[CLOSED] With a little blackmail from my friends

[bribon]

WHO: Astrid and Desidério
WHAT: Making friends in the Ambassadoria
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Minrathous, Tevinter.
NOTES: ooc info

He's never been to Minrathous. Not many people from the South have, he would guess. But a city is a city is a city, and he'll happily take two turns around enemy territory sooner than he would care to spend any more time traversing the Crossroads. There's something unsettling about the latter—a strangeness that drags at the flesh and makes his feet heavy. And so Desidério had been, against all reason, instantly relieved the moment he and Astrid had exited the eluvian.

It helps that he's Antivan and she's big enough to legitimize whatever dumb story he spools out for who the fuck ever might ask. 'Oh this? My bodyguard, on account of the fact that I'm working for an Antivan tradesman looking to renegotiate contacts with the north in spite of the sanction that no Antivan trade west of the Arlathans.' Or maybe, 'Oh her? She's clearly an Ander warrior late of the front line. I was a mercenary stationed near Starkhaven and we fell madly in love while she ransacked the Marches, and we've come back to Minrathous to cash in our war loot.' Or even, given a few days of extreme boredom watching the comings and going of the Ambassadoria and having gleaned enough unearned confidence to be a little curt, 'Fuck off, can't you see I'm busy?'

And so on. They have been able to move about the city and lazily survey their best prospects relatively unimpeded so long as they'd used good sense.

Arguably, this—the part where they are presently waiting to jump Lemmit Nista's brother on his way to his less than legal rendezvous—is not that. But only arguably. Which Desidério loves to do, hence why he is working through a few practice rationalizations in case there are questions when they return to Kirkwall.

"My other argument," he says to his companion from inside her shadow. They are both loitering just at the mouth of the alley with a clear view of the corner around which the younger Nista will come skulking. Desidério at least looks perfectly innocuous. He is presently eating an apple, speaking between bites. "Is that we've come all this way, and it would be a shame not to take the opportunity."

(This is his second tack. His first one had been 'We knock over the younger brother, get some evidence, and then present it to the clerk as blackmail. Easily done. They both fold like cheap paper. We trot back to Kirkwall with the assistant eating out of our palm to protect his status and an Ambassadoria guard as a bonus. I all but guarantee it. Who could complain about that?')

Comments

[bribon]

There is a kind of mathematics to this. Not that he should be the one mentally opining about numbers and figures—he'd always been rather poor with them, his education being somewhat piecemeal at best—, but his gut is better at calculations than his head is. What happens when you stop a man in a narrow alley, glower at him like a pair of cutthroats, and refuse to make way for him to pass? It's not exactly calculus, now is it?

"As a matter of fact, we can," Desidério remarks cheerfully, making a motion as if to draw either the sword or the knife at his hip.

The point being that when the younger Niska finds the fraction of sense he may possess and makes to break back toward the mouth of the alley—fuck this—, Desidério's foot is there to trip him. The hand diverts. Catches at the neck of Niska's armor and shoves.

Inspiring sudden panic can be a tricky prospect when it comes to men who carry things like Ambassadoria short swords and belt knives. Usually involves some dicey wiggling out of the way of being stabbed. But worth the risk, probably, to put Niska on the back foot.

Whatever. There's two of them and one of him. That's not difficult arithmetic either.

[brennvin]

Niska goes flying forward to the ground, but his center of gravity is very low to begin with, so he ducks, rolls, and pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. What ensues then is desperate and shambolic and more than a little inelegant: Niska’s metal-booted feet flailing, the dwarf shin-kicking, knee-biting, squirming and thrashing to get away from the pair of them.

He almost makes it, too, with one particularly solid and painful-looking kick to the Antivan’s knee, before Astrid’s slipped past them to block the exit in a pincer movement. Two on one, this should work. Flushing out prey, she thinks. It’s just like nug-wrestling, she thinks.

Which means eventually finally wrangling her arms through Niska’s and temporarily pinning him to the wall in front of Desi. “You good?” she asks, looking at the man, while more Orzammarian oaths and spitting curses emit from the flailing mess of limbs which she is, quite literally, holding above the ground.

[bribon]

Desidério's "Owfuck" is mostly lost under the crunch of Nista's armor and the scrape of metal plated boot heels. But by the time Astrid has the dwarf pinned to the wall, the instant surge of pain has given way to a more buzzing kind of adrenaline. His knee's going to blow up like a balloon. Later, he will regret delivering a swift kick right back to Nista's own flopping leg.

Invest in heavier boots, he thinks to himself about the disappointing thump and mild grunt of reproach it elicits.

"Please. It takes more than that," Desidério assures everyone involved, himself included.

He props his arm jauntily against the wall, then, leaning casually into the space in order to be more or less eye-level with their new friend. That it involves casually shifting the weight off his one leg is definitely merely a bonus.

"Now then, let's try this again. And don't you spit at me," he hastily adds, detecting some tell-tale flex of the dwarf's cheek behind his dense whiskers. "Or my partner will take offense."

Nista squirms sullenly against Astrid's grip. Some unpadded part of his armor scrapes at the wall.

"My purse is on my left hip. Take it and go."

Desidério tilts his attention to Astrid. Puts on a 'That's so cute' grin with too many teeth. "He thinks we're robbing him."

[brennvin]

“Our day would be soooo much shorter if we were.”

Astrid’s not a natural actress, but she has worked to bluff and intimidate others before: if you’re a lone woman in the woods running into bandits, it pays to scowl and puff yourself up bigger and let them think twice about stealing your shit. So she’s settling back into this play, this act: drop your voice a little to a lower register, sound very cool and dangerous, and look like you wouldn’t mind planting your very scary barbarian axe in a person’s skull rather than just an animal’s.

It is an act, of course, but Avigd Nista doesn’t have to know that.

“No, my buddy here’s interested in your ex-tra-cur-ric’lar activities,” she says, punching in the unfamiliar syllables, as her grip tightens around his chest.

“My… what?” Nista says after a pause, unconvincingly. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

Astrid stares meaningfully at Desidério over the dwarf’s head.