[ An ominous beginning, with friend hemmed in by the fact that he still calls her Madame.
But it’s true. He’s doing this at all—unsubtly and privately, while they’re behind a closed door and on a joint hunt through Scouting Division records for something pertaining to one Merchant Prince or another—because she is a hemmed-in friend. ]
So I hope you will forgive me for asking what you think I might find, if I go looking for Serafine Tokar.
[This friend pauses over the stack of records she's currently sorting through. It's not a particularly weighty hesitation. More rueful, rather. It has the energy of—
Fitcher drumming her fingers once across the top of the file under her hand. She grants Bastien a sidelong look>]
[ Bastien's head wobbles in equivocation, even as he says: ]
It's a compulsion.
[ It is. It also isn't. He might not have disturbed their truce, if the means to do so so easily hadn't fallen onto his lap. Onto his finger. But once they did, he couldn't only have helped himself if he'd really tried. ]
[There's something pleasant in her face. It's a faint curving to the arrangement of her features which suggests a smile that isn't actually there. It reaches all the way up to her dark eyes. For a woman who makes common practice of adopting all sorts of overplayed expression for comedic or charming effect (a mugging grin, an overemphasized batting of the eyelashes), this mask is a subtly applied. It could easily be genuine.
Fitcher holds her study of him for only a moment before the point of her attention slides gracefully back to sorting files. She's certain, she'd said when they'd first arrived, that she's copied out some report or another pertaining to the sort of details there after. Now if only she could recall when it had been written, and under what it had been filed...]
You remember when we were in the Crossroads. I seem to recall you meeting little Serafine there.
[A spirit in the shape of a girl very near to a young woman, with dark eyes and fiercely pretty despite or because of her hands pitched bright red from dyes. Fitcher has been mindful to find other work when the division might otherwise take her into the Crossroads since. Happily, Riftwatch has plenty.]
[ Bastien smiles at the thought—a fond smile, the sort that in another few hundred years might be aimed at someone's baby lumengrafs, or whatever future Thedosians come up with, now directed at the image in his own memory.
He returns to rifling through the drawers, pulling this and that out for a closer look. ]
The lovely daughter of tradesmen, [ he says, both capable of telling the difference between dye-stains and blood and dislinclined by nature to look for dark signs and augurs. ] And then what?
I'm surprised Byerly hasn't told you. He's better with a secret than I'd give him credit for.
[A brief look is punctuated by an even briefer apologetic smile before Fitcher returns to rifling through papers. No offense meant to your bedmate, Bastien, but you must know how he comes off—and so on. That Yseult knows roughly the same broad strokes, half truths though they may be, and has said nothing warrants no remark. Fitcher suspects that woman the type to be discreet despite the bonds of friendship.
More or less.]
That tradesman's daughter married a rich man and then died in an accident. Not to worry though. [A report is drawn free from its place in the drawer. She skims its contents.] I've heard the husband didn't make it either.
[ Byerly is better with a lot of things than he's given credit for, says Bastien's answering smile. To the extent a smile can be that eloquent. It's proud, at least, judging by the raise of his chin, and wholly unbothered.
And it's a hint. Not to worry, Fitcher says about her rich husband's death. Bastien might have needed a moment and more information to turn that cryptic good humor right side up. But like the shape of an adjacent puzzle piece, Byerly's secrecy is waiting to orient it: her husband, whatever Byerly knows about him and about Fitcher, is in the narrow category of secrets Byerly wouldn't idly gossip about for entertainment. ]
I'll trust I should be glad to hear it.
[ He lifts a hand in an invisible toast, before it's busy among the papers again. It's a sadder and more dramatic answer than he really expected. He's still thinking about it. But on a parallel track, ]
Why Fitcher?
[ Her husband could not have been Monsieur Fitcher, if she were faking her death. ]
It's the name of a domino game I like. And it isn't very Antivan. That seemed important at the time, before I realized that it didn't really matter.
[Having evidently suffered all the inspection it's worth, the current drawer is closed and Fitcher moves onto a second. With it goes the some measure of this casual compliance:]
[ Bastien grins at his drawer, feeling a sense of kinship—a changed name, a whimsical namesake, a distance from an origin—he does not intend to explain. But he'll answer a question, sure. ]
Val Royeaux and Halamshiral, ouais, most of it.
[ A sideways glance, expectant eyebrows. He anticipates a point. Perhaps it was not only in dreams that she was hired to murder men in Val Royeaux. ]
If you ever worked there—awake—I could not have seen you. Even with a mask, I would remember your cheekbones.
[Her mugging in response is brief, but sincere—an upward tip of one such cheekbone, and a look that's all crooked smiles and waggling eyebrows.]
You would have been far too young for me. [Ha ha. But really the point she's driving at, if there is one, is:] I didn't make a habit of staying in any particular place, and people have short memories. I could have held right on to Tokar and avoided all these awkward questions. This is what I get for retiring to war.
[ At this point, the only point of being coy is to amuse himself. Or maybe she does mean the city, rather than the work. Maybe she desperately wants to hear about the music and the cafes and his favorite bakery. Again, probably. Maybe for a third or fourth time. ]
[ A new drawer. This document had better be worth it. ]
I did, before I came here. But this is better, aside from the existential threat and—you know. Kirkwall.
[ If Riftwatch were doing its routine work from anywhere less stormy and grey and imposingly oppressive in its architecture, it would reduce the number of things he has to complain about by at least 60%. ]
Kirkwall. Do you know, I've been here for two years and still get ill every time I cross the harbor.
[This to the tune of 'Behold, the many noble sacrifices she makes for you people.']
I think I must have. Only a little. Otherwise I'd have stuck with something much quieter. Proper clerking, maybe. Little me, holed up somewhere keeping the books. I'd make a very dashing accountant.
[ He pauses his search to look at her, propped by his elbow atop the files. ]
After the war, perhaps I will hire you—for my printing empire. [ Even if he wanted a printing empire, he would never have one, and he absolutely did not prior to joining the Inquisition. But for the fantasy: ] We can play normal life chicken. Whoever cracks first pays for our new weapons.
[Silas. Barrow, maybe? If he'd rooted around, though the idea of that man displaying any natural instinct toward curiosity seems unlikely. Maybe Byerly Rutyer had put his nose to the ground and gone sniffing like a good Fereldan. How any of them might have arrived at Tokar though—
(There is a knife she keeps in her boot for emergencies. This would be a highly inconvenient place in which to need it.)]
I wasn't aware either had even followed me out of Antiva.
[ A few more seconds of stalling. Who might she have told? Who does she trust? But she isn't going to say, so his attention shifts partway back to his files. ]
Maybe they hadn't.
[ This one looks promising. He lifts it up. ]
It was a magic ring. I know what that sounds like, but... Maker's honest truth. I think it must have come from the rifts. If we'd had the magic for this before, Yseult would have already acquired one.
[ A friendly behind-the-back jab about her Black Fox puzzle ring, which he wants more than any other inanimate object in the entire world. ]
Did you discovered any other interesting secret names among our colleagues, or am I unique? [A tip of the head, a waggish bat of the eyelashes.] Moreso.
You know Loxley, the rifter? [ A sacrificial lamb—goat?—whom neither of them is close to and whose past cannot haunt him here, if it's a haunting sort of past. ] His real name is Chivalry. Poor man.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sighs @ myself immediately above this, but also hello
[ An ominous beginning, with friend hemmed in by the fact that he still calls her Madame.
But it’s true. He’s doing this at all—unsubtly and privately, while they’re behind a closed door and on a joint hunt through Scouting Division records for something pertaining to one Merchant Prince or another—because she is a hemmed-in friend. ]
So I hope you will forgive me for asking what you think I might find, if I go looking for Serafine Tokar.
what a treat
Fitcher drumming her fingers once across the top of the file under her hand. She grants Bastien a sidelong look>]
My, someone's been snooping about.
no subject
It's a compulsion.
[ It is. It also isn't. He might not have disturbed their truce, if the means to do so so easily hadn't fallen onto his lap. Onto his finger. But once they did, he couldn't only have helped himself if he'd really tried. ]
no subject
Fitcher holds her study of him for only a moment before the point of her attention slides gracefully back to sorting files. She's certain, she'd said when they'd first arrived, that she's copied out some report or another pertaining to the sort of details there after. Now if only she could recall when it had been written, and under what it had been filed...]
You remember when we were in the Crossroads. I seem to recall you meeting little Serafine there.
[A spirit in the shape of a girl very near to a young woman, with dark eyes and fiercely pretty despite or because of her hands pitched bright red from dyes. Fitcher has been mindful to find other work when the division might otherwise take her into the Crossroads since. Happily, Riftwatch has plenty.]
no subject
He returns to rifling through the drawers, pulling this and that out for a closer look. ]
The lovely daughter of tradesmen, [ he says, both capable of telling the difference between dye-stains and blood and dislinclined by nature to look for dark signs and augurs. ] And then what?
no subject
[A brief look is punctuated by an even briefer apologetic smile before Fitcher returns to rifling through papers. No offense meant to your bedmate, Bastien, but you must know how he comes off—and so on. That Yseult knows roughly the same broad strokes, half truths though they may be, and has said nothing warrants no remark. Fitcher suspects that woman the type to be discreet despite the bonds of friendship.
More or less.]
That tradesman's daughter married a rich man and then died in an accident. Not to worry though. [A report is drawn free from its place in the drawer. She skims its contents.] I've heard the husband didn't make it either.
no subject
And it's a hint. Not to worry, Fitcher says about her rich husband's death. Bastien might have needed a moment and more information to turn that cryptic good humor right side up. But like the shape of an adjacent puzzle piece, Byerly's secrecy is waiting to orient it: her husband, whatever Byerly knows about him and about Fitcher, is in the narrow category of secrets Byerly wouldn't idly gossip about for entertainment. ]
I'll trust I should be glad to hear it.
[ He lifts a hand in an invisible toast, before it's busy among the papers again. It's a sadder and more dramatic answer than he really expected. He's still thinking about it. But on a parallel track, ]
Why Fitcher?
[ Her husband could not have been Monsieur Fitcher, if she were faking her death. ]
no subject
[Having evidently suffered all the inspection it's worth, the current drawer is closed and Fitcher moves onto a second. With it goes the some measure of this casual compliance:]
Did you do most of your work in Val Royeaux?
[See. She can ask questions too.]
no subject
Val Royeaux and Halamshiral, ouais, most of it.
[ A sideways glance, expectant eyebrows. He anticipates a point. Perhaps it was not only in dreams that she was hired to murder men in Val Royeaux. ]
If you ever worked there—awake—I could not have seen you. Even with a mask, I would remember your cheekbones.
no subject
You would have been far too young for me. [Ha ha. But really the point she's driving at, if there is one, is:] I didn't make a habit of staying in any particular place, and people have short memories. I could have held right on to Tokar and avoided all these awkward questions. This is what I get for retiring to war.
[Sure. Why couldn't that be the truth?]
Do you miss it at all?
no subject
[ At this point, the only point of being coy is to amuse himself. Or maybe she does mean the city, rather than the work. Maybe she desperately wants to hear about the music and the cafes and his favorite bakery. Again, probably. Maybe for a third or fourth time. ]
no subject
Sure. 'Val Royeaux.'
[Are air quotes a thing in Thedas? They could be. Maybe they're in the dictionary of Bard hand signals.]
no subject
No.
[ A new drawer. This document had better be worth it. ]
I did, before I came here. But this is better, aside from the existential threat and—you know. Kirkwall.
[ If Riftwatch were doing its routine work from anywhere less stormy and grey and imposingly oppressive in its architecture, it would reduce the number of things he has to complain about by at least 60%. ]
no subject
[This to the tune of 'Behold, the many noble sacrifices she makes for you people.']
I think I must have. Only a little. Otherwise I'd have stuck with something much quieter. Proper clerking, maybe. Little me, holed up somewhere keeping the books. I'd make a very dashing accountant.
no subject
[ He pauses his search to look at her, propped by his elbow atop the files. ]
After the war, perhaps I will hire you—for my printing empire. [ Even if he wanted a printing empire, he would never have one, and he absolutely did not prior to joining the Inquisition. But for the fantasy: ] We can play normal life chicken. Whoever cracks first pays for our new weapons.
no subject
[She closes her chosen drawer with a definitive rasp of the wood on its rails.]
Who told you, by the way?
no subject
I'm sure there are only so many people who could have.
[ He'll tell the truth, maybe, probably. In a second. ]
no subject
Remarkably few.
[Silas. Barrow, maybe? If he'd rooted around, though the idea of that man displaying any natural instinct toward curiosity seems unlikely. Maybe Byerly Rutyer had put his nose to the ground and gone sniffing like a good Fereldan. How any of them might have arrived at Tokar though—
(There is a knife she keeps in her boot for emergencies. This would be a highly inconvenient place in which to need it.)]
I wasn't aware either had even followed me out of Antiva.
no subject
Maybe they hadn't.
[ This one looks promising. He lifts it up. ]
It was a magic ring. I know what that sounds like, but... Maker's honest truth. I think it must have come from the rifts. If we'd had the magic for this before, Yseult would have already acquired one.
[ A friendly behind-the-back jab about her Black Fox puzzle ring, which he wants more than any other inanimate object in the entire world. ]
no subject
A magic ring from a rift. That sounds like a very poor plot for a very cheap play.
[He has resumed sorting files, which means she ought to as well. But—]
Where in the world did you find such a thing?
no subject
[ He holds up his hands, all ten bare fingers, as if it couldn't be somewhere else. The abandoned file slides back into the drawer with a thunk.
It really does sound like bullshit. ]
no subject
Did you discovered any other interesting secret names among our colleagues, or am I unique? [A tip of the head, a waggish bat of the eyelashes.] Moreso.
no subject
You know Loxley, the rifter? [ A sacrificial lamb—goat?—whom neither of them is close to and whose past cannot haunt him here, if it's a haunting sort of past. ] His real name is Chivalry. Poor man.
no subject
Richard can't know, [is far more business like by contrast.] He'd have been blinded in a tragic eye rolling accident by now.