Between them, John works the seal from the bottle.
It is not a lie, but it sits alongside all the reasons to be cautious, all the reasons John has to hold himself in check. Trust can only extend so far.
"Hand me your cup, and we can toast to whatever it is we're embarking on here."
"The feeling is mutual," he says, and slides his cup across to John. Mutual in more than one way: By still doesn't trust Silver much further than he can throw him - a difficult task, given that the man is stocky, though he is rather incomplete. But his company is still pleasant, his personality charming.
"To ventures. Whatever they might be." And he lifts his eyebrows in invitation - what are they, exactly?
Yes, it's mutual. John doesn't need any further clarity on the matter than that.
Ventures goes unremarked upon for the moment, as John pours, returns the cup, sets the bottle between them.
As they drink, John considers the number of things meant to raise with Byerly. Most are perhaps better suited to the Diplomacy office.
"How did you find Nascere?" is perhaps not what Byerly was expecting. John settles into the chair, cup held loosely in hand. "It occurred to me that I had never asked, after our outing last year."
Or the dream, but John is leaving that to one side for the moment.
It is an unexpected sort of question. By tilts his head very slightly to the side for just a moment - his lone gesture of surprise - and then takes a breath, raises his brows, and slowly, thoughtfully rotates his cup.
"It was," he says, "the sort of place a fellow could fall in love with. I understand well your romanticism." He pauses a moment to think. "Ferelden fancies itself a rough place, but at the end of the day, it's still constrained by a thousand codes, written and unwritten, and a hundred thousand unspoken customs. But Nascere seemed truly wild. Man living with his nature, for better and for worse."
It's a poetic description. John receives it as a door cracking open, just enough to reveal—
Well, maybe nothing so surprising. In the midst of all else Byerly Rutyer is, he is still Fereldan. Is it such a shock he'd be charmed by Nascere in all it's unbound glory?
"Would you like to know something...funny?" John offers after a moment. "I think I've spent more time here than I did there, all in all."
Perhaps everything would have gone differently had that not been the case. What if he and Flint had gone home rather than remained? There'd been opportunity.
"And what's kept me here is hardly a mystery," he continues. "But I've wondered about you, from time to time. Are you so fulfilled here?"
Is Ferelden so well-served by your presence here, is a very different question but it lurks at the edges of the conversation.
"With company like this, how could I ever be elsewise?" he asks, lifting his glass with a grin. Then, slightly less glibly but no less wryly, he goes on: "There's much here to keep me quite content. Delicious gossip to fill my letters. Strange creatures from other worlds that could well be a threat, and whose odd qualities are more than enough to stir the interest of some in the south."
Yes, there's much in Riftwatch to keep a spy in employment, most certainly. Many odd folks in need of surveillance.
He surprises himself a little, though, when he feels compelled to offer some oblique comfort to Silver. "And you're certainly not alone, you know, in that funny thing of yours. Most people, when you ask them what their home is, they'll give an answer that is certainly not the place where they've spent the most time. Why, I still call myself a Rutyer of Dragonmount, for all that I was a fresh-faced youth when I left and never have I set foot there since."
And the south could be further stirred, John might say, were this a different kind of conversation.
But there are better ways to make mention of such things.
"I've never been so inclined before I arrived there," John says instead, and while it's intended to clarify, it's still a statement that is as much John working through the thing as it is him knowing. "So it's a strange thing, losing something I'd barely acclimated to having."
And it was only partly about Nascere itself, after all. What linked him to that island had been Flint and it had been Madi, and should they choose another island, then—
"Do you have intentions to return to Dragonmount?"
"Absolutely," Byerly replies cheerily. "My father's ashes aren't going to piss in themselves, after all."
Which is glib, and obnoxious, and about all that Byerly really wants to say on the subject. There are some with whom By will speak on the topic of the Rutyers and their grotesqueries. An orphan seems like the worst possible audience. At worst, it'd be cruel to the beastie to talk of broken families, for he'd get envious; at best, he'd simply be confused and unable to understand.
No, the Rutyers and Byerly's hatred are beyond him, though interesting to mark. John can understand the hatred in some reasoned, logical sense, but beyond that—
He lets it lie.
"On more ships than I can count, or care to remember. All unremarkable save for the ways in which they were uniquely miserable to serve on."
If Byerly would like those kinds of stories, John had dozens upon dozens to unspool for him. He turns the glass on the table, lifts it to his mouth rather than volunteer anything else.
"I've heard stories," By muses in return. He's curious, to be sure, but he's not entirely certain how much truth he'll get out of Silver if he invites him to share tales of shipborne miseries. So that's the question - is this conversation one for idle chatter? The sort of friendly jawing that builds an intimacy between two fellows? Or is this a conversation to pull some truths out of the man, a strategic conversation in which they endeavor to unravel the other? Pity the spy; he's long since lost the ability to really tell the two types of encounters apart.
"We had sailors who'd come into town, a-times. Not too often - it wasn't a major port - but we'd sell them some barrels of water." He gives a little grin. "I nearly joined a crew a few separate times. Did learn the knack of rigging and knots and the like from them. Learned a few other things, too." A lascivious wink. "Helped a deserter, once. Someone who couldn't take the miseries anymore."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"What," he says, "do you like me?"
no subject
Between them, John works the seal from the bottle.
It is not a lie, but it sits alongside all the reasons to be cautious, all the reasons John has to hold himself in check. Trust can only extend so far.
"Hand me your cup, and we can toast to whatever it is we're embarking on here."
Friendship¿?
no subject
"To ventures. Whatever they might be." And he lifts his eyebrows in invitation - what are they, exactly?
no subject
Ventures goes unremarked upon for the moment, as John pours, returns the cup, sets the bottle between them.
As they drink, John considers the number of things meant to raise with Byerly. Most are perhaps better suited to the Diplomacy office.
"How did you find Nascere?" is perhaps not what Byerly was expecting. John settles into the chair, cup held loosely in hand. "It occurred to me that I had never asked, after our outing last year."
Or the dream, but John is leaving that to one side for the moment.
no subject
"It was," he says, "the sort of place a fellow could fall in love with. I understand well your romanticism." He pauses a moment to think. "Ferelden fancies itself a rough place, but at the end of the day, it's still constrained by a thousand codes, written and unwritten, and a hundred thousand unspoken customs. But Nascere seemed truly wild. Man living with his nature, for better and for worse."
no subject
Well, maybe nothing so surprising. In the midst of all else Byerly Rutyer is, he is still Fereldan. Is it such a shock he'd be charmed by Nascere in all it's unbound glory?
"Would you like to know something...funny?" John offers after a moment. "I think I've spent more time here than I did there, all in all."
Perhaps everything would have gone differently had that not been the case. What if he and Flint had gone home rather than remained? There'd been opportunity.
"And what's kept me here is hardly a mystery," he continues. "But I've wondered about you, from time to time. Are you so fulfilled here?"
Is Ferelden so well-served by your presence here, is a very different question but it lurks at the edges of the conversation.
no subject
Yes, there's much in Riftwatch to keep a spy in employment, most certainly. Many odd folks in need of surveillance.
He surprises himself a little, though, when he feels compelled to offer some oblique comfort to Silver. "And you're certainly not alone, you know, in that funny thing of yours. Most people, when you ask them what their home is, they'll give an answer that is certainly not the place where they've spent the most time. Why, I still call myself a Rutyer of Dragonmount, for all that I was a fresh-faced youth when I left and never have I set foot there since."
no subject
But there are better ways to make mention of such things.
"I've never been so inclined before I arrived there," John says instead, and while it's intended to clarify, it's still a statement that is as much John working through the thing as it is him knowing. "So it's a strange thing, losing something I'd barely acclimated to having."
And it was only partly about Nascere itself, after all. What linked him to that island had been Flint and it had been Madi, and should they choose another island, then—
"Do you have intentions to return to Dragonmount?"
no subject
Which is glib, and obnoxious, and about all that Byerly really wants to say on the subject. There are some with whom By will speak on the topic of the Rutyers and their grotesqueries. An orphan seems like the worst possible audience. At worst, it'd be cruel to the beastie to talk of broken families, for he'd get envious; at best, he'd simply be confused and unable to understand.
"Where were you before Nascere?"
no subject
No, the Rutyers and Byerly's hatred are beyond him, though interesting to mark. John can understand the hatred in some reasoned, logical sense, but beyond that—
He lets it lie.
"On more ships than I can count, or care to remember. All unremarkable save for the ways in which they were uniquely miserable to serve on."
If Byerly would like those kinds of stories, John had dozens upon dozens to unspool for him. He turns the glass on the table, lifts it to his mouth rather than volunteer anything else.
no subject
"We had sailors who'd come into town, a-times. Not too often - it wasn't a major port - but we'd sell them some barrels of water." He gives a little grin. "I nearly joined a crew a few separate times. Did learn the knack of rigging and knots and the like from them. Learned a few other things, too." A lascivious wink. "Helped a deserter, once. Someone who couldn't take the miseries anymore."