narrative: muffins?! Who: Lucressia Peron, Giorgio Trovato (NPC) Where: The Yard of Vigil's Keep, Amaranthine When: Early morning, just before this. Molioris, 9:45 Dragon, etc etc. Summary: Where did the muffins come from, anyway? Rating: Swearing in multiple (well, two) languages.
"Good morning, mi bella."
Lucressia jolted awake almost as soon as she heard the voice even begin to speak, panicked, suddenly full of adrenaline as her eyes opened in the darkness of the back of her wagon. Some light was leaking in through the cracks between the boards, illuminating the space where trade goods were sometimes stored, and where now Lucressia had spread out her bedroll. But in the main, the space inside her wagon was dark, and at first she could only make out a form, sitting hunched over on a crate of empty glass bottles. Thin, long of leg, probably male, sitting very still.
And the smell of fresh baked bread and blueberries.
Lucressia was halfway to pulling the knife free of her pillow when she recognized the voice, the slouch, the way he was squatted over his knees, elbows resting on them, with hands clasped between them.
"Giorgio, what the fuck are you doing here? In my bedroom? In—" her eyes shot towards the door, and there was nothing even like daylight leaking in from outside, so it must still be before even the earliest hints of dawn. "In the middle of the night?"
"It's a wagon, not your bedroom."
"A wa—vaffanculo, I sleep here, it's my bedroom!" She swore, and then she glowered. Her eyes were adjusting, slowly, to the dark, and she could see the far-too-broad smile on the elf's face as he regarded her from where he was sitting. The near-darkness hid the long, twining tattoos that covered nearly a quarter of Giorgio's face, but it did not disguise the awful, self-satisfied smirk. "You didn't answer the question, porca, what are you doing here?"
He shrugged; no other part of his body moved. "I missed you?" She could see that he was wearing black leather, armor and gloves and a hood (now pulled back) and boots, all manner of things designed to hide motion in the darkness, disguise living skin from sight the middle of the night. She continued to glare, and, under her stare he eventually wilted. Slightly. Not that her stare was genuinely intimidating—she was wearing a nightgown and, she imagined, her hair was flying in a hundred different directions. But Giorgio's grin cracked open wider, and this second shrug actually moved some of his torso along with it. "I needed a place to go to ground. Just for a little while, while I work on the mission. I brought you a present, though."
She sat up—she would have stood, for it was a stronger gesture, but the wagon did not permit it—and looked around. The smell drifted through her mind again, appetizing and completely inexplicable. Was there a bakery nearby, or… Then she saw it. A basket, covered with a checkered linen cloth; she leaned forward and grasped it, for it had been laid only a foot or two from the foot of her makeshift bed. ".... this?"
"Open it, amica."
"This is your present? Where did you get…" She flipped the top of the basket open and stared down at what were perhaps twenty or thirty golden brown muffins, and the delightful aroma only intensified. They had small, irregular and slightly wet-looking blue dots, which, from the sour smell, were blueberries. They looked, and smelled, wonderful. "Pastries?"
"Muffins." He offered it in the most helpful manner Lucressia had ever heard him speak in; at least, in recent memory. As if she might just have needed to know the word before she began thanking him profusely. Probably with adoration and kisses. It was disgustingly smug.
"My question stands. Where on earth did you get muffins, and why are you bringing them to me? I can't eat this many." She looked up at the elf again; he seemed more amused than Lucressia felt he had a right to be, just then. "Well, spill it."
"I don't really care what you do with them. Sell them. Throw them at children. Eat every last one. I just don't need them anymore."
"You've got to be kidding." He had to be. There had to be some reason—he had to have some angle, some reason he was doing this, and Lucressia's first instinct was suspicion. "What's in them? Ground up glass? Lanthrax? Strychnine?"
"They'd stink if it were strychnine." The bastard couldn't help but point it out; Lucressia's frown grew deeper. Giorgio being right didn't help at all. "They're fine. Nothing but butter and berries. Made merely hours ago by quite a fine baker—and I mean that figuratively and literally."
This did not do a great deal to allay Lucressia's suspicions: Crows were liars, one and all. "Willing to attest to it with your actions?" When he nodded, she reached into the basket, fished around, looking for anything out of place, and finally pulled out a muffin, chosen mostly at random. She tossed, and Giorgio caught it in one hand and, with a fluid move and perhaps more confidence than a man should have when eating a muffin, took a large bite. The smile with his mouth still mostly full was, perhaps, a bit much.
Nothing happened right away, but Lucressia was willing to give him twenty or thirty minutes to keel over or start showing symptoms before she believed they were completely undoctored. "So, why muffins?" As she asked, he was taking one, two, three more gigantic bites, and then the pastry was utterly gone, save for crumbs that had fallen on his armor and on the floor of her cart.
"They were part of the plan." He gave the last word substantial gravity (at least, coming from Giorgio, whose sense of gravity was almost always sorely lacking.) "So don't ask where I got them. I just need them gone—and a place to lie low until sunset. You wouldn't refuse me, would you?
Lucressia rolled her eyes, brief frustration at her cohort's very purposeful obfuscation giving way to curiosity—and self interest. "Your assignment not going very well, caro? If you need to be in hiding?" Though she didn't wish him failure, just a little trouble would serve the man right, and maybe wipe that smug grin off of his face. But her question did no such thing; he only grinned more, and resettled slightly his makeshift seat.
"No, everything is progression exactly as it should be. It doesn't seem like your task is going all that well, though. From what I heard, the failure still lives." Ah, there, the quick and barbed words that meant he was, indeed, at least passingly interested. Lucressia shrugged, feigning complete disinterest, and started searching for a clasp to tie up her hair. Giorgio continued. "Or was it your task to take care of the mark? Perhaps the Crow and the pigeon?"
She had found a pair of lacquer sticks, and, twisting the bottom of her hair into order, was in the middle of pinning it to the back of her head as she spoke. "You don't actually know what my assignment is, do you?"
"I--"
"You're fishing, and for all you know I'm here for neither the Bryland or Corleoni. Ignacio didn't tell you a thing." Which was as it should have been. Lucressia had not been worried, but now she felt—proud, almost, or at least superior, that Ignacio had not gone telling either of the other Crows what she was doing in Amaranthine. It would have been a bit unusual to assume that she was there to bring Savio to justice (Crow Justice, as contradictory as that statement was), as they served different Masters, but not entirely unheard of. And if there was anyone that Lucressia had known, in her nearly ten years of being a Crow, to think outside of the box, it was the man sitting before her. After all, Giorgio Trovato had somehow decided that buying but not eating an entire bushel of muffins was crucial to his objective of publicly killing a well-known knight in Amaranthine. Somehow.
Her hair was done; clothing remained. "What time is it, anyway?" She asked, casting around the wagon, looking for a dress suitable for merchanting; she saw black linens and disguises and one dress whose décolletage was so low it was practically a skirt, but… ah, there they were. Wealthy Antivan Merchant dresses. Lucressia made a point of collecting acceptable gowns: those that were well-made but not too fine, eye-catching but not too ostentatious, enticing without conveying the idea that she was selling a certain set of goods that were not on the market. And most of them had one, if not more, very well-concealed pockets or pouches somewhere in them. (In Orlais, in Antiva, even here in Ferelden to a lesser degree, there was a delightfully thriving market for that sort of thing, it turned out.)
"Watch should call dawn in an hour, maybe," the other Crow guessed, finally moving from his hunched posture; his hands were still clasped, but he raised them above his head and stretched them high. Lucressia could hear joints popping, and had the sudden, disconcerting notion that he might have been in her wagon for quite some time. Bastard. "So I guess you have mercantile activities to get to, no? Early risers get the worms? Or whatever they say." He rose. "So you won't mind if I take a nap? I'm horribly, horribly tired."
Lucressia's response was more a growl and less words, but Giorgio took it as permission, and by the time she had started hawking muffins in the courtyard of Vigil's Keep, he was sound asleep.