The Crow that Flew the Nest [crowblooded]
“I have a favor to ask of you, mi amigo.”
Even in Tevene the thickness of the accent had cut deep, and Friyr had laughed.
“My regards,” he’d said and had tried to aim for wit, but the startle of the abruptness at which the Crows had sliced their way back into his life had shaken that intended haughty effect into something bordering a mockery.
But Friyr was not afraid of the Crows; he remembered the Crows, and he remembered meetings in the backs of brothels, and alienages, and an accent that coated the skin, like oil, but there had been no specificity to the memories of the contracts besides discretion, politicism, and the clink of chattering gold that had been infinitely more tangible and important to him. The Crows haunted, now, the edges of old memories of a past he had been surprised to find did not belong to him any longer, despite his return to fighting for coin. That they should be here again felt like he had stumbled into a part of his dreams that dwelled on his past with scrutinizing detail. Strange, but he was not afraid of the Crows; someone else was.
Friyr had taken to loitering his time on drink and company at O Dominae Nostrae, an Inn that had once been meant for an Imperial monastery that had never been built along a foot route that had connected Minrathous to Hossberg in ancient days before the Black Divine. It was still a good travelers’ route, and the inn was well sized - if a little dated and squat.
The inside opened into a red-stoned bar that had a good crowd most nights but was never quite filled to bursting, so one could easily go unnoticed in it without getting lost if one was not Friyr. The elven gladiator was more than recognizable, and he always found that, even in simple day garb, he had a number of people that found it okay to disturb his space whenever he interrupted the mundanity of thiers, and that sucked people close, like a receded tide, so those with disinterest or, importantly, those who wanted distance were obvious.
He had a middling amount of people peering at him tonight and adjusting themselves a little too conveniently close and stumbling into coincidental conversation, but he was intent on chatting to the innkeeper - who stayed behind the bar in amused interest with Friyr’s abundant warmth and cordiality poured out to him.
Friyr grinned rougishly and explained something about the make of daggers he used, and blocking technique, and really questions he’d answered so many times and was amusing himself to see if he could answer it in a different way, but there was no voice yet tonight that matched the auditory description of a Crow running from the Crows, no strange questions of news, no tongue in the common, none of this Zevran Arainai.
“So, as a highly concerned citizen of the Tevinter Imperium, has the Antivan trade died yet? Or do you see evidence through here that means we aren’t going to internally collapse on ourselves?”
