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}
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[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?
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I'm sure there are only so many people who could have.
[ He'll tell the truth, maybe, probably. In a second. ]
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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. ]
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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?
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[ 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. ]
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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.
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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.
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Richard can't know, [is far more business like by contrast.] He'd have been blinded in a tragic eye rolling accident by now.