[Something in his face goes briefly sharp, and then softens into strange lines. It is not pained, but viewed in the late afternoon haze through the office window which won't fully close, it could be that particular kind of fondness capable of inspiring it. There is something to this that is like reaching backwards. It is the nauseating pinch of space which occurs when travelling by eluvian, only what sits on the other side is a different kind of temple in a different time and with different people. Somewhere in Tevinter there is likely still a house with a private study not so removed from this one where two people had once sat and talked about the inevitable.
It's strange to be on the other side of that conversation. It chokes something in him. For a split second, he wants to be here.]
[ An idealist, under the scruff and the gruff? An optimist? There's an unexpected twist. Byerly's long, graceful fingers trace the line of his own chin as he studies Flint with some interest. ]
[Distantly, he is aware that the wine has done the ache in his side some good. That at some point, the latter has begun to slip sideways out from under the hum of everything else. The dull pain is there at his fingertips still - if he cared to, he could touch it -, but it's verging now on optional opposed to obligatory. It slides easily through the fingers in favor of:]
By convincing people it's possible - by showing enough of them that there is an alternative to what they believe they've inherited. Take this place. Could your father or your grandfather or however far back you'd like to go imagine that something like Riftwatch would even for a moment be tolerated to exist? Take you. Who was it that played you for worthless, and did they guess you'd end up here?
The world is already changing, Messr Rutyer. Someone will use that to their advantage, and there's no reason that it shouldn't be the people who would see it made differently.
[ There's a small, odd twinge in his gut. Who knows why. ]
The Blight always comes again. Men like Corypheus always come again. A thousand years ago we were fighting the same things we fight now. The vulnerable were used and abused back then, and they are now. Something like Riftwatch is a deviation, not a change.
It is an opportunity. It is has the potential to do what the Inquisition never tried and Divine Beatrix's Exalted March cannot. It is an independent force that has already said no to being collared once, and it is saying it five years into a war with what should be a common enemy which is destroying people while those in power who could be winning it do nothing for fear of losing what control they still possess.
Thedas thinks it is tired - Celene's drafted army in Orlais believes itself exhausted. But what they and you and I are finished with is fighting for people who do not know us, who do not care about you beyond what you afford them, and who they know would be powerless to stop a people who realize that, were they united, they could pull down more than just a corrupted magister.
[How many times have they spoken like this? Sawing back and forth over a some invisible point between them that seems incapable of shifting. But this is different. This isn't deflection, and isn't meant to cut though there is something sharp and keen in Flint's expression. He is gaining momentum, finding pleasure in it, and leaning forward now to make some further point.
The sudden shift sends an unexpected stab of pain across his ribcage, his head swimming. A clumsy hand hard against the edge of the desk. The wine in the opposing untouched glass pitches sharply enough to demand attention. For a strange moment, it swirls around and around and around.
He looks to Byerly, the spark in his face rapidly swallowed by some harsher closed thing. The desk hums under the splay of his fingers.]
[ There is nothing to mourn here. The drug will keep him talking, keep him happy, keep him honest, but likely that odd little intellectual connection will always be lost henceforth. But the connection was an illusion anyway; Flint would never have even entertained the idea of being so open and raw without being affected by that drug. His contempt was too complete. He himself saw - and would always see - Byerly as worthless, no matter that odd little comment that implied otherwise. There's nothing to mourn here; it's just a good trip going bad.
So By smiles. He leans back in his chair and steeples his hands. He looks at Flint. ]
My, my, it did take you a while to notice, didn't it? I told you at the very beginning what was happening. It's hardly my fault you weren't listening. How much of it did you drink? Enough, I think.
[It is more difficult than it should be to take stock of-- everything that should be noted. The pace of his heart or the feeling in his limbs. The details keep trying to slither elsewhere.]
You poisoned it.
[As if baffled. Then he reaches for the sending crystal where it sits on the desk.]
What possible reason would I have to make this easy for you?
[Is said aloud before he can close a hand around it. He keeps that steadying hand on the desk as he forces his legs to carry him sluggishly around it.]
[He gets to the far corner of the desk and there must pause, one hand planted and the other hovering near but not touching his side. A calculation is occurring, plain on his face - the door or Byerly -, only it is painfully slow to progress. He could do neither and the pain in his side would melt away again. He could just not.]
[He has his hand planted flat and braced. He doesn't sway into the contact, though the impulse of revulsion breaks up under how easy it would be. He can sense the window to that place - the different study, that different time, those different people - closing, and giving to Byerly's hand might somehow catch it before it's fully shut.]
My intentions? [Spat. Or close to it. Trying to cut with the wrong side of a knife.] My intention is for you to be concerned over what they might be. To breed enough uncertainty in you that you hesitate.
[ It would be easy to let his hand drift lower. To wrap his fingers around that throat, to dig his fingertips into the place the man's pulse jumps. A slower heartbeat than the paranoid fuck has likely ever experienced before, under the force of this drug. ]
The possibility [he growls, knowing naming this thing strips it of its power, and changes it into something that much more dangerous] would have been enough.
[ In his chest, something eases and loosens. The wild, irrational fear (that's led him to do this wild, irrational thing, this thing he's going to regret later) calms. The thumb of his right hand comes out and strokes at Flint's cheek, feeling the rasp of stubble under the soft skin. He's a handsome man, when he's not a figure of dread - such eyes on him, startlingly sharp even through the poppy-haze. ]
[He's figured that part out already, he realizes. Because why else would Rutyer ask after his wife's safety if he didn't anticipate some future where it might still be in question. It makes him laugh, a sharp exhaled sound as he sags against the edge of the desk and finally sets a hand to his tender side.
Stay that way, Byerly says, as if that's possible now. With respect to the young woman? Maybe. But with regard to everything else? How does this not change? Does he seriously think that he will leave here and that nothing will happen? Flint laughs. It's funny.]
[ And Byerly studies the handsome, weary lines of Flint's face a moment. And, in response to that laughter, his assumptions about its root cause, he sighs, and gathers himself. ]
By now you've deduced a few things, belike. About myself, and perhaps even about who I represent. Or perhaps you haven't, Northerner that you are...
[ His hand drops away from Flint's face, coming back to smooth down his own mustache. The habitual look of dissolution and distraction is gone, leaving Byerly's face looking sharp and focused and intense. ]
I have been charged with my true employers to serve Riftwatch. This is something that the Scoutmaster knows, by the way, so don't think that you can carry these tales to her and earn accolades for rooting out a spy; the ones who matter are already aware. Ending this war - and doing so in such a way that the South is defended and sheltered, that we don't repeat the desperation and misery that followed the Blight - is my primary directive.
I tell you this so you understand, Captain McGraw, that I am not a man on his own. It may seem it when you look at the stumbling, mincing drunkard, the disinherited fop. But I am one of many, a member of a network that is quite capable of acting even if one node falls. So if you come to me in the middle of the night and choke the life from me - if Sidony Venaras is discovered missing - honestly, if Sidony finds herself catcalled when she visits the harbor - then that lovely network of mine will disperse all necessary information to all the people who need to know it.
And that information will be about Captain McGraw, Tevinter agent provocateur. You have a great love, it seems, one you have told me about this evening: your great love is the prospect of freedom, and your role in seeing it come. I will twist your story, and the story of all who ever served with you, to have you remembered as enemies of liberty. I will make suspect everything you have ever fought for. The blows you have struck, the successes you have found, will all be twisted in the eyes of those who might rise up to make a better world; your fight will instead be seen as a lie, a deception, something to never be trusted. Your only legacy will become ensuring that these people who might shake off their chains instead will become mistrustful of anyone who would wish to lead them.
It wouldn't give me pleasure. You're a beautiful dreamer, my Captain. The sort that makes my heart ache. But... [ He lets out a breath, shrugs one shoulder. ] My oath-sworn duty is to defend my beleaguered home with all the power in my narrow shoulders and simple mind. And my honor-bound duty is to protect family and comrades.
And so: if you interfere with that, James, my lad, then I will fucking ruin everything you have worked for.
[ He reaches out, finally, for his glass of wine, and takes a tiny sip. Something to relax him just a bit. ]
[It sounds strangely like exactly what he's been waiting for. And what it inspires in low, churning senses is two prizes running at diverging directions in the dark - to strangle him here before what exists in this room leaves it, gambling on the potential that whatever Byerly has been passed heretofore can be made unworthy of remark. That this can be fixed here and now; and something else. The sense this makes and how satisfying it is to understand it.
Leaning hard against the edge of the desk, his hand against ribs is close to the knife in his belt. The proximity of it buzzes like a live thing. He studies Byerly and his closeness and his It wouldn't give me pleasure, and the grim smile he gives him is equal parts ragged and involuntary.]
The story you told yourself about me - the one about the man who gives himself away. [How do you make two opposing things travel in the same direction?] It's strange that it's just yours.
[There should be no give in him for that. Not under these circumstances. But: an exhale, rounded like something gentle and pained under the curve of his hand pressed to ribs.]
[ By's eyes lift to meet Flint's. He hesitates. Under normal circumstances, he'd assume that was a lie to mollify him, something to bring his guard down. But it's difficult - near-impossible - to lie under the drug's effects. Yet - it seems too easy. Has the immovable object been moved? Is it possible? ]
And to what will this understanding lead, my dear Captain?
[Now. This is the moment where with one hand he catches Byerly by the collar and draws the knife with the other.]
I haven't decided yet. [He says instead because it's truer than the knife is.] I suspect it depends on what you make of this opportunity, knowing you will never be afforded it a second time. Whether you pick the fight in this room or the one outside it - I will resolve it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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It's strange to be on the other side of that conversation. It chokes something in him. For a split second, he wants to be here.]
But we could.
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And how would that work?
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By convincing people it's possible - by showing enough of them that there is an alternative to what they believe they've inherited. Take this place. Could your father or your grandfather or however far back you'd like to go imagine that something like Riftwatch would even for a moment be tolerated to exist? Take you. Who was it that played you for worthless, and did they guess you'd end up here?
The world is already changing, Messr Rutyer. Someone will use that to their advantage, and there's no reason that it shouldn't be the people who would see it made differently.
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[ There's a small, odd twinge in his gut. Who knows why. ]
The Blight always comes again. Men like Corypheus always come again. A thousand years ago we were fighting the same things we fight now. The vulnerable were used and abused back then, and they are now. Something like Riftwatch is a deviation, not a change.
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Thedas thinks it is tired - Celene's drafted army in Orlais believes itself exhausted. But what they and you and I are finished with is fighting for people who do not know us, who do not care about you beyond what you afford them, and who they know would be powerless to stop a people who realize that, were they united, they could pull down more than just a corrupted magister.
[How many times have they spoken like this? Sawing back and forth over a some invisible point between them that seems incapable of shifting. But this is different. This isn't deflection, and isn't meant to cut though there is something sharp and keen in Flint's expression. He is gaining momentum, finding pleasure in it, and leaning forward now to make some further point.
The sudden shift sends an unexpected stab of pain across his ribcage, his head swimming. A clumsy hand hard against the edge of the desk. The wine in the opposing untouched glass pitches sharply enough to demand attention. For a strange moment, it swirls around and around and around.
He looks to Byerly, the spark in his face rapidly swallowed by some harsher closed thing. The desk hums under the splay of his fingers.]
What did you do?
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So By smiles. He leans back in his chair and steeples his hands. He looks at Flint. ]
My, my, it did take you a while to notice, didn't it? I told you at the very beginning what was happening. It's hardly my fault you weren't listening. How much of it did you drink? Enough, I think.
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You poisoned it.
[As if baffled. Then he reaches for the sending crystal where it sits on the desk.]
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[ His hand snakes out and snatches it before Flint's fingers can close over it. ]
None of that, Captain. Not that they'd be able to help you now.
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You shit. How the fuck do you think you're going to explain this away?
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[ By doesn't stand. Flint won't make it far, even if he has the wherewithal to try. ]
If you don't fight it, you might enjoy it, my dear.
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[Is said aloud before he can close a hand around it. He keeps that steadying hand on the desk as he forces his legs to carry him sluggishly around it.]
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[ By folds his hands together and watches, a small smile on his face. ]
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Does Yseult know?
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[ He stands, then, finally, and crosses to Flint. Puts his hand gently on his cheek. And asks in a very low, very gentle voice - ]
What are your intentions with the lady Sidony Venaras?
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My intentions? [Spat. Or close to it. Trying to cut with the wrong side of a knife.] My intention is for you to be concerned over what they might be. To breed enough uncertainty in you that you hesitate.
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And that is all?
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Then let us have it stay that way.
[ Another stroke of his thumb. Softly: ]
It is not poison, Captain. Merely a drug.
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Stay that way, Byerly says, as if that's possible now. With respect to the young woman? Maybe. But with regard to everything else? How does this not change? Does he seriously think that he will leave here and that nothing will happen? Flint laughs. It's funny.]
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By now you've deduced a few things, belike. About myself, and perhaps even about who I represent. Or perhaps you haven't, Northerner that you are...
[ His hand drops away from Flint's face, coming back to smooth down his own mustache. The habitual look of dissolution and distraction is gone, leaving Byerly's face looking sharp and focused and intense. ]
I have been charged with my true employers to serve Riftwatch. This is something that the Scoutmaster knows, by the way, so don't think that you can carry these tales to her and earn accolades for rooting out a spy; the ones who matter are already aware. Ending this war - and doing so in such a way that the South is defended and sheltered, that we don't repeat the desperation and misery that followed the Blight - is my primary directive.
I tell you this so you understand, Captain McGraw, that I am not a man on his own. It may seem it when you look at the stumbling, mincing drunkard, the disinherited fop. But I am one of many, a member of a network that is quite capable of acting even if one node falls. So if you come to me in the middle of the night and choke the life from me - if Sidony Venaras is discovered missing - honestly, if Sidony finds herself catcalled when she visits the harbor - then that lovely network of mine will disperse all necessary information to all the people who need to know it.
And that information will be about Captain McGraw, Tevinter agent provocateur. You have a great love, it seems, one you have told me about this evening: your great love is the prospect of freedom, and your role in seeing it come. I will twist your story, and the story of all who ever served with you, to have you remembered as enemies of liberty. I will make suspect everything you have ever fought for. The blows you have struck, the successes you have found, will all be twisted in the eyes of those who might rise up to make a better world; your fight will instead be seen as a lie, a deception, something to never be trusted. Your only legacy will become ensuring that these people who might shake off their chains instead will become mistrustful of anyone who would wish to lead them.
It wouldn't give me pleasure. You're a beautiful dreamer, my Captain. The sort that makes my heart ache. But... [ He lets out a breath, shrugs one shoulder. ] My oath-sworn duty is to defend my beleaguered home with all the power in my narrow shoulders and simple mind. And my honor-bound duty is to protect family and comrades.
And so: if you interfere with that, James, my lad, then I will fucking ruin everything you have worked for.
[ He reaches out, finally, for his glass of wine, and takes a tiny sip. Something to relax him just a bit. ]
How's that sound?
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Leaning hard against the edge of the desk, his hand against ribs is close to the knife in his belt. The proximity of it buzzes like a live thing. He studies Byerly and his closeness and his It wouldn't give me pleasure, and the grim smile he gives him is equal parts ragged and involuntary.]
The story you told yourself about me - the one about the man who gives himself away. [How do you make two opposing things travel in the same direction?] It's strange that it's just yours.
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[ For just a moment, his lashes lower. For just a moment, he feels a twinge of sorrow for what has been lost. ]
Monsters look for monsters.
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Then it seems we understand one another.
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And to what will this understanding lead, my dear Captain?
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I haven't decided yet. [He says instead because it's truer than the knife is.] I suspect it depends on what you make of this opportunity, knowing you will never be afforded it a second time. Whether you pick the fight in this room or the one outside it - I will resolve it.
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