open and closed.

[luaithre]

WHO: Marcus Rowntree and various.
WHAT: Activities.
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Mainly the Gallows
NOTES: Some open prompts in the comments, but also works as a catch all for planned things. Let me know if you'd like to do something specific, or if we have CR, feel free to just hit me with a wild card honestly.

Comments

[luaithre]

"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.

[cozen]

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."

[hassaran]

"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."

[luaithre]

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.

[cozen]

"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."

[hassaran]

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."

[luaithre]

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.

[cozen]

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.

[hassaran]

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?"