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: 2018-11-16 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."