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Entry tags:
closed.
WHO: Bastien + Byerly & Gwenaëlle; Redvers + Barrow
WHAT: Working hard or hardly working
WHEN: Winter/Spring 9:50
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Catch-all for a war table mission + some jobs. Eternally available to plan additional things! Just hit me up.
WHAT: Working hard or hardly working
WHEN: Winter/Spring 9:50
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Catch-all for a war table mission + some jobs. Eternally available to plan additional things! Just hit me up.
CONTENTS
I. Byerly & Bastien deal with an Antivan problem (and take a detour).
II. Gwenaëlle & Bastien escort a Chantry Mother.
III. Barrow & Redvers fetch jellied pigs feet.
byerly.
gwenaëlle.
barrow.
→ duelist
He's also willing to part with some of his bloodstained bandages. Bastien carefully rolls them up to avoid touching the blood and tucks them away before he and Byerly retreat from the communal bedroom, down the stairs, out into the brisk sunny day.
"In case we need to pretend some better duelist has already bested us," he explains about the bandages while he transfers them to Spotty Horse's saddlebags. A compromise, for Byerly's dislike of long rides: one of Riftwatch's sturdier horses, a brown fellow named Clopper, pulling a rough-hewn cart with room for two, and Spotty Horse walking alongside with their gear. "But sending him off on a wild goose chase will only work as long as it takes him to realize there's no goose."
→ detour
The inn where Bastien saw the man who might have been his brother is where he didn't really leave it, too, but the man isn't. But Bastien asks the barkeeper, gripping By's hand like a vice, and they're given directions to a street close enough to leave the horses and walk, to a house that's small but sturdy and dignified. Five lightly-bundled, cold-hardy children are playing outside, presided over by a lanky preteen carving a chunk of wood on the front stoop. He could be Anis, down to the way his eyes narrow when he looks up at the strange men in front of the house and raises his fist to bang on the door behind him without moving.
The man who opens the door is Anis, narrower and lighter-eyed than Bastien but otherwise much the same, with a short-trimmed beard and the kind of curls Bastien would have himself if he left his hair in peace. He looks at Bastien, then at Byerly, then at Bastien again, eyes searching intensely enough for Bastien to know they did receive the letter, but he's trying not to assume and trying not to be the first to speak.
"Dad?" says the boy on the stoop, head bent back to look up at him.
Professionalism takes over. Bastien stops staring. He smiles, waves with one hand in a way that's more acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation than genuinely awkward, and says, "I think you've won. I think you're taller. Congratulations."
Anis nods, slowly then quickly, and jostles his son's shoulder. "Go get your aunt," he says, and if there's a moment of rebellion on the boy's face, he recognizes the situation is weird well enough to let it pass and go, craning his head to get a close look at the strangers as he passes.
The other children have barely paused their wrestling and tag—the one who does stop to stare promptly tackled by another taking advantage of the distraction—and Anis shifts uncertainly before beckoning with his hand.
"Why don't you come inside," he says. There's no hint of Val Royeaux in his accent anymore.
Bastien nods, easy enough, but on the short walk to the door he wraps his hand around Byerly's elbow and says, "One aunt," softly, not willing to more clearly voice the fear that half his siblings might be dead after all.
no subject
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.
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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?”
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This is all good fun, really. It's all rather nice. This isn't life-or-death (no matter what the Ostwickian is moaning about); it's just a strange little problem presented to them by a strange little man. (Or big man, as the case may be.)
"Perhaps we should recruit someone burlier than us."
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And to be fair, it isn't the only thing they're in Wycome to do. There was a minor meeting to take with another potential donor; a slim-chance-of-usefulness collection of scrolls to pick up from a helpful citizen.
But now, jellied pigs feet. A whole crate full of jars of the stuff. Redvers lifts one to examine its contents in the light while the vendor, pleased as punch to have his wares so dearly missed and dearly paid for, watches without any fear that this scrutiny might end poorly for him.
"Always thought there was something wrong with Wycome," Redvers says mildly.
This, too, is not enough to dampen the vendor's good mood.
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Fearsome dimples, though, maybe? Dimples that would strike fear into the hearts of men?
No.
"That's a good point," he says. "Definitely. And I wonder if there is a way to point him at Tevinter."
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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."
why'd i say horse 3x in one sentence
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.”
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Oh, well, once more for old time's sake. And it's with his pal Redvers, whom he's been trying not to address with too much familiarity, because making friendly small talk with the man is rather like going out of his way to stroke the snout of a dog that might bite.
"Let's hope their pigs are healthy," he remarks, glancing warily at the contents over Redvers' shoulder as he offers out the vendor's payment.
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But -
"It's a charming idea, though. Have him block a road coming south? The fellow will end up slaughtered eventually, of course, but it does seem like he deserves it."
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Wouldn't that be nice—though it is hard to believe that the death of Corypheus would really be the end of anything, now. The time for the end to come so tidily was years ago. Before the other darkspawn magisters emerged to join his cause. Before cities had been razed and leaders slain and a very good excuse for an Exalted March on the entirety of Tevinter provided.
His death wouldn't fix the Veil, either.
Still. It'd be a problem off the list.
He offers Byerly a hand up into the cart as he would a lady. This is nice. It's what he'd hoped for, when they talked about Byerly stepping down. Going. Solving. Doing. Not a stack of papers in sight.
"Maybe we could convince him that establishing himself as the finest duelist in the Marches here would be pointless, because the finest fighters have gone to war, and he will only be proving he was the best among the weak or cowardly who did not go."
all have sinned and come short of the glory of thesaurus
"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.
understate not understand dammit
This might be a joke. Hard to tell, even when Redvers cuts an unimpressed look in his direction, the kind that would make a pimply new Templar recruit stand up straighter. On this man it has no effect at all.
"Enjoy!" says the vendor, and retreats to tend to other customers with what remains of his stock, which means it's safe for Redvers to huff a delayed, quiet laugh at his possibly-joke without risking him finding out it was funny.
He returns the jar to the crate, presses the wooden lid back into place, knocks some of the nails down with the crowbar used to open it in the first place, and looks at Barrow.
"Right then," he says.
One of them has to carry it.
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"You're on lookout duty," he grunts from behind it, "can't see a fucking thing."
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It's strange, though, the little squeeze to his heart that came from seeing the man who is so transparently Bastien's kin. Byerly is a man who has too much kin, relations all over; yet with very few exceptions, those people don't move him. He's no gladder to look on the face of a Rutyer cousin than he is to look on the face of a stranger, and typically he's much less glad. Yet the face of Anis, and the face of his children, press him with a wild and fierce sort of affection. By would personally crack the skull of that fierce and reckless duelist if he dared to threaten these folk. Hell, he'd go after Corypheus himself.
"Good construction," Byerly comments, knocking his knuckles against the doorjamb as they enter. He doesn't know from woodworking, but it seems the sort of compliment to pay to a homesteader like this. (He takes care to soften the nasals of his own accent, blunting the linguistic markers of nobility in his speech. Bastien has enough to talk about without having to explain why he's rubbing shoulders with someone who talks like a real son-of-a-bitch.)
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But the point is that he keeps his vows, so he makes good on it, resting his hand flat on Barrows' shoulder to give the kind of simple guidance that doesn't require words. Keep him straight on the path, nudge him a little that way, pinch his sleeve and pull to bring him back that way, while the crowd parts easily enough for two tall large men with something heavy.
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Bastien hasn't let go of Byerly's elbow. He looks around the house once, and once is enough for him to know how many rooms and where the doors are. It's not a rich house. Small, especially if more than one or two of the children outside belong here, but it's tidy and in good repair, and there's no sign of anyone sleeping on the floor by the stove.
"This is Byerly," he says before he has quite finished his look around. "Byerly Rutyer. He's my companion," comes easily, proudly, Bastien having already played through this much in his head to decide what word to use, with enough weight to it that it can't just mean the traveling kind. The change to his accent registers, and Bastien would like to say something about it, if he could say it without saying it in front of Anis, but—
"Pleasure," Anis says. For a moment he hesitates in the center of the room, awkwardness showing through the calm, before he points at the table and its chairs in invitation. While they're sitting and he's heading for the cabinet and rustling around in it he says, "I was sure you were dead. But Amani always said you weren't, so she's been... the worst, since your letter came. She told Mamma about it like she was a magistrate ordering a hanging. Dad is gone," he volunteers before Bastien can ask. "Eliya and Lyes are fine. And there is another one. Ahsan. He was a surprise."
"Oh," Bastien says. He looks at Byerly, overwhelm barely visible beneath a smile.
He doesn't know what to say. But the children outside save him. One of their joyous shrieks becomes a wail of insult or injury (or both) and Anis pops up from the cupboard, muttering a mix of curses and apologies on his way out the front door to make sure none of them are actively dying. He sets cups on the table as he passes, but nothing to put in them yet.
Bastien's more grateful for the pause than he would be for water, anyway.
"There's another one," he echoes quietly. That's bigger, weirder news than the death of his sickly father.
A second later he blinks out of his daze—insofar as he’s ever dazed, gaze slightly further away without qualifying as faraway—and grips Byerly’s knee beneath the table.
“Hey, don’t change,” he says. Not in a whisper. He can hear Anis outside, managing the children’s crisis. “If we are going to know each other, I want them to know you. You can’t—“ Ignore the irony. “—fake an accent forever.”
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"Appreciate it," he says, as sincerely as he dares, just barely managing not to step on the foot of a child racing by. "shit,"
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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 appreciate your bullying
So: Maybe, By has to admit, if only to himself, it isn't about not making trouble for Bastien. Maybe it's just about wanting them to like him.
"You can't fake an accent forever, maybe," By says. "Some of us actually have talent."
It comes out reasonably light. It has to come out light, after all - because this is Bastien's time to feel tentative and anxious, not Byerly's. This is Bastien's reunion with his family.
"Should I - Can we help out in some way?" By cranes his neck around and admits, "Your little nieces and nephews seem like quite a handful, eh?"
you heard it here, folks! bullying works!
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, let's."
Outside is light chaos: Anis holding a girl of five or six who's trying to articulate why she's so upset between wails into his neck while an assortment of others stand around protesting their innocence. A couple have lost interest in the proceedings in favor of resuming attempts to shove snow down each other's collars.
The presence of the two strangers alone is enough to stop the protests and the wailing. The girl sniffs and blinks her wet eyes at them, maybe because she doesn't want to cry in front of strangers, maybe because she's curious enough to have forgotten her woes.
"We thought we could," Bastien begins to say.
But the tallest and scampiest of the boys, maybe nine years old at most, cuts him off with, "He looks like Uncle Lyes."
"Yeah, he does," Anis says cautiously, and the war between wanting to be honest with the children and not wanting to be too hasty to introduce this near-stranger as their relative is visible on his face before the same boy combines cleverness and eavesdropping, lickety-split:
"He's the brother Mama is so mad Grandmother left in Orlais."
Amani's boy, then. Not Anis'. And Anis looks helpless, resigned, a little amused—used to this kind of thing—as he wobbles his head in noncommittal agreement with that diagnosis. The line of children consider Bastien with interest, some undoubtedly trying to do the math as to what being their aunt's brother makes him to them. Bastien smiles at them, nerves professionally disguised, while the scamp turns his adorable calculating gaze on Byerly.
"You can't be anyone's brother," he says. "You're too tall."
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It's not far to the cart. When they reach it he comes around the front to hold the front corners of the crate, to make lowering it in a two-man job.
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“Always nice to know we’re doing the important work,” he quips out the side of his mouth, giving the top of the crate a little pat.
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"Not a brother to anyone in this family - that's true." He sighs mournfully. "But would you believe that I'm actually descended from dwarves? I had to leave Orzammar because I kept hitting my head on the ceiling."
Amani's clever little boy looks a little skeptical and also a little bit like he wants to giggle at the image. The little girl, meanwhile, swallows the lie whole.
"How did you get so big?" she asks, her eyes wide with amazement.
"I fell off a cliff," Byerly replies, "but grabbed onto the edge. They didn't notice I was gone for three days. And while I was dangling there, I ended up stretching out."
The children don't entirely look like they buy this, but at least one goes and clambers up into a tree to conduct an experiment by which they dangle to see if they start to extend.
This side conversation, and the subsequent distraction, gives Bastien a little bit of room to speak directly with Anis. Perhaps a minute before the children start clamoring adorably for attention once again.
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"We, uh. We named him Laith," Anis says.
—and his wife is visiting her father but should be back tomorrow, if they stay that long. Bastien had already explained in his letter that he was in Kirkwall, with Riftwatch, but he explains a little further, avoiding the violence and spying of it all while the children are in hearing range without trying to fool Anis into believing there isn't something more.
Byerly is not included in this exchange because Byerly is being swarmed by children. The smallest two, Luja and Halim, who may very well be twins, are trying to climb him like squirrels up a tree, so accustomed to adults swinging them in circles by their hands until they're dizzy or carrying them on shoulders that they feel fully entitled to hang from his arms instead of tree branches to get taller that way. And in the meantime Nadim is quizzing him: what's his name, why is that his name, is that a dwarf name, if he's a dwarf why isn't his beard longer, does he know Garrin Durten who is a dwarf and who makes the little soldiers out of stone, where did he come from, what's it like there, how long did it take to get here, where are the horses and what are their names, do they like apples, does Byerly like cats, does he want to see a mama cat and kittens—
"You have to stop harassing that cat every twenty minutes," Anis interrupts, half an ear on this conversation even while he's having his own with Bastien.
While Nadim argues his innocence in the matter of cat harassment, Bastien catches Byerly's eye and smiles. Pleased and grateful and clearly touched by the sight of him with the kids. And promptly interrupted again, this time by, "Laith."
Amani, still far down the slushy road, isn't quite shouting. There's something hoarse and hissed about it even while it's loud enough to carry down the street. She's striding fast, leaving the preteen—Laith—strolling further in her wake with a young man. And the sight of her snaps something in Bastien that the sight of Anis didn't. Maybe because Anis looks so different and she looks so much the same, the added weight of motherhood and middle age bringing back her baby face as well.
He doesn't run, but he matches her pace, leaving Anis and Byerly behind to meet her halfway. Nadim leaves Byerly's alone to trail after him—maybe curious and looking to pry, maybe because that's his mother, maybe both.
Anis crosses his arms, then uncrosses them immediately to relieve Byerly of the weight of at least one of his children. "Companion, huh," he asks, with a friendly sort of wariness. The kind that comes from, say, having made rules about how long some other sibling had to be with one of their revolving door of companions before introducing them to the kids as anything more than a friend. "Long time?"
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Long time? seems much less loaded than reviews of his family tree or icy inquiries about what had brought him to this part of the world. Particularly since he can even give a rather satisfactory answer.
"We've been friends for nearly two decades. Off and on. Oof, all right, I'm not that strong - " He'd been doing his level best to hold his arm out horizontal to provide the child in question (he will be damned to death if he can remember a single child's name except for Laith) a branch to dangle from, but he can't keep it up long. The wriggling grub who'd been holding on drops to the ground, then demands to sit atop his shoulder.
Byerly quirks an eyebrow at Anis, unsure if Papa will be accepting of the prospect of the grub cracking its head open. Papa nods, and so Byerly hoists the child to sit atop his shoulders. There's much exclamation of delight, and soon several other little bugs are demanding their turns.
"Those two were close?" By manages to ask Anis in between all the hooting and hollering, nodding over at Bastien and Amani.
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"If he was close to any of us," agreement and not. A touch of cynicism from a little brother not little enough for the youngests' hero worship, trapped by illness and temperament while his brother came and went (but mostly went).
Amani chief among them. She doesn't reach for him now, stopping several feet in front of him. Fists clenched at her side. A family trait, this lack of inclination to fall crying into anyone's arms, even when they're back from the dead. But she isn't a bard. There's something on her face. Heartbreak, relief, outrage.
"I looked for you," is still not shouted, but sharp enough to carry. "I looked for you, I looked—"
"I know," Bastien says. He knew. He dodged and ducked and didn't go home. And so he owes it to her to be the one to close the distance, touching her shoulder as a checkpoint for discomfort before he hugs her to his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Nani."
No tears from either of them, but she clutches him back.
She says, "You sound so stupid and I can't believe you're still using that stupid fucking name—"
On Byerly's shoulders, the grub—Luja—whispers, "Stupid fucking name," with delight that makes it very obvious she will have found fifteen things to call stupid fucking by this time tomorrow.
Anis shakes his head, dislodging some snow beads, and gestures at the array of boys surrounding Bastien and Amani to stop standing there rubbernecking. Only his son obeys.
"Our mother thinks he must want something," Anis says while Laith the Younger trots back over. Maybe it's a bit of an apology for the woman's absence, the fact that he didn't send anyone to get her like he did Amina. But it's a little cynicism, too—a little not being entirely unwilling to rule out that this is a prelude to some request, even if it clearly can't be one for money. He's glancing sideways to check Byerly's face.
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“Well,” says Byerly, “advance notice that she’s about to take the whole family out of the city is obviously off the table. So that can’t be what he’s after, eh?”
He realizes that his temper has gotten the better of him, and takes a moment to be surprised by it. Not very like him, to snap instead of lying in wait for a moment to take revenge. He hopes to the Maker that he didn’t seem defensive, and that Anis hasn’t decided based on his snarling that Bastien has evil intent.
Then he takes a few steps forward, bouncing little Luja on his shoulders. “Hey-ho,” he says, and then does a convincing horselike nicker, which delights the girl. She grabs onto his hair like it’s a bridle and starts steering him around. He obliges, trotting along, until he’s been steered towards the pair of Bastien and Amani.
“Don’t mind me,” he reports to the two of them. He sounds cheerful and lighthearted. “I’m just a horsey.” (Bastien will, of course, understand perfectly that Byerly is checking to make sure he’s all right.)
hi I'm back to demand continued indulgence
"That's a gallant thoroughbred if I've ever seen one. You better treat him with respect."
Bastien was smiling before this, but it makes him smile wider, and it makes Luja give Byerly's hair a chastened pat. Aside from some wiggling and one attempt to kick him into resuming his gallop, she's relatively patient through a full minute and a half of adult conversation, as Bastien introduces Amani and Byerly, and then Amani introduces Ahsan, who looks as bemused by the arrival of this mythical older brother as Bastien feels by the existence of this surprise little one.
"We should," Amani says—
And pauses to pry Luja off Byerly's shoulders while the girl makes a disappointed whining sound.
"We should get it over with now. Better than seeing her on your way out and ending on a low note."
Her is his mother, Bastien understands. He understands too that Amani, beyond assuming Bastien would want to see her, wants their mother to see Bastien—that she has a point to prove in their apparently ongoing fight about him.
And if he doesn't want to see his mother, exactly, and would probably be perfectly content to leave Kaiten again without having spoken to her, he's also not afraid of her. So why not let Amani make his point.
"Alright," he agrees, and Amani turns her attention to persuading Luja and Nadim and Ahsan to all go help with dinner, while Bastien turns to Byerly. He could say Byerly doesn't have to come. But Byerly will come anyway. Bastien may as well admit to wanting him to. So he admits it silently, by taking hold of Byerly's elbow to make sure he can't join the little parade of children and teenagers who have been successfully persuaded to go make themselves useful by the promise of cobbler and/or the threat of having to deal with their grandmother.
The walk is long. But with the children out of hearing distance, Bastien is able to explain himself a little better. Realizing they'd gone for real. Being taken in by bards. Riftwatch, once he couldn't ignore the war any longer. Amani hasn't left Kaiten since they arrived here, busy raising siblings and a son and caring for their declining father and running a shop, but she takes this in stride. The two absent siblings have given her practice accepting adventure stories without too much amazement.
She leans forward as she walks to look around Bastien and up at Byerly.
"You aren't from Kirkwall though," she says.
I'm delighted
Don't change. That chastisement lingers in Byerly's ears. It likely wouldn't be enough to draw honesty out of him, though, if it weren't for Amani's manner. But Amani is so calm in the face of stories of Bards and warfare and all the madness that had been Bastien's life; if that story didn't shake her, why would Byerly's?
"We met when we were young, Ba- Laith and I. Then parted for a while, and met again in Riftwatch. I'm in service to Queen Anora as an intelligence agent - a spy - but - well - " He smiles wryly over at Bastien and offers a shrug. "There is a greater good, beyond our own agendas and our own national loyalties. It's what we fight for."
Perhaps there is a bit of an agenda in saying that. Perhaps he's building a bit of a wall against the mother's disapproval by telling Amani in no uncertain terms that Bastien is a good man.
But he suspects that practical, clear-eyed Amani will also smell bullshit if it's laid on too thick. Not that this is bullshit (high-quality fertilizer, if anything), but it wouldn't help to cut the stuff a bit.
"That and a steady wage. And the cook there does a good job, actually. The grub's better than you'd think."
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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?"
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“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.
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A small thing. He has to focus on the small things right now, little pieces he can chew on one at a time. He watches the way Amani watches Byerly when he explains himself: first with calm credulity, then a gentle wave of eye narrowing-skepticism that washed over and recedes again as she does the calculations and arrives at why not. Why not a spy in a Fereldan Queen's service. It's not stranger than the fabled tear in the sky, the blight and corpses and griffons, the return of a long-lost brother.
She smiles wide at the grub—her teeth are straighter than Bastien's but not much smaller. Her smile is aimed first at Byerly, then at Bastien, who smiles back mostly with his eyes, pleased she's impressed, proud of who he's managed to ensnare.
"He's there for the greater good. I'm there for the food—"
Amani says, "Of course," playing along.
"—and the men."
"Mmhm. You know, he looks kind of like that boy you liked. What was his name?"
Bastien opens his mouth to argue about how little Byerly looks like him, aside from them both being tall, then recognizes the trap she's laid out and manages to swerve to, "I don't know who you're talking about," in time to prevent losing a twenty-year-old argument about whether or not he liked their gangly, spotty neighbor.
Amani beams at him. The breath she heaves in and out could be an exasperated sigh if she didn't look so happy.
"I want to hear about it," she says around him, to Byerly. "All of it." But not this moment. Her walk is slowing as the snow-coated houses above them get smaller and less well-kept. She says, quieter, "She's worse than she was. You don't have to..."
Second guessing whether this is worth it after all—and Bastien understands, for the first time and all at once, that he got off easy compared to her.
"I'll be fine," he says. "And By was raised by dragons."
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"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.
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“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.)
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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."
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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.
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He finds that - painfully, with the ache of a stiff knee being unbent - he loves Amani. He loves her for the easy way she talks about the boy he liked, teasing and warm. He loves her for big-toothed smile. It is always difficult, finding a new person in your heart, because they hurt when they slot in there.
And it hurts to think of Bastien living a life without her. Who might Bastien have been, if he'd always had this nosy, loving, teasing sister beside him? Less hurt, to be sure. Less scarred. Maybe less willing to pretend. But Byerly, selfishly, knows that this is the Bastien who loves him, and so in some ways, he is grateful for Bastien's sisterlessness.
Still. Distracted though he is by the ache, he still does hear that warning. And so he scratches his cheek and asks in bard-sign: Are you lying? A neglectful mother, worse than she was, doesn't sound like a recipe for being fine.