Inbox - Fade Rift

[nonvenomous]

Book/crystal/correspondence/action/whatever you desire.

Comments

[unshut]

She oohs. She aahs. She flicks the edge of her reversed cloak back to center. "Paperwork. My favorite."

It's punctuated by a waggle of eyebrows made stark in the bit of light she's inhabiting. Like a turned knife, that casually sharp point of Fitcher's curiosity blunts as it's diverted. She doesn't offer him her arm, but it would ruin the concealing lines of her clothes to do so. Don't look so serious, Silas. Your face will get stuck that way.

"The exciting sort of documents, I hope. Account ledgers. Letters of licence. Something with lots of squiggly numbers."

[nonvenomous]

Visible or no, there’s a clear diversion to the dip of his eyeline after the flip of her cloak. It’s a very nice cloak. He’d said so earlier.

“Research.”

The rest it’s simpler not to engage with, just a hitch of a pause to mark it conscious in a glance rather than a missed connection, one or two feathers ruffled in the night. How many times can one increasingly identifiable fox slip the Venatori’s snare?

He sighs, tight and foggy in the cold, bony knuckles flexed and knotted at his sides to reset. Why are they talking about work? There are other jewels for him to count out of his pockets for her and he sets to that -- the pearls and the earrings and so on.

“It might be less suspicious if you’re wearing some of it.”

The earring he sizes out against her ear mid-sort is particularly obnoxious, pearl in a heavy floral setting. Hard to look at.

[unshut]

Research. Pass, says the tilt of her brow, as if she has any real say over where she goes and what papers she rifles through. Otherwise that too floats beyond the margins of their little cabal without remark.

"Not those. And I don't think any of the rings are likely to fit my— Well." One of the chunkier bands with a flat dark stone, a sigil-less signet ring for the pressing of seals on unimportant correspondence is plucked from his possession and tried on a series of fingers while Fitcher tallies the rest of what is extracted from his pockets. The pearls with the heavy pendant, maybe. And there's a pin that must be a sapphire or some other darkish stone that might do well on his collar.

"A shame you haven't a pierced ear. You should consider it." The one that hasn't been mangled. "Highly dashing."

[nonvenomous]

Research. That she humors him with the jewelry is enough to coax a warmer crook out of him, the gaudy earring pocketed away blind. He’ll find it again a month or two from now if he’s still alive, turning out his laundry in search of loose coin.

“Laceration will have to suffice.”

They’ve surely used Thot to cheat tables before, precluding the need to establish a new code in a dark alley. For all that her current form is conspicuous, it’s also innocuous -- inelegant, knobbled, shivering in the cold or with excitement.

“We’ll follow you’re lead.”

For his part he’s kept his own cloak folded over his arm, more hapless without it.

[unshut]

"Then let's hope that I don't steer us wrong."

But this will be fun—a game of losing the right things and sorting how to reap a little coin in return. By the time they tuck in for the evening, they might be a little richer. And if that fails, they'll at least have had an entertaining evening of disseminating their ill-gotten gains across a dozen different Kirkwall gambling tables. It's the enjoyably laissez-faire sort of wagering—the kind where the stakes are all more or less pretend, and there's no real method by which to come out worse than they are.

Thank you very much to their host for providing such a fine evening.

"Here. Hold still."

With the ring briefly at home on her slightly too small forefinger, Fitcher works the pin's catch free and then turns to him. She runs her hand matter-of-factly under the edge of his vest so as to stitch the pin high on his breast without jabbing Silas through the shirt.

Nothing for the inkblot summon shaped like a bundle of sticks arranged in the form of a dog, but presumably Thot's kept anything she cares to elsewhere.

[nonvenomous]

The static hiss to warm silk is echoed by a shiver he can’t quite stifle behind his breastbone -- another glanced apology for the insubordination of his nervous system, snared into a longer pause while Fitcher works. They could forego the gambling and proceed directly to an inn. There’s the slip of a concealed knife in there somewhere, familiar placement, sharp edges barely there beneath the brocade of his vest.

And now this pin.

He reaches his free hand up to assist with the smoothing of his own lapel and nods. Head in the game.

Gambling was his suggestion.

Some distance aft and aside, Thot waits alert, poised rigid as a caltrop apart from tremor of her tail. Later she’ll dance between feet and around table legs to score glances at carefully guarded hands. Surely not all creatures of the Fade are terrible.

crystal.

[charmoffensive]

So that's what you've been up to.

[ —on a slight delay, after That Post, but what is he meant to do, check the network every day or something? ]

I suppose you might have told me already if you've discovered something disastrous, in all your studies.

[nonvenomous]

Do you?

[ Suppose? ]

How would you like me to contact you in the event of such a disaster?

[charmoffensive]

[ Unseen eyebrow raise. Brightly— ]

However you like.

[nonvenomous]

A public announcement of my arrest, perhaps.

[charmoffensive]

Certainly. Then we can discuss it all in more detail after I spring you.

[nonvenomous]

Can you fly a griffon?

[charmoffensive]

[ A beat, then; ]

How hard could it be?

[nonvenomous]

I agree that we would be best served by finding out together when it's a matter of life or death.

[charmoffensive]

I'm not so good with animals. Besides Thot, anyway. But desperate times, and all that.

Is what you're doing really jail worthy?

[nonvenomous]

A vocal fraction of Riftwatch certainly seems to think so. Are you concerned?

[charmoffensive]

No,

[ but should he be, underscored in his tone. ]

Curious, rather.

[nonvenomous]

[ An intake of breath, a pause, a shifting of notes on a desk somewhere in the Gallows. ]

What would you like to know?

[charmoffensive]

Well—

[ An indecisive pause. ]

What are you looking for, exactly? Besides how good lyrium might be for scrapes and bruises.

[nonvenomous]

A transmutative integration of lyrium into the existing tissue, [ says Richard, easily. ] Lyrium becoming flesh.

[charmoffensive]

I feel that implies distressing things about the flesh, if it doesn't work that way on everyone else.

[nonvenomous]

There was an ordeal before our arrival here wherein a plague appeared to draw lyrium directly out of Templars and Rifters, sending the former into withdrawal and rendering the latter weakened and to some degree incorporeal.

So, [ Loxley said he was curious. ] yes.

[charmoffensive]

[ And he is, still, listening intently to unpleasant things in some comfortable corner, away from that island full of aggravating people.

After a weighty pause, he infuses some cheer in his voice as he says; ]

I don't feel make believe. Although, further to that point, are you in want of volunteers?

[nonvenomous]

Lyrium is real, [ Richard reasons. ] Spirits are real.

[ Ergo, vis a vis, concordantly -- he pauses. It’s a long pause and the scratch of his pen pauses with it, leaving a neat little beat of dead air to sink on Loxley’s end of their crystal connection. ]

Several Rifters have already reached out to us off the record. Should we need additional volunteers I’ll see that you’re added to the list.

[charmoffensive]

Alright.

[ :) ]

What happens, then, if you're successful with this transmutative business?