gurabad | 086 » i traded in my trues for some robins

Entry tags:

086 » i traded in my trues for some robins

[another attempt has been made on ser aymeric's life, and the city of ishgard is in flames.

the lord commander — newly crowned lord speaker — will live, but his leadership over ishgard will not, if the current situation persists. the problem, first and foremost, is that the man has no shortage of enemies, and while it may be in the scions' best interest to keep aymeric in power, identifying the myriad parties that want to keep him out of power is a challenge in and of itself.

fortunately, gathering information is thancred's strong suit, and that is the task with which he has been entrusted. a few trips to the forgotten knight — plus a few nights spent eavesdropping on high house guardsmen, temple knights, and the commoners in the brume — suggest that one of the following parties may be responsible:

first: the vault itself. the priests, as always, make for the most likely culprits. the senior clergymen in the synod must be bristling over the fact that their archbishop's own bastard son has ousted him at last, and while they may want vengeance for archbishop thordan vii, they stand the most to gain if aymeric is removed from power. in particular, a group of halonic friars known as the true brotherhood of the faith has spoken with open rancor towards ser aymeric's actions, though nothing suggests their involvement in either the stabbing or the fires...

second: the high houses. once upon a time, the nobility and the church were on equal footing in terms of power within ishgard; now, that power is much diminished, and it is possible that members of the aristocratic class see ser aymeric's shaky coup as an opportunity to take back the privileges they once held. but the count de fortemps is known to support the warrior of light, and his sons and servants seem of like mind; ruling them out, that leaves houses haillenarte, dzemael, and durendaire. house dzemael is known to employ a team of assassins and is widely considered the most cruel and ruthless of the houses, but the guardsmen under its banner seem to know nothing of the arson incidents. still, some whisper, an alliance between the families sworn to houses durendaire and dzemael could be easily forged, particularly given their sons now missing from the ranks of the heavens' ward...

and third: the house haillenarte thorns.

even mentioning the house haillenarte thorns is enough to win raised eyebrows in some places.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, have I won your hand? My, my! I am flattered.

[That shite-eating grin on the priest's face has yet to dissipate. Thancred brings it about himself, really; if he were the same self-styled bard and handsome stranger of a lifetime ago, his mysterious visitor would surely leave him well enough alone, but the very fact that his hackles are up make him fun to tease.

Well — the false priest, himself, is not a cruel man, and it is not interest in Thancred that keeps him teasing and prodding, so he soon relents, clasping Thancred's open hand in a friendly handshake.]

I promise you, you will survive the night. It does me little good if you fall here, you understand.

['Survive the night' isn't the most promising, but it was better than what he was set to accomplish on his own. Thancred stares at their joined hands and grits his teeth. Snarling at the priest will do no good.]

That potion, brother, if you would.

[Priests of Halone may traditionally be called "father", but Thancred can't bring it out of himself in this condition, to a man who seems several summers his junior and is enjoying his torment with all the glee of the city's famed inquisitors at a heretic ball.]

Else your promise will prove for naught.

[Gods. It is so hard to try not to be toyed with. To bite down retorts and repartee and a review of his current opinion of what Ishgard is doing for good measure.

He is not in the least comforted by hearing his life is some sort of useful playing card for the man before him.]

[Oh, right, the potion. Acting for a moment as if he's forgotten, the blond priest soon replaces his warm hand with the glass vial in question, particularly as it isn't very good for Thancred to bleed quite so much on the Vault tiles. The washing of stone is such a difficult thing, and while it won't be his job, he tries to be considerate in his line of work. The cleaning — that will always be someone's job.]

There you are, my friend. Take it at your leisure.

[He doesn't really mean that, of course. It'll be much better if Thancred takes it immediately — for his sake as well as his mysterious new "friend's".]

And then, if you would, pray tell me what it is you seek? I might be of use to you, you see... as I have demonstrated.

[Leisure is a luxury lost on Thancred this evening. He downs the remainder of the potion in three swallows, hardly tasting it (for the better, like as not) and finds the nearest solid object to help prop him up until such time as it starts to take effect. He isn't fool enough to think he'll lose the vertigo that comes with spilled blood. Not from half of one restorative.

He looks up, again, into the priest's amused blue eyes. The urge to snap at him must be quelled before Thancred can manage an answer.]

Information. [Perhaps more than that, else he'd not be squaring off against well-armed friars in a shadowy corridor in order to wear their garments. But 'tis truth enough for the time being. If the priest is skilled in such things, he shouldn't detect outright falsehood.] I don't doubt you are aware of the act that caused all this...upheaval. I want to know its cause.

[Best not to implicate the rest of the Scions unless it becomes unavoidable.]

[~~Whose fault is it that the potion is only half-full, Thancred?~~ For a new turn, the blue-eyed priest seems to put at least some of his infuriatingly smug demeanor away, shrugging one-shouldered in a manner that makes the gold embroidery of his fine robe catch the fading moonlight.]

Well, wouldn't you know it — I am here to investigate exactly the same thing.

[Thancred's distrust is a palpable thing, and will likely remain such, no matter that the priest says. Still, the young man reasons, he may as well play more of his cards. Every good spy worth his salt knows when to talk and when to stay silent.]

You see, my man, it does me little good if you are found here, bleeding through your friar's habit. The inquisitors will secure the entire area if they find even a single rat in one of their mousetraps, and I would rather not jeopardize my own operation if I can help it.

[The tone of his voice is conspiratorial — even seductive. Let us work together, he intimates, through his too-calm, too-friendly smile, the way he leans against a nearby sill with both palms behind him, as if to indicate, plainly, that he is not a threat.]

Shall we play a game while the restorative warms your belly? For every question you ask, I will ask of you another. We answer with complete honesty — or at least as much honesty as can be expected of men that slip into sanctuaries in the dead of night.

[Somewhat freed of the immediacy of bleeding to unconsciousness, Thancred can watch the man's body language with far more interest, listen to his words with an ear for keeping them all in mind and analyzing the two together. It could be a ruse, but he has the distinct feeling that the priest (who is most certainly not a priest by practiced trade, no matter how well he wears the robes) trusts him, or failing that, his professed intentions. Makes him damned uncomfortable, too, carrying with it the afterthought pressure of having-been-watched.

The game he proposes is...fair, if Thancred has the skill and deftness of mind to ask the right questions and prepare for anything and everything he might be asked in return. Under ordinary circumstances he would think this young man well outmatched.

But he has not been stabbed again. Supposing, as he must, that the priest wishes to keep him alive for some later nefarious purpose - well, being alive greatly increases his chances of doing something about it, compared to the alternative.

Thancred grunts and straightens as much as he can.]

Fine. [The hand that isn't holding the wall leaves his side to indicate the unconscious friar and the alcove they're tucked into.] But not while standing idly beside the sprung trap. Prideful rats feed keener cats, as it were.

[Unless there is far more to the troubles plaguing the Holy See than even the Scions have discovered, Thancred knows their discovery will be a risk this priest cannot afford to take, either. He could spin collusion as a preface to capture but would face the scrutiny of his superiors; or, perhaps, says an ancient spymaster's whisper in his thoughts, he is the superior. If that proves true, Thancred has nothing to lose by agreeing, as he is in trouble of the highest order already.]

Well? [On the whole it makes him feel better to have thrown in some terms of his own, feeble though they are.] Lead the way, if you're willing.

[It should come as no surprise to Thancred that the young Elezen briefly abandons his outwardly charitable demeanor; he bends low over the unconscious friar to tie the man up with a length of rope from one of his pockets. (The knot is a complex one that, if this priest were a member of an Eorzean Grand Company, would suggest some sort of past training as a scout.) Gagging the Hyur with a ragged piece of cloth for good measure, the priest leans the friar's lifeless body against a wall in the corner of the room. The poor man will not be warning anyone of his predicament unless they happen to come into this hall and look behind a pillar, and he will have to suffer the indignity of being seen in his smallclothes, besides.

No matter for the priest, who straightens, dusts off his hands as daintily as any noble maiden, then fixes Thancred with a smile.]

Very well, then. With me, Brother Williard. We have much to discuss.

[Williard is Thancred's name now, one supposes — whether it was the name of the man Thancred just upended or it is something of the young priest's own invention is somewhat unclear. Nevertheless, the priest-who-is-not-a-priest leads Thancred down several halls and a flight of stairs to what might be considered something of a residential quarter for the clergy. Here, the holy men and women of the Vault sleep in halls, one room next to the other; the priest takes Thancred to his own cell, or else a cell he has taken over for this express purpose.

The room is unremarkable. There is a bed, a desk. No window. The table is littered with what appears to be musical scores.]

We may speak freely here. And you may plot your next course of action, in the precious bells you have before the guards discover their missing man.

[Foul temper or no, Thancred won't risk his semblance of safety by bloodying the man's bed. He sits in the desk chair instead, carefully not disturbing anything on the desktop; one hand still holds his side.

The long walk here brought him information, but its usefulness overall is difficult to discern even now. The priest was ready with a name for cover - probably the very friar he tussled with - but the ease of it is what sticks in Thancred's mind. There was no falter, no misstep in voice or act, and this man appears rather young for such precision. Then again, so did Thancred, once.

Second: though they passed few people, they were not in any immediate way otherwise noticed, despite the heightened sense of fear in the city and the tightened security on the Vault itself. Thancred is left with the impression that this fellow is to be left to his business. Whatever that may be. Of course, it could be his own excessively healthy sense of paranoia tapping him on the shoulder.

Third, and perhaps most concerning, is that despite Thancred's internal insistence that this was no ordinary man of the cloth, he keeps austere rooms like any other devoted of Halone. And they may speak freely here.]

Then I shall do us both the favor of coming to the point. [He shifts a little in the chair.] You mentioned my jeopardizing your own operations. What are they?

Out the gate with such pointed questions! Have you no sense of romantic suspense, my friend?

[The odd young priest may be well-respected and left alone by those few in the Vault who recognize him — he may keep an austere room, seemingly devoid of earthly pleasures — but he seems very much like any other youth in any other corner of Eorzea, at least when he laughs. Heedless of the fact that he has a stranger in what must presumably be his office (is it his office?), the young man collapses, no, flops into his bed, boots dangling off the edge of his mattress as he presses his cheek into his pillow for a time. An odd lump in the folds of his robe over his thigh suggests that he has at least one hidden weapon on his person, but that's just what Thancred can see, and they both know the more dangerous things are what he can't.

Lying on his belly with his weapon in full view, the young priest seems almost as though he has given up on keeping secrets — but of course that can't be true.]

There is no simple way to explain what I am doing, but in essence, I am here to prove my innocence. A thing I find myself doing rather often of late, in truth...

[That's his first question answered, which gives him leave to ask another one. He looks at Thancred with keen interest, eyes bright.]

Now for your turn. Who do you think attempted to take Ser Aymeric's life?

[To prove his innocence, is it? Then he must, reasonably, have something about which he feels others may sense or divine some manner of guilt.

But it isn't his turn to ask a question. Thancred grimaces, which isn't that far from the face he made already, and tries not to sound too disbelieving of his own words.]

My organization has thrown its weight behind the allegations that the attempt comes from within. [His free hand gestures to the walls around them, clearly implying the machinations of the Vault itself.] But, as you will no doubt rightly guess, if that's all we believed, there would be no reason for my presence.

[He's lost a bit too much blood, perhaps, for in giving that answer he has revealed a great deal more than a sound Thancred would ever intend. Pity, but there 'tis.]

What might lead them to suspect your guilt? If I may.

[He can tell, at least, that the half-potion is doing something for his pain; there's a tingling at the edges of his wounds, a familiar sort not born of poison but of medicine.]

[The priest must surely have expected this question — it was bound to be one of the first things Thancred would ask — but even so, an odd loneliness seems to come over his person. The expression on his face is unexpectedly bitter, unexpectedly lonely. Lying on his pillow, the priest — this spy — could be naught more than a sullen teen, sulking over his mother's inattentiveness.

The words that escape his lips are anything but.]

...That man as good as killed someone very dear to me.

[Ordinarily, this would suffice as response, by the rules of the game. But Thancred gave a bit more than strictly necessary, himself; it seems only fitting for the Elezen priest to do the same.]

Even so, the masses are short-sighted. A life for a life may be the law of my trade, but I gain nothing now from seeing Ser Aymeric slain. Oh, I do hate him, [he says, rather suddenly.] I shall hate him until he apologizes for the offense. I daresay he never will.

[On that rather somber final note, the priest pushes himself to a sitting position, shaking his short blond locks back into place. He puts his melancholy away, leaving a falsely cheery front in its wake.]

To put it bluntly, his head would be more useful to me between my legs than removed from his person. 'Twas not I who ordered this hit.

[Sighing, the young spy fixes his gaze on Thancred's face once more, leaning his elbows on his knees.]

Do you suspect the Synod, perchance, or the True Brotherhood of the Faith?

[Such brazen talk for a man of the cloth! Thancred lacks the energy to even pretend at being scandalized; he scoffs instead, though it is without much scorn, either. Aymeric may not make all the best decisions, but what leader ever can?

He grits his teeth against a thought he doesn't want to have.]

The latter group exhibits more extremist tendencies.

[May he accept this as answer enough. Thancred personal opinions aside, he is here to either confirm or refute all suspects, and now he is all but certain that one of those sits on the bed before him. And claims innocence of the act. ...Against his own better judgment, Thancred is inclined to believe him.]

But I am not bound to the presumption that they would so openly try again, when such methods failed them utterly the last time. [Thanks to some timely intervention on all sides. But it remains that the True Brotherhood failed in their plans, and Ishgard grew closer to dragonkin as a result.

He finds his thoughts drawn away. That man as good as killed someone very dear to me is a twin wound to the one Thancred bears, for all he has no intentions of sharing that information. He, too, has actions he cannot take in response. Were he of sounder mind, he might recognize the young priest's anger for what it is.]

Which do you suspect?

[The young priest makes a show of canting his head to one side in idle contemplation. He already has his answer, however, and it slides off his tongue with a reflexively practiced air despite the fact that this ought to be an off-the-cuff remark.]

Neither. In my view, you have the right of it. The True Brotherhood has already thrown away their pawns and gambled away their bishops. They were humiliated enough by the scene in the Vault and by Vidofnir's arrival. Making a third attempt on Ser Aymeric's life is too zealous even for that band of zealots.

[A wry little smile seems to steal over his lips, though perhaps it is just the angle of his face against the shadows cast by the window light.]

Personally... I suspect neither. I find that noblemen play the shrewdest games in this city.

So. One of the High Houses, after all. [Thancred turns his head aside, his covered eye angled toward the priest.] Or one rather lower, but still vaunted enough to loathe calling itself lowborn.

[That was too easy. The man was not only ready for the question, but ready with a viable and perhaps useful answer. Thancred knows there are two obvious paths here, with a third and fourth waiting in the wings: he has put forth the nobles of Ishgard to cover for the truth, or he has put them forth to ensure a particular one comes to hang. Both can be true. Neither is ever the more unlikely. The man knows too much and he is too good at this game.

Not for the first time, Thancred wonders if his infiltration attempt was not expected after all.

But he has not asked a question, and so neither will the Scions' fallen rogue; instead, he shifts in his chair, testing the pain in his arm and side. He feels better. He wishes the earnestness of that didn't raise several internal alarums. But - if he were to somehow make a passable escape now - he can make it out without collapsing on the flagstones.

The trouble is he is prisoner of the questioning game unless or until his affable priest decides otherwise.]

[The priest lets the silence stretch on a little longer.

Then he laughs and straightens once more, resting his palms upon his thighs instead of sitting hunched over with this elbows upon his knees, and it makes him look suddenly tall and confident, radiant in a way that Thancred stopped being quite some time ago.]

I give you the opportunity to change the rules of our game, and you stick to it. Such a rare disinclination to gamble for our line of work! Or is it just the right disinclination to gamble? [He shakes his head.] You are an interesting man, Thancred of the Seventh Dawn.

[Well — Thancred might have refused to take up a freebie remark that would have won him more information without having to pay more of his own secrets, but that hardly matters to the Elezen spy, who is not trying to bleed Thancred of any secrets the Scions may be hiding anyway. On the contrary, his questions seem increasingly irrelevant to the situation at hand, indeed almost personal —]

What do you think of Ser Aymeric, I wonder?

Edited 2021-04-27 23:32 (UTC)

[He passes a hand across his face to mask any potential reaction to "Thancred of the Seventh Dawn"; though he is certain he didn't name the Scions outright, are his recollections muddled? Even those of the last bell or so? Did he even give this man his name at all?

When his hand has completed its motion he only looks worn. In the corners of his bearing are weariness and anger in equal measure, but they have been there for some time now, and have little and less to do with Ishgardian political upheaval or Ser Aymeric specifically.]

What do I think of Ser Aymeric?

[Why should Thancred's opinion matter at all?

He watches the young priest's eyes for a moment. Perhaps the streak of hunger there, or- not hunger, but something kin to it, something with the quality of longing but the temper of disgust. He can't think of another word for it - perhaps that momentary turn toward said unnameable emotion is something he invented just because it was likely.

Perhaps not.

Thancred sees no reason to fall upon dishonesty now and wither on its blade, but his response is guarded nevertheless.]

I know little of the man beyond the moves he and his have made toward a future for Ishgard wholly unlike this one. [Theirs is not some personal connection on any level. There are far better people to question for that.] In that regard, from the viewpoint of an outsider- [Thancred shifts in his chair and pauses to catch his breath. Not bleeding is heavenly; not moving is probably best for the rest of him.] I find little fault with his methods, unfamiliar as I am with their intricacies.

[He's gambling on this being the wrong answer entirely. His teeth are set when he looks at the priest again.]

Are you willing to offer an insider's counterpoint in return?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

086 » i traded in my trues for some robins

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject