In all the tumult of Bierfest, one stray interaction could go unnoticed.
Ofelia normally went to great efforts to ignore her fellow inquisitors unless they were in positively dire straits, neatly erasing them from her periphery and recognition as if they didn’t exist at all. But this time, bumping elbows at the line for one of the ale stalls, Ofelia traded a smile with Vannes by way of greeting.
“Evening,” she said. “Busy, isn’t it?” The overture was as bland as she could make it, absolutely nothing to pique any eavesdropper’s interest.
There was a slight arch of an eyebrow in carefully conveyed surprise, but it was immediately replaced with a very neutral, polite expression. This was always a fun game. Redwald took a sip of his ale—pumpkin flavored—and smiled. “Quite. There’s so much to take in, it’s hard to keep track of everything.”
“Mm. Almost overwhelming. Do your crowd go in for this holiday much?” Noting the specialised seasonal flavour of his ale, Ofelia wordlessly followed suit: she ordered a peach beer from the vendor, and the pair of them drifted off to the side, where a bit more privacy could be won in the crowd.
"Not at all," Redwald drawled. "They typically find this sort of revelry… uncouth. A few Kerwonian transplants are having private parties in the Nobles District. It's all very contained, as per."
“Would be a shame if anything happened to disrupt their party.” The older inquisitor’s expression was pleasantly unreadable, with all the deadpan she’d learnt from years at the poker table. “My family, on the other hand… I think they’re either calling it a holiday or taking an opportunity to fleece the tourists.”
Family was a mutable term. They tended to craft their own.
"Well. I'm not a gambling man," the orator began mildly, a lie if ever there was one, "but I'd wager it's the latter. I can't see them passing up such an opportunity." Redwald briefly thought of other topics, of illness and cultists, things they could discuss in an equally bland manner.
But some things were best left for LeSait.
“Every wager comes with strings attached,” she said vaguely, thinking of the taxes and tariffs that thieves paid to the council. “It’ll be interesting to see how much comes in this year.” Ofelia’s nails rapped against the side of her peach beer, the abbreviated tapping code that meant: Later.
The woman gambled with gil and cards nowadays, but both of them still played with words: the game of communicating some, while saying very little indeed. With another cautious nod, the inquisitor melded back into the crowds.
It was a fun game, yes, but it wouldn’t do for hard evidence.