twoforsurprise | One Short Day In Antiva City

One Short Day In Antiva City

Davrin might have forgotten Lucanis' offer about the tailor, but he had not. Not all of their excursions were for fighting demons or cultists or darkspawn, and eventually Rook was going treasure hunting on the Rivani coast with Taash and Harding. And just them. Quite adamant that only Taash and Harding were needed, in fact.

Andraste preserve them, Rook was apparently becoming interested in matchmaking.

It worked out, though. The timing. Lucanis ever so casually mentions that Davrin promised to assist him in some errands in Antiva and Rook is just so happy they're not at each other's throats that they're told to not take however long they need. Lucanis makes a mental note to pick up something nice for Rook when they're in Antiva City.

Ah, Antiva City. A less beautiful Treviso, Lucanis used to say. That was before the Ossuary, before the occupation, before the blight. Now it's hard to not see everything that's been lost. He doesn't insult Davrin by assuming the man can't keep up with the Crow routes along the rooftops and across ziplines, so much faster than the weaving crowded streets up the hill the city is built on overlooking the harbor the few times they need to duck down to street level.

"Should be right around - ah, there it is," Lucanis declares once they're half way up the hill, the financial district of the city settled between the Palace at the top and the harbor and all the wealth the shipping industry brings. This time when he drops down to the street level it is where they'll stay for the time being, heading to an understated store front with a simple hanging sign that looks like an embroidered rose carved into the wood of it.

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"If it was flowers, I would simply talk to Harding," Lucanis says easily - not at all helping offer clarification. It will become clear soon enough, he figures, though it's true there's very little on the outside to clarify about the shop's insides. It's the kind that does well enough that it's clientele know where it is and what they provide without a street barker to call anyone in. "Come - we're expected."

Somewhat. He had sent word ahead but had not specified on an exact time. None the less, he had no doubts the owner would make the time for them. Pulling the door open and holding it for Davin to follow after.

A tailor's, and not just any. The kind that serves a high enough class of clientele to have that understated kind of wealth on display. Quality items rather than flash and glitter. A few tunics or trousers in progress, some impeccible coats fit for the best dinner parties - several comfortable lounges for waiting if need be. There is a doorway to the back that is covered by a cloth that the owner steps through at the sound of the door - an older dwarven man, who smiles to see Lucanis.

"Ah, Ser Dellamorte. It is such a pleasure to see you back among the living once more."

"It is good to see you appear to have settled well in Antiva City, Mister La Rosa," Lucanis replied smoothly. Like they weren't talking about him being imprisoned for a year and thought dead.

"It is not Treviso, but it is closer to my grandchildren, so one must make to. Please, come into the back. This is the colleague you mentioned?"

La Rosa was too much a professional to do any kind of surprise at Lucanis' companion - besides, the Crows had elves with Dalish markings among their number or in association. Yet - if anything gave him pause it was that Davrin was very clearly not a Crow, and that alone prompted a curiosity.

"Indeed. Warden Davrin, we are on a job together. Warden, may I introduce Mister La Rosa - my tailor."

It would be against some form of honor to just heel turn and walk out, he was sure. He's not exactly sure where in the Warden oath running from a tailor would be, but it seems like something the general oath of no retreat until death would cover. But the temptation is there, clear as day written across his face. Dalish elves don't get outfitted by a prince's tailor. This clothes on display in this shop probably cost more than all the coin his clan had gathered in trade since he was born.

He gave Lucanis a look out of the side of his eye. What joke was this.

"You need a body guard while you get a new shirt?"

Oh, there's nothing really stopping Davrin from running... except Lucanis is watching him, with that damn slight smirk like he's daring Davrin to do it, to admit failure, to choose escape instead of some simple harmless task.

"You are getting a new shirt," Lucanis said smoothly, before pausing and correcting (after looking Davrin up and down and remembering that shredded pile of cloth). "Several new shirts."

La Rosa was politely silent while they talked, until Lucanis turned to him again.

"Just one for today to ensure the correct fit, the rest send to the Estate. I will need my measurements taken again as well, I think, but please take care of Warden Davrin first. Does your wife still make the coffee?"

"She does!" La Rosa said cheerfully, gesturing them to follow him into the back where the setup was far more intimate, a space for someone to stand to have their measurements taken with mirrors all around to check a proper fit, and another chaise longue for whoever was with. Lucanis removed his coat to hang near the doorway and took that seat.

"Alessa, darling!" he called into a different back room, "Ser Dellamorte and his guest, coffee if you please!"

"You really don't have to do that."

His tone was utterly flat, even as he followed after the pair of, apparently colluding Antivians. He could leave. He really could. But Lucanis knew damn well that little smirk made sure he wouldn't. It was the strangest battle of wills he'd ever been in, and he wished he'd just insisted on taking Assan with them instead of leaving him playing with Emmrich and Manfred. Avoiding getting feather dust all over the shop would have been a sound and tactical retreat.

As it was, he paused next to Lucanis in the back room as the tailor went about getting them coffee.

"This is revenge for the herbal tea, isn't it."

"Alessa's coffee is a privilege, not a punishment," Lucanis said, lofty. His eyes said oh yes though. He was going to enjoy this. The man needed more shirts with a proper fit to them anyway that didn't look like they'd been passed down for three generations, so this was a perfect excuse. He didn't quite manage to keep all the teasing out of his voice when he asked "Besides, what if Rook needs to take us someplace nice and you have nothing to wear?"

"Have you ever had your measurements taken before, Ser Warden?" La Rosa asked when he returned, a stout dwarven woman of similar age following after holding a tray with delicate cups filled with a strong smelling coffee, small containers for cream and sugar laid out as well.

"He has not," Lucanis answered for him, another small smirk at Davrin. A guess, perhaps, but he thought he was probably correct. He took up a cup with a murmured thank you and a few other pleasantries exchanged with La Rosa's wife who seemed just as happy as the man to see Lucanis again.

"Then I am honored to be the first and will make it as painless as possible," the tailor said cheerfully.

"That's- thanks."

He was not going to put innocents in the line of fire. He would allow himself to be pushed and prodded and whatever it was the clearly kind dwarf wanted from him, following orders like the soldier he was. But even as he stumbled a bit in his politeness with La Rosa and wife, in his heart he vowed to remember this. Somehow, someday, though he didn't know when or where, he would have his revenge against the Crow.

For...buying him shirts.

Look, just because no one else would understand that this was clearly a battle of escalation between the two men didn't make it any less so. Lucanis knew exactly what was happening. That was all that mattered.

"Don't you have other people to," bother, "visit while I'm here, Lucanis? I know you don't get out much. Wouldn't want you to waste your day."

Indeed, Lucanis knew exactly what was happening. He crossed one leg over the other as he held his coffee cup, quite comfortable exactly where he was with no intent on moving. Alessa set the tray down on a nearby table for just such purposes to be within easy reach of where La Rosa gestured to Davrin to stand while he got out his measuring tape and various other tools of the trade. A quick curtsy and Alessa vanished once more into the back for the time being.

"Oh, I have not seen La Rosa in more than a year. I would not pass up this chance to catch up with him," Lucanis said, which was true, but also he was not missing a single second of Davrin getting measured and stumbling through whatever manners he guessed would be appropriate for the situation. It would be different if he thought the Warden could actually do anything to offend La Rosa or vice versa, but while he was still getting to know Davrin, Lucanis had been seen by the dwarven man for almost twenty years now. He knew how socially inept Lucanis could sometimes be and had always been very gentle about that. So - a safe situation where Lucanis could simply be deeply entertained at Davrin's discomfort.

This would be more embarrassing than uncomfortable if Davrin didn't have the solid fact that all of Lucanis' wealth and luxury came from murdering people. Some that might deserve it, sure, but at the end of the day? Blood money. It made it very hard for a poor Dalish Warden with a code of honor strong enough to beat someone to death with it to feel anything close to less than. Which he was fairly sure Lucanis knew. As much as the war was building, he didn't think either of them were in it to actually maliciously wound the other.

He just wished he could have kept his shirt. It made sense, there was no measuring around the loose fitting one, but still. Civil as the dwarf was, there was no denying Davrin was more a reluctant object on display than a customer in this situation. And it gave Lucanis the satisfaction of seeing exactly how well the stitches he had done had healed- barely a trace at all, particularly compared to the rest of the jagged wounds littering his back and chest.

"Please, pretend I'm not even here."

Hey, it wasn't just blood money. It was generational blood money. A whole family business based off of murder going back for generations. Honestly were it not for the Antaam invasion, the Dellamortes had branched out enough in investments that they didn't need the Crow money anymore. But then there was the Antaam doing things like burning vineyards down, and they took care of their own people.

Someone somewhere always needed to die. Murder was a reliable business when times were hard, and stopping would only make them targets anyway. This way the farmers that worked for them could re-settle elsewhere and weren't so destitute at starting over. This way Lucanis' favorite tailor could settle into a different city closer to his family but not too far away to still do work for them.

La Rosa was true to his word in trying to make the process as painless as possible, and it seemed he did have some experience with customers new to such treatment. But him and Lucanis chatted away as he wrapped the tape around various parts of Davrin, asking him to move this way or that and taking down notes on a notepad filled with numbers and shorthand symbols. The man had three grand children with a fourth on the way across two children, Lucanis remembered all of their names and asked about them. For his part, La Rosa asked about Lucanis' cousin Illario, and someone (something?) named Irene who Lucanis informed him was doing well and being looked after by Illario as Lucanis was on a job and not reliably at home at the moment.

They did not talk about Treviso. Aside from a brief 'it was terrible to hear about Caterina' they did not talk about Caterina. They did not talk about why Lucanis was absent for a year.

While he made the polite conversation, Lucanis took the time to check his handiwork - Davrin's back was healing nicely. In time he felt confident that the scars that had come from it would fade entirely, even as he traced the other on the Warden's body and wondered where they came from. Curiosity, that was all.

That was all.

"Now - Ser Warden, for your shirts, do you have a preference for color or fabric or style?" La Rosa asked when he was satisfied with his numbers. This was Lucanis' friend, and Lucanis was infamously non-fussy about his own clothing to the point that it was better to ask if an opinion existed rather than simply assume one did.

"Easy to get blood out of."

Again, a tailor to the Crows. It couldn't be an unusual request, and was easier to ask for than trying to explain how hard getting blighted blood out of anything was. Though, maybe, with Treviso-

No. The two men around him had had an entire conversation without bringing up the most obvious pain points between them. He wasn't going to push it into the conversation now.

Through the fitting, even a total stranger to Davrin would know the man was a professional soldier. Being moved this way and that and overall treated as more a thing than person for armor fitting or medical treatment was nothing new. He went where put and stayed still without a moving a hair out of place when instructed, no matter how awkward a position. And he listened. A little too keenly, maybe. Soldier, yes. Spy? No. He made eye contact with Lucanis more than once in the mirror as he obviously made note of this or that being said (Irene?).

When eye contact was made, Lucanis held it, only raising an occasional expressive eyebrow at it. (Irene, yes, is that a question?)

La Rosa took that note down too without any sign of fuss. Lucanis had brought him here instead of seeing one of his cousin's tailors, after all.

"I have just the thing in mind. Please make yourself comfortable while you wait - Alessa was making some delicious cornettos, they should be done soon, I will have her bring some out along with a refresh of the coffee," La Rosa said cheerfully, taking up his supplies once more, gesturing to the various places to sit and going into the back again to leave Lucanis and him temporarily alone.

There was a step-stool for La Rosa to stand on (quite needed for measuring Davrin), an arm chair, and the lounge that Lucanis was on was technically big enough for two...

"This is not so bad, is it?" Lucanis asked, cheerful.

"Am I supposed to get dressed?"

A serious question that he was not entirely sure he would get a serious answer to, but he only had one person to ask. So he'd just have to suffer Lucanis having him, for the moment, at his figurative mercy.

As for how bad it was or wasn't? Davrin could only shake his head as he walked over and, more out of stubbornness to treat this all as under control and normal than a desire for the drink, took his own cup of black coffee. Still standing in front of the seated Lucanis, of course. Sitting was for after he got his answer, if at all.

Ah. Lucanis waited for just long enough to see if Davrin really was going to wait to sit until he got his answer. It seemed that way.

Lucanis took a slow sip of his own coffee.

"You may if you wish. You'll need to take your shirt back off to try on the one he brings, but that will be a short wait," he said, and then, because he was feeling particularly merciful at that moment in time (discomfort was one thing, actual harm was another) - "I put mine back on while I am waiting."

He didn't tend to take it off if he didn't have to. Though he was considering now that he was going to, to get his own measurements done. Ah, well. Hoist by your own petard. It was possible Davrin would be ready to crawl the walls then and prefer to wait outside.

"Hm."

It was as close to a thanks as Lucanis was going to get. He left the coffee on the tray to go slip his shirt back on- possibly giving a little too much of a sigh of relief as he did. It wasn't that being undressed was particularly bothersome; not if there wasn't a fight he'd want his armor for about to kick off. He'd stripped down more than once on the journeys out with Rook to clean off in a stream or lake. It was just the situation. The pomp and circumstance of it all made him tense in ways he didn't associate with nudity.

Cup back in hand, he took the arm chair, consciously trying to get his shoulders to loosen. The Crow won if he didn't, after all. Thinking along those lines, he wasn't going to let the silence sit for Lucanis to hold or break as he pleased. But with the whole situation making him off-footed he grabbed onto the first topic not about him to pass through his mind.

"Irene?"

Lucanis looked into his coffee cup rather than watch Davrin get dressed, the way his muscles in his back moved as he did. There was no need to ensure that nothing was tearing, no spotting, no bleeding... so, a modicum of privacy, never mind that he had watched the whole measuring process. It felt... more illicit, somehow, without the third party involved. As he considered what to say, if he wanted to say anything, Davrin beat him to the punch. The question made him startle a moment, blinking at the other man before he recognized the prompt.

"Yes. My pet snake," he clarified. Because of course 1) he had a pet snake and 2) he had named her Irene.

Of all the answers-

It's a good thing Davrin had training, because otherwise the coffee cup wouldn't have made it to the table again before he laughed hard enough to shake his entire upper half. He hadn't known what to expect, but with the fact his cousin was taking care of her, that a tailor had known to ask while discussing family, he'd at least expected a girlfriend. Bastard daughter, maybe. Hell, even an apprentice.

He still has one hand over the upper half of his face as he stops laughing enough to follow up.

"Of course it's a damn snake. Venomous, right?"

Lucanis hid his own smile behind his coffee cup. He felt like he should be offended at that laugh, but... the amusement was infectious, perhaps. ~~Maybe Davrin just had a nice laugh.~~

"Seheron taipan," he clarifies, casually. So, not just any snake, not just any venomous snake, but a snake that had such a massively lethal venom that it was known to be able to kill a qunari berserker in minutes with a single bite.

But really, they were quite a shy species, they preferred to run and hide. He kept antivenom right next to Irene's enclosure just in case, but in spite of having the snake since he was a teenager she had only ever bit a person once.

"I still can't figure out if you love or hate your cousin."

If any family member had given Davrin a living death wish to take care of, he would have loosed it into the nearest appropriate ecosystem and never looked back. Never mind that, as a Warden, he was more or less a living death wish, himself.

It was different. Snakes didn't come with a code.

A smaller version of the amused smile remained in place, encouraged by Lucanis' own pleased aura, as he took his coffee back up. Irene the snake had managed to make him feel comfortable for the first time in the room, if only by putting the whole getting fitted ordeal out of his mind for the moment.

"I did not ask him to take care of her," Lucanis feels the need to clarify. This he had not done to his cousin, but Illario had done to himself, apparently... which Lucanis was greatful for.

"When I was ambushed by Venatori, they somehow convinced my family that I was dead. He decided to take care of her. I'm certain he could have found someone else to take her, he never liked snakes, but..."

But for the memory of his dead cousin, he did it anyway. Their relationship was a complicated one.

He looked down into his coffee again. He should take her back, but he worried she would not recognize him now, or that the lighthouse would be a terrible place for her. She was probably happier in Illario's care.

He didn't have a good response to that for a moment. He didn't hide that fact behind taking a sip of coffee, either. Just tilted his head slightly, watching Lucanis. Ambushed by Venatori was a nice way of glossing over the year he'd been tortured and come back with a demon in him. For the first time Davrin wondered exactly how widely known outside of their little circle that fact was. Had Lucanis told his family, his fellow Crows?

It wasn't his business. Not really. But he wondered.

"Sounds like an interesting guy. You should give him a tour of the Lighthouse sometime."

Edited 2024-12-23 05:36 (UTC)

"I'm not sure he would enjoy the experience," Lucanis said, even as he showed a little amusement on his face at that. But no, his literal demon problem was considered 'Crow buiness', and beyond those who had the Cantori Diamond as their center of operations he expected it was not spread.

Of course, that also included all his family.

Had Caterina known, before she was killed? He hopes she had not. That she had died thinking Lucanis was still alive and well and not some abomination in his place was rescued. He lets out a slow exhale. Nothing to be done about it. Try not to think about it.

"In some ways we are more like brothers. Caterina took us both in after we lost the rest of our family," Lucanis explained. The phrasing was very particular- like it was an act of generosity for her to have taken her only living relatives left instead of leaving them on the streets as orphans to be noticed by an Heir if they had talent for Crow training.

The phrasing was noted and left alone. For now. He wasn't going to start another spat about the many terribly life choices of the Crows and the families within it here and now, when an innocent tailor might wander into the cross fire. He had plenty of time when they were on the road to let his thoughts be known on that one.

"Should I just call him that? Your brother. The feeling matters more than the actual blood."

What a question.

"Probably not where he could hear it," Lucanis answers.

It's smart that Davrin waited as well - not the tailor yet but his wife, with more coffee and fresh pastries made of a flakey rolled up dough.

"Ah, thank you, Alessa," Lucanis said, all politeness for the older woman instead of smirking challenge he had for Davrin.

Darvin was just as polite, biting off the follow up question as he took a pastry and made the appropriate thanks and compliments to the hostess. He may be here under a strange form of duress, but he had been raised right. Though he was going to have to start writing down the number of familial concerns he was gathering about Lucanis.

"Has he always had a sweet tooth?"

It was not until that moment that Lucanis realized that he had put Davrin in the perfect position to interrogate someone about Lucanis' past who was only too happy to answer. In his defense he expected Davrin to be too flustered over the whole ordeal to notice this opportunity until it had passed. Well, point for the Warden, and Lucanis made a mental note to not under-estimate his recovery time in the future.

"Oh, yes!" Alessa said cheerfully, as expected, only too happy to get their new guest talking. "Of course, he tried to pretend he did not. But he would always take a pastry and bring another home for his cousin too. Such a sweet boy."

"Ah, let's not bore the Warden with ancient history," Lucanis tried to interject.

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