but, I believe it implies knowledge of such a thing." He offers it out for her to read. The receiver, a Mssr Kel, does not appear to be of Hightown stock.
For all her—everything, the way that she's received Loxley thus far has been personable. In her way. Amiable, if a bit much. The way that her eyes narrow as she looks down at the letter he's handed her underscores as much, because it looks very different when she's memorizing all of the identifying information in front of her for the sake of shortening the immediate life-expectancy of Lady Cora Fiske.
“This is bullshit,” she says, flatly. “He has no financial ties to the Imperium, and I know where this bitch lives.”
Gwenaëlle, after all, has herself long been an in and out resident of Hightown. She's well-acquainted with some of its brighter stars, and familiar with its ways and means. The ebb and flow of its wide streets and their habits.
He has a moment of concern, like he hadn't factored in any vengeful wrath, but it's only momentary. Anger is fine, and it's a long hike up the stairs if Gwenaëlle were inclined to move directly to strike at Fiske with her fists, and Loxley has longer legs.
And information that is probably of value. "A well connected man," he says, "with ties to the office of the Viscount and the city guard. He's a consultant of some kind, it's not completely clear to me, so I expect most of what he does is off the books. But he builds cases that deal in," he gestures, "sensitive matters. Dukes moving gold over enemy lines, for instance."
Spoken in a tone that does not imply he believes the thing he's presented to her.
"I believe someone does have financial ties to the Imperium, and they're building a case to make it seem as though paths lead elsewhere. Which is strange, given the better plan should be to make paths disappear. Because on one end, you have elves disappearing out of the alienage," and he's watching her a little, there, as he says it, "and on the other end, the Imperium. And I can't imagine Kel or really anyone would actually give a shit about it, especially these days."
Not to worry; Gwenaëlle favours a longer game, where vengeful wrath is concerned.
(That is a different worry altogether.)
She hands him back the letter after a moment longer—scrutinizing it, and its particulars, and long habit of recording everything about her time attached to first the Inquisition and then to Riftwatch has made this sort of thing second nature. It makes it harder to assess her reaction to the question of disappearing elves, because she is still frowning down at the words in front of her.
“I'm intimately familiar with how few fucks are given about disappearing elves,” she says, briskly, “but people care a lot about financial ties to the Imperium. I can think of about seven reasons to pull this shit off the top of my head, and if we were in Orlais, I'd have a short list of who'd probably have the balls to do it, too.”
Her brother would be on that list, if she didn't think he had at least enough self-preservation instinct to steer clear of a scheme involving her grandfather, which at some point soon is going to be very funny. They aren't in Orlais, though, and Gwenaëlle's knowledge of Hightown is...particular. Familiar, but not intimate. If her personality hadn't been enough to fail to endear her to her neighbours, her subsequent disgrace had complicated matters all the more before her grandfather had proceeded to take simply ignoring her altogether off the table by refusing, himself, to do it.
Loxley takes back the letter, slipping it into his binder.
"So the chattel could be anything," he says. "If this were a simple frame-up. The chattel could even be non-existent, with the right sort of documentation. But the chattel is living bodies, elves or not, and they really are going missing. That's quite a costly endeavour, and I can't imagine that whoever is behind it isn't turning a profit, even if there's some other play going on."
He glances away from them, double-checking they're alone. It's not out of a need to keep secrets, really, but all of this could get messy fast, if the wrong people pick up on the wrong thing. It's with some calculation, then, that he continues;
"How well do you know Hightown? Well enough to help get a grasp on whether Fiske actually makes money out of slave trade?"
A cynical lift to his voice, despite it being a true question. He can't fathom that whoever is clever enough to have so effectively covered their tracks this far would have written this letter.
“Define help,” she says, dry, but it doesn't sound like dismissal so much as—well, exactly the question that it is. Hightown has been the nearest thing to a home she's had for some time now; she is not well-liked or particularly social in it, and when she has made a habit of accumulating all the information that she has at her disposal because you never know what might be important—
sometimes, you don't know what the fuck might be important.
“I doubt she is. I heard the Fiskes were bleeding money, or something, and even if you had the good sense to keep your slave money on the quiet I can't imagine you would go as far as to try and embarrass yourselves to cover your tracks. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?”
The purpose, that is. Far-fetched that the Fiskes are so desperate for money that this is the enterprise they'd pursue, but of course: Loxley knows next to nothing of Hightown. As far as he knows, they could all be involved in some strange elf trafficking racket, and so he listens, echoes back to Gwenaëlle mostly to demonstrate understanding.
Define help. "We need opportunities to observe the Lady Fiske. Salons she might be invited to, or—whatever they do up there to wile away the hours. We can't set obvious traps, we can only shadow what she does and find opportunities to get closer."
He splays the hand resting on his knee. "I'm a little conspicuous if I were to try to do so on my own, and further, we can't have just any Riftwatch agent try to play at masquerade—they'd need reason to be near. You have connections already."
“Yeah, ouais, not as you're hoping. And ordinarily, I'd throw Lexie under the carriage wheels,” without a second thought, “but under the circumstances I think that'd muddy the waters unnecessarily.”
Gwenaëlle's problem wasn't a failure to understand how the game was played; she didn't need someone to explain to her why someone whose surname was d'Asgard and whose Tevene in-laws certainly owned slaves was not going to be the right card to play. It isn't even that she thinks she couldn't be useful, only if this is what they're poking at the shape of being—
she's such an obvious weakness to exploit. If someone is trying to make Riftwatch look dirty, the last thing they need is the other Orlesian disgrace dangled in arm's reach.
“I can force my way in, but that's a different sort of conspicuous, too, so I can't be doing it by myself. I can find out where she goes that we don't need invitations to and I can have my grandfather get me invitations to anything necessary, but I have to show up with either an obvious explanation or someone who can make sure no one cares what the explanation is.” Loxley is charming; Loxley has horns, so that's not him.
There is a faint twist of a smile at some inner thought that he doesn't bother sharing: that being, if he was home, this would be an easy obstacle to overcome. He could look like anyone he wanted. Part of him never liked that, preferring to leave a mark more easily attributed to himself, but gods know it's a nice and simple solution.
"I can find someone," he says.
It might be Ket, but he would prefer it wasn't her when she already has a reputation, and the whole thing could easily smell of subterfuge if it isn't the sort of person that the denizens of Hightown would expect to see. Still, he's in the Diplomacy division. Someone there will be suited.
He pauses, and then says, "I believe this isn't the first time this has happened. Elves going missing, that is. Those from the alienage willing to talk about it said something to that extent, a year ago or more. That, along with the care being put in to track-covering, tells me that whoever's behind it is easily spooked. So if we're going to start putting necks in nooses, such as your new friend," he taps the binder, "they can't notice until we're ready to kick the stand out from under them.
"So I'd prefer to play all this rather close, for now."
No one, Gwenaëlle decides, is allowed to ask her any favours or clarifications for at least a full year after this. This is it. After this, it's strictly on the basis of explicit and direct orders from an appropriate hierarchy, or things where she might get to make something explode, and no exceptions.
“Guilfoyle will look into Fiske's usual haunts,” she says, “and I'll pick a few by myself so it isn't as obvious.”
Hightown is not typically somewhere that she socializes; not somewhere that she spends time doing anything that doesn't have a direct purpose, outside of either her grandfather's home or Alexandrie's. That will need to change, or it's going to look like subterfuge more or less immediately.
“Bon-papa doesn't know what to do with himself if I don't want him to buy me things, anyway, I can expand on my usual errands. My modiste won't be mad about seeing Charnier on her invoices more frequently.”
Loxley ducks his head in a nod, a gesture of gratitude. "No doubt you'll want company," he says, because we have fun here. "Perhaps along with Ket Perrino of Scouting, too. She's been looking into things with me, and I'm—fairly certain she'd welcome a change in scenery," with a genuine half-laugh. He never takes her anywhere nice. Good thing she likes cardgames.
He slides a look to the sewing she'd set aside, then back to her. Pleased, is the easy read, and perhaps cognizant to the non-zero chance she might have told him to go fuck himself. "My thanks," is quick but not insincere, as he goes to pick up the binder, and leave her to her afternoon.
Once on his feet, he adds, "And I'm mainly based in Lowtown, but do be in touch if you need anything too."
Blazingly bright lanterns hang from ropes that crisscross over winding streets, and open firepits send colourful sparks into the air and short gusts of acrid smoke. Taverns and gambling dens and brothels spill light from open windows, light enough to combat the inevitable deep blackness of late night in the late summer, and so these streets—full of people, still—are stiflingly hot.
This segment of Antiva City seems liable to stay lively well into dawn, and so will Loxley, probably. He is a few hours clear of his task, which had involved two days spent in variously uncomfortable stake-out spots to stare at guard rotations, then moving on quiet feet through the gaps, and doing his share of careful pamphlet dispersion. By the time he was close to finished, he'd given some serious consideration to standing atop one of the taller buildings and flinging the things into the streets. He can't imagine that wouldn't be equally effective.
And then onto the markets, making an early start on Operation: Have A Nice Time in a realm untouched by war, and later, a dinner appointment.
He meets Richard and Madame Fitcher in good and generous spirits, later than expected but with some extra coin he'd won in a dice game, and a long and narrow scarf of glimmer-threaded silken fabric snaked around his neck that he hadn't left Kirkwall with, more typically worn in the hair of some of the women local to the city. The extra coin he'd won is immediately spent on a bottle of luxuriously red wine, which he returns to their table with.
It is not so stifling here, a rooftop establishment close to the coast. Sometimes, the relief of a breeze snakes its way through, carrying with it the smell of the sea.
"How many more pamphlets will it take to ensure this city doesn't also fall to rubble and ruin?" is cheerily toned gallows humour from Loxley as he reaches one long arm to refill the nearest cup besides his own. "I hope not too many."
“It was a strange production,” Silas had been saying at the time of Loxley’s arrival, malicious humor sharp and bright in his eyes behind the severity of his critique. “Magestoffelees nearly refused to take the stage.”
Was he to do so without his oreilles? Everyone would laugh! Humiliating!
There had been a few chuckles, a ripple of confusion for a rapid negotiation with a lesser chat for her mismatched pair conducted in hushed whispers just behind the curtain. Was this part of the show? Were the pamphlets?
He’d stayed to watch it through after distributing them, of course, familiarizing himself at last with the canon of Les Chats.
He’s overdressed for the heat in a brocade vest and tall boots, sweat prickled at his temples, damp at the high back of his collar. A scar still fresh enough to pinch angry red slants up his left forearm from the roll of his sleeve; he tilts his cup to the offer of Loxley’s bottle. A firmly-secured bandage keeps the splinter in his palm well out of sight and -- for the moment -- mind. To the casual observer, he must be very accident prone.
“If we have to struggle on under these conditions to find out,” he says, watching Loxley’s pour without ever indicating when, “I'm willing to suffer through the dispersement of another stack or three.”
Edited (making up words and shit ) 2021-08-26 06:33 (UTC)
"Between the three of us, I'm reasonably confident that we might paper from Treviso to Salle in only a few months time. Tragic though it would be to miss the charm of the Free Marches' autumn season. There is nothing quite like pissing rain and Kirkwall's first bite of cold to invigorate the spirit."
The woman at the table with them has discarded the elaborately feminine and performatively modest wear she'd worn to the Chantry's morning services to be assured that the work she'd performed over the course of the previous evenings had indeed come to fruition. 'I merely identified a sympathetic ear among the Sisters and supplied her with the pamphlets to see the thing done for us,' Fitcher had explained prior to some arbitration over a detail of Le Chats lore. 'And lo and behold. You will never guess what I discovered in the prayer book during the service this morning.'
A copy of the pamphlet in question, rather like a trophy, is at this very moment absorbing the condensation from her cup. If there are certain details which she has neglected to mention—such as how Fitcher identified this sympathetic ear in the first place (a prior acquaintance), or how exactly she'd persuaded her to slip the pamphlets into the books (a delivery of information supplied by forces outside of Riftwatch, the production of various details of the Gallows' inner workings, a long meeting with a senior Chantry Sister with connections in Val Royeaux and a packet of documents which now live at the bottom of her traveling kit to be smuggled out of Antiva and delivered into the hands of less neutral parties to the West)—, then they cannot be very important. Certainly not so vital as to be worth distracting from the pleasure of the evening, the satisfaction of work completed, or the somewhat outrageous replacement Fitcher has donned for her chin-high blouse.
The masculine structure of the brocade coat is undermined by the fact that it possesses a single button very near to the navel, hidden now under a sash similar to the ones popularized by various rich Antivan young men who wish to appear rakish, and that the shirt Fitcher wears beneath it has been left open to nearly the same point. That she is otherwise covered from shoulder to wrist, from hip to the extraordinarily pointed toes of her boots are oddly negligible facts.
"If we were to send a message to Mssr Silver illuminating how much work we believe is left to be done..."
"He seems very obliging, Silver." He might even pretend to believe them.
Loxley leaves Richard's cup filled near to the top, then offers the same to Fitcher. They are both by a country mile better dressed than him, even if you're going to count the new acquisition of the scarf spangled around his neck. Rough spun cotton, some beaten leather, a new sash lying wide around his waist of local flare without drawing more focus than the rest of him inevitably will. He doesn't appear to mind, if he even notices.
Starting early on Having A Nice Time hasn't affected hand-eye coordination, anyway, the languid transition of topping up the lady to his own cup well aimed and precise and steady. Everyone has a talent.
"How does one measure the success of a campaign like this, anyway, do you think?"
Now half-emptied bottle set down, cup in hand, Loxley leans back into luxurious recline, arm draped over the back of his chair.
“Contacts in the region can report on matters of local rumor and sentiment.”
...Might be too serious an answer for a question that was not posed in earnest, but he is working out how to balance an obscenely overfilled cup of wine for a drink off the top without dribbling.
“Who should send the message?” he asks once he’s managed it, cup placed carefully aside again after a longer draw. “I submit that I am the least likely among us to be suspected of carousing.” Even if the vest he brought is very fine, and there isn’t a speck of spare elfroot to be found in his quarters at present, because it’s busy leeching its stink all through the contents of his pack.
Relaxation is a lot to ask this early into the evening -- his back is straight against his chair, the suggestive crook at the corner of his mouth outright sly.
They all knew what they were doing when they took on these assignments.
"I take offense. I am a very staid old woman, I'll have you know," says Fitcher into the amplifying shape of her extraordinarily full cup.
But when she has drunk the contents down to a less dangerous level, Fitcher relents as far as: "I nominate Loxley. Mssr Silver is too canny by a full measure. He will respect the lie more if we don't pretend it's anything else."
Silver must have known what he was doing when he assigned the work.
Loxley's eyebrows raise when the responsibility swings back to him, mid-wine sip himself and not cutting it short just to reply. Once he's done, he says, "I think Silver might find assurance in being contacted by the person he'd prefer not to lose track of," with a splay of his fingers off his cup.
"Now, whether that's still me, I'm not so certain, carousing or no carousing."
“Fair point,” says Silas, on the subject of Silver’s canniness, a late look tilted aside after the cut and cinch of Fitcher’s coat.
“I don’t think there is one among us he would prefer to lose track of,” he catches and returns Loxley’s concern in the next breath, awfully deft in the pivot of his full attention onto 2 vs 1.
“I‘d write one for you, but he would almost certainly assume you were captured and compromised.”
"Perhaps an outline," is no doubt the very definition of helpful. "Something Loxley here may easily reinterpret into his own words. 'Messere Silver, while I'm pleased to say that our distribution of the first series of pamphlets has been a success...'"
Fitcher looks to Loxley across her cup. Her eyebrows rise in encouragement, so lacking any appearance of conniving humor that she can only be purposefully repressing it.
Loxley had begun to raise his glass up again to drink from by the time Fitcher tosses it back to him, his eyebrows raising in return.
"'...we have found the Antivans to be a charmingly hedonistic, beautiful, and distractable people, requiring we double, nay, triple our efforts to claim their attention,'" he fills in. "'Please send more pamphlets forthwith with which to furnish the brothels'."
Yes? Good?
"In Tassia, that's really where all important business gets done."
Dick is impressed. Genuine approval tilts into the lines across his brow, something like pride to the poise wound into his shoulders, sharp under the cut of his vest. What a great boy Loxley is.
He’d almost forgotten.
“That’s true,” he agrees in aside, for Fitcher’s benefit. His wine is already down to a much more manageable roll beneath the rim, making a more measured sip easier as he surveys the rooftop around them.
“I don’t see how he could deny such an earnest appeal in good conscience -- are you going to send it now?” His eyes return to Loxley, warm, level, and keen across the table, friendly pressure behind the prick of an invisible knife.
Across the table, the curving line of her mouth slants slightly wider and is painted with some shade of genuine amusement visible just there near the lip of her wine glass. She takes a drink. If the line of her attention slides sideways to Richard, it lingers there for only an instant before flicking back.
The way Madame Fitcher sets her chin in her upturned hand is the perfect parody of fascinated. Her dark eyes play well at being rounded. Brothels, oh my, and so on.
"I've heard there's no time like the present, serah."
Loxley pulls in a breath to answer Richard, but the hesitation is enough for Madame Fitcher to have ample time to contribute, so it's released with a laugh, hoisting his cup.
"The pair of you," and they a little bit are, aren't they, in their nice things and little glances, and some assessing flick of a glance from her to he seems to clock something on an immense delay, and anyway, he continues very cheerfully, "can get fucked. I'll send our esteemed Master of Information a message when I'm not shouting it over the sounds of night merriment."
Is he not? That's a shame. For a place so concerned with the reputation of its young ladies, Antiva City boasts a remarkably marvelous string of pleasure houses.
"I'm still not certain that I fully understand the significance, happy though I am to accept any endorsement of your charm Messere." She tips her glass and temple toward Loxley, an appropriate gesture of respect for the general air of the qunari's everything. The scarf about his neck is exceedingly endearing. "Explain to me again what a mindflayer is meant to do. Beyond the obvious."
At non-serious-but-maybe-serious scolding and threats of chaperones, Loxley sips his wine, eyebrows arched and smile poorly hidden.
But expressiveness absents itself as Loxley goes carefully blank in the way of someone trying to pick up a cue they aren't getting right away but are hoping they will, but when the puzzle piece clicks into place, it's not from a memory jogged. He smiles at Fitcher, apologetic, if not too much.
"Your guess will be as good as mine, I'm afraid," he says, then, to Richard, "But I've never been regaled of stories of myself that I've not lived through firsthand. Please," generously, "take it from the top."
This is a real question anchored in real curiosity, asked earnestly of Fitcher after a delay that suggests he’s unsure of where to begin. There’s an ice pick flicker in his eyes, keen in brief, prising departure from regalement. For an instant, everything else is secondary -- the rooftop, the story, Loxley’s scarf.
He would very much like to see a Thedosian octopus.
It’s immaterial, of course, and he breathes in to explain, as he works his way deeper into his cup: Mindflayers are highly intelligent, tentacled aberrations that feed on the psychic energies of their victims, not entirely unlike demons but mortal and with a penchant for slavery and subjugation over wildfire destruction. They live underground, they are very organized, they are skilled mages. They are soft and slick with a natural excretion that keeps their skin moist at all times. This particular mindflayer was undead and so divorced from ambition.
"We were many hours’ descent into an underground temple whose entire clergy had been exterminated by a death cult, having encountered nothing that wasn’t in some way irrevocably corrupted or rapidly violent, and we came upon a moldering library wreathed in darkness.
"It was far too dark to see inside, but if there were hostile creatures within and we struck a torch, we would be set upon where we might have otherwise crept past unmolested.
"Ser Loxley, being the stealthiest of our number, and the fleetest of foot, proceeded courageously into the darkness alone to scout for unseen dangers. And -- upon hearing the shuffle of strange feet some 20 or 30 meters into the chamber -- " far from any immediate help, he intimates to Loxley with a look, "he called out. ‘Hello!’"
Fitcher makes for a fine audience as she steadily drains her cup. There are grimaces and nose wrinkles in all the right places ('natural excretions'), assurances where called for (there are, in fact, Thedosian octopuses), various hmm's and oh's and yes, I see's, but best of all she lapses into the correctly rapt silence as they reach the account of the gloom-drenched library.
Listening is a skill, and she has always enjoyed a good story besides.
Her laugh is full throated, a pleasantly low and well rounded thing. She makes no effort to stifle it. There is a brief and charming flash of wine-tinged teeth.
To Loxley, "You should have tried that with your warehouse guards."
Loxley is also a good listener, fond of stories, and for a while, that really is all it is. His near-smirk fades as real interest sets in, focus steady and fascinated at graphic descriptions of as yet unmet monsters, of an entire world of them in dripping, echoing caverns, and then of the ruined temple.
His expression flickers when Richard says his name, amusement and a sort of odd surprise all at once. Yes, of course, this was about him, wasn't it. There's a smile already in place for Richard's look, getting all the fangier for it, and then a slightly abashed, if pleased, glance down at his glass for that impression, and for Madame Fitcher's laughter.
Yeah, that sounds like him.
"I might have," he admits to Fitcher, "if they'd gotten wiser." To Richard, "Habit formed from working with our half-orcian friend. If I didn't speak up quickly, she'd start swinging. How fared negotiations then?"
Richard Dickerson does not often tell stories, but Loxley in particular lends himself to them, and Fitcher makes for an easy audience besides.
“Improbably well. You explained our passage through in pursuit of answers and the restoration of the temple’s domain and the mindflayer intimated in return that he was seeking answers of his own. You volunteered my services to supplement his research,” there’s an unappreciative slant at his brows -- presumptuous of him, “called for us to join you, and here we are today. Alive.
“Unfortunately it’s unlikely he survived the temple filling with sand upon our departure. Perhaps if he was swift to teleport himself to safety.
“A half-orc,” he explains in late aside to Fitcher, “is physically analogous to a qunari, or half-qunari. Are there half-qunari?” His intrigue is in near perfect echo to his prior interest in octopuses. If not, there should be. “Most are powerfully built. They have tusks in place of horns.”
Where Margaery is looking for some title or another, Loxley's voice intrudes on her solitude at a polite pitch and volume. It's at an ideal time to read, where the sun is pouring directly through the windows in the little seating areas, while the books themselves are protected in more shadowy areas. Loxley is standing at the far end—well, leaning, now that he's found who he's looking for, hands in coat pockets and a shoulder resting against the stack.
He is markedly otherworldly, even compared to the elves she might have met or seen, with silver-grey skin and curling ram-like horns that sprout behind his temples, and eyes that show up in the dark like a cat's, glinting gold. He finds it takes people a second to get past all that and acquaint themselves with things like—a smile, a querying lift of his eyebrows.
She's no longer jumpy in the quiet, but this is enough of an unexpected surprise for Loxley to get treated to the sound of a muted startled gasp before a slow turn and a rueful smile; when the tomes are as scruffy as they are, one tends to lend full focus into reading the faint lettering on the spine correctly. "It is a rather intimidating undertaking," she agrees as she settles into the full force of her friendly countenance. "But I find it's a task that rewards your efforts the more you try."
He's someone she's seen before - in passing, very difficult to miss - and it helps keep her adjustment period to a mere second. Although it's not to say her eyes don't linger thoughtfully even as steps forward with the chosen title in her hands: Dane and the Werewolf.
"I usually go for the histories, factual texts, but I thought it would be best if I went for something different today. I can't very well impress many people by simply reciting history, after all. Poetry, on the other hand," here, her smile becomes a touch devious, "it's something deceptively simple the nobles always seem to love."
His smile twists a little apologetic at her initial startle. It's difficult not to inadvertently sneak up on people when you're given to a fairly silent way of moving and it's a dark and quiet library. But she recovers admirably, and he takes his weight off his lean, dropping a look to the book in her hands.
"Admittedly," he says, mirroring her smile, "that's sort of how I imagine nobles conversing. Repeating bits of verse back and forth to polite applause, over champagne."
The picture he paints earns a genuine laugh, and it's slow to fade even as his question carries weight that she refuses to acknowledge. Perhaps he can see the wry twist of her lips before she answers?
"I'm flattered you would even ask," is the easiest sentiment to admit. It is good to know that even with her identity feebly balancing on tumultuous waters, she carries herself in a manner that implies - class, decorum. "But I've always been taught that nobility is a privilege afforded to those with high rank or wealth, and I have neither.
All of my former successes were more or less dependent on my family name. It hardly seems fair to stretch my imagination to pretend I am anything other than a rifter here."
A beat.
"Why do you ask?" Her curiosity is gentle, unexpectant even she poses the question.
A direct answer for a direct question. Loxley moves into the alleyway of book shelves, a sort of reflexive positioning that both gives Margaery a sense of easy exit on either side of her as well as puts them nearer. "I'm looking for someone who might do well in navigating the societal circles of Hightown. I'm given to understand it's less of a wolf den than the imperial courts in Orlais, but still requires some finesse.
"Not alone, or anything. Gwenaëlle, she works here too, she's of that ilk, but needs a companion or two to move with so as to be less conspicuous. If that sounds remotely like something within your capacities, then I'd like to convince you about worthiness of the cause, above other causes you might be participating in."
Her eyebrows raise first, and in time, the curls of her lips follow - there's just something irresistibly sweet about being useful. His consideration too, is noted, and the topic of conversation is more than enough to distract Margaery from the wondrously unique aspects of his appearance for good.
"I would be more than happy to assist. I believe I've seen Gwenaëlle in passing," -and heard one of her disagreements with Thranduil over crystal, which is why Margaery assumes her finesse is requested. "What is it you hope to accomplish, exactly?"
Not far. Just out of the looming dusty stacks, more towards where the sunlight is streaming through tall windows. There are places, here, to sit, but Loxley favours a lean by the wall next to the glass.
"Have you been to the alienage? The elven quarter, here in the city, wherein local elves are obliged to gather and live together, safely apart from humans who might wish them harm. I believe that's the justification. Of course, in practice, it means they're often overlooked by the city guard, when they're not busy with the business of outright suppression, anyway."
He rolls his wrist, a gesture. Bear with him. "There've been reports of elves going missing. From what I've managed to glean, it's an organised string of kidnappings. What I've not been able to glean is the person or persons responsible, but it's beginning to point towards the sale of captives elves to the Tevinter Imperium.
"Which brings us to Hightown, and a question of who among them is profiting, if anyone."
He isn't done, but he does pause there, mostly to check for—well, signs of empathy. Rifters seem to be unique for rarely having any prejudice against elven kind, but he can imagine the ways in which certain kinds of humans might lack impetus to question it.
Of course, he doesn't need Margaery to have empathy, but wouldn't that be a nice bonus?
She doesn't sit; while Loxley already towers over her, Margaery prefers to take the more polite route of keeping the height difference between them minimal. Her posture though, remains ramrod straight in contrast.
Her heart beats far more tenderly now, thanks to the weight of the new pain she has learned to carry, and while there are practiced ways for her to perform an empathetic reaction - she doesn't insult Loxley's intelligence by opting to do so. Her smile and the lighthearted air of charm has disappeared though, replaced with a troubled curve to her brow. It's difficult not to think of Fenris.
"And you would like for us to help you figure out who," she guesses. "But if - when we do," determination, in the emphasis, "May I ask how you plan to seek justice? I know enough about purposeful suppression to assume that even if such a plan is uncovered, many may not consider it a serious enough issue to give more than a bare bones punishment. If that."
A considering pause.
"Or are we simply hoping to stop the operation, without anything more?"
"The local authorities don't care if elves disappear," Loxley says, "but those in higher offices will certainly object to someone hidden in Kirkwall, selling its citizens to an enemy nation for profit, regardless of who those citizens are."
Justice, though. Loxley considers the window, the slightly blurry outline of the world beyond it. "Stopping the operation, one way or another, is enough," he says. "But I think that if we can truly outline the extent of the thing occurring, the people benefiting from it, the shape and size of the corruption, then we might be able to move those in charge to do something about it properly."
His smile is lowkey, more around the eyes than his mouth as he adds, "The south, as far as I can tell, considers itself the moral superior to its northern neighbours. It's one thing to throw all the elves into ghettos, to keep the impoverished under your bootheel, but slavery? And during a time of war, too?"
His hand wanders to his chest to cover his heart. Scandalous.
"No, it won't abide it. Which," his hand drops, "to be very clear, is wonderful of them."
The edges of her lips twitch - wry amusement at his theatrics - but Margaery eventually nods. At least here, there appears to be some measure of accountability. Even if it stands on pride, it's something.
"I will do everything I can to help you."
The resolve in her expression is easy to read, although she doesn't offer up any explanations for why. Loxley doesn't need to know about the shifts in her conscience, or the guilt that she carries as a consequence.
"I don't consider justice to be the only worthwhile goal, but it's good to hear that something may actually come of it, as a warning for others who may be tempted to try as well."
A firm nod (more to herself), and then she's back to a small smile. "Tell me where to be and when. I've already a few ideas in mind to help narrow down our list of suspects."
No, Loxley doesn't need to know, but he can't help be curious. He had imagined this woman brushing aside his request, or, at best, accepting the task in some small minimal way, but there is an earnest generousity that he's rather sure is sincere when she pledges to assist him to the fullest of her ability. It's curious, isn't it?
Or maybe he's just very used to trying to convince people to do good things for no reason that the amount of heroes in Riftwatch always catches him by surprise. Still. No one just becomes heroic without motive.
But all that's for another day. His hands come together in not quite a clap, respectful of their being in a library and all that, clasped in a gesture of gratitude. "Yourself and myself and Madame Baudin can work out the finer points—this evening, if you've no prior engagements.
"I'd only ask," he adds, "that we keep all of this between ourselves, even within Riftwatch. Whoever it is we're closing in on seems to have a talent for pulling back into the shadows at first sign of being seen."
Her brows raise at the request, although they smooth out not a second later; although it's surprising to know this is a clandestine effort even within Riftwatch, his reasoning is sound. The less people talk, the more opportunities will be on their side.
"I will speak of this to no one," she promises, her hands coming up to cup around his - briefly, in case the touch is unwelcome - while they're still clasped together. "And thank you. For thinking of me." For trusting me, goes unsaid. While settling into Thedas hasn't been monotonous, by any means, the thought of navigating treacherous waters in a familiar setting excites Margaery more than she thought it would.
Her following curtsy is more playful than anything, head tilted and smile mischievous.
A flicker crosses his expression, like sincere promises and hand touches and offered thanks all have a way of working on him. It's a pleased flicker, rippling the up-until-just-then smooth surface of business-like charm that Loxley prefers to cultivate with unknowns, but what can he say: it's flattering.
And maybe gets it. There'd been a moment, early in his time in Riftwatch, when he'd made an offer to make himself useful, and to be trusted, and it had gone so awry that to this day, he picks and chooses his work from a distant sideline, plays at independence a trifle harder than the average rifter-agent. He thinks it might have made a difference, if someone had identified him in the pack and asked if he'd like to do something worthwhile, rather than he spend all his time finding it on his own.
He ducks his head in an acknowledging nod, just shy of a bow in return of curtsey. It's nothing.
"I'll leave you to your verse," he says, and moves to do so.
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gardens in the gallows. for gwenaëlle.
What might bother her are other people, and neat-sounding footfalls on stone pathway indicates that this inevitability is imminent. The man that comes to a halt at a respectful distance has been among Riftwatch long enough that they won't be complete strangers to each other—Loxley recognises who he's set out to find, anyway.
Umber-toned leathers are a bright spot even in the late summer gardens, and he sketches a shallow bow. In one hand is a thin leather binder for documents, but he's not drawing attention to it immediately as he says, "Lady Baudin?" but still all a little more windswept than buttoned down, manners or no manners. He's seen her do a lot of swearing on the crystals already.
"Could I infringe on your—" He gestures. Whole situation. "—for a moment?"
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“Wow,” she says, “I think I hate that almost as much as she did. Is this a general misunderstanding or some kind of political kink?”
This is borderline friendly, which is why that comes out as a sincere question rather than as snide as it might have done. Even if she is relatively certain of what the answer probably is. He doesn't look like the type to jerk off to the idea of installing elves in high places, but you never can tell.
“It's madame if we're standing on ceremony, but I certainly don't outrank you here enough to warrant it and I'm sure if you know my surname you must know my first name.”
The gesture she makes at the other end of the bench is an invitation, or at least indicative of having resigned herself to some sort of interaction continuing to happen because he's holding a binder and if he were here to serve her with some kind of legal action he'd have addressed her differently.
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"Well, very glad to have amused you," Loxley says, the corner of his mouth turns up. "I can never tell what to do with names when there's more than one of them, with titles and everything. I imagine it a little like dinner placings somewhere fancy. Start from the outside, work your way in."
His accent sort of lists fancy too, in a Tevinter sort of way, but it sounds more like theatre than the true thing. Then again, who can say.
"'Gwenaëlle' it is. I was hoping you might help clear something up for me. It's to do with your grandfather."
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Because that just immediately feels like it can't be going anywhere good.
“The rest of his grandchildren do have titles accordingly,” she says, “but he only lets me still call him that now everyone knows we aren't related because I remind him of my father's mother.”
This may or may not actually be true; she's never asked. It had taken some time for her to accept that his determination to remain her grandfather was sincere, and without obvious strings attached, and she's still easily derailed by it. This is, however, her best theory. Emeric had told her once or twice how she favoured the late Comtesse de Vauquelin; she had seen it for herself in portraiture.
“What's my grandfather got to do with anything after the Orlesian occupation of Ferelden?”
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"It's really about what he's not involved in, ideally," he says. "And you'll have to bear with me a little, because there's actually a fuck load of paperwork involved that I couldn't possibly bring about to you down all those stairs, but I'd be happy to walk you through it—"
The document he produces is a single sheet, stamped with some emblem of a Hightown family. Likely recognisable as just one of the many viper pits in the neighbourhood.
"This, though, is a letter, signed by a Lady Cora Fiske, referencing the Duke Romain de Coucy's financial ties to the Tevinter Imperium. Well," Loxley tips his head, "it doesn't come right out and say that, but, I believe it implies knowledge of such a thing." He offers it out for her to read. The receiver, a Mssr Kel, does not appear to be of Hightown stock.
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“This is bullshit,” she says, flatly. “He has no financial ties to the Imperium, and I know where this bitch lives.”
Gwenaëlle, after all, has herself long been an in and out resident of Hightown. She's well-acquainted with some of its brighter stars, and familiar with its ways and means. The ebb and flow of its wide streets and their habits.
“Who's Kel?”
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And information that is probably of value. "A well connected man," he says, "with ties to the office of the Viscount and the city guard. He's a consultant of some kind, it's not completely clear to me, so I expect most of what he does is off the books. But he builds cases that deal in," he gestures, "sensitive matters. Dukes moving gold over enemy lines, for instance."
Spoken in a tone that does not imply he believes the thing he's presented to her.
"I believe someone does have financial ties to the Imperium, and they're building a case to make it seem as though paths lead elsewhere. Which is strange, given the better plan should be to make paths disappear. Because on one end, you have elves disappearing out of the alienage," and he's watching her a little, there, as he says it, "and on the other end, the Imperium. And I can't imagine Kel or really anyone would actually give a shit about it, especially these days."
He holds out a hand for the letter back.
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(That is a different worry altogether.)
She hands him back the letter after a moment longer—scrutinizing it, and its particulars, and long habit of recording everything about her time attached to first the Inquisition and then to Riftwatch has made this sort of thing second nature. It makes it harder to assess her reaction to the question of disappearing elves, because she is still frowning down at the words in front of her.
“I'm intimately familiar with how few fucks are given about disappearing elves,” she says, briskly, “but people care a lot about financial ties to the Imperium. I can think of about seven reasons to pull this shit off the top of my head, and if we were in Orlais, I'd have a short list of who'd probably have the balls to do it, too.”
Her brother would be on that list, if she didn't think he had at least enough self-preservation instinct to steer clear of a scheme involving her grandfather, which at some point soon is going to be very funny. They aren't in Orlais, though, and Gwenaëlle's knowledge of Hightown is...particular. Familiar, but not intimate. If her personality hadn't been enough to fail to endear her to her neighbours, her subsequent disgrace had complicated matters all the more before her grandfather had proceeded to take simply ignoring her altogether off the table by refusing, himself, to do it.
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"So the chattel could be anything," he says. "If this were a simple frame-up. The chattel could even be non-existent, with the right sort of documentation. But the chattel is living bodies, elves or not, and they really are going missing. That's quite a costly endeavour, and I can't imagine that whoever is behind it isn't turning a profit, even if there's some other play going on."
He glances away from them, double-checking they're alone. It's not out of a need to keep secrets, really, but all of this could get messy fast, if the wrong people pick up on the wrong thing. It's with some calculation, then, that he continues;
"How well do you know Hightown? Well enough to help get a grasp on whether Fiske actually makes money out of slave trade?"
A cynical lift to his voice, despite it being a true question. He can't fathom that whoever is clever enough to have so effectively covered their tracks this far would have written this letter.
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sometimes, you don't know what the fuck might be important.
“I doubt she is. I heard the Fiskes were bleeding money, or something, and even if you had the good sense to keep your slave money on the quiet I can't imagine you would go as far as to try and embarrass yourselves to cover your tracks. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?”
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The purpose, that is. Far-fetched that the Fiskes are so desperate for money that this is the enterprise they'd pursue, but of course: Loxley knows next to nothing of Hightown. As far as he knows, they could all be involved in some strange elf trafficking racket, and so he listens, echoes back to Gwenaëlle mostly to demonstrate understanding.
Define help. "We need opportunities to observe the Lady Fiske. Salons she might be invited to, or—whatever they do up there to wile away the hours. We can't set obvious traps, we can only shadow what she does and find opportunities to get closer."
He splays the hand resting on his knee. "I'm a little conspicuous if I were to try to do so on my own, and further, we can't have just any Riftwatch agent try to play at masquerade—they'd need reason to be near. You have connections already."
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“Yeah, ouais, not as you're hoping. And ordinarily, I'd throw Lexie under the carriage wheels,” without a second thought, “but under the circumstances I think that'd muddy the waters unnecessarily.”
Gwenaëlle's problem wasn't a failure to understand how the game was played; she didn't need someone to explain to her why someone whose surname was d'Asgard and whose Tevene in-laws certainly owned slaves was not going to be the right card to play. It isn't even that she thinks she couldn't be useful, only if this is what they're poking at the shape of being—
she's such an obvious weakness to exploit. If someone is trying to make Riftwatch look dirty, the last thing they need is the other Orlesian disgrace dangled in arm's reach.
“I can force my way in, but that's a different sort of conspicuous, too, so I can't be doing it by myself. I can find out where she goes that we don't need invitations to and I can have my grandfather get me invitations to anything necessary, but I have to show up with either an obvious explanation or someone who can make sure no one cares what the explanation is.” Loxley is charming; Loxley has horns, so that's not him.
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"I can find someone," he says.
It might be Ket, but he would prefer it wasn't her when she already has a reputation, and the whole thing could easily smell of subterfuge if it isn't the sort of person that the denizens of Hightown would expect to see. Still, he's in the Diplomacy division. Someone there will be suited.
He pauses, and then says, "I believe this isn't the first time this has happened. Elves going missing, that is. Those from the alienage willing to talk about it said something to that extent, a year ago or more. That, along with the care being put in to track-covering, tells me that whoever's behind it is easily spooked. So if we're going to start putting necks in nooses, such as your new friend," he taps the binder, "they can't notice until we're ready to kick the stand out from under them.
"So I'd prefer to play all this rather close, for now."
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“Guilfoyle will look into Fiske's usual haunts,” she says, “and I'll pick a few by myself so it isn't as obvious.”
Hightown is not typically somewhere that she socializes; not somewhere that she spends time doing anything that doesn't have a direct purpose, outside of either her grandfather's home or Alexandrie's. That will need to change, or it's going to look like subterfuge more or less immediately.
“Bon-papa doesn't know what to do with himself if I don't want him to buy me things, anyway, I can expand on my usual errands. My modiste won't be mad about seeing Charnier on her invoices more frequently.”
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He slides a look to the sewing she'd set aside, then back to her. Pleased, is the easy read, and perhaps cognizant to the non-zero chance she might have told him to go fuck himself. "My thanks," is quick but not insincere, as he goes to pick up the binder, and leave her to her afternoon.
Once on his feet, he adds, "And I'm mainly based in Lowtown, but do be in touch if you need anything too."
antiva, in general. for richard and fitcher.
This segment of Antiva City seems liable to stay lively well into dawn, and so will Loxley, probably. He is a few hours clear of his task, which had involved two days spent in variously uncomfortable stake-out spots to stare at guard rotations, then moving on quiet feet through the gaps, and doing his share of careful pamphlet dispersion. By the time he was close to finished, he'd given some serious consideration to standing atop one of the taller buildings and flinging the things into the streets. He can't imagine that wouldn't be equally effective.
And then onto the markets, making an early start on Operation: Have A Nice Time in a realm untouched by war, and later, a dinner appointment.
He meets Richard and Madame Fitcher in good and generous spirits, later than expected but with some extra coin he'd won in a dice game, and a long and narrow scarf of glimmer-threaded silken fabric snaked around his neck that he hadn't left Kirkwall with, more typically worn in the hair of some of the women local to the city. The extra coin he'd won is immediately spent on a bottle of luxuriously red wine, which he returns to their table with.
It is not so stifling here, a rooftop establishment close to the coast. Sometimes, the relief of a breeze snakes its way through, carrying with it the smell of the sea.
"How many more pamphlets will it take to ensure this city doesn't also fall to rubble and ruin?" is cheerily toned gallows humour from Loxley as he reaches one long arm to refill the nearest cup besides his own. "I hope not too many."
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Was he to do so without his oreilles? Everyone would laugh! Humiliating!
There had been a few chuckles, a ripple of confusion for a rapid negotiation with a lesser chat for her mismatched pair conducted in hushed whispers just behind the curtain. Was this part of the show? Were the pamphlets?
He’d stayed to watch it through after distributing them, of course, familiarizing himself at last with the canon of Les Chats.
He’s overdressed for the heat in a brocade vest and tall boots, sweat prickled at his temples, damp at the high back of his collar. A scar still fresh enough to pinch angry red slants up his left forearm from the roll of his sleeve; he tilts his cup to the offer of Loxley’s bottle. A firmly-secured bandage keeps the splinter in his palm well out of sight and -- for the moment -- mind. To the casual observer, he must be very accident prone.
“If we have to struggle on under these conditions to find out,” he says, watching Loxley’s pour without ever indicating when, “I'm willing to suffer through the dispersement of another stack or three.”
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The woman at the table with them has discarded the elaborately feminine and performatively modest wear she'd worn to the Chantry's morning services to be assured that the work she'd performed over the course of the previous evenings had indeed come to fruition. 'I merely identified a sympathetic ear among the Sisters and supplied her with the pamphlets to see the thing done for us,' Fitcher had explained prior to some arbitration over a detail of Le Chats lore. 'And lo and behold. You will never guess what I discovered in the prayer book during the service this morning.'
A copy of the pamphlet in question, rather like a trophy, is at this very moment absorbing the condensation from her cup. If there are certain details which she has neglected to mention—such as how Fitcher identified this sympathetic ear in the first place (a prior acquaintance), or how exactly she'd persuaded her to slip the pamphlets into the books (a delivery of information supplied by forces outside of Riftwatch, the production of various details of the Gallows' inner workings, a long meeting with a senior Chantry Sister with connections in Val Royeaux and a packet of documents which now live at the bottom of her traveling kit to be smuggled out of Antiva and delivered into the hands of less neutral parties to the West)—, then they cannot be very important. Certainly not so vital as to be worth distracting from the pleasure of the evening, the satisfaction of work completed, or the somewhat outrageous replacement Fitcher has donned for her chin-high blouse.
The masculine structure of the brocade coat is undermined by the fact that it possesses a single button very near to the navel, hidden now under a sash similar to the ones popularized by various rich Antivan young men who wish to appear rakish, and that the shirt Fitcher wears beneath it has been left open to nearly the same point. That she is otherwise covered from shoulder to wrist, from hip to the extraordinarily pointed toes of her boots are oddly negligible facts.
"If we were to send a message to Mssr Silver illuminating how much work we believe is left to be done..."
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Loxley leaves Richard's cup filled near to the top, then offers the same to Fitcher. They are both by a country mile better dressed than him, even if you're going to count the new acquisition of the scarf spangled around his neck. Rough spun cotton, some beaten leather, a new sash lying wide around his waist of local flare without drawing more focus than the rest of him inevitably will. He doesn't appear to mind, if he even notices.
Starting early on Having A Nice Time hasn't affected hand-eye coordination, anyway, the languid transition of topping up the lady to his own cup well aimed and precise and steady. Everyone has a talent.
"How does one measure the success of a campaign like this, anyway, do you think?"
Now half-emptied bottle set down, cup in hand, Loxley leans back into luxurious recline, arm draped over the back of his chair.
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...Might be too serious an answer for a question that was not posed in earnest, but he is working out how to balance an obscenely overfilled cup of wine for a drink off the top without dribbling.
“Who should send the message?” he asks once he’s managed it, cup placed carefully aside again after a longer draw. “I submit that I am the least likely among us to be suspected of carousing.” Even if the vest he brought is very fine, and there isn’t a speck of spare elfroot to be found in his quarters at present, because it’s busy leeching its stink all through the contents of his pack.
Relaxation is a lot to ask this early into the evening -- his back is straight against his chair, the suggestive crook at the corner of his mouth outright sly.
They all knew what they were doing when they took on these assignments.
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But when she has drunk the contents down to a less dangerous level, Fitcher relents as far as: "I nominate Loxley. Mssr Silver is too canny by a full measure. He will respect the lie more if we don't pretend it's anything else."
Silver must have known what he was doing when he assigned the work.
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"Now, whether that's still me, I'm not so certain, carousing or no carousing."
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“I don’t think there is one among us he would prefer to lose track of,” he catches and returns Loxley’s concern in the next breath, awfully deft in the pivot of his full attention onto 2 vs 1.
“I‘d write one for you, but he would almost certainly assume you were captured and compromised.”
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Fitcher looks to Loxley across her cup. Her eyebrows rise in encouragement, so lacking any appearance of conniving humor that she can only be purposefully repressing it.
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"'...we have found the Antivans to be a charmingly hedonistic, beautiful, and distractable people, requiring we double, nay, triple our efforts to claim their attention,'" he fills in. "'Please send more pamphlets forthwith with which to furnish the brothels'."
Yes? Good?
"In Tassia, that's really where all important business gets done."
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He’d almost forgotten.
“That’s true,” he agrees in aside, for Fitcher’s benefit. His wine is already down to a much more manageable roll beneath the rim, making a more measured sip easier as he surveys the rooftop around them.
“I don’t see how he could deny such an earnest appeal in good conscience -- are you going to send it now?” His eyes return to Loxley, warm, level, and keen across the table, friendly pressure behind the prick of an invisible knife.
Very interested in his response.
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The way Madame Fitcher sets her chin in her upturned hand is the perfect parody of fascinated. Her dark eyes play well at being rounded. Brothels, oh my, and so on.
"I've heard there's no time like the present, serah."
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"The pair of you," and they a little bit are, aren't they, in their nice things and little glances, and some assessing flick of a glance from her to he seems to clock something on an immense delay, and anyway, he continues very cheerfully, "can get fucked. I'll send our esteemed Master of Information a message when I'm not shouting it over the sounds of night merriment."
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He’s narrowed his eyes, flinty through the bridge of his nose, the pluck and reset of his fingers around his cup. But he’s not serious.
Probably.
“I’d just been telling Mrs. Fitcher how you charmed your way through an undead mindflayer’s reservations about the party.”
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"I'm still not certain that I fully understand the significance, happy though I am to accept any endorsement of your charm Messere." She tips her glass and temple toward Loxley, an appropriate gesture of respect for the general air of the qunari's everything. The scarf about his neck is exceedingly endearing. "Explain to me again what a mindflayer is meant to do. Beyond the obvious."
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But expressiveness absents itself as Loxley goes carefully blank in the way of someone trying to pick up a cue they aren't getting right away but are hoping they will, but when the puzzle piece clicks into place, it's not from a memory jogged. He smiles at Fitcher, apologetic, if not too much.
"Your guess will be as good as mine, I'm afraid," he says, then, to Richard, "But I've never been regaled of stories of myself that I've not lived through firsthand. Please," generously, "take it from the top."
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This is a real question anchored in real curiosity, asked earnestly of Fitcher after a delay that suggests he’s unsure of where to begin. There’s an ice pick flicker in his eyes, keen in brief, prising departure from regalement. For an instant, everything else is secondary -- the rooftop, the story, Loxley’s scarf.
He would very much like to see a Thedosian octopus.
It’s immaterial, of course, and he breathes in to explain, as he works his way deeper into his cup: Mindflayers are highly intelligent, tentacled aberrations that feed on the psychic energies of their victims, not entirely unlike demons but mortal and with a penchant for slavery and subjugation over wildfire destruction. They live underground, they are very organized, they are skilled mages. They are soft and slick with a natural excretion that keeps their skin moist at all times. This particular mindflayer was undead and so divorced from ambition.
"We were many hours’ descent into an underground temple whose entire clergy had been exterminated by a death cult, having encountered nothing that wasn’t in some way irrevocably corrupted or rapidly violent, and we came upon a moldering library wreathed in darkness.
"It was far too dark to see inside, but if there were hostile creatures within and we struck a torch, we would be set upon where we might have otherwise crept past unmolested.
"Ser Loxley, being the stealthiest of our number, and the fleetest of foot, proceeded courageously into the darkness alone to scout for unseen dangers. And -- upon hearing the shuffle of strange feet some 20 or 30 meters into the chamber -- " far from any immediate help, he intimates to Loxley with a look, "he called out. ‘Hello!’"
His impression is not terrible.
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Listening is a skill, and she has always enjoyed a good story besides.
Her laugh is full throated, a pleasantly low and well rounded thing. She makes no effort to stifle it. There is a brief and charming flash of wine-tinged teeth.
To Loxley, "You should have tried that with your warehouse guards."
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His expression flickers when Richard says his name, amusement and a sort of odd surprise all at once. Yes, of course, this was about him, wasn't it. There's a smile already in place for Richard's look, getting all the fangier for it, and then a slightly abashed, if pleased, glance down at his glass for that impression, and for Madame Fitcher's laughter.
Yeah, that sounds like him.
"I might have," he admits to Fitcher, "if they'd gotten wiser." To Richard, "Habit formed from working with our half-orcian friend. If I didn't speak up quickly, she'd start swinging. How fared negotiations then?"
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“Improbably well. You explained our passage through in pursuit of answers and the restoration of the temple’s domain and the mindflayer intimated in return that he was seeking answers of his own. You volunteered my services to supplement his research,” there’s an unappreciative slant at his brows -- presumptuous of him, “called for us to join you, and here we are today. Alive.
“Unfortunately it’s unlikely he survived the temple filling with sand upon our departure. Perhaps if he was swift to teleport himself to safety.
“A half-orc,” he explains in late aside to Fitcher, “is physically analogous to a qunari, or half-qunari. Are there half-qunari?” His intrigue is in near perfect echo to his prior interest in octopuses. If not, there should be. “Most are powerfully built. They have tusks in place of horns.”
the library. for margaery.
Where Margaery is looking for some title or another, Loxley's voice intrudes on her solitude at a polite pitch and volume. It's at an ideal time to read, where the sun is pouring directly through the windows in the little seating areas, while the books themselves are protected in more shadowy areas. Loxley is standing at the far end—well, leaning, now that he's found who he's looking for, hands in coat pockets and a shoulder resting against the stack.
He is markedly otherworldly, even compared to the elves she might have met or seen, with silver-grey skin and curling ram-like horns that sprout behind his temples, and eyes that show up in the dark like a cat's, glinting gold. He finds it takes people a second to get past all that and acquaint themselves with things like—a smile, a querying lift of his eyebrows.
"You know, books-wise. What sort do you go for?"
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He's someone she's seen before - in passing, very difficult to miss - and it helps keep her adjustment period to a mere second. Although it's not to say her eyes don't linger thoughtfully even as steps forward with the chosen title in her hands: Dane and the Werewolf.
"I usually go for the histories, factual texts, but I thought it would be best if I went for something different today. I can't very well impress many people by simply reciting history, after all. Poetry, on the other hand," here, her smile becomes a touch devious, "it's something deceptively simple the nobles always seem to love."
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"Admittedly," he says, mirroring her smile, "that's sort of how I imagine nobles conversing. Repeating bits of verse back and forth to polite applause, over champagne."
But; "Do you not consider yourself one of them?"
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"I'm flattered you would even ask," is the easiest sentiment to admit. It is good to know that even with her identity feebly balancing on tumultuous waters, she carries herself in a manner that implies - class, decorum. "But I've always been taught that nobility is a privilege afforded to those with high rank or wealth, and I have neither.
All of my former successes were more or less dependent on my family name. It hardly seems fair to stretch my imagination to pretend I am anything other than a rifter here."
A beat.
"Why do you ask?" Her curiosity is gentle, unexpectant even she poses the question.
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A direct answer for a direct question. Loxley moves into the alleyway of book shelves, a sort of reflexive positioning that both gives Margaery a sense of easy exit on either side of her as well as puts them nearer. "I'm looking for someone who might do well in navigating the societal circles of Hightown. I'm given to understand it's less of a wolf den than the imperial courts in Orlais, but still requires some finesse.
"Not alone, or anything. Gwenaëlle, she works here too, she's of that ilk, but needs a companion or two to move with so as to be less conspicuous. If that sounds remotely like something within your capacities, then I'd like to convince you about worthiness of the cause, above other causes you might be participating in."
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"I would be more than happy to assist. I believe I've seen Gwenaëlle in passing," -and heard one of her disagreements with Thranduil over crystal, which is why Margaery assumes her finesse is requested. "What is it you hope to accomplish, exactly?"
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Not far. Just out of the looming dusty stacks, more towards where the sunlight is streaming through tall windows. There are places, here, to sit, but Loxley favours a lean by the wall next to the glass.
"Have you been to the alienage? The elven quarter, here in the city, wherein local elves are obliged to gather and live together, safely apart from humans who might wish them harm. I believe that's the justification. Of course, in practice, it means they're often overlooked by the city guard, when they're not busy with the business of outright suppression, anyway."
He rolls his wrist, a gesture. Bear with him. "There've been reports of elves going missing. From what I've managed to glean, it's an organised string of kidnappings. What I've not been able to glean is the person or persons responsible, but it's beginning to point towards the sale of captives elves to the Tevinter Imperium.
"Which brings us to Hightown, and a question of who among them is profiting, if anyone."
He isn't done, but he does pause there, mostly to check for—well, signs of empathy. Rifters seem to be unique for rarely having any prejudice against elven kind, but he can imagine the ways in which certain kinds of humans might lack impetus to question it.
Of course, he doesn't need Margaery to have empathy, but wouldn't that be a nice bonus?
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Her heart beats far more tenderly now, thanks to the weight of the new pain she has learned to carry, and while there are practiced ways for her to perform an empathetic reaction - she doesn't insult Loxley's intelligence by opting to do so. Her smile and the lighthearted air of charm has disappeared though, replaced with a troubled curve to her brow. It's difficult not to think of Fenris.
"And you would like for us to help you figure out who," she guesses. "But if - when we do," determination, in the emphasis, "May I ask how you plan to seek justice? I know enough about purposeful suppression to assume that even if such a plan is uncovered, many may not consider it a serious enough issue to give more than a bare bones punishment. If that."
A considering pause.
"Or are we simply hoping to stop the operation, without anything more?"
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Justice, though. Loxley considers the window, the slightly blurry outline of the world beyond it. "Stopping the operation, one way or another, is enough," he says. "But I think that if we can truly outline the extent of the thing occurring, the people benefiting from it, the shape and size of the corruption, then we might be able to move those in charge to do something about it properly."
His smile is lowkey, more around the eyes than his mouth as he adds, "The south, as far as I can tell, considers itself the moral superior to its northern neighbours. It's one thing to throw all the elves into ghettos, to keep the impoverished under your bootheel, but slavery? And during a time of war, too?"
His hand wanders to his chest to cover his heart. Scandalous.
"No, it won't abide it. Which," his hand drops, "to be very clear, is wonderful of them."
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"I will do everything I can to help you."
The resolve in her expression is easy to read, although she doesn't offer up any explanations for why. Loxley doesn't need to know about the shifts in her conscience, or the guilt that she carries as a consequence.
"I don't consider justice to be the only worthwhile goal, but it's good to hear that something may actually come of it, as a warning for others who may be tempted to try as well."
A firm nod (more to herself), and then she's back to a small smile. "Tell me where to be and when. I've already a few ideas in mind to help narrow down our list of suspects."
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Or maybe he's just very used to trying to convince people to do good things for no reason that the amount of heroes in Riftwatch always catches him by surprise. Still. No one just becomes heroic without motive.
But all that's for another day. His hands come together in not quite a clap, respectful of their being in a library and all that, clasped in a gesture of gratitude. "Yourself and myself and Madame Baudin can work out the finer points—this evening, if you've no prior engagements.
"I'd only ask," he adds, "that we keep all of this between ourselves, even within Riftwatch. Whoever it is we're closing in on seems to have a talent for pulling back into the shadows at first sign of being seen."
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"I will speak of this to no one," she promises, her hands coming up to cup around his - briefly, in case the touch is unwelcome - while they're still clasped together. "And thank you. For thinking of me." For trusting me, goes unsaid. While settling into Thedas hasn't been monotonous, by any means, the thought of navigating treacherous waters in a familiar setting excites Margaery more than she thought it would.
Her following curtsy is more playful than anything, head tilted and smile mischievous.
"Tonight, then."
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And maybe gets it. There'd been a moment, early in his time in Riftwatch, when he'd made an offer to make himself useful, and to be trusted, and it had gone so awry that to this day, he picks and chooses his work from a distant sideline, plays at independence a trifle harder than the average rifter-agent. He thinks it might have made a difference, if someone had identified him in the pack and asked if he'd like to do something worthwhile, rather than he spend all his time finding it on his own.
He ducks his head in an acknowledging nod, just shy of a bow in return of curtsey. It's nothing.
"I'll leave you to your verse," he says, and moves to do so.