faderift | closed.

A well-loved Chantry mother from Antiva, Mother Henriette, wishes to lead a prayer service for the fallen at Tantervale. Mother Henriette and the trio of Chantry Sisters accompanying her will need protection from any stray Tevinter soldiers in the area. Ensure the memorial prayers are conducted and Mother Henriette escorted back to her ship in Kirkwall without incident.

Gwenaëlle Baudin and Bastien aren't the only protection afforded to the Mother and Sisters as they cross the into the spottily-treacherous territory south of Tantervale. One of the Sisters is, herself, armed; so is the burly young man driving the cart for the Mother and her favorite of the Sisters. The other two are on horses of their own, further back. The rising and falling chatter occasionally breaks for laughter or scolding. Now and then Riftwatch stands out against the Antivan.

At the front of the pack with Gwenaëlle, Bastien is settled on top of his merry spotted horse with form that's correct only in the ways required to avoid discomfort or dismounting, shoulders slouched and looking as comfortable as if he'd been raised in a stable.

"You don't speak Antivan, do you, Mademoiselle?" he asks Gwenaëlle—in Orlesian. It only seems fair.

Persistence — Percy, she had affectionately called her, saddling up — is a beautiful mare, although she has been with Gwenaëlle through enough that it's probably nearing time to offer her a gentle retirement of some kind, and perhaps acquire a horse who was not selected so specifically for the way her coloring is a perfect match for her mistress's hair. She, which is to say the horse, has the very particular bearing of a horse who probably sort of enjoyed all the pomp and circumstance of being a young noblewoman's horse, once, and still moves with a certain formality to her now—

not inefficient, just precise. Probably it's at least partly that, and the steel-boning corsetry of Gwenaëlle's armored bodice, that has her by contrast to Bastien so habitually correct in her seat; she probably held herself as straight when she was riding Percy side-saddle, too. It'd stand out less if she didn't seem, on the whole, relaxed to a degree that might be borderline unrecognisable to him.

She glances at him, thoughtful, aware of the discussion behind them the way a cat might slant its ears back whilst pretending disinterest in the progress of a person behind it,

“I'm afraid not,” she answers, in kind. “I've picked up only the least useful of languages, these past years.” Snatches of Elder Speech; conversational Sindarin. Not exactly practical. “Does that mean not you, either?”

"Oh, no, I do," he says.

That isn't true, aside from what he's picked up from folk songs, which he wouldn't be at all nimble about rearranging into new sentences. The conversations behind them are a mystery, made all the more mysterious by the difficulties of hearing with a single ear.

Ahead of them, the road curves through gentle hills and rocky formations. The vast majority are too small or shallow to mask an ambush on their own, but the grass is tall. If someone saw them coming they could lie down and wait—but it feels unlikely. It feels like a pleasant ride through undemanding terrain.

He turns his head a bit, angling, and nods along with a few syllables.

"She is saying... she did not expect demons and heathens to all be so charming and beautiful."

Well,

for all she knows, that could be what's being said. On the other hand, charming makes it instantly much less plausible than beautiful, because they are only both one of those things. She has probably never charmed a Chantry mother in all her life; it seems unlikely she's going to start now, representing Riftwatch and her own radically-leaning political opinions,

or tendency to revere Avvar worship before Andraste,

but why not play along, either way. She can't tell if it's true or not, but Bastien is very charming, and the ride is thus far fairly sedate. Hopefully it stays that way,

“It's your moustache,” she says, wisely, having developed a new appreciation for facial hair of late. “It's enthralled her, I'm sure of it.”

Bastien nods at this, and his nod fades into a thoughtful nod at nothing. He has an ear cocked back toward the Antivans, as if he's listening—but it's the deaf one.

"Exactly right," he says, and if he ever had any intent to be convincing, he's abandoning it now: "That is exactly what she said. My moustache and your neck, my piety and your respect. She is entirely beguiled. We could ask her for anything."

He grins sidelong. Mademoiselle Baudin's relatively good mood, noted. (Could be the fresh air. Could be not being in Orlais anymore.) Appreciation for his moustache, on the other hand, slides by as some kind of joke, probably.

Ask her to convert, she doesn't say, although mostly because she doesn't immediately have a clever suggestion as to what the chantry mother in question could reasonably convert to. A joke is nothing if it has no punchline. She'll have to workshop it — maybe there'll be another opportunity, down the line, or else she will have simply crafted, retrospectively, a very good line that she could have said, if she had been quicker with her witticisms.

Most conversations might have been cleverer, in retrospect.

“I do have a lovely little neck,” she concedes, instead, “though one worries to hear too much about it, living so near the Gallows.”

Cheerful place they call something vaguely resembling home, isn't it.

“And lacking, so often, as charming and quick-witted company.” Bastien could probably talk her out of trouble, but she has proved exceptionally good at getting into it, over the years. (On the other hand, she's also still here.)

"I am going to tell Florent that you said that," Bastien says.

It's either an empty threat or one that relies on his ability to tell Florent this in a way Florent finds entertaining to be offended by, rather than taking it to heart. Only time will tell.

More seriously, with his voice lowered to accommodate the possibility that one of these members of the Orlesian Chantry does in fact speak Orlesian, he asks, "Were you raised to believe it? I mean, were your parents religious?"

A laugh breathed out for Florent's sake, and— well, it's more than a little funny that her first reaction to what he says next is Maker, no, all things considered. She manages to say, instead,

“Not a bit,” which it occurs to her is maybe only two thirds true, but it feels like a strange conversation to broach with Guilfoyle. And besides, even if Mistress Baudin had been faithful, that wouldn't have meant anything for her own upbringing. No, this question refers to two of them particularly, and it's a straightforward sort of answer to a question that her years in this war could have complicated.

Hasn't. Could have, though.

“One of my namesakes, Lady Decima Roux, is notoriously devout. Famously,” she corrects herself, with a casual roll of her eyes, “we only ever attended services so she'd see my lord attending. I don't know what he thought it was going to achieve. About as much as anyone's prayers to the Maker ever have.”

Well. Marcellin Roux exists, so maybe slightly more than that.

Bastien knows the name. He knows the names she doesn't say, too. They're all still in there, but largely frozen in time, arranged the way they were a decade ago when he stopped spending his life keeping track of them and began only hearing the very important or very funny things. The common man's grapevine.

"I've heard worse plans," he says, laugh smothered behind the first syllables. "And better ones. But plenty worse. Is that why you were named for her, because he—?"

Loved is presumptuous; wanted to fuck is rude. Silence full of implication will suffice.

Sure, it could suffice, or:

“Jerked himself off imagining new and exciting ways to humiliate and punish my mother?” she suggests, sardonic. “I can certainly only assume.”

Insult to injury, she has always thought, to have named his bastard after yet another mistress. Her father's daughter, but her mother's creature— of all the little vengeances that Anne had managed to take, the pitiless rage nurtured in Gwenaëlle's breast is her most enduring and successful. There had been a time that he had imagined his wife's death might have led to a relenting; that without her to look to, his daughter might soften toward him, in time.

It hadn't lasted very long.

But since that is a real fucking downer,

“What about you? Did you imagine a world the Maker might return to, one day?”

(She assumes if he ever did, he doesn't still, which is mostly because she thinks him quite intelligent.)

Gwenaëlle's choice of description curls his shoulders inward—the only sign of a laugh, suppressed because if loosed it would have been loud and sharp and attention-grabbing, and because her poor mother.

Which mother does she mean? He could just ask. He thinks she wouldn't mind, even with the company and non-zero chance of multilingual eavesdropping—

"The way I imagined Antiva and the Amaranthine Ocean."

He swipes a wandering fly away from his horse and himself. It buzzes over to Gwenaëlle, Bastien's mild apologetic grimace following.

"The Chantry fed us if we came to services. And if you came often enough they knew your face, you were first in line for new shoes and things when they had them. I wasn't pious," is what he meant with Antiva and the Amaranthine, whose existence he accepted with equal ease and equal impact on his behavior, "but it took me some time to realize it was up for debate."

Edited (dashed off TOO quickly) 2024-06-28 00:53 (UTC)

The practical matter of self-preservation makes a great deal of sense; Orlais is not, she knows, a gentle place to be without. That the Chantry is often the only place a person might turn is — she has been coming to think — half the problem. In those half-formed thoughts of solidarity between elves and mages and maybe more than only them, too, she'd begun to envision, what if they weren't? What if people could work together, what if there were other avenues, what if,

it has been clear, every time she is kindly dismissed on that front, that it's thought naive. What do they have in common? Why should they help each other?

Well, maybe so people like Bastien have somewhere else to turn, and the people who are less like Bastien has turned out to be are less minded to cleave to the Chantry all of their lives, the only place that had helped them. It's so large a thing, though; not something she can reshape Orlais into with only her own hands, and unlikely to move anyone to pull alongside so long as it sounds like no more than fancy and presumption. Mulling that over, spinning out from the moment of just one little boy with a familiar face, she isn't— downcast, exactly. Just thoughtful.

“I think I took it all for granted a bit like that, I only thought it all seems a bit ... the faith part, I mean, doesn't it seem a little desperate? Running after someone who's deemed us all unworthy already, and spread that desperation around with a sword.”

Hm. Maybe there'd been something personal in what she hadn't liked about Andrastianism. Probably better not to examine that altogether too closely.

closed.

gwenaëlle.

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why'd i say horse 3x in one sentence

all have sinned and come short of the glory of thesaurus

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