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

[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?"