He sighs, sadly. "Yes, of course. I thought you would say that. But it is true: I am often unappreciated. It is a sadness of people such as myself. You see, if I were to make this request, I would be questioned. Valentine, why are you doing this? Valentine, why would we listen to you? Valentine, your ideas, we do not respect them, for we do not understand your value as a scholar, we are without the capacity for this understanding, and so on, and so on, and so on--but you? You are liked and respected by these simple and straightforward people, and if you were to make this request? You would be heard, instantly."
He snaps his fingers. Instant.
"It can only be you, mademoiselle, that does the asking. It is essential to this project that you do."
It's not as if it isn't sound logic. Given the opportunity to reflect on the possibility of him in conversation with—who? The other party hardly matters, really—, she can only picture a certain level of intellectual battery unlikely to engender good will among any of their prospective pool of voluntolds.
(She is rather well liked in Riftwatch, it's true.)
"Then perhaps," she says, still leaned forward over the tea tray between them. "You might draw up the list and I will do the actual negotiation. So as to use both our skills to their best advantage."
Val smiles, very suddenly, and reaches very suddenly between them so that he can tap Wysteria on the nose.
"Très très bien."
He leans away from her again and takes another sip of tea. This one nearly drains his cup by half, reducing its threat.
"It is always best in a project to make maximum use of the skills that one has at one's command. I am wasted; you are flourished. We will be a very good team, I think, despite what anyone might say of us. We will prove them wrong. And we will have the very last laugh when our project is complete, for nothing of its like will have been seen before in all of Thedas! You see," more conversationally, "this is where we would need the wine. For the toasting. Tea does not toast the same. Even you can see the sense in that, yes?"
She balks just slightly from the tap, wrinkling her nose as she straightens back, but that is the extent of her objection. For what could she begin to object to? She has gotten more or less everything she had wanted, save perhaps the dignity of sitting in a chair rather than on the floor, and his enthusiasm - if that is indeed the word for it - is most encouraging.
"Yes, yes. I see the logic in it now, de Foncé, and there is indeed a bottle waiting in the kitchen - you must make do with something simply white, I'm afraid - but in the mean time—"
(What could anyone possibly have to say about them as an 'us,' she cannot begin to imagine.)
Wysteria extends her cup, saying, "To something entirely new," and clinks it against Val's.
"It is bad luck," he cautions, without doing anything else to stop the toast from happening. "One should never drink to success with tea. I appreciate the daring, it is very bold of you. How blessed you are in your ignorance, to come out on the other side as a kind of innocence."
His next drink nearly empties the cup. With a critical eye, he peers at the dregs and the sludge of sugar at the bottom of it.
"We might find a better tea. Let this be another thing 'entirely new'."
There had been, perhaps, the faintest light of some fledgling good temper in her face - the kind born of a certain level of self satisfaction, yes, but nurtured along by the agreeable shock of finding him so unexpectedly amenable. She had anticipated that at this time they would still be arguing over the state of the house, or wrestling with the refusal of her plan, or, or, or— And so on.
Optimism's glow disappears at remarkable speed. Her cup clinks hard against its saucer.
"I'm sorry to hear it hasn't lived up to your expectations."
"Ah, no, mademoiselle. Do not apologize. This is not what I sought. Truly, it is my fault. I am used to a certain quality, yes? It is difficult to replicate. When Riftwatch was showing such bravery within the jungle, I was thinking, all along, how normally I would have such a supply of tea to drink while I am breakfasting on my adventures."
He sighs, as he settles back into a comfortable cross-legged seat once more, and rests both cup and saucer upon one of his knees. The perfect picture of composure.
"You are not to blame. It is whoever it is that does your purchasing for you. Who is that?"
In reply, Wysteria grows steelier still. While hardly looking, she takes a spoonful of sugar from the bowl and dumps it into her cup.
"Then it seems the blame is indeed entirely mine, Monsieur." It is light and airy, and continues to be so as she fetches her own spoon and begins to aggressively stir in the sugar. "For there is no one who does the purchasing, just as there is no one else who sees to the ordering of the wallpaper, or the arrangement of any other business in this house."
The teapot is fetched back up. Her half empty cup is refilled.
"But you must not be concerned, de Foncé. I won't force you to drink any more of it."
"But that is terrible. Not that I would be free of drinking it--of course, that is not unwelcome, but I would much prefer to have something to drink while working--but that you are being made to conduct your own purchasing. Where is the sense in that? Why would you undertake each and ever chore? I will say, I am not of Orlais in the way that so many others are. Of course I have an appreciation for work. I am a scholar, my research is always my own. But could I have written all that I have written if I was traipsing about purchasing tea? I will tell you: I could not have."
Imagine going to the market and purchasing tea, for yourself, always. Not just when it was amusing to do so, or when you did not trust someone to purchase the tea you wanted, or when you were in an exotic place where a trip to a market might be an adventure in of itself. No: an ordinary market, for ordinary, every-day, plainly serviceable tea. Quelle horreur.
"If you are to make a serious go of this, mademoiselle, you must learn what it is to delegate."
Vall rolls his eyes hugely. "If I was not comfortable, I would not be here." In this house, for starters, but Riftwatch, in general--and before her, the Inquisition--is the extended target of this remark. "Lest anyone forget, it is my choice to be here, among such company. I could leave, if I felt compelled to. I do not. So: I am here, and that says enough."
Dismissive now, he waves his hand, to clear this pettiness aside. "Scholarship, of course, is what I am speaking of. Do the scholars of your whatever-you-call-it country truly do their own shopping? Of course you must reserve final judgement on the important matters. The wallpaper must look appropriate to your taste, the tea must be appropriate to your taste as well--but have one of your men do the down-low things for you so that your schedule and your mind are both clear for the work that you intend to be doing."
"'One of my men'? Really, de Foncé! We are a cooperative league of like-minded scholars and artisans. Would you ask Monsieur Mercier or Mademoiselle Durfort-Lacapalette to do these down-low things on your behalf? I think not. As for what is done in Kalvad, it hardly matters for we're not there and the circumstances would be quite different if we were."
She starts to lift her cup, and then sets it down again as she finds another point to pursue. "Furthermore, my mind is quite clear. In fact, I find the seeing to of little details like this entirely rewarding and that they in no way subtract from the quality of my work."
Up comes the— no, wait. One more thing.
"And speaking of the collective, Mr. Stark had suggested that you consider contributing to the refreshments kept on hand if we are to be working here together. We all do."
Dramatically, Val scoops his cup and saucer off of his knee so he can flop onto the floor. Stretched out so, he might have fainted--but if he did, he made the very deliberate choice to faint.
"What is this? Who is 'Mr. Stark'?" he asks to the ceiling, in a voice of exasperated weariness. "Who are any of these people? Names. I," he waves a hand, voilà, presenting himself, still laid out upon the floor, "am not here to keep some hoard of 'like-minded scholars and artisans' in cakes. I do not even like cakes so much. Monsieur Mercier and the Baroness would never ask me to pay for cakes. I would not ask them to pay for cakes. Certainly I would not even so much as suggest. We simply buy one another cakes when the mood suits us. This is all so stupid. Why this insistence on such small details and pretending they are some reward? What does Mr. Ellis do? Is he a scholar or an artisan? For who else am I buying cakes?"
There is a pillow on the chair nearest to her. Wysteria sets her cup and saucer aside to fetch it, rising as high as her knees in order to pass it over the tea tray between them and set it nearer Val's head than his (bare) feet.
"Here, Monsieur. You may collapse on this. As for the collective," she says, settling back with a compulsive rearrangement of her skirts and a repossession of her teacup. "There is myself and Mr. Stark, who is a Rifter and something of an engineer who presently leads the work on Project Felandaris of the organization to which we all belong. And there is Mr. Fitz, who is also a Rifter, and is most interested in the study of Rifts and the Veil and the nature of the Fade. Then there is Mr. Ellis, who as you must know is indeed an artisan in a particular meaning of the word in the sense that he is a skilled tradesman of dangerous situations, which the study of Rifts often necessitates. And lastly there is Mr. Herschel, who is perhaps not fully aware of his part in this but nonetheless does all my smithing. He works in the Gallows as we clearly have no forge here, so you need not supply any cakes for him."
She takes a prim sip of tea.
"Although I'm sure he wouldn't refuse one or two being delivered to him."
Val snatches up the pillow and clutches it to his chest instead, winding his arms about it so that he is holding it very close. He listens to her list, making little ohs and ahs to punctuate where they would be appropriate, all of them very flat and disinterested.
"I like Fitz," he says, nearly right over the bit about Herschel's cakes. "I did not know he had gotten himself mixed in with you. The poor soul. I shall pray for him. But I will not be buying any cakes unless they are for people who I like and wish to give cakes to. The collective," with some scorn, "may cake itself. Tell me, is this practice a tradition of your country?"
He half lifts his head from the floor, so he can stare at her.
"Yes," he says slowly, as if she is very stupid, "I like Fitz. I do not examine why it is that I like someone. Would that be philosophy? Theology, perhaps?" No, the more interesting question: "You like him? Or, no?"
"Of course I like Mr. Fitz!" She declares, setting aside her cup and saucer with such ferocity that the former threatens to overturn and the latter quails with the effort to restrain it.
"He is an excellent research partner, and quite bright, and he is in fact the only individual in all of Thedas who has every expressed curiosity - true curiosity - about the place I come from. Mr. Fitz is indeed the very spirit of— of— He is very resourceful. And I see no reason at all why someone would not care for him. What I fail to grasp entirely, Monsieur, is where your standard for good company lies."
He has awful taste in fruit jams! His handwriting is atrocious! His choice of filing systems in the library is baffling!
Then he lays back down on the floor again, the pillow still held to his chest.
"I see," he says to the ceiling. "You want us to be very separate. I will consider that flattering, mademoiselle. And usually I would share your opinion. Furthermore, I detest anyone who everyone cares for. It is a very boring position to take. 'Everyone'. I do not permit myself to be spoken for. And why should everyone like them? Of course I make exceptions when the person proves to be interesting. You should try the same for Fitz. He strikes me as worthwhile. Oh, perhaps that is where my standard lies. Worthwhile.
Where to begin? With the grossly misinformed theory that she wishes to keep them very separate? With flattery? With, I have just said that Mr. Fitz is perfectly agreeable, so what do you mean that I 'should try the same?'
"Oh. Worthwhile," has such faux sincerity, all murderous lightness and air. "Yes of course. I should have known as much. For what else might inspire respect in a person? You must tell me, de Foncé, what in particular about the man's person strikes you so, so that when next I am in his company I might make particular note of it."
Airy, but in an entirely different way, Val slings one leg over the other, his ankle pressed to his knee. He studies the ceiling as he considers what he might say to this.
"I don't know that I could say," he says eventually, with a little laugh. "It is a certain unsayable thing, I think. A quality that one cannot put their finger upon. Even you will notice it, if you think to look for it when you are next with him, mademoiselle. And he is amusing. I suppose that helps his case. I have invited him to dinner so that he might meet Freddie and Jeannot. Or I intend to. I do not think I have said the invitation yet. You must not tell him so that it might be a surprise."
"You are inviting him to dinner?" spikes shrill. —And then moderates in a monumental show of force, pitching higher and more pleasant still. "How fine. I'm sure the four of you will have a marvelous time. It is rather nice, isn't it? To have such reliable and interesting companions with which to spend the an evening. Now tell me, Monsieur. When shall I expect your list?"
"Yes, I am pleased to have found his company." Without looking around, Val stretches his hand out toward the cup of tea that he had abandoned. It is a bit too far for him to reach easily. Fumbling about, he does not move any closer or make any significant effort to get at it. "It should be a very pleasant evening. Engaging conversation amongst those of interesting company and intelligence, one can hardly ask for more. I have a plan to engage the services of a chef that I have heard of. He prepares food in the style popular in Orlais right now. Of course, it will not be precisely the same as if we were dining in Val Royeaux, but it will be a similarity. And one must make such a compromise when one lives abroad."
At last, he finds the cup and drags it closer. The sludge of sugared tea sloshes dully. "As to the list, I suppose I will find the time for it in the coming week or so. I will have to check my appointment book."
"In the next week or so should be perfectly agreeable," she says, pitched with such delicate effervescence that it hardly exists at all.
Claiming her own cup with a vice grip, Wysteria takes a fortifying drink before saying, "I ask only as Mr. Ellis and myself are soon to be away from Kirkwall for some time together on a trip whose particulars I am not presently at liberty to discuss, and I would vastly prefer to see this set in motion before then. You know how these things are; sometimes when one is away, it becomes difficult to pick up a thing right as you left it."
Val lifts his head from the floor so that he can take a sip of his tea. Not so that he can look at Wysteria. He has no interest in Wysteria. And he waits until he has set his head back down upon the floor again before he gives any further remark, which--
"A mission, I assume."
--who cares about liberty when he wants to know.
"I can only assume it is to be very dull, and that is why you will not speak of it."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-07-31 06:41 pm (UTC)He snaps his fingers. Instant.
"It can only be you, mademoiselle, that does the asking. It is essential to this project that you do."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-31 07:40 pm (UTC)It's not as if it isn't sound logic. Given the opportunity to reflect on the possibility of him in conversation with—who? The other party hardly matters, really—, she can only picture a certain level of intellectual battery unlikely to engender good will among any of their prospective pool of voluntolds.
(She is rather well liked in Riftwatch, it's true.)
"Then perhaps," she says, still leaned forward over the tea tray between them. "You might draw up the list and I will do the actual negotiation. So as to use both our skills to their best advantage."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-01 11:17 pm (UTC)"Très très bien."
He leans away from her again and takes another sip of tea. This one nearly drains his cup by half, reducing its threat.
"It is always best in a project to make maximum use of the skills that one has at one's command. I am wasted; you are flourished. We will be a very good team, I think, despite what anyone might say of us. We will prove them wrong. And we will have the very last laugh when our project is complete, for nothing of its like will have been seen before in all of Thedas! You see," more conversationally, "this is where we would need the wine. For the toasting. Tea does not toast the same. Even you can see the sense in that, yes?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-02 12:16 am (UTC)"Yes, yes. I see the logic in it now, de Foncé, and there is indeed a bottle waiting in the kitchen - you must make do with something simply white, I'm afraid - but in the mean time—"
(What could anyone possibly have to say about them as an 'us,' she cannot begin to imagine.)
Wysteria extends her cup, saying, "To something entirely new," and clinks it against Val's.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-03 10:24 pm (UTC)His next drink nearly empties the cup. With a critical eye, he peers at the dregs and the sludge of sugar at the bottom of it.
"We might find a better tea. Let this be another thing 'entirely new'."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-04 09:39 pm (UTC)Optimism's glow disappears at remarkable speed. Her cup clinks hard against its saucer.
"I'm sorry to hear it hasn't lived up to your expectations."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 02:53 am (UTC)He sighs, as he settles back into a comfortable cross-legged seat once more, and rests both cup and saucer upon one of his knees. The perfect picture of composure.
"You are not to blame. It is whoever it is that does your purchasing for you. Who is that?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 03:07 am (UTC)"Then it seems the blame is indeed entirely mine, Monsieur." It is light and airy, and continues to be so as she fetches her own spoon and begins to aggressively stir in the sugar. "For there is no one who does the purchasing, just as there is no one else who sees to the ordering of the wallpaper, or the arrangement of any other business in this house."
The teapot is fetched back up. Her half empty cup is refilled.
"But you must not be concerned, de Foncé. I won't force you to drink any more of it."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 05:53 pm (UTC)"But that is terrible. Not that I would be free of drinking it--of course, that is not unwelcome, but I would much prefer to have something to drink while working--but that you are being made to conduct your own purchasing. Where is the sense in that? Why would you undertake each and ever chore? I will say, I am not of Orlais in the way that so many others are. Of course I have an appreciation for work. I am a scholar, my research is always my own. But could I have written all that I have written if I was traipsing about purchasing tea? I will tell you: I could not have."
Imagine going to the market and purchasing tea, for yourself, always. Not just when it was amusing to do so, or when you did not trust someone to purchase the tea you wanted, or when you were in an exotic place where a trip to a market might be an adventure in of itself. No: an ordinary market, for ordinary, every-day, plainly serviceable tea. Quelle horreur.
"If you are to make a serious go of this, mademoiselle, you must learn what it is to delegate."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-05 06:40 pm (UTC)The spoon is removed from the sugar bowl; the bowl's lid is firmly replaced to its rightful position.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-06 09:55 pm (UTC)Dismissive now, he waves his hand, to clear this pettiness aside. "Scholarship, of course, is what I am speaking of. Do the scholars of your whatever-you-call-it country truly do their own shopping? Of course you must reserve final judgement on the important matters. The wallpaper must look appropriate to your taste, the tea must be appropriate to your taste as well--but have one of your men do the down-low things for you so that your schedule and your mind are both clear for the work that you intend to be doing."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-06 10:39 pm (UTC)She starts to lift her cup, and then sets it down again as she finds another point to pursue. "Furthermore, my mind is quite clear. In fact, I find the seeing to of little details like this entirely rewarding and that they in no way subtract from the quality of my work."
Up comes the— no, wait. One more thing.
"And speaking of the collective, Mr. Stark had suggested that you consider contributing to the refreshments kept on hand if we are to be working here together. We all do."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 03:43 pm (UTC)Dramatically, Val scoops his cup and saucer off of his knee so he can flop onto the floor. Stretched out so, he might have fainted--but if he did, he made the very deliberate choice to faint.
"What is this? Who is 'Mr. Stark'?" he asks to the ceiling, in a voice of exasperated weariness. "Who are any of these people? Names. I," he waves a hand, voilà, presenting himself, still laid out upon the floor, "am not here to keep some hoard of 'like-minded scholars and artisans' in cakes. I do not even like cakes so much. Monsieur Mercier and the Baroness would never ask me to pay for cakes. I would not ask them to pay for cakes. Certainly I would not even so much as suggest. We simply buy one another cakes when the mood suits us. This is all so stupid. Why this insistence on such small details and pretending they are some reward? What does Mr. Ellis do? Is he a scholar or an artisan? For who else am I buying cakes?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 04:34 pm (UTC)"Here, Monsieur. You may collapse on this. As for the collective," she says, settling back with a compulsive rearrangement of her skirts and a repossession of her teacup. "There is myself and Mr. Stark, who is a Rifter and something of an engineer who presently leads the work on Project Felandaris of the organization to which we all belong. And there is Mr. Fitz, who is also a Rifter, and is most interested in the study of Rifts and the Veil and the nature of the Fade. Then there is Mr. Ellis, who as you must know is indeed an artisan in a particular meaning of the word in the sense that he is a skilled tradesman of dangerous situations, which the study of Rifts often necessitates. And lastly there is Mr. Herschel, who is perhaps not fully aware of his part in this but nonetheless does all my smithing. He works in the Gallows as we clearly have no forge here, so you need not supply any cakes for him."
She takes a prim sip of tea.
"Although I'm sure he wouldn't refuse one or two being delivered to him."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 06:02 am (UTC)"I like Fitz," he says, nearly right over the bit about Herschel's cakes. "I did not know he had gotten himself mixed in with you. The poor soul. I shall pray for him. But I will not be buying any cakes unless they are for people who I like and wish to give cakes to. The collective," with some scorn, "may cake itself. Tell me, is this practice a tradition of your country?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 08:18 am (UTC)It has the shape of a question but not the sound of one, and is exclaimed with little regard for anything which follows Val's truly outrageous claim.
"What on the gods' green earth has Mr. Fitz done to make you like him?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 03:36 am (UTC)"Yes," he says slowly, as if she is very stupid, "I like Fitz. I do not examine why it is that I like someone. Would that be philosophy? Theology, perhaps?" No, the more interesting question: "You like him? Or, no?"
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 03:57 am (UTC)"He is an excellent research partner, and quite bright, and he is in fact the only individual in all of Thedas who has every expressed curiosity - true curiosity - about the place I come from. Mr. Fitz is indeed the very spirit of— of— He is very resourceful. And I see no reason at all why someone would not care for him. What I fail to grasp entirely, Monsieur, is where your standard for good company lies."
He has awful taste in fruit jams! His handwriting is atrocious! His choice of filing systems in the library is baffling!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 04:31 am (UTC)Then he lays back down on the floor again, the pillow still held to his chest.
"I see," he says to the ceiling. "You want us to be very separate. I will consider that flattering, mademoiselle. And usually I would share your opinion. Furthermore, I detest anyone who everyone cares for. It is a very boring position to take. 'Everyone'. I do not permit myself to be spoken for. And why should everyone like them? Of course I make exceptions when the person proves to be interesting. You should try the same for Fitz. He strikes me as worthwhile. Oh, perhaps that is where my standard lies. Worthwhile.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 05:17 am (UTC)"Oh. Worthwhile," has such faux sincerity, all murderous lightness and air. "Yes of course. I should have known as much. For what else might inspire respect in a person? You must tell me, de Foncé, what in particular about the man's person strikes you so, so that when next I am in his company I might make particular note of it."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 10:09 pm (UTC)Airy, but in an entirely different way, Val slings one leg over the other, his ankle pressed to his knee. He studies the ceiling as he considers what he might say to this.
"I don't know that I could say," he says eventually, with a little laugh. "It is a certain unsayable thing, I think. A quality that one cannot put their finger upon. Even you will notice it, if you think to look for it when you are next with him, mademoiselle. And he is amusing. I suppose that helps his case. I have invited him to dinner so that he might meet Freddie and Jeannot. Or I intend to. I do not think I have said the invitation yet. You must not tell him so that it might be a surprise."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 07:17 pm (UTC)At last, he finds the cup and drags it closer. The sludge of sugared tea sloshes dully. "As to the list, I suppose I will find the time for it in the coming week or so. I will have to check my appointment book."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-13 07:30 am (UTC)Claiming her own cup with a vice grip, Wysteria takes a fortifying drink before saying, "I ask only as Mr. Ellis and myself are soon to be away from Kirkwall for some time together on a trip whose particulars I am not presently at liberty to discuss, and I would vastly prefer to see this set in motion before then. You know how these things are; sometimes when one is away, it becomes difficult to pick up a thing right as you left it."
no subject
Date: 2020-08-14 12:28 am (UTC)Val lifts his head from the floor so that he can take a sip of his tea. Not so that he can look at Wysteria. He has no interest in Wysteria. And he waits until he has set his head back down upon the floor again before he gives any further remark, which--
"A mission, I assume."
--who cares about liberty when he wants to know.
"I can only assume it is to be very dull, and that is why you will not speak of it."
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