![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
WHO: Kingfisher and anyone she wakes up
WHAT: Delivery!
WHEN: 2am morning of Solas 25
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Noisiness. Can probably just be a pile on in one thread.
WHAT: Delivery!
WHEN: 2am morning of Solas 25
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Noisiness. Can probably just be a pile on in one thread.
Despite the frequent storms that have plagued Kirkwall, it's been a quiet, calm night. Lucky, in some ways, as if it had been raining Kingfisher would likely have had to part with a few more coin to persuade the boatman across to the fortress. As it is her coin purse is already lighter for the trouble than she'd like, and really, who sets up some kind of elite emergency army out in the harbour and then doesn't put on a night ferry?
That impression doesn't improve much on finding no guards or staff to greet her. She'd almost consider the place empty, except she knows what abandoned places feel like, and the quiet here is softer than that kind of coldness. Still, the lack of the kind of late night motions she'd expect in a place like this has her wondering why her delivery here was impressed as being so urgent. It didn't look like anyone was going to get anything done with it any time soon. But she doesn't question her clients. She'd have a lot less of them if she started doing that.
She'd have less of them if she failed in delivering anything as promised, too. But in the absence of any noticeable staff or guards to point her in the right direction, she isn't going to be able to find the recipient quickly. And there's no way she's walking the whole fortress banging on doors.
There are weapons racks visible in the courtyard. Taking a moment to peruse the options, she picks out a nice domed shield, unbuckling her scabbard so as to be able to heft her smallsword by the sheathed blade. There's a singular, ringing clang as she tests out the combination, nodding to herself in satisfaction at the way the sound echoes off the walls around her.
The next wave of clangs comes in threes, louder now for the shield and sword hilt being struck together in the air above her head. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. Then a pause, where she inhales deep and does her best town crier, bellowing "Commander of Riftwatch!" before striking her improvised bell again.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
She's an archer. It'll take a while for her arms to get tired.
no subject
"Shut up," he opines, "there's not... one Commander." He tries to shift position, but loses his balance and slides uselessly down onto his back, where he proceeds to lie there motionless, yearning for sleep or death or maybe both.
"'less you mean C'mander Flint," he mumbles into the ground, "jus' Forces. Not. Everything." And also he's mean.
no subject
"Maker's tits, when did you get there?"
Sword and shield now raised partly defensively, instinctual rather than anything she's consciously perceiving as a threat from the now slumped figure on the floor. Drunk, she surmises quickly. Maybe that was why the place was so empty, they'd had some kind of party and were now all passed out in various spots around the fortress. Annoying. She loved a good party.
Still, she's more than happy to take the drunken fellow's advice, and she hefts the shield and sword upwards again.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
"Commander Flint!"
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
no subject
The now-prone Benedict is given the choice of fighting (correcting her) or fleeing, and the latter doesn't seem like it's going to happen any time soon-- he tries to sit up, is caught up by a dizzy spell and slumps back against the pillar-- so the former it is.
"Not him," he slurs, trying to focus on her, "annnnyone but him."
no subject
"Hello," he says, and, "Please stop."
He glances at the dark shape of the body on the ground, and his hand tightens on the sword before there's a visible oh, it's just you, and he relaxes again. Partway. There is still the clanging stranger.
no subject
"You need to make up your mind, friend." CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. "See, I have to deliver this box." CLANG. CLANG. CLANG. "Before dawn, or I don't get." CLANG. CLA-
She stops, abrupt enough that the sword hilt is still against the shield at the arrival of another stranger, dulling the ring of the last aborted clang. Her face brightens, smiling broadly. This one looks much more like what she's after, sober, soldier-like, getting ready to draw on her and everything.
"Hello," she says, cheerfully. "Commander Flint?"
no subject
no subject
Decidedly. Much worse. Here is Matthias, emerging from yet another door, sleep-rumpled, red-eyed, looking cross and late teenaged and more than a little put out. He doesn't need a sword, he's got his magic and the power of all his mild annoyance. Forces Assistant, here to answer for Commander Flint, who is off doing Commander Flint-y things, like staring out windows or looking darkly at maps or sat reading books in a way that suggests he does not want to be disturbed, possibly cannot be disturbed.
"But dont restart that ringing or the whole bloody Gallows'll wake up and come see what you're about. It's enough that you've three of us at your call. What d'you want??"
no subject
He might have heard something about a box? But his hand on on the hilt of his sword nonetheless. They don't get many visitors without prior announcement, here. He understands there was once an incident with an abomination taking out half the dining hall (building, not occupants, fortunately). The box could contain anything, the box could be a cover—
"This isn't a good time," he tells her, "for nonsense. You'll not find a single one of us in the fucking mood."
no subject
"I understand, it's the small hours and there's a strange lady making a lot of noise in your courtyard. Sorry about that." And, perhaps as peace offering or confirmation that the clanging will not be continuing, the shield is calmly set to one side. The sword, which is hers, remains, and is now used as a prop to point to the large wooden box sitting on the floor slightly behind her. "But I need to see this delivered to the Commander of Riftwatch before dawn, which has already taken me more expense and time than estimated when I took the job, and I don't really appreciate my work being called nonsense."
Her gaze returns to the soldier-like one, unflinching, before also dropping to include the smaller one as she continues. The drunk one is left out, clearly having offered as much help as he was going to already.
"So if one of all three of you at my call want to point me in the right direction, I can be on my way before I, too, am not in the fucking mood."
no subject
"I'm Forces Assistant," he says. He looks at the box. Fairly unremarkable, as boxes go. Not glowing with any sort of glyph. Still might contain a thousand vipers. "And the Commander is in charge of Forces, so I reckon I'm as close as you'll get at this hour. I'll bring it to the offices and have it for him and you can kip in a spare room and come by to see it opened. Or be on your way, whichever you like."
Not that he wants to fetch the box from her. He nods at Benedict, still slumped against the pillar.
"Get it."
no subject
Excuse me?
no subject
"I'll get it," he says before the mages can be more embarrassing or, worse, before Matthias can try to turn it into an order for him.
He holds his hands out for the box.
"None of us is waking Flint for you," he tells the courier, just so that's clear. "But if it only has to go to one of the leaders, in general, Stark might be awake."
no subject
The client entrusts it to her, and she doesn't let it out of her sight or into anyone else's hands until it's with the recipient. She wouldn't be able to charge half as much without a guarantee like that. Not that she means it needs to just sit in the courtyard. She can carry it wherever. Still, she grins.
"Though you're welcome to try. I haven't had a good fight for a while."
kicks tag order aside
He makes a round gesture to encompass the entire situation, from her coming in uninvited to all of the noise to this current insistence that no one except one of their surviving figureheads is allowed to touch her mysteriously urgent package.
"—is too stupid to be an assassination attempt, I'd think. Not on your part. Maybe on the part of whoever put you up to it. But I'm not in the mood to take a risk even if it's a small one. And it won't be a fight. Both the lads are mages."
gets hit in the face with it
no subject
"We're mages, not weapons that a Templar gets to boast about and deploy when he likes. If she takes your hands off, I won't be helping. Oh, right--this lad's a Templar," this bit to the courier for her reference, with a thumb jerked toward Redvers. "Which isn't much to brag about, I know, but it's got to be said so it's not forgotten. Look, we'll have it off of you one way or another, might as well make it an early night and give it over, save your grandstanding for the morning when there's more people around to appreciate it."
no subject
The united front doesn't need her input to start showing cracks, though. Even if she was open to persuasion on the matter, they wouldn't be making much of an impact. The final reference to her maintaining her very serious and solemn duty to her cargo as grandstanding is the last nail in that coffin. She turns, walks over to the box, then plonks her butt down on it. Sword braced across her knees, bored expression settling over her features.
"Tell your commander I'm waiting."
no subject
And as the courier pivots into another new mood and takes a seat, it gets less subtle. His eyebrows go up. Andraste help him. (As a figure of speech. She will of course do no such thing.)
"If you're going to insist on trespassing, you can do it in the dungeon," Redvers proposes, "and we'll tell the Commander in the morning. Unless you want to tell us anything to explain why it's so urgent. Aside from you wanting to get paid. We don't—"
A pause. He carefully does not glance at Matthias, who he suspects now will disagree with any we he puts forth.
"I don't care if you are or not."
no subject
"Open it yourself," he says quietly, and glances once more from Matthias, to Redvers, to the courier. There's an implied 'or else'.
no subject
"This is stupid."
--he might as well say it aloud. This courier is acting arsey on purpose and it's far too early (late?) and Benedict is of no real help at all and then there's Redvers, who Matthias does, unfortunately, have to agree with in this particular moment.
"She's not going to open it and she's not going to give it over, and she's not going to tell us anything, so--" Annoyed, he shoves off to approach her, shuffling his feet so they work down into his boots properly. He'd only had a moment to pull them on before heading out here. "Dungeons it is. C'mon."
no subject
So, here: the scrape of boot heels, the flap of a coat tail, the faint click of metal shifting against metal that comes from the easy collision of belt knife against stowed spyglass. Fragments of brazier- and moonlight paint Commander Flint in a patchwork of golds and blues as he comes traipsing out of the dark, the stark black shape of him clarifying in pieces as he cuts in across the courtyard.
"Is this meant to be the watch change?" sounds more like a patronizing What the fuck is half the company doing in the yard at this hour than it does some barked order. It's dark. He's sixteen paces off. The woman sat on the crate could be—
it's a shorter list than is ordinary, but still.
no subject
She's about to turn her sword off her knees to ward off the approaching mage when there's the sound of yet another grumpy bloke coming to join the party. Kingfisher knows better than to get her hopes up, at this point, but it's an effort to stop herself rolling her eyes.
"Let me guess," she says, gesturing at the new arrival with the pommel of her sword for emphasis. "Also not Commander Flint."
STEALTH