“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.”
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no subject
“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.”
no subject
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.
no subject
"'...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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.”
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
“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.”