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You slippery bastard, she does not say though the amused glimmer of it is in the flash of Fitcher's eye and the arch of her eyebrow. She squares the reassembled deck with a brisk rap on the table, then begins shuffling.

"Concerned your world ending employers might catch up with you?"

The cards arc and bow under her agile fingers, well worn suites flashing in the room's low lamplight.

“Maintaining appearances.” Should he be caught up with -- a lean sees the bottle placed down near the parcel. It hardly matters now, per a slant at his brows while he watches the cards flash through her fingers. “Not that I'd call it a wasted effort.

“No one overestimates a man named Richard Dickerson.”

"Next you'll tell me you're not really an accountant."

Tap. The deck is squared once more, then subsequently dealt. The game itself - some simple affair involving the collection and matching of suits - is unimportant.

“I’m an incredible accountant.”

He catches up the cards as they’re dealt, at odds with certain conventions about that sort of thing, but doesn’t check them until she has her full hand as well. And he’ll play with her a while in as much quiet as the game allows for, sporting about his level of effort, in much the same way he’s been about collecting paper for an ant, or building a chicken coop.

“When did you get into gambling?”

She plays in turn, with answering skill - good, but not too good. Making mistakes, but not too many.

"I liked race horses as a girl. Livestock is a popular trade in Antiva. But cards? Not until later. I find they're a pleasant way of getting to know people."

A card is turned, some combination of plays activated through it.

"For better or worse, as you know."

“Young,” he observes. And eventually:

“It’s an expensive way of getting to know people.” At times coupled with the threat of aggressive pursuit, as was their recent experience, insinuated with a glance as he folds, or mucks, or discards his hand face down, conceding victory, and only a little skeptical. He has a bottle to place back up on the table, and a cup of whiskey to finish before he can stage an exit.

He flops the parcel of letters up last, and only after he’s pushed his cards across the table for her to take, in no rush to bolt down the near full finger he has left.

“I take it you resolved matters with your friend in the green vest."

She hums in affirmation around the pipe's stem, sweeping up the cards in broad strokes.

"For the present." She shoots him a sidelong glance. And just like there, the easy quality of her attention has drifted back toward something sharper and more pointed once again. A bright flicker. Her curving smile is put on and she knows that is looks that way.

With a huff of exhaled smoke, with the cards folded back into a deck, she frees the pipe from between her teeth. A cap is fetched from her pocket; the burning ember in the bowl is smothered under it.

"I really do apologize for Barrow. He means well."

It’s easy to find his eyes, sidelong or otherwise.

There’s nothing especially sharp or pointed about him in return, past hard creases and silver flash. He has an easier time relaxing than he has a right to, in a world without real stakes, and he’s more comfortable now than he was when he first went spelunking in her luggage, having had plenty of time with his own thoughts between hands.

“That must be gratifying for him.”

...is a little mean. He drinks.

“I gave him an opportunity and he held back,” he notes, more kindly. “I’m not concerned.”

Poor Barrow. So free of firm convictions and so burdened by the expectation that he have them. No, she guesses. Richard - or Silas, or whatever he's to be called - has very little to be worried about.

She taps the pipe on the table. It makes a sturdy clicking sound as she studies him, and is easily and thoughtlessly discarded.

"I'm retired," she says. "As much as is allowed with these things. Unless Yseult asks, of course."

Imagine retirement. Richard does, briefly distant, his brows at an awkward slant.

“I was arrogant enough to make an attempt.” Here, he means.

It was obviously short-lived, with Serrah Richard Dickerson now filed neatly under the Research designation. He’s zeroed back in on her, a little dead behind the eyes with rue at his own expense. This particular failure hasn’t been as easy to swallow as some of the others.

But that’s life as an alien two societies deep.

He says, “Congratulations,” with an appropriate amount of respect for the accomplishment it represents. He’ll even drink to it, polishing off the dregs and smoothing his whiskers. Idle with the empty cup a moment, while he watches her. “She isn't lacking for incentive.”

Edited (???) 2020-10-19 05:17 (UTC)

Her smile flickers briefly crooked, something very like sympathy lurking momentarily in her expression. Not for him, not strictly. But maybe for Yseult if what she says after is any indication: "I don't envy her. She's fallen into a truly strange position. Even worse, I think she feels some obligation to it."

(Privately, she thinks how strange it is to regret a lie so soon after telling it.)

"Though I suppose most of us do. Even you." She nods to his hand. "Still, Andraste preserve her—I'd rather jump off a tower than be ringmaster of this circus."

If Richard’s clocked anything strange in the specifics, there’s no tell-tale tick-tock of recognition in his eyes. But his silence is distinctly that of someone who’s watching her word count rise without having asked a question.

“I’ve never spoken to her,” sounds a lot like him tipping the implication that he thinks much of accountability to local leadership off the end of his lunch tray. Not quite reassurance.

He says nothing on the subject of broader obligation. Instead, he follows her nod to examine the sliver of lurid green light lodged in his palm. His fingers can only curl halfway to stifling the glow entirely.

“There are people here that I would like to see happy.” Or at the very least, not ground beneath the heel of a vulture-core megalomaniac.

With the pipe dismissed and her glass empty, there's very little occupation left for her hands. One is simply flattened on the table, thumb scuffing absently along the smooth polished surface.

"That's rather kind, all things considered." Is perhaps a more mercenary assessment than is truly polite, and yet.

“It’s human.” Weak in that specific way.

His eyeline shifts from his hand to hers, and lingers there a beat. His hands are similarly unoccupied, now, save for the hide, which he covers with his shard-bitten palm. The cards are gone, the pipe is gone. He stays himself for just a moment, shy of standing.

There’s something there in the level of his brows, knocking at the door of scandal with just enough clearance for plausible deniability. Do you want to --

It’s brief. He stands, and pulls the folded hide up with him, self-control, propriety, etc snared up loose under his arms to move him. He scoots his chair in under the table. Neat.

“You’re sure you’re willing to part with these letters?”

The hand lingers there on the table for just a moment before being judiciously drawn away. Lightly again, unvarnished and without any particularly keen edge: "I don't see the harm in it so long as they don't stray outside your keeping. Though I may need to reference one or two in my next letter - Zaluski has a penchant for mentioning nothing twice for the sake of security, so apologies if I come asking for their return sooner rather than later."

Briefly, it seems as if she may remain where she is as he collects his things and sees himself out. But either it is an unconscious delay or she purposefully changes her mind, for after a pause Fitcher sweeps cheerfully to her feet and dusts her hands as if to knock loose any last lingering dredges of—

Well. It hardly matters.

"Thank you again for going through all this trouble. It sounds as if you've arranged for the hand, but should you ever need something less drastic cut away - a finger perhaps? -, you may rely on me."

“I’ll settle for your company, and an invitation for the next time you infiltrate a gambling ring specifically to cheat them of their winnings.”

One last mug -- Oghma willing, he won’t need to entreat her for anything so dire as an amputation.

Otherwise clean, cool, collected, he pauses at the door, and hefts the borrowed packet. Any hesitation has left him, and taken translucence with it. He’s as opaque as a stapler on a desk, and about as remarkable at a glance.

“Thank you for the drink. I’ll have these back to you before the week is out.”

She drifts after him with the mild affect of politeness which showing just about anyone out should merit, though her smile as it flashes briefly over the prospect of cheating is more crooked than appealing and potentially more genuine for it.

"Enjoy them. The man's a true artist of conspiracy."

With a flick of the wrist, the door is unceremoniously drawn open for him. Lest he escape from the lion's den unscathed, however (or due to the old habitual inability to leave a loose thread unpulled)—

"You look well in it, by the way," she says, her sharp cheek set jauntily against the edge of the door and expression made up entirely of roguish eyebrows. "The coat."

Oh. Half-turned back for the purpose of easy farewell, Richard turns fully back to her face in the frame. Such cheekbones.

“Thank you,” he tells her, earnest in his appreciation. Also, whiskey makes a brief appearance for him to hazard a mild (and slightly wary):

“I’m gay.”

In case that wasn’t clear. Helpful information for her to have, and a handy reminder for him in this moment, also.

Up go those eyebrows, quirking briefly toward her hairline and then— settling, as easy as her cheek at the edge of the door or her hand curled light about its latch. Her mild observation as he'd picked through her trunk.

Yes. Well.

"That's fine."

And for the best, really.

Having essentially delivered a fistfull of verbal pocket sand, Richard looks away, briefly, to assure himself that there’s nobody else stepping out at the same time to have overheard this declaration. There isn’t.

He looks back to her, eyes bright, critical, and says, “Mm,” because he is less convinced that it is fine.

Imagine being a spy and not dumping Charisma. He turns to go in earnest -- he has important letters to slowly open and read three or four times without processing what they say.

There is something there on the tip of her tongue - an impulse, the itch of a face down card from a deck she hasn't counted carefully.

(It's very easy to win with her own; she's had it for long so that the wear on the backs is as telling as its faces.)

But whatever it is she holds just a beat too long, and then the opportunity has evaporated. So she trades it for the far more definitive "Good night, Richard," and decides she is satisfied with it. When it is perfectly polite to do so, she withdraws. The door is snipped shut.

The room, with its scattered assortment of things is regarded.

"Mm, he says," she repeats for its benefit.

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