Marcus draws a wandered step nearer as Flint lands, a level of formal attentiveness of the same instinct that has kept him in his armor and Monster in her bridle. Any loosening of that tension at the news they're done for the evening (if anyone can be done while camping out in enemy territory, where hierarchy will click briskly back into place at any sign of complication) is invisible, at first, Marcus nodding acceptance at this decision.
But he isn't waiting to be told anything else as he turns to move back to where Monster is preening, seeing about loosening some of the straps on her so that she can rest more comfortably.
"These will only maintain themselves for an hour at a time, at most," he says, with a tip of his head to the warming runes on the ground. "I can keep them during my watch."
There are better glyph-focused mages out there that Flint can partner with next time, surely.
Things being what they are, he makes do with stripping the saddle bags from behind his saddle and slinging them across his shoulder. Loosening Buggie's cinch and harness buckles, a hand short of warding off the griffon as she twists her neck and head around. Wrapping her heavy chin against his hip in an effort to nibble at the lacing of the forward saddlebag.
"I've some suspicion we can do without if it comes down to it," says the man currently making to extract himself from the hook of Buggie's feathered neck, shoving her off with a rough hand at the base of her heavy beak.
He passes Marcus a sidelong look across the tufts of Buggie's ear feathers.
Following suit in offloading the saddlebags, Marcus glances back to take measure of that remark—and cuts loose a breath of a laugh for the serpentine reach of Buggie's neck trying to herd Flint in closer.
"She's cuddly," he notes. "Is it that you spoil her?"
Having had her wings stroked through already, Monster is less desperate for attention—both immediately and as a rule—and, once she can sense Marcus has offloaded her as much as seems wise, she nibbles once at an errant bootlace then moves to a warm line of runic glow, settling down on it with a mild amount of put-upon drama. One big paw raking at more of the runes as if she could gather more of them to her.
"I told the stablemaster that every mount I have is always after a feeding," Marcus explains as he collects back his waterskin. Testing it with his fingers. It's gotten colder with the night time flight, so he spares it magic augmentation as he undoes the cap. "And he diagnosed me of doing it too often."
A last ditch effort to go nibbling after the flap of the nearer saddlebag is met with another forceful hand pushing her away, and so the slate colored griffon sighs. Makes due with—Flint catches her by the headstall before she can nip at his coat and forces her round, bullying her in the direction of joining her sibling.
"She bites," he explains, steering the heavy animal round and clicking at her in an an effort to encourage her to lay down alongside Monster. "But we've discovered my fingers are more useful to her while they're still on my hand."
Presumably '—and occasionally not petting her can be perfectly acceptable' is the next lesson on the docket.
With some encouragement, Buggie flops down perpendicular to Monster. Given her head, she makes to extend her beak out and nibble at the nearest recently smoothed feather. This, Flint takes no exception to. They can bother one another all they like so long as they do it in some approximation of quiet. Instead, he moves toward toward the opposite side of the low glowing ring and there dumps the saddlebags en route to rolling a medium sized slab of stone over on which he might take a seat.
No fire. Earth flecked with shale and fine little stones. Weather clear and chill for its purity. They're likely to share this first watch; he can't imagine being comfortable enough to sleep right at this moment.
Monster stays perfectly still as Buggie approaches, but doesn't disguise the way she tracks her with an open golden eye. Defensive, preemptively, of the warm spot she's claimed, but when approach amounts to no more than a nibble, she lifts her head, twitches that wing away before relaxing. The sound of what parses, to Marcus' ear, as a friendly croak from Monster rather than a warning has him leaving them to it as he moves towards where Flint is settling.
The dropping of saddlebags is loose in gesture, familiar. In his hand is the copper glint of cigarette case, rescued from his pocket, as he makes some doubtful evaluation of this use of a stone before he goes and tries to brush smooth a patch of ground with the edge of his boot. Doubts the efficacy of this too.
Flint's answering huff is low, expressed without actually looking at him as dredges the saddlebags across the bend of his knee and begins to search the one side. Is it smart, or did he make more trouble for himself than it was worth?
"Softhearted," he suggests instead, and manages to keep a straight face during it. Though there's something to it; if he'd been sensible, he would have checked the griffon with a little slap or a tug on her line rather than ostensibly rewarding her for every little transgression.
He finds what he's looking for at the bottom of the saddlebag. Twisting free, and a small batter cup and a slab of a few hard biscuits is produced. The former, Flint blows some debris out of before offering it to Marcus in a clear request that he lend him a splash of water.
"Did your family not keep a dog that you remember? Before."
Once he's raked himself a spot in the sandy earth, Marcus settles. Angled so that he has a good view of the darkness past Flint's shoulder, and Flint his. Softhearted gets no argument, save for a fine and subtle twist at the corner of his mouth. Maybe that's it.
He leans, tips a helping of water into the cup.
Draws back, taking a sip for himself in place of a quick answer. A shake of his head as he swallows, sets the skin aside, thumbs open the cigarette case. "I don't think so," he says, drawing free a cigarette. In no rush, idling it between his knuckles. "Full enough house already."
He looks back to the two shapes of the griffons just nearby, where Buggie's tail idly lashes across the sandy ground. A rustling protest slightly further back where a paw is planted on a beak and lazily pushed aside.
"Too few hours in the day to be minding a dog," he says, breaking off one of the biscuits and pushing it inside the small cup. Given some time in that measure of water, it might remember it had once been something other than the texture of sawdust glued into shape. "Though we'd a cat on every ship I've ever been on."
And a monkey, and sea turtle (before it'd been eaten), and a bird who'd sometimes screamed in the middle of the night for no reason that could be figured. There's nothing a crew loves more than the novelty of an animal aboard.
Setting his boots forward, he places their soles directly on top of that soft glow of the runic ring. Feels the warmth come ebbing through them. Were the dark about them less dark, and the threat of roaming Venatori less like a prickle at the back of the neck, and the food less crumbly, he might almost consider the arrangement comfortable. He's sat on less flat rocks.
After a moment, the biscuit is fished free of its bath.
The grunt from Marcus implies some amount of agreement—likely there was always a mouser in the kitchens, and it's more likely he could name them now rather than say with certainty if his family, before, ever had a dog. A thing contemplated but not said out loud, summoning a small flame between his fingers and dipping the end of his cigarette into it.
A fine white trail of smoke lifts, more delicate than the great gusts of black clouds that mark his presence on a battlefield, but just as sharp to the nose.
(That smell in the air tempts some prickle of the senses; it had lingered for a long time in the bed linens of that apartment adjacent to the division offices.)
Despite soaking in the water, the biscuit is slow to separate into two pieces between the hand.
"By twelve," he says, catching crumbles across his thigh. It's a throwaway remark, as if this is the simplest question ever put to him or as if the answer is very easy to supply. These are distant, uncomplicated truths and he is more concerned with the mechanics of chewing through the soggy biscuit than eschewing this line of inquiry he'd started. "Which is typical, unless you've the money to false muster straight into the wardroom."
The smoke is good for discouraging an appetite, supposedly, and there is nothing about soggy biscuits that stir his hunger, but Marcus finds himself watching Flint's hands anyway. Maybe for their task, or maybe it's just a good place to rest his focus at this angle, sitting in the sand. He is just near the warming runes, settled on the inside of the circle, the air prickled warm where, a few feet away, it's sharply cold.
A pause implies either a silent wandering off the topic or a contemplation—it can truly go either way—but shows his hand as he asks, "Did you want to be?"
Less a contemplation and more an imagining, of that world at that age.
Flint's answer is, at first, a low hum of acknowledgement. The answer is more complicated though, and less readily to hand—not because he's reticent to give it, but because he must consider and decide on the correct answer. Because:
"I can only assume my answer would have been reliant on the events of the day when you'd put the question to me." Twelve year old boys being, notoriously, somewhat difficult and changeable with their opinions on most things much less the trajectory of their professional careers.
Had he been happy always in the service? No, certainly not. To say nothing of the complications that has dogged the latter half of his commission, those first years had been difficult and often bitter, homesick and lonely. But they'd also been remarkably free, even if the boy who had gone from that seaside village had cried when he'd left it.
"I'd some understanding that I should be proud of it, and mostly was."
(Is, maybe. Though that's stranger to contemplate.)
This first part gains a sharpening in Marcus' expression—less objection or annoyance, but something skeptical, as if he might accuse Flint of evading the question. Ever subtle by a matter of instinct, and disperses when Flint has more to add.
Accepts it, rotating cigarette in fingers, focus dropping down to the boots Flint has resting on the glowing runes. He can move his own just a little, and touch the toe of it into the outside arc near the heel.
He does so, when he says, "You owe me a story of the Imperial navy," as he leans back, weight resting on a hand. Potentially a loose interpretation of that exchange.
So loose that it takes him a moment to recall exactly when he might have promised such a foolish thing. Recalling the circumstances—in which he is firmly certain he'd come out being owed something as well, if they're counting—prompts his brow to lift by a few degrees.
"Ah." Is that so?
He takes a bite from a soggy biscuit quarters. Chews slowly. Doesn't withdraw his heel.
Marcus settles his foot there, a conscious nudge of contact turned negligent as he brings his cigarette up again to breathe from while Flint eats. Comfortable and confident in his interpretation of events, meeting eyebrow lift with a faint tip of his head. That is so.
Salve has dried chalkily on the side of his neck. Gotten in time that he no longer itches, at least for tonight.
"Mm," he rumbles right back, a tinge of mocking humor in it and eyebrows still at that elevated altitude. A conversation made up of grunts and single syllables. Isn't this riveting?
He finishes the quarter. While he studies Marcus, he wipes his fingers at the knee of his trousers and washes the too dense biscuit down with a sip from what night chilled water remains in the little tin cup.
"What do you know of the Tevinter soporati?" he asks.
Mockery is taken well enough, a crinkle of humour reflected back somewhere more at his eyes than mouth. No move to amend or add to it. He stands by monosyllabic grunt.
The next question demands more, though, Marcus pausing over it. "They're those without magic, in Tevinter," he offers. "But not of the slaves. Commoners, merchants, military."
It's a sight more than he knew not just before Riftwatch, but before the rebels had almost crossed that northern border with promises of a homeland. He'd learned a little, then.
Yes, something like that, suggests the tip of Flint's temple. He drops his eye from Marcus to the biscuit; takes to turning it into smaller pieces between his fingers in lieu of devouring it.
"Above them the Laetan, and below the freemen and slaves. The Imperium at sea is much the same as it is otherwise. A soporati might reasonably aspire to be a petty officer aboard, but if he's in the wardroom then it's likely because he has indentured himself to a commissioned mage. But let's say that by some miracle, he has the good fortune to obtain his letter of passage when he's eleven or twelve."
Entirely hypothetically, of course, is punctuated with a brief and sidelong glance.
"Then he need only survive two years to earn his temporary rank. From there, if he wishes to be a Lieutenant, he requires a commanding officer willing to submit him to a board and the head with which to pass their examination. Unlikely as those circumstances are, these are measurable requirements and therefore perfectly attainable should someone find himself in such a position regardless of where he might come from or who he might be otherwise."
The pause as Flint works his way through a bite of another soggy biscuit corner implies a However—
There is a breath in from Marcus that might betray the early kindling of impatience as Flint launches into an explanation that sounds, first, broader than a single man's story, but it doesn't resolve into words. Listens anyway, dropping his gaze aside almost in time as Flint, dispersing ember and ash from the end of his cigarette onto sandy, before returning focus to Flint's face.
Entirely hypothetically, he tries to imagine a younger James Flint in uniform, attending to examinations. Maybe it is just as easily imagined as himself in robes, awaiting written verdict as to whether he'd be named Enchanter.
There is a however implied. He is expectantly silent for the other side of it.
"Obtaining a captaincy is something else entirely. There's no official examination. It requires the captain in command to afford said lieutenant opportunities to prove themselves capable, and asks that same captain to endorse them as a sort of protege. In the case of a soporati, it begs some risk to one's reputation. And even if that did happen, and if this lieutenant did prove himself and his commanding officer was willing to make a place for him, then there are the naval lords in Minrathous who must come to some consensus on the promotion and underwrite it. Those men and women have never met this lieutenant. They see only his name, and that he is a soporati; and they see the names of other junior officers and that they are not."
He has stopped shredding the hardtack biscuit in part because he has turned it into glorified crumbles and reducing it farther would only render the thing entirely inedible. Instead, he makes himself hold the softened pieces in his cupped palm and shifts the set of his boots in the sand away further into the arcane ring and off the gently heated circle itself. The heat has leeched all the way up through the leather, and convinced him temporarily that he is warm and doesn't require to cling so close to touch of magic to be comfortable.
Flint turns his offhand in place of a shrug.
"There are soporati captains in the merchant service, but I didn't want to be one of them. I determined to become someone who couldn't be passed over. In the process of becoming that someone, I simply came to resent the thing which required that of me." (Simply, he says.) "But I suspect they resented me too," he says, playing that this is in any way a pleasure comparable to whatever specific disappoint it was that he had suffered in exchange for it.
Marcus glances down, instinctively tracking that shift of movement where he feels Flint nudge his feet forwards off the glowing magic and away from where he'd pushed his own boot near. Back up, considering him, serious in the gentle glow of runic light and almost only that, by now, given it's his back to where the sun has set.
He could ask after it, that resentment. That word, simply. He is curious about it the most, he thinks. What does this process look like? What does it resemble?
Shifts his boot. A less subtle slide until his ankle settles at Flint's heel. Almost playful, though the rest of his demeanour doesn't match that, nor his response. Something else.
"Did you make it that far, before you left it?" he asks, instead. Designed in part to afford some room if there is more to it that Flint would willingly speak of, would wish him to know, but Marcus finds that in spite of that curiousity, he has no appetite for worrying at the thing like a bone, cracking it open.
Because it's familiar in a way where he knows he wouldn't appreciate it, in return. "The captaincy."
Something else. Had he either hand free really free, he might lean forward and reach out to catch that pressing ankle; run his fingers across dusty leather and see the shape of the thing altered from what feels a little like pity into another shape. He doesn't particularly care for the former. Not because of who it is doing it, just that the thing itself pricks a little at the surface of his pride. Instead, he fixes his attention on the ambient warmth of the rune band across the backs of his calves.
(It's chill there, the air at his back. Though the cliff face hanging above and the scrub about them wards off the desert wind, at least. Opposite that, the two griffons have reached a kind of accord. Buggie has settled for preening Monster's soot free feathers rather than yanking at them.)
"Close," he says, It had been. Managing an Altus with controversial opinions, and seeing his strange proclivities turned into profit would have done it. "But no."
Despite his intention not to feel it, there is some power left in it that grips him. Slants a line in his face slightly crooked. So. Lighter, as if this is a story that has been designed to reach this fact rather than any other and he now sees a way to his punchline:
"This may come as a surprise to you, but pirates are remarkably less particular about promotion."
The boot stays where it is, resting comfortably while Marcus smokes. Whether until Flint's hands become free or until one of them needs to take a piss or some other thing that pushes them in the few directions currently available.
The punchline is accepted as it ought to be, a slight ripple of humour—no, not surprised—and perhaps an opportunity to let the story, such as it is, drop anchor there.
It's not unconvincing. A Naval officer who struggled under the yoke of an oppressive system saw what he would need to become to become what he was meant to be, and left it behind for fair wages and deadly democratic processes and harassing the merchant sailors he didn't want to become. Perhaps that man develops sympathies, had harboured them already. That sounds containable within a dry aside about promotions.
If there is a prickle of feeling that there is more story beneath it, then that's an instinct borne of knowing there always is. And that Flint, in specific, would elect to edit.
"I imagine they're not very particular about most things," Marcus says, smoke escaping between his teeth as he considers the progress made on cigarette. "Including the state of the Magisterium, so long as there was trade to plunder."
"It depends on the man," he says, attention sliding to what remains of the biscuit with its soggy exterior and portioning out what remains of the water left in the little cup. He polishes both off. Wipes his hand on his knee.
"Some were happy with whatever fell into their lap without a thought for what would tomorrow. But then there are the escaped slaves, and those who left because of some dispute with the Magisterium's rule, or who had no care to be folded in under it again when the Imperial governor came calling on the island."
A tilt of the head, faintly red rune light touching across the fine bristle of hair at his temple. A faint spreading of the hands from where his elbows have hooked across knees. It's a complicated business.
Marcus picks up his waterskin, takes a swig somewhere in the midst of that. Offers, after Flint's gesture.
A beat of silence, after, no further questions to follow immediately. The occasional croaked avian-feline purr from Monster under the attentions she is getting, heavy head resting on talons with a wing angled to permit Buggie getting at the crumpled feathers beneath.
"I know there are some among Riftwatch, and out of Riftwatch," he says, tapping cigarette, "who think those that broke from the Circles only did so because we knew nothing of what would wait for us outside of it, when we were afforded warm beds, consistent meals." Like a dog might hope for is only unsaid because it is too easy to level his bitterness in that direction, even when it's not the subject at hand.
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But he isn't waiting to be told anything else as he turns to move back to where Monster is preening, seeing about loosening some of the straps on her so that she can rest more comfortably.
"These will only maintain themselves for an hour at a time, at most," he says, with a tip of his head to the warming runes on the ground. "I can keep them during my watch."
There are better glyph-focused mages out there that Flint can partner with next time, surely.
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Things being what they are, he makes do with stripping the saddle bags from behind his saddle and slinging them across his shoulder. Loosening Buggie's cinch and harness buckles, a hand short of warding off the griffon as she twists her neck and head around. Wrapping her heavy chin against his hip in an effort to nibble at the lacing of the forward saddlebag.
"I've some suspicion we can do without if it comes down to it," says the man currently making to extract himself from the hook of Buggie's feathered neck, shoving her off with a rough hand at the base of her heavy beak.
He passes Marcus a sidelong look across the tufts of Buggie's ear feathers.
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"She's cuddly," he notes. "Is it that you spoil her?"
Having had her wings stroked through already, Monster is less desperate for attention—both immediately and as a rule—and, once she can sense Marcus has offloaded her as much as seems wise, she nibbles once at an errant bootlace then moves to a warm line of runic glow, settling down on it with a mild amount of put-upon drama. One big paw raking at more of the runes as if she could gather more of them to her.
"I told the stablemaster that every mount I have is always after a feeding," Marcus explains as he collects back his waterskin. Testing it with his fingers. It's gotten colder with the night time flight, so he spares it magic augmentation as he undoes the cap. "And he diagnosed me of doing it too often."
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"She bites," he explains, steering the heavy animal round and clicking at her in an an effort to encourage her to lay down alongside Monster. "But we've discovered my fingers are more useful to her while they're still on my hand."
Presumably '—and occasionally not petting her can be perfectly acceptable' is the next lesson on the docket.
With some encouragement, Buggie flops down perpendicular to Monster. Given her head, she makes to extend her beak out and nibble at the nearest recently smoothed feather. This, Flint takes no exception to. They can bother one another all they like so long as they do it in some approximation of quiet. Instead, he moves toward toward the opposite side of the low glowing ring and there dumps the saddlebags en route to rolling a medium sized slab of stone over on which he might take a seat.
No fire. Earth flecked with shale and fine little stones. Weather clear and chill for its purity. They're likely to share this first watch; he can't imagine being comfortable enough to sleep right at this moment.
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The dropping of saddlebags is loose in gesture, familiar. In his hand is the copper glint of cigarette case, rescued from his pocket, as he makes some doubtful evaluation of this use of a stone before he goes and tries to brush smooth a patch of ground with the edge of his boot. Doubts the efficacy of this too.
"Smart," he remarks. Wry.
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"Softhearted," he suggests instead, and manages to keep a straight face during it. Though there's something to it; if he'd been sensible, he would have checked the griffon with a little slap or a tug on her line rather than ostensibly rewarding her for every little transgression.
He finds what he's looking for at the bottom of the saddlebag. Twisting free, and a small batter cup and a slab of a few hard biscuits is produced. The former, Flint blows some debris out of before offering it to Marcus in a clear request that he lend him a splash of water.
"Did your family not keep a dog that you remember? Before."
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He leans, tips a helping of water into the cup.
Draws back, taking a sip for himself in place of a quick answer. A shake of his head as he swallows, sets the skin aside, thumbs open the cigarette case. "I don't think so," he says, drawing free a cigarette. In no rush, idling it between his knuckles. "Full enough house already."
He looks back to the two shapes of the griffons just nearby, where Buggie's tail idly lashes across the sandy ground. A rustling protest slightly further back where a paw is planted on a beak and lazily pushed aside.
"You?"
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And a monkey, and sea turtle (before it'd been eaten), and a bird who'd sometimes screamed in the middle of the night for no reason that could be figured. There's nothing a crew loves more than the novelty of an animal aboard.
Setting his boots forward, he places their soles directly on top of that soft glow of the runic ring. Feels the warmth come ebbing through them. Were the dark about them less dark, and the threat of roaming Venatori less like a prickle at the back of the neck, and the food less crumbly, he might almost consider the arrangement comfortable. He's sat on less flat rocks.
After a moment, the biscuit is fished free of its bath.
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A fine white trail of smoke lifts, more delicate than the great gusts of black clouds that mark his presence on a battlefield, but just as sharp to the nose.
"Were you on ships as far back as that?"
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Despite soaking in the water, the biscuit is slow to separate into two pieces between the hand.
"By twelve," he says, catching crumbles across his thigh. It's a throwaway remark, as if this is the simplest question ever put to him or as if the answer is very easy to supply. These are distant, uncomplicated truths and he is more concerned with the mechanics of chewing through the soggy biscuit than eschewing this line of inquiry he'd started. "Which is typical, unless you've the money to false muster straight into the wardroom."
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A pause implies either a silent wandering off the topic or a contemplation—it can truly go either way—but shows his hand as he asks, "Did you want to be?"
Less a contemplation and more an imagining, of that world at that age.
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"I can only assume my answer would have been reliant on the events of the day when you'd put the question to me." Twelve year old boys being, notoriously, somewhat difficult and changeable with their opinions on most things much less the trajectory of their professional careers.
Had he been happy always in the service? No, certainly not. To say nothing of the complications that has dogged the latter half of his commission, those first years had been difficult and often bitter, homesick and lonely. But they'd also been remarkably free, even if the boy who had gone from that seaside village had cried when he'd left it.
"I'd some understanding that I should be proud of it, and mostly was."
(Is, maybe. Though that's stranger to contemplate.)
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Accepts it, rotating cigarette in fingers, focus dropping down to the boots Flint has resting on the glowing runes. He can move his own just a little, and touch the toe of it into the outside arc near the heel.
He does so, when he says, "You owe me a story of the Imperial navy," as he leans back, weight resting on a hand. Potentially a loose interpretation of that exchange.
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"Ah." Is that so?
He takes a bite from a soggy biscuit quarters. Chews slowly. Doesn't withdraw his heel.
"You wanted to know why I'd left."
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Salve has dried chalkily on the side of his neck. Gotten in time that he no longer itches, at least for tonight.
"Mm," he says, a rumbled sound.
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He finishes the quarter. While he studies Marcus, he wipes his fingers at the knee of his trousers and washes the too dense biscuit down with a sip from what night chilled water remains in the little tin cup.
"What do you know of the Tevinter soporati?" he asks.
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The next question demands more, though, Marcus pausing over it. "They're those without magic, in Tevinter," he offers. "But not of the slaves. Commoners, merchants, military."
It's a sight more than he knew not just before Riftwatch, but before the rebels had almost crossed that northern border with promises of a homeland. He'd learned a little, then.
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"Above them the Laetan, and below the freemen and slaves. The Imperium at sea is much the same as it is otherwise. A soporati might reasonably aspire to be a petty officer aboard, but if he's in the wardroom then it's likely because he has indentured himself to a commissioned mage. But let's say that by some miracle, he has the good fortune to obtain his letter of passage when he's eleven or twelve."
Entirely hypothetically, of course, is punctuated with a brief and sidelong glance.
"Then he need only survive two years to earn his temporary rank. From there, if he wishes to be a Lieutenant, he requires a commanding officer willing to submit him to a board and the head with which to pass their examination. Unlikely as those circumstances are, these are measurable requirements and therefore perfectly attainable should someone find himself in such a position regardless of where he might come from or who he might be otherwise."
The pause as Flint works his way through a bite of another soggy biscuit corner implies a However—
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Entirely hypothetically, he tries to imagine a younger James Flint in uniform, attending to examinations. Maybe it is just as easily imagined as himself in robes, awaiting written verdict as to whether he'd be named Enchanter.
There is a however implied. He is expectantly silent for the other side of it.
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"Obtaining a captaincy is something else entirely. There's no official examination. It requires the captain in command to afford said lieutenant opportunities to prove themselves capable, and asks that same captain to endorse them as a sort of protege. In the case of a soporati, it begs some risk to one's reputation. And even if that did happen, and if this lieutenant did prove himself and his commanding officer was willing to make a place for him, then there are the naval lords in Minrathous who must come to some consensus on the promotion and underwrite it. Those men and women have never met this lieutenant. They see only his name, and that he is a soporati; and they see the names of other junior officers and that they are not."
He has stopped shredding the hardtack biscuit in part because he has turned it into glorified crumbles and reducing it farther would only render the thing entirely inedible. Instead, he makes himself hold the softened pieces in his cupped palm and shifts the set of his boots in the sand away further into the arcane ring and off the gently heated circle itself. The heat has leeched all the way up through the leather, and convinced him temporarily that he is warm and doesn't require to cling so close to touch of magic to be comfortable.
Flint turns his offhand in place of a shrug.
"There are soporati captains in the merchant service, but I didn't want to be one of them. I determined to become someone who couldn't be passed over. In the process of becoming that someone, I simply came to resent the thing which required that of me." (Simply, he says.) "But I suspect they resented me too," he says, playing that this is in any way a pleasure comparable to whatever specific disappoint it was that he had suffered in exchange for it.
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He could ask after it, that resentment. That word, simply. He is curious about it the most, he thinks. What does this process look like? What does it resemble?
Shifts his boot. A less subtle slide until his ankle settles at Flint's heel. Almost playful, though the rest of his demeanour doesn't match that, nor his response. Something else.
"Did you make it that far, before you left it?" he asks, instead. Designed in part to afford some room if there is more to it that Flint would willingly speak of, would wish him to know, but Marcus finds that in spite of that curiousity, he has no appetite for worrying at the thing like a bone, cracking it open.
Because it's familiar in a way where he knows he wouldn't appreciate it, in return. "The captaincy."
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(It's chill there, the air at his back. Though the cliff face hanging above and the scrub about them wards off the desert wind, at least. Opposite that, the two griffons have reached a kind of accord. Buggie has settled for preening Monster's soot free feathers rather than yanking at them.)
"Close," he says, It had been. Managing an Altus with controversial opinions, and seeing his strange proclivities turned into profit would have done it. "But no."
Despite his intention not to feel it, there is some power left in it that grips him. Slants a line in his face slightly crooked. So. Lighter, as if this is a story that has been designed to reach this fact rather than any other and he now sees a way to his punchline:
"This may come as a surprise to you, but pirates are remarkably less particular about promotion."
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The punchline is accepted as it ought to be, a slight ripple of humour—no, not surprised—and perhaps an opportunity to let the story, such as it is, drop anchor there.
It's not unconvincing. A Naval officer who struggled under the yoke of an oppressive system saw what he would need to become to become what he was meant to be, and left it behind for fair wages and deadly democratic processes and harassing the merchant sailors he didn't want to become. Perhaps that man develops sympathies, had harboured them already. That sounds containable within a dry aside about promotions.
If there is a prickle of feeling that there is more story beneath it, then that's an instinct borne of knowing there always is. And that Flint, in specific, would elect to edit.
"I imagine they're not very particular about most things," Marcus says, smoke escaping between his teeth as he considers the progress made on cigarette. "Including the state of the Magisterium, so long as there was trade to plunder."
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"Some were happy with whatever fell into their lap without a thought for what would tomorrow. But then there are the escaped slaves, and those who left because of some dispute with the Magisterium's rule, or who had no care to be folded in under it again when the Imperial governor came calling on the island."
A tilt of the head, faintly red rune light touching across the fine bristle of hair at his temple. A faint spreading of the hands from where his elbows have hooked across knees. It's a complicated business.
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A beat of silence, after, no further questions to follow immediately. The occasional croaked avian-feline purr from Monster under the attentions she is getting, heavy head resting on talons with a wing angled to permit Buggie getting at the crumpled feathers beneath.
"I know there are some among Riftwatch, and out of Riftwatch," he says, tapping cigarette, "who think those that broke from the Circles only did so because we knew nothing of what would wait for us outside of it, when we were afforded warm beds, consistent meals." Like a dog might hope for is only unsaid because it is too easy to level his bitterness in that direction, even when it's not the subject at hand.
Shrugs a little. "Depends on the man, too."
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