Estella glanced down at the parchment in front of her, sighing when she realized she'd probably just spent the better part of half an hour drawing useless doodles on it instead of making new requisitions for the Riptide, as she'd promised Zahra she would. She'd been having trouble focusing all day, perhaps understandably.
Though the Inquisition seemed to be doing its best to prove otherwise, it really wasn't every day that a friend had the metaphorical carpet ripped out from underneath her. Only yesterday had they judged Ser Durand; he would be leaving for Val Royeaux quite soon, she was sure. Their detention system was presided over by Rilien, after all; it would never be anything other than efficient.
Leaning her cheek into the arm propped on her desk, she made a few more idle scratches with her quill, turning a circle into a sunburst and chewing her lip. She wanted to do something for Khari, but she was at a loss. What did you do for someone in that situation? Was it best to distract her, or try to leave her alone to process things without pressure? It just didn't seem like the kind of problem she could solve with her special cider recipe or hot soup or saying she was sorry—it felt terrible to be so utterly useless. What good was being an Inquisitor, trying to help all these people, if she couldn't even help her friends?
And now she was making this about herself. It wasn't meant to be. “Ugh." Sliding back in her chair, Estella folded her arms on the desk and rested her forehead against them, enclosing herself in a dark little hollow of her own making. Her braid ticked her neck, but she didn't have the motivation to move it. So close to the surface of the desk, her breath gushed back at her when she exhaled, almost uncomfortably warm. “What do I do?"
Ordinarily, it would have been a question she posed to the commander—Lucien, not Leon, though she supposed Leon's advice might not be bad, if she felt they were close enough that she could ask for it. Unfortunately, she didn't. Rilien wasn't exactly the best choice for emotional advice—while he was always helpful to her when she was in distress, Estella knew his ruthless pragmatism wasn't usually what other people needed. Cyrus was brilliant, but not about this kind of thing. She was usually the one giving the advice there. She wasn't sure there was anyone else she'd feel comfortable asking.
She had to figure it out some other way then, because she couldn't just do nothing.
“You doing okay there, Stel?"
As it turned out, the voice belonged to the current object of Estella's thoughts. Khari stood in the doorway of the office, leaning to one side against the wooden frame, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn't appear to be suffering in any particular way from the aftermath of the day before. Currently without her armor, Khari wore a loose white shirt and soft brown leather trousers under her heavy earth-colored cloak. The hood was down; wispy curls of bright red were escaping her braid as usual, especially around her ears. She looked... normal. At least normal for Khari.
Somehow, that was worse than looking like a wreck. Estella knew she probably shouldn't think that way, but considering the state Khari had been in yesterday, she thought the spike of worry in her chest was warranted. Khari—tough, hardscrabble Khari—had been close to tears while her teacher was being judged, especially when it had looked like a real possibility that he might die. The reversal from that moment to right now made Estella wonder if maybe Khari wasn't for once being just a little bit dishonest.
Realizing that she had yet to answer, Estella blinked, straightening slightly in her chair. “Me? Oh, um... I'm all right, really. Perhaps a little tired." She paused, swallowing, then continued. “How—how are you?"
Khari tilted her head to the side, far enough to rest it against the doorframe. Blinking slowly, she arched her eyebrows and shrugged her free shoulder. “I'm okay. I was thinking of going down to the tavern to get a drink, actually. But I don't want to drink alone, because that's pretty pathetic, you know? So I was hoping you'd come along with me." She flashed a smile; it was only brief, but there was at least an echo of her normal self in it. “What d'ya say? Wanna be my date?"
Estella choked a little bit on the breath she'd been taking in. It became a laugh pretty quickly, though, even if she was slightly uncomfortable laughing at this particular point in time. Despite herself, and despite knowing it was a joke, she still felt her face heat a little. It was completely ridiculous, naturally—she was too easily embarrassed as a rule.
Luckily, she could also usually recover quickly. “When you say 'date' you actually mean nurse, don't you? You want me to look after you if you get too drunk." She infused a sort of exaggerated suspicion in her tone, as though she was still contemplating whether she wanted to sign up for such a responsibility. “All right, but I draw the line at anything involving dancing, and if I tell you you're too inebriated to play darts, I expect you to believe me."
“This is why you're the best." Khari smiled again, a little wider this time, and reached over to take Estella's cloak off the hook on the wall. “Come on; no use wasting twilight!"
“I think the expression is 'no use wasting daylight.' And we're definitely out of that already." Estella's tone was wry, but she accepted her cloak and settled it over her shoulders, clasping it tightly against the cold they were bound to encounter outside.
It was indeed quite chilly; the absence of even weak sunlight and the fact that it was the dead of winter in the mountains combined to chill them right to their bones. Estella supposed she still had the worst of it; even after so many years in colder southern climates, she did not handle the winter especially well. The new year would arrive soon; and as it happened, her birthday with it. She and Cyrus hadn't celebrated in years, and she hadn't bothered to tell anyone else when it was.
In contrast to the cold outside, the inside of the Heralds' Rest was quite pleasant. Estella was never going to get used to the idea that a building was named after her, in part. Warm torchlight and oil lanterns cast the large central room in a deep golden glow; the fire roaring in the hearth against one wall kept the chill at bay—though perhaps the body heat of the evening's occupants did quite a bit of that as well. The Lions were elsewhere today; the tavern was perhaps only half-full.
“Do you want to find a table or sit at the bar?"
Khari seemed to consider that for a moment, shedding her cloak and folding it over one arm. “Table. Let's use that one." She pointed, indicating a four-seater in a less-occupied spot. They made their way over to it; Khari chose to sit with her back to the wall, draping her cloak over the chair and pulling her legs up underneath her on the seat. “So... I don't actually do this that often. What do they have that's good here?"
Estella thought on it. She wasn't the most frequent tavern patron, either; usually she spent the nights not occupied by work with her brother or the Lions, and that only sometimes involved trips here. “Well... the brandy's not bad at all. Lady Marceline's family supplies some of the wine, which is good. There's also several different kinds of ale; Hissrad is partial to the dark beer here as well. He says it's almost thick enough to chew." Personally, Estella didn't find that very appealing, but she knew some people did.
When a waitress came by to take their orders, smiling politely at the both of them, she went with the brandy. Old habits died hard.
Khari was a bit more indecisive; in the end, she went with the same. “Might as well try something new, right? Seems like the time for it." There was a slightly-bitter undertone to the words, but she didn't seem inclined to dwell on them. The waitress left to get their order; Khari sighed heavily as soon as she was gone, leaning back in her chair.
“Thanks for coming with me, Stel."
“You're welcome, of course." Honestly, on this day in particular, Khari could have asked her to go cliff-diving or something equally perilous, and she would have agreed. This was mercifully easy to do by comparison.
"Care if I join you?" asked Vesryn, who appeared beside Estella. Khari would've seen him approach, her back to the wall as it was, but for once the blonde-maned elf didn't make his presence known across the entirety of the crowded room. It was unsurprising to find him here; he'd chosen to take up a permanent residence in a room on the upper floors of the tavern, and just about every occasional patron of the Heralds' Rest had become familiar with him. He was also out of his armor, dressed in a sky blue shirt with long sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and dark trousers. He hadn't been present for the judgement of Khari's mentor, but it was entirely likely he'd heard the story by now.
"Or would three be a crowd? I don't mean to intrude."
Estella spared him a small smile, but glanced at Khari. It was entirely up to her, of course.
Khari shrugged, apparently not too concerned about it. “If three was a crowd, I don't think I'd be in a tavern with twenty. Go ahead." She gestured to one of the other chairs at the small table. “You just missed the waitress though."
"Ah, well, she'll be back I'm sure." He left out why, exactly, but he seemed relatively sure, pulling back a chair and taking a seat between the two. "Anything you can share of where we'll be going next?" he asked, the question directed at Estella. "Unless we're planning on waiting out the winter."
The weather did make leaving Skyhold a much more difficult and dangerous thing to do in the wintertime. Then again, if nothing else, the recent excursion had shown it was still possible, at least in small enough numbers. “Well," Estella replied, “we still have need of allies and numbers; we're at where we were before Haven, but not much further, I'm afraid. And still sorely lacking in information. Cyrus says he's getting closer to understanding how Corypheus was able to open the Breach in the first place, but I'm not sure exactly how much that will help us stop him. If we can even find him."
She paused then, as the waitress returned with their orders, setting a glass down in front of Estella and another in front of Khari. "Anything else for you three?" the woman inquired.
Khari took an experimental swallow of the brandy, apparently finding it to her liking, if the little hum of satisfaction was anything to go by. “More of this, definitely." She took a longer draw, only setting the glass down when it was half-empty.
“Please," Estella added, with considerably less enthusiasm. “And if you would be so kind as to put the table's order on my tab tonight, I'll settle before I go."
Any potential skepticism was quite averted by that request, and the waitress nodded amiably, moving her attention to Vesryn. "The usual for you, Ves?"
"No, no, the brandy will do fine tonight. Just need another glass. Thank you, dear." She smiled and nodded, heading off to fetch one more glass for the table. Vesryn drummed his fingers once upon the wooden surface of the table. "Well, if we're not going anywhere tomorrow and the Inquisitor's covering the tab, tonight seems like a good night for... enthusiastic drinking." The waitress soon returned with Vesryn's glass, which he poured some of the brandy into. No doubt she would be back with more of that soon.
Vesryn raised his glass slightly over the table. "Shall we?"
“Absolutely." Khari clinked her glass on his, then on Estella's, then knocked back the rest of what she had and reached for the bottle. As she poured, she glanced back over at Estella. “You hadn't finished your answer, right? What else are we up to these days? Kinda feels weird that I don't know." She snorted, then shook her head.
“Maybe it shouldn't."
Estella recognized the reference immediately. It wasn't as though she'd been planning on withholding what little information she had—but now she supposed it would be best to make a point of finishing. “Oh. Well... until we have a clearer idea of what Corypheus is going to do, or even where he is, I suppose we're just going to close as many rifts as we can and try to disrupt any Venatori or Red Templars we can come across. Defending what we already have is a bit harder with the weather like this, so I think we'll probably be waiting for the snow to melt a bit before we try anything larger-scale."
She sighed. “Which I suppose doesn't sound like anything particularly... world-saving. I wish I could say it would be the matter of a battle or two, but the truth is, it's really unlikely. For now, we basically have to fight Corypheus on his terms, until we can figure out how to make him fight on ours." She took a drink from her glass, then set it down.
“But... we will. If we work together, we will." Estella made an effort to catch Khari's eyes, trying not to let her worry show through too obviously. She understood the need to not think about things sometimes, but there was something rather alarming about the rate at which the other woman was drinking. “That's still true, you know. As true as it was yesterday, or a week ago, or back at Haven."
"No such thing as a pretty fight," Vesryn said after finishing what he'd poured for himself. He immediately refilled his glass. "Never has been. This Corypheus, though, seems like a rat. He struck us only when we were unprepared, and hasn't dared to strike us since. Seems like the work now isn't that of armies but of agents. Smarter people than I. Once they figure out what the ugly bastard's intentions are, we'll go snuff them out."
“Make him wish he never crawled out of whatever scummy hole in the ground he came from." Khari seemed to be in agreement with that at least, draining another glass after grumbling the declaration. “And I know, Stel. I'm not made of glass, you know. Just 'cause I was taught by a liar doesn't mean I can't still kill shit just as well as I did yesterday. And I'm not an agent either, so that's really the only part I'm good for here."
Estella frowned, rotating the glass in her fingers against the surface of the table. “No, it's not," she countered. “You're good for more than fighting, Khari. If you weren't, there would be no place for you here, and there is. Please don't say things like that about yourself." She pursed her lips. It hadn't been her intention to bring the mood down in any way, and she had a feeling if the conversation slid much further in the direction it seemed to be going, it would soon become uncomfortable for all involved. Estella wasn't unwilling to have conversations like that, but this didn't seem like the right setting for it.
Unfortunately, she wasn't exactly sure what to do to prevent it from going there. She glanced at Vesryn, who was provably much better at lightening the tone of things than she was, and for once let her expression convey exactly what she was feeling: help.
Vesryn caught the glance, and returned it with a momentarily uneasy look, though he soon wiped it off and replaced it with his more common upbeat expression. "I can't claim to see or know much of anything for certain on the subject," he said, his tone still quite relaxed, "but from my view, it looks to me as though you," he waggled a finger at Khari, "are a close friend, maybe even the closest friend, of both our Inquisitors. I think I can say with confidence that they both rely on you for far more than your ability to 'kill shit.' That's more than can be said for me." He took another long drink, shaking his head slightly as the strength of it rushed through him.
"It's a storm, to be sure, but we'll weather it. And you'll still be here, with our Inquisitors leaning on you, when it's through."
Khari snorted when he repeated her words back to her, but though she looked quite unimpressed with the claim, the encroaching dark look on her face disappeared, leaving her more or less the way she'd been when first they entered the bar.
“If you say so. I, for one, fully intend to be leaning on the Inquisitor on my way out of this bar, though. Pass the brandy, Stel."
Though the Inquisition seemed to be doing its best to prove otherwise, it really wasn't every day that a friend had the metaphorical carpet ripped out from underneath her. Only yesterday had they judged Ser Durand; he would be leaving for Val Royeaux quite soon, she was sure. Their detention system was presided over by Rilien, after all; it would never be anything other than efficient.
Leaning her cheek into the arm propped on her desk, she made a few more idle scratches with her quill, turning a circle into a sunburst and chewing her lip. She wanted to do something for Khari, but she was at a loss. What did you do for someone in that situation? Was it best to distract her, or try to leave her alone to process things without pressure? It just didn't seem like the kind of problem she could solve with her special cider recipe or hot soup or saying she was sorry—it felt terrible to be so utterly useless. What good was being an Inquisitor, trying to help all these people, if she couldn't even help her friends?
And now she was making this about herself. It wasn't meant to be. “Ugh." Sliding back in her chair, Estella folded her arms on the desk and rested her forehead against them, enclosing herself in a dark little hollow of her own making. Her braid ticked her neck, but she didn't have the motivation to move it. So close to the surface of the desk, her breath gushed back at her when she exhaled, almost uncomfortably warm. “What do I do?"
Ordinarily, it would have been a question she posed to the commander—Lucien, not Leon, though she supposed Leon's advice might not be bad, if she felt they were close enough that she could ask for it. Unfortunately, she didn't. Rilien wasn't exactly the best choice for emotional advice—while he was always helpful to her when she was in distress, Estella knew his ruthless pragmatism wasn't usually what other people needed. Cyrus was brilliant, but not about this kind of thing. She was usually the one giving the advice there. She wasn't sure there was anyone else she'd feel comfortable asking.
She had to figure it out some other way then, because she couldn't just do nothing.
“You doing okay there, Stel?"
As it turned out, the voice belonged to the current object of Estella's thoughts. Khari stood in the doorway of the office, leaning to one side against the wooden frame, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn't appear to be suffering in any particular way from the aftermath of the day before. Currently without her armor, Khari wore a loose white shirt and soft brown leather trousers under her heavy earth-colored cloak. The hood was down; wispy curls of bright red were escaping her braid as usual, especially around her ears. She looked... normal. At least normal for Khari.
Somehow, that was worse than looking like a wreck. Estella knew she probably shouldn't think that way, but considering the state Khari had been in yesterday, she thought the spike of worry in her chest was warranted. Khari—tough, hardscrabble Khari—had been close to tears while her teacher was being judged, especially when it had looked like a real possibility that he might die. The reversal from that moment to right now made Estella wonder if maybe Khari wasn't for once being just a little bit dishonest.
Realizing that she had yet to answer, Estella blinked, straightening slightly in her chair. “Me? Oh, um... I'm all right, really. Perhaps a little tired." She paused, swallowing, then continued. “How—how are you?"
Khari tilted her head to the side, far enough to rest it against the doorframe. Blinking slowly, she arched her eyebrows and shrugged her free shoulder. “I'm okay. I was thinking of going down to the tavern to get a drink, actually. But I don't want to drink alone, because that's pretty pathetic, you know? So I was hoping you'd come along with me." She flashed a smile; it was only brief, but there was at least an echo of her normal self in it. “What d'ya say? Wanna be my date?"
Estella choked a little bit on the breath she'd been taking in. It became a laugh pretty quickly, though, even if she was slightly uncomfortable laughing at this particular point in time. Despite herself, and despite knowing it was a joke, she still felt her face heat a little. It was completely ridiculous, naturally—she was too easily embarrassed as a rule.
Luckily, she could also usually recover quickly. “When you say 'date' you actually mean nurse, don't you? You want me to look after you if you get too drunk." She infused a sort of exaggerated suspicion in her tone, as though she was still contemplating whether she wanted to sign up for such a responsibility. “All right, but I draw the line at anything involving dancing, and if I tell you you're too inebriated to play darts, I expect you to believe me."
“This is why you're the best." Khari smiled again, a little wider this time, and reached over to take Estella's cloak off the hook on the wall. “Come on; no use wasting twilight!"
“I think the expression is 'no use wasting daylight.' And we're definitely out of that already." Estella's tone was wry, but she accepted her cloak and settled it over her shoulders, clasping it tightly against the cold they were bound to encounter outside.
It was indeed quite chilly; the absence of even weak sunlight and the fact that it was the dead of winter in the mountains combined to chill them right to their bones. Estella supposed she still had the worst of it; even after so many years in colder southern climates, she did not handle the winter especially well. The new year would arrive soon; and as it happened, her birthday with it. She and Cyrus hadn't celebrated in years, and she hadn't bothered to tell anyone else when it was.
In contrast to the cold outside, the inside of the Heralds' Rest was quite pleasant. Estella was never going to get used to the idea that a building was named after her, in part. Warm torchlight and oil lanterns cast the large central room in a deep golden glow; the fire roaring in the hearth against one wall kept the chill at bay—though perhaps the body heat of the evening's occupants did quite a bit of that as well. The Lions were elsewhere today; the tavern was perhaps only half-full.
“Do you want to find a table or sit at the bar?"
Khari seemed to consider that for a moment, shedding her cloak and folding it over one arm. “Table. Let's use that one." She pointed, indicating a four-seater in a less-occupied spot. They made their way over to it; Khari chose to sit with her back to the wall, draping her cloak over the chair and pulling her legs up underneath her on the seat. “So... I don't actually do this that often. What do they have that's good here?"
Estella thought on it. She wasn't the most frequent tavern patron, either; usually she spent the nights not occupied by work with her brother or the Lions, and that only sometimes involved trips here. “Well... the brandy's not bad at all. Lady Marceline's family supplies some of the wine, which is good. There's also several different kinds of ale; Hissrad is partial to the dark beer here as well. He says it's almost thick enough to chew." Personally, Estella didn't find that very appealing, but she knew some people did.
When a waitress came by to take their orders, smiling politely at the both of them, she went with the brandy. Old habits died hard.
Khari was a bit more indecisive; in the end, she went with the same. “Might as well try something new, right? Seems like the time for it." There was a slightly-bitter undertone to the words, but she didn't seem inclined to dwell on them. The waitress left to get their order; Khari sighed heavily as soon as she was gone, leaning back in her chair.
“Thanks for coming with me, Stel."
“You're welcome, of course." Honestly, on this day in particular, Khari could have asked her to go cliff-diving or something equally perilous, and she would have agreed. This was mercifully easy to do by comparison.
"Care if I join you?" asked Vesryn, who appeared beside Estella. Khari would've seen him approach, her back to the wall as it was, but for once the blonde-maned elf didn't make his presence known across the entirety of the crowded room. It was unsurprising to find him here; he'd chosen to take up a permanent residence in a room on the upper floors of the tavern, and just about every occasional patron of the Heralds' Rest had become familiar with him. He was also out of his armor, dressed in a sky blue shirt with long sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and dark trousers. He hadn't been present for the judgement of Khari's mentor, but it was entirely likely he'd heard the story by now.
"Or would three be a crowd? I don't mean to intrude."
Estella spared him a small smile, but glanced at Khari. It was entirely up to her, of course.
Khari shrugged, apparently not too concerned about it. “If three was a crowd, I don't think I'd be in a tavern with twenty. Go ahead." She gestured to one of the other chairs at the small table. “You just missed the waitress though."
"Ah, well, she'll be back I'm sure." He left out why, exactly, but he seemed relatively sure, pulling back a chair and taking a seat between the two. "Anything you can share of where we'll be going next?" he asked, the question directed at Estella. "Unless we're planning on waiting out the winter."
The weather did make leaving Skyhold a much more difficult and dangerous thing to do in the wintertime. Then again, if nothing else, the recent excursion had shown it was still possible, at least in small enough numbers. “Well," Estella replied, “we still have need of allies and numbers; we're at where we were before Haven, but not much further, I'm afraid. And still sorely lacking in information. Cyrus says he's getting closer to understanding how Corypheus was able to open the Breach in the first place, but I'm not sure exactly how much that will help us stop him. If we can even find him."
She paused then, as the waitress returned with their orders, setting a glass down in front of Estella and another in front of Khari. "Anything else for you three?" the woman inquired.
Khari took an experimental swallow of the brandy, apparently finding it to her liking, if the little hum of satisfaction was anything to go by. “More of this, definitely." She took a longer draw, only setting the glass down when it was half-empty.
“Please," Estella added, with considerably less enthusiasm. “And if you would be so kind as to put the table's order on my tab tonight, I'll settle before I go."
Any potential skepticism was quite averted by that request, and the waitress nodded amiably, moving her attention to Vesryn. "The usual for you, Ves?"
"No, no, the brandy will do fine tonight. Just need another glass. Thank you, dear." She smiled and nodded, heading off to fetch one more glass for the table. Vesryn drummed his fingers once upon the wooden surface of the table. "Well, if we're not going anywhere tomorrow and the Inquisitor's covering the tab, tonight seems like a good night for... enthusiastic drinking." The waitress soon returned with Vesryn's glass, which he poured some of the brandy into. No doubt she would be back with more of that soon.
Vesryn raised his glass slightly over the table. "Shall we?"
“Absolutely." Khari clinked her glass on his, then on Estella's, then knocked back the rest of what she had and reached for the bottle. As she poured, she glanced back over at Estella. “You hadn't finished your answer, right? What else are we up to these days? Kinda feels weird that I don't know." She snorted, then shook her head.
“Maybe it shouldn't."
Estella recognized the reference immediately. It wasn't as though she'd been planning on withholding what little information she had—but now she supposed it would be best to make a point of finishing. “Oh. Well... until we have a clearer idea of what Corypheus is going to do, or even where he is, I suppose we're just going to close as many rifts as we can and try to disrupt any Venatori or Red Templars we can come across. Defending what we already have is a bit harder with the weather like this, so I think we'll probably be waiting for the snow to melt a bit before we try anything larger-scale."
She sighed. “Which I suppose doesn't sound like anything particularly... world-saving. I wish I could say it would be the matter of a battle or two, but the truth is, it's really unlikely. For now, we basically have to fight Corypheus on his terms, until we can figure out how to make him fight on ours." She took a drink from her glass, then set it down.
“But... we will. If we work together, we will." Estella made an effort to catch Khari's eyes, trying not to let her worry show through too obviously. She understood the need to not think about things sometimes, but there was something rather alarming about the rate at which the other woman was drinking. “That's still true, you know. As true as it was yesterday, or a week ago, or back at Haven."
"No such thing as a pretty fight," Vesryn said after finishing what he'd poured for himself. He immediately refilled his glass. "Never has been. This Corypheus, though, seems like a rat. He struck us only when we were unprepared, and hasn't dared to strike us since. Seems like the work now isn't that of armies but of agents. Smarter people than I. Once they figure out what the ugly bastard's intentions are, we'll go snuff them out."
“Make him wish he never crawled out of whatever scummy hole in the ground he came from." Khari seemed to be in agreement with that at least, draining another glass after grumbling the declaration. “And I know, Stel. I'm not made of glass, you know. Just 'cause I was taught by a liar doesn't mean I can't still kill shit just as well as I did yesterday. And I'm not an agent either, so that's really the only part I'm good for here."
Estella frowned, rotating the glass in her fingers against the surface of the table. “No, it's not," she countered. “You're good for more than fighting, Khari. If you weren't, there would be no place for you here, and there is. Please don't say things like that about yourself." She pursed her lips. It hadn't been her intention to bring the mood down in any way, and she had a feeling if the conversation slid much further in the direction it seemed to be going, it would soon become uncomfortable for all involved. Estella wasn't unwilling to have conversations like that, but this didn't seem like the right setting for it.
Unfortunately, she wasn't exactly sure what to do to prevent it from going there. She glanced at Vesryn, who was provably much better at lightening the tone of things than she was, and for once let her expression convey exactly what she was feeling: help.
Vesryn caught the glance, and returned it with a momentarily uneasy look, though he soon wiped it off and replaced it with his more common upbeat expression. "I can't claim to see or know much of anything for certain on the subject," he said, his tone still quite relaxed, "but from my view, it looks to me as though you," he waggled a finger at Khari, "are a close friend, maybe even the closest friend, of both our Inquisitors. I think I can say with confidence that they both rely on you for far more than your ability to 'kill shit.' That's more than can be said for me." He took another long drink, shaking his head slightly as the strength of it rushed through him.
"It's a storm, to be sure, but we'll weather it. And you'll still be here, with our Inquisitors leaning on you, when it's through."
Khari snorted when he repeated her words back to her, but though she looked quite unimpressed with the claim, the encroaching dark look on her face disappeared, leaving her more or less the way she'd been when first they entered the bar.
“If you say so. I, for one, fully intend to be leaning on the Inquisitor on my way out of this bar, though. Pass the brandy, Stel."