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[nonvenomous]

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[nonvenomous]

Mm.

[ If only. The light snuffs out; there’s the sound and stir of him stepping away in the collapse of darkness around them. ]

I’m relying on Loxley to employ me once he’s romanced a princess.

[ They are almost certainly going to die before he has the chance. He sweeps up a damp fan from the dresser in passing, the folded wooden frame too rigid to have navigated the coil of Thot’s weird doggy body. She’s blinked up at him slowly from her post -- silent assurance of an all clear that he trusts enough to roll the lock and open the door inward.

Fitchers first. ]

[unshut]

[As with a great deal of the invitations Fitcher is extended, she takes him up on this one—slipping wordlessly past Silas into the bar of soft light and so the corridor beyond.

It isn't until they've successfully navigated back through the house—coasting idly along the fringe of the part, pausing once while he and Thot wait in a shadow while she accepts a drink off a tray and makes small talk with a two ladies at the very margins of the evening until they eventually pass on, allowing Fitcher to down the rest of the drink and then scurry along—and are emerging from it that she picks up where they'd left off as easily as if there had been no taut action sequence between points a and z.]

Any princess, or do you have a particular one in mind?

[The evening has cooled considerably since last they were in it. The air smells like rain.]

[nonvenomous]

[ Bold (or fatalistic) enough to have fanned himself in the periphery of Fitcher’s wining and dining, Silas has fallen into step with her in the night. Thot weaves across the cobbles ahead of them, abuzz with the stink of city vermin. ]

We’ve just come upon one in a bog I have my eye on.

[ As a matter of fact. He’s only just now slotting the fan away on his person. Bonus booty. ]

She’s masquerading as a cavalier.

[unshut]

[Ah yes, bogs. The ordinary place to find eligible princesses.

(Fitcher has already begun to shed her coat, deftly turning it inside out and re-donning it so as to disappear the bright bottle green in favor of the black lining.)]

How does Loxley feel about this arrangement?

[nonvenomous]

I haven’t consulted him.

[ Matter-of-fact and only a little sly as she changes the coat in for out, he sets to unfastening his own coat once she’s finished. Less clever, he simply folds it crisp over his arm as they walk. ]

I’m certain he doesn’t know who she is.

[nonvenomous]

If you're in the Gallows I can come to you. Payment won't be necessary.

[ what's a favor between friends. ]

[illithidnapped]

[A favor called in later, most likely. At least in Astarion's cynical experience.]

I'm not— but I more than easily can be. Unless you haunt Lowtown or Hightown as I do, I'll meet you in the courtyard presently.

[This is where a 'thank you' should live. And it does, but after like a really, really long pause where he has to work up the ability to be nice...ish.]

And...[ugh] thank you, I suppose. Provided you do a decent job.

[nonvenomous]

[ Precisely. ]

You’re welcome. I can find you in Lowtown.

[ Lest he establish a precedent for taking patients in his personal quarters. ]

[unshut]

[Her hum of reply is considering as Fitcher measures something in her head. Loxley's affable nature versus what she judges from distance to be a habit for—what? Independence. Something like that, maybe. Or maybe she is doing an entirely different sort of mental calculus, for what she eventually says is—]

I had a similar arrangement made on my behalf and I've no complaints.

[More or less.]

I'm sure he'll be a good sport about the whole thing.

[nonvenomous]

I hope no one believes I’m a wealthy royal in disguise.

[ His sidelong regard takes on a conspiratorial slant -- imagine the scandal, some distant overseer sorely disappointed. Certainly eligible princes and princesses have come in stranger shapes than the tall balding backscrubber in a vest next to her. ]

I won’t hold it against him if he marries his first mate instead, provided he doesn’t leave me to tend to the rest of our party alone.

[ It must not be a very serious arrangement, then. Best laid plans of mice and dead men. She’ll see him weighing out the inevitable question when he looks to her again, gauging its importance, whether or not he wants to ask at all. Was she married? ]

[unshut]

I can't imagine he would choose to leave you so exposed.

[Vulnerable. That's the word she could have chosen, but didn't (and she is immune to the subtext of that look—).

A few brisk turns in succession. A staircase. It's amazing how little effort it takes to move from Kirkwall's Hightown to everywhere else. Similarly: how easy it would be to say nothing at all.

And yet.]

He died some years ago.

[nonvenomous]

No.

[ Levity leaves him with a thought for the cot standing idle in his quarters, sheets crisp save for the occasional wrinkle of little nug hands whenever one of his cursed brood takes ill. They might be helpful in the disposal of his corpse should Thot fail to alert him to an intruder in the night.

He tucks his own hands into his pockets against the cold, already nipped pink in the ears. ]

No such trouble.

[ Another glance -- they’ve crested the stair before he says so. A less striking admission.

He's also sorry for asking without having asked. ]

How are you feeling about the ferry?

me yesterday typing html on my phone: why the hell did I put this thread in brackets

[unshut]

Dreadfully. But that won't change with the hour.

[She's not—sorry he asked, anymore than she is for rifling around in some rich man's things. Fitcher pauses only a moment, her head tipped toward him like the way an attentive and clever dog keeps her ear cocked for a whistle or command. Sensitive as she may be to the flicker of his mood, her own good humor is plenty resilient.

(When she looks at him, there's some note of expectation in it. Why, does he have some alternative in mind?)]

i am the khaleesi now

[nonvenomous]

"We could barter for a room here."

They have ill-gotten goods, late in the evening as it is to find a fence. He draws himself up a little, quashing his own distraction with a review of their surroundings to orient himself.

"Or launder the jewelry through a card game."

By cheating with his magical dog, obviously.

[illithidnapped]

[Perish the thought.]

I’ll be waiting.

[And once he's sent off directions to his own address, he is, in fact, waiting. Lantern lit outside his Lowtown home, heavy iron doors parted (though Astarion holds a knife in hand once he opens them, only put away only once he’s sure it’s his ally come calling and not someone else). It’s a frightfully cluttered place, small and narrow and little more than a glorified closet, but it suits well enough: finery and relics and trash scattered throughout like a fledling dragon's unkempt hoard.

By the fire there’s a small table, rickety. Astarion sits at it, lifting his own chin to show off two twisting cuts running from his lips down to the center of his chin, not bleeding (not yet fully healed, either), but visible all the same. A problem.]

As you can see, I need them gone.

[nonvenomous]

[ Framed lean and dry as a fence post by the open door, Richard Dickerson exudes a strange patience for any glimpse of a knife he might catch. His clothes are dark and his collar is high and if Astarion’s never been bothered to notice before, he may notice now that he has a scar clipped across one cheek clear through to a notch missing out of his ear.

Promising.

The oil slick cat that plucks her way in after him is attuned to the decor, the flashing saucers of her eyes set straight away to snooping.

Her master follows Astarion to the table without falling prey to the same distraction, unperturbed by the narrowness or the clutter or the lack of any direct invitation to sit. He can see better in the firelight by standing, shoulders slanted to spare the lift of Astarion’s chin his shadow. ]

Hm, [ he says, as he gauges the age, the depth. The unlikely trajectory. Awfully subdued for a how did you even accomplish this? There’s no corresponding glance to question it, no uptick at his brow.

He does lift one hand, palm up. ]

May I?

[nonvenomous]

Weeks, months. Time is a flat circle.

She draws back and he releases the lock on his hold, easy, fabric slithering. He doesn’t seem to clock the skepticism. You can’t address something you have no desire to perceive.

“Don’t mention it.” Quiet, a little wry in the glance he gives her as he turns back for his trunk.

He means it.

the reward for your initiative is me falling off the planet for 3 weeks straight

[unshut]

The dismissive slant of the brow and tip of her head in reply for this first suggestion—she likes her own bed and her little room in the Gallows just fine despite the inconvenience of having to brave the harbor to get to it—doesn't have the opportunity to fully develop before it's replaced by a flicker of real interest for the second.

"Are you trying to prey on my weaknesses? You scoundrel."

But also, faux outrage aside:

"I know a place."

Obviously.

[nonvenomous]

“It’s a reasonable suggestion.” Faux outrage begets faux reproach, his voice lowered as if to insulate the city streets from their personal drama. What else are they going to do with all of this ridiculous jewelry? Speaking of:

“I’ll have to get it out of her, first.”

Primed for just this purpose, Thot shudders behind a gagging cough. A rogue earring skips plink and tinkle across the street.

[unshut]

"And here I thought she might turn conveniently inside out like a purse."

The sidelong look she paints him with is so brief that it's impossible to tell exactly how much of the exasperation is put on for show and how much is secretly true. But luckily, there is no shortage of Kirkwall alleys to be sick in. Even here at the fringe of Hightown, it doesn't take long before Fitcher is veering down some narrow little side street where they might find a particularly dark corner into which Thot can hork up the rich contents of her stomach.

"I'm surprised you sent her away with Ellis."

[nonvenomous]

“Mm.” With the help of a filet knife, perhaps.

Silas narrows his eyes.

With the runaway earring caught up in her snaggled teeth, Thot scrabbles ahead into the pit of whatever dark corner Fitcher has seen fit to funnel them into. There she lurches and chokes and sloughs slimy pearls out through her jaws for Silas to recover from his crouch nearby, a handkerchief produced to tend each damp piece before he sorts them away into his pockets.

He pauses mid-scrub for the question, breath pinched short behind a glance up from below, bony elbows angled out from his work. Is it a question? There’s room in his vest for a gold bracelet.

“He needed a means to communicate his findings on short notice should he have found himself in danger of capture."

[unshut]

Fitcher doesn't assist in the scrubbing. She does however stand patiently over the pair of them with her eyeline (if not the bulk of attention) trained toward the busier end of the narrow little miscellaneous side street while Thot gags out a second earring and a brooch inset with a citrine stone only slightly more modestly sized than one of the the cat's own saucer eyeballs.

"I was under the impression that was the whole point of the crystals."

She tilts her ear slightly toward him, but doesn't actually look at the arrangement of squiggly cat summon and Richard's birdwinged limbs. If a hand is offered for whatever mostly not-damp article might require one of her own pockets then it's done so more or less blindly. Don't put something slimy in it.

[nonvenomous]

“She carried his crystal in her crop, ready to produce it upon request.”

Reasonable.

Thot the cat who is currently a dog and was formerly a finch laps across the jut of her goblin snoot, forked tongue rasping dry after strings of ectoplasm trailing through her jaws. Beside her, still polishing, Silas creaks to his feet. Once he’s finished chasing away the last bit of slobbery gloss through its metalwork, he offers the brooch out to Fitcher -- a gloved tendril at her periphery, glittering at its end.

“The cost of detection would have been high.”

[unshut]

The brooch is accepted with the delicacy of a soft mouthed dog taking a bird into its teeth—all fingertips, the palm of her large hand cupped as if wary of saliva remnants (Fade-touched or otherwise). Her inspection of the piece is less circumspect, turning it in a stripe of moonlight to examine the setting. It's pretty, though she has little use for a yellow stone in her wardrobe.

"He must have told you a little of what his business was then." The brooch disappears inside her cloak. Fitcher flashes him an apologetic look. "I'm desperately curious."

[nonvenomous]

There’s no stripe of moonlight to prick his eyes out from the hollows they’re set in when he looks to her in aside. It’s a dark alley, devoid of lamplight to glance off the retinas. Thot is giving herself a bath.

“It’s not my business to discuss.”

The level of his brow is even, the handkerchief he’s tucking away into his vest by feel is still damp in places and likely to stay that way. Apology seen at 1:19 AM.

“There are documents we may attempt to retrieve from Tevinter, if you’re feeling heroic.”