faderift | closed. beneath the staircase built from hair and bone

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closed. beneath the staircase built from hair and bone

WHO: Yseult, Ellie, Tsenka.
WHAT: Can Yseult be one of Yseult's own angels? Discuss. (The Gang Stops An Assassination.)
WHEN: Mutters something into my hand
WHERE: the unveiling of Lady Nicoline de Deauvin's new elaborate indoor conservatory, Orlais
NOTES: on assignment, content warning for MISSION STATUS SICK.

Marshall Castex has a new personal guard.

As long as at least two of them aren't speaking, they fit in seamlessly with the rest — presumably once they've got blood on the uniforms, it'd be all right if they kept them? Tsenka isn't mad at the figure she cuts in hers, her hair and mask carefully concealing the high points of her ears. Tall for an elf, she passes for average-if-thin for a human; nothing that would stand up to greater scrutiny, but no one is going to have their attention drawn today to query an elf performing the job a chevalier might. She hasn't foregone her staff, but hidden it within the hothouse where it'll be unlikely to be stumbled upon by anyone else and swiftly to hand in the event that all bets are off.

At the moment,

all bets are not off. Right now, it's the tedious hurry up and wait of it all, letting the murmur of other people's conversations go through her, a sharp eye out for this Jade and only half an ear on the possibility that someone might actually manage to say something of interesting.

Translating Orlesian bullshit into relevant information is not yet something at which Tsenka is terribly experienced. She's trying to look on this as practise, but there's an itch under her skin for the part where she gets to punch someone in the face.

And—

She catches Ellie's eye, Yseult's. Tips her head, almost more a gesture of the eyes than anything else. Doesn't that look like a mercenary to you.

Those, she knows much better than nobility.

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Wearing a mask is probably more cumbersome than the rest of it put together. Still, it's much lighter than a gas mask, and Ellie's fought in those plenty of times. Enough to compensate for the way it restricts her vision.

Mercenaries look different from the predators of her world, but they carry themselves the same way. Ellie knows the type, and apparently, so does Tsenka.

The gorgeous moonlit gardens seem an excellent place for an attack. It's secluded from the rest of the party, though Ellie supposes that if bloodcurdling screams were to rise up they might have an audience from the balconies. But all of Orlesian architecture seems to pander to closed-off little alcoves, narrow alleyways, and rooms with far too many corners to get lost in. It's a place of secrets.

Ellie holds an arrow in her hands, twirling it slowly through her fingers with a very slight nod.

Yes, she sees them -- but where is Jade?

Yseult meets Tsenka's eyes through the dark-rimmed holes in her mask and gives a similarly minute nod, then flicks an indicating glance at two other likely mercenaries, a tall man who keeps rubbing fingers beneath his collar as if the stiff brocade is an unfamiliar itch, and a woman lingering near the punch bowl who isn't as good at pretending to drink as she thinks she is.

As for Jade, she either has yet to put in an appearance or is truly a master of disguise, since Yseult has been making a keen study of the crowd and seen no one matching the description they were given. The few other bards operating here tonight are all ruled out for one reason or another—too short, too tall, too male, too ginger. She watches the drifting currents of the party with soft eyes, waiting for something out of place to present itself. A flash of color is just a man mopping his brow with a huge handkerchief. A sudden swirl of movement is two old friends greeting each other unexpectedly. A woman peeks out around the palm fronds of an alcove, her mask the plain face of a foreigner.

Something in the way her dark head swivels slowly toward them tugs at Yseult. "Don't both turn at once. Just past the large orange flower," she says, in a flawless Orlesian accent, "Dark hair, dark green dress, plain mask. One to watch."

It's a slow, easy movement; like the natural rhythm of someone stood at a dull guard assignment, adjusting their stance and angle before something goes to sleep and doing it smoothly enough not to too obviously look fucking bored, like she's letting herself shift with the current of the party. Underneath her mask, a brief quirk of expression,

and since there's no way she's going to sound Orlesian, she can at least pitch her voice as quietly as possible: “That's clever.”

The best disguise is probably one a not insignificant portion of attendees also bought in bulk. Half the reason they're wearing guard uniforms right now, and not trying to look like noblewomen or openly bearing Riftwatch insignia. She shifts her weight; “Drongair* at the punch has clocked her, too.”

She'd be absolutely plastered if she were drinking as much as she's not very convincingly pretending to, but something's straightened her spine and it feels like a warning.

* a habitual drunk.

The man in the stiff brocade isn't really talking to anyone, but he's circling closer, and Ellie gives him only a passing glance before she shifts, tilting her head to one side like she's shaking off the boredom. Glances through her lashes at the woman at the punchbowl.

"Punchbowl's eyes are brown," she says, ruling her out -- she knows Yseult has eyes on the woman by the flower, who fits the description more closely than any others they've seen.

She twirls the arrow in her fingers one more time, and catches it between two forefingers.

The energy level's close to reaching a fever pitch, and Ellie can almost read what's going to happen next. Jade should've hired more people.

"They'll come for us first."

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, the woman by the punch affects a stumble, and starts her way over towards them. Yseult is nearest, and it's her that she goes for, with a too-loud laugh and a smile on her face below her mask.

"So sorry," she titters, laying a hand over her mouth. Her accent is almost convincingly Orlesian, her eyes big and brown and a study in innocence. "I've gotten turned around. Where can I go to freshen up?"

Her other hand is near the copious folds of her dress, nearly out of sight in the moonlight.

Nearly, but not quite. Masked there's no need to affect a smile, so Yseult's head tips and body turns in seeming helpfulness. "It is a bit hidden," she says, one arm spreading as she steps nearer, "All the plants. Let me show you." Raised brows and a quicker step, as if she's moving to catch an impending fall, brings her near enough to lock fingers around the wrist of the mercenary's knife-hand in her skirts and twist viciously at the same time she hooks a heel around her ankle, putting the other woman as off-balance as she was pretending to be. The Scoutmaster belays her stumble with an arm around the waist and steers her toward an alcove.

At the same time, the man in the scratchy brocade reaches the apex of his path through the crowd. A casual flick of his hand launches some tiny missile in the direction of the punch table, because a shower of glass suddenly shocks the assemblage as a tower of goblets cascades to the floor. While they are looking that way, he flicks two more small missiles (they will prove to be some kind of coin-sized metal disc with sharpened edges) toward Tsenka's throat and goes for Ellie, blades emerging from the sleeves of his doublet.

Tsenka flings herself backwards, tilting at such an angle as to very nearly feel the air broken by the speed of those discs passing just above her throat on her way down, and in the interests of maintaining ongoing plausible deniability about being merely Castex's personal and definitely Orlesian guard—

tamps down the impulse to loudly point out how excellent a job of stealth they had been doing up to this point. The Starkhaven of it would be unmistakable, which would likely decrease the likelihood of scoring any points with the boss about what a great job they're otherwise doing with her breathtaking witticisms. That thought in mind, she flattens, rolls, and scrambles for the hot-house, intent on securing her staff and coming out swinging.

Only two of them are occupied, though, leaving probably-Jade to rethink her own next moves in light of one "guardswoman" apparently bolting,

which even Tsenka would admit is unlikely to fool anyone into thinking she's actually just been frightened into fleeing by one little distance death threat. She'd probably want to know what she was going for, too, but luckily the hot house is close enough that it's not going to take long for anyone to find out.

It all happens at once, and quietly, with the type of finesse Ellie's not used to seeing. They've barely disturbed the guests, and most of them still haven't realized what's going on.

Would be a damn shame to disrupt the going theme.

Tsenka bolts for her staff, and Stiff-Brocade goes for Ellie, drawing knives in the gleaming moonlight, and it's almost too easy. Of course he'd save her for the direct confrontation. Ellie's the smallest, the youngest, and what with the bow she's carrying, presumably vulnerable close up.

But Ellie's been grappling with men his size for damn near a decade.

She dodges back, and the man stumbles, not used to her speed -- and his eyes widen. Because of course, that speed isn't mortal. A burning gold has crossed through Ellie's green eyes, lighting them up molten, and it's followed by the gleam of her teeth clenched in something far too aggressive to be called a smile.

"Dance?" she whispers huskily, and swings her bow like a bat. He only barely dodges backward in time, but it still catches him nastily across one cheek instead of cracking his skull. He's skilled, though, and recovers admirably, taking advantage of her momentum to slash at her-

Only to find nothing there.

He gives a soft gasp, and Ellie's knife appears at his throat, her behind him, pressing through the first layer of skin.

Blood drips into the brocade.

"Careful now," she murmurs. "Wouldn't want to ruin the party."

The woman by the flowers has suddenly vanished, leaving them nodding. Ellie notices, just a second too late.

"Shit-"

The woman by the flowers who is probably Jade has vanished, but the compactly muscular fellow that Tsenka first clocked as a mercenary has reappeared, sliding out of the crowd to pursue the mage deeper into the hot house. He doesn't run, but with quick strides winds between the huge plants (imported all the way from Rivain, as some guest gushingly reported earlier), brushing aside a showy, low-hanging frond as he searches Tsenka out, the tip of a knife blade glinting, ready, just beyond his cuff.

Yseult, meanwhile, has delivered the punch-drinker a blow with the butt of her own knife and left her slumped, broken wrist bound behind her back, in the alcove, pose suggesting all that drink has finally gone to her head. The Scoutmaster tucks the knife up the sleeve of her coat and pauses to reassess the movement of the crowd as she reemerges, looking first for the Marshal--still carrying on a conversation with one the slightest sidelong attention on her guards--then Ellie and Tsenka and finally for the woman that might be Jade. She watches Ellie a moment, until her blade is at the mercenary's throat, and then moves into the crowd, taking a searching, circular route back toward their posts in search of the others.

As a mage, the best way to stay alive in melee is not to get caught in a fucking melee in the first place. Tsenka didn't survive as long as she did outside of the Circle by accident, and she makes herself a fast-moving, difficult target within the hot-house as she locates where she'd secreted her staff for just this occasion. She isn't certain what kind of weapon he has on him, but the mercenary follows her in and she doesn't immediately take an arrow in the back, so she's presuming it's something she best needs stay ahead of him and out of reach for.

Luckily,

she doesn't need to be close to him.

The mercenary follows her into the hot-house.

The mercenary emerges from the hot-house almost as swiftly, smashing through its wall in an explosion of glass that showers nearby revelers with shards, carried by the momentum of the torso-sized boulder that's collided with him, chest-high, flinging him backwards tens of feet and dealing damage to his ribs that'll give him trouble the rest of his life.

Probably that isn't going to be very long, spitting blood with a wet wheeze where he lands.

The glass panes of the hot-house erupt in a silver glittering mess in the moonlight, scarlet blood looking almost black where it's splashed across the snow in the dark.

The mercenary groans in the snow, then goes still, and the second he does, screams start to erupt from around them, the nobles hiking up their skirts and making for the exits.

One woman mutters something about the entertainment being a bit more boisterous than last winter as she hurries by.

Ellie swears softly -- no option of stealth now, and she feels the twitch of the man in her arms, barely manages to twist herself away from the knife that digs a furrow across her ribs. She loses her grip on her hostage, despite digging her knife down, and he comes at her again, knocking her knife from her hand and sending it clattering over the cobblestones.

She feints a stagger, and as he comes down at her, Ellie comes up with an unlikely weapon -- the broadhead arrow she was playing with earlier -- and plants it neatly in his throat. He staggers back, clawing at it, then falls, gurgling.

"Yseult!" she yells, nocking an arrow -- she hasn't spotted Jade, but the Scoutmaster's closest to the assassin's mark, and it's likely she's going to have the best chance to intercept.

It isn't Jade that Yseult spots first, but another mercenary, a big man who'd cleverly disguised his breadth and bearing as that of a visiting soldier from Ferelden. He's moving swiftly against the tide of the crowd, muscling through fleeing lords and ladies toward Marshal Castex, his course and Yseult's set to intersect near the now-abandoned drinks table.

He spots her a moment before she gets there, just in time to avoid her knife doing any worse than slicing into his shoulder. A dirk produced from his boot forces her to duck a slashing blow and the jab that follows, darting back out of range. And then just as quickly Yseult moves back in, the high polish of the floors allowing a slide beneath his guard, blade raked across the back of a knee. The man bellows but doesn't fall, one heavy boot finding a hip as Yseult is in the process of rolling back to her feet, sending her instead tumbling into the table. A tug of the tablecloth flings half of its contents crashing to the ground in his path, buying enough time to find her feet again before another kick can land.

A grab of one meaty fist nearly jerks her off her feet, easily lifted and, it seems, about to be tossed as easily aside. But she catches a toe on the edge of the table and the leverage is enough to wrap a leg around the grabbing arm, propelling herself improbably upwards onto her assailant's shoulders, knife plunged down into his chest from above.

Neat enough, but it's not going to do anything to stop Jade. She is finally making her move, rushing up to the Marshal with the fluttery hand motions of a terrified young woman overwhelmed by the situation.

Edited 2022-02-27 06:35 (UTC)

Broken glass crunches underfoot as Tsenka emerges through the hole her boulder had smashed in the side of what about a minute ago was a beautiful achievement in Orlesian horticulture and architecture and has now seen better days. Earlier today, for instance. Movement at the corner of her eye drags her attention back to the Marshal—

oh, there's no fucking way that's not her. The description is perfect. She levels her staff

and swears under her breath. The instructions were not kill the bard.

Rifling through known spells for options feels as if it is taking much longer than it actually does, but what pulls the Marshal's attention is the sudden shimmer of a mage's shield springing to life, and Tsenka shouts, “The window for keeping both of them alive is closing!” urgently.

Ellie's the farthest away, should be the least able to act. But between one breath and the next, she realizes that none of them are going to be close enough if she's right, and this woman is Jade.

If she's wrong, she could maim or kill an innocent.

That's when the shield goes up, a shimmering light between them that shines bright blue off of Jade's eyes. Off the blade of the dart concealed in the palm of one of her fluttering hands.

And that's enough for Ellie to take the shot.

The gold burns through her vision, tearing down her arm, whirling into place along the arrow. When she lets it loose, the golden shimmer leaves a trail. It whistles through the air without a sound, until it hits.

Then, it's with a loud tearing noise.

The broad head of Ellie's arrow goes through all of the layers of the bard's voluminous sleeve, then sinks deeply into the ornamental fruit tree behind her, pulling an extremely surprised Jade with it.

She screams.

Which is understandable, really.

Yseult doesn't wait for the big man's knees to hit the ground, half-jumping half-sliding off of his shoulders to get there a moment sooner. It's still not soon enough--by the time she's slipped between a gawping onlooker and a palm tree to get a clear path for the throwing knife produced from her sleeve, Jade will be within striking distance--but Tsenka's shield and Ellie's arrow move faster. She's there before Jade manages to tear herself free, and the bard is easily disarmed and hustled off to a more secure location. The Marshal's regular guards are left to mop up the mercenaries and calm the crowd. Thankfully there's plenty of champagne left.

In Lady de Deauvin's repurposed storage shed, Jade first defiantly and then tearfully recounts her story, insisting that she is Lady Clara, daughter of the Marquis d'Archambon, and more importantly was hired by the Empress's agents. The guards to escort her away to likely execution will arrive as soon as matters are seen to in the remains of the garden party. They could still let her go, she begs, and fake an escape. Her family would be grateful.

Outside, Yseult crosses arms tightly against the cold and watches the newly ventilated but still plenty warm hothouse with both brisk, searching concern and just a hint of envy. She keeps the corner of an eye on it for movement of the guards as she looks to Tsenka and Ellie and lifts her chin along with a brow. "What do you make of her?"

There is a slight shift of Tsenka's weight, like if she hadn't thought better of it she might have poked the ostensible Lady Clara dubiously with her boot. Her inclination is to leave making anything of her up to the professionals — judging the veracity of statements made by professional liars when she can't easily sink inside their minds to be sure is worlds away from being her area of expertise — but the one thing that does come to mind, straightaway, is:

“What sort of bard starts blubbering within minutes of being caught?” doubtfully. “She's demonstrably not incompetent enough for this performance to be sincere. Whoever she is, she thinks we're fucking stupid.”

Ellie's never had a taste for interrogations. Not in the beginning, and not now that she's actually done a few, and knows how easily and how horribly they can go wrong. It's good that she's not alone in this; this is one of the places she least trusts herself.

"Or she's telling the truth," Ellie points out. It's a possibility, though a thin one. If Jade is telling the truth then there are far more layers to this than Ellie likes, and Celene's put considerable twists and turns into eliminating an apparently incompetent bard and framing them for it.

But no matter what...

Ellie shifts from one foot to the other, uncomfortable, but resigned even if her stomach wants to crawl up her gullet. Yseult asked.

"She has to know that even if she's telling the truth, it's in our best interests to hand her over. So if she's lying, you'd think she'd come up with something more convincing."

Yseult watches each of them in turn, her attention undisguisedly keen--enough that they might be forgiven for thinking she is assessing them as much as their answers. (They might be right.) What she makes of what she gets is harder to discern, but there's nothing immediately disapproving in her expression.

"Some nobles become bards thinking the Game is truly a game and are unprepared for real consequences," she notes mildly, "But she's well-trained enough to at least exaggerate the tears for our benefit." She tugs at the collar of the uniform jacket, flipping it up to block the wind. The vibrant blue of the cloth on the underside brings out the flush and freckles in her cheeks below the mask.

"If she's telling the truth and we allow her to be executed, we make an enemy of a Marquise and help the Empress hide that she's worked against our interests. If she's lying and we let her go she may remain a Venatori agent. But one whose face we now know." She cocks a brow, hidden but somehow still discernable from the tilt of her head. Thoughts?

All of this feels leagues above what Tsenka would like to consider her pay-grade, which is clear enough in her expression — not that she has no thoughts, per se, but maybe if she could have chosen her first mission she'd have liked one with lower stakes and clear-cut orders.

“I don't believe her,” she says, finally, and it's probably clear that any potential of Tsenka believing her for even a second had died the second a tear fell and all respect for her evaporated in the splash. “Either she's a liar or a spoiled, entitled murderer. Say for the sake of argument she's telling the truth, and the Empress is acting against us, what's the benefit in making it clear to her we believe that? If we're worried about making personal enemies of Marquises.”

Ellie's quiet, thinking, letting everyone else have their say first. She studies their faces as much as she reads their words, but it's clear that none of this sits well with her. Orlais in general doesn't. There's too many underhanded, shitty schemes wheels within wheels, and it makes her head spin.

Even behind her mask, her jaw is visibly clenched, and she's chewing her lip.

"... my gut says she's lying, too." Ellie says with a sigh. That's really what it comes down to. It doesn't make sense for Celene to go to all this trouble.

"And even if it turns out she's not lying, she was still about to kill somebody who's actually on our side."

Again, Yseult absorbs their answers with quiet focus. She's silent for a moment afterwards, turned in profile to watch the hothouse and the jarred crowd milling about within once more. Her consideration doesn't take so very long, just long enough to be clear it's occurring, wheels spinning somewhere behind still features. The minute feels longer than it is.

Then she nods, and turns back. "She is Orlais' to deal with. Our work here is finished." She drops her arms from their fold against her chest, and digs hands into pockets instead, turning to round the house. "We may find a ride back to town."

A lot of this experience has been educational for Tsenka, some in ways that she expected — others, not so much. In a way, that's rather been her entire experience of the world outside of the Circles or outside of a cell, in general; it all looks different when she gets to go ahead and look at it up close for herself. If she's not satisfied with the end result, she's not dissatisfied with it, either, just

contemplative, in a way she might not have seen coming.

They leave the assassin, whoever she is, to Orlais. It will probably become some kind of problem, but that makes a certain kind of sense to her; nothing is clear-cut, least of all cutting someone's throat. The thing that niggles at her, though—

They're on their way back when she remarks, “I'd never seen an assassin out of a book, before.”

Assassins were not targeting rebel mage camps, hacking off their hair and trying to survive in the woods. If she crossed paths with any, before now, it wasn't knowingly. It's very little as she might have imagined.

Ellie's eyes stay on Yseult, long after she turns away, long after she takes up after the other two, following in silence.

It feels like a pit in her stomach, the decision. Privately she's glad that it wasn't hers to make. Still, she hopes it was the correct one.

"Probably too much to hope that we never will again."

(They have, in the brief interim before Tsenka's remark, cadged a ride back to town in a sleigh whose nervous driver was more than happy to vacate the area after the commotion and make a bit of extra coin in the process. Yseult regards them both from one corner of the forward-facing seat, a blanket tucked neatly and unself-consciously over her legs. It's fucking cold.) She looks faintly bemused, some unspecified humor tugging at the corners of her mouth and eyes, mingled with the faintest air of incredulity as she looks from the mage to the rifter and back. Her tone is mild, without judgment:

"I take it you had expected something different?"

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closed. beneath the staircase built from hair and bone

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GOD DAMN IT

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