The reply is somewhat delayed in its return—not because Wysteria waited at all to write it, but because afterward she'd taken some time to carefully fold the paper into the two dimensional shape of a bird. The runner's odd transformation into a walker might also be a contributing factor.
Monsieur,
Of course I recall Blanchet. Or at the very least I remember clearly your enthusiasm for the scholarship in question and would be pleased to have some further context. In fact while we're on the subject, I have been thinking on a number of points regarding our recent conversation over Langlais' ideas in a related field
I was going to write a few lines which might return us to that very debate, but have decided the messenger is unlikely to wait and that we both have better business than Langlais to attend to today. Rest assured I will note my thoughts down separately and send them along at a later hour. Although it has some relevance here. Langlais' ideas, I mean—the attempt to define impulse and rational thought as being distinct from each other. Take for example my recommendation of Mister Dickerson. You have rightly identified it as being reflexive. It true that I came on it almost instantly. But does not reflex motivate reason, and vice versa? I would be very pleased to see the University and am viciously disappointed to miss the opportunity. These are impulsive responses. However, clearly the solution to both our troubles—your lack of a traveling companion and my annoyance at having been otherwise engaged—is to send someone along who will both make for a fine friend and who would appreciate the trip in a similar fashion as myself. That way when I return they may relay the experience to me as if I were there.
The only other solution I can think of is for you to attempt to put yourself into the mindset as when you first made your way there many years prior, so that when I return you might describe your trip in such a fashion that I might more easily sympathize with. But I (unlike Langlais; I hope Blanchet will improve on his theory) recognize the difficulty in detaching experience from the development of a kind of cool reserve (or even indifference), and it would hardly be fair to press you with such an impossible request. And besides, that wouldn't solve this issue of having to re-plan all your plans. So you see! Just because a thing is promptly arrived at hardly makes it ill-considered.
I am indeed traveling most alone if you discount Vanderak's distant cousin who will be my companion from Kirkwall to Orzammar. There had been some thought that another member of the division or perhaps someone from Forces might accompany me—indeed there was a sum set aside for two and the booking on the Waking Sea packet is large enough for it—, but the trip will be very long and the bulk of the war effort is here in the Free Marches. As of yet, I have no partner planned for my return trip but trust I will be able to acquire a friend or else make my own way.
There was something else I meant to write, but I plan to make this little note into a shape that will aggravate you and am running out of room if I wish to do the folds properly and also leave the outside clean of any marking. Enjoy Val Royeaux. Given the sensitivity of the schematics, we might consider implementing a cipher so as to protect any notes you might send from prying eyes. Please refrain from putting your shoes on my furniture while I'm away.
Some weeks later, in Orzammar, Wysteria will look up from some activity or other--writing, or digging, or dancing, or reviewing artifacts, or reviewing prototypes, or soil samples, or shopping, or breakfast--or perhaps she is simply walking--and see the runner coming toward her.
Yes, it is the same runner. Yes, he is travel-stained and weary but well-compensated and, he will confess, interested to be in Orzammar, which he has never had cause to visit before and is now pleased to find himself visiting. And here is her letter: crumpled, travel-stained, sealed with red wax marked with Val's usual seal, and bound with a (now rather worn) blue ribbon around a well-bound volume with a spine stamped in gold embossing, VOLUME II CHAPDELAIN, and a slightly tattier text stamped with Blanchet's name.
A number of weeks later—indeed slightly longer than one might anticipate even if one thought to anticipate it—, in Kirkwall, the very same messenger eventually winds his way back into the presence of Val de Foncé, wherever it is he may be. The runner is considerably tanner than he was when he left the Free Marches, and he has developed that dashing and rather windswept air about him which comes naturally from being a well-traveled citizen of the world.
He comes bearing a formidable stack of letters, a thick portion of which is delivered to Val; the remaining envelopes are apparently otherwise addressed and briskly stuffed back into his bag. The runner also evidently expects to be paid, having been promised by Madame de Foncé that Monsieur de Foncé would make him quite whole upon his return to Kirkwall.
The first letter, written plainly, reads:
Monsieur,
I am so pleased to have received your message! It's very rare, you know, to be so uniformly delighted by the contents of anything. (More on this later).
First, I am pleased to hear your trip to Val Royeaux was such a disappointment, and that the weather was so wholly uncooperative. I suspect all the dissatisfaction will compel you toward a make up attempt in the not too distant future, and perhaps at that time I will be present to accompany you. I believe myself quite capable of carrying on an argument across a great distance.
Take, for example, this very letter which has come to you from a great ways off! I will have you know I have in fact found the opportunity to read the first half of Blanchet, as I enjoy reading before bed and do indeed still require sleep in spite of my deeply important work. While I've yet to reach Blanchet's conclusion, I feel quite comfortable in my assessment that the work is impressive less for its contents and more for it's form. I find the work itself ultimately trivial, but the shape of the argument itself is undeniably compelling. I realize I'm presently writing to a man who claims to take little pleasure in how a piece of writing is formed, but for myself I have been compelled to take a number of notations on the way that Blanchet structures his essays. There are one or two tricks he has mastered which I would like to appropriate for my own use.
I'm also glad to hear that the state of my little house is so well improved, and am even cheered by this ridiculous display of sentimentality as I've full confidence you won't allow it to rule over good taste. And I think it hilarious that you would send something all this way. I meant you to put the Chapdelain on the shelf in the library with it's companion, but am cheered to have it with me.
In exchange for all of this, I will permit you a very small secret which is that I find Vanderak to be intolerably dull. Happily, there is plenty else in Orzammar to interest me, and time in the smithy itself has been productive enough thanks to an enthusiastic apprentice named Caprin with whom I've struck a fine friendship. But there is nothing worse than suffering the company of a poor host. I have entirely run out of small talk, and Vanderak is a terrible conversationalist. I've pretended to be ill to avoid having to sit at dinner so many times now that everyone in the household believes my constitution to be rather frail. Ordinarily I would strongly object to the assessment, but can't quite bring myself to sabotage my escape route.
Otherwise, Orzammar is as I hoped it would be. It's a fine state of affairs to find oneself so totally at liberty, and so very far from anyone who knows you well. It reminds me very much of when I first came to Kirkwall, only now I've a very clear picture of how I mean to get back where I came from. These two things in combination is charmingly novel.
I hope this letter finds you in a very sorry state of affairs indeed. That way, receiving it will be more exciting than otherwise. Please pat Déranger on the head once or twice for me. I've Mister Ellis' mabari with me who I anticipated would make for a fine substitute, but I find Ruadh to be somewhat more of a standoffish companion by comparison. Not to say he is unfeeling, only reserved, and I sometimes wish he could be encouraged to sleep at the foot of the bed as Déranger occasionally insists she do.
If you would please be so kind as to compensate Ned for his troubles in carrying these notes to you, I would be very appreciative.
The second letter, arranged according to the cipher Val had provided, reads:
Regarding the schematics, the drafts for which are in my drawer at home and you no doubt have reviewed thoroughly by now—
In Somerset, which is a major city in Kalvad notable for it's university and the one in which I studied, there is a great factory district. I don't know of anything like it in Thedas to which it might be compared, but imagine it rather like every seamstress and every loom and every printing press and everything which requires the regular motion of a hand held housed in a series of large rooms and all of these machines running supervised but otherwise of their own volition.
These places often run on a series of enchanted mechanics, the repair and maintenance of a small section of which was among my charges as an apprentice. The schematics are a copy of one of the great wheels from a garment house which served to drive a number of subsidiary machines, and I have been thinking how the concept might be applied here in Thedas. I had originally considered how the fundamentals might assist in the workings of some of those ideas coming out of Ansburg which I have sometimes insisted on discussing in your presence. But after much consideration, I think I would like your opinion on the subject. I know you are fond of the workings of various machines, and have more experience in the subject than I do.
There is some difficulty to overcome with respect to the motivating force behind the automation, but I feel fairly confident I can find some solution to that end.
Oh also, in my house's little library there is a paper hidden in the place Chapdelaine ought to have gone. It's highly annoying that you didn't happen upon it according to my plan and that I had to tell you directly.
What follows is a series of notes in the same cipher detailing the working of the schematic, and an assortment of numbered onion skin pages which, when stacked in a precise arrangement, form further iterations of the diagrams left behind in Kirkwall.
The third and final letter is written in an entirely different cipher, and is fully unintelligible until translated with the key hidden in the Hightown house stuffed between VOLUME I CHAPDELAINE and its neighbor. It reads:
De Foncé,
I am sorry that your visit to Val Royeaux went so poorly. But only slightly.
Have you introduced Veronique to the completed renovations yet? If so, I hope she finds them suitable.
Please tell me no detail of your mural should you write again, as I would prefer it to be a surprise.
Did you choose the blue ribbon intentionally or was it merely happenstance?
That's all. You may answer these concerns by crystal if sending a note is inconvenient or if you simply prefer it. I can of course not guarantee I will be on hand to receive the message directly as so much of my day is spent at work, but suppose it might be charming to review at some free hour such as the next time I find myself compelled to hide away from Vanderak's company.
It is not desperation that causes Wysteria's crystal to crackle to life, some days later. Nor is it despair, or loneliness, or frustration. In fact one should not mistake the tone of Val's voice for a tone of frustration. It has been a long day, that is all, filled with work and projects and avoiding talking to certain people and consulting with Babin on the mural, and then dinner and avoiding conversation and then--at last!--what should have been a bit of light and relaxing code-breaking by the fire with Veronique and Déranger for company, which leads him now to this message--
"If your handwriting were better, this message would have been easier to untangle!"
She had assured him that she would be unlikely to be in a position to immediately receive and reply to any message might possibly choose to send. She is, after all, very busy. That's true! And she can hardly avoid the pretense of being a guest in someone's house every evening. One can get away with poor manners only so often! In fact, with all this in mind it would be a little unseemly to respond directly even if she happened to be to hand at the exact right moment. Were she to answer right away, it might seem as if she'd exaggerated the scope of her work in Orzammar.
Which is why, when the crystal crackles to life on her little bedroom desk as she is copying down all her notes for the day, she restrains herself from immediately snatching up the crystal. Instead, she springs to her feet. She paces around the little guest room. She makes herself change out of her day clothes and into her nightshirt.
She does not, however, get as far as combing out her hair before the impulse to valiantly defend herself (obviously; there can be no other reason) overrules prudence.
"My handwriting is excellent. Everyone says so," comes crackling back (not very many) minutes later. "Maybe you need spectacles."
Val has no patience to delay his response. Above the ground, absolute leagues away, he is pacing before the fireplace in Wysteria's Hightown home. Déranger watches his progress for a few paces before she springs to her feet and falls into step just behind him, attentive and pricked-eared. Too engaged, Val does not look down at her.
"Lying to you," he repeats, "or laboring under a particular blindness. This little mark, meant to represent an E--I spent nearly an hour thinking it was a U. I only discovered it when I realized the letter began by addressing me. And all this time I have been critical of Mister Ellis, when it was you that I should have been critical of all along!"
"In fact," Wysteria says, in some lofty tone designed to either speak over him or as if she'd failed to hear him at all. "I believe you yourself have remarked how neat my penmanship is on prior occasions."
The papers on her desk are shoved unceremoniously into her little working journal, which is just as thoughtlessly snapped shut.
"So indeed, it seems someone has or is lying to me."
Val frowns, and not because Déranger has begun to lick his hand. This would not be enough to inspire a frown from him. He cares nothing for dog spit. But to be so caught--this is what causes him to frown.
"Perhaps," he says, slowly, "I might have made some off-handed remark in this fashion in the past, without really realizing what it was that I was saying--certainly not realizing that I was fashioning for myself a noose that would be used against me in future! Possibly I even committed this remark to parchment--which I can only admit now was a mistake, one should never commit compliments in writing--but the fact of the difficulty remains! So, I can only conclude that it is very dark in Orzammar and your penmanship has suffered for it."
This conclusion comes out more snappish than lofty. Certainly better than having nothing at all to say, and being caught out in it. Val reaches the wall and turns on his heel to pace back in the other direction, Déranger dogging his steps. Now his tone turns more conversational.
"The E character really does look like a U. I have saved the letter so that I can show it to you upon your return. What are you doing at present?"
In the little room, Wysteria pivots to shoot her mabari companion (who takes up a great deal of the floor directly nearest the clever little stove) a labored look. He reciprocates it with a flick of a nubby ear and little else. Ruadh apparently has no great affection for gossip and has become totally enured to Wysteria stamping impatiently about this room or any other.
"I'm cleaning up my notes from the afternoon," she says, turning once more from the desk on her heel. The crystal comes with her this time. There is a loud, overly close clack as she gathers up her comb in hand with it.
"I prefer to do so at once while everything is still fresh. There is nothing worse than reviewing your own writing weeks later and finding that the past you has become impenetrable. Why?"—is required to be at least faintly accusatory—"What are you doing?"
Val stops in the center of the room and considers his surroundings. Here, a plate and a cup and crusts of bread upon a tray. Here, a half-drunk bottle of red wine, and a glass that has been used and reused. There, a stack of parchment weighed down by an inkwell, beside a tower of books, and all of it surrounded by still more books, open and face-down, spines raised so that they look like tents of some encampment. Here, a half-pinned beetle upon a board, with tools of that work scattered about--and a half-eaten beetle, the legs of which are still in the corners of Déranger's mouth. Now that Val is still, she presses against his leg, tail thumping, and licks again at his hand.
"In fact I have only a few moments." Under a nearby chair, Veronique makes a soft scuffling sound, unique to her attempts to burrow into solid wood. Val leans down to attempt to see her. "There is something--several somethings, actually--that I absolutely must attend to before the day ends. I had a moment to spare and thought to sit down and make work of your cipher--which would have gone much more quickly, had it not been for the poor light in Orzammar, which is what I now blame for this quality, or lack thereof. I do hope you do not come back entirely ruined by it. You know, sometimes I like to leave my notes entirely unread for weeks at a time. I find that, in then returning to them, I can be brutally honest, or brutally complimentary--because I have so forgotten writing them that it is as if their author is another soul entirely. You might try that."
She will not. But it's the polite thing to say when she has caught him out so badly as to necessitate a serious revision to his story. What is slightly less polite—
"But if you're very busy then I won't insist on keeping you. Clearly my little note has already taken up far more of your time than you were ready to give it. And curious as I am to have answers to the questions in it, I doubt they're more pressing than the various things otherwise occupying your time."
With a fhwump from the thin duvet, Wysteria hops far enough onto the edge of the bed to keep her feet from the floor. The headboard is near to the same height that she might hold the crystal, and so makes for a good ledge on which to prop it while she picks out various pins and ties from her hair.
Val snorts, loudly. He kicks at a patch of rug, then decides it is soft enough that he will sit down on it. Déranger rushes upon him instantly, tail wagging, and bashes her shoulder against his.
"Veronique approves very well of the renovations. She is here upstairs at present, with me, naturally--but she will eventually make her retreat. I have been giving her a choice of where she might be and I do find her in the cellar more often than not, when I am able to find her. I appreciated the blue of the ribbon. A summer's color. Do you think--" He interrupts himself to address Déranger as she tries to drop into his lap and half bowls him over, recule, ma chérie, pas bouger, then continues as if he had not interrupted himself at all, "Do you think it would be novel, to have you presence missed whenever you are away, or would it merely be annoying? I have been thinking of this and cannot decide which."
Yes, in addition to being her favorite, blue is a very summery color.
A long way away, on the bed where she is sat, Wysteria draws her legs up so she may sit criss cross and form a collection of pins on one of her knees.
"Well first, I think that's a very silly question. Of course it should be novel to be missed, as then it means someone has thought of you and what could possibly be more pleasant. But I suppose if I were to entertain the possibility of it being otherwise—for the sake of the argument, as it were—, then I think it would depend entirely on the person in question who was doing the missing and how you felt about them. For example, say it was someone you disliked. It might be highly aggravating to discover they'd thought at all kindly of you, as it would somewhat ruin your ability to disapprove of them without reservation."
The collection of pins is transferred thoughtlessly to the little side table overflowing with books and a porcelain washing basin and a mostly empty cup.
"You haven't let her into the little library, have you? Veronique. I believe you said she has a fondness for paper."
"I am offended by the very question, mademoiselle."
Val dips his forefinger in a nearby cup of wine, and uses it to begin to trace, from memory, a plan of the house on the bare floorboards beside the rug he is sitting upon. Here is the hall, with its little table at the end, and the stairs here, and the door to the sitting room, and the door to the little library, which he renders immediately after, with its bookshelves and the window with the cushions. Déranger watches, head cocked.
"Your argument is rather difficult for me to comprehend--for I believe that everyone who dislikes me does so with such completeness that they never miss me. Though I suppose one might miss a favored adversary, yes? To dislike someone does give a certain sense of purpose which, in certain circumstances, can be quite sad and pathetic--but in other circumstances is perfectly understandable and indeed logical. For what joy is there in simply being unopposed? If there were nothing to argue against, one could not argue. One's point would simply be correct, but unable to be proved as such. Through opposition comes proof."
"See, but that's entirely in support of my point. Imagine, by some strange happening, you came to realize that your favored adversary had been harboring some secret fondness for you. Picture if it were—remind me, which is your least favorite colleague from University?"
The comb is fetched from its make-do shelf and the great heap of her hair drawn forward over her shoulder so it may be picked slowly through.
"Picture if it were them, and you stumbled across some note where they spoke kindly or your scholarship. If I found myself in such a position, I would be furious. Although, honestly. I don't see why you of all people should even struggle over the idea of missing someone or being missed in the first place."
"Must it be a mere one? I have so many least favored."
A point that must, must be made. Val dips his finger again in the wine and, floorplan complete, begins to trace Veronique's path through the halls. From this room, to that, to this, to that, to the little library. He should look in on the little library and take in the state of things. Surely she was not within the room long enough to wreck unimaginable havoc. Only a havoc one could imagine.
"I suppose," he begins to say, and then draws Veronique's path out of the little library, a sharp straight line, into the cupboard across the hall. There.
"No: I suppose nothing. What a soft word. Strike it from your recollection of this conversation. My argument is, forcefully, that one needs not to speak kindly of another--privately, or publicly--to appreciate an adversarial bond. In fact one should not speak kindly, or else ruin the adversarial nature of the relationship--for it is a relationship. One in opposition of the other, two lodestones that cannot meet. But if one lodestone is alone, it is merely a stone."
"Ah, yes," she says, the scrape of the comb through her hair so vague that it must not sound like anything at all through the crystal. Well, I can see the logic in it. I lost a shoe once, which rather ruined the effect of the one I still had."
They are not, she suspects, discussing the various schoolmates he despises. Maybe. Possibly. But it might be that they're discussing his two most dear and sincere friends, and he is merely taking the most circuitous and infuriatingly confusing route to arrive at that fact. One must either simply allow him to continue on, or brook some argument with this detail or that in an effort to chase him through the various twists and turns at , or (in exceptionally rare circumstances)—
"All the same, you may say so if you miss me. I assure you that I will be appropriately disgusted."
—simply hack straight in the direction one feels is most irritating and observe the results.
In the cupboard, Veronique's path takes on the shape of a squiggle. Around, and then around, and around again--then straight through the wall into the adjourning room. In the mademoiselle's little mansion, this room is some sort of parlor or receiving room--small, not very remarkable, likely destined to be shut up and shuttered unless absolutely needed for entertaining. Veronique's trajectory takes on a destructive air. When she is grown quite large, she will make a ruin of this room.
"Very well," Val says to his crystal. To his wife, through the crystal, some many miles away and then somewhere still miles below. "I miss you."
Veronique, represented by his thumb, strikes the wall and barrels through into the next room. The wine is running dry; he dips it in anew and has her circle where the shabby chandelier hangs.
Through the crystal, some many miles away and then still miles more below the surface, the regular motion of Wysteria's hand pulling the comb through her hair pauses. Partly—no, primarily—she stops because the comb has snarled on a tangle. Indeed, if there'd any other point to it then it's so negligible as to be practically—
"Good," she answers abruptly. He wasn't meant to have actually said it and she can feel an embarrassed heat prickling at the base of her skull. But over the crystal, she may make herself sound very high handed indeed.
"Did you miss me while you were in Val Royeaux, or only once you'd returned to Kirkwall?"
Val makes a (by now very familiar) noise of disgust.
"Do not ask me such a thing, mademoiselle." He keeps pushing at Veronique's path, around and around and around the chandelier. "It is unfair and unsporting. I have done as you asked--no, commanded--and said this thing, and so it has been said, and so--"
Déranger leans down to sniff, delicately, at the shape of one of the walls, and sticks her tongue out to lick the line of wine. Val veers Veronique toward her, and Déranger prances back, ears cocked, eyes fixed now on his hand again.
"Because." Here, the briefest pause so she may untangle her comb and for no other reason.
"It was a clever ploy to resolve your quandary and remind you to be entirely unsentimental. I knew you would object to being obligated to do or say anything, and for me having been dishonest, and it seemed the most expedient way to rankle you. You're very welcome."
Across the little room, the big scarred Mabari sighs and shifts his block head from resting on one beefy paw to the other. Wysteria shoots Ruadh a hot a look. No commentary from you, sir.
"Is that so?" Maybe a bit more loudly than necessary, and certainly very archly. Val drags his thumb back, recalling Veronique to the confines of the house. A hole has been blasted through the wall. Let it stay there. Let the rain come, and the winds, and the seabirds and the rats and the insects and the thieves. Let plants grow upon the floor. Let rot set in. Why not!
With more control (and yet still slightly clipped), he continues. "Then let me say: how very clever, ma poule. I admire your ability to see so clearly and plainly what must be said and done to get the desired result. And how greatly do I appreciate the reminder toward unsentimentality. Imagine, if I had said aloud that I had in fact missed you while I was in Val Royeaux--that I left early because I was so dissatisfied, that I had thought to come to Orzammar myself and came instead to Kirkwall, only to remain dissatisfied--that I am dissatisfied to this day, this very hour and moment--that this feeling is unsettlingly unique--that your company has become somehow, impossibly, something that I could not say that I enjoy but that I at least look forward to, upon occasion--imagine, if I had said all of that. I could never return from that shore of sentimentality. Thank you, thank you, for the reminder."
The ribbon tied about the books had been very blue, and in not so different a shade from the coat he'd worn to that silly pretend wedding that had gone so fortunately terribly that no one at all since had questioned its veracity. The coat hadn't mattered. He'd simply asked her favorite color and had worn it as an admirable commitment to their shared little subterfuge—a different and more secret sort of partnership, and certainly not one predicated on any kind of regard save perhaps for the kind which sensibly recognizes opportunity and cleverness both.
(Yes indeed, she is very clever).
But receiving the letter and the books and the absurdity of the runner sent so far—she'd been outraged to receive the poor man. Good gods, you are a man of singular dedication, sir! What a beast he is, to have sent you all this way! And then having to explain to sweet Caprin the apprentice who had sent the parcel; never have the words My husband been so venomously regurgitated!
Yet there on her little desk, draped like a question mark among the papers and books and drawings, is preserved the little blue ribbon. And here, sitting cross legged in the bed, Wysteria furiously bites the end of her comb to keep from squawking in reply to imagine if I said all of that.
Nevermind that she is quite prompt to respond after, all very knowing and cool as she contemplates pummeling the pillow at the head of the bed.
"Again, you're very welcome. Indeed, it's a very good thing we agree on this point. Because if you had made the error of saying any of those things, I might have compelled to say something along the lines of 'If that's how you feel, then you should simply bring your next letter in person and join me in Orzammar.' Yes, such an arrangement might technically be of benefit to the both of us. After all, I'm very busy and taking the time to seek out your vases and various little articles that would seem to suit only takes away from my time in the smithy. And then you would be convenient to hand to judge said pieces for yourself without anyone's questionable judgement serving as your interpreter.
But I clearly can't say that," is most firm. "As we have agreed this very evening on the important of preserving a particular equilibrium of disregard. Also"—also!—"because if you look forward to my company upon occasion, then I would judge that I look forward to yours slightly less than that."
So. How fortunate that no one has said anything at all!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Yes, it is the same runner. Yes, he is travel-stained and weary but well-compensated and, he will confess, interested to be in Orzammar, which he has never had cause to visit before and is now pleased to find himself visiting. And here is her letter: crumpled, travel-stained, sealed with red wax marked with Val's usual seal, and bound with a (now rather worn) blue ribbon around a well-bound volume with a spine stamped in gold embossing, VOLUME II CHAPDELAIN, and a slightly tattier text stamped with Blanchet's name.
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He comes bearing a formidable stack of letters, a thick portion of which is delivered to Val; the remaining envelopes are apparently otherwise addressed and briskly stuffed back into his bag. The runner also evidently expects to be paid, having been promised by Madame de Foncé that Monsieur de Foncé would make him quite whole upon his return to Kirkwall.
The first letter, written plainly, reads:
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What follows is a series of notes in the same cipher detailing the working of the schematic, and an assortment of numbered onion skin pages which, when stacked in a precise arrangement, form further iterations of the diagrams left behind in Kirkwall.
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"If your handwriting were better, this message would have been easier to untangle!"
Perhaps this is a husband pining for his wife.
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Which is why, when the crystal crackles to life on her little bedroom desk as she is copying down all her notes for the day, she restrains herself from immediately snatching up the crystal. Instead, she springs to her feet. She paces around the little guest room. She makes herself change out of her day clothes and into her nightshirt.
She does not, however, get as far as combing out her hair before the impulse to valiantly defend herself (obviously; there can be no other reason) overrules prudence.
"My handwriting is excellent. Everyone says so," comes crackling back (not very many) minutes later. "Maybe you need spectacles."
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Val has no patience to delay his response. Above the ground, absolute leagues away, he is pacing before the fireplace in Wysteria's Hightown home. Déranger watches his progress for a few paces before she springs to her feet and falls into step just behind him, attentive and pricked-eared. Too engaged, Val does not look down at her.
"Lying to you," he repeats, "or laboring under a particular blindness. This little mark, meant to represent an E--I spent nearly an hour thinking it was a U. I only discovered it when I realized the letter began by addressing me. And all this time I have been critical of Mister Ellis, when it was you that I should have been critical of all along!"
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The papers on her desk are shoved unceremoniously into her little working journal, which is just as thoughtlessly snapped shut.
"So indeed, it seems someone has or is lying to me."
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"Perhaps," he says, slowly, "I might have made some off-handed remark in this fashion in the past, without really realizing what it was that I was saying--certainly not realizing that I was fashioning for myself a noose that would be used against me in future! Possibly I even committed this remark to parchment--which I can only admit now was a mistake, one should never commit compliments in writing--but the fact of the difficulty remains! So, I can only conclude that it is very dark in Orzammar and your penmanship has suffered for it."
This conclusion comes out more snappish than lofty. Certainly better than having nothing at all to say, and being caught out in it. Val reaches the wall and turns on his heel to pace back in the other direction, Déranger dogging his steps. Now his tone turns more conversational.
"The E character really does look like a U. I have saved the letter so that I can show it to you upon your return. What are you doing at present?"
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"I'm cleaning up my notes from the afternoon," she says, turning once more from the desk on her heel. The crystal comes with her this time. There is a loud, overly close clack as she gathers up her comb in hand with it.
"I prefer to do so at once while everything is still fresh. There is nothing worse than reviewing your own writing weeks later and finding that the past you has become impenetrable. Why?"—is required to be at least faintly accusatory—"What are you doing?"
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Val stops in the center of the room and considers his surroundings. Here, a plate and a cup and crusts of bread upon a tray. Here, a half-drunk bottle of red wine, and a glass that has been used and reused. There, a stack of parchment weighed down by an inkwell, beside a tower of books, and all of it surrounded by still more books, open and face-down, spines raised so that they look like tents of some encampment. Here, a half-pinned beetle upon a board, with tools of that work scattered about--and a half-eaten beetle, the legs of which are still in the corners of Déranger's mouth. Now that Val is still, she presses against his leg, tail thumping, and licks again at his hand.
"In fact I have only a few moments." Under a nearby chair, Veronique makes a soft scuffling sound, unique to her attempts to burrow into solid wood. Val leans down to attempt to see her. "There is something--several somethings, actually--that I absolutely must attend to before the day ends. I had a moment to spare and thought to sit down and make work of your cipher--which would have gone much more quickly, had it not been for the poor light in Orzammar, which is what I now blame for this quality, or lack thereof. I do hope you do not come back entirely ruined by it. You know, sometimes I like to leave my notes entirely unread for weeks at a time. I find that, in then returning to them, I can be brutally honest, or brutally complimentary--because I have so forgotten writing them that it is as if their author is another soul entirely. You might try that."
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She will not. But it's the polite thing to say when she has caught him out so badly as to necessitate a serious revision to his story. What is slightly less polite—
"But if you're very busy then I won't insist on keeping you. Clearly my little note has already taken up far more of your time than you were ready to give it. And curious as I am to have answers to the questions in it, I doubt they're more pressing than the various things otherwise occupying your time."
With a fhwump from the thin duvet, Wysteria hops far enough onto the edge of the bed to keep her feet from the floor. The headboard is near to the same height that she might hold the crystal, and so makes for a good ledge on which to prop it while she picks out various pins and ties from her hair.
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"Veronique approves very well of the renovations. She is here upstairs at present, with me, naturally--but she will eventually make her retreat. I have been giving her a choice of where she might be and I do find her in the cellar more often than not, when I am able to find her. I appreciated the blue of the ribbon. A summer's color. Do you think--" He interrupts himself to address Déranger as she tries to drop into his lap and half bowls him over, recule, ma chérie, pas bouger, then continues as if he had not interrupted himself at all, "Do you think it would be novel, to have you presence missed whenever you are away, or would it merely be annoying? I have been thinking of this and cannot decide which."
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A long way away, on the bed where she is sat, Wysteria draws her legs up so she may sit criss cross and form a collection of pins on one of her knees.
"Well first, I think that's a very silly question. Of course it should be novel to be missed, as then it means someone has thought of you and what could possibly be more pleasant. But I suppose if I were to entertain the possibility of it being otherwise—for the sake of the argument, as it were—, then I think it would depend entirely on the person in question who was doing the missing and how you felt about them. For example, say it was someone you disliked. It might be highly aggravating to discover they'd thought at all kindly of you, as it would somewhat ruin your ability to disapprove of them without reservation."
The collection of pins is transferred thoughtlessly to the little side table overflowing with books and a porcelain washing basin and a mostly empty cup.
"You haven't let her into the little library, have you? Veronique. I believe you said she has a fondness for paper."
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Val dips his forefinger in a nearby cup of wine, and uses it to begin to trace, from memory, a plan of the house on the bare floorboards beside the rug he is sitting upon. Here is the hall, with its little table at the end, and the stairs here, and the door to the sitting room, and the door to the little library, which he renders immediately after, with its bookshelves and the window with the cushions. Déranger watches, head cocked.
"Your argument is rather difficult for me to comprehend--for I believe that everyone who dislikes me does so with such completeness that they never miss me. Though I suppose one might miss a favored adversary, yes? To dislike someone does give a certain sense of purpose which, in certain circumstances, can be quite sad and pathetic--but in other circumstances is perfectly understandable and indeed logical. For what joy is there in simply being unopposed? If there were nothing to argue against, one could not argue. One's point would simply be correct, but unable to be proved as such. Through opposition comes proof."
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The comb is fetched from its make-do shelf and the great heap of her hair drawn forward over her shoulder so it may be picked slowly through.
"Picture if it were them, and you stumbled across some note where they spoke kindly or your scholarship. If I found myself in such a position, I would be furious. Although, honestly. I don't see why you of all people should even struggle over the idea of missing someone or being missed in the first place."
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A point that must, must be made. Val dips his finger again in the wine and, floorplan complete, begins to trace Veronique's path through the halls. From this room, to that, to this, to that, to the little library. He should look in on the little library and take in the state of things. Surely she was not within the room long enough to wreck unimaginable havoc. Only a havoc one could imagine.
"I suppose," he begins to say, and then draws Veronique's path out of the little library, a sharp straight line, into the cupboard across the hall. There.
"No: I suppose nothing. What a soft word. Strike it from your recollection of this conversation. My argument is, forcefully, that one needs not to speak kindly of another--privately, or publicly--to appreciate an adversarial bond. In fact one should not speak kindly, or else ruin the adversarial nature of the relationship--for it is a relationship. One in opposition of the other, two lodestones that cannot meet. But if one lodestone is alone, it is merely a stone."
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They are not, she suspects, discussing the various schoolmates he despises. Maybe. Possibly. But it might be that they're discussing his two most dear and sincere friends, and he is merely taking the most circuitous and infuriatingly confusing route to arrive at that fact. One must either simply allow him to continue on, or brook some argument with this detail or that in an effort to chase him through the various twists and turns at , or (in exceptionally rare circumstances)—
"All the same, you may say so if you miss me. I assure you that I will be appropriately disgusted."
—simply hack straight in the direction one feels is most irritating and observe the results.
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"Very well," Val says to his crystal. To his wife, through the crystal, some many miles away and then somewhere still miles below. "I miss you."
Veronique, represented by his thumb, strikes the wall and barrels through into the next room. The wine is running dry; he dips it in anew and has her circle where the shabby chandelier hangs.
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"Good," she answers abruptly. He wasn't meant to have actually said it and she can feel an embarrassed heat prickling at the base of her skull. But over the crystal, she may make herself sound very high handed indeed.
"Did you miss me while you were in Val Royeaux, or only once you'd returned to Kirkwall?"
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"Do not ask me such a thing, mademoiselle." He keeps pushing at Veronique's path, around and around and around the chandelier. "It is unfair and unsporting. I have done as you asked--no, commanded--and said this thing, and so it has been said, and so--"
Déranger leans down to sniff, delicately, at the shape of one of the walls, and sticks her tongue out to lick the line of wine. Val veers Veronique toward her, and Déranger prances back, ears cocked, eyes fixed now on his hand again.
"Why good, when you have promised me disgust?"
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"It was a clever ploy to resolve your quandary and remind you to be entirely unsentimental. I knew you would object to being obligated to do or say anything, and for me having been dishonest, and it seemed the most expedient way to rankle you. You're very welcome."
Across the little room, the big scarred Mabari sighs and shifts his block head from resting on one beefy paw to the other. Wysteria shoots Ruadh a hot a look. No commentary from you, sir.
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With more control (and yet still slightly clipped), he continues. "Then let me say: how very clever, ma poule. I admire your ability to see so clearly and plainly what must be said and done to get the desired result. And how greatly do I appreciate the reminder toward unsentimentality. Imagine, if I had said aloud that I had in fact missed you while I was in Val Royeaux--that I left early because I was so dissatisfied, that I had thought to come to Orzammar myself and came instead to Kirkwall, only to remain dissatisfied--that I am dissatisfied to this day, this very hour and moment--that this feeling is unsettlingly unique--that your company has become somehow, impossibly, something that I could not say that I enjoy but that I at least look forward to, upon occasion--imagine, if I had said all of that. I could never return from that shore of sentimentality. Thank you, thank you, for the reminder."
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(Yes indeed, she is very clever).
But receiving the letter and the books and the absurdity of the runner sent so far—she'd been outraged to receive the poor man. Good gods, you are a man of singular dedication, sir! What a beast he is, to have sent you all this way! And then having to explain to sweet Caprin the apprentice who had sent the parcel; never have the words My husband been so venomously regurgitated!
Yet there on her little desk, draped like a question mark among the papers and books and drawings, is preserved the little blue ribbon. And here, sitting cross legged in the bed, Wysteria furiously bites the end of her comb to keep from squawking in reply to imagine if I said all of that.
Nevermind that she is quite prompt to respond after, all very knowing and cool as she contemplates pummeling the pillow at the head of the bed.
"Again, you're very welcome. Indeed, it's a very good thing we agree on this point. Because if you had made the error of saying any of those things, I might have compelled to say something along the lines of 'If that's how you feel, then you should simply bring your next letter in person and join me in Orzammar.' Yes, such an arrangement might technically be of benefit to the both of us. After all, I'm very busy and taking the time to seek out your vases and various little articles that would seem to suit only takes away from my time in the smithy. And then you would be convenient to hand to judge said pieces for yourself without anyone's questionable judgement serving as your interpreter.
But I clearly can't say that," is most firm. "As we have agreed this very evening on the important of preserving a particular equilibrium of disregard. Also"—also!—"because if you look forward to my company upon occasion, then I would judge that I look forward to yours slightly less than that."
So. How fortunate that no one has said anything at all!
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