[ Such an odd choice for a spy, if a spy he is. He gives himself away constantly with twitches and jerks, flutters of the eyelid, flaring nostrils. How clear that look of shock had been on his face. Even in his neophyte days, By had never been so transparent. Though, to be fair, he'd also never accomplished anything with his rage; anger no doubt carried the Captain far. ]
I am desperate to know what Tevinter will do next. More than anything else, I want to know that.
[Who did he ask? From where had he traced the information? It was possible - likely even - that someone from the Walrus had spoken some word out of turn. This is the trouble with keeping men in harbor, with putting crews on land. Inevitably, they will say the right thing to the wrong person who knows how to follow a thread to its source. Or had it been news from Nascere, intercepted en route here? Or had it fallen into Rutyer's lap by way of somene in Tevinter who had heard how the rebellion force had been divided and thought to run down its disparate parts. Or from the point of occupation itself - the maigstrate on the island now who had known enough about the basic elements of the man who had left the Imperium to speak on them?
The surprise, thinks some distant logical part, isn't that some trace of it has finally reached Riftwatch; it's that the person armed with it is Byerly fucking Rutyer. It's in how he uses the level he's found in his hand.]
Might I recommend asking them? [A bland statement - testing the limits of the snare.]
[ It could be an unobjectionable statement. "I've already sent messengers out there to my sources up north." Or it could be an accusation. The Captain has room to interpret it as either - to wiggle and kick within the snare, to fight it, to try to force this conversation into one of mild chatter about spy movements. Or he could charge forward and meet By directly and lay the accusation out plain. Which one will he choose? It's a fascinating dilemma. It will be exquisitely revealing. ]
[A flash of heat in his face - that untempered swell of anger checked and re-checked. It's clear what interpretation he makes.]
I can at best provide you with an educated guess, as I have to Yseult and Provost Baudin. In which case, I would say that Tevinter will wait to see what happens in Nevarra. If the fighting starts there in earnest, they may simply winter as they are - growing fat off Val Chevin and entertaining the Orlesian front line while Van Markham and Aurelia Penteghast's forces drive Nevarra into the ground. Come spring, the Magisterium will have had plenty of time to resolve their differences and mount a force - primarily slaves, who are no fighters but in numbers more than capable of overwhelming whatever remains of a Nevarran force made to do war through a winter - to push West.
[Semantics, rattled off crisply and doing very little to minimize the sharpness of his attention. The glass remains idle in his hand; he asks,]
[ Fascinating. So here it is that the notorious Captain Flint is craven. He doesn't think for a moment that he can put Byerly off the scent; that's transparent. Yet the old boar nevertheless limps from the hunters, instead of standing to fight.
Shall he weary the quarry further? There would be some joy in the cruelty. The captain is, after all, it must be noted, a massive dick. ]
Come now, Captain. Surely you can manage a bit more education than that.
Whatever it is you think you know [prickling, steely, a dozen adjectives that more or less amount to expressing the urge to strangle the man across from him] is wrong.
[ He leans back, the slouch allowing his hand to dip out of sight so his fingers can find the hilt of his dagger. Just in case the beast decides to fight. ]
So you were born James Flint? Such drama in that name, by the by. Theatrical. I do love it.
[If the boar were to turn, he'd have to launch himself forward over the width of the table. Even then, Byerly might be sitting back outside the easy length of his arm. Instead, he smiles. It's an unpleasant flexion, not so different from bending away from a wound and having the two torn edges of flesh briefly separate.]
A name can't possibly be the extent of what drives your suspicion.
[In a cellar, under a house built on a rugged patch of land Southeast of Seheron waits a box. Inside waits what was once a fine ceremonial sword. He imagines it ruined now - by the salt and heat and by how cheap the metal had been to begin with. He'd had the intention of pawning it, but it'd never been necessary.]
Here I thought that much must be obvious. [A drink from the glass - some effort to blunt sharper points failing in the flex of his spare hand.] I take it your contact neglected to mention that the commission you seem to know so much about was torn up over a decade ago?
[A show of repudiation. That says more than anything else does. It triggers some cold flash of relief - he knows nothing -, which passes hand in hand with a rigid stab of dread: What Byerly suspects could be more dangerous. Who will he tell? What will they do? There are plans in motion; whose scrutiny can they survive?]
What I think is that you're concerned, that you have no idea what you're doing, and that you're jumping to conclusions in an effort to make this arrangement manageable. Maybe if you tell me what exactly you think you know, I might begin to help you make sense of it. [Teeth flashing again:] As a show of friendship.
[ A corner of his lip curls up in droll amusement. The temptation is bloody strong to let Flint know exactly who he's dealing with. The way he phrases that, you'd think Byerly were a mage-boy, stumbling upon his powers, trembling on the edge of becoming an abomination. Or a fussing, clucking fool like the Seneschal. But the temptation has always been strong with men like Flint - these warriors, brusque and haughty, who treated By like a mincing fool - to stand up and shout, I am dangerous, I am more dangerous than you, I am more dangerous than you could ever be, and you need to see that. But By had resisted the urge in Ferelden; he can resist it here. ]
Maker, Captain, you know I'm a card player. You think that you can bat your lovely ginger lashes at me and have me show you my whole hand? I'll have you know that it is a point of pride for me that I routinely destroy my friends when we all come to play.
In that case, lets assume for a moment that your suspicions are correct. Let us pretend that ten years ago, Tevinter - a place where one's reputation is everything - sent a man to Nascere to pose as a pirate. There he set to burning his way up and down the coast, ransacking any number of merchant ships plying their trade in the Nocen Sea, and putting a series of the Imperium's own magistrates to the sword - to what end, I truly cannot guess.
Then, preceding the coup in Minrathous and without having accomplished the task Tevinter had poured a decade away and a fortune into, they sent that man to Kirkwall where for a year he has acted under suspicion of the city guard and every ship's crew in Kirkwall harbor, to say nothing of the Inquisition's command. When Kirkwall split from the Inquisition proper and Ser Coupe retired from her position, that man simply stepped into the vacancy.
Is there anything you would like to add before I go on, or do I have the gist of it?
[So he does, strangely even. Not blunted, just sure - a saw's teeth tearing first in one direction and then the other.]
Now then, this man we're discussing - he has spent nearly a quarter of his life in pursuit of a goal which must, I assume, be something along the lines of re-invigorating Tevinter's power and it's desire to expand. If not North into Seheron, then the South will do. This man, who has given up his place in Tevinter, who has surrounded himself with people working counter to it and presumably has breathed no word of his true motives, who has sacrificed his pride and ambition and name, is the one you've invited to sit alone in this room with you.
[Bodily threats are easy. They are also not the point.]
In which case, I find myself wondering what you think you can get out of that man. And I think, as a friend, that we had all better hope you're wrong. Otherwise, that man is very dangerous and Tevinter itself is far more rotted and more clever than I or anyone else has been crediting it with.
Men have sacrificed far more than pride, ambition, and name for love of country, dear man.
[ How well he knows it. But - All of these are, of course, decent points. But at the moment, he's not yet ready to turn to the question of what he wants (because at the moment, he's not certain what it is), and at the moment he's not ready to respond to the threats (they'd just be a distraction). Instead, he muses aloud, gaze carefully watching Flint: ]
He raged against the Imperium - but how much damage did he truly do? So many years on the island, and no real progress made. And now his boats sit in harbor. And Tevinter says, On the island lives a monster; be afraid. And they say, See how the Southerners harbor that monster who burned our countryside and destroyed our lives.
[A month ago, his argument had been with Charles Vane - stay here, stay put, we are making more progress than you know -, and now that man is gone and here comes Rutyer having tripped over and picked up the same knife to undercut him with. You've been here this long, and what have you accomplished? A narrowness overcomes Flint's face where he sits across the table. It's as donning a mask - one of cold fury, but a mask all the same. His free hand, draped over the chair's arm and once flexing its grip there, has at some point gone very still.
At length:]
Have you shared this paranoid delusion with anyone?
Come now, Captain, I've watched as many melodramas as you. The masked traitor asks, Does anyone know? Our hero replies, I've not told a soul. And then a knife across the throat.
[ His long, long eyelashes lower, and he murmurs: ]
I assume, of course, that you do not consider yourself the hero of this tale.
[ Then: ]
Here's another. Tale, I mean. Delusion, if you prefer. Perhaps your hatred of Tevinter is true. And perhaps you see, quite rightly, that Corypheus will be its destruction. No true love for the land, no true love for anything, just a desire to see it burn.
[There is a naked sense of satisfaction in the other man's face and in the easy slump of his shoulders against the chair back. And Byerly has, he is certain beyond measure, no idea what he's talking about.
But this particular story is a hot coal he'd long carried in his clenched fist, and it seems that somewhere - before Kirkwall, before coming South for reinforcements, before the rebellion on Nascere had stuttered to suspension, but maybe in a torchlit room before a maroon queen - he'd found some method of putting it down.
No true love for anything, said so casually, burns the hand these days.
[ And it shouldn't shake Byerly. It shouldn't. Flint is just a man, and Nadine is living a quiet life a continent away - far from the war, far from the reach of any damned pirates. The very words are absurd. He ought to laugh right in the man's face.
And yet. And yet, for just a moment, a frisson runs down his spine, and his lips twitch, and he blinks.
And then the smile is back again, easy and casual. He gestures broadly with his glass, and replies - ]
It's the most singular advantage of being a man like me. I love nothing, and nothing loves me. It's honestly what makes me so spectacularly suited to this job, wouldn't you agree?
[ Then a sip. And he wishes he had the nerve to end it there, to let Flint walk out and try fruitlessly to find some path to revenge. But something foolish in him makes him continue: ]
I want only what I said from the very start. Friendship between us. Shall I define friendship for you?
The simplest of things. Just this: to not scheme against me.
[ Is that really it? Well, no, not quite. He also wanted to see Flint suffer and squirm, and to know that the fool Byerly Ruter was responsible. But it seems that that has been accomplished, despite that sole return jab from the man. And that is satisfying. And aside from that...Yes; Byerly fancies that that really is all he desires. The freedom to do this bloody job. ]
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I am desperate to know what Tevinter will do next. More than anything else, I want to know that.
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The surprise, thinks some distant logical part, isn't that some trace of it has finally reached Riftwatch; it's that the person armed with it is Byerly fucking Rutyer. It's in how he uses the level he's found in his hand.]
Might I recommend asking them? [A bland statement - testing the limits of the snare.]
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[ It could be an unobjectionable statement. "I've already sent messengers out there to my sources up north." Or it could be an accusation. The Captain has room to interpret it as either - to wiggle and kick within the snare, to fight it, to try to force this conversation into one of mild chatter about spy movements. Or he could charge forward and meet By directly and lay the accusation out plain. Which one will he choose? It's a fascinating dilemma. It will be exquisitely revealing. ]
So what are your thoughts?
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I can at best provide you with an educated guess, as I have to Yseult and Provost Baudin. In which case, I would say that Tevinter will wait to see what happens in Nevarra. If the fighting starts there in earnest, they may simply winter as they are - growing fat off Val Chevin and entertaining the Orlesian front line while Van Markham and Aurelia Penteghast's forces drive Nevarra into the ground. Come spring, the Magisterium will have had plenty of time to resolve their differences and mount a force - primarily slaves, who are no fighters but in numbers more than capable of overwhelming whatever remains of a Nevarran force made to do war through a winter - to push West.
[Semantics, rattled off crisply and doing very little to minimize the sharpness of his attention. The glass remains idle in his hand; he asks,]
Or was there something else you wanted to hear?
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Shall he weary the quarry further? There would be some joy in the cruelty. The captain is, after all, it must be noted, a massive dick. ]
Come now, Captain. Surely you can manage a bit more education than that.
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[ He leans back, the slouch allowing his hand to dip out of sight so his fingers can find the hilt of his dagger. Just in case the beast decides to fight. ]
So you were born James Flint? Such drama in that name, by the by. Theatrical. I do love it.
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A name can't possibly be the extent of what drives your suspicion.
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[ He savors that word a moment, rolling it in his mouth like a cigar. ]
The officer's commission has rather more to do with it.
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Here I thought that much must be obvious. [A drink from the glass - some effort to blunt sharper points failing in the flex of his spare hand.] I take it your contact neglected to mention that the commission you seem to know so much about was torn up over a decade ago?
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[ A quick laugh. It's a contented sound, like the purr of a fed cat. ]
Is that what you think, Captain? Someone's sold you out? Some enemy has given me all the pieces of this story?
[ A shake of his head. ]
Yes. I am well aware that a show of repudiation was made.
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What I think is that you're concerned, that you have no idea what you're doing, and that you're jumping to conclusions in an effort to make this arrangement manageable. Maybe if you tell me what exactly you think you know, I might begin to help you make sense of it. [Teeth flashing again:] As a show of friendship.
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[ A corner of his lip curls up in droll amusement. The temptation is bloody strong to let Flint know exactly who he's dealing with. The way he phrases that, you'd think Byerly were a mage-boy, stumbling upon his powers, trembling on the edge of becoming an abomination. Or a fussing, clucking fool like the Seneschal. But the temptation has always been strong with men like Flint - these warriors, brusque and haughty, who treated By like a mincing fool - to stand up and shout, I am dangerous, I am more dangerous than you, I am more dangerous than you could ever be, and you need to see that. But By had resisted the urge in Ferelden; he can resist it here. ]
Maker, Captain, you know I'm a card player. You think that you can bat your lovely ginger lashes at me and have me show you my whole hand? I'll have you know that it is a point of pride for me that I routinely destroy my friends when we all come to play.
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In that case, lets assume for a moment that your suspicions are correct. Let us pretend that ten years ago, Tevinter - a place where one's reputation is everything - sent a man to Nascere to pose as a pirate. There he set to burning his way up and down the coast, ransacking any number of merchant ships plying their trade in the Nocen Sea, and putting a series of the Imperium's own magistrates to the sword - to what end, I truly cannot guess.
Then, preceding the coup in Minrathous and without having accomplished the task Tevinter had poured a decade away and a fortune into, they sent that man to Kirkwall where for a year he has acted under suspicion of the city guard and every ship's crew in Kirkwall harbor, to say nothing of the Inquisition's command. When Kirkwall split from the Inquisition proper and Ser Coupe retired from her position, that man simply stepped into the vacancy.
Is there anything you would like to add before I go on, or do I have the gist of it?
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That is one of the possibilities currently under consideration. But - please, good man, go on.
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Now then, this man we're discussing - he has spent nearly a quarter of his life in pursuit of a goal which must, I assume, be something along the lines of re-invigorating Tevinter's power and it's desire to expand. If not North into Seheron, then the South will do. This man, who has given up his place in Tevinter, who has surrounded himself with people working counter to it and presumably has breathed no word of his true motives, who has sacrificed his pride and ambition and name, is the one you've invited to sit alone in this room with you.
[Bodily threats are easy. They are also not the point.]
In which case, I find myself wondering what you think you can get out of that man. And I think, as a friend, that we had all better hope you're wrong. Otherwise, that man is very dangerous and Tevinter itself is far more rotted and more clever than I or anyone else has been crediting it with.
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[ How well he knows it. But - All of these are, of course, decent points. But at the moment, he's not yet ready to turn to the question of what he wants (because at the moment, he's not certain what it is), and at the moment he's not ready to respond to the threats (they'd just be a distraction). Instead, he muses aloud, gaze carefully watching Flint: ]
He raged against the Imperium - but how much damage did he truly do? So many years on the island, and no real progress made. And now his boats sit in harbor. And Tevinter says, On the island lives a monster; be afraid. And they say, See how the Southerners harbor that monster who burned our countryside and destroyed our lives.
[ He tilts his head to the side. ]
Now, that would be quite rotted and quite clever.
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At length:]
Have you shared this paranoid delusion with anyone?
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[ His long, long eyelashes lower, and he murmurs: ]
I assume, of course, that you do not consider yourself the hero of this tale.
[ Then: ]
Here's another. Tale, I mean. Delusion, if you prefer. Perhaps your hatred of Tevinter is true. And perhaps you see, quite rightly, that Corypheus will be its destruction. No true love for the land, no true love for anything, just a desire to see it burn.
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But this particular story is a hot coal he'd long carried in his clenched fist, and it seems that somewhere - before Kirkwall, before coming South for reinforcements, before the rebellion on Nascere had stuttered to suspension, but maybe in a torchlit room before a maroon queen - he'd found some method of putting it down.
No true love for anything, said so casually, burns the hand these days.
He looks Byerly in the eye, breathing sharp.]
I recommend you arrive at your point.
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[ The question is simple, and asked with a smile. And he waits; it's not rhetorical. ]
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[It's an easy threat and a year of quiet spent in the Gallows should make it seem toothless and hollow. It somehow doesn't.]
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And yet. And yet, for just a moment, a frisson runs down his spine, and his lips twitch, and he blinks.
And then the smile is back again, easy and casual. He gestures broadly with his glass, and replies - ]
It's the most singular advantage of being a man like me. I love nothing, and nothing loves me. It's honestly what makes me so spectacularly suited to this job, wouldn't you agree?
[ Then a sip. And he wishes he had the nerve to end it there, to let Flint walk out and try fruitlessly to find some path to revenge. But something foolish in him makes him continue: ]
I want only what I said from the very start. Friendship between us. Shall I define friendship for you?
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Please. Go on.
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[ Is that really it? Well, no, not quite. He also wanted to see Flint suffer and squirm, and to know that the fool Byerly Ruter was responsible. But it seems that that has been accomplished, despite that sole return jab from the man. And that is satisfying. And aside from that...Yes; Byerly fancies that that really is all he desires. The freedom to do this bloody job. ]
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