open | now give me something to believe in.

[interroga]

WHO: Cassian Andor & you
WHAT: A liaison from the Shadow Dragons arrives
WHEN: Bloomingtide
WHERE: Minrathous + Kirkwall
NOTES: Some injury description

arrival.

It’s a late spring night when a stranger arrives at the Widow Tavisa’s Boarding House.

Most regular guests would take the front entrance and speak to the innkeeper in the main room; but this one slips through the back entrance and takes an out-of-the-way servant’s staircase, into a shuttered wing of the building which isn’t supposed to be open to the public. But those rare people in the know might be aware that this leads to Riftwatch’s secret outpost in Minrathous —

The darkhaired man slumps against the locked door leading into their safehouse. He knocks on the door in a fixed, staccato rhythm identifying him as an ally. He has a hand pressed to his side with worrisome urgency, jaw tight and teeth gritted against the pain; he knocks again a little louder, in case whoever’s on watch is dozing.

No one’s expecting a new arrival right at this hour. It’s not ideal.

settling in.

After finally getting vetted and officially joining, Cassian tucks the Riftwatch pin into his pocket and starts to get the lay of the land, gathering information, pressing a finger to the pulse of this new city he’s going to be calling home.

There’s a kind of amiable affability to this new arrival, his smile calculated to be inoffensive and mild, even as the gears are very busily ticking away behind his dark-brown eyes.

You might find him at the Gallows bar, pouring himself a drink and smoothly sliding into the chair at your table to pry: “So, what’s your favourite place in the Gallows or Kirkwall?”

Or wandering the battlements of the towers and looking out across the city. Rebuilding is expensive, and so some parts of Kirkwall still bear the marks of the Venatori attack a little over a year ago: collapsed buildings that never got raised again, battle-scars and scorch marks from dracolisks. “What was it like?” he asks. “The Venatori attack.”

He also goes for long walks through the city, right past the alienage (although his gaze lingers), and venturing into the deeper recesses of the city slums. One particular afternoon, he emerges from Darktown blinking half-blinded into the dim light of Lowtown, which is right about when a few thieves assemble around him for an attempted mugging, knives brandished. “I really don’t have time for this,” he says to the ringleader, looking more annoyed than frightened; which is right about when a Riftwatch colleague might turn the corner and encounter the scene.


( Also happy to receive wildcards, or to write up a bespoke starter for you; just hmu @ quadrille if you’d like to discuss! )

Comments

petrana.

[interroga]

The first order of business is to prove his credentials, which means it’s a relief that Riftwatch apparently has someone on staff who specialises in decrypting encoded messages. Perhaps it’s even the first hurdle to see if this organisation is simply an assortment of war-harried brute soldiers, or if they’re capable of a more deft hand, a sophisticated touch where it comes to spywork.

So per arrangement, he goes to the office shared between the Chief Cryptographer and the Master of Information — already noting both titles as very much of interest to him — and knocks on the door, poking his head in to find a blonde woman.

There was an envelope sewn into the lining of his jacket; Cassian had carefully ripped out the seams earlier to retrieve a page of what looks like banalities, a letter from a woman written to her husband across the continent, catching him up on the local gossip and the state of their rose-garden.

“Hello. Are you the resident cryptographer?” he asks.

[ipseite]

The woman at her desk when Cassian arrives — the other side of the office is not occupied, presently, but plainly in use — seems absorbed in her own thoughts, enough that the initial knock had not quite stirred her from them. She looks at him with no small surprise, an openness about it that he will certainly come to recognise as unusual; arranges her features into a more measured pleasantness with the ease of great practise as she says,

“I am. And you are, Monsieur…?”

She sounds Orlesian, so long as one is not greatly familiar with the usual cadence of native speakers; slightly too clipped, if one is, something a little more Tevene about the way she shapes her vowels and patterns her speech.

(And yet, to hear her actual accent in spoken Tevene—)

[interroga]

There’s a slight twitch to his expression at the Orlesian title; not enough to quibble about the use of it, however. It’s polite, and he’s answered to worse.

“Andor,” he says, his voice noticeably Tevene-accented. “Cassian Andor. Newly arrived.”

The way he approaches the desk is as if she’s called him in to attention. A straight bearing, professional and obedient, a hound called to heel. He reaches into his pocket, retrieves the piece of folded paper, and sets it on the nearest clear spot at the edge of the woman’s desk.

“Leadership will need to see my credentials, but they’re in the form of an encrypted letter from the Lucerni. I hear you might be able to help me.”

[ipseite]

Her expression warms at his accent and this news — and, perhaps, some small amount at this demeanour, familiar as it is — and she says,

“Indeed I may,” in fluent Tevene, the way she speaks it strikingly underlining the similarities to her natural accent (the wrong notes to an Orlesian ear) as well as indicating, as she continues, that the drawing rooms and parlours where she has honed her Orlesian are not where she most usually converses in this language: “I have some familiarity with your ciphers already.”

The way that Tevene had always seemed to rumble out of James Flint’s diaphragm and curl, smokelike into conversation; her prim speech is not that. Still, there is a brisk affect, a particular patter — a specificity to her cadence and even the words she chooses when translating her thoughts — that signposts other habits. She lifts the paper he places down, not immediately unfolding it but instead laying her hand upon the lowest drawer of her desk and opening it with the flare of a cold blue light momentarily aglow in her eyes,

rifling through it a moment, and then resealing it the same way when she finds what she is searching for.

“I expect that you will be obligated to cool your heels whilst I translate your letter,” she says, “so if you would sit, I would be most interested in your introduction. I am Madame de Cedoux.”

[interroga]

Cassian starts to go for the chair to cool said heels, but then he blinks, thrown.

It’s the first stutter in that otherwise smooth demeanour, tripping right over— well, not the fluency in the language, that’s easy and common enough, but the particular lilt to it. A certain hyper-specific regionality to her speech and idiolect which catches him entirely off-guard for how it doesn’t match the package at all. She looks like a perfectly-coiffed blonde Orlesian duchess and sounds like a fucking pirate.

“Where,” he says, his voice faster and more fluid in his native tongue, a little less stilted around the edges as he’s briefly derailed from the original topic, “did Madame de Cedoux learn to talk like a grizzled old sea dog?”

yseult.

[interroga]

They’d placed him in guest quarters at first, out of an abundance of caution, but with his letter of introduction translated, Cassian’s now able to sit down and have this conversation with something more to show for it than his mere word.

Ever since needing to go underground, magisters on the run or black-bagged and thrown into prison never to be heard from again, the Lucerni had become more cautious. They’ve been covering their tracks, operating in the shadows, but the splinter group’s finally ready to reach out and reconnect with their Riftwatch allies.

By all accounts, all roads lead to the Scoutmaster; she’ll be the one to vet his arrival, and he already knows it’s her division he’ll want to join. So the meeting’s scheduled, and the man known as Captain Andor shows up with military punctuality, spine straight, hands folded against the small of his back.

“Scoutmaster Yseult? I hear you’re the one to talk to.”

[hassaran]

The Scoutmaster stands at a filing cabinet on the far side of her desk, rifling through a neat collection of folders. She plucks one out, and says, "Come in," as she flips open the waxed-cloth cover (who can afford paper for anything but writing these days). She gestures at the chairs as she turns, movements seamless even if her gaze pauses on his face.

"You must be our new Shadow Dragon recruit." She sets down the folder and takes a seat, picking up another off the top of the pile in the tray to her right. Her hair is lighter here and longer, skin paler after a long winter, makeup more subtle, but she wasn't in deep disguise that time in Vol Dorma, just blurred a little, softer, unmemorable--not at all the same as unrecognizable.

"Pleased to meet you, Serah Andor."

[interroga]

Once Yseult turns around to face him, and once she speaks,

then there’s a sense of nagging déjà vu nipping at his heels, a faint disorientation like climbing a staircase and miscounting the steps and missing the landing. He trips over that metaphorical absence, then recovers, and moves forward to take the offered seat in front of the desk. Cassian’s good with faces, but the context’s so wholly different that he can’t pick out yet what she reminds him of. Give him some time to chew over it.

(The two fake servants working the magister’s party that evening had had different names, both of them.)

“And you. The Lucerni appreciate Riftwatch’s efforts in the region— as you probably know, our operations have changed over the last year, we’ve had to go underground,” into the shadows, “but the Dragons wanted to pick up collaboration again.”

And it had been an easy choice to send Andor. They pointed him and told him to go, and off he went. He could think on his feet and improvise if necessary, but in the meantime, he would stay loyal and focused on the cause.

[hassaran]

"Collaboration would be welcomed." Yseult is confident she can speak for the Division Heads on this much, at least. "Riftwatch has shared the Lucerni's goals and our work together had been productive." And has continued to be, though of late it has primarily involved smuggling those targeted by the Venatori out of Minrathous, to the Lucerni's new base in Qarinus or beyond. Their own work together was productive—infiltrating an enemy site is dicey enough before pairing with a stranger, but Yseult had been pleasantly surprised by the man's professionalism—a rare mission that proved easier than anticipated. She wonders why they've sent her someone so capable.

She wonders too how long it will take him to place her, and whether he'll admit it when he does. She has him at a disadvantage, the Scoutmaster title is helpfully vague about what she herself does and the last time they spoke she was using a Tevinter accent, a soft one but enough not to draw the second looks a foreigner might. She sounds Marcher now, a crisp upper-class accent and just a slightly unusual lilt to her intonation that's impossible to place. As she watches him she fiddles at one of several slender chains around her neck, drawing it out of the neck of her blouse to thumb with seeming absence at the ring that dangles from it. (Kassa, it whispers in her mind. Close enough for now.)

"Is there any work in particular the Dragons wish to undertake? Or are you intended as a more permanent liaison?"

mugging

[bouchonne]

The rescue is not a dreadfully heroic one. The Riftwatch colleague does not leap into danger full of derring-do, brandishing a rapier; he does not place himself in the way, making certain that it is his body assuming the risk of violence. He does not even use his silver tongue to charm and cajole.

Instead, this Riftwatch colleague (who is out walking his dogs, one a tiny rat and the other a mournful hound) matches Cassian's peevish energy perfectly. His response to running across this threatened violence is to just sigh heavily and say, "Maker's breath, Ingrid, not in front of my house. Take it elsewhere."

The leader of this little pack narrows her eyes and replies, "Not in front of your house, not in front of the theater. Where can I make my living, then?"

Byerly turns towards Cassian and raises his eyebrows, clearly asking for suggestions. After all, Cassian certainly gives a general impression of being the sort of person who'd know where you might find some illegal business, if for no other reason than his pragmatism over having a knife pointed at his heart. And Byerly has had this conversation with Ingrid more than once. And clearly none of his suggestions have been good enough for her.

[interroga]

There’s a kind of mental realignment which always happens in moments like this. The stranger with the Tevene accent (not a popular one around here, either) had been strung taut, body language tense and on the verge of bursting into movement, a hand drifting towards the edge of a jacket where perhaps he keeps a knife of his very own. The taste of adrenaline, the threat of impending violence, the readiness to do what he has to.

Byerly severs all of it neatly with just a few words and a glance.

Cassian tilts his head, and he considers the question posed. Hightown had deeper pockets, but increased guard presence. The Undercity had even less to steal and their people deserved even less to be stepped on.

“Learn the guard rotations,” he eventually suggests, ruminative, “and hit them where they’re not looking. Bigger scores above,” Hightown, “and you won’t have to scavenge so much so often down here.”

Because each mugging was another accident waiting to happen, another potential fight with opportunities to go wrong. The eternal balance of risk:reward.

[bouchonne]

"That's bullshit," Ingrid replies. She has a Fereldan accent. It's the reason that she has some measure of familiarity with Byerly, if not necessarily respect for him. If they were back home, she'd absolutely loathe this nobleman with his effete and condescending manner; here, their common origin overrides the class difference.

Despite her immediate resistance, she's watching Cassian closely, her eyes narrowed.

"I tried going up there before. They took one look at me and knew I didn't belong there."

Byerly, helpfully, offers - "Have you tried scowling a bit less? It might do wonders if you didn't look like you were sucking on a lemon."

"Get fucked," says Ingrid.

Byerly gives a sanguine shrug. But for all that he's talking to the woman, his gaze is also on Cassian. His interest is piqued.

[interroga]

“It’s worth cleaning the jacket and blending in, to go after the bigger score. How does that Fereldan saying go?” He’s noticed both their accents. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish…”

A small glint of humour, but not as easy and relaxed as the other man, just yet. Ticking through these questions of survival, he hasn’t spared the attention to fully size up Byerly, what with most of his attention still kept locked on the surly woman with the knife.

And for his part, he looks different from the last time they may or may not have crossed paths: a couple years older, scruffier and more frayed around the edges, and not the gelled hair and shiny shoes and long coat of the frivolous manicured dandy Varian Skye.

(Still: his voice sounds very much the same. He hasn’t been able to shake it.)

settling. hello beloved countryman

[altusimperius]

It's not long after Cassian's official joining date that Riftwatch's own welcome wagon, Benedict, approaches him, carrying his little writing board and not at all nervous that he's about to speak to a real live Shadow Dragon, thanks for asking.

"Messere Andor?" he asks brightly, "I'm--" sometimes the surname is there, sometimes it isn't-- to say it now, he might as well paint a target on himself. "--Benedict."
He smiles.
"...personnel officer. I wanted to see how you were finding everything."

[interroga]

Benedict finds him at breakfast in the dining hall, digging into some rough bread and scrambled eggs and watery tea, coffee still being at too much of a premium to afford often. It’s a quiet morning; ordinarily Cassian has been cozying up to people, trying to get their stories, but he’s alone today until the personnel officer approaches.

(This long table isn’t exactly the same as the small, bustling Shadow Dragons mess hall tucked away in a safehouse, but: close enough.)

“How I’m finding everything,” Cassian echoes, pausing after spearing some more eggs, looking at the other man a little too closely. He can hear home in Benedict’s syllables, the shape of his words; and rather than evoke some simpatico, it makes Cassian automatically warier.

“Well. The breakfast’s decent.”

[altusimperius]

"We do our best," Benedict chirps, straightening as though paid a personal compliment-- keep it light, keep it cheerful-- "may I sit?"

He gestures to the seat across from Cassian's, even the motion of his wrist subtly outing him as upper class.

[interroga]

“It’s a free country,” Cassian says with a flash of a smile, and —

his expression is ostensibly friendly and the words aren’t unpleasant, exactly, but there’s a bitter bite beneath the surface. Sharp and sardonic, pressing his thumb on a particular bruise for a Tevene citizen like himself: Kirkwall still breathes free while Corypheus now sits openly in the Archon’s seat.

But he waves his own free hand, a have at it gesture. Cassian’s still new here. He’ll take the welcome wagon as it comes.

arrival

[armd]

The slump of a body against the door has Abby scrambling to fold the page of her book down, marking her place hastily before she shoves it away. It's true that she's not supposed to be reading on watch but it's so quiet out — in general — that they don't typically bother stationing a second guard at this eluvian site. The most exciting thing that ever tends to happen out here is some drunk takes the wrong staircase and ends up doing a piss on the safehouse door.

So Abby waits. And then the knock comes.

She waits a little longer anyway and the second, repeated signal is what makes her finally move. Mentally, she's trying to comb through who it could possibly be — and then throwing all of that out the window when she opens the door and somebody nearly collapses onto her.

"Woah—" At first she thinks he is drunk, and bears against his weight instantly to set him back on his feet. Doesn't explain the signal, but. It is just a knock on a door. She doesn't know this person. "Keep moving."

[interroga]

No reeking smell of alcohol, no slurring his words, but there’s an unsteadiness to his steps. And his free hand comes away red and wet with blood, when he lets go of his side. Moving through the curfew had been difficult. Minrathous was getting too claustrophobic for comfort these days, the noose tightening; it was far past time for him to get out of the city, and he’d probably delayed too long already. It had gotten messy, and he’d needed to shake his tail before heading to the supposed Riftwatch safehouse.

(Said tail is now dead, rolled off the edge of the docks.)

Cassian knows the pattern of the knock, but if there are other code phrases to utter, he’s painfully aware that he doesn’t have the most up-to-date ones. “I’m a friend,” the man says. “Looking to—”

How to phrase this?

In the end: “Looking to join your watch. I’m told this is the place.”

[armd]

"What the fuck," Abby says of the blood on his palm when he flashes his gore to her in the low light, palm peeling off the wound. She takes it all remarkably in stride though, no nausea or fear twisting her expression out of its disapproving calm. "Get in."

And she steps aside from her post to come in close to him, immediately offering her arm and shoulder for support should he need it to get in over the threshold.

"Maybe you can join after we get you stitched up — c'mon."

[interroga]

Relief unspools in his chest. If they were tremendously unlucky, he could be anyone, he could be a Venatori spy trying their luck at infiltrating the well-guarded safehouse,

but right now, the credulity thankfully sits in his favour. He slings his arm over Abby — he’s a few inches shorter than her — and hopes that hobbling frailty works for him, too. Might make him seem like less of a threat.

Also, the stab wound really does hurt.

He hustles in over the threshold, the door closing and locking again behind him. As the woman’s arm moves into place to prop him up, he glances down and catches the glint of green in her palm, where she hasn’t had time to pull on gloves to hide it. Confirmation that she’s who he thinks and hopes she is.

“Thanks,” he says, voice still tight. “Had to shake a guard patrol over by Hessarian Avenue. But they’re no longer a problem.”

alienage

[untiltheyarent]

It's in a moment of lingering that Cassian is observed, a wary glance cast from a diminutive elf woman as she leaves the alienage carrying an empty basket. Her look has a subtle recognition to it: few people join Riftwatch without Fifi learning of them.

"Hello," she says, pausing. The word contains a variety of questions: what are you staring at, are you up to no good-- are you lost, perhaps, more generously.

[interroga]

Few people join Riftwatch without Fifi learning of them,

and Cassian pays attention to the elven servants in a way that most out of Tevinter don’t. This particular woman had been good at ghosting in the background, slipping out of rooms like a shadow, but he made a point of noting who bustled through the Gallows carrying their laundry. Cleaning staff everywhere were the most easily-overlooked, and often his first stop for useful information and gossip. Magisters overlooked them to their detriment.

So he stalls as he’s called out, hands in his pockets in imitation of nonchalance. But his shoulders tighten in self-consciousness; he knows this isn’t where he’s supposed to be, looking the way he does.

Still: “We work together, I think,” he says. Not exactly an explanation for being here, but: it’s an in.

[untiltheyarent]

The way her eyes widen slightly suggests Fifi wasn't expecting him to recognize her, but her response isn't strictly negative-- if anything, she's impressed.

"Yes," she says quietly, and glances once more from him to the alienage below. "Do you have family here?" She knows elfbloods look human, she's not a fool; it's the way he lingered and watched that had her on guard.

[interroga]

The man’s not eager to give up his intimate personal details, lackadaisically handing out the information he normally kept bricked-up and tucked away under lock and key, nobody’s business but his own. And the truth is that the answer’s probably no.

But he hesitates long enough over the answer, too-mindful of the fact that Fifi’s an elf. And no might make him sound like some morbid tourist, coming by here for— the wrong reasons, the worst reasons that might lead a human man to linger and stare down the road of a city alienage.

So: “Not that I know of,” Cassian says quietly, his dark eyes resting on hers, and it is a very particular emphasis which tips his hand a little.

Not that he knows of. But that means it’s possible.

(He thinks of a sister with sharper ears and a riot of messy black hair, and a name he hasn’t uttered in years.)