faderift | open and closed.

"Right," Bastien says, nodding once and then again, while his eyes slide to the middle distance off to Marcus' side and he sorts back through the details. "C'est ça."

It would have been nice, is all, for it to have been someone outside of the Gallows.

After a moment his eyes return to Marcus' face, smiling in the particular way—small and crooked, eyes concerned above it—of someone who just smiles as a reflex, even when they're taking something seriously.

"Someone working in the Chantry's interest, against mages. It is not you. It could be me," is in deference to Marcus' perspective, not a supposition he might have blacked out and betrayed everyone, "but I was gone during the time someone would have needed to be here to interfere with the contact in Lydes."

Maybe Marcus knew that; maybe that's why he's here.

Now he's making notes: lines down the page to divide it into columns, with M. ROUNDTREE and BASTIEN added to one of them.

"Is there anyone else you are sure we can eliminate? Or anyone you suspect, if you would rather work forwards."

There is a hint of near-humour for Bastien's deference, borderline undetectable to the naked eye, and Marcus otherwise allows both this speculation and the following ruling out to go by without comment. He watches Bastien write, his focus not so unlike a dog judging whether a human putting on shoes will mean anything to him in the short term.

At the question, he looks back up, hesitating. Mages, as per elimination, feels simplistic, so instead he opts for the other thing,

"You recall Barrow," he says, "who went with us after the Abomination. He also participated in its execution. Until then, I don't believe anyone knew he was a Templar, and this concealment of his status could indicate involvement on behalf of the Chantry. I don't know his skills in forgery, but any man can act as eyes and ears inside a place of interest."

"Aw. I like Barrow." He says this as he unhesitatingly writes BARROW in the second column. "But that is how I usually worked, when I worked—by being likable and so harmless."

He does not expect Marcus to relate.

"The other one, Orlov," who Bastien knows only by reputation and habitual research, "he is too new. Although it is not out of the question there is more than one, ouais? Some coordination, some baton-passing. Shit."

It's true, Marcus has never affably charmed his way through anything, but there is the knowledge of how one stays still and quiet and unnoticeable until the time comes to be noticed. So he nods once at Bastien's assessment, some quiet dislike ambiently transmitted through more passive, subconscious cues than he intends.

He lets out a breath, short and sharp through his nose, at the idea of such coordination. It's not a cynical sound, but the opposite, that it feels all too likely.

"There were two others, that I recall. One of the Anderfels, and one of," and Marcus pauses, "I'm not sure, he came by way of the Inquisition. Antiva, I think. They're both gone and I don't know that I suspect them, but I can match their movement to what's been identified so far and see if there is anything worth questioning. But it was Barrow's presence that day and his deception as much as his affiliations that mark him."

In case Bastien might suspect him of bias, of naming suspects based on character alone, some small amount of defense ready in his tone.

Bastien nods without looking up from his meager columns, adding an underline below Barrow’s name before looking up and broadening his resting-cheer-face smile into a deliberate one. Nothing to defend. Even if it was all affiliation, affiliations matter.

“We an pull records and see what he has worked on,” he says. “Not that that will be the only information he has, when we gossip like fishwives, but a start.”

Affiliations matter, he’s still thinking, now with a sinking feeling. He doesn’t know who Yseult works for.

It’s all in his stomach, the sinking. It doesn’t cast any shadows on his face.

“Have you spoken to any of the Division Heads already?”

"The Scoutmaster," Marcus says. "After she was identified by Catrin Prosser, after Prosser surrendered to the Inquisition and we returned to Riftwatch, I made contact with the Scoutmaster to confirm if she'd really had correspondence with Catrin or her husband. She'd never heard of them."

It bothers him, still, Felix Naegle's violent death, the look on Catrin's face when they'd told her of it, the young girl with her. He leans a little aside to fish a slender cigarette case from his coat pocket, but doesn't open it immediately, turning it in his fingers and watching the light play off it as he draws back from memory, into the present.

"The report on that situation was distributed to all four," Marcus adds, a glance back up at Bastien. "But they've not been updated since."

Thinking through that scenario, Bastien's stomach gains a little more buoyancy. Not the buoyancy of certainty, quite, but—

"Yseult would never be sloppy enough to incriminate herself that way, if it were her," he says, "and it is not the Commander. He is who he says he is, and who he says he is would not be involved with this. And it is not Byerly. I have known him for a long time, and this isn't—"

Who he's spying for. Possibilities tug on the edge of his thoughts: Byerly's reports to Ferelden, someone in Denerim trading with the Chantry, Ferelden itself making a bargain. But he doesn't let them snag and doesn't pause.

"—something he would do. So we do not need to worry about them, or the mages who fought in your war, I assume."

More names into columns. Barrow stays lonely on the list of suspects.

"Are you up for going through all of this again if I ask Yseult to come down now?"

Focus sharpens in the time it takes Bastien to say 'something he would do', and while there's no pause with which to dig into, there's a sort of

quiet bristling, that occurs, on Marcus' side of the conversation. This being an unsatisfactory explanation as to why Rutyer's name should go down on that side of the page, Marcus watching its forming as he thumbs open the cigarette case, takes one brown-leaf rolled smoke between his teeth. There is a table nearby, and he places the open case on it, in a sort of passive invitation to share, if Bastien so wishes.

He issues no protest, and instead says, "Aye," of the question being directed to him. At some stage, the end of his cigarette has caught flame, tempered into that round circle of embers, the release of a ribbon of smoke.

Bastien clocks that bristling—clocks it visibly, with a glance up and a sympathetic stretch of his smile. But he discards the possibility of trying to make a point (Enchanter Julius used to be a Loyalist, didn't he?) as a pointless exercise and takes up his sending crystal instead.

Maybe it's a reversal of the proper way of things, to ask Yseult to come down to them instead of gathering their things and going up to her, but he's of the personal opinion she should leave her office more often.

"I have always been jealous of that," he says once he's issued the invitation and set the crystal aside again, taking one of those offered cigarettes and wiggling his finger at the unlit end to clarify what that is. "I worked with a mage when I was younger—a healer, mostly, but I think he learned to create fire solely to be able to light cigarettes. He didn't smoke. He just liked daring people to lean over his hand, with that flame, knowing it could get bigger at any moment."

He rifles around the slight chaos of his desk for his little enchanted fire maker, which has cured him of half his jealousy.

"I miss him."

Marcus closes the case once Bastien takes from it, disappearing it back into his pocket. He is, as ever, stone-faced and silent, but listening to this story about a mage Bastien once knew. His gaze shifts to watching Bastien's hands search out something.

"It's something an apprentice will master at a young age," comes at a delay, like he'd considered sitting in silence until the Scoutmaster arrives. "Hearth starting, candles. The usefulness was self-apparent, and you forget it's even magic. Imagine our surprise to find even more uses once out in the world, decades later. Campfires, cigarettes."

Bastien locates the fire starter, and Marcus certainly hadn't indicated he'd help if he hadn't, but the absence of hostility or bitterness in his tone is basically a version of friendly.

Bastien's eyebrows go up.

"They did not let you have tobacco?" he asks. "I hope that is on your list of things to change. Not at the top, of course, but—"

His hand raises, flat, and lowers midway back toward the desk's surface, indicating the rightful place of mages must be permitted to smoke in the middle portion of this hypothetical list of demands.

"Well, the Senior Enchanters had their liberties," Marcus says, dry. There's a joke there, around his own promotion, one he might think of in the kind of company where he has the room to think of it, but Bastien will have to imagine it for himself in the time Marcus breathes in more smoke.

He thinks he recalls one of them only ever using a firelighter from hearth to pipe in place of magic, but that too doesn't go voiced.

"Beyond matters of mages," he says, instead, "what do you think the Chantry would gain with a secret foothold in Riftwatch?" It's not rhetorical; Bastien seems to be taking the idea of it seriously.

Edited 2021-10-07 02:39 (UTC)

Bastien's first answer, while he's puffing, is an expansive hand wave that means everything we have. Once smoke is coming out of his nose, he's more specific.

"I probably do not need to tell you so, but," with a carelessly loose but very Orlesian finger twirl, "I like listening to my accent." So: "Before Kirkwall's Knight-Commander was terrorizing the Circle here, she was deposing the Viscount on the Chantry's orders, because he caused problems for commerce. Taking control of the whole city for the Divine. They have the wealth of a nation, the army of one, the interests of one. And we are potentially more disruptive than some chains across a ship channel. The rifters pose a theological problem, which could easily become a power problem, and we have attracted some other troublemakers."

Not naming names. Maybe glancing pointedly up.

"We don't have much influence now, because we are small and weird and fractious. But if we are the ones to stop him, instead of them, I think whatever is left of us will have more. I imagine that is an alarming thought. Something worth having eyes on and trying to temper where they can."

"I see you're doing your university student impression again," Yseult remarks from the doorway, where she has at some point during this little performance silently arrived. "It's more effective with wine."

Marcus listens throughout, attentive, and having relaxed enough that there is room for tension to reset when Yseult makes her presence known. Just a straightening of his posture, remembering then to tap ash onto whatever's convenient, hopefully an actual ashtray. (There'd been no stir at pointed glancing, just expectation that there was more to come after.)

"Scoutmaster," he says, in greeting and acknowledgment, his answer from Bastien simply accepted and filed away.

"Scoutmaster," Bastien echoes, following the precedent, with a less formal wide smile.

He stands, gathering his list and his pen, and goes first to pass her near the door and shut it behind her, then to the table—not too large, but larger than either of the desks—in the center of the room, which is cramped enough that Marcus will not have to do much more than turn his chair in a new direction to be seated at the table instead of in front of the desk.

"We can have wine after we catch our spy," he says, "and I will tell you all about how a religion formed out of a slave rebellion came to allow what is done to the serfs."

This might be a genuine threat.

But for now, retrieving a chair of his own to bring to the table: "The Senior Enchanter has collected more incidents."

Yseult does not make a face at that threat, nor even roll her eyes. Instead she takes her little notebook and stub of pencil from a pocket, and sidesteps around the table to draw out a third chair and seat herself at the remaining point of the triangle.

"Good. That they have been noted." She gestures with a roll of wrist. Not that they exist, obviously. The little bit of pencil is spun once between fingertips, short enough to roll between her knuckles as she crosses knees and tugs skirts smooth. "Let's begin with what you've found, before any theories it might suggest."

Chair feet scrape the floor as Marcus adjusts its position at the table. At his elbow are some of his own notes, a few pieces of evidence, all of them having been ordered back into place once he'd gone through enough of them with Bastien. Now, methodically, he brings them back in front of him, leafing through, leaning back enough so as not to spill ash and embers on anything.

"The first discrepancy of this like is early Guardian, last year," he says, "where our records note first contact with an Inquisition agent working out of Churneau, specifying that a previous correspondence had not been received—"

And onwards. A pattern of missing letters, of confusion, or lost trails altogether, subtle enough and far apart that they could well be errors. Some of them possibly are, but Marcus notes them anyway without qualifier, eyes down on what he's listed and noted rather than watching Yseult and Bastien.

When he is done, his cigarette his three-quarters the way finished, and his being done at all is only signalled by the way he stops talking.

Edited 2021-10-14 10:56 (UTC)

Bastien has a good memory, and a great one for narratives. But he listens again just the same, without any fidgeting, looking for all the world like Marcus has 100 percent of his attention. In truth, he has about 50 percent. The rest is on Yseult—in peripheral vision, a few direct glances at her face and a few more at her hands when she takes notes.

She would never be so sloppy. But maybe—

He's fully finished with his own cigarette, when Marcus finished. It's easier to suck on the things when one is not talking. He puts it in the dish on the table for that purpose, slides it closer to Marcus as he's the only one who needs it now, and begins adding a new column of names to his sheet of notes. Everyone he can recall who's joined too late to be involved. At least not from the beginning.

"Maybe you should be poaching him from Forces, non?" he asks Yseult.

Yseult looks up at Bastien and smiles, quick, gaze shifting to include Marcus in it. "Maybe so." She has been silently attentive, noting down dates and keywords, a few quick underlines and question marks. (Bastien can read them upside down if he likes, they're not in the shorthand parts of her little notebook contain but she abbreviates often and her handwriting favors speed over style.) She takes each piece of evidence in identical stride, no little twitch or glance suggesting any familiarity or significance.

Now that they've finished she comes back to those little notations with clarifying questions--date ranges, messenger routes, assorted details. She looks, then, at Bastian's list-in-progress, and after a moment to figure out his categories suggests another name or two.

"You discussed before my arrival," she says then, "Had you come to any particular theory?"

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