player plot: the battle for starkhaven.

[luaithre]

WHO: All
WHAT: Riftwatch and the rebel mages come to the aid of Starkhaven
WHEN: Last week of Wintermarch
WHERE: Starkhaven and outlying territories
NOTES: Open to all, with instructions/suggestions below for what your character can do, dependent on skillset and division. Violences within.



The news has been the same for seemingly endless months: the Tevinter Imperium stays encamped, entrenched, at the doorstep of Starkhaven. The Free Marches city is long besieged, strangled and dying, and its proud stone walls that keep Corypheus' forces out also entomb its own citizens as supply dwindles fast over the winter.

The Exalted March has not come. The scattered militias and militaries of the surrounding territories have not rushed to its aid. Riftwatch has done all it can with the personnel it has, sabotaging enemy movement, collecting information, supplying villages and redirecting refugees, but it seems as though all it can do for Starkhaven is stand vigil to its collapse.

That is, until some hasty conversations were had.

A trio of Riftwatch agents approached Grand Enchanter Fiona, ad hoc leader of the rebel mage forces currently under the Inquisition's banner, with a question: what would it take, for the rebel mages to lend aid to Prince Sebastian Vael?

23 Wintermarch: Stoneweale Fort

Closed: The Division Heads, Derrica, Fenris, Julius, Marcus Rowntree, Petrana de Cedoux

It rains for the entirety of the ensuing negotiations, ice wet winter striking the impassive walls of Stoneweale Fort and the tents erected within its walls. The fort stands south of Starkhaven at the edges of Tevinter's influence, and contains the entirety of Prince Sebastian's available forces and, newly, Grand Enchanter Fiona, several rain-swept griffons, and a collection of Riftwatch agents.

Not all of them take up space in the war room (for instance, the griffons don't need to be there), but those that do bear witness to a deal being struck:

Prince Sebastian speaks plainly: the situation is beyond dire. They are at the precipice of surrender, and between himself and his commanders, they've been preparing for a last-ditch effort to save as many of his subjects as he can spare. By directing his forces in a (likely suicidal) full-scale attack against the enemy, he has hope that this will distract them for long enough so that a select few of his soldiers can fell the far gate and evacuate as many citizens as they can. He welcomes any assistance the mages could offer.

Fiona, understanding the lethality of what Prince Sebastian and his men are going to attempt, first states that the rebel mages can be mustered to assist in this evacuation by destroying the wall and shepherding Starkhaven's people to safety. She also pledges to personally join the Prince and his men in their attack on the main force.

It's with gratitude that Prince Sebastian accepts her offer.

And there is little time to prepare.

23-29 Wintermarch: The Minanter River

In the coming days, Riftwatch redirects its focus towards the preparation of Starkhaven's last stand. The movement of a small army of mages from the Orlesian frontline to deep into the heart of the Free Marches is the kind of logistical effort that one would hope to have plenty of time to organise, particularly in the interest of evading the Imperium's notice for as long as possible, but time is a luxury, and there are few of those available these days.

To ensure a swift and relatively stealthy travel time, the rebel mages are broken up into still sizeable detachments – they ride on horseback, or travel on merchant vessels that have been acquisitioned for the war effort, quietly coursing down the Minanter. They camp in thatches of forest or huddle within long emptied warehouses in semi-abandoned trading settlements.

Riftwatch agents of any combat capability join them, ride with them, and stay in contact through crystals to ensure coordination.

In the sky, griffon riders are tasked with keeping close monitor of any Tevinter detachments that might push close to the small army of mages moving in from the west. The going is often lonely, long hours, solo flying with reportage over the crystal network, before gathering together in small camps to feed their mounts, themselves, and sleep in hastily erected tents that protect them from the winter-time rain.

When necessary, members of Forces and Scouting will be deployed to run interference and push back and redirect Tevene scouts or soldiers and Venatori. Sometimes, larger groups of Imperial forces threaten to intercede, in which event, Riftwatch agents may find themselves working together with rebel mages to not only prevent the enemy from interfering with their people, but killing them so as to ensure there is no reporting back of a sudden influx of mage activity.

Members of Research may find themselves based at Stoneweale Fort. After some convincing, Prince Sebastian allows his various commanders to coordinate with Riftwatch to identify locations and pressure points within Starkhaven and its defences for the purposes of sabotage in preparation for Tevinter's taking. Now is the time to plan, analyse maps, prepare explosives or enchantments, and try not to look too excited about it.

Meanwhile, those within Diplomacy, if not hovering helpfully around Stoneweale Fort, are sent to make ready for Starkhaven refugees by speaking to villages further south, negotiating for supplies and accommodations, rallying any militia that are willing to assist in their protection. It's all a little thin on the ground, but if there was ever a time to cash in some of Riftwatch's local goodwill, it's now.

30 Wintermarch: Starkhaven

The wall

A horn sounds out, long and mournful. Voices and horse hooves and sword clashing and magic casting beneath the stormy sky is reduced to a dull roar as Prince Sebastian, accompanied by Grand Enchanter Fiona, leads his forces in a frontal assault against the overwhelming Imperial presence at his gates.

As a result, the far gate has been left undefended.

Slaughtering the remaining unit of Tevinter soldiers guarding it is borderline perfunctory, but there is much still to do. The majority of the rebel mages (less those volunteers who have joined Fiona in Sebastian's host), along with any mages of Riftwatch who choose to join them, gather en masse upon the stone bridge and the shallows of the river – a small army of men and women in robes or in armor, but all holding a staff to mark them for what they are. As they begin to draw from the Fade, the air takes on the scent of bitter-storm, energy crackling and prickling across exposed skin, ruffling hair and clothing in unseen winds.

Stone cracks and wood splinters under gouts of raw magic and white-hot bolts of summoned lightning, slamming in unison against walls that have remained previously unbroken all this time. Beneath them, the ground rumbles and shivers, and debris spills where cracks form and open and widen from the base of proud walls to the ramparts.

A small group within the rebel mage forces then move together in coordination, and the stone wall before them all at once comes apart. Giant broken slabs of stone and support lift into the air as if in an explosion slowed in time, drifting away from one another as magic carries it in shimmering green-tinged telekinetic influence.

The ground shakes, again, as pieces of Starkhaven's walls land safely, if heavily, on the mud-thick river on either side, leaving a yawning opening where once were sealed closed gates of oak and iron.

On the other side, where rain beats down the rising dust, gathered citizens of Starkhaven, frightened and war-worn, stare out at an army of mages.

The sky

In the sky, over the chaos, Riftwatch uses the distraction of battle to send swift-flying griffons over the walls and into the city proper to enact acts of sabotage to Starkhaven's infrastructure. Below them, civilians flood the streets, pressing in a constant stream of bodies towards the crumbled wall. Up here, the sounds of a raging battle drift clearer from the front.

Everyone in the sky knows where they are going and what they are doing, under strict orders to avoid any harm coming to civilians. Either as a passenger or on their own, members of Scouting (and some non-Scouting mages) carry with them precise instructions from Research and the means to enact them in the form of alchemical explosives and enchanted grenade-like items that will detonate in bursts of raw Fade magic (or their own magical ability). Common targets include: the defensive weaponry and ballistae posted up on the ramparts, the chains that man the major gates of the city, certain storehouses and administrative buildings indicated on maps. Likewise, there are wealthy estates to pillage and deprive Tevinter of any coin they might find there.

But soon the city will be overrun, and those on griffonback may find themselves under assault of arrows and magic as they make their escape.

The retreat

On the ground, floods of Starkhaven citizens, soon to be refugees, flow through the crumbled wall, staggering across the bridge and through the shallows of the river that surrounds the city, helped along by mages and Riftwatch alike. It is a lengthy and exhausting process as hundreds of ordinary people, wide-eyed and terrified, are herded out of the valley and onto solid ground, streaming south for where villages have been fortified and prepared to receive them.

Then, the sound of cavalry.

Racing across the rocky plain, under Imperial banner, a horde of dracolisk and their riders come galloping at a furious pace towards civilians, mages, Riftwatch alike. Their presence does not speak well for the main battle, but they arrive all the same. Reptilian screeches and hisses pierce the rumble of thunder above, and frightened cries from the refugees begin to sound out as panic grips them, turning to run in panicked stampede at the sight of Imperial soldiers upon their poison-spitting mounts.

It was enough of a likelihood that the Forces members who have been deployed to ensure the security of the evacuation are prepared to move with the rebel mages to meet them. The battle is quick, bloody, magic crackling through the air in time with clashes of shield and flying arrows. Searing poison sprays across skin and armor and flame ripples across scaly hide as a brutal skirmish ensues.

But the battle breaks when the worth of continued harassment weighed against the potential cost. By order of Itaeus Ferra, astride his own beast, the dracolisk cavalry withdraws, tiding back towards Starkhaven, now lost to the forces of Corypheus.

31 Wintermarch: Southwards and Vallomire

Men, women, children march through the cold and into the night, but blessedly, the rain eases itself to an icy misting of constant damp instead of the driving downpour from earlier that day.

It becomes clear that among the refugees, there had been those prepared for this journey. Temporary campsites, guarded by mages and Riftwatch alike, strike up so that all may take a few hours of rest. There is some food passed around, if not very much, and as the sun rises on a new day, the procession resumes, if no less wearily.

Eventually, all arrive at the half-abandoned township of Vallomire, chosen for its largely empty barnhouses and warehouses on the shores of a distributary from the Minanter. It is not large enough or manned enough to permanently house so many of Starkhaven's people, but it will do for the next few days of recovery and rest.

There is food, gathered in from as many corners as was willing to part with it, and warm blankets, and, just as important, a reduced sense of impending doom amongst those that had lived under its shadow for so long.

Spirits are not high, but they are tired. Mournful, but alive. As the day lurches into the evening, as the rain finally withdraws and bonfires are lit, and mages and ordinary citizens of the Free Marches mingle in this moment of necessity, news finally trickles in from Starkhaven.

It is as feared: the city has been claimed by the Tevinter Imperium. Much of Starkhaven's military has been destroyed, giving their lives to buy this opportunity for escape. And, in murmurs that spread from campfire to campfire, two names in particular are spoken in low, reverent tones: Prince Sebastian Vael, and Grand Enchanter Fiona, have fallen.

Stories of prince and mage charging side-by-side into a wave of enemy soldiers, fighting back-to-back against overwhelming odds after all their fellows had fallen, rising again and again from the mud to continue the fight, to hold back the inevitable tide until the city was emptied. Toasts are raised and tears shed for the saviors of Starkhaven—its people, if not its stones.

Smoke rises in the north, a black mark in the sky, as the sun begins to set.

Comments

[hornswoggle]

"Halve it with me," John tells him, as Flint straightens.

There is no hesitation in it; the offer comes easily. Even with only a half-guess at the sorts of things that might require Flint's attention, John has little doubt he will be suited to managing some part of them. To managing whatever might be shared between them, so that they might end the day together.

[katabasis]

The look he gives him is steady. It is not a measurement or a question. It is observation for the sake of looking, undisturbed by a more chronic instinct to memorize; to tether to a time and place like a knot in a line that might later be used as a guide for testing progress and direction.

The hand the falls to John's ankle doesn't yet make to dislodge the prop of his heel.

"So long as you mend better than you cook."

[hornswoggle]

"Consider whether that's the standard you're concerned with clearing."

It is not difficult to improve upon his cooking.

But rather than a straightforward reassurance, John offers this sidelong, glancing joke harkening back to that disastrous attempt at roasting a spitted pig. Flint's hand is warm where it lies, and the incremental flex of his heel is equal parts encouragement and welcome.

[katabasis]

Too quick, says his low scoff of humor and some press of fingers.

It isn't difficult to extricate himself from under John's ankle, or to supply him with the sword belt along with the thick waxed lacing and heavy needle required to make the necessary impromptu repairs. The desk hasn't become stacked so high that it isn't impossible to separate into what should be kept loose and what requires consolidating and packing away, and the matter of turning the coals in the brazier may be accomplished more or less as an afterthought.

The ammunition bag, though. That he brings back into bed with him, spilling its contents between them so that after he has squeezed in next to John (his own boots still on, one foot planted on the reed mat and the other hooked across his knee, legs more out of the bed than in) they may do this part—examining each heavy shot to be certain it hasn't been knocked out of shape, verifying that it still fits through the metal ring used for testing dimensions, repacking the shot that is reliable and separating out that which must be recast—in tandem.

[hornswoggle]

There is a meditative quality to the work, all the more potent for their proximity.

The sword belt is repaired. Serviceable stitching, if nothing else. (Some consideration of whether John could lay some sort of magic into the belt itself, though until the sword sees more regular use again there are likely better places to put that energy.) It is ready to be set aside once Flint returns to bed, where they pass the metal testing ring back and forth between them as they work through the spill of shot piled across the coverlet.

By and by, they winnow down the potential shot to a small pile of discards that might be set aside for the Research division's reworkings.

And John is free to catch up his hand, now unoccupied, in a loose hold. Preserve the quiet they've worked in as he tips his head: Dispense with that for the ammunition bag telegraphed by the lift of his jaw.

[katabasis]

The bag is heavy.

Tomorrow, late in the day when is riding in the direction of Vallomire, Flint will find that both his shoulders have gone stiff from the effort of either managing the ammunition or from the weight of the long gun itself braced across the scratched leather pauldron. By the time they reach the encampment hastily thrown together in the township, he will regret, maybe, choosing to ride the length of the line instead of simply tethering his horse to the back of some wagon or cart and letting it be dragged along in whatever direction didn't require him to steer or to suffer the sullen horse jerking on the reins.

But tonight, despite working with the disadvantage of just the one hand, the heavy canvas bag is displaced from the bed without much trouble. So too goes the rejected shot, further disqualified from the quilted blanket to the crate make-do side table.

[hornswoggle]

The last remnants of the work resettled and set aside, John cedes his grip on Flint's hand.

"Let me," as he propels away from the headboard. Foot over the side of the bed, but not following it over to stand as his hand falls to Flint's knee. "Lay back."

A small thing, calling back to a foundational request: Let me take care of you.

Whatever that looks like in a tent in the mud on the eve of a siege breaking in favor of their enemy.

[katabasis]

It takes some shifting to give over to the request, drawing himself down into the bed by way of his foot still planted there on the ground, but he manages that too—biddable even, in an odd sense of the word that shouldn't hang well on him but sometimes does in these half shielded places.

Beyond the heavy canvas of the tent, the yard isn't quiet. It isn't yet late enough to have rendered down the fires, and the weather is wet and cold enough that anyone making their bed in the patchwork of tents collected here tonight are likely to cling to them for some hours yet. Somewhere in the not quite distance, there is the murmur of smattered conversation and the occasional spike of laughter. Shouting in the the tenor of some forgettable insult that will be erased by sleep or by the lack of sleep and everything that will soon follow after.

With a creak of the bed's collapsible frame, Flint draws his legs and his boots up into the bed. He is careless of what dirt may come with them; they've received no particular careful treatment tonight.

[hornswoggle]

At this vantage point, having been so obliged, John has little issue picking apart and loosening laces, working one boot off, then the other, until both are dropped to the mat alongside the bed. Considering the weather, the accommodations, the early morning waiting for them both, common sense dictates that is as far as preparation for bedding down will go.

“A feather bed,” has all the cadence of a joke, punctuated by a second, groaning creak as John levers himself back to prop his shoulders against the headboard before taking up Flint’s hand.

All the rings adorning it, and John’s fingers seek out only one to press a thumb over. There is reassurance in feeling the answering hum and flare of power rising up from the red and black stones.

[katabasis]

The survival of that ring is somewhat miraculous. He'd been wearing it when he and Yseult had been taken in Hasmal, and there are other personal articles he will never see again. A belt knife, the sword he'd carried for some years, a spyglass, the waxed canvas coin purse gone soft with age and the sun of its contents. But the rings had been permitted to stay, and so here are those faithful red and black stones ready to answer when they're called.

"Fucking Averesch," is in a similar tenor as Flint crosses one ankle over the other. "I could have done without being reminded of there being an alternative."

To those lumpy, musty smelling specimens in the Gallows.

[hornswoggle]

John's thumb sweeps over those stones, the skin-warmed silver setting.

"We can consider the cost of the sheets repayment for it," John reminds; all their best ministrations hadn't completely spared the bedding from the after-effects of the Antivan Crows' handiwork.

His fingers shift, catching hold of Flint's hand. His fingers slip across Flint's palm, the knuckles of his thumb, on the way to drawing their linked palms up so John might put a soft kiss to the back of Flint's hand.

[katabasis]

"Fuck repayment."

He manages to imbue the thing with some genuine intractable sentiment despite lying there beside John in the half dark afforded by the turning over of the brazier coals. Though it's a brief glimpse of the thing, sharpness surfacing like the gleam of some animal breaking past the surface of a wave and then disappearing back again—that brief, very soft scuff of mouth and whiskers across his knuckles serving to mollify it.

He breathes heavily out through his nose. Presses his fingertips close to whatever plane of John's hand is most available to him. His other hand has come to lay inert across his middle.

"Consider instead that you've kept yourself at a distance from me," he says, and must mean the way John is presently propped against the barely there headboard.

[hornswoggle]

Consider instead that you've kept yourself at a distance from me.

This specific string of words may mean nothing more than John's position on the bed, which creates a slight distance between them by nature of John having settled first, by the business of separating out shot. A practical observation put forth, making clear a request in the process. But for a moment, this observation highlights something else.

You must know—

The look that shifts John's expression is a echo of a reaction, there and gone in a matter of moments. A beat of something near to hesitation, reaction resolving as John looks at him in the near dark.

He descends from the headboard. It does not require him to withdraw his hand from Flint's fingertips.

"Easily remedied."

If they are talking of the headboard, and John's former position.

[katabasis]

There is some shifting to make room for him—an adjustment of elbows and hip so that they may lay something close to flush in the crowded bed. It's not a piece of furniture particularly meant to have two people laid shoulder to shoulder in it but it isn't impossible, and if the way Flint settles so readily along the new line is any indication, he's satisfied with the results.

Easily remedied.

(There is no reason consider otherwise. There is no reason to associate the bed with a little skiff, or the pretend isolation of the tent in the fort's crowded yard with some similar illusion afforded by a dark bay and the lights of a city illustrating the distant water's edge. It's possible he doesn't think of it at all, and is instead perfectly content simply with the arrangement of bodies and the clasp of John's hand. After all, the blood that had stained the inside of his coat's lapel a darker and more permanent black in Abeir-Toril hadn't followed them out either.

That is entirely possible.)

"There. That's more comfortable," is meant to be funny. Hopefully everyone is happy to be close friends with the edge of the straw mattress.

[hornswoggle]

It is funny. John's snort of laughter answers the declaration, hand flexing within the lacing of their fingers.

Maybe comfortable is not the exact word for their present state: John on edge in a way that has nothing to do with the narrow quality of the bed, the layers of clothing between them, the draft that cuts intermittently through the seams of the tent.

But even with all these factors taken into account, the pleasure of having so arranged themselves into such a space, the way the bed itself lends itself to closeness and overlap of their bodies is more than enough incentive to ignore the balance struck at the edge of the mattress.

Still, that minor hesitation delays John a moment, slows the habitual hook of his ankle over Flint's, cinching them tighter still.

"Do you recall what you told me in Antiva?"

While they're meditating on sheets, and feather beds.

[katabasis]

"Duck."

—he says, exquisitely dry, and can't in good conscience be blamed for it. This is John's fault for setting a precedent by laughing.

[hornswoggle]

And perhaps doubly John's own fault, given the second laugh.

"If you think we can be so discerning tomorrow..."

Is not the question John had meant to ask.

But it helps, that he isn't certain he cares to ask it at all.

His thumb rubs back and forth over Flint's thumb. The shooting pains in his leg have dulled, present but momentarily distant. It occurs to him that they might trade flippant rejoinders back and forth until one of them falls asleep, and John might let all other uncertainties remain unsaid.

The siege will break within a day. How long can it take him to fetch a Chantry Mother?

[katabasis]

Assuming all goes well—or near to well; if it goes as planned and not disastrously—, there will be some days spent in Vallomire to oversee the realities of shifting a significant portion of a city's siege stricken populous from inside its walls. There will be things they have prepared for and things they haven't, and it will take some there to know exactly how everything has shaken out.

For all of John's optimism regarding the efficiency of Riftwatch in numbers, it is entirely possible that he and Petrana may reach Kirkwall before the bulk of their force he does.

(And if he thinks too much on the semantics of the thing, he will grow restless and feel the urge to return to the papers he's already packed away.)

He grunts a noncommittal reply, hmm, and that too is more humor than not. Giving everyone a lot of credit there, John. But eventually, Flint turns his hand in John's to an angle that is more comfortable given their current arrangement. He asks—

"What of Antiva?"

[hornswoggle]

By rights, John's palm should have a ragged new scar. But whatever was paid in Abeir-Toril did not write itself into his skin, only passed into the insubstantial collapsing structure of the Fade.

Flint's hand is warm around his own. John lets that hold his attention, that point of connection in conjunction with the link of their ankles, how their hips and thighs align between layers of fabric.

Recalls the tone of Flint's voice, face lit by candles as he'd asked: "Does it worry you still?"

"You put a question to me. Before I returned it to you."

Not about mattresses.

"It occurred to me your answer might have changed."

It is a roundabout way to the observation: Consider instead that you've kept yourself at a distance from me.

[katabasis]

Surely there are, by technicality alone, a dozen possible questions they might have asked one another during their time in Rialto. If he gave the matter some serious consideration, he might even recall a few. What thing could he have possibly said then which now requires further litigation so many seasons on?

(It has been so pleasantly warm in Antiva, he thinks, an unbidden thought that brings a strange and unrecognizable form of regret to him here in this cold, wet place. The air in Rialto had breathed hot against the nap of his neck. Everything has smelled of salt and the rich stench native to the products of and the unrelenting demands of trade.)

Even in the half light, it is obvious in Flint's face when the exact thing John is endeavoring to fish forward across time comes him. It shifts something in the line of his brow, or maybe does something to his mouth that the whiskers and their shadow obscures. Ah, it says. That.

He is quiet for a moment, the line of his thumb shifting meditatively against John's hand as he considers some point beyond the inconsequential light barely reflected off the canvas some distance above their faces. (Would that the dimensions of the tent were closer. The air would stay warmer.) When he does speak—

"Occurred when, exactly?"

—it's a mild question, designed to feel out the dimensions of this thing. He doesn't tip his face to look at John.

[hornswoggle]

They needn't speak of it, John knows. Flint would let it pass. It could remain dissolved in the Fade, along with all other aspects of that dream.

And beyond that, there are other unspoken sentiments summoned forth by that turn of phrase. Other ways in which John has held himself at some remove, regardless of how transparent he has been rendered through their partnership.

And Flint would allow those to remain unspoken of as well, John knows. They might pass the night some other way.

In the quiet following that question, John observes that minor shift in expression. Focuses on the movement of Flint's thumb over his hand. Winds his way towards—

"Shortly after I slashed my palm open."

The working of that spell is almost inconsequential; this is not a new concern.

[katabasis]

A low, considering sound rises to meet that. John Silver might have a dozen of such marks laid into his palm. Cutting into his skin in an alley that doesn't exist over a man who isn't dead (and even if he is, then fuck that man) may be the most recent occurrence. But it's hardly the only time he has waited as John set a sharp edge there. He's watched the blood well up into his cupped palm. He has rolled his sleeve up to receive it.

(He suspects he may be asked to do so again before they part ways in the morning.)

"You remember," he says after some measure. "What I've told you of being a young man on an Imperium ship."

Surely they have spoken on this subject before. Enough to know that young man means boy of twelve; the casual indignities of the wardroom; the vicious particular pleasure to be derived from attaining any measure of seniority; the trap stitched into a Lieutenant's uniform wherein no man moves out of that coat unless permitted to by some higher power either out of necessity, or as a nod to good favor, or perhaps for the simple fact that some action or other has made the lucky bastard impossible to ignore forever.

(Sometimes, when is capable of thinking of the thing in abstract terms and is possessed of a kernel of sentiment, he supposes that is what Nascere had been intended to be. Make something of this, and maybe it will serve to propel you past the reality of your station.

Well. That is true.)

[hornswoggle]

Yes, John recalls.

Worlds away from the black hole of John's past, though the petty cruelties coloring it are not beyond John's understanding. All the ways the world might remind a man (or a boy) of his own powerlessness may vary greatly in the action, but that punishing knowledge is easy to recognize.

"I do," to the tune of Go on.

The tent is comparatively warm, but chill steals in through the seams, the heavy flap of canvass serving as a door and lashed tightly but not secure enough to keep out a draft. On this bed, they are warmest where they align, where their hands meet and limbs set against each other, where John's ankle has hooked over Flint's calf. Anchors all, as they broach the vastness of a topic John has habitually recoiled from.

[katabasis]

There in that arrangement of contact points between them, Flint shifts—adjusts the lay of his knee, turns his hand so as to lay John's hand against the high curve of his ribs and hold it there. These are largely absent motions: evidence of a man who has decided he will settle into place.

"My third year as a junior officer," he says to the half dark. "here was a recall of particular patrol fleet of which I'd long been part, any my commission transferred. A gracious act, by all accounts, given the number of officers posted to shore and put on half pay. Prior to that, I'd known just the flag ship. And whether I was aware of it or not, I'd enjoyed considerable protections thanks to the lucky turn its admiral had granted me."

(He had been acutely aware of it.)

"This new ship, this new captain. He was a first generation Laetan out of Vol Dorma, someone told me. Come out of Soporati trade stock, and was known to be something of a tough bastard and a prize hunter both. I, barely fifteen, had one or two suspicions as to why that sort of man, raised suddenly out of a his home and into a standing remarkably separate from his predecessors by the whims of chance, might find himself compelled to wear a rough glove."

And for a time, Flint tells John, it had seemed as if his suspicion would prove out. Here was a man who must guard his reputation carefully, and not without reason. His children being all too young to have yet proved out his lineage, it would be his obligation to make the most of his advanced position as possible for as long as possible on the off chance that they all slipped back down the ladder after he'd gone. No reasonable man would waste that opportunity by being timid, or soft-handed, or mediocre. And the way a young junior office knew this was because of the way this captain out of Val Dorma treated him with a strange measure of kindness—not just in the rare instances of crossing paths during a lonely night watch, but sometimes too in lessons with the other young men and women. There was a secret and mutual understanding there which someone might almost name as favoritism.

This captain lived up to the promise the rest of his reputation as well. A ravenous prize-fighter, it wasn't many months before a great many of the senior officers which could be spared had been dispatched on various captured ships with orders to deliver them promptly back to the nearest friendly port in order to secure their value to the Val Dorma captain's account. That it would lend some credit to the reputation of those officers temporarily in command was a thing unspoken, but indisputable.

"And then one day there was a captured Qunari scout ship under our lee, and no senior officers left to take command of her. And this Val Dorma Laetan passed over four other boys to put me to it. I was given strict instruction to take her to Neromenian, and there to first confirm the presence of two of our previously dispatched senior officers in order to deliver the message that we must all return directly by whatever means were available, and then at last I was to see the ship surrendered to the proper authorities. Beyond the bindings of those orders, and given a few hours for the two ships to lose one another over the horizon, I found myself with total authority."

(There is no point in describing the pleasure not of just acquiring command, but of finding himself so fit to it. What young officer doesn't wring their hands fitfully and lose sleep over whether their navigation will past snuff outside of the fore deck classroom? Not James McGraw, though he'd slept fitfully all the same—so delighted with the practical application of three years of work, and the freedom, and the possibility of what lay in Neromenian that being well rested would have been a waste of precious minutes wherein the whole world and the skeleton crew living in it belonged entirely to him.)

"When I reached Neromenian, I faithfully delivered the captain's written orders to my senior. The woman in question naturally saw a ripe opportunity and took possession of the captured ship and reported it to the harbor officials herself. Bad luck. Another opportunity would present itself, I was certain. And not long after, it did. And then again it happened that I delivered some letter and found myself unexpectedly robbed of the opportunity to see the thing finished properly.

"When the opportunity came a third time, I did something I shouldn't have. I opened the letter I was meant to deliver upon my landing and found he'd written more or less what you know he must have written. It occurred to me then that what I'd understood as a rare opportunity to self govern had really been something else. And that it was possible the real reason the captain out of Val Dorma had been so easy with me was because he'd seen no purpose in taking me to task, and had seen nothing similar in me at all."

Here, in the tent, Flint's thumb has at some point stopped shifting across the back of John's hand. His breathing expands slowly under their palms, a slow rise and fall of ribs.

"That isn't the first time I've watched you open your palm. I only wanted for a moment to hold what it produced, the possibility of which seemed very real in that place." Sitting on a balcony, a little lick of fire twitching between his fingers. The whole world. "But in a word, no," he says, a measure of levity forcefully injected there. He has been talking for some time and isn't ignorant to the fact that he is fucking ridiculous. "My answer hasn't changed."

[hornswoggle]

In the midst of the telling, James Flint's voice rising and falling over the business of unearthing his own history, John has a moment of awareness: he has nothing of equal value to give in return.

Years before, in a ship's cabin in the wake of a different unburdening: If I could have ripped these abilities from my blood I would have done so a long time ago.

Now, John considers how those words might have fallen, so filled with loathing and recoil as they had been. (As they may well still be, were he to be pressed to discussion of the thing on such a scale again.) He cannot rid himself of the ability. And outside of a dream, Flint cannot hold it.

If John doubts either statement (is a moment ever enough? can a man watch the dead speak and not feel some uncertainty?) he does not speak of it.

"You made me a promise," is what he says instead. "As to the fate of the structure that robbed you."

Robbed is such a broad word. It encompasses three ships. It encompasses a life, two lives. It encompasses an island, cracked apart and fallen into the sea.

(I'm going to burn down that fucking house.)

"We will see that through."

John Silver cannot make fire. But he can collapse the bones of a thing. Under Flint's palm, John's thumb shifts, hooks over Flint's in return.

"You've hold of it already," is a lower thing, a quieter offering. Here is his palm, so readily opened. Do they not already decide together the use of the thing? Is it not a shared asset? (Would John not pass it over to him, if it were possible?)