It would be nice and it would be credible, Maker knows, to have more than only former Templars listed on the page. But adding Mrs. Fitcher and Brother Gideon to its rank and then crossing them out might have been too whimsical. Marcus is silent and patient as Flint counts out some silent beats, all expectation by the time Flint looks up again.
There's an uncertain pause, where he measures the question against his intent, and says, "Safeguard Riftwatch. Arming ourselves with better information, and setting the expectation that we require it."
A pause, and he adds, "It's a beginning. More than we have now."
There are questions here which beg to be asked. Yes, it's a beginning—pointed in a direction that the whole company can be trusted to understand, given that abomination and heretic cultists have hardly proven any more discriminatory with their abuse than Riftwatch has with its membership. But what does the end of this look like? Is Marcus prepared to surrender his contacts abroad should someone find this line of questioning thus motivated? And how far does this—chasing the heels of what they know rather than what they don't—really get them? Does it buy them anything more than the illusion of action and bristled hackles from the Chantry's representatives? Are they breeding for trust, or for paranoia?
Someone will ask these things and they will be right to.
"Alright."
The page is set back down onto the desk, five fingertips pivoting it back around to face Marcus.
There's a split second after this instruction where Marcus thinks that this is where questions, caveat, qualification goes in place of it, but it's hardly a pause after these things do not happen before he picks the page up off the desk, and slips it into the book he had brought. He nods.
He shall keep Flint informed.
Closing this book—full of notes of happenings on watch, guard rotations, sundry other things that do not directly pertain to shaking down Chantry-adjacent members—is a signal of a meeting concluded, but it doesn't have him standing and leaving as is his usual. Instead, Marcus pauses over it, appears to steel himself to some degree, and say, "Regarding what happened—"
—could have just about anything following on from it. Throughout the return to Kirkwall, Marcus had spoken to as few a people as he could get away with. Exhaustion demanded he surrender discussions of intrigue to Bastien and the Seeker, the decision-making to the Commander and Derrica. Maybe he'd have wanted something different in its outcome. There'd been time for talk and he'd spent all of it white-knuckled and furious.
So it's here and today he says, "Thank you for your part in it."
Placating Tsenka Abendroth in the fashion required to delay her and see that the effort to recover Marcus and Julius be carried out a manner of the Division Head's choosing. The careful transfer of authority from himself to Derrica as means of giving himself a measure of plausible deniability on both sides. His part in it.
Here, in this room, Flint absently taps the tip of his forefinger at the top of the desk. The series of his rings, silver and gold and veridium, red polished aventurine and darker, flatter stones glint in the light filtered through the bank of narrow windows behind his shoulder.
"You're welcome. I trust that if our places were reversed, you would have made every effort to do the same."
Whatever mechanical shifts and turns that had to happen to have Marcus freed in the manner that he was—less efficiency? More? A massacre on the road, a dead Riftwatch agent or two, or a single Templar with an arrow protruding from the gap in his helm, or perhaps a calm conversation and some deal struck—whatever they are, he is freed. It was arranged, and it was done. There is a simplicity to it that he could complicate, quite easily.
Or he could offer gratitude, and maybe it was only a little bit physically painful to do.
Flint says that, and Marcus nods, once. "Aye," stated simply, apparently truthful, apparently satisfied that this gesture crossed the desk and stayed there.
Across the desk, the shape of his hand turns—some small, open palmed gesture which says Good talk or some similar sentiment. Indeed, what more is there to be said on the subject? Marcus is here. Julius is whole. Tsenka is a dreamer walking among them, and no one has made any motion toward paranoid overtures to check that, no matter how much the impulse might live right there under his fingertips. If there are any thoughts to the contrary which had kept him awake at night during their return trip from Orlais, then they're better left right where they'd begun—in his head, where they might be carefully turned over in private. Examined so thoroughly that hopefully he never has cause to do so while asleep.
(He had, if nothing else, steered Silver in Petrana's direction before climbing all those stairs to the griffon's eyrie.)
"You know," he says, as if he's only just remembered something. Maybe he has—some latent form sharpening under the influence of relevance. "That dream we all shared some time ago where we were warned of the Gates. It's a little strange to think of it now, but I believe I recall Julius and I searching after Madame de Cedoux."
His hand turns further, finally moving toward his half-filled cup.
Small as it is, that initial gesture is enough to indicate dismissal. Marcus gets as far as leaning forwards by a matter of a fraction, fingers hooking around the spine of the book, before pausing when Flint speaks up again.
It is unexpected, the thing he says. Marcus' expression had already been reflexively neutral, already thinking onto the next thing, but now there's a frosting over, fine tensions pulling subtle at the edges and a more needling focus in his stare across the desk. But it's more winter than fire beneath surface, less animated. Withdraw.
He flexes his fingers where he grips the book, relieving some tension, the couple of rings he wears purchased in Lowtown, adorned in dull stone and glass. He continues his paused momentum, turning to leave with the same dismissal of something being snapped free and discarded.
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xoxox
There's an uncertain pause, where he measures the question against his intent, and says, "Safeguard Riftwatch. Arming ourselves with better information, and setting the expectation that we require it."
A pause, and he adds, "It's a beginning. More than we have now."
no subject
Someone will ask these things and they will be right to.
"Alright."
The page is set back down onto the desk, five fingertips pivoting it back around to face Marcus.
"Keep me informed."
no subject
He shall keep Flint informed.
Closing this book—full of notes of happenings on watch, guard rotations, sundry other things that do not directly pertain to shaking down Chantry-adjacent members—is a signal of a meeting concluded, but it doesn't have him standing and leaving as is his usual. Instead, Marcus pauses over it, appears to steel himself to some degree, and say, "Regarding what happened—"
—could have just about anything following on from it. Throughout the return to Kirkwall, Marcus had spoken to as few a people as he could get away with. Exhaustion demanded he surrender discussions of intrigue to Bastien and the Seeker, the decision-making to the Commander and Derrica. Maybe he'd have wanted something different in its outcome. There'd been time for talk and he'd spent all of it white-knuckled and furious.
So it's here and today he says, "Thank you for your part in it."
no subject
Here, in this room, Flint absently taps the tip of his forefinger at the top of the desk. The series of his rings, silver and gold and veridium, red polished aventurine and darker, flatter stones glint in the light filtered through the bank of narrow windows behind his shoulder.
"You're welcome. I trust that if our places were reversed, you would have made every effort to do the same."
Sure.
no subject
Or he could offer gratitude, and maybe it was only a little bit physically painful to do.
Flint says that, and Marcus nods, once. "Aye," stated simply, apparently truthful, apparently satisfied that this gesture crossed the desk and stayed there.
no subject
(He had, if nothing else, steered Silver in Petrana's direction before climbing all those stairs to the griffon's eyrie.)
"You know," he says, as if he's only just remembered something. Maybe he has—some latent form sharpening under the influence of relevance. "That dream we all shared some time ago where we were warned of the Gates. It's a little strange to think of it now, but I believe I recall Julius and I searching after Madame de Cedoux."
His hand turns further, finally moving toward his half-filled cup.
"Let's hope this is the end of my rescuing days."
no subject
It is unexpected, the thing he says. Marcus' expression had already been reflexively neutral, already thinking onto the next thing, but now there's a frosting over, fine tensions pulling subtle at the edges and a more needling focus in his stare across the desk. But it's more winter than fire beneath surface, less animated. Withdraw.
He flexes his fingers where he grips the book, relieving some tension, the couple of rings he wears purchased in Lowtown, adorned in dull stone and glass. He continues his paused momentum, turning to leave with the same dismissal of something being snapped free and discarded.