crystal.

[elegiaque]

FORM: Crystal!
SENDER: Gwenaëlle Baudin.
RECIPIENT: Anyone with a crystal.
WHAT: Summary of content.
WHEN: Currentish.
WHERE: She's in Halamshiral; wherever you all are.
NOTES: Optional side quest. Also I know the difference between Kirkwall and Halamshiral and didn't edit her misspeaking a day later. You don't know.

This is Gwenaëlle Baudin. I need to make a brief trip from Halamshiral to an estate in the Dales, and given what happened the last time I took that road—

( understandably tersely, for those who do know what it was that happened, )

—I would prefer to do it with several able warriors. I've some other contacts I can reach out to closer to hand if no one is available, but I'm not in a great rush to do it, so if anyone is bored of the unrest in Kirkwall and would like to make a bit of coin on the side while touring some different, exciting unrest in what I assume will be remembered as the last days of Orlais before it was overrun by Corypheus, do be in touch.

Do not bother responding if you can't bring yourself to refrain from embarrassing the Inquisition in the High Quarter.

Comments

[rathercommon]

Which he gave to you?

[elegiaque]

Which he gave to his man to give to me. When he dies, all of this passes out of our hands and there would be nothing—

It needs to be done before.

( she hadn't known it was going to be so soon. none of them had. )

Whoever oversees it afterwards. Perhaps they'd be fair. Perhaps they wouldn't. It's a preference not to leave it to chance.

[rathercommon]

It wouldn't be you overseeing it?

[elegiaque]

As punishment for passing off the bastard daughter of his housekeeper as a legitimate heir for twenty-four years, the title and all its entailments belonging to the Comte de Vauquelin will revert to the crown upon his death.

( she took her mother's name, after that. )

* nor are you .... fingers please

[shri]

[ It's something to note, at the very least. This has been a problem with a great many before. One more thing to file into what to manage whilst she's here. ]

Anything else?

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty bites her lip, refraining from asking who exactly was the bastard daughter. Is the lady's sourness because of anger at an older sister who was an interloper? Or because she herself was cut out of the line of inheritance? If Kitty had to lay odds, she'd guess it were the latter - just because this lady seems like she wouldn't have refrained from bringing down curses on an older sister's head, if said sister were relevant. ]

So...Would you get anything at all once he's dead?

ah the good old i swore i typed those words

[elegiaque]

That's all.

[elegiaque]

To be frank with you,

( as if gwenaëlle seems capable of being absolutely anything else, )

that really isn't my most pressing concern.

[rathercommon]

I'd hope not, since if that were at the top of your list that'd make you a complete madwoman. But you've thought about it, I'm sure.

[elegiaque]

Unavoidably, as he told me his plans before he left.

[rathercommon]

And?

[elegiaque]

Why do you want to know?

[rathercommon]

[ Because as long as someone's answering questions, Kitty will keep asking them. ]

Because if you're the sort of person who'd look after staff, I think you ought to have the money rather than the Empress.

[elegiaque]

( there's a reason that gwenaëlle is paying her escort on this mission so generously, and it isn't all the goodness of her heart. some of it is just that: fuck celene. the empress may never think about her or care, but it's a small, easy act of rebellion to spend as much of that money as she can because every coin spent is one more that bitch's bloodstained hands don't get. )

If people got what they deserved, the world would be a very different place.

( the civil war would have ended fucking differently, for a start. )

[rathercommon]

Yeah. Sure. And if people contented themselves with what they got, and didn't fight for anything more, it'd also be a fair sight different.

[elegiaque]

Mmm.

It's all of a piece. He can say whatever he wants about what should happen after he dies, but once he's dead, he's dead.

( the likelihood of her seeing any part of an inheritance would be slim to none. )

[rathercommon]

Well - can't you take control of things now? While you've got authority? Like - taking things from the estate?

[elegiaque]

Do you know, that might be one thing that I could possibly do while I'm there.

( a bit dry.

guilfoyle could have done it for her, but she'd jumped at the excuse to get away from kirkwall a while longer, even if she'd had second-thoughts once she was there. she'll feel better, seeing to the properties and their staff personally, but.

well, it's not the only thing she's there for. it's just nothing she needed to be there to do.

an exhale. )

Within reason. I can take what's been set aside for me out of what was my lord's personal wealth.

[rathercommon]

[ Kitty clucks her tongue at that response, and says, rather defensively: ]

Well, you said you weren't there for the money. Sorry for taking you at your word. Is it insured? The estate? [ Do they even have the concept of insurance here, in the medieval past? ]

[elegiaque]

I said I didn't need to go to Orlais to get the money.

( blandly. )

What do you mean?

[rathercommon]

Mm. I guess not, then. [ Kitty huffs out a breath, and then says, pre-emptively cautious: ] I'm a rifter. You probably guessed. Anyway, where I'm from, there are services where you can pay a fee to have your home insured. So that if it burns down or something, you get money back for it. But this place does seem a little bit - [ Backwards. ] Um - It just doesn't seem like you'd have it.

[elegiaque]

No.

( and as tempting as it's been to burn the fucking place behind her, she's at least got the sense to be aware she'd be in irons before she could get anywhere near the border. )

[rathercommon]

Mm. [ Unfortunate. Insurance fraud would be a neat little solution. (Kitty Jones, if it is not obvious, is something of a criminal.) ]

What about - [ She hesitates. ] Is it in a dangerous country?

[elegiaque]

( gwenaëlle laughs for a while.

like, a while.

like, an uncomfortably long time for someone to laugh without crying.

are we sure she isn't crying. )

All I am going to do, ( eventually, ) is do what I came to do, take what's mine, and get the fuck out of this miserable place for, ideally, the rest of my life.

[rathercommon]

Yeah. Well, all right.

[ That's...a creepy sort of laugh. Kitty, though, is undeterred: she fiddles with the crystal so that she's speaking to Gwen and Gwen alone, and says: ]

'Cause - I mean - the crown can't get what's there if it's in the hands of bandits. You know?