faderift | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

closed. beneath the staircase built from hair and bone

no subject

no subject

GOD DAMN IT

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject