Oh. Her answer is cautious - "Depends on the project" - but it's impossible to fully hide her excitement at that question. It's a combination of curiosity and gratification, that someone would come to her with a project, that her skills have been noticed. And that it's someone who's as clever and thoughtful and politically-minded as Flint - She needs to remind herself to stay careful; she needs to remind herself that, just because she likes Flint and thinks he's clever doesn't mean that he's got her best interests at heart, and that flattery's an easy way to turn someone's head, even hers.
The teacup is displaced to his knee, more or less forgotten except by the hand required to steady it there. Simply and straightforward, without batting an eye: "Destabilizing trade flowing to and from Tevinter."
Oh. That's...really big. And properly piratical, isn't it? Kitty takes just a moment to fancy herself a buccaneer, shouting commands to a pirate crew, before her practical mind asserts itself.
She crosses her arms, bracing them against her knees as she leans forward. A moment while she considers the possibilities and the ramifications before saying, "Can we know that that would hurt the Tevinter government more than it would the common folk?"
"We can." He's certain. Sounds it. "The soporati will feel the pinch, but if it's made clear that the upheavel is in answer to the new Archon and the Venatori powers that must be in the Magesterium, it could be the encouragement they need to join your would-be slave rebellion." And the freemen with no holdings and those below them are already suffering enough that another jab can hardly be worth registering.
"The longer we wait for the Imperium to decide its own trajectory, the more likely we are to find ourselves fighting a war on yet another front. If you can undercut the North's resources from the start and follow it up with some decisive action from the Inquisition and her allies, it might be possible to avoid the need to divide our attentions further."
It all sounds really reasonable, honestly. You can't stir up the middle classes with slogans alone. You've got to rob them of their comfort. Like her mum and her dad, back home - as long as they had their lovely house and their lovely paychecks, they were never going to understand Kitty, or even hear her. If they'd had that taken away, though -
Well. No use thinking of them now. Or ever, really. Honestly, they're worth forgetting altogether.
Here, satisfied he has her, Flint attends to the teacup once more. Takes a sip. "Exactly what you were trying to do to with my things at the Boar," Flint says.
Which is to say: spy work. Worming around places he can't rightly go or can't easily access and putting her eyes on documents, her ears at the edge of conversation. "The more we know about what's going in and out of Thedas' major ports, the better prepared we'll be to plan where to make our runs. Make friends. Have them write you as they're abroad. If we're to do this properly, we'll need that intelligence so we can do this quietly. The worst version of this is to have the Imperium's citizens blame the Inquisition for overreach, rather than the Venatori and their ties to Corypheus."
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rathercommon) wrote2018-06-25 09:47 pm
no subject
But even so. It's really nice.
"What are you thinking?"
no subject
no subject
She crosses her arms, bracing them against her knees as she leans forward. A moment while she considers the possibilities and the ramifications before saying, "Can we know that that would hurt the Tevinter government more than it would the common folk?"
no subject
"The longer we wait for the Imperium to decide its own trajectory, the more likely we are to find ourselves fighting a war on yet another front. If you can undercut the North's resources from the start and follow it up with some decisive action from the Inquisition and her allies, it might be possible to avoid the need to divide our attentions further."
no subject
Well. No use thinking of them now. Or ever, really. Honestly, they're worth forgetting altogether.
"And what can I do?"
no subject
Which is to say: spy work. Worming around places he can't rightly go or can't easily access and putting her eyes on documents, her ears at the edge of conversation. "The more we know about what's going in and out of Thedas' major ports, the better prepared we'll be to plan where to make our runs. Make friends. Have them write you as they're abroad. If we're to do this properly, we'll need that intelligence so we can do this quietly. The worst version of this is to have the Imperium's citizens blame the Inquisition for overreach, rather than the Venatori and their ties to Corypheus."