[ There's a moment's hesitation - only a moment - as he fights the urge to...Well, to lie. To lie in a glossy, easy way, to laugh and report on the whole sordid story like it's an amusing anecdote rather than a mire of misery. To do what he's always done. But in the end, what brings him to his blunt honesty is not, perhaps, his pledge to not lie to her; rather, it's his awareness that she won't share any sensitive secrets until he's abased himself. That's how secrets work - why he was always such a successful spy. You don't worry about your dignity around a man devoid of the stuff.
So. ]
My father was the fifth son of his generation, and unsuited due to both temperament and talent to either religious service or the military. So he was given a threadbare inheritance - an old estate on a rocky beach. The only prosperous souls in our holdings were the smugglers, and smugglers, of course, pay no taxes. So. The way out of such genteel poverty would be to make a favorable match, but my father also had no charm. And so my mother came with next to no dowry at all, and our fate was set.
This is not, of course, to imply that poor families cannot be happy. Many who are without money are rich in love. But our coffers were bare there, as well - as you'll likely be unsurprised to hear. You're well aware how irksome I am when I am but a mere acquaintance; imagine how irksome it would be to have me as your son and heir. Combine that with the Rutyer family's curse of madness, which bit at my father - led him to the most peculiar obsessions, an odd desire to accumulate the strangest things and pile them up in great rotting heaps - Well. The stench alone would have driven an even-tempered and cheerful lad into melancholic fits.
[ His shrug is nearly audible. ]
I imagine you were likely hoping for something more interesting - I fear it's all dreadfully ordinary.
[For a person very prone to interruption and swiftly and immediately expressing her opinions on any subject which arises, no matter how aggravating or impolite, Wysteria miraculously manages to maintain near-religious silence throughout this confession. And afterward, though aware of the impulse to directly correct him (she wasn't imagining anything; she was merely broadly curious), she manage to hold her tongue for the beat necessary to think better of it.
Maybe it feels like a very long silence. Like maybe a month long silence, were someone to acknowledge the timestamps on these tags. Maybe it's just enough time to begin to feel a prick of reservation for having said anything at all—]
It is very ordinary, [she says at last.] But I suppose ordinariness doesn't really matter to a little boy, and I can see why you wouldn't wish to think on it. Particularly as you're so far removed from it now.
[ Was he holding his breath? He's not quite sure, in the wake of her response - he doesn't recall having done so - but he does feel in his lungs the faint ache of coming up for air after a bit too long underwater. ]
Would I were farther. Whenever I'm in Ferelden, or corresponding with our nobility, I can never just be Byerly, that rake and scoundrel. I must also be, son of the grotesque and pitiable. If I must be despised, I wish I could be despised merely for myself.
[ There. That sounded good. Wry and arch. Nothing of the strange twist that the phrase little boy leaves in his head. The urge to correct her and tell her that he'd never been anything of the sort. ]
[Truth for truth, he says and despite this she hesitates. But why shouldn't she? He's spoken the exact issue aloud himself. Byerly Rutyer may come from a dreadful house and mad father, and perhaps it's even true that those things shade everyone's estimation of him. But it's not him. Indeed, having laid the whole thing out, in a way makes him seem somehow more honest and reputable. Yes, of course a scoundrel and a rake with all the secretly delicate sensibilities like Byerly has would have such origins. And if he's a liar or if he has been playing games, then in a funny way it all manages to align very closely to the truth despite everything. Doesn't it?]
Well. [She says, like a placeholder as she mentally tries to work through exactly what she means to say and how she means to say it. Annoyingly though, no clear way forward magically reveals itself to her. So after a moment, she says again:] Well.
Well, I suppose the natural solution, Mister Rutyer, is to simply make yourself despised for being Riftwatch's Ambassador. That can't be very difficult. I believe we're unpopular with a great many people already. You need only be slightly more intolerable to the correct people and eventually the one reputation will win out over the other one. I believe that's how these things often go. Certainly that's how it usually goes in Kalvad, and I imagine gossip is one of those things which is fairly universal in its application.
Anyway, my truth is highly uninteresting. The reason no one would consider me a scholar in Kalvad is because I'm not one. I was only an apprentice magician—which is and isn't like a mage here, which you know a little of—to a highly unpopular fellow, and was considered far too old for the position besides. Most apprentices are children of ten or eleven and far more accomplished with their Talents. And if I told you what other people said on the matter, you might think it was very poor treatment indeed. But I assure you that it is all highly regular in that place. That's how one should expect to be treated in Kalvad if the impression one gives is being something of a waste of time.
That's all. So you see. It has no importance here whatsoever.
Forgive me, please, Madame. But - I feel a fool, as you've said it so matter-of-factly - Is it a matter of general knowledge that you have magical ability?
Oh. Well. [Again with that word as a placeholder for something else. What a terrible habit; maybe she picked it up from those long hours spent in Salvio's company in the Base Operations office.]
Not particularly common knowledge, no. But why, you knew this! All that time ago when we shared that carriage and we played Wicked Grace, and I cheated with the cards! You can't have possibly been under the impression that I was just some sort of—
[What? This is absurd. She's certain he'd guessed it.]
[ For a moment, he teeters on the edge between two reactions. The first is what most residents of Thedas feel when finding out that a longtime friend is a mage - that prickle of discomfort, of fear. That knowledge that all this time, when they thought they were safe, there was an abomination-in-waiting beside them.
The second is the reaction he's tried to force himself to have. To shut down that fear, to remember that he's been living with mages for years now and there's only been a single abomination and it's come from outside. That second reaction prevails: he denies the terror.
And so after a moment's hesitation, laughter comes bubbling up from him. ]
I absolutely did! Madame, I'm devastated. You've broken my heart! I thought you'd studied to become a cheat, and I was so proud of you for being one! - Though I suppose you still are, just by different mechanisms.
You—! [Were this conversation occurring in person rather than over crystal, Byerly might be treated to the hot flush of Wysteria's fury and mortification, her mouth opening and closing a few times like a gasping fish before she manages to master herself.]
But all that business about how I should find myself friends lest I find myself at the mercy of the Chantry after the war— Are you being honest with me right now, Mister Rutyer? I tell you, I am going to be entirely and irrevocably cross with you if you've picked this is all things to lie over.
[ He's still laughing, just a little. Not at her, just at what a mess this is, what a very silly miscommunication the whole thing has been. How typical a thing it is between them.
But it's not funny, and so he gets a hold of himself and tries to banish the amusement from his voice. ]
Apologies. It's a solemn matter. [ He takes a breath. ] Rifters' fates have been intertwined with mages'. That was my meaning only. Madame, you know I'm a bit of an idiot.
[The strangled noise she makes is something between a disparaging scoff and a squawk of either pure embarrassment or unmitigated indignation. It's difficult to say exactly which, and to what degree it may be attributed to his laughter versus her own horror. Eventually, she manages to produce—]
Well! [Which is thoroughly outraged and also a sure sign she means to move rapidly onward lest she be forced to face her own part in any of this.] The point is that I'm not really a magician either, so in fact in every sense it has no bearing whatsoever. On anything at all.
Well, because he's quite good at listening, to begin with.
[ That is a voice that is, briefly, absolutely thrumming with adoration. ]
And because he has many of the same sorts of frustrations. Freemen - commoners - are treated like they're below notice in many places, but especially in Orlais. So he had to grow up with utter disdain, despite his very real and very remarkable talents. Much as you did.
Oh, [is blurted out directly, despite having only just recovered her foot from her mouth.] I'm not common. My mother is a Lady, and I'm her only child.
[ He might not be able to smell a mage, but he can certainly smell nobility. ]
But it's much the same sort of thing. Bastien's birth, much like your...I presume you were late-apprenticed, and to a master of lesser renown, because someone mismanaged their social connections? Didn't exploit them properly? Or was some other misfortune involved? - Regardless, you're both undervalued because people have paid attention to circumstances instead of talents.
No, it's— Well, I suppose there is some similarity. Only, I chose it. I wasn't meant to have been apprenticed at all, you see. I picked it.
[Not the assignment, or how dreadful her company had been maybe. But still. They're circumstances which she herself designed.]
It's not like an ordinary apprenticeship or even like the Circles here, and Kalvad is very different from Orlais— It would be dishonest, [she resolves, as if it's only just occurred to her given how closely they've hewn to the subject] To pretend otherwise only for the sake of talking about it.
But speaking about it with me is a very different experience from speaking about it with Bastien, you know. I'll make a mess of it, but Bastien will make you feel better. Always.
I don't feel poorly about it. I don't wish to discuss it because it's not important.
[And she does, in a sense, sound like she's telling the truth. What difference does any of it make? It was years ago now, and will never touch her here.]
You won't tell anyone, will you? About mine knowing just a bit of magic. It wasn't on the list that was made of all the Rifters who did and Val mustn't know. I mean, he wouldn't even if you did because he doesn't know anything about anyone in Riftwatch. He hardly knows who you are, and only because I made fun of him for it. And there are other people as well who shouldn't know either, of course.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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So. ]
My father was the fifth son of his generation, and unsuited due to both temperament and talent to either religious service or the military. So he was given a threadbare inheritance - an old estate on a rocky beach. The only prosperous souls in our holdings were the smugglers, and smugglers, of course, pay no taxes. So. The way out of such genteel poverty would be to make a favorable match, but my father also had no charm. And so my mother came with next to no dowry at all, and our fate was set.
This is not, of course, to imply that poor families cannot be happy. Many who are without money are rich in love. But our coffers were bare there, as well - as you'll likely be unsurprised to hear. You're well aware how irksome I am when I am but a mere acquaintance; imagine how irksome it would be to have me as your son and heir. Combine that with the Rutyer family's curse of madness, which bit at my father - led him to the most peculiar obsessions, an odd desire to accumulate the strangest things and pile them up in great rotting heaps - Well. The stench alone would have driven an even-tempered and cheerful lad into melancholic fits.
[ His shrug is nearly audible. ]
I imagine you were likely hoping for something more interesting - I fear it's all dreadfully ordinary.
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Maybe it feels like a very long silence.
Like maybe a month long silence, were someone to acknowledge the timestamps on these tags.Maybe it's just enough time to begin to feel a prick of reservation for having said anything at all—]It is very ordinary, [she says at last.] But I suppose ordinariness doesn't really matter to a little boy, and I can see why you wouldn't wish to think on it. Particularly as you're so far removed from it now.
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Would I were farther. Whenever I'm in Ferelden, or corresponding with our nobility, I can never just be Byerly, that rake and scoundrel. I must also be, son of the grotesque and pitiable. If I must be despised, I wish I could be despised merely for myself.
[ There. That sounded good. Wry and arch. Nothing of the strange twist that the phrase little boy leaves in his head. The urge to correct her and tell her that he'd never been anything of the sort. ]
So. Truth for truth.
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Well. [She says, like a placeholder as she mentally tries to work through exactly what she means to say and how she means to say it. Annoyingly though, no clear way forward magically reveals itself to her. So after a moment, she says again:] Well.
Well, I suppose the natural solution, Mister Rutyer, is to simply make yourself despised for being Riftwatch's Ambassador. That can't be very difficult. I believe we're unpopular with a great many people already. You need only be slightly more intolerable to the correct people and eventually the one reputation will win out over the other one. I believe that's how these things often go. Certainly that's how it usually goes in Kalvad, and I imagine gossip is one of those things which is fairly universal in its application.
Anyway, my truth is highly uninteresting. The reason no one would consider me a scholar in Kalvad is because I'm not one. I was only an apprentice magician—which is and isn't like a mage here, which you know a little of—to a highly unpopular fellow, and was considered far too old for the position besides. Most apprentices are children of ten or eleven and far more accomplished with their Talents. And if I told you what other people said on the matter, you might think it was very poor treatment indeed. But I assure you that it is all highly regular in that place. That's how one should expect to be treated in Kalvad if the impression one gives is being something of a waste of time.
That's all. So you see. It has no importance here whatsoever.
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Forgive me, please, Madame. But - I feel a fool, as you've said it so matter-of-factly - Is it a matter of general knowledge that you have magical ability?
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Not particularly common knowledge, no. But why, you knew this! All that time ago when we shared that carriage and we played Wicked Grace, and I cheated with the cards! You can't have possibly been under the impression that I was just some sort of—
[What? This is absurd. She's certain he'd guessed it.]
—Card sharker.
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The second is the reaction he's tried to force himself to have. To shut down that fear, to remember that he's been living with mages for years now and there's only been a single abomination and it's come from outside. That second reaction prevails: he denies the terror.
And so after a moment's hesitation, laughter comes bubbling up from him. ]
I absolutely did! Madame, I'm devastated. You've broken my heart! I thought you'd studied to become a cheat, and I was so proud of you for being one! - Though I suppose you still are, just by different mechanisms.
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But all that business about how I should find myself friends lest I find myself at the mercy of the Chantry after the war— Are you being honest with me right now, Mister Rutyer? I tell you, I am going to be entirely and irrevocably cross with you if you've picked this is all things to lie over.
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[ He's still laughing, just a little. Not at her, just at what a mess this is, what a very silly miscommunication the whole thing has been. How typical a thing it is between them.
But it's not funny, and so he gets a hold of himself and tries to banish the amusement from his voice. ]
Apologies. It's a solemn matter. [ He takes a breath. ] Rifters' fates have been intertwined with mages'. That was my meaning only. Madame, you know I'm a bit of an idiot.
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Well! [Which is thoroughly outraged and also a sure sign she means to move rapidly onward lest she be forced to face her own part in any of this.] The point is that I'm not really a magician either, so in fact in every sense it has no bearing whatsoever. On anything at all.
[So! There!]
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[ He clears his throat. Once he's gathered himself, he offers a perfectly sincere: ]
Well, you have my sympathies. - Have you spoken with Bastien about any of this?
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Why on earth would I say anything to Monsieur Bastien about it?
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[ That is a voice that is, briefly, absolutely thrumming with adoration. ]
And because he has many of the same sorts of frustrations. Freemen - commoners - are treated like they're below notice in many places, but especially in Orlais. So he had to grow up with utter disdain, despite his very real and very remarkable talents. Much as you did.
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[ He might not be able to smell a mage, but he can certainly smell nobility. ]
But it's much the same sort of thing. Bastien's birth, much like your...I presume you were late-apprenticed, and to a master of lesser renown, because someone mismanaged their social connections? Didn't exploit them properly? Or was some other misfortune involved? - Regardless, you're both undervalued because people have paid attention to circumstances instead of talents.
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[Not the assignment, or how dreadful her company had been maybe. But still. They're circumstances which she herself designed.]
It's not like an ordinary apprenticeship or even like the Circles here, and Kalvad is very different from Orlais— It would be dishonest, [she resolves, as if it's only just occurred to her given how closely they've hewn to the subject] To pretend otherwise only for the sake of talking about it.
[Abruptly, and more honestly still:]
I don't wish to talk about it.
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[ And he does. ]
But speaking about it with me is a very different experience from speaking about it with Bastien, you know. I'll make a mess of it, but Bastien will make you feel better. Always.
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[And she does, in a sense, sound like she's telling the truth. What difference does any of it make? It was years ago now, and will never touch her here.]
You won't tell anyone, will you? About mine knowing just a bit of magic. It wasn't on the list that was made of all the Rifters who did and Val mustn't know. I mean, he wouldn't even if you did because he doesn't know anything about anyone in Riftwatch. He hardly knows who you are, and only because I made fun of him for it. And there are other people as well who shouldn't know either, of course.
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[ He becomes immediately distracted. ]
He doesn't know who I am?
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Or at the very least, he knows someone named Byerly Rutyer is Riftwatch's Ambassador. I've no idea if he would identify you as that person.
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[ Byerly actually sounds kind of mad about it. ]
Fine.
[ It's not fine. ]
No Riftwatch member will hear of this.
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I'll lie, but I won't break promises. You'll notice I didn't even insult your lord husband after what you just told me, eh?
[ let's gloss over the fact that calling him your lord husband comes dangerously close to an insult. ]
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What of people outside of Riftwatch?
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Who would I tell?
[ Great answer. ]
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