contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

Comments

[heirring]

Ambassador,

Well enough. Mister Dickerson will be leading the effort with respect to testing lyrium in my absence, though I mean to deliver an assessment of my own place in it before I go. Your apology is accepted. I don't anticipate further kerfuffles, dreadful or otherwise.

Best of luck with the merchant's wife's noblewoman friend in Ostwick.

Sincerely,
W.A. dF

[bouchonne]

Your own place means testing it on yourself?

[ This, written on her own note returned to her, scrawled in the margin. ]

[heirring]

[In a similar slapdash form of marginalia:]

Correct. -W.A. dF.

-> crystal

[bouchonne]

[ A hesitation. He debates this. But, finally: ]

Madame.

[ He just knows this is going to go terribly. ]

Forgive my intrusion, and I hope I am not bothering you. But I did just receive your latest missive, and - I am safe in the presumption, I believe, that you have rather little experience with narcotics.

[heirring]

[Her reply, when it comes, has the prim air of a young lady who has been anticipating a scolding since penning her reply and has therefore thought out all her counter arguments ahead of time. And will now proceed to supply them all in a single sentence.]

That is correct, Mister Rutyer. However I have an excellent constitution, and have consulted a knowledgeable source for the correct dosages, and will indeed for the entire duration. There is practically no danger beyond the inherent one.

[bouchonne]

[ A little dryly: ]

No danger beyond the inherent one.

[ But he's not here to point out when she's blustering. He's here to provide some measure of something like help. ]

My concern is a bit less for your physical well-being and a bit more for your - Well. Many of the tales you doubtless heard of the madness induced by drugs and drink were exaggerated, but that doesn't mean they were without truth.

[heirring]

Mister Rutyer, you should know that I am in possession of a formidable number of cousins. And that one or two have traveled extensively.

[bouchonne]

Yes?

[ A question asking her to fill in the details there. He won't, evidently, be content with vague implications of worldliness here. ]

[heirring]

And so have heard one or two shocking stories which I couldn't possibly repeat.

—What exactly is the point you're driving after, sir?

[bouchonne]

Maker, don't call me sir. Especially not when I'm providing advice based on my sordid past. - And semi-sordid present.

[ Said jokingly, but...Well, it's as Bastien identified. He's embarrassed by it. When he was playacting that being booze-soaked and frequently out of his mind was...what, some grand performance? a piece of ongoing experimental theater with a single dreadful ham constantly on stage? a joke? - it was easy enough to wrap it all up in simple irony. But now that he's cracked the door to it being, perhaps, something that was a bit ruinous for him, shame comes in as well. And while shame has always been Byerly's companion, from childhood itself, he does detest that old friend of his. ]

The point is - They are less a poison to the body than they are a poison to the mind. So I want to ensure that you are willing to risk that for this. Willing to risk your mind.

[heirring]

[Would you prefer I call you Ambassador while discussing your sordid past, is strictly a thing she thinks very loudly rather than something she says.

So too goes the fact that she has consulted with a Templar or two and has heard and noted all their morbid recitations, and has read quite a lot on red lyrium and the reliance upon the trade which has made it's proliferation so rapid. And Colin had been so protective of his lyrium supply contacts, and the Carta too treats it with the laissez-faire indelicacy of a thing which probably ought to be handled with gloves. Instead, what she says is:]

Yes, I'm quite willing. Had we a few other Rifters with their arms chopped off, I might consider otherwise. But given the givens and what I imagine would be a great outrage were I to suggest hacking off bits and pieces of people to avoid putting myself in a little danger, I see little alternative.

[That she could simply not ask these questions, or might easily classify them as inessential—after all, there has been Rifters drifting in and out of Thedas for years—seems to be irrelevant.]

[bouchonne]

[ He's quiet a moment. Then: ]

This knowledge is valuable. That much is true.

Your mind, at least from my perspective, is far more so.

[heirring]

[Is not the little lecturing jab she's anticipated. Her own quiet moment is half the length of Byerly's, but in the language of Wysteria Poppell it constitutes a very long moment of mental reorganization.]

Well. That's very pleasant of you to say.

But there are one or two rather bright Rifters and who can say, there may be more, and it would benefit us to understand a little more so we can be certain the ones we like best don't disappear into the ether. [My, how charitable an assessment.] And even if that weren't the case, you can be certain the Venatori have asked similar questions and likely know far more answers than we will be willing to press for. Not that I'm advocating we follow so precisely in their footsteps. It's merely a fact. And—

[Here, another brief pause as she becomes uncharacteristically aware of the length at which she has been justifying herself. But no, she decides. This part is worth saying too.]

If the war ends and everyone begins looking to see how they will manage Rifters once they can't all live in the Gallows, it will be better to know than to not know.

So you see, I am endeavoring to think ahead.

[bouchonne]

[ He doesn't argue further. Instead, he just asks: ]

Better to know what, precisely?

[ Because these sorts of experiments mystify him in the best of times. The goal of this one has eluded his befuddled dullard's mind most thoroughly. ]

[heirring]

How a Rifter is constituted, and their relationship to the Fade and to lyrium and whether they might manipulate it, and how closely they fall in line with mages and how they do not, and how the anchor can be expected to develop either in a Rifter's body or otherwise.

And if there are no easy answers to those questions, it will at least be preferable to have our own scholarship documenting it which an ally might choose to trust. I don't know about how you would feel on the subject, but personally speaking I would strongly prefer not to be defined by whatever Corypheus' followers might choose to write down about me. I suspect those notes may give the altogether wrong impression.

[bouchonne]

Forgive my stupidity. [ The apology sounds genuine. ] How will getting doped up on lyrium answer those questions?

[heirring]

[She makes a small sound as if beginning to answer and then stops. Rearranging the words in her head, Wysteria instead prompts him:]

Consider, unpleasant though it may be, the severed arm and the lyrium's attraction to it. What do you suppose caused that?

[bouchonne]

Ah…

[ The answer: He has no fucking clue. So he hems, and says: ]

I imagine you have an explanation in mind.

[heirring]

Well yes. But I want you to make a guess. And it doesn't matter if it's the same as mine. It's not as if I know whether mine is right.

[bouchonne]

I -

[ A rather uncomfortable laugh. ]

Maker. You know I was the despair of every member of the Chantry who tried to school me? Not just because I was a rascal. I was that, of course, but I was also very stupid.

[heirring]

All my governesses detested me.

But truly! Have you heard of any other instance of lyrium—and I mean normal lyrium, not the red kind. While the Red Templars pose a compelling complication, but I think for our purposes are a somewhat advanced concern— Do you recall any rumor or story of refined lyrium reacting to a body in order reconstitute it?

[bouchonne]

Not to my recollection. - Why did they detest you?

[heirring]

Because I was an unruly child who refused to be educated. —And yet the lyrium has done so in the presence of a Rifter appendage with an anchor in it. So is it the anchor, or is it the [how did Mister Dickerson put it?] Rifter flesh?

[bouchonne]

[ A matter far more interesting to him: ]

You were impatient with them, I presume?

[heirring]

You haven't answered my question, so I won't be answering yours. Fair is fair, Mister Rutyer.