therookery | CRYSTAL;

Entry tags:

CRYSTAL;

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Flint
RECIPIENT: Riftwatch
NOTES: new dad; vaugely backdated to earlier in the month

This is Captain Flint. For those of you who may be unaware, Ser Coupe has stepped away from command of Riftwatch's forces. I've been asked to take the work to hand in her absence. [How politic.]

I mean to familiarize with the division's work and its personnel. If we have yet to meet, you are more than welcome to make your way to the division office in order to make your introductions. Should you have any questions, I encourage you to ask them. I only request that any concerns be submitted in writing for fair review as I work to acquaint myself. [So they can be burned or stuffed unceremoniously into the Complaints box.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Congratulations on your appointment, Commander Flint.

[Sounds like gratitude (stilted, half genuine) even if the words aren't a thank you; he knows how he's meant to play this game:]

I hope to be useful in it.

( petrana does not say, you could scarcely do worse, because she does, too. )

If I might be of use to you in it where remits overlap, of course. I was at your predecessor's disposal.

( that is one way of describing what in practise ended up more of a cold war. )

I would be more than happy for any assistance you might provide. [Etc, etc. But-- recognize who leans forward when you say you've taken the reins of a thing.]

We should speak when you have a moment.

Of course. Perhaps this evening?

( leans forward. )

So long as you don't mind an office in the midst of reordering, I don't see why not.

I am certain I've seen the offices of the division heads in worse state, ( ever so lightly. ) I shall join you there after the evening meal.

( the better not to interrupt ongoing work, etcetera. petrana isn't the sort of person to whom it would occur he might not want to fill his late evening with more work, but to be fair, flint probably isn't either. )

[and in fairness, she hardly seems to be an interruption when she arrives.

as promise, the office is in a state of chaos; it is half furnished at best, the heavy doors to the adjacent chamber left wide open to encourage a cross breeze out of the night between it and the window here. what little remains in there is in similar disarray as the paper strewn office. he must not be planning to live there any time soon.

when she arrives, Flint tosses aside a sheaf of papers and shifts another stack from out of the lone chair so she might sit.]

Do you care for a drink, Madame?

[a bottle, unlike much of anything else, could be easily produced.]

( it is difficult to imagine a pirate residing comfortably within a tower. the obligation of division heads to reside within the gallows doesn't necessarily mean they must use the rooms provided, and presumably if he prefers to remain aboard the walrus (does he? or elsewhere? it isn't urgent to know, but she makes a mental note it would be interesting to) then it remains close enough to serve the spirit if not the letter of the law.

he shall have an excess of storage at his disposal. how sensible.

petrana sits, in the meanwhile, considering the more or less controlled chaos around her and inclining her head to his offer, ) I would, Commander, if it would not be an imposition.

( during her time in the office down the hall, she had greeted visitors with tea; ushered them to the fireside and away from the large desk that now takes up a good portion of what is now her private room. she has worked tirelessly and for years now to polish herself to pleasant, defanged smoothness; thedas has increasingly seen that it is not only the case. she is not going to balk at accepting a drink from a man in whose company she seems incongruously comfortable. )

[A bottle is produced, though the question of glasses is less readily answered. As he searches for them:]

I believe you've done some work with our Scoutmaster as well?

[Hardly a question really, but certainly an opening.]

I report to the Scoutmaster directly as chief cryptographer, ( is agreement, arranging her (eggshell blue, and soft) skirts around her knees where she's settled upon the seat. ) It is a recent appointment—a less social one than to which I've been accustomed, but I cannot say I've minded that greatly.

( or that she isn't still available to the diplomacy division to which she belongs, or that she isn't still cultivating the diplomatic connections that she made as ambassador and subsequently.

she's very good at multitasking. )

Is there something more social you'd prefer? Were the option available.

[He's abandoned the desk, speaking still as he moves about the room to a battered trunk stowed beneath the window. A search there eventually produces two mismatched stoneware cups.]

I am content in my work, Commander, though I should not balk at being called upon for more familiar tasks.

( they are all of them becoming very flexible about what exactly their best use is at any given moment. or they ought to be, though there are always going to be holdouts. )

I have tried my hand to many things within the organisation. I believe I am well-placed for the time being.

That's convenient. As I'll be entirely honest - at present, no better recommendation springs to mind.

[The bottle is finally opened and the blood bright wine is measured into each glass before he recorks it. He passes the first to her accordingly, then recedes to set his hip against the window ledge. She's a small woman in the room's singular chair. Looming seems inconsiderate.]

Did you have occasion to do much work with Ser Coupe while she held this position?

( it would be inconsiderate. it would also not be unusual, so petrana marks that he does not, and that she would be foolish not to think it a choice. )

I did. Ser Coupe and I were colleagues while I held the ambassador's role, prior to our former Ambassador Amsel, and we did on occasion coordinate after I had relinquished it.

( it almost doesn't sound like they spent all of that time staring dead at each other waiting to see which bitch would blink first. )

I am—familiar with reinvention. It behooves us all to be useful, and proactively so.

[Here, a flicker of backlit surprise from his place in the window. The cup hovers at chin height for a moment before he drinks from it. After:]

I hear we've yet to find an appropriate replacement for Enchanter Amsel.

[It's not a question. But it is.]

It is a difficult and thankless role, and one for which suitable candidates are thin upon the ground.

( if she hears the question—and she must—then she gives no indication, tasting from her cup and then, approving or just satisfied, sipping properly. it would be false to say that she's not considered stepping forward again, particularly with ser coupe having...ah, not removed herself from play, no. but stepped back.

that they have more independence now makes it more plausible than it would have been to draw the inquisition leadership's eye back to her a few months ago. she believes she can work well enough with yseult, with flint. she can manage provost baudin.

but perhaps she works better with less direct scrutiny. how often were her hands tied by the audience of them? )

Some of my work with Ser Coupe reflected as much. I believe she did recognise certain challenges, when I absented myself from the role initially.

I see.

[He's looking at her from the window, and the hard cut of the light against his dark form of him softens some of the blunt edge to his evaluation but by no means does it temper all of it. It's the face of a man considering the sharpness of a blade, not fully certain of how to hold it without being cut but sure of the use to be had in wielding it.

Fuck Herian Amsel anyway.]

How long have you been here, Madame de Cedoux? In Thedas specfically.

[There are men who might apologize for interrogating her so blatantly.]

( there are, but she had not mistaken him for one of them. her smile is small, closemouthed, and not without a hint of wry warmth. )

A little more than two years, now. I believe the second anniversary of my arrival passed some months prior; the Gallows had then only recently been made an outpost of the Inquisition. ( she shall save him some time, and that she implicitly acknowledges the interrogation is deliberate, too: ) I began in research, I believe for perhaps six months, before I took the post of ambassador.

( took, yes; viewing herself as more qualified in the role than the man who had been holding it, she had been the architect of his removal to make room for her. it had been a professional mercy kill, better for all involved. )

I found those early months a practical means of educating myself.

Then you have considerably history with the company that I do not. Tell me, what would your evaluation of our present position be in comparison with how you first found it?

[So long as they're here on the same page.]

( ah, an easy question.

she considers him, and her cup. a slow exhalation through her nose, tilting her head. )

I believe that we are the better for having split with the Inquisition, though I should stress that I believe that to be the best of unideal outcomes after more preferable options became closed to us.

( by their own hand, she means, yes. )

Riftwatch has ever been a matter of herding cats, Commander. It is regrettable we lack the benefits of an Inquisition outpost, but that was inevitable so long as the Gallows continued to view the Inquisition as a separate entity to itself. There were moments in time that I believed that to be the influence of select rifter elements, but I have come to see that is not the case. Indeed, had not been the case, and I should regret being duped by the obvious scapegoat myself.

There was a mistrust present that made it difficult to unite behind anything, as is necessary to achieve everything. I would not say that is gone, but certainly it's mitigated by the knowledge that, ( a lift of her lips that might be considered coy, were they in a courtly context, ) we shall have none to blame but ourselves for our choices. We are still beholden, but the difference in how matters.

We are not manned by only those who understand their own best interests. Riftwatch cannot simply be commanded, and expected to hop to. I believe the sort of management it requires is unlikely to be strange to you, with your own background.

( well, that sounds like a far too comfortably familiar professional assessment of how pirates work. )

['It's true that I wouldn't know what to do with a larger and more united force,' is a lie. It occurs to him to say so anyway, but he discards the thought almost as soon as it occurs to him. Instead, he takes a drink from the speckled stoneware cup. It's come a long way - from a shelf beside finer porcelain, packed in the sea chest wrapped in a cotton shirt and carried back and forth over the Nocen, then following East and South. Once, he'd meant to return it.

Keep it, a woman - now dead - had said. I've already replaced it.]

Do you know, [he sets the cup in the window beside him] two months ago, I'd considered cutting ties with the Inquisition and making our way elsewhere. We're often an impatient breed.

[Which she apparently knows.]

But I believe we have some opportunity now to use what the Inquisition - and by extension the Southern Chantry - may have seen as unreliable. I can't imagine that anyone expects any sense of order to come out of this place, and that expectation can at last be made to benefit us.

All good news, as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to go home soon.

( a fine, delicate balance: the hint of indulgence to her small smile, that she (naturally) did not know but (naturally) is not surprised, neither smile nor indulgent air pronounced enough to presume too much familiarity. visible enough to be a chess move. a piece of narrative framing. madame de cedoux is a woman comfortable regarding commander flint as an equal, deferring enough but not more. she is comfortable in the halls of authority; she has been comfortable elsewhere.

it interests her to what he responds: what she does, or how. )

I certainly hope that you shall.

( the very slightly pert tilt of her chin may be pushing her luck; her laugh is a murmur, her gaze cutting away from him. ha ha, everyone wishes the tevinter pirate would just fuck off, says rifter who can't. it isn't that she doesn't have a sense of humour, it's that it's sort of terrible and it's generally better no one notices. )

In any event, I agree. We are quite the resource, here, but our hands have been most inconveniently tied. If the knots are merely loosened, now, it is...enough to be getting on with. You have plans, I take it, for your position.

[Somewhere behind Flint's mustache, the corner of his mouth twitches back after the ghost of a smile. It doesn't manifest there, but it reaches his pale eyes: pleased with himself, or with that low flash of humor in her, or some combination of both, or--]

I do.

[A shamelessly stark answer. And he could let it be that - bald of any meaningful detail except the new commander thinks he knows best -, but what good does that do anyone? Say nothing, and expectations naturally trend toward untrustworthy. Best to get ahead of that as he's able.]

Have you dealt much with Nevarra? The unrest growing there.

I would not claim to have dealt with it a great deal, ( because she is a diplomat who is careful with her words, first and foremost, ) but I am familiar with it. I have visited Nevarra, when Riftwatch still served as an Inquisition outpost.

( obliquely: when their visit to nevarra kicked off an international incident. )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

CRYSTAL;

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