"Perhaps. Though better to identify likely speakers on our own. If someone were to discover Debuchy passed along the names of likely candidates to spark revolt among the foot soldiers, I can't imagine that would reflect kindly on him among his peers."
To say nothing of his reception at the Orlesian court, where a host of nobles--the sensible ones--must already be courting their own anxieties regarding what a peasant is likely to turn against when they are sick of fighting a common enemy and decide instead to find one which serves more specific interests.
"And," is like a new thought, one which is only just occurring to him as he sits quietly under the scrape of the blade. "If we were to bypass the generals to build trust among the men on the ground, that might later play to our advantage should we ever need to to circumvent them."
A pause, John humming agreement over the suggestion. His thumb runs along the stretch of newly shorn scalp.
"We could send a group. You were watched closely, I assume, but perhaps healers, some of our better fighters..."
People of apparently little importance, John means. Agents there to better the quality of life of the common soldiers, offer some minor pieces of assistance and pose no real interest to the generals. Who would look so closely at them?
"Do you think they'd be allowed to circulate without a chaperone?" is posed as John's fingers shift to his temple, John leaning in and against Flint's shoulder to avoid stepping around to stand face to face just yet.
"It's possible. Likely, even." It wouldn't be the first time that members of Riftwatch had worked with the Orlesian army. They're allied forces, after all.
With the blade not yet set against him, he shifts in the chair by the degree necessary to turn and tip his face back enough to look at least in the direction of Silver. The necessity of his shoulder as support keeps Flint from twisting far enough to meet his eye.
"Ket and Bastien," John says, reaching farther forward still to pass the blade into Flint's hands. "If we don't think rifters would create too much of a stir and distract from our purpose, Holden, Erik and Loxley as well."
As he speaks, John carries that forward momentum around, circling the chair. Meets Flint's gaze, some minor, fond quirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he continues, "Maybe myself, if only to obligate them to entertain me while the rest do their work."
"Yseult likely won't care for it, but Rutyer might be convinced." A foothold for Ferelden among the ranks of the Orlesian army is unlikely to be something he could bring himself to refuse outright. Not if presented in that fashion. "I've no idea where Stark would fall, but if Bastien is involved then the rest would have to be."
Call him unnecessarily suspicious, but that much seems a given.
Casting a hand up to scuff his palm across the close shorn surface of his scalp, he says, "In any case, any reinforcements from Riftwatch will require a certain number of anchors in hands"—or wherever—"to appear legitimate. A rifter or two in addition to Ket and Bastien under your supervision seems plausible."
But after, "Rutyer will be interested in the prospect of interesting information to pass back to Aurora, if retaking the city isn't tempting enough for them both."
The state of the Orlesian army certainly must qualify as intriguing. John can't imagine Byerly would pretend otherwise.
But there is no contradiction to be made. If they use Bastien, and John sees few other candidates capable of the task, then they will have to assume the details of their objective will pass to Byerly then to Yseult, at the least. It's hard to know immediately where Stark fits into that configuration.
John draws the blade back, to attend to a missed patch with a few careful strokes and a hand at Flint's shoulder.
"Maybe we offer Yseult a few people of her choice, to accompany mine."
That hand is obedient enough, floating back down to the chair's arm again in time with the lowering of his brow. He addresses the point of his knee:
"And if her concern is a matter of personnel, that might work. But I suspect her qualms will have more to do with appealing to the rabble over the army's leadership. Maker forbid we hand anyone without a title any measure of leverage. Whoever she worked for must have been people of means."
Though that much likely goes without saying. Who else has the coin to afford such services? Yseult can hardly have been the intelligencer of farmers and seamstresses.
"I don't imagine she'll object to personnel, but affording her the chance to send along a few of her choices might make her feel as if she has a hold of the reins alongside us."
Punctuated by the last clink of the knife against the bowl, rinsing and then laying alongside it as John hooks the cloth and offers it to him. There is an easy comfort to inhabiting Flint's space, something long-established and well-worn by now, and while John returns the whole of his weight to the crutch, he doesn't step back to offer, "There's enough to counter her objections. We aren't alone in wanting to see Tevinter engaged rather than allowed to retreat and consolidate their power to create a problem elsewhere."
Maybe a reference to the disparate Orlesian leadership, but also a glancing estimation of Rutyer. Stark is still such an unknown quantity, but he's struck John as pragmatic. Maybe it wouldn't be such a struggle to sway him.
The cloth is accepted, some flickering look of skepticism casting across it in Silver's direction as he turns it over once. With a low hum of consideration, he takes the cloth to his scalp and mops up the damp at the back of his neck. Dries his hands, rings turning on their respective fingers.
"Given that we can't simply go around her,"—though it's clear where his preferences lie with respect to manuevering about Yseult—"It's likely the best argument that could be made to her. Though I doubt she'll hear it from me."
Here, now, his hand does make an inspection of the top of his head and behind his ears. The nape of his neck. Shifting the lay of his collar.
Whatever John says about common sense, he knows that's rarely the deciding factor in this organization. Or any organization, really.
"I can discuss it with Rutyer. Considering my involvement it would fall within our purview. If he agrees, and he is the one to raise it further, it may resolve the issue of Yseult altogether."
"I can raise the subject with Stark." His hand has returned to the crown of his head, not critical of the work he can't see but rather like a compulsive kind of thing. It's as if his hands require some occupation, and there is nothing quite like a scraped smooth surface to compel a person to put their hands all of it.
The cloth, faintly damp now, is laid across his knee and folded a handful of times into until it has taken the shape of a neat square.
"Be certain that if nothing else, he is acquainted with the relevant facts rather than whatever someone else might tell him regarding the motivations for our interest. From there, it will be only a matter of determining the correct message to rally the army behind Debuchy's interest rather than simply drive them away entirely."
The progress of his hands is marked, all the familiar gleam of rings and habitual, small movements. John finds a small impulse to mirror the restless motion, but it goes no farther than his own hands shaking the last drops of water away.
"I have the sense he'd be more interested in what could be salvaged of Tevene weaponry than inclined to balk over circumvented protocols and chain of command."
Something to recommend him, in John's opinion.
"I'll find a moment to speak with Rutyer. I think I can put this to him in such a way that he feels comfortable putting his support behind it," John says, before suggesting, "We might still let her supplant my chosen team with her own, even if Stark and Rutyer agree to support the course of action."
A small gesture, likely not enough of one to smooth over all discord, but one that still feels useful to make.
The quiet shift of his fingers is slow, tempo in keeping with the low thoughtful humming sound he makes in reply. And then, as if deliberating a course of action was the thing which had been keeping it in motion, his hand falls away and Flint moves to lever himself up from the chair.
"She's likely pull similar names," he agrees. "So I see no obstacle with giving her that much."
There is only so much competence to go around in Riftwatch.
Yes, there are only so many in Riftwatch worth sending on such a mission. Allowing Yseult her pick is a small risk overall.
The only drawback John could see is that whoever she chose would turn back to her to report all that occurred, and what did that matter? For this, something so straightforward, there would be nothing of interest to be had. John's answering hum of agreement is all the response there is, for the moment. They are aligned in this. What else need be said?
Flint rises, and John claims the vacated seat left in his wake, crutch slanting across one thigh.
"What else?" is open invitation. For their business, yes, but for whatever else on his mind that might be said in these early, quiet hours before every other aspect of this place intrudes too closely.
There is a little polished mirror glass on the table beside the basin. Flint trades the damp towel for it as Silver helps himself to the vacated chair. His assessment of his own reflection is brief, uncritical. They have done this enough times that there is little reason to look save perhaps for habit, or to note how much older he looks when he has been shorn down to the scalp like this. Not that a little bristle really does so much to soften certain haggard edges, but—
"Else?"
He divorces his hand from where it's risen to tug absently at the whiskers of his beard, smoothing this corner or that across his upper lip. And the mirror is set aside, the image of him in it sliding free beyond its edge.
"Rivain—Darras"—Fuck the man for not having taken on a less ambiguous surname—"Has an eye set toward some treasure in the Amaranthine." It's a throw away thing. Inconsequential until Darras makes it real. But the thought which is drawn in after it is—
More than maybe John has let on. He has wondered about her. Even after all that had passed between them, what she had nearly delivered him into, he has thought of her leaving and considered whether or not he might have pressed her to be more specific as to her destination.
She might be dead. She might be rich, as they'd both hoped to accomplish, and vanished somewhere the war wouldn't touch. (Antiva, maybe.) Max might have reached a place where she need not consider pirates and their wars, and put them from her mind. John wouldn't hold that against her.
"What made you think of her?" is a more pertinent question. Max had been an obstacle to Flint on more than one occasion. John doubts Flint thinks of her in the same way John has.
"Darras' business," he says, shifting his attention to the razor and lather block, rinsing the former and drying both before tucking them neatly back into the small lacquered box missing them. They're traded for a vial of oil, something to be worked briefly between the palms before he runs his hands once more across the scraped close scalp. A practiced, thoughtless ritual.
"She took a piece of a sizeable fortune with her."
So no, nothing so sentimental as whatever might be occurring to John Silver in this moment.
(Though Antiva would almost certainly be his wager also.)
That's all there is for a few beats. The sun has crept higher, rays slanting a little further across the floor. John watches the motion of Flint's hands, the movement of his shoulders and the fall of his tunic. There is some quiet pleasure, in looking his fill, unchecked, but it doesn't distract from the topic at hand.
"Are you considering attempting to retrieve it?"
A question posed neutrally, even as John considers what a difficult prospect it would be. Would they find Max hidden behind Anne Bonny's knives? Or would they find her safely ensconced in the midst of trade, with a number of other partners willing to take up against Riftwatch should she be dislodged?
Or would they find her at all? John had meant to disappear. He and Max have always been more alike than either of them had been willing to admit at the time.
His hum is a low, meandering thing—as if the idea hadn't occurred to him at all and now requires some measure of consideration here in the pale early morning light which filters through the nearby window.
How many men had died in the pursuit of the contents of that chest? What parts of the world had crumbled away because of it? What spirits of labor and heartache and desire must live still in it, in whatever dark place Max has seen fit to stow it away. If there is any fit place in the world for a thing made of such equal parts profit and want and a longing to be kept, then it must be Antiva.
"No," Flint says at last. The bottle is corked and stowed. The lacquered box is closed with the smallest rasp of its close fitted lid. "I see little reason to."
"Acquiring an alternative?" flows naturally from that answer.
Is there an alternative?
John might find rumor of one. But there is the business of retrieving it, and then—
The business of spending it. Or levering it. John can think of places that might benefit from being fed a little gold, enough so to strengthen their opposition. It would keep the men happy, busy hunting some new, breath-taking prize. But the management of the thing after obtaining it, do they need invite that into their business?
"I've given Darras license to do as he likes with respect to this cache he believes is waiting on some island in the Amaranthine," he says, settling himself back against the narrow window's ledge.
Without looking, he reaches back over his shoulder to pop the latch on the upper panel casement. It's jammed outward, more cracked than open. They're a long way up and even in these more pleasant administrative rooms where some Tevene mage, or later a Templar, once sat apparently some consideration was made for how certain environments might increase the propensity for a person throwing themselves out a window.
"If there is something to be found there, our intention is to use it to buy off the Viscount in exchange for letters of marque—an avenue to legitimize privateering in the Waking Sea. And if there isn't, there will have been no harm in looking." But as far as what Max slipped away with goes— "We've complications and opportunities enough without committing ourselves to chase the spirit of a thing that slipped well out of our reach years ago."
And besides,
"Rackham's probably spent half of it on new clothes by now."
Now there's a worthy use, one John assumes Darras didn't need much convincing to pledge his possible acquisition toward. It would make things easier for them and for Darras, to say nothing of the profit.
John's grin flashes, bright, silent approval geared more towards the prospect of paying off the Viscount than reconciling themselves to another thing passed through their grasp, before he agrees&—
"Overpaid, I can only assume."
Sight unseen, with only the memory of Rackham's enduring commitment to his wardrobe to guide the passing jab.
"I should fucking hope so," is mild. If there were anyone in the world fit to be robbed, surely Jack Rackham is that man.
The breath of air, not cool exactly but salt-sharp, passes through the window and across his shoulder. It stirs the dust motes, disturbed from the opening of the pane in the first place, where they float in the air.
"That's more or less the extent of my news, I'm afraid." Because it would be pleasant if there were more; it would afford some reasoning to stay locked in this room for a little longer, to avoid the stack of papers waiting on his desk or the work down at the ferry slip or along the docks in Kirkwall, or the meeting scheduled with the other division heads, or any other point on a long list of headaches waiting in the wings just beyond that door.
Seated, limbs loose in the chair, taking up space, John's expression turns contemplative at the prompting. His hands shift over the worn-smooth grip of his crutch, attuned perhaps to the unspoken thing there: the allotted time they're able to spend here, staving off the true start of the day, is dwindling.
"Come here," John says first, straightening with one ankle bracing on the floor to lever himself upwards in the chair from an almost-slouch.
And then—
"Depending on what Ket tells me of the night watch's rotations in Antiva City, I might send some of our people to remind the citizens of Antiva City of the Divine's call to action."
Rarely is James Flint a biddable creature. But in the warm daylight, behind a closed door and before the day has truly begun John Silver says Come here, and the man perched in the window detaches himself from it with a forward sway of the shoulders and does. It's thoughtlessly done, not unlike following the rolling deck of a ship through weather, and requires only a few paces to be before him.
"One would think the Divine could find a way of reminding Antiva City herself. But then," he concedes with some sidelong look. He is unrolling his sleeves from where they have been forced up about his elbows. Soon, despite what promises to be a day of weighted heat, he will shrug his way into a coat. "What would Riftwatch's purpose be if not to do what she and a half dozen Orlesian nobles refuse to."
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To say nothing of his reception at the Orlesian court, where a host of nobles--the sensible ones--must already be courting their own anxieties regarding what a peasant is likely to turn against when they are sick of fighting a common enemy and decide instead to find one which serves more specific interests.
"And," is like a new thought, one which is only just occurring to him as he sits quietly under the scrape of the blade. "If we were to bypass the generals to build trust among the men on the ground, that might later play to our advantage should we ever need to to circumvent them."
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"We could send a group. You were watched closely, I assume, but perhaps healers, some of our better fighters..."
People of apparently little importance, John means. Agents there to better the quality of life of the common soldiers, offer some minor pieces of assistance and pose no real interest to the generals. Who would look so closely at them?
"Do you think they'd be allowed to circulate without a chaperone?" is posed as John's fingers shift to his temple, John leaning in and against Flint's shoulder to avoid stepping around to stand face to face just yet.
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With the blade not yet set against him, he shifts in the chair by the degree necessary to turn and tip his face back enough to look at least in the direction of Silver. The necessity of his shoulder as support keeps Flint from twisting far enough to meet his eye.
"Who might you suggest for the work?"
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As he speaks, John carries that forward momentum around, circling the chair. Meets Flint's gaze, some minor, fond quirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he continues, "Maybe myself, if only to obligate them to entertain me while the rest do their work."
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Call him unnecessarily suspicious, but that much seems a given.
Casting a hand up to scuff his palm across the close shorn surface of his scalp, he says, "In any case, any reinforcements from Riftwatch will require a certain number of anchors in hands"—or wherever—"to appear legitimate. A rifter or two in addition to Ket and Bastien under your supervision seems plausible."
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But after, "Rutyer will be interested in the prospect of interesting information to pass back to Aurora, if retaking the city isn't tempting enough for them both."
The state of the Orlesian army certainly must qualify as intriguing. John can't imagine Byerly would pretend otherwise.
But there is no contradiction to be made. If they use Bastien, and John sees few other candidates capable of the task, then they will have to assume the details of their objective will pass to Byerly then to Yseult, at the least. It's hard to know immediately where Stark fits into that configuration.
John draws the blade back, to attend to a missed patch with a few careful strokes and a hand at Flint's shoulder.
"Maybe we offer Yseult a few people of her choice, to accompany mine."
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"And if her concern is a matter of personnel, that might work. But I suspect her qualms will have more to do with appealing to the rabble over the army's leadership. Maker forbid we hand anyone without a title any measure of leverage. Whoever she worked for must have been people of means."
Though that much likely goes without saying. Who else has the coin to afford such services? Yseult can hardly have been the intelligencer of farmers and seamstresses.
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Punctuated by the last clink of the knife against the bowl, rinsing and then laying alongside it as John hooks the cloth and offers it to him. There is an easy comfort to inhabiting Flint's space, something long-established and well-worn by now, and while John returns the whole of his weight to the crutch, he doesn't step back to offer, "There's enough to counter her objections. We aren't alone in wanting to see Tevinter engaged rather than allowed to retreat and consolidate their power to create a problem elsewhere."
Maybe a reference to the disparate Orlesian leadership, but also a glancing estimation of Rutyer. Stark is still such an unknown quantity, but he's struck John as pragmatic. Maybe it wouldn't be such a struggle to sway him.
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"Given that we can't simply go around her,"—though it's clear where his preferences lie with respect to manuevering about Yseult—"It's likely the best argument that could be made to her. Though I doubt she'll hear it from me."
Here, now, his hand does make an inspection of the top of his head and behind his ears. The nape of his neck. Shifting the lay of his collar.
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As if these are easily accomplished things.
Whatever John says about common sense, he knows that's rarely the deciding factor in this organization. Or any organization, really.
"I can discuss it with Rutyer. Considering my involvement it would fall within our purview. If he agrees, and he is the one to raise it further, it may resolve the issue of Yseult altogether."
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The cloth, faintly damp now, is laid across his knee and folded a handful of times into until it has taken the shape of a neat square.
"Be certain that if nothing else, he is acquainted with the relevant facts rather than whatever someone else might tell him regarding the motivations for our interest. From there, it will be only a matter of determining the correct message to rally the army behind Debuchy's interest rather than simply drive them away entirely."
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"I have the sense he'd be more interested in what could be salvaged of Tevene weaponry than inclined to balk over circumvented protocols and chain of command."
Something to recommend him, in John's opinion.
"I'll find a moment to speak with Rutyer. I think I can put this to him in such a way that he feels comfortable putting his support behind it," John says, before suggesting, "We might still let her supplant my chosen team with her own, even if Stark and Rutyer agree to support the course of action."
A small gesture, likely not enough of one to smooth over all discord, but one that still feels useful to make.
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"She's likely pull similar names," he agrees. "So I see no obstacle with giving her that much."
There is only so much competence to go around in Riftwatch.
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The only drawback John could see is that whoever she chose would turn back to her to report all that occurred, and what did that matter? For this, something so straightforward, there would be nothing of interest to be had. John's answering hum of agreement is all the response there is, for the moment. They are aligned in this. What else need be said?
Flint rises, and John claims the vacated seat left in his wake, crutch slanting across one thigh.
"What else?" is open invitation. For their business, yes, but for whatever else on his mind that might be said in these early, quiet hours before every other aspect of this place intrudes too closely.
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"Else?"
He divorces his hand from where it's risen to tug absently at the whiskers of his beard, smoothing this corner or that across his upper lip. And the mirror is set aside, the image of him in it sliding free beyond its edge.
"Rivain—Darras"—Fuck the man for not having taken on a less ambiguous surname—"Has an eye set toward some treasure in the Amaranthine." It's a throw away thing. Inconsequential until Darras makes it real. But the thought which is drawn in after it is—
"Do you sometimes wonder where Max has landed?"
—Less so. Or more so. He's not certain which.
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More than maybe John has let on. He has wondered about her. Even after all that had passed between them, what she had nearly delivered him into, he has thought of her leaving and considered whether or not he might have pressed her to be more specific as to her destination.
She might be dead. She might be rich, as they'd both hoped to accomplish, and vanished somewhere the war wouldn't touch. (Antiva, maybe.) Max might have reached a place where she need not consider pirates and their wars, and put them from her mind. John wouldn't hold that against her.
"What made you think of her?" is a more pertinent question. Max had been an obstacle to Flint on more than one occasion. John doubts Flint thinks of her in the same way John has.
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"She took a piece of a sizeable fortune with her."
So no, nothing so sentimental as whatever might be occurring to John Silver in this moment.
(Though Antiva would almost certainly be his wager also.)
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That's all there is for a few beats. The sun has crept higher, rays slanting a little further across the floor. John watches the motion of Flint's hands, the movement of his shoulders and the fall of his tunic. There is some quiet pleasure, in looking his fill, unchecked, but it doesn't distract from the topic at hand.
"Are you considering attempting to retrieve it?"
A question posed neutrally, even as John considers what a difficult prospect it would be. Would they find Max hidden behind Anne Bonny's knives? Or would they find her safely ensconced in the midst of trade, with a number of other partners willing to take up against Riftwatch should she be dislodged?
Or would they find her at all? John had meant to disappear. He and Max have always been more alike than either of them had been willing to admit at the time.
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How many men had died in the pursuit of the contents of that chest? What parts of the world had crumbled away because of it? What spirits of labor and heartache and desire must live still in it, in whatever dark place Max has seen fit to stow it away. If there is any fit place in the world for a thing made of such equal parts profit and want and a longing to be kept, then it must be Antiva.
"No," Flint says at last. The bottle is corked and stowed. The lacquered box is closed with the smallest rasp of its close fitted lid. "I see little reason to."
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Is there an alternative?
John might find rumor of one. But there is the business of retrieving it, and then—
The business of spending it. Or levering it. John can think of places that might benefit from being fed a little gold, enough so to strengthen their opposition. It would keep the men happy, busy hunting some new, breath-taking prize. But the management of the thing after obtaining it, do they need invite that into their business?
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Without looking, he reaches back over his shoulder to pop the latch on the upper panel casement. It's jammed outward, more cracked than open. They're a long way up and even in these more pleasant administrative rooms where some Tevene mage, or later a Templar, once sat apparently some consideration was made for how certain environments might increase the propensity for a person throwing themselves out a window.
"If there is something to be found there, our intention is to use it to buy off the Viscount in exchange for letters of marque—an avenue to legitimize privateering in the Waking Sea. And if there isn't, there will have been no harm in looking." But as far as what Max slipped away with goes— "We've complications and opportunities enough without committing ourselves to chase the spirit of a thing that slipped well out of our reach years ago."
And besides,
"Rackham's probably spent half of it on new clothes by now."
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John's grin flashes, bright, silent approval geared more towards the prospect of paying off the Viscount than reconciling themselves to another thing passed through their grasp, before he agrees&—
"Overpaid, I can only assume."
Sight unseen, with only the memory of Rackham's enduring commitment to his wardrobe to guide the passing jab.
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The breath of air, not cool exactly but salt-sharp, passes through the window and across his shoulder. It stirs the dust motes, disturbed from the opening of the pane in the first place, where they float in the air.
"That's more or less the extent of my news, I'm afraid." Because it would be pleasant if there were more; it would afford some reasoning to stay locked in this room for a little longer, to avoid the stack of papers waiting on his desk or the work down at the ferry slip or along the docks in Kirkwall, or the meeting scheduled with the other division heads, or any other point on a long list of headaches waiting in the wings just beyond that door.
"You?"
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"Come here," John says first, straightening with one ankle bracing on the floor to lever himself upwards in the chair from an almost-slouch.
And then—
"Depending on what Ket tells me of the night watch's rotations in Antiva City, I might send some of our people to remind the citizens of Antiva City of the Divine's call to action."
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"One would think the Divine could find a way of reminding Antiva City herself. But then," he concedes with some sidelong look. He is unrolling his sleeves from where they have been forced up about his elbows. Soon, despite what promises to be a day of weighted heat, he will shrug his way into a coat. "What would Riftwatch's purpose be if not to do what she and a half dozen Orlesian nobles refuse to."
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