With money you squeezed from the peasants (open)

[toujoursdroit]

WHO: Open to all Riftwatch agents who care to attend. Plus-ones allowed within reason.
WHAT: The duke de Coucy is throwing a celebration to mark his eldest grandson’s 18th birthday, which he would do anyway and which is definitely not a blatant attempt to keep said grandson from running off toward the nearest opportunity for combat.
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: The de Coucy property in Hightown. (The servants are spying in case you break anything.)
NOTES: If you’d like your character to come but think some maneuvering would be required to make it happen, hit me oocly and we’ll figure it out. Similarly, if you need or want a starter with Romain or an NPC, just let me know.

The engraved invitations only go to a select few: the division heads and project leaders, Alexandrie d'Asgard, Petrana de Cedoux and (after some deliberation) Hugo and Jehan Mercier d'Annecy. Others, without a specific addressee, are posted in common areas in the Gallows including both dining halls, the herb garden and the game room:



Those at ease enough or bold enough to take him up on the invitation arrive to find the duke’s Hightown residence lit with a mixture of opulent scones, torches and enchantments. Once admitted through the outer gates—the servants at the door have a list on which one’s name must appear, seemingly including every member of Riftwatch—guests will be ushered a short walk back from the street to the house proper. The foyer boasts more servants, ready to take any outwear (the weather does not dictate it, but fashion may), as well as any gifts for the marquis.

Guests are then shown through to the ballroom. While it is generally used these days as a training area, it has been converted back to its intended use for the evening. The space is brightly lit and features a small but talented collection of musicians. The center of the room is clearly intended for dancing, but chairs and railings along the edge of the room provide a place for those who need a breath or who simply prefer conversation to dancing. Staff circulates with wine and hors d'oeuvres (mainly local shellfish and assorted pastries from Romain’s imported Orlesian patissier). In addition to their fellow Riftwatch agents, guests may run into carefully selected individuals from Hightown society, gratified to varying degrees at having been included.



Those who find even the edges of the ballroom too much may discover that the lower level of the two-level library is open, though servants pass through with enough regularity that it is not truly private. (Assuming one thinks servants count, of course.) The upper level is roped off. Anyone attempting to make their way up will be gently but firmly redirected by the staff. The lower level, however, does offer a few tables and various comfortable chairs and chaises, good for quiet conversation or simply a break from the crush of society.

About two hours after sunset, dinner is announced. All present guests are shown into the dining room. Those few in attendance who have seen the duke’s estate in Orlais, or even his home in Val Royeaux, would know this room is smaller than either. Everyone is seated comfortably, but in addition to the long, rectangular table at the room’s center, a few smaller circular tables hold the overflow. The seating has been chosen carefully for status, affiliation and balance of conversation. The duke heads the long table, and his grandson Thomas sits opposite. Thomas, like his grandfather and younger brother, is masked, but those who chat with him will easily be able to determine his buoyant mood from his voice and manner. The food is excellent, if less varied and exotic than it would have been had supply lines not been so constrained. (Romain thought to bring a few things back from his most recent trip to Orlais and finds himself glad of it now.)



After dinner, guests may resume dancing and gossiping in the ballroom, or engaging in quieter conversation in the library. Or they can make their way out to the courtyard in the rear of the property. While Hightown’s constraints mean the outdoor space is not extensive, it is walled to offer privacy from the nearest neighbors and boasts a water feature, impressively lit in honor of the occasion.

The duke circulates throughout the party for the evening, seemingly doing absolutely nothing other than chatting with his guests. Yet somehow after he passes through, any guests with empty glasses find someone offering to fill them, any low-burning torches are promptly replaced, and any guests causing a scene are discreetly spoken to or, if necessary, shown into a carriage that will take them home. In addition to Romain, guests may have a chance to speak to the guest of honor, Thomas, or to his younger brother, 15-year-old Raoul, who has been given a special dispensation to stay at the party as long as he likes and is seemingly determined to make the most of it. The festivities will drag on until dawn, for those most committed to a bit of merriment in the face of invasion, or at least most committed to eating the duke’s refreshments and drinking his wine until they’re cut off.

Comments

[illithidnapped]

If he could hear the gears spinning inside her head— the thoughts she's keeping locked away— Astarion would be inclined to agree. As things are, he only smiles ever-so-sweetly with the simplest shrug of his shoulders:

“Considering we’ve only just begun, I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Attention drifting for a brief flicker of a beat, fingertips still tapping out the lightest of rhythms against sea-dark glass. Another somewhat thinned group of guests wades past, and Astarion's expression pinches in a discreet, unspoken criticism.

“In an hour or two, depending on the company...that might not be the case. I suppose you’ll just have to check back in if you want an update.”

An invitation, not a dismissal.

[indissection]

It's an easy game, playing around with someone like this; it's not real, false words dancing between them even as they keep well aware of what is happening around them. It's like doing two things at once.

"I suppose I might have to. I may try if I survive the evening myself."

Shaking her head, she looks over at the people milling around and tries not to twist her nose at them all.

"I fear my hands may be a little too calloused for them these days."

[illithidnapped]

“Calloused?” He asks lightly, as though he couldn’t possibly know what she means by that remark— though it’s obvious enough, her implication. Instead, he means it as a segue. An inquiry.

Curiosity, if nothing else.

[indissection]

"I've not been quite the noble lady for some years," she admits, almost airily, as if it doesn't matter to her at all. It stings, a little, to have lost her high society status thanks to her family abandoning her, but, well.

They were hardly caring in the least anyway.

"I am a surgeon by trade now."

[illithidnapped]

"From high towers to healing hands. My my, that's an interesting shift in professions."

It's uncouth to ask what she did. What she lost, or who she and hers might've offended to warrant such a fall from grace. But the lovely thing about speaking to someone with absolutely no social standing is that you absolutely can be uncouth— no one's going to slap your hand for it, after all.

His smile widens slightly, though his chin dips in feigned deference. Playful.

"What in the Realms did you do to make such a bold little leap, I wonder?"

[indissection]

"Oh, the tower was hardly that high. I was no fairytale princess, darling."

Sidony doesn't much care about people asking why she changed; some things she keeps to herself, close to her heart, because she doesn't want the Chantry to come breathing down her neck, but she can voice a little of her path. It's not something she feels any desire to hide, because it has shaped her now.

She's a stronger woman for it, and isn't that one of the best things to come from Riftwatch?

"Nothing as desperate as wishing to help people," she shakes her head. "I find the body fascinating and had no magic to allow myself to become a Mortalitasi. Needs must."

[illithidnapped]

“Really? Could’ve food me: pretty as you are, I’ve been looking for the tiara.”

His grin is all sharp, all jagged amusement as he taps his fingertips against the bottleneck clutched in his arms. Crosses his ankles leisurely where he’s leaning against the wall.

“Do you ever miss it— the charmed life?”

[indissection]

"Anyone can wear a tiara, princess or not. Who needs the trouble of a father or a prince?"

She shakes her head, scoffing a little. She had abandoned that, after all, left it all behind to come here. It's been quite the journey, but she's not going to discuss it, doesn't need to go into that much depth. Her friends and spouse know and that's enough for her.

Head tilted, she watches him for a moment.

"Should I? I was terribly bored, you know, darling. It was hardly the most wonderful of experiences for someone who actually has thoughts in their head."

[illithidnapped]

“You’d think so, but some places take exceptional offense to regal ornamentation— though I suppose with enough strength or money, those pesky little social quirks could always be done away with in a flash.”

A dream Astarion aspires to, even now. The sort of sway that grants freedom enough to do whatever he wants, unbothered.

But still.

“And I imagine missing has a great deal to do with circumstance. Ambition. Need. That sort of thing.” He waves a gloved hand through the empty air between them, dark leather obscuring any sign of the anchor shard he normally lets breathe.

“A creature accustomed to gilded walkways left holed up in a damp basement might very well have an impressive amount to yearn for. You, however— no. I suppose not.”

Astarion’s met countesses that might as well be emperors in their own right. The sort that wear silk as bright as their own educational exploits. From the way this woman talks, Astarion imagines that hasn’t been the case for her. Which might mean...

“Familial expectations too leashing?”

[indissection]

"Alas, I lost my share of both. Now my hands are little more than blood and scalpels, though I doubt most people care about that in this place."

Few have turned their nose up at her, honestly, and few people have been particularly callous towards her. Riftwatch is likely a place filled with vagabonds, nobodies and rejects; they hardly have any space to judge her for what she had chosen or what she had left behind.

She shakes her head, nodding once before she breathes out.

"I suppose not, no. I have all that I need and more, at least from what I am reasonably able to have." Magic is beyond her, after all, so she cannot put to voice that particular desire. All the same... She gives him a small, sly smile.

"Oh, less of a leash and more of a chain, darling, or a noose."

[illithidnapped]

"How terrible." It might be the posh accent making that sympathetic commentary sound all the more wooden, but more likely it's Astarion's own selfishness at play: he isn't a softhearted soul at the best of times, and right now, one hand fiddling away at his own shirt collar with a sort of preening quality, empathy seems well out of reach— though it certainly isn't callousness, either.

"Well, in the spirit of camaraderie," he starts, offering his arm to her with all formal ceremony, coupled with the slyest of grins, "what say we dive into the deep end of this shark-infested pool together, mm?"

[indissection]

"Truly a nightmare. I'm uncertain how I managed to survive." Which is both a jest and not, given her circumstances and situation, but she manages all the same. Her nose is a touch wrinkled, her expression a little sour, but she's managed somehow all the same.

No one is going to stop her, after all. She has that freedom now.

"How charming," stepping forward, Sidony takes his arm. "I could not ask for a more lovely escort."

[illithidnapped]

“Flatterer.” Pleased by it, his eyes glint bright as sparks as he turns with her held fast against him, gloved fingers fanned across her own. Conspiratorial, their association.

Delightfully so.

“You’ll fit in just fine, I think. Healing hands or not.”

No one can say she isn’t charming. Enchanting. A curiosity, rather than a bore. Or they could, of course, but by now Astarion would be all too keen to disagree.

“But now I know your past, your profession, your clever little heart— your good looks— the tragedy is I still don’t know your name.”

[indissection]

"It's only flattery if one doesn't mean it," Sidony counters, her lips curled into a careful smile. Oh, she is going to receive looks for this, for not arriving on the arm of her spouse, but she doesn't quite have the heart to care.

No one understands the relationship between herself and Byerly anyway: why should she be bothered?

Lifting her head, she looks at him for a moment before she hums a little noise, close to a laugh but not quite making it.

"Sidony Venaras Rutyer," she says, after a moment, "and the pleasure is all mine."

[illithidnapped]

“Adrasteia’s darling.” He gasps, light as the fluttering of downy wings.

Oh, there’s more to the story than that detail: Byerly’s wife-by-law, the opposite side of the coin offsetting Bastien’s only half-concealed presence— but what does that matter, when he’s been nursing along this budding little romance from before its first tentative steps?

“All this time and I thought I might never meet you.”

[indissection]

"Is that who I am?" Her eyes widen a little, some colour coming to her cheeks, but she tries not to show how flustered she actually is.

Sidony hadn't realised that she had a reputation, nor did she imagine this gentleman and Adrasteia might be friends. Perhaps she ought to have expected it, considering how kind and charming the woman actually is.

Breathing out a little, she keeps her smile in place.

"It's not as though I was hiding, darling."

[illithidnapped]

“Not intentionally I’m sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that we likely operate in different circles.”

Or including the fact that Astarion fucking hates the Gallows.

When he leans in nearer to her for the most affectionate squeeze of her snared arm with gloved hands, it comes with an added sidelong tap of sorts— his temple pressed gently against her own, as though the man were an overgrown cat in search of attention in its most basic form.

“Anyway, delighted to make your acquaintance at last, my dear. Astarion, at your devoted service.”

[indissection]

"Understandably so, given my nature."

Not meant as an insult to him, but to herself; she spends all her time in the middle of the healer's rooms, burying herself in stitching and surgery and whatever else might need to be done. That's simply her nature now - to do her work and listen rather than be a little more active.

She does raise her eyebrow at the gentle touch to her temple, but makes no other comment on it. If that is how he is to be affectionate with her, well, she's certainly had worse.

"The pleasure is mine and mine alone, I am sure," she laughs softly. "What luck, to find such a delightful arm to learn me to my doom."

[illithidnapped]

“Oh please. Our darling little dove would never forgive me if I left you to the wolves.”

He only pulls away by degrees, there, amusement laced throughout. Though they’ve crossed the threshold now, Astarion clearly isn’t keen on letting her slip from his grasp.

The ‘gift’ he’d brought is— in passing— unceremoniously deposited on the table as they stroll by. Quick, nimble fingertips poised to snatch up something else in trade—

Before he realizes one of the servants is watching, and simply smiles.

“Tell me, how are you doing, though? Clearly you’re enamored, but has she won you over yet?”

[indissection]

"A dove?" Sidony's eyebrow raises. "I'd never have considered the term for her before."

It doesn't seem as though Sidony minds; she has always been one to enjoy a bit of the game, to allow herself to laugh and play along - at least with those she wishes to engage with. Others would see a far cooler side of her nature.

She offers a glowing smile at the people around them as they pass by before she hums, lifting her head a little and smiling.

"Is it a battle to be won?" Her skirt dances around her legs. "I fear I am the one who must try hard. She is a remarkable woman."

[illithidnapped]

"Everything in life’s a battle. Waking up every morning is a battle. Trying to survive in the middle of a consumptive war is a battle." He scoffs through the edges of a subtle grin as he rattles it off, one hand idly drifting through the air as punctuation for his commentary.

"Love might very well be the most worthwhile ordeal of the bunch— provided that’s what either of you are entertaining."

The subject itself, while wholly innocuous in its framing, might very well be an unspoken question: is it what either of them are entertaining?