Maybe it's for the best - that she doesn't apologize, that it's her own interrogation and not something passed down to her from one of the half dozen voices trying to talk her down across the sending crystals (he isn't deaf). In any case, it's an answer that suits him enough to take the question more seriously than the evening or her perfectly true but unrelentingly earnest criticism of the festivities might otherwise merit.
He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.
She considers that a moment. There's more than just a grain of truth in it, isn't there? A life of perfect freedom is a life completely unbounded. But that wasn't the sort of freedom she had fought for - not the sort she'd even want. She and her compatriots, they'd wanted a voice in government. Not its utter destruction. It's not the freedom he seems to be advocating, either.
"But balance is needed." She leans up against the wall beside the brazier, arms crossed, head tilted thoughtfully. "There are people who get freedom and use it to do wicked things. When people don't face consequences for their actions, sometimes they go mad with it - turn to abuse and cruelty. So freedom isn't always a good thing."
He abandons twisting at the ring with a low, meditative noise. No, that's not--
"Freedom isn't a lack of consequence," he clarifies. "It's the ownership of it, and of the justice a place where people share in that freedom decides on. Balance, such as it is, in a world built by men who have only ever looked after their own security is as much a story as that party happening downstairs right now. But give men and women ownership of themselves, and they'll be as veilfire for each other in the dark."
"Don't try to teach me my business," she replies. Her manner is wryly confident rather than scolding or disapproving, but she means it; she doesn't move to check on it. She's made enough bloody cups of tea, on a stove or over a brazier, to know the sound of water when it's ready. And this pot needs another minute.
She thinks over his story, though, considering his position. It...does sound right. "Where I come from, the people in power - they seized power from a parliament. We got taught the story by rote in school - the old commoners' parliament was corrupt and weak, and so the Founder, William Gladstone, came in and during the Night of Long Counsel convinced them to give power over to him..." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. "Watching you lot, though - the way you vote, and politic - it does make me feel better. No one could accuse your democracy of weakness."
That came out a little incoherent, didn't it? Well, her thoughts are confused and a bit disjointed tonight. She hopes she's not incomprehensible. Regardless, now the water's ready; she goes and fetches it, pours two cups.
His mistake. Won't happen again, says the way he tips his head and the corner of his mouth twitches back.
(Funny too, how the temper of the room isn't half so self-serious as the topic of conversation really implies. It's easy, like they are talking about the weather or a discussing a book they've both been reading.)
"Consider telling that to the people already doing it."
Because, isn't it? Weak. Or only as strong as the men inside it believe it to be. Today it's been proven as tenable for a few more hours, but weeks existing at the fringe of what the world calls proper society was a way of wearing on things. Blunting them. It's easier to say 'Fuck those men who hate you for your liberty, who call this version of democracy nothing more than mercenary criminality,' when you aren't living in their pockets.
Kitty blinks very slightly in surprise. She didn't expect that to be Flint's reaction. After all -
"Hold on. Weren't you just saying it was the only way to be free, all that?"
She places the tea at Flint's elbow, then sits primly in the chair opposite him. The primness is immediately ruined as she kicks off her shoes and pulls her legs up beside her, curling up like a cat in the chair.
"And it's not like it hasn't lasted a while, right? This system. It's been in place for some time, hasn't it?"
What a pair they make: discussing free democratic republics while neither of them even knows how to sit in a chair properly.
"But there isn't any continuity in it, is there?" How old is the oldest man on the Walrus? On Nascere? What has any crew passed down to another? Secret pieces of seamanship, how to raid and survive, how to make a name that will be forgotten when you are gone. What difference is there in the lives of the women and men who did this work twenty years ago and the ones that do it today? Nothing. Yet.
Flint fetches the cup up from where she's set it, wrapping both his hands about it. Holds it just there, letting the warmth leech into his fingers. "The trouble isn't the system, it's that it exists in isolation even from others like it. A ship is an island, surrounded at all times by the world in opposition to it. That world means to break you; it has dashed a hundred other crews and swallowed everything they've done and it will do it to you and it will do it to your men given the barest chance.
"And if it doesn't, what then? One day you will be old and gray and you will be tired of the sea, but there will be no alternative. There is no place waiting for you because a ship's freedom, even in places like Llomerryn, is a story told to contradict something else. It is defined by what it chooses not to be, by people who believe they are right to be different. That may be just, that may be true, it may even be the nearest thing to independence certain men can find in this world as it is presently. But it is a state under perpetual siege. Until freedom is a life lived and not a weapon you have to use against something else, our option - yours and mine and the people in that courtyard tonight - is to take the best version we can get and figure out a way to use it to show the rest of the world that it can be done."
That's a good point. The democracy gets smashed to bits - because of course, it must be easier to smash a democracy to bits, with all the indecision and squabbling - or maybe not, because a democracy must produce more good ideas than a monarchy, so maybe it's stronger...But say, for argument's sake, that a democracy does get destroyed. Like the old Parliament. If it's a small democracy, if it stands alone, it's probably like snuffing out a spark. It probably doesn't even leave behind burn-marks, to let others know it existed.
She lets out a slow breath. "You could write books, I suppose," she says. "Leave behind what you knew. But then whoever comes after, they'll be like the magicians back home - burning the books they don't like, keeping the common folk illiterate." She drops her chin into her hand. "Teach other people, and hope they'll teach the ones who come after. Hope that they'll outlive the folks who want to snuff out freedom, too."
"As you said - balance is required. It can't all be done at the end of a sword," he agrees, though there is tar black on his neck and a knife in his belt. "Show people irrefutable proof that what they know to be true doesn't have to be, whether that's by taking something away or by giving it, and they can be persuaded."
He pauses then, struck all at once by some sharp ache. He's sent messages North. Maker willing they will find their way to Madi at whatever line of defense she has fallen back to.
"Will you be at Ghislain?" Spoken suddenly across the edge of his cup.
That's...a topic that's a bit harder to cheerfully intellectualize. She curls in a little closer to herself, wrapping an arm around her knobby knees.
"I guess I will." She gives a small shrug, trying to look casual, but there's something a bit pinched about her expression. "Don't know how much good I'll do, but I've got a mabari that loves me, and I guess I'll be sending her out there. Which seems..." Her face settles into a deep sort of unease. "Wrong. But what can you do."
She gnaws on the inside of her lip a moment, then blows out a long breath, shaking her head. "Anyway. What about you lot? It's landlocked, isn't it? Will you be going?"
"I'm technically under Scoutmaster Ashara's command." So that's a yes. "But the crew isn't Inquisition and I believe their talents are better applied elsewhere."
He has work for them to do here, something to keep them occupied while prying eyes are either turned elsewhere or removed from Kirkwall entirely. Which-- for a moment he nurses the cup, contemplating the brazier's coals and measuring the nearly intangible weight of the packet inside his coat light at his side. Then he looks at her. Speaking of talents that would benefit from being pointed in certain directions...
"What does the Inquisition have you doing, Kitty? Specifically, day to day."
"Research," she responds. Then, with a tilt of her head, she admits - "Well - I sort of have myself doing research, more precisely. I think they were a bit squeamish of telling me to go into any particular department, on account of my age and all that. So I decided what I could get the most use out of, and where I could do the most good."
Which is partially a lie. She could, perhaps, do a bit more good out on the battlefield, where her resilience could let her get at targets that others couldn't. But also, that seems like a quick path to a quick death - and everyone's trying to kill Corypheus; better to spend her time working on problems that aren't getting worked on yet.
"So - you're going, but your men are staying behind?" It's an interesting way of doing things, and one she doesn't disapprove of. Those in charge, she thinks, ought to be spending their time out on the front lines.
"Not that it's my preference to go to Ghislain and be stabbed, but--" What's the eyebrow equivalent of a shrug? Whatever it is, his face manages to do it.
But, refusing to do the one thing of any significance the Inquisition has actually ordered him to do seems-- well, unlikely to do him any more long term good than getting killed might, and he thinks the odds are strong he can keep himself from being slaughtered in Orlais. He'll figure it out.
"As for the men, they're the closest thing the Inquisition has to a crew for its ships right now. Better to keep them on hand than risk wasting them on a battlefield. What kinds of research?"
He seems genuinely, surprisingly, interested in her activities. So, after a little frown of curiosity, she answers more directly.
"A few different things," she says. "My primary project - the thing I care most about - is seeing the slaves up north freed. As we talked about. So I'm reading a lot about Tevinter, and about the history of slavery there - not that there's much to read about, given how utterly dull and uninteresting most educated folks have apparently found the lives of slaves." A deeper frown shows what she thinks of that. "But I'm reading about Andraste, too, and her life, to see if it'd be possible to stir up the religious types and their religious feelings to mobilize them in the cause for freedom.
"Other things I'm looking at - Lyrium, red lyrium specifically, that's something I've been researching. Awful stuff - absolutely dreadful - the more I read the worse it seems. History, still, though I feel like I've got a firm enough grasp on a lot of parts of the world - not all of 'em, but enough that I'm not scrambling for an explanation of some reference I come across every two paragraphs. Every seven or eight paragraphs, instead, now." A wry shrug. "And a little bit about magic, but honestly, magical theory is so complicated here that I feel as though I'd need another lifetime to even start to get a handle on it, and it doesn't seem as though there's all that much that learning about it is adding to my general knowledge. Few other things, too - but I'm chattering on, I don't know if you wanted this much detail."
It's fine detail, and tells him more or less what he needs - that, with the exception of her involvement in the Inquisition's interests to the North, it seems unlikely that anyone else is leveraging her attention just yet. And that particular combination--
He can think of worse circumstances.
A faint tip of the head and a speculative look across the cooling cup of tea punctuates, "How would you like another project?"
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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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-11-14 11:42 pm (UTC)He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 01:12 am (UTC)"But balance is needed." She leans up against the wall beside the brazier, arms crossed, head tilted thoughtfully. "There are people who get freedom and use it to do wicked things. When people don't face consequences for their actions, sometimes they go mad with it - turn to abuse and cruelty. So freedom isn't always a good thing."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 10:26 pm (UTC)"Freedom isn't a lack of consequence," he clarifies. "It's the ownership of it, and of the justice a place where people share in that freedom decides on. Balance, such as it is, in a world built by men who have only ever looked after their own security is as much a story as that party happening downstairs right now. But give men and women ownership of themselves, and they'll be as veilfire for each other in the dark."
A pause. "Your water sounds ready."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 10:36 pm (UTC)She thinks over his story, though, considering his position. It...does sound right. "Where I come from, the people in power - they seized power from a parliament. We got taught the story by rote in school - the old commoners' parliament was corrupt and weak, and so the Founder, William Gladstone, came in and during the Night of Long Counsel convinced them to give power over to him..." She blows out a breath, shaking her head. "Watching you lot, though - the way you vote, and politic - it does make me feel better. No one could accuse your democracy of weakness."
That came out a little incoherent, didn't it? Well, her thoughts are confused and a bit disjointed tonight. She hopes she's not incomprehensible. Regardless, now the water's ready; she goes and fetches it, pours two cups.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 01:50 am (UTC)(Funny too, how the temper of the room isn't half so self-serious as the topic of conversation really implies. It's easy, like they are talking about the weather or a discussing a book they've both been reading.)
"Consider telling that to the people already doing it."
Because, isn't it? Weak. Or only as strong as the men inside it believe it to be. Today it's been proven as tenable for a few more hours, but weeks existing at the fringe of what the world calls proper society was a way of wearing on things. Blunting them. It's easier to say 'Fuck those men who hate you for your liberty, who call this version of democracy nothing more than mercenary criminality,' when you aren't living in their pockets.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 02:05 am (UTC)"Hold on. Weren't you just saying it was the only way to be free, all that?"
She places the tea at Flint's elbow, then sits primly in the chair opposite him. The primness is immediately ruined as she kicks off her shoes and pulls her legs up beside her, curling up like a cat in the chair.
"And it's not like it hasn't lasted a while, right? This system. It's been in place for some time, hasn't it?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 03:30 am (UTC)"But there isn't any continuity in it, is there?" How old is the oldest man on the Walrus? On Nascere? What has any crew passed down to another? Secret pieces of seamanship, how to raid and survive, how to make a name that will be forgotten when you are gone. What difference is there in the lives of the women and men who did this work twenty years ago and the ones that do it today? Nothing. Yet.
Flint fetches the cup up from where she's set it, wrapping both his hands about it. Holds it just there, letting the warmth leech into his fingers. "The trouble isn't the system, it's that it exists in isolation even from others like it. A ship is an island, surrounded at all times by the world in opposition to it. That world means to break you; it has dashed a hundred other crews and swallowed everything they've done and it will do it to you and it will do it to your men given the barest chance.
"And if it doesn't, what then? One day you will be old and gray and you will be tired of the sea, but there will be no alternative. There is no place waiting for you because a ship's freedom, even in places like Llomerryn, is a story told to contradict something else. It is defined by what it chooses not to be, by people who believe they are right to be different. That may be just, that may be true, it may even be the nearest thing to independence certain men can find in this world as it is presently. But it is a state under perpetual siege. Until freedom is a life lived and not a weapon you have to use against something else, our option - yours and mine and the people in that courtyard tonight - is to take the best version we can get and figure out a way to use it to show the rest of the world that it can be done."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 03:55 pm (UTC)She lets out a slow breath. "You could write books, I suppose," she says. "Leave behind what you knew. But then whoever comes after, they'll be like the magicians back home - burning the books they don't like, keeping the common folk illiterate." She drops her chin into her hand. "Teach other people, and hope they'll teach the ones who come after. Hope that they'll outlive the folks who want to snuff out freedom, too."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 06:53 pm (UTC)He pauses then, struck all at once by some sharp ache. He's sent messages North. Maker willing they will find their way to Madi at whatever line of defense she has fallen back to.
"Will you be at Ghislain?" Spoken suddenly across the edge of his cup.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 07:19 pm (UTC)"I guess I will." She gives a small shrug, trying to look casual, but there's something a bit pinched about her expression. "Don't know how much good I'll do, but I've got a mabari that loves me, and I guess I'll be sending her out there. Which seems..." Her face settles into a deep sort of unease. "Wrong. But what can you do."
She gnaws on the inside of her lip a moment, then blows out a long breath, shaking her head. "Anyway. What about you lot? It's landlocked, isn't it? Will you be going?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 09:37 pm (UTC)He has work for them to do here, something to keep them occupied while prying eyes are either turned elsewhere or removed from Kirkwall entirely. Which-- for a moment he nurses the cup, contemplating the brazier's coals and measuring the nearly intangible weight of the packet inside his coat light at his side. Then he looks at her. Speaking of talents that would benefit from being pointed in certain directions...
"What does the Inquisition have you doing, Kitty? Specifically, day to day."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-16 09:48 pm (UTC)Which is partially a lie. She could, perhaps, do a bit more good out on the battlefield, where her resilience could let her get at targets that others couldn't. But also, that seems like a quick path to a quick death - and everyone's trying to kill Corypheus; better to spend her time working on problems that aren't getting worked on yet.
"So - you're going, but your men are staying behind?" It's an interesting way of doing things, and one she doesn't disapprove of. Those in charge, she thinks, ought to be spending their time out on the front lines.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-17 10:16 pm (UTC)But, refusing to do the one thing of any significance the Inquisition has actually ordered him to do seems-- well, unlikely to do him any more long term good than getting killed might, and he thinks the odds are strong he can keep himself from being slaughtered in Orlais. He'll figure it out.
"As for the men, they're the closest thing the Inquisition has to a crew for its ships right now. Better to keep them on hand than risk wasting them on a battlefield. What kinds of research?"
no subject
Date: 2018-11-17 11:12 pm (UTC)"A few different things," she says. "My primary project - the thing I care most about - is seeing the slaves up north freed. As we talked about. So I'm reading a lot about Tevinter, and about the history of slavery there - not that there's much to read about, given how utterly dull and uninteresting most educated folks have apparently found the lives of slaves." A deeper frown shows what she thinks of that. "But I'm reading about Andraste, too, and her life, to see if it'd be possible to stir up the religious types and their religious feelings to mobilize them in the cause for freedom.
"Other things I'm looking at - Lyrium, red lyrium specifically, that's something I've been researching. Awful stuff - absolutely dreadful - the more I read the worse it seems. History, still, though I feel like I've got a firm enough grasp on a lot of parts of the world - not all of 'em, but enough that I'm not scrambling for an explanation of some reference I come across every two paragraphs. Every seven or eight paragraphs, instead, now." A wry shrug. "And a little bit about magic, but honestly, magical theory is so complicated here that I feel as though I'd need another lifetime to even start to get a handle on it, and it doesn't seem as though there's all that much that learning about it is adding to my general knowledge. Few other things, too - but I'm chattering on, I don't know if you wanted this much detail."
no subject
Date: 2018-11-30 08:17 pm (UTC)He can think of worse circumstances.
A faint tip of the head and a speculative look across the cooling cup of tea punctuates, "How would you like another project?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-01 12:03 am (UTC)But even so. It's really nice.
"What are you thinking?"
no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-16 11:20 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2019-01-17 09:26 pm (UTC)"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
Date: 2019-01-19 01:31 am (UTC)Well. No use thinking of them now. Or ever, really. Honestly, they're worth forgetting altogether.
"And what can I do?"
no subject
Date: 2019-01-30 11:23 pm (UTC)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."