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

[bouchonne]

It's a relief, that tone when the stranger says Clem. There's just enough oddness to it, a sort of unfamiliarity with the word, that it sounds like a false name. If Bastien had been giving a false name, it would sound beautifully lived-in; someone who knew him well would still pause to wonder, Wait, have I been remembering his name wrong this whole time? That likely means that "Clem" is not a spy at Bastien's level, but more likely only as skilled at Byerly.

Which isn't a surprise. Tevinter might be an ancient country, but its spy networks - like Ferelden's - are clumsy and new when compared to the sophistication of Orlais'. Bastien had been recruited as a Bard in training when he was just a boy. Few could ever hope to match the grim skills of Byerly's beloved.

"Clem had a good suggestion to help her vent some of that energy of hers. Learn guard rotations and hit Hightown. I think she's probably sharp enough to manage it." His smile at Bastien is warm. "Bastien here was the one who taught me how to properly burgle, back when we were young men in Val Royeaux. Up to that point, I'd been living off nothing but charity from my hideous cousins and their hideous hangers-on, using my wiles and my pretty eyes to find a bed to sleep in at night. But Bastien recognized my potential as someone maybe-not-entirely-useless, despite the handicap of my noble birth and Fereldan foolishness, and so he schooled me in how to pick out the right house and get past its excellent locks."

As he plays the raconteur, Byerly is animated and cheery. It would be strange and rather rude to be watching Bastien while Byerly is speaking, and By has positioned himself specifically so that Clem can't watch both of them at once. It leaves Bastien free to do whatever he thinks is right - whether that be a knife to the throat, a drug in the drink, or even nothing at all.

[interroga]

Clem eventually rises back to his feet and tries to match Byerly’s movement, sidling around to keep him and the kitchen within his field of view, but the both of them keep pivoting discreetly around each other so it’s impossible. And then he’s beset again by the over-enthusiastic Rat Red, encouraged by his prior friendliness; the dog blocks his immediate path and so he’s stuck where he is, looking at Byerly.

Frustrating, since it means the back of his neck keeps prickling and he can’t watch both men at once— maybe it’s an accident, but very likely not—

The more Byerly talks, the more Cassian keeps matching those faint memories and lining them up that nagging familiarity. It wasn’t a decade removed, after all: the run-in was only a couple years ago. Warning bells keep ringing in his ears even as he smiles and smiles, his expression easy and light and not betraying exactly how unsettled he is. He’s measuring how many steps it is back to the hallway, or to the windows to scramble through and fling himself back out onto the street if necessary.

“So you both came up through Val Royeaux?” he asks. (Orlesians. Bard territory. Shit.) “Funny, I was just thinking you reminded me of someone. Have you ever been to Hercin—”

[cozen]

There, Bastien tosses (underhanded, in both senses of the word) a kitchen knife to Byerly, slow enough to be caught rather than dodged. It is two plans in one. A plan for Byerly to be armed, if it comes to a struggle. And a plan to keep Clem's attention divided while Bastien slides around and over furniture with fluidity that comes from strenuous dance lessons as much as strenuous combat training, and swipes a stone sculpture from the bookshelf.

It was not meant to be a weapon. It's a first draft of their friend Tovilda's larger sculpture, still in progress, accepted as payment after they trounced her and her partner so badly at cards that she offered it in lieu of removing her corset, and they accepted because they are gentlemen.

The professionally aimed and calibrated blow to the side of Clem's head is gentlemanly, too, give or take some scrabbling and scuffling to keep him from going out the window after all.

Once he's been secured to a chair, Bastien sits on the table nearby with his leg propped on one of the chair's siblings, begins removing the peel from an orange in a single long spiral, and says, "You're sure?" to Byerly. Bit late if he isn't, but Bastien doesn't really doubt him. He just wants details.

[bouchonne]

"Completely," Byerly answers, even as a hand smoothing down his shirtfront says in Bard-sign - almost completely. One did not, of course, confess to uncertainty in front of someone they were interrogating. That was one of the cardinal rules of interrogation. You never let the subject know where you were ignorant. As soon as they knew, they could start telling lies in that realm, knowing you were incapable of separating fact from fiction.

Byerly controls his nerves as best he can. He leans his shoulder up against one wall, crosses his arms, and stretches out his long legs as he regards their captive. Handsome - rather scruffy - no sign of prosthetics or cosmetics or wig that might indicate that this man is disguising himself. There's no feigning that exhaustion around the eyes, either. Surely they haven't caught the spy off-duty?

"He was going by the name Varian Skye the last time we met. He claimed to work in fashion." He purses haughty lips, eyeing the man with aristocratic contempt. "I suppose there's a certain sartorial competence to him, but I have a hard time imagining this creature in silks."

[interroga]

Cassian’s head aches.

He’d lost time, a little, blanking out and glazing over after that blow to the head, and now he’s come back around to the sound of their voices, plus a fiend of a headache throbbing at his temples as he tries to re-focus on the two men from where he’s— okay, yeah, he’s been tied to a chair, and not in the fun way. His wrists flex, straining, testing the restraints and his range of movement (verdict: not much).

The name Varian Skye haunts him. He remembers what it had felt like to play that particular role; he’d modelled more than a little of it after his mentor’s smiling laughing dandy of a Minrathous antiques salesman.

His throat is dry when he admits, “Makes sense. I prefer these clothes.”

For a heartbeat, he’d considered pleading ignorance, but there’s clearly no use pretending anymore. They’ve both recognised each other— Enrik. That was it, the name at the time. Too little too late, but.

“What are you two doing in Kirkwall?” he demands, looking back and forth between the pair, as if he’s the one asking the questions. “Have you been following me from the Marches this whole time?”

Hercinia was years ago, so that feels implausible.

[cozen]

Byerly's sneer — which both is and is not like him — garners no reaction from Bastien, under the circumstances, save a crooked smile and a curious contemplation of whatever-his-name-is that would count as friendly under any other circumstances. Scruffiness can be a disguise, too, although this fellow does wear it like a natural.

"Of course we have," Bastien says.

It's unsporting to tease a man he's just hit very hard in the head and tied firmly to a chair — but this, too, sounds practically friendly, like Clemarian is in on the joke. Maybe he is. Depends on how seriously he feels like taking himself tonight.

"And once we realized you were coming to Kirkwall, we ran ahead of you, rented a house, stole some dogs, and waited for you to be robbed on the doorstep."

The orange unspooling in his hand fills the air around them with its scent. Upstairs, something scratches hopefully at a shut door — Rat Red, stowed with Whiskey out of the way of any potential future scuffling while the Vint was still out.

[bouchonne]

"It was all such a great deal of effort," Byerly agrees. If he sees anything cruel about tormenting a man with a head wound, well, it's a milder sort of cruelty than most captured spies receive. "But certainly worth it so we could trick Corypheus' scruffiest soldier."

Bastien has finished peeling that orange; Byerly holds his hand out for half of it. There's a comfortable, domestic familiarity to the gesture. If this is a pretend partnership between two allied agents, they're very good at faking.

"My dear fellow, I caught you - an agent of Tevinter - skulking outside our home. You're wasting your breath by pretending that you're surprised to see us here."

[interroga]

His skull is still throbbing in time with his heartbeat, blood pounding in his ears, and so it takes concentrated effort to focus on the other men’s voices, but he forces himself to do so. His life depends on how the next few minutes play out. He was trained better than this, how absolutely stupid if this is how it all falls apart—

But then everything comes to a screeching halt when he hears Byenrik’s comments, and Cassian instinctively surges a little forward, arms tugging at the restraints. The chair scrapes across the kitchen floor.

“Corypheus’ soldier?” he repeats, demanding and offended and a little aggrieved. No. A lot aggrieved. “An agent of—”

Well, okay, he is technically an agent of Tevinter, but splitting the difference feels difficult through his muzzy, dry mouth. But he sinks back into the chair then, sagging like his strings have been cut, and fails to stop the short laugh that ripples loose. It comes bubbling up out of his throat, irrepressible, ridiculous, like finding something extremely funny in your own funeral and you just can’t stop it. Bastien’s highlighted it, too: the absurdity.

“My hospitable hosts,” he says once he manages to stop laughing, weary, “I’ve spent the past six years working against Corypheus and his Venatori puppets. Our network’s run ragged trying to take them down even as they tighten the noose around our home and our necks— literally.”

There’s a stab of anger in those words, too raw to be fake, too sloppy to be anything but genuine. He’s burning with the memory of Shadow Dragons hanging from gallows throughout Minrathous. The panicked messages through their underground network, the order: you have to leave the city.

“When I say I’m an agent of Tevinter, I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

[cozen]

The requested half of his orange goes into Byerly's palm without hesitation; the peel Bastien leaves on the table beside him, where the coil of it maintains a lopsided and flattened approximation of its original shape; the spy tied to the chair scoffs and laughs and does, at the worst, a very good impression of someone who would never work for a power-mad darkspawn.

Bastien pivots where he's sitting to face Clem (until further notice) more fully. He's close enough he can rest his foot on the edge of his chair, instead, and lean in to look him intently in the face while he chews his first wedge of orange. His earlier friendliness has not entirely dissipated from his face, even this scrutiny a bit merry around the edges of his eyes, but it does thin enough for something sharper to be visible underneath. It says Clem's would not be the first throat he cut this week.

Which is not true. But his wouldn't be the first throat he cut this year.

There is nothing in Clem to discover during this inspection that wasn't on better display a moment ago, when he was laughing and angry and talking. Sometimes one needs to be a little dramatic, though, and also remind their captives they could kick their chairs over and have a crack at inflicting a second head injury if the Fereldans in the room suggest they should.

[bouchonne]

It's certainly a strong reaction. If it's performatively strong, it's certainly quite the performance. And maybe there's something to that turn of phrase, our home. A Venatori pretending to be a rebel wouldn't fake patriotism, would he? The Venatori think of themselves as the true inheritors of the Imperium.

But how intolerably droll would it be to find out that the spy he'd met all that time ago was actually on their side? Something had seemed off about the man. Imagine if what had been off was that he was one of the angels. Dreadful thought. He has half a mind to ask Bastien to kill the man just to spare him the embarrassment of having gotten it so wrong.

(Not really. But it is damnably embarrassing.)

"And what would a rebel be doing this far south?" Byerly's drawl sounds contemptuously skeptical, but his fingers flick a furtive signal at Bastien: I believe him. Need a little more. "In my experience, the Shadow Dragons and their ilk don't care much about what atrocities are happening in our lands. Their interest ends at the Silent Plains."

my lol, i love him

[interroga]

At that question, Cassian hesitates. To admit his new allegiances or not? He’ll probably never wear the Riftwatch colours in public — it’s too pointedly obvious — but he’s been trying to suss out a temperature-check on the organisation as a whole. This city in particular seems warmer on them, past protections having bought goodwill, but some bars might find a disgruntled crowd muttering about the heat Kirkwall keeps catching for their guests. They have so many mages, so many strange rifters, a target painted on their back.

So. Are these men more or less likely to slit his throat if they find out he’s got a hand-shaped pin rolling around in his new desk drawer?

But it’s not exactly like the Gallows is inconspicuous, looming over the town, so Cassian finally gives way. Cards on the table, hands open.

“You could ask the same question about why there’s so many Kirkwallers up north disrupting Venatori affairs,” he says. “There’s an organisation here, Riftwatch— Corypheus’ biggest enemy, as word goes. I came south to work with them.”